Motherhood is the Neck of the Chicken

Otillia “Tillie” Duncan’s favorite part of a chicken was the neck—or so she claimed.  I know this because she is my great-grandmother, and though I’ve never met her, I’m fascinated by her life story. Suddenly widowed in her early thirties, Tillie was forced to raise eight children and run a ranch during the height of the Great Depression, by herself. Somehow, she managed it.

When Tillie made roast chicken for supper—one, small roast chicken, mind you, for her family of nine—she always exclaimed enthusiastically, “I get the neck! Save the neck for me, it’s my favorite!”

Tillie’s daughter June, (my “Grannie”) grew up truly believing the neck of the chicken was the most delicious part, and pined for a taste of that delicacy her mother had so zealously hoarded. It wasn’t until Grannie became a mother herself that she felt she had earned the right to enjoy Tillie’s favorite dish, and served herself some tasty chicken neck.

She chewed in confusion. Her mother had liked this piece? Had preferred it to the juicy breast, the crispy skin, the dark meat of the plump thigh? She picked apart the spiny, slimy bone with her knife and fork. Where was the rest of it? There wasn’t more than a mouthful of meat on the entire thing!

And that’s when Granny realized just how wrong she had been.

My own “neck of the chicken” moment came two weeks after the birth of my first child. Being an enlightened twenty-two-year-old Millennial, I knew better than my parents had. While my mother was a college dropout and stay-at-home mom of seven, I grew up in the aughts: a time when women were overtaking men as the majority of university degree recipients. Stay-at-home parenting was a misfortune reserved for the uneducated, the unqualified, the unambitious.

No more antiquated “Leave It to Beaver” household of my youth, in which my dad would return from work (Honey, I’m home!) to a clean house, an adoring wife, and a table set with a hot meal. My husband Micah and I would be equal partners in all things: paid work, house work, child nurturing would all be split evenly between man and woman, in the interest of fairness and equity. The solution was simple, obvious, and effortless. Until biology rudely intervened.

Before we could get to truly equal footing, I had to concede, I would have to bear the literal weight of pregnancy alone. This was unfair, but unavoidable, and I made sure Micah did his part by insisting he give me back rubs each evening and not allowing him to consume food in the house unless it was virtually scentless.

Still, there was no way to equalize my 42-hour labor, so I settled for vigorously resenting my maladroit spouse as he held my hand and futilely muttered, “You’re doing great, babe.” It was me who discovered that Hypnobirthing’s “waves of pressure” were actually “tsunamis of agony.” It was my body which was ripped open and sewn back together. I knew that it was coming, but nothing can really prepare you for the moment when the mantle of parenthood is roughly thrust upon your shoulders.

At least my husband was present for the birth, which is more than can be said of Tillie’s or Grannie’s. And my own dad, though he was there for each child’s arrival, once heard a woman loudly vocalizing her travail in the maternity ward and famously told my mother, “If you scream like that, I’m out of here.” When all was done and dusted, Micah cut the baby’s umbilical cord and we tried vainly to pretend the contribution made things even-Steven.

The nastiness of delivery out of the way, Micah and I began to delineate our parental responsibilities, starting with the middle-of-the-night game plan. Since obviously #breastisbest, I would be the one doing the actual feeding, but to ensure fairness, Micah would get the baby from the crib, change her diaper after I’d fed on one side, and settle her back to sleep when I was done, at which point we would go back to bed together. 21^st century gender equality? Nailed it.

Except that after only a few days this routine became glaringly idiotic, and Micah’s eyes wore a new patina: incredulity. Though he was wise enough not to say so, I could read his thoughts as the same ones circulated in my own head: why did he have to be awake for this?

As Micah began to doze off during our established routine and I began to feed the baby alone, also in a semi-conscious stupor, I finally grasped that though I (and society in general) may kick against the pricks, the incontrovertible facts of science dictate that, physically, there cannot be parity in parenting.

I had to admit it: I get the neck of the chicken. No matter how committed I was to egalitarianism and feminism, if I wanted to breastfeed, I would have the sleepless nights. My husband would snooze, his hairy, pointless nipples safe and comfortable, while I clocked hours in the bedside rocker attempting to placate our tiny piranha. I would do it for this baby for the next year or so, and I would do it for every subsequent baby, and no number of lazy Saturday mornings would ever make up for the colossal loss of sleep.

