SeattleK8's Open Salon Blog

Mother's Curse

Sun, 4 Sep 2011 16:09:59 -0400

This essay was the First Place Winner in the "Spring 2011 Essay Contest" on WritingItReal, a writer's website hosted by Sheila Bender. (If you are an essayist or memoirist, her site is a font of good info and advice.)

Here is the editor's intro when posting it as the winner:

[I admire the way Kate threads her essay with the words of the “mother’s curse,” using them four times (at the beginning, a couple of times in the middle and then again at the end of the essay). The words are the apparatus the essay hangs on, and at the end, they bring the past and the present together, helping to evoke the author’s feelings of joy at turning from a hard time to a time of full pride. I also admire the tone that evokes strong feelings of despair and anger and then of deep concern and admiration. And finally, I admire the use of the second person “you” mixed in with the use of the first person “I”. As reader, I am drawn into the essay, knowing that the old adage “there by the grace of God go I” applies here. The essay is filled with love and truth and courage. The personal situation becomes a universal one, a story about a prodigal child. –Ed.]

* * *

Who knew that daughters would be such a heartbreak? When you are pregnant no one tells you that fourteen years later, (in the middle of a discussion about the appropriate amount of gratitude in the mother/daughter relationship) you will suddenly be called a psychotic bitch and that it will be a fairly accurate description of the moment. When you are choosing a bassinet, the sales woman does not point out that when the subject of dating comes up you will become a red-faced dictator whom you neither like nor recognize. No one tells you that you will brandish the sharp edge of the mother’s curse just to survive.

Not that I would have believed it anyway. Sitting in the overstuffed rocker, reading Goodnight Moon or the Narnia tales, you think this warm bond will sustain you. You look at a mom in Target, following her teenager through the junior’s department. You hear the daughter’s tone and think, “Boy, whatever that woman did wrong I am not going to be guilty of.” What you don’t know is that the woman is guilty of exactly the sort of mothering that you are: The kind that gives a damn.

If you don’t give a damn, it will not bother you when they roll eyes and glance meaningfully at friends as you pick them up from school. Not giving a damn eases the pain of saying no and other land mines of interpersonal discourse that turn your civil daughter into an excoriating banshee.

Not giving a damn might have saved me from hurling the mother’s curse. I delivered the curse several times over the years, and it was met full on with a steely stare and utter disdain. The first time was immediately following the psychotic bitch comment. I shouted, “I hope you have a daughter just like you!”

She shot back, “I do, too, because I will know how to treat her!”

Slam!

I glared at the closed door, “If God is good, may it be so!”

There was really no way to talk about the grief of losing the daughter I thought I would raise. I thought I would have someone bright and funny and empathetic. The teenager who lived in my house came in late with friends I hated and used a tone with me that you might reserve for war criminals or rodentia. Who this girl might be and how she had somehow taken over my daughter’s life was a mystery of tragic proportion. I cried about it, alone, at two a.m. – waiting for the latest tattooed lowlife to drive up and deliver my daughter home. I cried about it when she moved out at seventeen, living in a van in someone’s muddy driveway. There was a lot of crying, and a lot of worrying, and every now and then there was the mother’s curse hurled into the dark. “I hope you have one just like you!”

Translation: Someday you will understand…

Not that you – sitting there in the dark – would have been convincible, that, should you let her live, your daughter might turn that curse on its little sow’s ear.

Sometime between “Get out of my head!” and “Mom, I’m pregnant!” Lynne had decided to come back. I don’t know if it was all the Raman noodles or getting a taste of life on minimum wage, but somewhere in there she decided I was not such a shabby mom after all – worth a second go. Gone was the wall between us. Gone the critical tone, the sneering commentary, the silent surliness.

In its place was a young woman I admired. An independent, happy, industrious, funny, bright, beauty. Who this woman might be and how she had somehow taken over my daughter’s life was a mystery of glorious relief. We loved each other, could say so, and-- best of all -- liked each other! As she finally left her adolescence behind, she found and married Paul -- a man with only modest tattoos and an utter adoration for my daughter. He is smart, he is kind, and he is as stubborn as she. I rested easy in her choice.

