Road Blocks and Speed Bumps

When we are babies our bodies change visibly every single day, new teeth, longer hair, another shoe size, or larger diapers. One day we can walk under the dining room table without even noticing it is there and the next we bang our foreheads into it. We tip over, fall over, and tumble down stairs. We fall out of and off of anything we are on or in. We stick wet fingers into electrical sockets, put pennies and rocks into our mouths and beads up our nose, stand on high chair trays, pull clothing racks on top of ourselves while hiding under them and watching mom and dad have screaming panic attacks looking for us. Our parents are our road block at this stage, something to get around or under while we stumble and roll through life. We are just learning how to use all of our parts and they keep changing on us. It is a miracle anyone learns everything at all.

Change and growth slow down to a manageable speed when we are learning how to be daring. Mother nature reigns herself in long enough for us to develop courage and grace and speed and a desire to succeed. Riding bikes, skateboarding, skiing, gymnastics, horse back riding, jumping, running, sliding and skating are all approached with an incredible verve and abandon. Danger is something we understand intellectually only. We fall, tumble, take a spill, crash, wipe out, and take a header. Bruises, Charlie-horses, knocks and dings, strawberries, casts and missing teeth are worn like badges of honor. Our bodies heal like magic. Broken bones? No problem, we are back riding that bike with our cast on in a week or less. We shake our heads at parent’s admonitions to be careful, slow down, wear a helmet or just plain don’t do it because we are going to get hurt. How bad can something be when the worst pain can be tolerated with the help of a new Sponge Bob episode or a visit from our very best friend? Our parents are still trying to be road blocks but in reality are more like speed bumps. We run them over with our enthusiasm, our youth and our promises to be careful. We chuckle behind their backs, sneering at their concerns and fears. We are young and we are invincible.

Late adolescence and young adulthood are a whole other story. While most of us give up the things that caused contusions, sub dermal hematomas and lacerations we find new ways to test our body and judge our skills. We are seriously just getting to a point when we know our bodies and we start screwing with them! Alcohol, pot, uppers, downers, acid and other mind altering substances become the new thrill. It takes years to realize that while we are not covered in bandages and held together with stitches we are still doing incredible harm to ourselves. Vomiting, headaches, sleepless nights and comatose days, dangerous sex, loneliness, confusion and paranoia are the order of the day. We say that we must have had a good time because we can’t remember it and remember when we… whatever. The ‘remember when’s’ happen because we are so busy destroying ourselves that the past becomes a beacon for us, for a time we knew what we wanted, when reaching the top of that tree or jumping off that garage was a worthwhile goal and we succeeded at it. Our parents try calling us, stopping by, taking us to lunch at work. We accept this love as a burden we must bear in order to get help when we can’t make the rent or our hearts are broken yet again by the obviously wrong person. We use and abuse them and they keep coming back for more which makes us respect them even less.

Sometime in our early thirties (or for those of us that are a little slow, our forties) we wake up and realize we feel like shit. Our hair is dry, we have bags under our eyes we could pack a wardrobe in, our faces are booze swollen and our hands are shaky. We have stopped progressing at work and our love life is unsatisfying. Our parents, long since having given up on telling us to be careful are happier and more successful than we are. Like a switch flipping and a light coming on we realize we have to slow down before it all goes to hell. We rededicate ourselves to work, to finding someone to settle down permanently with. If we have children we find ourselves telling them to be careful, they could hurt themselves. School, which we suffered through, becomes enormously important for our progeny. We allow them to do all of the crazy physical things we did at the appropriate ages and warn them off of all of the things we wish we hadn’t done early and often. Sometime during this period we have a slow realization that we have, indeed, become our parents. It is disheartening. It makes us feel OLD for a while and then we realize that our parents did ok, they aren’t total ogres and there are a lot of role models that are worse than they are. Our parents can actually become our friends during this period if we let them.

