Birth

I am checking my watch (because in the olden days, there were no brightly lit cell phone screens to scream the time) every five minutes, convinced that the pressure I am feeling is my first child, making her way into our world. I question everyone around me, not sure I even know what to expect with labor. They all give me varying ideas, and so I convince myself this is it. I expect more fanfare- flags, trumpets, a baffled and eager husband to leave me stranded in my driveway a la She's Having a Baby, but business goes on as usual, and eventually the contractions go away. My work phone still rings, I still answer it, and another day passes with no infant to bring home. Each day is a mystery, not knowing how it will end. Perhaps I will go home and eat a burrito, or perhaps I will squeeze a newborn through my loins. I get butterflies every time I feel a contraction, I have a bag packed. And then repacked. And then packed again. I have utter conviction that I will do it all naturally, and argue with everyone who debates me. What an absurd idea that I will take drugs to do something so many women before me have done. I am standing in my kitchen when my water breaks, and it seems so un-monumentous, that I question whether it has actually happened. Unlike my third child, whose water will break like the unleashing of a tsunami, it is a thin trickle, like a whisper, and then it is gone. I am calm, and Jake is calm, and we even remember to feed the dog before we leave. I have a pillow, and a bag, and it is an easy route to the hospital, where it seems like such a farce to see so many cars in the crowded lot. Surely these other patrons have very small ailments, and why in the world would there be no parking for the women who have tiny skulls urging their way through the birth canal as they walk the spanse of blacktop. It is an absurdly hot day in July, in the one hundred teens, and for just a fraction of a moment, I think I would rather go back and rest in the pool. Once inside the doors, the universe changes. The mellow afternoon becomes a blur, with overhead speakers, and rushing gurneys, and the smell of antiseptics lingering around every corner. I accidentally make eye contact with an old woman who is surely dying, and I grip my stomach and pull it closer, so the death can not reach out and take hold.

Once inside, they discover I have had a slow leak for many days, and that my womb is filled with meconium. I am hooked to antibiotics, and petocin and am left in an ugly sterile room, a large but oh so small 21 year old girl, who is thinking there is no turning back.

It is a long labor, we play cards, we watch TV, and as I am denied food, I grow weaker and more tired. The pain begins in a bearable way, but becomes ferocious and when I try to rest, it snarls and snaps its angry jaws at me. I fight as long as I can, and then ashamed, admit defeat while they administer the epidural. The pinch in my spine is something I would never classify as a pinch, and then the pull of the drug as it goes through my blood is oddly hypnotizing. I can follow its path as it surges, and kisses the booboo all better. I am suddenly at peace. The beast within is asleep, and it allows me my own rest. The sleep is not deep, and often interrupted, but it has allowed me strength to push when morning comes. I do not feel the urge to push, but they tell me I must, and so I do. I had fear that I would not know how to push, but the instinct is animalistic, and I am only along for the ride as my body does its thing. I push for a long time. I wonder later if I was ready to push, or if my doctor wanted to make a tee time, but I will never truly know. When she begins her descent, it is a remarkable feeling. The fanfare is suddenly there. It dawns on me that of course there would be no fanfare during the labor, because it is all saved for this very moment. I am looking into Jake's nervous face and telling him I love him, while he holds one leg and my mother holds the other. I am watching a tiny bald head leave my body, and though I am seeing it through a mirror, I am feeling it as an out of body experience. There is no pain as she graces us with her presence. There is an immediate relief with no worldly comparison, and then suddenly there are frantic rushes around me. The cord is around her neck, she is blue, there is no breath. She is whisked from me, brought simply miles from my beating heart and suctioned and handled with such roughness, it is as if watching a petulant toddler with a ragdoll. I am vomiting, and seeing fear in my mother's face, which sets my blood cold. They are now delivering my placenta, so stained with the meconium that it is green, looking like something pulled from a Hollywood movie about aliens. And then there is the blood. A bucket below me catches it, and I wonder where it is all coming from. They are straddling my body, attempting to contract me down, but still the blood is everywhere, up to elbows, on the floor. I think I might die. I might die without holding my little blue baby.

