The Story of Your Birth

The Story of Your Birth

For Carolyne, October 2014

Your bravery as an artist has inspired me to give new birth to my first love, writing. Thank you.

There was a time when my greatest act of rebellion was to climb out the window of my brother’s room and onto the roof of the breezeway. Here I could sit, my back against the grey siding shingles, my legs scratched by the texture of the roof. And see. Clear vision was all I wanted. I could look past the rows of small cape-style houses, beyond the expanse of the brick school crowned with the set of plaster crosses facing east-west-north-south. My view was East.

Sometimes, not often, I woke early enough to take my notebook and pencil – always sharpened, always with a cap eraser – and take my throne when the sun was just coming up over my view. The rays of the sun point out details I have never seen in the neighborhood: a broken branch in Mr. Albert’s yard, dangling dangerously over his manicured lawn, the tiny curl of a white rose just hours from a full birth on the Martin’s back fence.

I did not understand why this place, these moments were special. I knew they were mine, and mine alone. I would write, but I’m sure I have nothing on paper that remains. I would dream, but I have long lost the memory of either the source or hope of those dreams. The recurring image is of the sun, rising over this world of my childhood, whispering, not shouting. The message did not exist for me then.

Many years later, I lie in a hospital bed, my back elevated slightly, my legs searching for a cool spot on the stiffness of the institutionally bleached sheets. They have told me to sleep, advised me that sleep is now a precious commodity. I close my eyes and pretend to sleep so everyone will leave, and they do. Perhaps I doze. The sounds of pre-dawn in the hospital wash over me: nurses chatting between sips of coffee in Styrofoam Dunkin Donuts cups, a mop being swished along the tile floor, the continuous beep-beep-beep of a monitor from another room. I am awake and look immediately out the window. It is still dark outside.

It has not escaped my notice that this window faces East. I don’t know what floor this room is on, but it is above street level, affording me a view of this city, this place of my birth. I have returned here to birth my own child. Several years from now I will do all I can, pay any amount, to have a wildlife expert get rid of a skunk living under our front porch. He will explain she has had babies there, and these babies are likely to return to their birthplace when it is time for them to have their own offspring. I succumb to this story of mothers and birth, because it’s my story, too. I want my babies to know my home.

It’s strange, that it is this moment that I recall most vividly from your birth, the birth of my first child. Not the labor, not the delivery, not the shock of holding you, slippery with the wet of my own insides, your eyes still sealed shut. Not the cutting of the cord that connects us, not watching the nurses clean you, check you, turn you, twist you with hands I suddenly don’t trust. Not the moment you were enveloped in a blanket, white with a wide stripe of green and small stripe of blue, and given to your father. My husband, holding you and his new title. Father. His face so focused on you, telling me he could do this thing, would do this thing, called parenthood, without any words. But it is this moment, when everyone is gone, and I am alone, looking East that I feel the first real pull of motherhood.

I know the sun’s rays will point to this window any moment, and I am desperate to have you here. I try to close my eyes, get some sleep, but the promise of the sun keeps my eyelids from closing. I am panicked. I need you to be here, in this room, at this window with me on this first day of your life.

I am not supposed to get out of bed without a nurse. These are the days when they still keep babies in a nursery – I have no idea what you are doing, thinking, feeling. My heart is racing and I now know the irrational anxiety that will be motherhood for the rest of my life. There is a call button somewhere, where? Where? They need to bring you here – the sky is lined with pink and the faintest trace of yellow lines the horizon. My hands scramble around the bed still searching for the call button, for you, my eyes never leaving the window. The door opens and a nurse wheels in a cart with an open-topped plastic crate and I think, what are you doing? Bring me my baby! It’s time – right now – and then I realize you are here, in my arms, and the world comes back into view. We are alone, with the window, and the sun is coming up.

This is the first day of your life. This is the first day of my life as a mother, a birth for me as well as you. Now that you are bundled in my arms, I can relax. My head falls back, releasing the tension in my neck, and naturally falls to be within inches of your tiny face, topped with white hospital cap, trimmed in pink. Nothing else of you shows in this bundle, just your face, and it is enough. Any more and I would be completely overcome. The light in the room is rising with the sun but I don’t need to see it. Your presence has shown me there will always be a sunrise to share. This moment will always be ours, tucked in the recesses of our memory, a subconscious secret between the two of us.

You open your eyes. There is no shock in our eyes meeting for the first time, we have known each other forever. Exchanging our first glance is not remarkable in any form, aside from the fact that it establishes how we will always see this moment behind every look we share in the future, every time we say goodbye, every last second before we turn from each other at airports.

You move, and in that small movement, I know you will walk away from me one day very soon. I feel your back sway, your small backbone twisting, little legs stretching. One incredibly tiny foot pushes its way out of the blanket and I instinctively know to rub the bottom of it. Your skin is dry, somehow rough, not unlike the shingles on the roof of the house where I grew up. I feel your foot and know you will shed this newborn skin, your skin formed within me, and you will be uncovered for the world. I must allow this, in fact, I must help you make this happen. I want to keep you forever in my arms, and I want to uncover you for the world, all at the same time. No one can explain this great oxymoron of motherhood.

We are lost in our moment, you and I. My next recollection is that the sun is fully up, the sounds of the hospital tell us the day has officially begun for the rest of the world. Nurses changing shifts, elevator doors opening, food service aides wheeling metal carts of plastic trays with breakfast. We have not slept. We have just been. For the rest of your life, wherever you are, I know you will feel this time we had together as deeply as I do. Early in the morning, in those moments just before you or I are fully awake, I know we will both smell the bleach of the hospital sheets, see the colors of the sky, feel the touch of my hand on your foot. It is all I need, to know you and I will always have this moment, this sensation, with us. Forever.