Friday, June 20, 2003
BABY I'M YOURS, Sex and Lies continued... Wednesday, June 04, 2003
My diaphragm and I never got along. It sure put a crimp in my style. I used it consistantly, I swear - even though the thing would slip out of my fingers and boomerang around the bathroom. Sometimes it would take me so long to get the thing in place (or so I thought) Pete would be sound asleep. Hence my surprise when they told me I was 3 months pregnant. After some intense inquiry from my doctor, turns out I was putting it in backwards, or something like that - therefore it was not too effective.
So, a 6 month pregnancy goes by a lot faster than a 9 month pregnancy. When I think how little I knew about the effects of my diet and behavior on my body and on my fetus during the 3 months I was pregnant and had no clue... I was too young and stupid to even worry.
They figured the baby was due in May, sometime around the 20th. I had wanted to work until labor started. I was working in the office of the Dean of Fine Arts at B.U. during the day. When I was about 7 months along, THE DEAN (a geezer - I remember he came from the music dept. and his bushy gray eyebrows gave him the look of a schnauzer) suggested that I resign from my post for "my own safety". He actually said I made it uncomfortable for him to have a pregnant woman around the office. I was bullshit. How could he force me to quit?? Well it was 1970 and they could do stuff like that then - and if the Christian Coalition got their way, they'd be doing stuff like that now. I think they probably still do in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana - but I digress from my story.
Reluctantly I leave my job. Two months to go and I'm getting too big to stand at my easel and paint all day. My feet swell. Pete is so attentive it's annoying. It was a very warm, early spring that year. On a weekend when I'm close to term, Pete suggests we go fishing. It was unseasonably hot. We drive to the Cape on a Sunday afternoon. He's got his fishing gear and I've got the Sunday NYTimes. I'm set. We get to Scituate harbor and Pete goes to make arrangements to rent a rowboat. He was handing his money to the guy with the boats when the guy spies me walking over from the parking lot. "You're not taking HER out with you?!" "Sure" says Pete, "Why not?" - "Well, look at her! She's ready to pop any minute." They were talking about me as though I wasn't there. I felt like pushing that asshole's head in his bait box. Pete said he would pay an extra $10. and take full responsibility if anything happened. It didn't. We had a lovely, lazy afternoon floating around Scituate Harbor.
I was really ready to have this baby. I weighed 165 pounds. I had taken advantage of eating everything in sight - except for two things, meat and coffee. My body was smart and rejected this stuff even though my mind told me I wanted it. I don't think I drank either.
On the night of May 22nd I started to go into labor. Pete rushed us off to the Brigham and Women's Hospital in downtown Boston. They admitted me, took us up to a labor room and prepped (shaved) me. I had not done any practice work. Birthing classes with fathers included was just not done (maybe in communes but not at Brigham and Womens). Dads were not even allowed in the delivery room. Do you believe it? It's 1970. I was not one of those brave women, I had asked my doctor to give me anesthesia when the going got rough. Unfortunately that night my pains stopped. They sent Pete home and said he could pick me up in the morning. Most of the nurses left. I was the only one in the labor room. I did not want to leave that hospital in the morning without a baby. I got off the table I was laying on and started to jog around the room. I did a few deep knee bends for good measure. Suddenly I had to go to the bathroom. There was a bathroom right in the labor room. I hadn't seen a nurse in awhile, they must've been napping. I sat on the toilet thinking I had to shit. It wouldn't come. Then the pain, I'm talking REAL PAIN, started. "Oh my god, I'm going to have this baby in the toilet and it will drown." I'm too blind with pain to think about pulling a cord for help. I roll my body off the toilet on to the floor. Up on my hands and knees I start crawling towards the door. I'm nearly out the door when Pete comes running down the hall, "I couldn't sleep at home without you. What the hell is happening around here? Where are the nurses? Why are you on the floor?" He picks me up and maneuvers me back on the table. The nurses come scurrying. They part my knees, take a peak, slap my knees together again and say, "Mrs Close, DON'T PUSH! We have to wait till the doctor comes, we just called him". I say "Fuck you I don't care who is here I'm having this baby NOW." I hate them. The pain is intense. No one even thought to offer me an aspirin. I don't care.