It only takes us forty or fifty years but we finally reach a point where we are content if not the ephemeral ‘happy’. We are making good money and have the respect if not the admiration of our peers and subordinates. Our love life has settled into a comfortable pattern, if not with one person that with serial monogamy. With the help of Advil and Motrin we can still get out on the weekends and do something physical, like snorkel or hike or ride bikes with the wife in the park. Our parents are either wildly self sufficient and intent on doing everything for your children that they were too smart to do for you, or, in sadder situations, your responsibility. You are now their road block, their speed bump, and the person who allows themselves to be used and abused by the crafty old geezers they have become. Your children run rampant. Whether trying to kill themselves with dangerous physical activity or drinking and dancing the night away before an important presentation which will make or break their whole career  they are the only thing that still causes you true concern. You almost look forward to the ‘I need rent money’ or ‘Can I eat at your house tonight’ phone calls because you can see them and judge the state of their decline and in turn the amount of worrying you must do.

Before you know it, in the mere blink of an eye, you are the old geezer worrying your children to death. You either bring home a mini-bike for the 11 year old bookish grandchild or accidentally drink bleach because it is in an orange glass and it might be juice. You are now prescribed pills you would have paid good money for in your twenties but they don’t do what they are supposed to do, much less make you feel like you aren’t falling apart. You look back at your contented grown children and wonder that they made it that far without killing themselves. You wonder how they bore children so smart and pleasant when they were horrid, ignoring you at best, sneering at you at their worst. You finally, sadly, realize what a gift your body, your family, your life here is when it seems all but over. If you have twenty years left (it seems like an immeasurable space of time for a child but it races by as an adult) you need more. It simply isn’t enough to appreciate what God or fate or a random confluence of matter, time and space have given you.

The Three Stooges Vs. Don Quixote

I fight a battle every day. Well, actually myriad, but this one is the big one. Well, not really the big big one but a Lieutenant Colonel in an army of Generals.

The big big one is my vision, or lack thereof. It fights on two fronts, the obvious head on assault screaming at me as it charges “You can’t see shit, you can’t see shit, nanny nanny boo boo”, holding its fingers in the shape of an ‘L’ against it’s forehead, demeaning me at the same time it throws its weapons at me. And the flanking maneuver, surprising me almost daily with little arrows thrown from the shadows; Words disappear on the page, ten feet are gone and I can no longer recognize my kids from 15 feet away by the way they move, now they must be five feet away. It is a sneaky and vile method of warfare and one I know I have no chance of holding my own at, much less winning but just can’t seem to quit fighting. In this case every new defeat steels my determination. I am Don Quixote but my donkey keeps pissing on my bedroll at night.

The big one, the one this writing is about, is depression. I have seen pictorial representations of depression and they are always dark and moody, coloring the periphery with grays and blacks, or hulking, overpowering shapeless beasts that cover and smother and drown.

My depression manifests itself more as an imp, a poltergeist, a malicious sprite. Hiding in nooks and crannies waiting to jump out, slap me around and disappear again under the love seat or out the car window. I know this won’t kill me, I know I can continue to live my life and enjoy giant swaths of it, I KNOW that this little bastard can’t do anything more than rattle me but it is so damn good at it that it is wearing me down.

Like a tiny vaguely painful cavity it reminds me that one wrong bite, wrong step, miscalculation or assumption and it will be there, grinning, slapping, yanking my hair and poking my eyes before popping out of my life in an instant leaving me blinking furiously, growing a bruise, shaken and confused. Picture the Three Stooges rolled into one vaguely poopy smelling creature and me, Don Quixote with a urine soaked blanket. Depression does, indeed, stink.

In The Beginning There Was Nothing

This is the short begining of what may be a longish piece. Be warned! Let me know your thoughts on this.

In the beginning there was nothing. No dark, no light, no heat or cold or wet or dry or loud or quiet of soft or jagged. In the beginning there was a single lucid thought:

“This is not a good situation.”

