Babyhood (9780062098788) (8 page)

“I'll drive,” I said with great calm and magnanimity.

“Okay,” she said.

Like
she
was actually thinking of driving.

    

I remember thinking that if ever I was legally allowed to drive too fast, it was now. Because even if we got stopped by a cop, I could say, “But, Officer, my wife's having a baby.”

And then, if he did his part right, he'd push up the brim of his hat like cops did in the movies and say, “Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? Follow me!”

And then we'd get that really cool police escort, with sirens and everything.

I also remember it was really
quiet
in the car. All I heard was the thumping of my heart and that faint, grinding sound you sometimes hear when everything in the entire universe spins horribly out of control.

I looked over at my wife, who was holding her belly, her eyes closed. I squeezed her hand. She weakly attempted the beginning part of a smile, and then gave up.

I wanted to say something, but I didn't know what. I suspected that asking “You okay?” every eight seconds wasn't really helping.

When we stopped for a light, I looked at the guy next to us. I remember thinking how simple his life seemed. Wherever he was driving, I was willing to bet it didn't matter to him as much as our drive mattered to us.

I noticed his car. Then I'm pretty sure I said, “I was talking to Barry today, and they really love their Camry. They
did
go with the four-door.”

My Beloved opened her eyes and turned her head ever so slightly toward me. Her pained expression told me to go with my first instinct.

“You okay?”

She nodded yes, and I drove us to the hospital.

    

T
he
main
difference between a hospital admission area and the Department of Motor Vehicles is that the DMV
really
doesn't care. Hospitals care, but they still make you fill out a clipboard-full of forms and “wait over there.”

While the woman that I loved sat caressing the stomach that we
both
loved, I fumbled through my wallet, produced cards and IDs, and listed as many phone numbers and next of kins as my frazzled brain would offer up.

A steady stream of both green- and white-clothed hospital employees kept whizzing past us on their way to taking care of someone
not
us, and I remember feeling like immigrants must feel trying to get a cab from the airport.

“Will somebody just help us,
please
?”

Whenever anyone
did
talk to us, even if it was just to give us a map of fire exits and a pamphlet on the history of the hospital, I made a special effort to observe the name on their name tag and use it pointedly in a complete sentence.

“Thank you,
Dorothy.
We really appreciate that,
Dorothy.
”

“How we doing on that room,
Darryl
? We'll be over here,
Darryl.
Honey?
Darryl
's going to check on the room for us.”

I wanted to forge a bond with them not just because I thought it would make us stand out and get better service, but also because I was naive enough to think this was a special night for
them
, too, and that we would all correspond regularly for years to come.

“Hey, Dorothy, remember when Darryl tried to give an I.V. and he couldn't find a vein? That was something, huh?”

Of course, as soon as any of them took a coffee break and someone new came on duty,
they
became my new best friend.

“What is your name? Rosalinda? That's a very beautiful name . . . Listen, Rosalinda . . . I was wondering if you could help us . . .”

Once in a while I sucked up to people who didn't even work there. At one point I gave our whole medical history to a guy everyone kept calling “Doctor Cooper” only to find out he had a Ph.D. in art history and his wife happened to be in labor, too.

E
ventually, someone led us to our room—a doctor or a nurse, or an unbelievably conscientious ice cream man. All I know is they were wearing white, and I was thrilled to see them.

And I remember lots of different people coming in with different stuff to do different things, the net result of which was that my wife was, in a matter of minutes, transformed from a Pregnant Woman into a Patient. Seeing her in her little standard-issue hospital gown and wristband, with her very own tan plastic pitcher of ice water nearby, I got very sad. Up to this point, we had been really lucky; since we'd been together, neither of us had ever been in a hospital. But now, here she was, in a little bed in the corner, with a button that you hit if you need a doctor real fast. Just like sick people. And I could see it was spooking her, too.

I sat on the edge of her bed and stroked her face.

“How you doing?”

I swear, there are only so many different ways you can ask that question.

Her response surprised me.

“I want you to promise you'll remarry.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“If anything ever happens to me, I want you to marry someone and get on with your life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, I don't want you to totally
forget
about me either. You know . . . you could be sad
periodically
, and maybe you wouldn't necessarily take her to places that you and I always went to, but I would want you to be happy.”

“First of all—you're a big nut.”

“I'm serious.”

“You're going to be fine. Nothing's going to happen.”

“It might. You don't know. What was that movie . . . ?”

“What movie?”

“The movie where the mother was giving birth and they helped pull out the baby but the mother died?”

“City Slickers?”

“Yeah.”

“Sweetie, that was a
cow.
”

“Even so, remember? She thought everything was going to be fine, too, and then look what happened.”

“Honey, that's so totally a different thing. First of all, the cow was living outdoors in bad weather for, like, thirty years. And second of all, it was a movie. And also keep in mind, that cow didn't have
me.
”

That seemed to work. She smiled.

“I love you.”

“Hey, what are you, kidding me?” I said. “I'm the one who loves
you.
”

I don't remember any other day in my life where I went through every emotion there is. Inside of twenty-four hours, I felt joy, fear, love, anger, helplessness, wonder, and a numbness in my right hip from sitting funny on my wife's bed, which I know is not an emotion, but it's something I went through and why keep it a secret? There's a reason you can only go through all this at most every nine months. More often would be just unreasonable.

A
t some point, my wife's best friend came in. She had gone through this herself a couple of times and was someone my wife really wanted around. And while I had agreed to her being there, and was grateful for the support she provided, I have to admit it bugged me.