And then, the chaos stops. The nurses and doctors leave the room, with sullied gowns and gloves, and barely a nod of recognition my way. Jake is holding our little girl, who has gone from a deep purple to a luscious pink. He cries, as he will every time I give birth (and in the case of Lucas, will hop around the room like a confused rabbit), and it brings tears to my eyes. He places her in my arms, my bleeding stops, and she looks at me, and I think, "I know you."

And I can tell from her complete and focused gaze, that she knows exactly who I am, as well.

September 11 through the years

2001

Rhiannon is a little girl, just a month over two. She is a play by herself, hum on the potty, Elmo obsessed dollop of a girl, with blonde pigtails and wide brown eyes. I am just past my twenty fourth birthday, in an unsure place in my life, ironing my shirt in the guest room, with the only surety I have playing by my feet with found objects.

The phone rings. It is an old fashioned phone by today's standards, a black princess with a purring ringer, and a cord connected to the wall. It is my husband on the other line. My husband of only a year, one year of tumult and ships passing in the proverbial night. I turn on the television, per his command and am in time to see a second plane fly into a second tower. I sit on the bed in my bra, my wrinkled shirt forgotten. Baby Rhiannon sits, unknowing, singing to herself by my feet. My only surety, an anchor to reality.

In a month, I will be pregnant again, never questioning bringing another child into the evil, evil world.

2002

I am seven months pregnant. A month past when I would have been due with the twins I miscarried, two months before baby Morgan will grace our lives. We have left Virginia for the streets of gold promised in New York. We have passed the eerily solemn cavities with the dingy teddy bears, tattered photos and faded banners. The husband of two years works for a shoddy government project named, ironically, Homeland Security. A job he both detests and opposes. It is an agency that had profited from a horrendous tragedy, and spends as a young child would in a candy shop. He regales me with stories of the conference rooms, empty but for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of unused equipment, forever to be left in boxes. He will leave this job in a year, and look back only as a means to justify his anger for our government, in a time when no justification is necessary.

2003

We have driven upstate and found a house on a whim, after the husband of three years has finally gotten a job. Rhiannon has graduated from pigtails to braids, preschool to pre-K, and a the bouncy baby Morgan is taking first steps, stepping toward her second year of life.

The war has been raging for two years, and our president has been swearing up and down, left and right and sideways that we are still threatened. That secret weapons are hidden in caves, that will singlehandedly send our country into Armageddon. The unity we found briefly two years ago has faded like the flags still shoved in walkways and window planters across suburbia.

We will be moving away from his job in the city, away from the aesthetically barren streets of Rockland, to go home.

2011

Fast forward to the age of Facebook. The husband of eleven years works away from home. Rhiannon is an argumentative pre-teen, trading in her braids for hair sprayed layers, no longer content to play with found objects at my feet. Baby Morgan has loaned her piercing baby blues to her young brother, and is struggling with a difficult fourth grade teacher. Baby Lucas has come onto the scene with a charming vengeance, and has begun first grade. Twins have graced our lives, and livened the rooms in our house. Osama Bid Laden has been lain in a watery grave, Saddam Hussein, whose connection to this day was slightly blurred and vague, has faced his firing squad, and his bloody remains are rarely spoken or thought of anymore.

The war still rages on, presidents have come and gone, the arguments and political nonsense have stayed the same. The anger has dimmed, and been replaced by reluctant acceptance. New fears have arisen... epidemics linked to birds, odd weather patterns in the northeast, and old squabbles being unearthed around the globe.

The firefighters and police whose lungs are now being devoured by the debris, breathed in so many years ago at "ground zero", have been turned away at the memorial. The families who were left bereft by the tragedy are not allowed closure, as the war continues and scrapes at the scars. Media still uses the indistinct threats against our safety as a ratings boost, and even the ideas to fill those long empty cavities with new life have caused controversy.

The White house will soon host a new family, tides will change, frustration will continue. The rest of the world will doubt us more, while the war robs us of money necessary to educate our young, feed our impoverished and care for our elderly. But in the age of Facebook, everyone has held onto the hope that we have solidarity once again, and that America is still a place of which to be proud.