I can’t say I felt disembodied. I can’t say I felt frightened. I felt nothing, nothing at all and that was what let me know that this was not a good situation. Another thought appeared, floating in the nothingness that was my universe:

“I must keep my wits about me”

This was going to prove to be easier thought than done.

There was no time in the vast nothingness so when I realized I heard something I had no idea if it had been a second after my floating thoughts or an hour. I heard my name, loud and insistent, repeated over and over about one inch from what I realized must be my ear. The sound seemed to tunnel through the nothingness, leaving rends and tears and slamming into my ear, funneling down to my brain and reverberating, sending waves crashing up against my consciousness and irritating at first, then abrading, then scarring the tenuous connection to the world I found myself in.

“Ma’am? Ma’am can you hear me?”

Did I answer?

“Ma’am? Can you tell me what is hurt?”

Huh! I must have. I took a space of time. I can’t breathe, that can’t be right. My arm won’t move. I am frozen in a block of nothingness and something keeps screeching in my ear. I summon every single ounce of strength and courage and life left in me (here I wish I had said or done something heroic or life affirming, instead…) and croak out “Make him shut up”

Another space of time passes I hear someone say “She is talking, she made sense for the most part, we are getting her out.” The screeching stopped. I sank deep into the nothingness.

I open my eye, I am in a room with what seems like too many people, or one person in a white coat with many ,many arms. I sink into the nothingness with relief.

Crap, I have kids! How could I have forgotten I have kids? Someone needs to tell the kids… something, whatever! I still haven’t decided what happened and I really can’t face it at this point in time anyway.

My body is weightless yet weighs a ton at the same time. I can barely  speak but my grunts and squawks get someone’s attention. I need to call my kids I tell them. There is a flurry of activity and a man with no features leans over me and asks what I said. I repeat myself, fading into a whisper, which forces me back into the void for a period of time. Oh crap, I have kids! I swim up and inspire myself by imagining I am kicking like a frogman up from the depths.

When I break the surface of the nothingness an incredibly hot, burning pain sears through my head. I try to grab it but can’t move at all. I think the first clear words spoken by me were “MOTHER FUCKER” Another flurry of activity, the featureless man (whom I could now tell was sporting wire rims) came running back into the room. The light reflected off the rims and sent darts tipped with  red hot coals through my eyeballs and into my brain. I tried to turn from him but couldn’t. I closed my eye (where was the other one?) and muttered I have call my kids.

"Who do we call?"

Now that was a good question. I pondered it for a while, trying to pilot my muddied  thoughts around the ever increasing maze of pain in my head. Ah hah! Call my mom and dad. I could feel the whole room sigh with relief that I was making sense and helping them out.

“What is their number?”

Stymied. I had no clue. They had had the same number for 18 years but it appeared to have fallen out when whatever happened to me happened. I try  thinking of ANY number and realize they are all gone, my folks, my own, my house number, do I have a house number, do I have a mom and dad, what is a mom and dad, oh crap, I have kids!

“Can you tell us their names?”

Thank God, an easy one… Mom and Dad I say with a bit of triumph

“No dear, we need the name in the phone book”

I speak slower, obviously I am not the only one with head issues tonight. Mooom  aannnddd dddaaaddd. Idiots.

My job is done. I feel I have given them the best information possible and the nothingness is sucking at my shoulders, trying to bring my head back under. I haven’t the will to fight it.

A whispered voice, a cool and soothing carress, grabs my attention. I try and I try to swim, try to picture the frogman and finally break the surface of silence gasping for air and feeling the pain surge back through my head and my neck and shoulders as well. I hear the voice I open one eye (I can tell now I have two but only one is working) I see my mom. She is talking oh so quietly to my sister in the semi darkened room. She sounds sad. I mutter something that didn’t even make sense INSIDE my head. When she turned to me and said Oh Jean the first big crack appeared in the nothingness. I hadn’t realized I had been afraid, now I felt an immense relief. She would take care of things. Pain and relief;

it occurred to me I wasn’t dead at the same time that I realized I thought I might be.

