"“it is through the flow of behavior—or more precisely social action—that cultural forms are articulated."
-Victor Turner
Once upon a time, there was a kingdom. In this kingdom, there was a man and his wife. The wife was a midwife, who carried with her the knowledge, the perpetuation of symbols surrounding the power or a birthing woman. The midwife longed for a daughter to carry on the knowledge to bring forth life with herbal tinctures, freedom of movement, power of touch and strength of soft assurance. The midwife saw the world shifting around her. The advent of surgeon's guilds were bringing women out of their homes, away from their mothers, sisters and other children and into hospitals where they laid on their backs and the male doctors told them how and when to have their babies.
One day, the midwife was in her apothecary combining dried raspberry and nettle leaves for a tea to prepare her expectant neighbor's body for her upcoming labor. Lost in work and thought, she began to shed quiet tears thinking of all that women were losing in the growing medicalization of birth, knowing that the tradition would die with her if she continued to fail to conceive. Her tears slipped into the mortar and the sweet smell of her dearly departed mother's hair wafted through the air. Without hesitation she placed the leaves into a cup of hot water and settled down into her rocking chair, drank her tea and watched the new buds on the magnolia tree dance in the whisper of the spring breeze. Upon finishing her tea, she looked into the bottom of her earthen mug and read in the soggy leaves the message she had almost ceased hoping for.
Two seasons later, she gave birth to a baby girl. In the where the midwife had been born, she labored surrounded by her sisters and the women from the village. As she leaned against her eldest sister, squatting on the floor, breathing through the urge to bear down, pushing her daughter into the world, she whispered, "Renata," and thus the red haired infant was named.
The man and his wife threw a great party and invited the whole village, and because of the wife's renown for her midwifery skills, midwives from all over the province attended, bringing gifts. The celebration was full of music and merriment. Children ran with ribbons, and the adults enjoyed a feast. As the sun began to set, the midwives gathered and began to discuss the changes occurring in the community. Then, there was a knock at the door. The surgeon's guild stood there with their medicine bags.
How could the midwife have labored at home? That was irresponsible. Why hadn't they been invited to the party? Didn't the midwives know that they held the social capital in the village? They cursed the midwife and her daughter.
"Your line will die with you. Your daughter will not live to carry on your barbaric tradition of midwifery. On her fifteenth birthday, she will prick her finger on a needle, and you and your lot will fade until your role in this world is a mere vestige."
With that, they left. The room fell silent until the daughter of one midwife, too young to be trained but old enough to understand spoke. "What if she just falls asleep for a bit?"
The man, the midwife and all of their midwife friends destroyed their sewing needles and tried to forget the ordeal. The world continued to shift, and Renata grew strong and brilliant.
Until her fifteenth birthday when she was walking in the woods, she stumbled and fell on a log. She was mostly fine except for the splinter in her left finger. An old man came walking through the woods and called to the girl asking her if there was a problem. She told him she was fine, just struggling with a splinter. But, he insisted on helping. He pulled out a needle to dig the stubborn little splinter out. The needle glinted in the sunlight and pricked her finger. The reflection of the sun against her eyes blinded her briefly before she fell into a deep slumber.
All around the kingdom, practicing midwives fell asleep, some peacefully, some suddenly, some painfully. There they slept for many decades, sleeping with their secret knowledge of the beauty of birth. The world continued on.
There came a time in a sterile room that a woman laid in stirrups, unable to move, unable to alleviate the pressure of the coming child from her womb, prostrate in the hands of the latex gloves beneath the fluorescent lights. She wondered if this was the only way, and the idea sifted out into the universe, penetrating the collective conscious and more women began to wonder. And, the women began to talk—at first amongst themselves and then to the narrative that lay behind them. They began to search for a history that had concealed the locations and identities, the wisdom and techniques that the sleeping midwives held in their dreaming states.
The women and the men who shared their cause feared the thorns that guarded the path. HMOs, liability, the superiority of the white coat and the ideology beneath it all threatened to pierce their spirits, deflating their belief that they could affect change in the birthing community. Still, they fought on and began to prevail till they could see the mantle of Renata’s fiery hair covering her body in the clearing overhead and knew they were close. They couldn’t give up…
(thanks to Robbie Davis-Floyd and Melissa Cheyney for the allegorical inspiration)
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