Someone says they see the doctor running down the hall. I do not care. They wheel me out to the elevator (delivery room one floor up). I tell everyone in the elevator to fuck themselves or something and more. The doctor tells Pete he hasn't heard language like that since the Marines. Ha-ha. The OR doors swing open. Pete can't follow. We barely get inside when they yell at me to look, look in the mirror. Through the blinding pain I see a miracle. I see a living creature emerge from my own body. It was otherworldly. I will never, ever forget that moment. Unfortunately, the idiot with the anesthesia decided then was a good time to shoot my spine with the epidural I now did not need. But I had seen my beautiful, wiggly, wonderful daugther. We named her Erika.
READING AND WRITING, a diversion from sex and lies...
John Updike taught me how to read. Not literally, he was just the first writer I discovered in high school that I wasn't forced to read for a class. THE POORHOUSE FAIR was the book, one of his earliest. I picked it up at a yard sale. He spoke to me in a voice I could hear. I was not an avid reader but I fixated on Updike. THE SAME DOOR, a book of short stories came next. I love the short story form because I have a short attention span. My gram supported my Updike habit and would give me a new Updike book every Christmas. RABBIT RUN was her first choice. What a great book. There is something of me in Rabbit. I think it has something to do with writing in your own time, writing in a voice that is very present in your own time. Joyce Carol Oats also filled my book shelves in college, but no one ever replaced Updike in my ranking of writers.
I have read nearly everything Updike has written and each new book seems to tell me something about where I'm at in my own life at that time. It's as though he's stalking me. The novel "S" was too close for comfort. A few years ago, my best friend gave me JUST LOOKING, Updike's essays on Art.
Now, here I am on this blogging thing. It's not much about reading or writing. It's about "blogging". Marshall McLuhan had it right, the medium is the message.
My diaphragm and I never got along. It sure put a crimp in my style. I used it consistantly, I swear - even though the thing would slip out of my fingers and boomerang around the bathroom. Sometimes it would take me so long to get the thing in place (or so I thought) Pete would be sound asleep. Hence my surprise when they told me I was 3 months pregnant. After some intense inquiry from my doctor, turns out I was putting it in backwards, or something like that - therefore it was not too effective.
So, a 6 month pregnancy goes by a lot faster than a 9 month pregnancy. When I think how little I knew about the effects of my diet and behavior on my body and on my fetus during the 3 months I was pregnant and had no clue... I was too young and stupid to even worry.
They figured the baby was due in May, sometime around the 20th. I had wanted to work until labor started. I was working in the office of the Dean of Fine Arts at B.U. during the day. When I was about 7 months along, THE DEAN (a geezer - I remember he came from the music dept. and his bushy gray eyebrows gave him the look of a schnauzer) suggested that I resign from my post for "my own safety". He actually said I made it uncomfortable for him to have a pregnant woman around the office. I was bullshit. How could he force me to quit?? Well it was 1970 and they could do stuff like that then - and if the Christian Coalition got their way, they'd be doing stuff like that now. I think they probably still do in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana - but I digress from my story.
Reluctantly I leave my job. Two months to go and I'm getting too big to stand at my easel and paint all day. My feet swell. Pete is so attentive it's annoying. It was a very warm, early spring that year. On a weekend when I'm close to term, Pete suggests we go fishing. It was unseasonably hot. We drive to the Cape on a Sunday afternoon. He's got his fishing gear and I've got the Sunday NYTimes. I'm set. We get to Scituate harbor and Pete goes to make arrangements to rent a rowboat. He was handing his money to the guy with the boats when the guy spies me walking over from the parking lot. "You're not taking HER out with you?!" "Sure" says Pete, "Why not?" - "Well, look at her! She's ready to pop any minute." They were talking about me as though I wasn't there. I felt like pushing that asshole's head in his bait box. Pete said he would pay an extra $10. and take full responsibility if anything happened. It didn't. We had a lovely, lazy afternoon floating around Scituate Harbor.