Some fun in the AM from this not-always-Debbie-Downer

Courtesy of Scorp Writers

The Typo Goblin

I am the Typo Goblin, my heart is made of flint,
My role in life is simply this: to keep you out of print.
I sneak into your manuscript and do my fiendish work,
... Adding errors guaranteed to make you look a berk.
And then I cast the ‘Careless’ spell: you say, ‘Ah, what the heck!’
And pop your script into the post without that final check.
At length some hapless editor receives your golden wit,
And after reading fifty words he writes it off as ... unpublishable.

- Michael Shenton

Love and Demons

I loved my first husband with a passion known only to youth. I, indeed, would have lain down and died for him if he had asked. I could see no future without him and my past seemed cold and colorless until he arrived on the scene. We grew up together raising four children in the process. It was an ever changing weave held together with laughter and adventure, tears and raw desires. As often happens with unions created in adolescence we fell spectacularly apart. Not quickly, even though it happened in an instant it took eighteen years. Not physically, our chemistry was solid. Not even emotionally, we shared our love of family, shared a religion, and shared a vision of what could be if we just hung in there.

My husband had a ‘nervous breakdown’; an over used but very apt term. As I was going through the nightly drill of dinner cooking, homework helping and living room cleaning his boss phoned the house. Since this was before caller ID was prevalent I snatched up the phone ready to chew out either a salesman or a bill collector, only half paying attention as I stirred, spelled, yelled and diapered.

“Ms. G----?”

“Do not bite your sister!!”

“Hello? Hello?”

“I am not interested, thank you”

“WAIT!! This is Lonnie? From the garage?”

“He’s not home yet; can I have him call you?”

“I just wondered why he didn’t come in today?”

Now THAT got my attention. I turned on the laser death stare, impaling my brood so they froze where they stood and let loose the evil hiss mother’s only pull out when life or death depends on complete and total attention.

“Not at all? He didn’t come in at all? He left at the same time he usually does” I snuck a look at the clock and was shocked to see he had left the house 13 hours before, uniformed, lunch in hand with a kiss and a wave like always.

Lonnie, realizing that I had no clue what was going on quickly backtracked, hemmed and hawed and finally, with a mumbled “I am sure there is a good reason” slammed the phone down. I lit a cigarette, gave the kids their dinner and started making calls. Our family first, then police departments, then hospitals. I finally found a nurse at an ER front desk who remembered him checking in sometime in the morning. She assured me he was just fine at the precise moment he walked in the front door. I was frightened and angry and relieved. I started hollering “Where the hell have you been?” even as I grabbed him hard and hugged him to me.  I looked into his face and saw a fear so deep and dark I recoiled as he burst into tears and hung on to me for dear life. I was lost. We were lost.

I am a mother, I did what a mother does, I hugged him back to me, patted his back and said it’s all right, it will be alright but I knew something tragic and permanent had happened and I was at a loss. Like kissing a child’s hurt knee it was ineffectual but he, assuming I could fix it, cried out his pain on my shoulder

I hustled the kids off to bed. The fact that there were four of them meant that even in a hurry it took a bit of time and when I was finished, the last tooth brushed and nose kissed, I realized he had gone to bed.  The door to our bedroom was locked. I sat through the night at the dining room table chain smoking and worrying.

At six o’clock I opened the sliding glass door to the cool February morning and let the smoke blow out. I made yet another pot of coffee and poured us both a cup. I walked quietly upstairs and hesitated before I tried the door. Still locked. “Honey? Honey it’s time to get up! I have coffee!” I heard a strangled cry and I left the coffee by the door, letting him know it was there, and went to wake up the children.