She's one of these women who speaks in really supportive tones, offering a nonstop stream of unconditional love that I really admire but can't help but make fun of.

“Isn't she doing great?” she asked me every thirty seconds.

“Boy, she sure is.”

“You are doing so-ooooo great,” she reiterated to my wife, clutching her hand tightly in her own.

“Yeah, sweetie, you really are,” I threw in weakly from behind.

Now, I'm very well aware that if you ever plan on being totally selfless, the hour your wife gives birth to your child is as good a time as any to try. But I didn't like being dropped down to the Number Two position on the Support Team.

“Doesn't your wife look beautiful?” she said for my wife's ears but into
my
face. I'm thinking, “What does she think? I don't know how to say nice things myself?
I
know how to say nice things myself . . .”

Of course, what I
said
was, “Oh, wow, does she ever.” I leaned over her to address my actual wife. “You really do, honey.”

A
fter a while, our most thoughtful of friends stepped out into the hall to give us some time together.

Alone again, with very little time to go, my bride and I looked at each other, and between her contractions and my feeble reminders to “Just breathe,” we ran a last-minute search for girls' names.

“Sarah?”

“Nah . . . Stella?”

“It's a nice name if you're
Brando's
daughter . . . You sure I can't talk you into Aretha?”

“Oww owww owww . . .”

“Okay, just breathe . . .”

She breathed a few quick, sharp breaths and then I remembered something else.

“Oh, geez.”

“What?”

“We forgot to get
values.
”

“What?”

“Our child's going to be here any minute and we have no values.”

At this point my wife contorted in pain, and then everything became a blur. There was a chunk of time—for the life of me, I couldn't tell you how long it lasted—where doctors came in, nurses scurried about, machines were wheeled around, mirrors were brought in . . . everybody was talking and moving and coaching and touching and prodding and sponging and gloving and crying and pulling and crowding—and through a haze of surreal commotion that veiled us somewhere entirely outside of place and time, I heard someone say, “Come here—you want to see?”

I actually said, “See
what
?”

“Your baby.”

Oh. Right. I forgot that was happening today. I mean, I knew that's why we were there and everything, but . . .

I looked, and sure enough, something babylike was making its way into the world. No matter how many books you read, no matter how many tapes you watch, you still can't believe that this can happen. I looked up at my wife and was even more floored by what I saw next: the most radiant, beautiful woman I had ever imagined. In that moment—her hair curling with sweat across her forehead, crying and wincing in pain—in the midst of all that, was this exquisite and inescapably
feminine
being, doing exactly what she had to do, instinctively and splendidly. She was like an ad for Woman. Powerful and stunning.
That
I
do
remember.

It's a phenomenon beyond comprehension that women know how to do this. In order to give birth, it seems that God gives women a thousand times
more
stamina, resources, know-how, and smarts than they would have ordinarily. Ironically, for those very same hours, men get
less.
They get a little
less
intelligent,
less
resourceful, and
less
capable. And I don't think it's just coincidence. I choose to believe we become
less
of whatever we are specifically so that women can become
more
of whatever they are. It's a transfer. A gift of love. A shifting of the scales that helps perpetuate the cycle of Life, and then, later, when you get home, you can sort it all out and settle up.

T
he next thing I remember was the doctor looking up from his rolling front-row seat and gleefully pronouncing, “It's a boy!”

My heart took another in a now dizzying flurry of ecstatic jolts.

A boy! Yes!! I was thrilled not only because the mystery was over, but also because I could now openly confess to myself and to the world that, “Okay, I wasn't going to say anything, but I really
wanted
a boy!”

You're never allowed to admit that. Throughout pregnancy, you're only allowed to say, “We just want a healthy child.” No one gets to say out loud that secretly, women want girls and men want boys. So you deny it. You convince yourself you genuinely have no preference.

But if it happens to work out your way, there's no way to pretend you're not smiling a teeny bit wider.

“Would you like to cut the cord?”

“What?”

The doctor handed me something frightening, shiny and metal, and said, “You're going to cut the cord, aren't you?”

Okay, here's the thing: I know everybody does it, and it's a magical moment and everything, but . . . what
is
that? Does merely being present at the birth automatically qualify a person to perform a medical procedure? If you visit your friend in the hospital, they don't invite you to take out the guy's appendix.

“Come on, go ahead . . . we'll be right here in case you screw it up . . .”

Of course, I did it. Because I wanted the experience of that magic moment, and, plus, I didn't want the doctor to think I was a wimp.

I had been forewarned that babies don't always look so pretty at birth, so I wasn't shocked by that. What did surprise me is that they come out with perfectly manicured fingernails. Neat, trim, little white lines around the whole front part—amazing. What do they need that for? It's practically the only thing they have at birth that resembles even remotely what it'll look like later on. And there's nothing they have that could be less important. Perhaps if they spent a little less time on their nails and used it instead to, just for example, finish developing their
facial features
, everyone would be better off. But, kids . . . there's no talking to them.

For the next few minutes, doctors and nurses continued to run around, they did a bunch of stuff, then they did some
other
stuff, wrapped the baby up, and then placed this brand-new person on his mother's chest.

I remember that my wife cried like a baby. The baby, ironically, cried like an angry woman in her thirties. I cried like a man exactly my age. The three of us cried, and held each other, and cried a little more, and then somebody nice must have packed us up and taken care of everything, because somehow, sometime later, the three of us—now and forever a family—went home.