by Amos, Tori
I became Dr. Bronsky's patient when I was about seven months’ pregnant, and it turns out that in my eighth month of pregnancy with Natashya, he had a hunch about the miscarriages. Dr. Bronsky tested me for protein S and protein C deficiency, and it turns out that I did have both deficiencies. The result of this, at that time, was that I needed to have shots in my legs in the morning and at night, which Duncan did for me because I had a hard time stabbing myself in the leg with a needle. I couldn't take the medicine orally because it could hurt Natashya, and I think they were worried that I would get a blood clot in the lung.
DR. MARIE DOBYNS:
Virchow, the father of hematology, identified the three factors responsible for vascular thrombosis, also known as blood clots: vessel injury, alteration in blood flow, and changes in the coagulability of the blood. Pregnancy affects all three factors. Your blood volume increases by a third when you are pregnant, and your body doesn't really know how to handle that without all of the mechanisms that occur between the placenta, the fetus, and the mother. If there is any issue that goes amiss within any of those three components, then the fetus won't develop properly.
The body responds to anything foreign that is going to upset the natural ebb and tide of life. Pregnancy is perceived as a hypercoagulable state. This is not a problem for most women; however, if you have a protein S or protein C deficiency, this upsets the hemostatic balance and the body responds by trying to protect the mother. That is why Tori had several miscarriages. Dr. Robert Stillman had a hunch and put Tori on an aspirin a day, which makes your blood thinner, enabling her to get pregnant. She was supplemented with progesterone suppositories in order to help the development of the fetus.
Tori initially went down to the Florida house and was under the care of Dr. Graham, a wonderful Jamaican physician. However, she retired during the sixth month of Tori's pregnancy. Dr. Marlow and I sent her to a specialist in Washington, DC, Dr. Bronsky He ran a series of blood tests, and her deficiency was eventually detected. However, the physicians had to find the exact balance for Tori, because the progesterone hormone can increase the chance of development of a blood clot. Therefore, once she got pregnant she took low molecular heparin shots because the progesterone put her at an increased risk for blood clots in the legs and lungs. The heparin shots kept her blood from getting too thick without interfering with the growth and development of the fetus and the placenta. An aspirin a day affects the clotting mechanism such that one who has protein S or protein C deficiency may get pregnant. However, once Tori was pregnant she had to be given heparin shots to thin her blood. She could not take the medication orally because that would have crossed into the placenta and harmed the fetus.
After the baby was delivered she went back to an aspirin a day, which is an antiplatelet drug that prevents the cells from clotting quickly. She also continued with the heparin shots until her levels balanced out. And because she was nursing Natashya, she couldn't take the oral form of the medication. An aspirin a day will decrease your incidence of stroke; also risk of thromboembolism will be drastically reduced with just an aspirin a day if you have this deficiency. Suffice it to say miracles do happen and blood is an amazing vehicle.
TORI:
During the pregnancy with Tash, the Scarlet seed started coming. During the first half of the pregnancy while I was at the beach house in Florida, I would play piano for three hours every day. So the songs were developing daily as was this little girl inside me. I would take walks on the beach, and just play to Tash, who would kick to the rhythm, and read. My various advisers told me I had to change my life—I couldn't take any work, I couldn't handle the stress and carry life. So I didn't. I didn't get involved with being a lioness then, except for carrying this life.
ANN: On September 5, 2000, Natashya Lórien Hawley left her mother's womb and said hello to the world.
DUNCAN PICKFORD:
I've known Natashya since she was about an hour old. When Tori was delivering I dropped her and Mark off at the hospital. I was supposed to stay but I couldn't bear to—I was just too nervous! I drove around D.C. in the truck, supposedly just buying some sandwiches and getting some juice, and I spent two hours just going, Oh my God, Tori's going to be a mother. I'm going to be an uncle. Finally I went back to the hospital and I ran upstairs thinking she'd be back in the room, and she wasn't there, and I'm like, What's wrong, what's wrong? And all of a sudden the elevator doors open and she came through and was wheeled back with this tiny little creature in her arms. I've known this creature ever since. I've seen her grow from this helpless dumb little thing that squalls every time it wants to eat into this amazing creature who thinks, and says what she thinks. She uses phrases, she can demand what she wants, she has moods and tempers and an amazing imagination.
CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN TORI AND ANN:
I thought that I would get a little boy, because I'd already put my little girl to rest. We'd known who she was; we'd named her and said goodbye. But the universe kept telling me I was going to have a little girl. I felt like Natashya's birth was a complete gift that came out of Venus.
At this point, I was communicating with friends online, and people were talking to me about how popular music was getting more violent. I felt I had to respond to Venus's pillaging. Male artists were saying these really malicious things—and I'm not talking about tongue-in-cheek statements, I'm talking about men wanting to rip women's clits out. I needed to answer that. Once I had Natashya, the idea really started to take root. Neil Gaiman came to visit, and we started to talk, and then the plot was hatched with Mark, Neil, and me sitting there. I was nursing Tash, and we came up with the concept for Strange Little Girls. And I went through with it; we gave 1000 percent to that project, to redeem Venus, who had given us so much.