As the kids squabbled about cereal bowls I peered outside. The regular houses had the regular lights coming on. The regular neighbors were either driving out slowly or returning from a hard nights work. All of my children were subdued, dressing without prompting and eating without enthusiasm. They drug their feet as they gathered their books and backpacks. My oldest daughter finally asking was her daddy ok? I felt my breath hitch as I said he just had the flu, no big deal. “Why was he crying? Does he feel that bad?” I had no answer so I just nodded my head and ushered them to the door.

For the next three weeks he stayed mainly in the bedroom. I would hear the door unlock and I would scurry up to try to talk to him, to gather some clothes, to ask him why. I grew angrier and angrier as I was met with either silence or tears or the locked bathroom door. On the 19^th day I used a butter knife to open the door and started screaming like a harridan.  “What the &$#@ are you doing! Talk to me dammit! TALK TO ME!” I had a shelf with countless paperbacks which I started hurling at the lump in the bed with all of my force. I got into a rhythm with the books yelling “TALK TO ME” whumph “TALK TO ME” whumph “TALK TO ME” until he shot up and slung one back at me. “You bitch!” “You bastard!” We stood on both side of the rumpled stale bed, both breathing hard and ready for battle. “I need to see someone” he finally confessed. “No shit Sherlock” I replied. We went down together to make some calls.

My husband never went back to work. He was diagnosed as Bi-Polar after many failed stops and starts with various doctors and medicines. A couple of years after his initial break I found out what had happened that day.  He had been driving down the road, as always, when a terrible and black void as deep and wide as the universe opened up in front of him. It was full of evil, shadows that took on and lost form as they beckoned him into their terrifying world. Some hours later he found himself sitting in a parking lot on the other side of town, alone, the void gone, the creatures at bay but forever now a part of his consciousness. He did not know who he was or why he was there. As he calmed he realized he needed help and by the time he got to the nearest hospital he knew himself as well as he ever would again. He waged a valiant battle but the demons finally caught him.

A Hearts Desire

I don’t remember any birthday’s before the age of four. I remember being deathly ill and hospitalized. I remember magical moments where I played in the cool German evenings as the sun set and the air cooled and mothers called out to their children to come in one by one, their voices mingling together and rising and falling with the sound of an ice cream vendor's bells to create the music of summer. I remember interminable flights which everyone complained through but I was wedged into the embrace of my mother and thought them heaven on earth. These are the things that make a mark on a toddler; abject terror, perfect joy and absolute love are forever imprinted, birthdays….not so much.

When I turned four I had my first moment of absolute, inescapable, life-or-death scenario desire. I wanted a horse. Nope, I NEEDED a horse. I would never be happy again in my whole entire life (at that point my 14 year old sister was, in my mind, ancient and my brother, soon heading off to college, dead and gone already) if I did not have a horse of my very own.

I knew there was work involved, brushing and feeding and cleaning their hooves. I knew they were expensive, they had to be or everyone in their right mind would have a whole herd of the animals, I knew they were big and bulky and smelly and pooped A LOT. I wanted one anyway. Without one I would die. I decided on a wear-your-parents-down strategy. I pined, heaving huge long dramatic sighs as I threw myself at their feet. The first few times they reacted just as I had hoped, with concern and pats and sweet explanations about why I wasn’t going to get a horse. By the third day they were stepping over me, sliding their feet up under my back and sliding me out of the way, picking me up by the back of my overalls and depositing me like a bag into a corner or nook. So they wanted to play it that way, huh? I ramped up the attack.

