dislodging a navel stone

by Connie Petersen

MY HUSBAND OF FORTY-PLUS YEARS and I had just made love in our Paris apartment, and we felt like teenagers. We were still giddy over buying one share of a romantic, Haussmannian pied-a-terre with high ceilings and ornate moldings. It would be a new adventure, living here one month every year. The October sunlight poured through the tall windows and warmed my skin. My husband hovered over my tummy, squinting his azure eyes as he scrutinized my belly button.

“Why are you doing that?” I asked. He inhaled deeply, continued to linger, and again I queried, “What are you looking for?”

“I’ve noticed it before,” he whispered and furrowed his eyebrows and interlaced his fingers with mine. “Something’s in there, dark and hard.”

I quickly got up and walked to the dimly-lit mirror above the marble counter in the bathroom. My navel is a small, deep “innie,” which makes it difficult to see or feel into the crevice. But sure enough, I saw and felt it: a black, hard stone wedged inside my belly button. A stone! I picked at it vigorously, only to get that weird sensation one does when one goes too deep into the place where the umbilical cord was cut. It’s a feeling between nausea and discomfort. The mass wouldn’t budge. It seemed attached to my navel. After interrogating my husband about when he’d first noticed it (he couldn’t remember), why he hadn’t mentioned it before (he didn’t really know), and feeling generally embarrassed and, at the same time, a tad bit scared that this could be cancer or a tumor or who-knows-what, I consulted the web to learn that “in rare cases, a navel stone can develop, properly called an umbolith, also known as an omphalotloth, from a build-up of dead skin and accumulated debris.”

Shame engulfed me.

Dead skin and debris? What? I shower every single day. And I have for years. Had I not gone deep enough with my belly-button self-care to extricate old dirt? Had I merely cleaned the surface, leaving hidden residue to build up into a rock? I immediately felt dirty. So dirty.

I vigorously scrubbed my belly button over and over and over again. I tried to pry out the stone, tugging it with tweezers. I put warm, wet swabs of cotton into the crevice, hoping to loosen the dark thing. By the time the skin encircling my navel had turned rough and red, I gave up on removing it, at least for the time being. Rather, I dressed and decided to act normal, as if I didn’t have a collection of old stuff hardened and stuck where once I was connected to nourishment and the life of my mother.

We all have a navel. It’s a profound part of one’s physical body, but for the most part, we don’t talk about it or give it any due, maybe because it’s incidental to our other physical attributes such as the size and shape of our feet, the width and length of our fingers, our skin tone, hair texture, eye color. The navel is technically a scar, a scab, a wound where the umbilical cord was severed. We refer to navel gazing, implying that we’re unable to see the bigger picture because we’re so hell-bent on gazing at our own situation, our own self and our own needs. Depending on how the scar healed after birth, we sometimes describe our navels as an innie or an outie. Other than that, it seems to me that we leave the navel out of our everyday vernacular. Yet, isn’t it the most significant physical reminder of our origins?

I think that my mother must have wrapped me as a newborn with a tight belly band, probably a trend in the early 1950s, her immaculate habits and conscientious hands guiding my navel to be as flat and unnoticeable as possible. She was fastidious—making sure my appearance was clean, wholesome, as perfect as a child’s can be. I was born six years after my mother endured a stillbirth.

She and my father lived in Rhode Island while my father was serving in the Navy. Because money was tight, they arranged for the baby’s body to be shipped by train to family in the Midwest to be buried in their hometown cemetery, and they stayed put. At the funeral home, my Mom’s brother, a photographer, took photos of the baby in the coffin so they could have pictures of their son since they were not allowed to see or hold the baby when he was born.

When I was young, Mom would show me and my sister, who came a year after me, the black-and-white 8 x 10 photos of our brother in a miniature casket dressed in a white outfit with booties on his tiny feet, fists clenched, eyelids closed as if he were sleeping—this baby whom my parents named but never met.

“Why couldn’t you hold him, Mommy?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess it was protocol. The nurses didn’t want to cause me more pain, so they whisked him away without me laying eyes on him.” She shook her head and clamped her lips together. After a few minutes of gazing at the pictures, Mom added, “I’m just so glad your Uncle Al took these.”

The photos were kept inside a tissue-filled gift box nestled between the folds of a soft, blue blanket in the top bureau drawer in Mom’s bedroom. She’d periodically pull them out, and every time, I would ask, “Why did it happen?”