DUNCAN PICKFORD:
Tori's always been a bit of a lioness. She's always protected her pride. But it's fivefold since Natashya came along. She's always watching for the dangers, and not just the physical dangers but pitfalls in her career, people wanting to rip her off or do her down or whatever. She's much more on the lookout for all of this. It's not in a negative way. She's always been very clued in on the details of her career, but that's sharpened even more. She lets much less ride. She doesn't simply react to things: she acts.
CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN TORI AND ANN:
Becoming a mom has in some way made me seem a lot more chilled out, because I think my energy is more compassionate and loving than in the old days. But on the other hand, where Natashya's involved, don't underestimate the crocodile when you're walking across the pond. Sometimes people take it for granted that when I'm out and about with Tash, I'm free to be approached. But at that moment, I need to be a mom. If they don't understand that, then they will see another side to me. I've had to be much clearer about the lines in the sand. I'm not okay if people take my mommy time away, because when they've taken my mommy time away they can't give it back to me.
When people don't treat Natashya as if she's a human being, and this can be anyone from a fan to a “friend,” that is not acceptable. They think they can call on the Tori Amos thing any time they want. I would never call you at your home when you are not on your work schedule to talk about work. But people feel they can call me anytime and talk about my work.
I've chosen to incorporate Natashya into all aspects of my life, which can be challenging for both of us. She was out on the road from November until September and she had already been out on the road on another tour. She left her school, her life, and her friends. There are consequences to that. Sacrifices were made, and when that is not understood and people take advantage, I have to turn around and say, “I am not a possession, and neither is my family.” I also have to discern what areas of my adult life Tash isn't yet ready to witness. She is really curious about the world of performing. Kids are curious about what their parents do. And you know, a lot of parents take their kids to work. Then there are so many toys that evoke performance: there's Barbie, there's her Polly Pockets�
��you can buy little stages for Polly Pockets—and so she really can't see why she can't do it, too. She doesn't know why she can't go onstage with me.
We let her come out on sound check and play, sometimes, for a minute. At the same time you can't overindulge; it is that fine a line. During the shows themselves, she sees me from the side of the stage, but there are certain songs I feel she's not ready for. She's not ready to hear “Me and a Gun.” “Professional Widow”—she's not ready to see Mom do that. And she's not ready to see “Precious Things.” I know that and so does she, and that's okay. She loves “fairytale” and “Corncake Girl,” as she calls it.
When she's not allowed to watch, it doesn't feel like withholding because we don't treat it like withholding. There are times when she's gone from the side of the stage and I know that she and her nanny are backstage dancing or whatever. She's not seeing what I'm doing. I know if they've got screens backstage in every venue we play; I've sussed it out. I may not know every detail of each venue's operation, but as far as what Tash is exposed to, I'm present in that way, as a mom.
She's wanted to come out onstage a couple times, and I have to kind of battle her about it. She is getting to the age of “I want this, I want to do this!” You have to be able to say, This is not good for you, it's not right, right now. You can't tell yourself, She thinks it's right for her now. She's three years old. Are you nuts? I just say no, and then try to move on to another conversation. She doesn't understand a lot of the time when I tell her no. She says, “I don't like you, Mummy.” I say, “You don't have to like me. I will always love you.”
I spent so much time, energy, and pain becoming Natashya's mother that I'm not going to take any aspect of her for granted. Yet having a child hasn't lessened my dedication to my work—if anything, it has grown since the work helped me through so many hard times. What's truly difficult is convincing other people that I can manage it all. You have to set very clear boundaries. And there will be people who do not hear you. You try to give them warnings, and if they do not heed them then they are out of your life. I've spoken with several working moms who didn't get hired for a particular job that they were qualified for simply because of the “working mother” stigma, the implication being that a working mother works less than a single working woman. When I heard that, I pulled back from my life like a camera and tried to see if this was true in my case. I concluded that I put in the same amount of time working as I did back in 1992. I just sleep a lot less …
I can see why some women artists just throw their hands up and say they cannot deal with all this confrontation. Those women retreat from their careers, or else they grow distant from their children. Sometimes even Tash will say to me, “Mummy, it's Tash time, stop working now.” Any mother who works at home or has their child on the “road” with them will understand exactly Tash's and my predicament, because lines that separate work from home life can be blurred when they occur in the same physical space. But the upside of this is that I get more work done and consequently have a lot more Tash time because I don't spend half of my life traveling to work and working away from home. Sometimes “home” is a bus, sometimes home is a hotel room—now, naturally Tash knows this is not her “home home,” but it is a bus home and a hotel home and of course, like anybody, she can get homesick for “home home.”