At the end of the first week I started crying, huge gulping sobs with one or two alligator tears accompanied the falling to the floor. I would get totally into it, the tears would flow more and more freely, my chest heaved, snot bubbled, and it was AWESOME! I could make myself gag if I kept it up long enough. It was truly Oscar worthy and I knew, just KNEW that horse would be mine. Just about the time I realized it just didn’t get any better and I had a good shot at a guest spot on As The World Turns I was yanked up off the floor and tossed onto my bed. The door slammed and I was alone. What? What? Not likely mom! I stomped back downstairs to air my humiliation and hurt and was summarily picked up and dumped on my bed again. And again. And again. I felt the first terrible frisson of fear run down my spine-- Maybe my mom was going to wear me down first. I retreated and licked my wounds for a bit while I developed a new strategy. Kill them with kindness!! Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

The next morning I came down fairly clean, teeth brushed, smiled at my mom in my prettiest Shirley Temple imitation, head tilted, dimples exposed (I had none, but it was a good attempt) batted my eyelashes and said “Good Morning Mother, How are we today?” My mom, looked at me over her coffee, shook her head and said ”What is wrong with your neck? Did you sleep crooked? Stop doing that thing with your eyes! Is something in them? Why did you call me ‘Mother’? What did you do now?” I tried for a few more minutes but it just wasn’t happening. She was convinced I had a crick in my neck, soap in my eyes and was only being polite because I did some as yet undiscovered bad thing I was trying to get out of trouble for. I stomped off with the grand indignation only little children can get away with. I thought I heard her laughing quietly to herself, but when I raced back down to catch her in the act she was looking calmly out the window, sipping her coffee.

I had underestimated her. My mother was a much more worthy opponent than I had initially thought. I decided a head on assault was what was needed and that, indeed, I had wasted valuable time with my guerilla maneuvers.  Over the next two weeks I went through sheet after sheet of drawing paper and an entire 8 pack of crayons. Pictures of horses littered every surface in every room. Being four they were not the best, I realized looking at them that they didn’t even come close to portraying the magnificent steed we would soon have ensconced on our screened in porch, but they were noble attempts, full of passion and heated desire. I begged for stories about horses, for jodhpurs, for western boots or clean black riding boots, I was pretty easy. ANY of it would be PERFECT. I let our dog walk me and spent what seemed like hours pulling burrs out of his coat after he drug me through the hedge just to demonstrate my ability to care for an animal. I swept (as well as a toddler could) the screened in porch and looked in the newspaper for ads with pictures of bales of hay or pitchforks or tack in them and crookedly cut them out and left them in impossible to miss places (i.e. the toilet seat. I was a very, very smart kid).

My mom took this attack with much grace and aplomb. Over and over she repeated, firmly, DEFINITLY that I was not now nor would I ever get a horse unless I bought one myself when I grew up. Every attempt I made was given the same gentle rebuff. The night before my birthday I cried myself to sleep. These were real tears, so hot they felt like they scarred my cheeks as they ran down into my ears and hair... She patted me, she kissed my cheek, she shushed me quietly. “Have you ever had a bad birthday?” I tried to remember but didn’t even think I had HAD a birthday before so I said no, grudgingly. She left me with a kiss and a reassurance of a wonderful tomorrow, a celebration of me.

I woke up the next morning feeling groggy, my head pounding, my eyes hot and dry and my hair still damp from the tears. My face was stiff from the snot that my heartbreak had released, smeared across my face and dried into a mask of childhood agony. I could not help it. I knew I was being foolish. I knew I was acting like a little baby. I knew if I told ANYONE what I was going to do and why they would think me a true idjit. I inched my way out of the bed I shared with my sister trying desperately to not wake her. I eased the door open and slid out, working my way down the hallway and the stairwell on my tippy- toes, close to the wall where the stairs did not squeak. I pulled open the door, and tried to push the screen door out fast, so it wouldn’t creak and moan but not so fast that it slapped the side of the house when I flung it. I stepped out in to the morning sun with my eyes closed tight as I turned to face the screened in porch.  I prayed to God and my imaginary friends that my parents were just really, really, REALLY good at keeping a secret and opened my eyes slowly—

No horse. I was stunned. I was shocked. I felt smote by the hand of God.

