In Pieces(52)

And every piece of me felt him, a foot sliding down, an elbow poking out, and I’d want to shout, “WOW.” I knew what side he preferred I sleep on and how he calmed with my touch. I rested when I was tired and ate when I was hungry because he needed me to. With my childhood soulmate at my side, and the constant assurance of the future pushing against my rib cage, I felt… contentment. And only now do I realize that that is what I felt.

Once, I woke in the night unable to get comfortable and fall back to sleep. I poked Steve in the side, then watched him shoot out of bed in a panic, thinking something was wrong. But no, I just couldn’t sleep. We got up and I perched on the kitchen stool watching him make banana pancakes, something I kept saying I didn’t want. With a big tray of food between us, we sat in bed, watching an old black-and-white movie, and I know nothing will ever taste as good as that syrupy mess. Maybe it was hormonal, but I’ve had three children and it never felt quite like that again. Everything quieted in me and I let myself need someone, allowed myself to be dependent on this one person and never doubted that he would be there. Steve. I had that once in my life. Maybe that’s enough.


Early on in this nine-month journey, I began having war dreams. Terrifying, hard to shake, Technicolor dreams that would invade my contentment, growing more intense with each visit. In the dream there was always a war; that much stayed the same. It was the enemy that varied; either the Germans, or the Japanese, or the Mongols wearing pointed helmets and riding massive black horses. I was always separated from my family—not sure who, other than Steve—and desperately trying to find them, when I’d hear the bombs beginning to fall off in the distance (though how the Mongols had bombs I cannot tell you). At first, the battles were very far away, but with each dream the enemy got closer, until finally I could actually see their faces. I’d be lost, alone and watching their approach, frantically looking for a place to hide.

One night in late October, I dreamed that the battle was on top of me, with the German soldiers so close I could see their uniforms, hear their voices speaking a foreign language. Feeling trapped, I quickly scurried under a bush and held my breath as I watched their boots step up to the shrub while they stood over me talking. And then the unthinkable happened. They caught me, pulled me out of my hiding place, shoved me along the path, then raised their rifles and shot me. I remember thinking, Oh my God, I’m going to die. As I started to fall, the action began to slow, and while moving in slow motion, I thought, Boy, oh boy, this is good. They’re really going to love this. A feeling of accomplishment bubbled up and when I smashed face-first into the dirt, everyone applauded. It was a scene. I’d been acting. It was self-imposed fear and not really happening. I woke not terrified but triumphant, and acting had somehow been a part of it. A feeling of strength, of solidly standing on my own two feet, stayed with me for days, even into the following week.

At two thirty in the morning on November 10, 1969, one week before the baby’s projected due date and four days after my twenty-third birthday, I woke with an unmistakable yank from deep inside, accompanied by a massive cramp in the small of my back. I’d learned about Braxton-Hicks contractions, had grown used to the tight knotted-up feeling of my body rehearsing for its opening night, and with this one sharp tug, I knew rehearsals were over. The show was about to begin.

But if this was opening night, I had no idea how to play my part, didn’t have a clear picture in my head of what my body was going to be doing—or how. Birth training didn’t exist at that time and the only thing I’d learned, wandering around the maternity ward for an hour with the other expectant parents, was where to park, how to sign in, and what to bring. I wanted to be prepared, so I did the only thing I knew to do: I packed and repacked all the items listed on the brochure we had been given, and that was it. It’s not that I wasn’t nervous or curious, but the only book I could find was one written by Dr. Spock, explaining what to do with the baby after he arrived. It supplied zero information about how the little creature was going to get out in the first place.

Steve and I played our parts perfectly. We parked in the right spot, we reported to the proper desk to alert the hospital staff of our arrival, and after that I became a prop in the production. First, I was examined by a young resident who confirmed I was truly in labor, then handed to an intensely friendly nurse who said with a sweet smile, “I have to give you a little enema.” She then proceeded to hang what looked like a Sparkletts water bottle over me, which—to my way of thinking—was not a little enema. After dressing me in a white gown, putting me in a white bed, and covering me with a white sheet, she exited stage left. I went through the various stages of labor alone and clueless, waiting for the periodic visits from either the nurse or—the true star of the show—the doctor. And since I had nothing to guide me but instinct, as the process became more intense, I began rolling from side to side, chanting loudly, putting myself into a hypnotic trance as if I were a Native American preparing to go into battle. I don’t remember seeing Steve after I left him signing papers at the admissions desk, though he may have come in while I was preparing for war.

Finally, my long-lost obstetrician appeared. Jesus, where’d he been? He examined me and determined that my wonderful little bundle—who turned out to weigh eight pounds, four ounces and possessed an enormous head—was facing the wrong way. Not breech, with his feet where his head should be, but with his face turned up and not down. So, without word one, my fatherly doctor reached inside me and flipped the little fellow… over! How was that even possible? And finally, after enduring my first labor experience alone with little comforting and no medication—at least none that I was aware of—I was automatically given a spinal block. Not an epidural, as they use today, but a total block, as if I were having both legs amputated. This was the standard treatment in 1969 before the widespread use of Lamaze or natural childbirth, and before the blessed women’s movement came along to break down the doors, demanding that changes be made to this demoralizing, choiceless way of doing things.