I was really ready to have this baby. I weighed 165 pounds. I had taken advantage of eating everything in sight - except for two things, meat and coffee. My body was smart and rejected this stuff even though my mind told me I wanted it. I don't think I drank either.
On the night of May 22nd I started to go into labor. Pete rushed us off to the Brigham and Women's Hospital in downtown Boston. They admitted me, took us up to a labor room and prepped (shaved) me. I had not done any practice work. Birthing classes with fathers included was just not done (maybe in communes but not at Brigham and Womens). Dads were not even allowed in the delivery room. Do you believe it? It's 1970. I was not one of those brave women, I had asked my doctor to give me anesthesia when the going got rough. Unfortunately that night my pains stopped. They sent Pete home and said he could pick me up in the morning. Most of the nurses left. I was the only one in the labor room. I did not want to leave that hospital in the morning without a baby. I got off the table I was laying on and started to jog around the room. I did a few deep knee bends for good measure. Suddenly I had to go to the bathroom. There was a bathroom right in the labor room. I hadn't seen a nurse in awhile, they must've been napping. I sat on the toilet thinking I had to shit. It wouldn't come. Then the pain, I'm talking REAL PAIN, started. "Oh my god, I'm going to have this baby in the toilet and it will drown." I'm too blind with pain to think about pulling a cord for help. I roll my body off the toilet on to the floor. Up on my hands and knees I start crawling towards the door. I'm nearly out the door when Pete comes running down the hall, "I couldn't sleep at home without you. What the hell is happening around here? Where are the nurses? Why are you on the floor?" He picks me up and maneuvers me back on the table. The nurses come scurrying. They part my knees, take a peak, slap my knees together again and say, "Mrs Close, DON'T PUSH! We have to wait till the doctor comes, we just called him". I say "Fuck you I don't care who is here I'm having this baby NOW." I hate them. The pain is intense. No one even thought to offer me an aspirin. I don't care.
Someone says they see the doctor running down the hall. I do not care. They wheel me out to the elevator (delivery room one floor up). I tell everyone in the elevator to fuck themselves or something and more. The doctor tells Pete he hasn't heard language like that since the Marines. Ha-ha. The OR doors swing open. Pete can't follow. We barely get inside when they yell at me to look, look in the mirror. Through the blinding pain I see a miracle. I see a living creature emerge from my own body. It was otherworldly. I will never, ever forget that moment. Unfortunately, the idiot with the anesthesia decided then was a good time to shoot my spine with the epidural I now did not need. But I had seen my beautiful, wiggly, wonderful daugther. We named her Erika.
READING AND WRITING, a diversion from sex and lies...
John Updike taught me how to read. Not literally, he was just the first writer I discovered in high school that I wasn't forced to read for a class. THE POORHOUSE FAIR was the book, one of his earliest. I picked it up at a yard sale. He spoke to me in a voice I could hear. I was not an avid reader but I fixated on Updike. THE SAME DOOR, a book of short stories came next. I love the short story form because I have a short attention span. My gram supported my Updike habit and would give me a new Updike book every Christmas. RABBIT RUN was her first choice. What a great book. There is something of me in Rabbit. I think it has something to do with writing in your own time, writing in a voice that is very present in your own time. Joyce Carol Oats also filled my book shelves in college, but no one ever replaced Updike in my ranking of writers.
I have read nearly everything Updike has written and each new book seems to tell me something about where I'm at in my own life at that time. It's as though he's stalking me. The novel "S" was too close for comfort. A few years ago, my best friend gave me JUST LOOKING, Updike's essays on Art.
Now, here I am on this blogging thing. It's not much about reading or writing. It's about "blogging". Marshall McLuhan had it right, the medium is the message.
