frequent, so that she was shutting herself in the basement only two or
three days a week. Then the healing had slowed. Now it had been nine
months. The headaches persisted, and Mother’s memory was erratic.
At least twice a week she’d ask me to cook breakfast long after
everyone had eaten and the dishes had been cleared. She’d tell me to
weigh a pound of yarrow for a client, and I’d remind her that we’d
delivered the yarrow the day before. She’d begin mixing a tincture,
then a minute later couldn’t remember which ingredients she’d added,
so that the whole batch had to be tossed. Sometimes she would ask me
to stand next to her and watch, so I could say, “You already added the
lobelia. Next is the blue vervain.”
Mother began to doubt whether she would ever midwife again, and
while she was saddened by this, Dad was devastated. His face sagged
every time Mother turned a woman away. “What if I have a migraine
when she goes into labor?” she told him. “What if I can’t remember
what herbs I’ve given her, or the baby’s heart rate?”
In the end it wasn’t Dad who convinced Mother to midwife again.
She convinced herself, perhaps because it was a part of herself she
couldn’t surrender without some kind of struggle. That winter, she
midwifed two babies that I remember. After the first she came home
sickly and pale, as if bringing that life into the world had taken a
measure of her own. She was shut in the basement when the second
call came. She drove to the birth in dark glasses, trying to peer through
the waves distorting her vision. By the time she arrived the headache
was blinding, pulsing, driving out all thought. She locked herself in a
back room and her assistant delivered the baby. After that, Mother was
no longer the Midwife. On the next birth, she used the bulk of her fee
to hire a second midwife, to supervise her. Everyone was supervising
her now, it seemed. She had been an expert, an uncontested power;
now she had to ask her ten-year-old daughter whether she’d eaten
lunch. That winter was long and dark, and I wondered if sometimes
Mother was staying in bed even when she didn’t have a migraine.
At Christmas, someone gave her an expensive bottle of blended
essential oils. It helped her headaches, but at fifty dollars for a third of
an ounce, we couldn’t afford it. Mother decided to make her own. She
began buying single, unmixed oils—eucalyptus and helichrysum,
sandalwood and ravensara—and the house, which for years had
smelled of earthy bark and bitter leaves, suddenly smelled of lavender
and chamomile. She spent whole days blending oils, making