I am sad for those who died such a violent and sudden death those many years ago. I am perpetually sad for the men and women who, in doing their jobs, were killed in front of their coworkers, while their horrified families watched on the television. Or the ones who are slowly dying now from their efforts so long ago. I am sad for the hundreds of thousands who died in another country, being punished for the sins of their religious beliefs and geography. And I am sad for all of us, who lack any control over any of these events, and whose hearts may never mend. We will spend each September 11th remembering less and less, history books will eventually have this listed as a small section of a chapter, we will continue to expand our families, change careers, make new friends, lose old ones, and grow old. But in both our hearts, and on New York ground, there will always be two dusty cavities, unfilled.

Amusement Through the Ages

She is five years old, and although she is only five, she knows her parents do not have much money. She has asked them to take her to see ET in the movie theater and they have told her they will take her somewhere special, if only they can take a small nap. She asks them what she can do while they nap, and they say twiddle her thumbs. So she sits on the green couch in the living room, whose windows look over Hamilton Street, and spends a bit of time figuring out how to twiddle.

When they get into the car, the drive seems very long. Madison Ave is far in the rearview mirror, and she is getting sleepy in the car. Perhaps when they get there, her parents can twiddle their thumbs while she naps. Suddenly, an enormous ferris wheel catches her eye, and she feels a flip flop in her belly. She must not get her hopes up, but oh they float to the surface despite how hard she pushes them down. It is only when they pull into the immense parking lot that she realizes those fireflies of hope are free to fly.

Everything at the Great Escape has earned this park its name. From scary roller coasters, to calliope music, it is a treasure trove for each of her senses. It is a long day for little feet, but a day which has left indelible memories in a brain that will later prove itself to be a vault.

She is sixteen. She probably laughs at the idea of amusement parks to her friends, and casually dismisses the idea as juvenile, until the school sends them all to the Great Escape for a field trip. Getting out of chemistry to ride the Comet is really All Right. The bus ride is rowdy, with laughter as music, and no one even notices the eye rolls from the teachers. The students have wads of bills in their pockets, pockets which will come home empty and flat. They frantically list, in order of importance from greatest to least, the rides they must find and conquer. Though no one says it aloud, they each have plans to bend their lanky bodies in half to visit the shacks in storytown.

Between waiting in lengthy lines at the Scrambler, and trying not to vomit on the Rotor, she sits with her friends and eats fried dough. The powdered sugar bursts into little clouds, and it is hard not to taste the mere deliciousness of the day in the air. Later, her boyfriend tries to win her a stuffed animal in the arcade. After several attempts, and forty dollars wasted, he tosses the toy gun to her and tells her to take the last shot. It is inevitable that she will win, and she does, and she can only barely stifle the giggles at his wounded pride.

The bus ride home is quieter. It is a long day for these would-be adults. Girls have rested their heads upon boys' shoulders, stuffed animals have been placed lovingly into the bins overhead, and there is an aroma of confections in the air. The cotton candy ice cream hauntings of a good day.

She is on the cusp of thirty four. On a whim, she has taken up an invitation to bring her children to the Great Escape. This is not a trip she makes often. It seems somewhat daunting with five children, but the day is promising to be warm and uneventful, so she goes. She remembers to pack waters, and bug spray, and sunscreen and a change of clothing, lest little ones forget their potty training in the face of such excitement. They get sandwiches on the way, and the children are quiet, to avoid the fights she warned would send them all home early.

As they pull off the highway onto the exit for the park, the children all gasp and point as they see the looming roller coaster begin a new leg of its journey. They clamber over each other as they get out of the car, anticipation buzzing from them like electricity, almost audible in its intensity.

The day goes by so very quickly. She notices as she gets on the rides, how so many are not there any longer. The Scrambler has long since abandoned its building, which now stands mostly hidden behind trees like a shameful secret. The indoor roller coaster is now a warehouse, and lonely limbs of dead rides lay scattered like minefields behind the tracks of the roller coaster. But as she is noticing this, and noticing that the gun game that won her a stuffed animal and a reason to gloat has been dismantled, her children are noticing only the glory of an endless summer day with promise around every corner. It is easy to see how the youngest two, the twins, are fascinated by the intermittent squirts of water coming from the ground geysers, and why the rickety wooden tracks of the Comet are calling to the others. When the divers fly through the air into filthy green water, she cannot help but be delighted with the group as they are soaked in the aftermath.

She thinks to herself this is an easy lesson learned. Spending so long in childhood longing to get out, and so long in adulthood wishing to be back in. They go for ice cream at the end of the day, and the sudden downpour washes away the dribbles of soft serve on their chins, and cools their flushed faces.