Then sometimes as a mom you can feel guilty, and that really pulls on your energy levels, thereby unfortunately creating the climate for “cross Mommy” to be the creature that takes over your body. Tash will say, “Mummy, you didn't get enough sleep. You're cross Mummy. Don't be cross with Tash. It hurts Tash's feelings.” And then of course that's like cold water rushing through your capillaries, and sometimes the only thing that you can think to do is take a minute and call your own “mommy.”
Luckily I have a mom who knows exactly what to say when I'm upset because I've hurt my child's feelings and been an all together Miss Grumpy Boots. This kind of love is the archetypal Great Mother that all mothers seem to tap into, some more frequently than others, let's be honest. My physical mother has held this loving archetype, I would say more than many—certainly more than I ever have. And because of this, I have a walking instruction manual, a map, that shows me “what is compassion,” how to set boundaries firmly but lovingly, how to say no—my mother taught me the most important lesson when she said, “Tori Ellen, I don't have to agree with you all of the time to love you. I may not like something you say or do, but I still and will always love you. Love does not waver from a mother's perspective. Like, however, is a chameleon that can change as a lizard's colors can, and sometimes we can all be lizards. And I still love you when you're a lizard.” And I said to my mother, “Surely not a lounge lizard, Mom.” And my mother said, true to form, “You can still be a lounge lizard, sweetheart, and play Radio City. A lounge lizard, a particular lounge lizard I know, made a lot of people happy playing lounge lizard music. Don't belittle that, my darling. Lizards have their place, too.”
With my mother's heart condition, which I write about in the song “The Beekeeper,” I've had to step into a different role in the family scheme. My sister and I and Cody, my niece, have had to become the female caretakers for the older generation as well as the younger. My sister caretakes from a medical “how to keep somebody's heart still ticking” point of view, whereas I have to be more of an emotional problem-solver than I had to be, say, five years ago. Becoming forty, I think, gives everybody a license to have to deal with the complicated family issues that all big extended families/friends have to deal with. Cody, who is nineteen, holds the role of giving a perspective on the real issues and difficulties that her generation faces. We have a lot of family friends in this generation, and I must consider the effects and consequences of a decision that we make as the responsible adults. Cody helps us to see the ramifications of certain decisions before we make a mistake out of ignorance, not maliciousness. There is no way that you know how to be nineteen in 2004 if you've never been nineteen in 2004, but you do know how to be forty if you are forty in 2004.
So as you can see, you don't have to be a physical mother to hold the mother nurturing space in a friend/family tribe, but the nurturing Demeter archetype must be carried by one or more of the women in a friend/family tribe or the hive will be destroyed and the Beekeeper cannot be the queen. However, some women wouldn't be happy, giving mothers if they didn't work. Other mothers are not happy mothers if they work in the secularized world. Very simply, I would not and could not ever consider giving up music. I would consider not being as active in the music industry, but that day is not today. So if I'm not willing to give up the music, or give up having my relationship as it is with Tash, which is right here present in my heart, then the best thing to do is to “whistle while you work.” It just takes a lot of energy. But the team I have in place understands this, and if they don't then they're not part of this team. That's very simple, right down the line. Natashya is a non-negotiable.
SONG CANVAS: “Ribbons Undone
A moment with Tash:
“Mummy, can I draw a picture?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
“I want to use your colored pencils, though.”
“That's fine, let me get them for you.”
“That's okay, that's okay, I'll get them.”
“I'm going to have a sip of my green tea then.”
“Let me pour it for you, Mummy.”
“Okay sweetheart, but the teapot is made of porcelain, so it can break if it gets dropped, so can you use both hands?”
“Porcelain doesn't break if it drops on the couch in the living room.”
“Well, if the porcelain teapot drops on the porcelain teacup on the couch, then the teapot and the cup can have a crash, thereby breaking them both.”
“Look, this water bottle is not porcelain. This is plastic, Mummy. Watch it drop.”
So the water bottle quickly drops to the floor, and luckily I had put the lid on tightly.
“Mummy, loo
k! These colored pencils are flowers and this flag protects mummies but not daddies.”
Tash has picked up a British flag that had been bought for the football festivities before, of course, England was out of the quarterfinals of Euro 2004. She starts waving what she calls her wand and says, “I'm the fairy, but not the alien fairy. I'm good to mummies and I have these flowers, look. But the alien fairies like black, so I'm going to give them a black flower.”
Then Tash proceeds to pull out a black-colored pencil, which had gotten into my colored-pencil flower arrangement.
“Mummies don't need black flowers.”
“Mommies don't mind black flowers.”
“No, but the alien fairies really, really, really need black flowers, because it's dark.”
“What's dark?”
“Where the aliens come from. They come from where there are twinkles in the sky.”
“You were a twinkle in the sky.”
“No, that was Natashya. I am the fairy. Here, look. Here's your microphone.”
At that announcement I'm surprised, because when she's not Natashya she likes to be this creature she's invented called “Alice Lily Horsey Ribbons,” which has woven itself into “Ribbons Undone.” I did not use those words in that order, but used and referenced them nonetheless, mainly to capture Tash's spirit.
