So far, we’ve had two babies. Both boys. I’ve seen them come into the world, wet, followed by placenta. The nurse unfolded the slimy mound and showed it to me. “Look,” she said, “the tree of life.” It actually looks like a tree, the blue blood vessels forking like branches from a trunk. The way the nurse spoke, with rapture, it was clear she was not feigning her amazement. This was an authentic placenta fan. She had me run my finger across the oozy membrane. Like a fish, or ray, or some other deep ocean organism. My wife was less interested. 

And that was not surprising. Her body was full of recovery. The pain, still seeping out of her muscles, and relief swelling in like the tide. Of course, the placenta was nothing in this moment. Some seaweed caught in a wave. This was a moment when a new baby’s cry was filling the room as it tried to latch onto his mother’s breast. And so I took a picture, to show Sarah after. After she had some time to recover. After the baby was less marvelously new. When the miracle of a placenta might be observed for its own beauty, un-eclipsed and un-eclipsing. 

But Sarah never cared much about the placenta. It was, to her, just a little bit gross. Like observing her own fecal matter. Something her body produced that was necessary, but best unobserved. So Sarah is not a placenta fan. She is not like Dia, my brother’s wife, who eats her own placenta after birth. This might seem like crazy-granola-lady-hippie behavior. But it is common in almost all mammals and just about every animal that produces a placenta. There are only a few exceptions including aquatic animals, camels, and most humans. 

The overwhelming propensity of placenta producers to consume their own placentas must have evolutionary explanations. Some believe it contains needed nutrition. Others claim it helps stabilize hormones. Some say it boosts milk supply, decreases pain, and regulates mood. Research remains nascent and inconclusive. So we are stuck with the testimonies of those who have tried. People like Dia. And Dia believes it has helped. 

She’s tried a few ways of consuming her placenta including capsulizing the placenta into pills or blending it up in a smoothie. Apparently, it’s not easy. It’s not like a kiwi, that at first looks fuzzy and unappetizing, but when diced open and consumed, actually tastes delicious. Placenta is chewy, tough, and metallic tasting, at least that’s what I’m told. My brother almost ate Dia’s placenta, when he mistook the smoothie as an available breakfast refreshment. He was stopped just before consuming. I have never eaten Placenta.

Yet even though I have limited knowledge, authority, or exposure, still I say proudly that I am a placenta fan. And not just for practical reasons, but sentimental ones as well. This is the means by which a cluster of cells was brought into the world. This is how food and oxygen were shared. This was a room that expanded for the child, grew with him, like the scaffolding of a skyscraper, a magnificent construction constructed only to construct something else and then be deconstructed. It too must be birthed. And then, consumed or thrown away. This is the scaffolding of a boy. 

But what has struck me recently, is that when the baby is born, the scaffolding removed, the project is still unfinished. A building, constructed, is still just the frame of a thing. Most of the work and often most of the expense will take place inside. For children, nine months is a drop in the bucket of what it takes to bring a child into the world. And so, I am a placenta fan partially because that’s kind of what I’ve become. I’ve taken over placenta duty. We are now the ones supplying food, protecting oxygen, sustaining life and developing being. We are still pregnant with these two boys. It’s not just Sarah anymore. We bear them between us with some help from friends and family. It’s a labor to bring them into the world. 

From us, children learn what to expect when they’re awake. Who will be there. Who will feed them. Who will comfort them. They learn to self-comfort, to calm down. When they’ve learned enough, they are able to fall asleep without tears and before total exhaustion. They learn what a day consists of. What activities happen. What fairness looks like. They learn skills for coping with disappointment. They learn what they can get away with, what is fun, what is appreciated. They learn how to snuggle. They feel all the emotions, and sometimes, most of the time, the emotion gets the best of them. And they learn the ways emotions come and go. They learn how others respond when emotions get the best of us and how emotions are radioactive. They share themselves with everyone around. They learn how to be present. How to listen. What is beautiful, what is funny. They learn about weather, coldness, heat, hunger, tastes, chores, dirtiness, baths, holidays, rituals, moods, fatigue, victory, failure.  

There are many ways to face all this, to stand against the tide like stone cliffs or move like sand. To breath in or hold your breath. The process of becoming, of situating oneself must be exhilarating. Perhaps that’s why children love finding lines and breaking rules. Pushing boundaries. Nothing excites my oldest son, Clarence, more than telling him, with a stern face, to make sure he doesn’t have too much fun. “I’m going to have too much fun,” he says greedily, endearingly. 

Recently, for singing time in our church’s primary, I had the children cut my tie when they sang well. I thought it was mostly a stupid gimmick, that would be met with mild amusement. But it was a hit. And maybe this is why. Cutting clothing is a line they’d learned, a rule, a thou shalt not. Doing it was adventurous, thrilling, funny. They felt the world move a little, under their feet. They laughed, and clung to their piece of tie after class was dismissed.  

I’ve been wondering what type of life I want my son to encounter. How do I want him to be in this world? A lot of Mormon practices have been built around a certain kind of being. This being is a continuous becoming. It is like Groundhog Day, the 1993 comedy with Bill Murry who lives the same day over and over again until he lives the perfect day. He practices piano until he has mastered Beethoven’s Sonata No. 9 in D minor, commonly known as the “Tempest Sonata.” He perfects a french toast recipe. And not just french toast, he learns French, the entire language. He also finds the time to become expert in the off-the-beaten-track skill of ice sculpting. Near the end of the movie, he executes a practically perfect date and sweeps his love interest off her feet. They sleep together that night. But as he falls asleep, he assumes they will wake up in different beds, and he will have to relive the day all over again, only this time, just a little better. 