It is a long day for this tired mother, but despite the weariness in her shoulders and her feet, she finds she has a spring in her step.

What Gay means to me.

The first time I met my uncle's partner, he bought me an ice cream sundae so large, I remember it to this day. We sat across from each other in a half empty ice cream shoppe before he gave me a Washington DC teddy bear and wished me a Happy Easter. I went home after my trip with stories about Uncle Tom's friend until my mother sat me down for the "talk". I was nine years old, and suddenly my world was bigger, and filled with a new kind of love.

Through the years, Uncle George became a fixture in our family, as beloved as the rest of the spouses in the family, and I always felt a certain kinship for him, as we were the unbloods- the ones born outside of the bloodline, with our own perspective in.

Knowing my uncles were gay from such a young age allowed me insight that other children my age did not have. I could recognize the boys in school who just didn't "get" the girl, as the other boys did. I was angered more easily than everyone else when words were tossed about like cruel confetti and then later, slung like arrows at the quiet boys in gym class. I was voted most politically correct in high school, but in retrospect, it is a shame that there is a distinction for that in high schools.

When I was nineteen, I came home from Arizona for a month over the holidays, and I sensed a change in my sister. It was a quiet change, but suddenly things made sense, and she came out to me on the couch after my mom was asleep. I think it changed things between us. A door I had thought open, and not necessarily open wide, was closed firmly, and in its place a new window appeared. I say a window, because while it is completely transparent, I will never quite be able to use it as an entrance into her world. It is a world so very unlike mine, and yet so tethered to me I often feel confused.

A year later, I met Jase. He walked into Chevy's Restaurant on my second day of work, with an aura so big, it filled the room. He was handsome and vivacious, and the clamoring bevy of girls should have tipped me off immediately. But it was only when he spoke to me that I realized he was gay, and according to his reminiscences, I informed him immediately we would be best friends. ( I don't recall this proclamation, but it sounds a little like me, so I roll with it) He introduced me to the purely platonic male female friendship. We went on roadtrips, shopped, whispered secrets and I fell very much in unromantic love with him. I have moved to four different states, and never has our friendship dwindled a bit, though our otherworldly lives are completely separate.

Since Jase, I have made other male friends, and met my sister's girlfriends and friends. The years have given me a growing populace of gay loved ones. Just last year, my cousin came out to me, one of the first people in our family she told, and she has now committed to a wonderful, artistic girl named Liz.

Last night, she texted me after the New York senate finally voted to legalize gay marriage. Different than the other jubilant responses I read on Facebook, hers was flowery and somehow bigger than what I could have said or felt. She told me that she felt a new kind of happiness, one that she is not sure she has been able to feel yet, and reading through my tears, I got it.

My sister and her beautiful wife, Adi, get to check married on their tax returns. When one of them falls ill, the other will be able to sit bedside as family, and sign the papers to help save a life, or help to end one when the time inevitably comes. They can proudly walk past the absurd protestors, who have no argument other than an antiquated bible and a homophobia that all but screams the Shakespeare quote, "I think thou doth protest too much". I will be able to be there as not only they, but so many of my beloved gays marry, then bring happy, well adjusted children into this world. And they WILL be well adjusted, as they will come into a world where an open mind is equal to an open heart, and trust me as I say from experience, it makes you happier in the end. They will grow to be fighters for civil rights, environmental lawyers, artists, musicians, nurses, physicists and unspeakably wonderful first grade teachers.

My Uncle George and Uncle Tom have since separated, after more than two decades together. Like every other married couple, they have had to split assets, divide household goods, and cry over old pictures. But I will always consider him to be my uncle, and consider my life to have been beautifully touched by not only him, but every other friend and family member (gay or straight) who has entered my life.

We spoke two months ago, and I told him that Morgan was now the age I was when he and I met, and he said to me, "time to bring her for an ice cream sundae."

Someday

I am sitting in the parking lot of the video store, with my suddenly flatter belly, tearing up because I have left my four day old baby in the care of my mother for this errand. A small errand, to be sure, but the absence seems so thick, I am choking. I am flashing forward in my mind to six, eight weeks down the road, when I will have to put my tiny little person in the hands of a stranger, in hopes she will not be harmed, or lost in a shuffle. At the mere thought, I could vomit, and when I look into Jake's very young face, I know I am not alone. We are, at that moment, in agreement.