As I stood in mute and trembling shock my mother came out behind me carrying a cup of coffee and a glass of milk. She nudged me toward the screened in porch with her knee and somehow managed to open that door with one elbow while balancing both drinks, steering me and talking about what a lovely day it was. She pulled me on her knee, wiping my shiny face with spit on the edge of her apron.  She combed through my damp hair with her fingers and smoothed my nightgown and pulled me into her and rocked and rocked in the straight backed chair until I slowly began to relax, to relent, to accept the fact that we don’t always get our hearts desire. I dozed off for a bit, waking up as she tried to lay me down on the sofa inside.  She smiled at me and I smiled back at her.

Pieces of Me Part V

On this, the birthday of my fifth and last child, I give you his story.

I had had four children by the time I was 25. I was exhausted, broke and lonely for adult company. I had waged a silent, vicious war for the entire term of my last pregnancy. I was done, D.O.N.E. done! I had two beautiful charming daughters and an adorable and mischievous son. They were all remarkably brilliant, natural comedians, phenomenally healthy, outgoing and charismatic through and through.

My husband thought they were perfect so we should just keep having them, one perfect child after another. I thought that if I had to spend another year changing diapers, practicing spelling words and sleeping three hours a night I would kill someone, and he would be the first one in my sights. In the end I won. It was my body, my time and my sleep that were to be affected. You carry them, I hissed at him more than once, and you can decide how many to have.

I had my tubes tied in mid-September. I felt free and unfettered by worry for the first time since I had realized it was possible to get pregnant if you slept with someone ONCE even if were only 17 and supposedly bright. I had roughly two months of feeling pretty, young, light on my feet. Every milestone my infant daughter passed… rolling over, strained peas, grabbing her toes, laughing out loud… had a new and almost nostalgic quality. I just knew this would be it. The last first- time for everything.

I was working out hard every day. At 7 AM Jane Fonda and I had a standing date for sit ups and squats, toe touches and back bends. I started looking for a part time job. I bought high heels in simple anticipation of actually having somewhere I could wear them. I was ahead of myself but I could taste the freedom that having no babies would give me and I liked it immensely.

I caught a cold at the beginning of December, waking up one morning hot and nauseous. I tried to do sit ups with Jane and felt a wave of heat over take my body and started shaking uncontrollably. A year ago I would have thought I was pregnant but that was impossible now. I had taken the ultimate step. I had nipped and tied, stitched and burned, followed every rule the doctors gave me so it just couldn’t be that. I took over the counter medications for nausea, for headaches, for the flu. I bought Pepto and Maalox, Bayer and Midol. At the end of the second week I walked to the store toting all of my young ones in strollers and backpacks to buy a test. I mentioned I was bright, right?

The test was, of course, positive. Bright blue line, yep, positive, no doubt. I went with my husband to buy another. Positive again.  If possible even brighter blue, straighter line. I made a doctor’s appointment the next morning.

The doctor, having done the procedure a scant two months earlier assured me it was a false positive as he drew blood. My husband and I sat there in silence. It took every bit of control I had to not run screaming into the street in my back tied gown. My husband, who was also bright, realized how close I was to the edge and stayed silent in an effort to minimize his presence in the room.

The doctor came walking back in the room with an over jovial grin and manner and I just knew.  I thought for a moment that I would burst into flames, that I would fall like water with a splash to the floor, that my head would literally explode. My husband was trying to not get up and dance a jig while yelling “In your face!” to me and the doctor was making a mental note about calling his lawyer and checking on the value of his malpractice insurance.

We spoke at once—

Me: Well then.

My husband: In your face!

The doctor: You signed a disclaimer.

As soon as I got home I started calling abortion clinics. I wasn’t discussing it. A girl has to do what a girl has to do. At 16 weeks I was ready. I had arranged sitters. I had several nights meals prepared and in the freezer, my house was clean and my conscience was clear. The day of the procedure dawned crystalline and azure. My head was clear but my heart was muddied. I hugged my babies good-bye, told them I would be home after lunch, poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table.  I looked at all of them looking back at me for a minute and then we all spoke at once—

Me: Mommy’s having another baby

My husband: I love you

My daughter: It better be a girl

My son: Can I have a cookie?