When the initial shock wore off, I did as Tillie did, and as mothers have done long before her and after her: I embraced it. The neck of the chicken became my symbol of motherhood. I was not only going to feed my children breast (figuratively and literally) while accepting the neck, I would do it gladly, loudly echoing the words of Great-Grandma Tillie: “It’s my favorite!”

(I guess I ate a little crow too, since I’m now, proudly, by choice, and with two college degrees, a stay-at-home mother of five. While my husband does change a few dirty diapers and help out around the house, he’s the full-time breadwinner, and I’m the full-time homemaker. Sorry for being so judge-y, Mom.)

Perhaps women’s ability to sacrifice is innate, and biological as well. I’m reminded of some spiders which engage in matriphagy, meaning that the young spiderlings kill and devour their own mother as their first meal. I confess I anthropomorphize the mother spider, watching her children emerge and then laying down on her web, extending a trembling, hairy leg to her hoard of tiny offspring.

“Take a bite, guys! It’s good! Have some….more...go ahead...I….like...it.” And she dies, with a smile on her spider-face, blue blood oozing from dozens of open wounds on her body and shining on the mouths of her progeny.

“She was right,” squeak the babies to each other. “Delicious!” They eat their fill before wandering off to begin life, their own mother forgotten until one day they make an egg sac and...oh. That.

I didn’t eat my mom, but I do recall barfing all over the hallway in the middle of the night, and that is close to just as bad. I remember my mom on her hands and knees, scrubbing my vomit out of the carpet. I apologized repeatedly, probably pushing my sweaty, befouled head onto her lap as she attempted to work, but she endlessly replied, “It’s okay, honey. This is what I’m here for. I don’t mind.”

Like hell she didn’t. After cleaning the carpet, she changed the sheets, bathed me, tucked me in and sang me to sleep before sinking back into bed around 5 AM. Or maybe she decided to get an early start on the day and went to the kitchen to begin making breakfast and packing sack lunches. I don’t know. I was asleep, and, more to the point, oblivious.

For as much as they would like to think they are, parents are not people, not in the eyes of their children. My own mother is not a bona fide human, with emotions and complexity—not to me. She’s Mom. Her mental and physical resources are limitless and at my disposal. Her foibles and quirks are magnified, embarrassing and unforgivable. She is a Goddess; I cannot live without her and she is so very out of touch. I love her endlessly, but she can never be my peer. She’s spent too long gnawing at a crunchy chicken spine, grinning with gristle stuck in her teeth.

Mothers are so good at their charade that they fool us completely until we eventually join their ranks. But mothers must keep the ugly, disgusting bits of the chicken neck secret, or women everywhere would be too terrified to try it. I know I would have been, if my own mother hadn’t so convincingly beamed as she waved the neck above her head, shouting, “This is the best! I love sitting for hours in the blisteringly hot pool bleachers to watch your swim meets! 5^th grade band concerts are phenomenal, you’re doing a great job! Please, tell me more about Harry Potter!”

Here’s the strange thing: though motherhood has proved to be one ghastly bite of neck after the next, somehow, bizarrely, I’ve developed a real taste for it.

I’ve discovered that motherhood is enduring the pain of cracked and bleeding nipples while feeding an infant who has just grown TEETH and whose favorite soothing mechanism is to pinch the tender skin of your underarm as they fall asleep—and then looking down at their unbelievably long, black eyelashes and listening to their snuffling, deep, slow breathing and thinking, “I love this so much.”

Motherhood is a miraculously inaccurate scale. It weighs hours of tantrums, countless insults, bald face lies, disrespect and mutiny… against a sparse handful of unsolicited kisses and a few sincere expressions of gratitude and it doesn’t come out equal, but in favor of being a mom, every time. There’s no amount of money that would make this work worth it, and yet, there’s no amount of money I would accept to be relieved of it. It is my millstone and my crown jewel, simultaneously.

Motherhood is the neck of the chicken, and I claim it for myself. It’s my favorite.