Thus becomes my accidental occupation. Being a stay at home mom was not my plan. Growing up, I wrote stories, and planned my future down to minute details. Which car I would drive, how many children I would have, and coincidentally enough- that my husband's name would start with J (thank you twirled apple stems). And never for a moment did I waver in planning to become a doctor. And yet, just like that, Rhiannon burst from me after more than 30 hours of labor, and every plan was thrown out the proverbial window.

I was 21 when she was born. I had not yet finished school, had a lovely job that did not pay very well, and lived thousands of miles from people I loved. One could look back, and in retrospect say that my idealism bordered on ignorance and stupidity. But Jake and I had made the decision for me to stay at home, and so I did. We lived on his meager salary as a beer salesman, and wholeheartedly moved from Arizona in a quest for new beginnings. We had a sparse two bedroom apartment in Tampa. We had only one car, so stay at home mom was not just an occupation, but a complete and accurate description of my life. We set strict grocery budgets, welcomed hand me downs, and limited our entertainment to board games and basic cable.

Throughout the years, more children came, and finances were easier. jake finished school, got a good job, which became a better job, and then a better one. Occasionally I would reflect on my career choice, and wonder if it was self- serving, if it would be benefit anyone in the end. But I have been reaffirmed every time. I got to be there on snow days, and really-really-going-to-throw-up days, I got to witness every milestone, from first steps to first words, to first crushes. My kids always got to know I would be waiting at the door when the bus pulled up to the driveway, and there would always be cupcakes and chaperones for class parties. People sometimes ask me if "someday" I will have a "real job", and I know there are so many somedays when you are a stay at home mom.

Someday, my car will be spotlessly clean. Someday my road trips will be lonely. Someday, I will finish writing my novel. Someday, I will have too much time on my hands. Someday, I will embark on worldly travels. Someday, I will wish my children were traveling with me. Someday, I will buy white couches. Someday, I will yearn for spots and tears and a lived-in look. Someday, there will be quiet when I have to use the phone. Someday, I will be listening for the roar of squabbles, and laughter, and conspiratorial whispers.

Someday, I may have a "real job", one that pays and offers insurance, and 401k and every other bell and whistle. But knowing how hard I have fought for the job I have right now, knowing every sleepless night, every anguished tear, every panic attack, every sports game, concert, school play, every cuddle, every living room dance party, it seems that my resume is rather full. I have foregone vacation days and paychecks for this accidental occupation, when really it was my destiny, all along.

Field of Dreams

A tiny little boy in his Yankee cap, perched on the battered wood in the dugout waves to me, and I realize he is my boy. He has the flushed cheeks of an Irishman, and his hat is a bit askew. He has the nonchalance of a real ball player, and for just a moment, I am left breathless. A boy who only yesterday was struggling with his first steps, is now the beginnings of a tiny man, and I am a surreptitious observer behind a fence. I watch him joke with his friends, his effervescent grin spreading light throughout the dugout, his foot on the bench only slightly too small for the cleat it inhabits. I want to tell him I love him, but it will embarrass him, so I turn my head to damper the urge.

There are a thousand boys in the fields tonight. Some reluctantly, there to satisfy their father's need for vicariousness. Aging dads, with rounded paunches creeping over their belts, their caps hiding thinning hair and grey are holding clipboards and calling for the Mikeys, the Lukes, the Nicks to gather. Some boys are there because their older brothers, now legends in their own minds, have left footprints that need to be filled. And others are there because they believe they will someday be Derek Jeter, beloved and hated equally, but nevertheless a wonder.

My son is there because his mother believes in the simple life that baseball once epitomized. The lazy summers of apple pies and playing in the park till dusk. A time when our world seemed a little easier, or when children were allowed to believe in its ease.

I remember my own teenage years, perched at the edge of a hard metal seat in the score booth, watching a game with so much anticipation, I could taste it. Hearing cracks of bats at all the fields, lit by searingly bright lights, knowing that behind every bat crack was a girlfriend, a mother, whose heart had grown in pride.