My baby: gah

From the beginning this pregnancy was different. My body which Jane and I had been working on for months was not adjusting very well to it’s new co-op’ed state of being. My boobs hurt, my back hurt, my feet went flat and my intestines revolted. My hair turned dry and brittle and I broke out in terrible acne. What the hell?  It turns out though while 25 is very young it is a lot older when it comes to carrying children than you might think. Every time I went to the doctors I was chastised for gaining weight, for not getting enough rest, for not getting enough exercise. I was always treated to little smirks and grins or “what kind of slut are you” looks from other mother’s as I trudged about town with my big belly and three little munchkins in tow. Single women sneered at me and any man under 75 shuddered when I passed with my diapered entourage. I was not, as they say, a happy camper.

As the pregnancy progressed and I continued my quick decent into fat ankled hemmoroidal hell I was informed that my baby was not only breech, but was in fact sitting up facing forward and had no apparent desire to flip himself over and around like a good baby would.  The baby grew so large, and I got so tight that near the end when he turned his head you could make out his facial features. It was revolting and fascinating at once. It’s little hands or feet would press outwards in a stretch and I could trace them with my finger tips.  The end result was that I felt I knew this baby; I had seen his face and tickled his feet even before I held him to my heart. I knew him already and loved him with a fierceness I didn’t know was possible at that point.

Labor Day, 1986.  I woke with a tug and a rend and an “oh crap”. We had stayed at my parent’s the night before, just in case, to be closer to the hospital. Being old hands at this now we calmly waddled to the car and, waving a cheery goodbye, raced to the ER. My midwife (who by now had delivered two of my children) did an ultrasound and assured me that the baby’s butt was socked down good and tight and, since this was my fifth would probably just tumble out and we could be home by lunch. No special precautions were taken, no special rooms readied. We were all so at ease in this situation that I was tempted to ask if anyone wanted to play cards while we waited. Every ten minutes or so she would walk back in and listen to the baby’s heartbeat and check my vitals.  On her third trip into the room she asked us to hush a minute. She turned on the volume so we could hear it for ourselves.

“The baby is in distress, the heart beat is slowing dramatically, we don’t have time for him to deliver naturally, we have to do a caesarian immediately”

Before these words had a chance to register the room was full of people, sticking tubes in me, hooking monitors to me, shoving papers at my husband saying sign this sign this, sign this. They started to wrap my wedding ring in tape but I jerked it off and handed it to my husband. He looked at the band in his palm and said I am going to name the baby after my grandfather if it is a boy. A mask was placed over my face and I was rushed down the hall watching the numbers on the baby’s heart monitor go from 100 to 80 to 50. My last thought was “Please God, don’t take this baby from me now, I am so, so sorry”

I was trying to drag myself out of a deep dark nothingness because something was terribly wrong. My body was wooden, my mouth was full of cotton, my breath rattled and I was surrounded by eerie noises, beeping and hissing their way into my consciousness. A terror so overwhelming I knew it could kill me made me jerk and sit and thrash about looking for something, looking for a piece of me, looking for my heart. My midwife shushed me, called my name, rubbed my back, lay me back down saying over and over it is all right, everything is all right, the baby is all right. I cried like a baby as she held me like a mother.

When I had regained a semblance of calm I realized three things; I had no idea if it was a boy or a girl, my stomach hurt like a sum-a-bitch, and my husband’s grandfathers were named Cyril and Henry. “Boy or girl?” I croaked. Boy! “Name?” Henry Roger! (Thank God. I didn’t know either man, I am sure they were grand, but I didn’t want to pin a kid with the name Cyril in 1986). “Can I have some good drugs please?” Yes!  I smiled as the nurse carried in my little Henry, my baby, my last. Hallelujah, life was good.

Henry passed on August 5^th, 2008. Today is his 25^th birthday. I love you buddy and I miss you each and every day.