But then I thought of how my daughter's cord had been wrapped around her neck, and the horror movie that was my birth experience was the thing that saved her life. I didn’t want my own scary reality to be the thing that disturbed their idyllic fantasies. It would fundamentally change who I was and how I saw everyone around me.Īfter I left the hospital, I found myself downplaying the details of my own delivery, particularly to expectant mothers. Like the research team from The Thing, my body had been subsumed by an unknowable creature. When the nurse asked me if I wanted to try nursing my daughter, I looked at her as if she’d asked me if I wanted to hang drywall. The pain I was in overrode any maternal instincts I had. My first moment of motherhood was waking up from general anesthesia for an emergency C-section, feeling utterly bewildered, with a baby in my arms. Which was good, because, in the end, I didn’t get my transformative first glimpse. That was enough to get me through the next three months. I had been searching for a promise that everything would be all right, but I actually needed to accept uncertainty, and to trust that when I faced the unknown, I could handle it. I wasn’t Keri Russell making pies, I was Kurt Russell ready to pick up that flamethrower. That’s when I thought, This is what motherhood must feel like. But the horror was over in a matter of moments, and I wanted to see what happened next. I had my hand on the remote the whole time, my mind screaming, I can’t handle this! And I truly believed I couldn’t. Unfortunately, most food rapidly loses its appeal while you’re watching a writhing creature made of equal parts alien, dog, and Wilford Brimley. And that’s what I was watching, in the dark, completely alone, with only a half-eaten bowl of takeout to comfort me. But before it takes on the form of a beautiful snow dog or Keith David at his swolest, it undergoes a disgusting secretion-heavy transformation that Carpenter spent roughly 10 percent of his budget on despite having less than 10 minutes of screen time. If let loose, it could assimilate, and ultimately destroy, the whole planet within a matter of years. It terrorizes an Antarctic research team who, no longer sure which team members have been subsumed by it, turn on one another. The Thing, if you're unfamiliar, is an alien creature capable of disguising itself as any living organism it encounters. Still, a clean-shaven Brimley was a mere prelude to the horrors that awaited me. Between Ennio Morricone’s synth-score and the sight of Wilfred Brimley sans mustache, I felt a low-grade terror as I balanced my bowl of lamb vindaloo on my belly. I figured it would be hard to feel sorry for myself while watching Kurt Russell operate a flamethrower. Six months into my pregnancy, I celebrated Halloween with takeout Indian and John Carpenter’s The Thing. United Archives/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Afraid that I would not experience that transformation, my fears for the future worsened - my mind was not eased. While one film ends with a woman finding the strength to stand on her own and the other with a woman succumbing to the will of a satanic cult, they both reach a moment when each mother is transformed by an instinctive love at the first glimpse of their newborn child. I felt like I was doing pregnancy wrong, so I turned to movies about nervous moms-to-be like Waitress and Rosemary’s Baby to help quell my anxieties. In reality, I spent most days complaining that everything tasted like pennies and counting down the days to when I could enjoy peeing again. I'd assumed I would tune into a primal maternal energy that would intimidate yet beguile anyone I encountered, and my ambivalence about motherhood would subside. I hit an unexpected roadblock during my pregnancy, though. I’ve had my share of false idols (Woody Allen Aunt Becky), yet I’ve always turned to Hollywood characters to help me map out my own life. Robin Hood (the cartoon fox, of course) taught me to love, and Katherine Hepburn taught me to be “yar” in The Philadelphia Story. I worshiped her clothes and her bedroom, but beyond that, she helped a 5-year-old me understand the otherwise complex dynamics of being adopted. My first spiritual leader was Punky Brewster. Some people are guided by astrology while others find meaning in scripture, but to help make sense of the world I’ve always turned to movies and television.
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