All My Useless Gifts

When I was ten years old, I emphatically informed my family that I wanted to have fourteen children. I landed on this exact number because a colleague of my father had thirteen children. Not knowing of anyone else who had more than thirteen children, I figured that if I had fourteen kids, I would win some sort of award for producing the most offspring. 

I eventually realized that competitive reproduction has its downsides, so I relinquished that dream to move on to other endeavors--like earning a college degree and teaching high school English. Marriage arrived later in life than my childhood self had hoped, and my first (and so far only) child was born after I turned thirty. Unless I hurry up and have septuplets and then sextuplets, it's going to be really hard to have fourteen children before menopause. 

Early on during my pregnancy with Monica, I was diagnosed with a bicornuate uterus--which lands me in the high-risk category. While pregnant, I spent twelve weeks on bed rest (four in the first trimester, eight in the last). Entirely unrelated to my own condition, Monica has a rare neurological malformation that comes with a constellation of special needs.

Last week, a mother in one of my Facebook groups asked for advice about having a fourth child. She mentioned in her question that one of her children has special needs, but she doesn't think this should keep her from having another baby. Her question touched very near an ache of my own.

Right now, we're in a difficult season with Monica's special needs. My husband is working furiously to finish his dissertation. There's a strong possibility that we will move in about six months. Both Benjamin and I decided that right now is not the time to get pregnant. If I ended up on bed rest, it would be hard to get Monica to therapy and care for her when she's in pain. I might not be physically able to handle an international move without going into premature labor. Another baby is out of the question at the moment. And the uncertainty of how much care Monica will need in the future, combined with my own difficulty in having children, sometimes makes me wonder if she will be our only child.

The prospect of having only one child triggers another, more existential ache. Since leaving the classroom and taking up motherhood, my circle of influence has shrunk considerably. I used to engage students with Shakespeare's Macbeth, inspire them to write poetry, and make them tremble at the thought of my behemoth midterms. Now I spend a considerable amount of time encouraging an almost-two-year old to use her words instead of grunting and screaming like an inconsolable--although adorable--caveman. My world is much, much smaller now. I sometimes wonder, as probably every mother has, "How much am I giving to God and contributing to the universe by asking my daughter, for the hundredth time today, if she wants water, milk, or juice?"

In A.E. Stallings's beautiful poem "The Magi," she traces the journey of three wise men figurines as they travel across the living room to arrive at the creche on Epiphany. Her poem ends with this stanza:

One kneeling, while the camel grunted--

Twelve whole days of Christmas hence--

To give what no child ever wanted;

Gold and myrrh and frankincense.

  

I've heard dozens of sermons on the symbolic significance of the wise men's three gifts, but the conclusion of this poem unexpectedly illustrates how rather impractical--or perhaps downright silly--those gifts were, something rarely mentioned from the pulpit. 

Perhaps we've missed something important about the Magi's story by overlooking that silliness. Perhaps it's the very uselessness of these gifts that is part of the point after all. When I think of the smallness of my world and my contribution, when I consider the possibility of spending my life mothering just one child instead of the fourteen I used to imagine, the relative insignificance of my gift makes it all seem a bit meaningless, like giving frankincense to a baby.

But maybe the meaning isn't meant to come in the gift itself. Even with their ridiculous presents, the Magi did meet Christ. And as with all things, in that moment of meeting, God stood the world on its head. Kings came to meet a newborn baby. Kings brought gifts to a lowly infant. And kings found themselves the recipient of the greatest of gifts--a brush with God, with the divine clothed in human flesh. 

For despite appearances, neither we nor the kings are the real givers here. Rather, we are the meek, who bring useless gifts, and somehow inherit the earth.