When I watch Field of Dreams, I still cry inconsolably when Doc Graham makes the decision to leave, once again, his baseball dreams behind. So many of these little boys on this field today will someday stuff their old caps and worn mitts into boxes in the attic, and make their own metaphorical step over that invisible line. The line into an adulthood fraught with responsibility, and gravity. Their tanned arms and sunkissed noses will pale as they study in college, and later sit at their desks. And when they are home on the weekends, they will always find themselves just a little bit amazed at how very perfectly the baseball fits into the palms of their hands, as they toss it back and forth with their sons in the yard.

But for now, these little boys are bursting with possibilities, and dreams. Their summers are still endless, their apple pies still cooling on the windowsill, their mitts still not broken in.

I wiggle myself into a tiny spot to watch as the evening begins, my eyes glued on the little number 6, who is doing a little dance in the field. I am again hit with that urge, and I have to quietly murmur to myself that I love him, because if it isn't uttered, I will burst. I think Derek Jeter's mom probably does the same, and this thought makes me grin. I get to be Lucas' mom. Which in and of itself, is a field of dreams.

Teacher, teacher, can you teach me?

I preface this by saying I am the daughter of a teacher, and stepdaughter of another. I am the next door neighbor to three teachers. I am the friend to many teachers. I have 5 children in the public school system.

Over the last several weeks, I have read the internet posts, the Facebook comments, the political diatribes and nonsense being spewed on Fox News, and very few stories have hit me quite like this one.

It is true that my mother got holidays and summers off. However, to supplement her very low income, she often taught summer school, volunteered to head extra curriculars, and mentored her graduated students well after their tassles had been turned. We did not live a particularly lavish lifestyle, but it was one filled with the same gifts she shared with her students. We visited museums, trekked through the woods to find and sample fiddleheads, and when an opportunity to educate us arose, she took it. Years later, I would take notice of how many of her students still chose to know her. She touched their lives with simple encouragement, and giving them generous allotments of her time. There was never a punching of a clock, when one day ended or began. It was like motherhood, a seamless blending of one day into the next, peppered with phone calls, and heart wrenching tasks. She attended student funerals, and art exhibits, weddings, and baby showers. She would sometimes be up past my bedtime, with the low murmuring of the TV in the background as she graded paper after paper, writing words of enthusiasm or constructive criticism. She became president of the union, and would often be on phone calls for hours while cooking our dinner, the phone tucked in the crook of her neck and shoulder, while she used the spatula to flip the food. There were notes scrawled throughout the house about upcoming meetings, calls to return, and thoughts she had for the next meeting. There were grievances to file, contracts to renew, budgets to amend. She made far less than other people with her experience who worked 9-5 for the state, or private corporations. But it wasnt about her paycheck. Or the crystal apple awards she won, or even being written up in the Who's Who of American Teachers. It was about the pride she could feel when one student became an FBI agent, and another a doctor attempting to cure cancer, and another an occupational therapist with a happy family.

Lately, the politicians and even citizens of this country have taken to blaming our public school educators for being greedy. They are accused of being "part time employees", who are abusing a bereft financial system. Without taking into consideration the amounts of money these teachers spend for their own classroom supplies, or offering special incentives for their students, most of our teachers are being paid less than $2.00 per hour for each of their students, which is far less than someone like you or I could make babysitting in our home. Our own Dave Herrington spends hundreds of hours of his afterschool time organizing and directing the fifth grade play, even though he hasn't a fifth grader, nor does he even teach fifth grade. Many of our teachers come to our PTA meetings and events, donate their time and money to our fundraisers, and attend the Board of Education meetings once a month. There are workshops in school, when many outsiders think the teachers are relaxing at home with their children on a three day weekend. They spend weeks inputting grades for report cards, and then days meeting with harried parents to discuss their children's progress.

The next time some plaster haired talking head appears on the news to discuss our greedy teachers, perhaps we could pause a moment to think of the teachers we have in our life, and think of their mansions, their Range Rovers, their Dolce and Gabana teacher sweaters worn at Christmas, their opulent parties and entourages. We could think of the trillions of dollars our country has sacrificed in the name of war, and stolen from the next generations of students and schools. And possibly think that without these same teachers, the moms who update their Facebook statuses with constant frustration over their children being in their hair, and driving them crazy, would be spending THEIR time homeschooling their kids for the next thirteen years, and magically, our perspectives may be put back in order.