Of course a perfect Mormon day would not conclude by sleeping with a girl after your first date. It’s hard to imagine what a perfect day would look like. A day is too short a measurement to contain much. And if you tried packing every pristine moment of your life (marriage, honeymoon, birthdays, Christmases, soccer, baptism, campouts, molten Lava cake, ice cream, Lars and the Real Girl, The Castle, The Brothers Karamazov, Lord of the Rings, East of Eden, great restaurants, concerts, vacations, chocolate chip cookies, and the list goes on) into a single day, it would explode. Making each day better than the last is impractical as days do not compare well. But the sentiment is common and understandable. I heard it uttered again in Elder’s quorum today, when the teacher said, “each day we can do a little more good and a little less bad.” It’s a slow progression of purer thoughts, better charity, and holier being. And this is one way of thinking about our lives—we are rough stones rolling. 

And this conception works really well for a while. Children learn to read, to think, to talk, to play. And they progress rapidly. Six year old readers are much better than five year olds. Eight year olds are athletically dominant over six year olds. Even a few months can make a dramatic difference. And as they age in the church, they have more spiritual stepping stones. For children and for youth in the church, there is a seemingly endless to do list. A set of accomplishments that mark the way of progress. What was scouting has become Duty to God. They move through primary and baptism into young men and young women. They serve missions, fall in love and get married. And then they are in their twenties, and they have existed their entire lives with a trajectory of rapid improvement, when suddenly it ends.  

There are no more steps to take. Some try to fabricate these steps by seeing church hierarchy as a path towards continual progress and personal betterment. A clerk, then Elders Quorum President, then Bishop, Stake President, etc.. The same can be done with careers. But no one can avoid recognizing that progress is much slower, almost impossibly slow, and backsliding becomes inevitable. Forty year olds are seldom vastly superior in any measurable quality to thirty nine year olds. After thirty, it’s unlikely you will become athletically superior, or mentally faster, or morally better. Reaching this age, people stop changing much. You can not see someone for ten years, and then see them again, and they are practically the same person. 

Of course some things can get better but often at the expense of other things. We reach a capacity, an equilibrium, and progress levels out. Days stop building on top of days. The progression narrative shutters. The idea that we are learning heaven, or getting better every day falls flat. Instead, we are faced with the reality of the monotony before us. It is the long slog of enduring to the end. The progress that once shot up into the sky like a rocket has leveled out, and if anything, the slope tilts just a little downward.  

And we must figure out a new mode of being in the world. And I think it was given to us, at the final stepping stone of marriage. When we are told to multiply and replenish the earth. Suddenly, the goal is no longer self improvement, or the building of self into something godlike, but the building of something else. Other people, and the earth (which actually sounds more godlike).

And what matters here is not the bullheaded insistence that we get just a little better, but that our lives turn into a scaffolding to create other things. We become a placenta. We create structures and rituals that enable us to create people, essays, books, artwork, community, culture, etc.. And what matters when we die, is not that we got better or died without any doubt or became sinful or grumpy in our old age. What matters about our days, was that they brought forth beauty as they were lived. 

What I’m getting at is maybe reading your scriptures more often is not valuable per se. Getting one percentage point closer to 100% may not matter in the grand scheme of things, unless that additional scripture study enabled you to actually do something—because it is what we do with our spiritual nourishment that matters, not merely the fact that we are nourished. Like placentas, whatever nutrients we possess are valuable inasmuch they yield something else.

It’s not that scripture study or prayer or attending church doesn’t matter. It’s that life is not a video game where you level up by collecting coins. You don’t get stronger and stronger. You don’t get bigger, better weapons. You probably won’t even get kinder in our old age. If we embrace a leveling up perception of enduring to the end, we will no doubt  be troubled to see our own parents and grandparents navigate old age. 

They’ve stopped leveling up! They’re becoming less smooth as they roll! They’re moving in the wrong direction! This is inevitable. And so, said bluntly, we should stop trying to get better. Because maybe we can’t. And maybe that’s okay. The ultimate level you obtain is nearly insignificant. What matters is the work of placenta.

Maybe it won’t matter if in our elder years we fear dying like my Grandpa, and cling to life unceremoniously, with constant dialysis and expensive surgeries, connecting a cow artery to his heart to extend life a few more weeks. Or if we grow moody like my Grandma, who lashes out at her husband and children for not paying her more attention. Maybe we slide back into old sins or commit new ones. Maybe things fall apart a little at the end, and we die far from our best. And that’s a real tragedy unless continual progression was never the goal.

The tragedy wanes a little if we are a placenta, if days are not repetitive attempts at perfection. Maybe praying five times a day is critical for your work, maybe it’s not. Maybe having entirely pure thoughts is less important than having thoughts. Your thoughts could be getting in your way or they might not. Perhaps reading daily is necessary, but that could just as easily be getting in the way. Maybe instead of daily study, what you need is a project. Maybe you need to write a book which will have you spend years studying and then months writing. 

Thinking of things as placenta is not seeing things as days but trimesters. It strings days into weeks and weeks into creation. It ties people together with umbilical cords. It binds us to others, and to what we create. As mother Mary before us, our lives are the bringing forth of God. What will matter is not how good we’ve become or the attributes we mastered or the lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to. What will matter is if we made room. That our life and schedules and equilibrium allowed us to bring God into the world. 

And by the very labor of bringing God into the world, we are born into Heaven. And when we are born into heaven, we might just be the afterbirth. Maybe that is our goal, to have become a tree of life. And then we will realize that what we discarded, what we feared to consume, the piece that followed us into life, was our destiny.