In The Fourth Trimester, we ask parents: What meal nourished you after welcoming your baby? This month it’s oxtail guisado from novelist Cleyvis Natera. For an entire week, I’d been lying as still as possible, sitting upright only to breastfeed my two-month-old baby girl, Penelope. Any time I moved, sharp rays of pain slithered up my lower back, radiating so intensely I had to clamp my eyes and mouth shut just to keep from crying out. My two-year-old son, Julian, took notice. “Did that baby hurt you?” he asked, chunky hands caressing my cheek. “No, Penelope didn’t hurt me,” I reassured him. “Mommy hurt herself.” My predicament was not labor related. In fact, I’d been stunned by how quickly I’d recovered post-C-section. Just a couple of weeks earlier, I had been flushed with an energy I never experienced when I gave birth to my son. It was with this renewed vigor that I’d come across a barrage of headlines about the singer Ciara’s post-baby body transformation. She had “snapped back,” returning to her pre-baby weight with lightning speed. I was used to a strong, fit body. Not long ago, I’d completed a marathon, and had even finished a few triathlons. Now, after my second child, there was a softness, a broadening of my figure I didn’t want to accept. Outside, it was late summer and through my great room’s street-facing windows in Montclair, New Jersey, I saw athletic bodies glowing golden, midriffs exposed in a blur of motion. I considered the remaining 12 weeks of my maternity leave. Why not reach toward a better-than-before-the-babies, celebrity-level body? I, too, could diet and take advantage of the extra caloric deficits from breastfeeding. I, too, could tackle intense workouts and shred the baby weight. So I ordered a DVD set for an at-home workout and decided to have my own snap-back summer. Eating nothing but grilled chicken and lettuce for most meals, I made it all the way to day five when an overly enthusiastic burpee halted all dreams of a svelte physique. Upon flinging my body into the air, I realized something had gone terribly wrong. My husband carried me to bed. I’d pulled my back out; after a couple weeks of rest, it would heal itself, my doctor assured me. While I recovered, my mother agreed to stay with us. I knew what I craved, and she’d anticipated as much: Within an hour of arriving, a familiar, piquant aroma wafted from the kitchen. My mother hummed an old bolero song as she cooked, and the combination of her voice singing, “Besame, besame mucho,” and those sweet, tomato-laden vapors felt, at the time, more potent than any painkillers I’d been prescribed. The scents and sounds transported me back to the Dominican Republic, my birthplace, to a time when my 10-year-old body climbed up the side of our simple concrete house easily, all the way to the roof, in search of a lost baseball or a few moments of solitude, when my agile body had known no pain. Soon my mom presented me with a steaming plate of tender Dominican oxtail guisado in a red sauce. I handed her the baby, making a trade, and sat crooked on the couch, devouring the juicy meat, surprising myself at how hungry I’d been. My mother glanced at me with concern as she held Penelope and played with Julian, encouraging me to eat more, more, even bringing me extra servings so I could keep going. As I filled my belly, I could feel myself grow stronger, more alert. Yet there was something else about this meal that satisfied more than my hunger. Making oxtail guisado entails a simple yet lengthy process, sometimes requiring three hours of slow-simmered cooking time, which was part of the reason I’d never bothered to learn how to make the dish myself. But as I enjoyed the savory flavors with a throbbing back, I was reminded of other major milestones in my life—both happy and difficult times—when I’d eaten this dish, and how it had enriched me. Its consistency was a map that tracked where I’d been, who I’d been. Seeing my mother playing with my children created a sense of urgency within me. “I want you to teach me how to make oxtails,” I told my mother in Spanish. The worry left her features immediately. She laughed so loudly her shoulders shook. “In this state?” she asked. But I was determined to learn. My mother would be leaving for DR in just a week. A few days later, I stood beside her as she cut onions into thin slices. By then, I could be on my feet as long as I moved slowly. The dried oregano bunches she’d bought from the Dominican grocery store were so aromatic I wanted to hang them in my bathroom, smell them every morning when I woke up. I pulled the small dry leaves, crushed them between my palms, the smoky, pungent fragrance jolting me awake. My mother and I didn’t need to talk as we worked. I had seen her do this from a distance countless times as a child, before I had any language to express how beautiful I thought she was. Over those three decades, her weight had often fluctuated, depending on whatever she was going through. Yet, I’d always looked on at her in wonder, admiring the way she comforted us with her presence and her skill. She was as beautiful then as she was now. Standing next to her, gingerly limiting my movements because of pain I’d inflicted to make myself smaller suddenly seemed absurd. As the hours flowed, I added enough water for my oxtails to drown and boil, undisturbed. I was relieved the recipe called for resting time, for restraint. I went back to the couch, fed my baby, gave Julian a kiss, added more water to the meat, went back to rest. With each trip to the stove, I felt my body loosening up, the tension I’d