She’d repeatedly explain that severe toxemia—what we now call pre-eclampsia—caused the baby’s death. “Lordy, I was swollen bigger than a balloon, sicker than a dog,” she’d say. “I almost died, lucky to be here.” When Mom would relive that December day, I thought I heard her questioning what exactly had caused the pre-eclampsia, perhaps feeling helpless that she couldn’t redo the baby’s fate, perhaps blaming herself. I was too young to fully understand, but I did comprehend that this was an awful trauma and pain she carried.

Mom, then, must have been extra careful with me when I was born, determined to keep me healthy, mothering me with the very best of intentions. A mother’s intentions are always good when we carry a baby and when we give them life. However, cutting that umbilical cord is a sudden reality that puts mother and child onto separate journeys. No wonder the navel is considered a wound. As a mother of three, I can attest that mothers will do almost anything to be their child’s lifeline as long as possible. It’s hard to let go and trust that the baby turned child turned adolescent turned adult can survive on their own. The mother-child bond is incredibly complex, be it from the perspective of the mother or the child. One can spend a lifetime trying to be independent, even when the cord is severed, even when the wound looks healed, even when one of them has passed on.

My earliest memories with Mom revolve around singing hymns, dancing with her to “The Stroll” when Dick Clark played “Blueberry Hill” on American Bandstand, waiting at the bus stop on Indiana Highway 32 to ride east to see Grandma Josie in Farmland or west to take dance lessons in Muncie on Saturdays. To say we had fun together was an understatement, though there was also an undercurrent between her and my father of mistrust and stress over money. Over time, they grew angrier and more vicious, verbally and physically. By the time I was ten years old, I was aware of my mother’s discontentment, and because she was forced to stay with my father so that he could financially support us, I believed her misery was my fault. Kids can get these things mixed up in their brains, but somewhere along the line, I absorbed responsibility for her happiness. At the same time, my mother leaned on me, or me and my sister, to ride bikes to the fireworks display, shop at the grocery with our measly budget, decide where to live—driving because she didn’t, listening to the details of her marriage to our father because she needed an ear. All that extra care for me as an infant had evolved into a role reversal, where I looked out for her, felt for her sadness, stood up to my father, earned money to help ends meet, found rental houses so we wouldn’t be kicked out on the street.

Those years seemed far, far away the morning I scurried down Rue de Courcelles to my adult ballet class at Institut Stanlowa, navel stone still lodged within me. The high-low sound of a siren jolted me. Pedestrians paid no attention, bicycle riders didn’t flinch, taxis and buses didn’t stop. The sound echoed in the distance, after all. Here I was, living my own life—free to be creative, grateful to act upon my passions. I checked the time and watched my footing as I crossed the cobblestone intersection, peering to the right where the Arc de Triomphe boldly stands blocks away, relieved that I had another twenty minutes before class started.

It must have been hard for my mother to watch me separate from her. She’d spouted encouraging messages along the way: You can do anything. Marry rich. Get a good education. Show ‘em how tough you are. And on the other hand, I heard her caution just as loudly: Don’t be a crybaby. You’re dreaming too high. Better not forget where you came from. Despite the blurry instructions, I knew to do what she wished for herself: become independent. And at the same time, I carried the burden to make her proud, to make her laugh, to give her a piece of contentment that my father didn’t.

I took on the appearance of being the perfect college student, career person, wife and mother. When I studied in Spain, I wrote to her every other day, always mentioning how much I missed her, describing the sights I wished she could see, not telling her what a wild and wonderful time I was having. In turn, she typed ten-page single-spaced letters to me weekly, detailing the antics of my father and the hardships of living in another rental with a faulty furnace. When I began my career selling Sheetrock for a Fortune 500 company, I spent my first bonus on a vacation, taking her to Florida where she’d said she wanted to go before she died. I’d mail her newspaper articles and magazine clippings that mentioned my name, hoping my professional accomplishments would bring her joy. She didn’t ask for details about my work; my father, on the other hand, wanted to know how it felt to be a district sales manager in the construction industry with men his age working for me. The day after our wedding, my mother broke down in tears, sobbing like a baby, sniveling in my arms before my husband and I left for our honeymoon. I presumed this was partly because we would be living across the country in California, far from her in Indiana, so I promised to call her every evening after work. Three years later, my husband and I moved from Los Angeles to Chicago, a six-hour drive from my parents. And we expanded our family: one, two, three babies in three years as I carried on my career. I still phoned Mom every day before I got on the commuter train to come home to my children.

The cord wasn’t severed after all.

Before I knew about the navel stone, my husband and I took Bus Route 92 to the American Cathedral, one of the oldest English-speaking churches in Paris, whose majestic spiral oversees the upscale 8th arrondissement on the Right Bank, where congregants nonchalantly don silk scarves atop their wool coats. We sat in a pew in the back. As the choir sang “Abide with Me”, the organ pipes vibrated loudly, touching something deep within me I couldn’t quite name. My eyes rimmed with tears. I fingered the paper bulletin to remind myself that I had not been physically transported. An undeniable Presence reminded me that I have never been alone. And as the dry taste of the thin communion wafer melted on my tongue and the sip of bitter wine entered me, I felt an undeniable comfort.

After the service, we ambled through the courtyard, then headed toward the Alma bridge over the Seine where we noticed flower bouquets piled upon a statue. When we walked closer, we saw that the statue was the Flamme de la Liberté, a gilded copper flame that replicates the one on the Statue of Liberty and now commemorates Princess Di who was killed in the nearby tunnel almost thirty years ago. Handwritten poems scattered among daisies and lilies and mums called us to pause, to soak in the heaviness of this Sabbath morning, to huddle closely as the chilly breeze whipped around us.

It took years of wrong turns as well as a pinnacle psychotic break for me to examine the wounds affecting my marriage, my mothering, my wholeness. I scribbled on napkins, wrote in journals and typed my way through personal stories to sort out what was true, aiming my efforts toward cleaning out the gunk stuck inside. Years of therapy gave me a new lifeline, a different perspective, drew me to self-awareness so that my own behaviors could be healthier. And I prayed. I developed a keen sense and connection to my faith—helping me forgive, leading me to rely on God to save, not acting as if it was my job, be it with my mother, my children, or anyone else I love.

When I told Mom I was quitting my full-time career of twenty years, she said, “So you’ll go home and just be with your kids. That’s enough, isn’t it? They need you.” It’s heartening to know that toward the end of her life we were finding a way to see each other.

Since my parents’ deaths, I have moved to the West Coast, far away from my roots. Every Memorial Day, my sister, who lives forty miles from the cemetery in Winchester, Indiana, sends me photos of the family gravesites she decorates. The pictures show my parents’ headstone adorned with a patriotic or pastel or rose-covered arrangement. I notice that, just beyond, she hasn’t neglected to coordinate a sweet remembrance for the baby’s grave, our brother’s lone flat headstone which lies a short distance from theirs.

Mom’s been dead for over twenty-five years now. I ponder what it will be like when one day, our spirits will meet again. Will my spirit want to hide since I’ve grown so different from who we once were together? Or will our spirits unite in comfort and familiarity, celebrating the connection we once had? Or have we both gone on our separate journeys never to meet up again? Whatever the unknown, my soul needs to quiet, to rest without fear, to let go. I trust that the mother-daughter love between our imperfect beings is what lingers, not the fragments of our flaws. I hear the whisper of assurance that all is well.

Autumn days in Paris have a way of making one appreciate the simple pleasures of strolling arm-in-arm through Parc Monceau or sitting for inordinate periods of time over a croissant and espresso at a sidewalk café. Yet I stayed vigilant, determined to rid myself of the dark rock that still resided in me. After three days of dousing oiled Q-tips and warm compresses into my belly button, trying to soften that navel stone, one morning in the shower I was able to merely lift it out. It was about the size of a guitar pick. Beneath the oblong dark flat part was a soft, pliable, putty-like mass. From top to bottom the layers blended into one another: charcoal to light grey to taupe to a pearlescent white pointy base. It didn’t have an odor and didn’t hurt when I removed it. As if it were time, the stone simply was freed.

About the author:

Connie Petersen is a writer of creative nonfiction, focusing on personal essays. Her work has been published in Ophelia’s Mom (Random House - 2001), the Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, the Chicago Suburban Pioneer Press, and Post Alley. She was awarded first place in the 2018 San Miguel Writer’s Contest in the CNF category. She has also written a memoir, The Taste of Rain. Connie’s work explores transformation within the topics of career, motherhood, family roots, and faith. She lives in Seattle with her husband.