Two weeks ago, I watched my daughter labor to deliver her first child. She had a dream about that birth. The dream was that she would deliver with a midwife and have a doula – a sort of lady in waiting for the laboring woman. Paul, an EMT, would “catch” the baby boy and clamp the cord. She spent a year planning this birth. Eating well, conceiving at just the right time to offer the child a good and welcoming home. She was the poster child for the pregnancy glow -- happy, eager, and healthy. I envied her that pregnancy experience.

When she and Paul finalized the birth plan, she gingerly explained that they wanted the labor and birth to be “just the two of them.” She was visibly relieved when I was not offended. I knew that Paul was determined that the birth be as close to “natural” (read: drop it in the bushes or, lacking bushes, a midwife’s portable birthing pond) as Lynne could abide. I suspected he worried that I would advise medical intervention or some unnamed intrusive approach. If they were studying their choices and making them together, I was fine with waiting. This was the beginning of their family story. It was theirs to write.

The day before her due date, Lynne called to say that she was headed for the birth center. Paul texted me about the progress.

“3 mnts apart. Taking shower.”

A couple of hours later, “Water broke. Soon.”

I worked on a sweater for the baby. Worried. Thinking of my own labor with Lynne. Twenty-four nightmarish hours and an emergency C-section. I sewed the sleeves to the body of the sweater. It would be so cute. He would wear this around nine months.

“Please, God, soon.” I kept glancing at my phone on the stand, listening for the “teek” that announced a message.

Two hours after the “water broke” text, I sent Paul one: “Anything?”

The response came quickly, “Pushing. Progress slow.”

“Baby?” I sent back.

“Fine. Monitoring.”

Two more hours passed. I texted two question marks.

The response was immediate: “Going to hospital.”

Oh. In that split second I felt my heart tear.

I knew how fiercely they were guarding their privacy in this. My daughter. My grandson. The hospital. Already twenty-five hours of labor. This was bad. Really bad.

I tapped on my phone keyboard, “Can we come?”

“Yes.”

It was six-thirty in the morning. My daughter had been laboring all night. “Anne, wake up!” I shook my partner in her bed and headed down the hall, yelling back over my shoulder, “Get dressed. Lynne is going to the hospital.”

Sleepily she threw the covers off and started pulling clothes on. “What happened?”

I was crying hard. “I don’t know. But Paul said we can come.”

It almost never snows on our island. The moderate climate is what brought us here. But the night before we had had four inches of snow, which had become a thick, treacherous swamp of slush and ice. The hospital was thirty miles away. I eyed abandoned cars at odd angles in the ditch and drove slowly, carefully. Anne sat beside me. She knew better than to say anything. It was all I could do to stay on the road. It was all I could do to breathe. My daughter was in trouble.

Despite the snow, we arrived at the hospital ahead of Lynne. The ambulance had struggled in the snow and needed chains on the tires to make it up the hill to the hospital’s birth center. Paul was in the waiting room with the midwife and doula. They all looked tired and disheveled. I knew I looked worse.

“What can you tell me?” I hugged Paul.

“It just wasn’t progressing. She’s been pushing for hours. Then there was meconium on the bed…”

“Oh. Okay.” Meconium. Yes, the baby was in trouble. “Did they listen to heart tones?”

“Yeah. So far, so good.”

The doors of the labor unit whooshed open, interrupting his report. Three EMTs pushed the gurney down the hall. Lynne looked over at us, nasal canula delivering oxygen. Her complexion was gray. I waved, tried not to cry. She waved, crying. They pushed into a room where the doctor followed them.

After an assessment, the nursing supervisor told us we could join Lynne. I barged through the door and saw her sitting up on the bed. I crossed the room quickly and hugged her.

“Oh. Hon.”

“Hi Mom.”

They were still hoping to deliver there in the bed. She was opting to give it a little more time, since the baby’s heart rate was good. This was a replay of her own delivery.

There it was. The mother’s curse revealed. She was having a child just like herself.

I watched her squat on that bed for another four hours – pushing, laboring, trying. Until they were sure that the baby couldn’t be delivered, she was going to try. With every contraction the midwife, doula and labor nurses cheered her on. I couldn’t imagine watching anything more valiant. When I got up to leave the room for a moment, I whispered to her, “You are my hero.”

“Thanks, Mom.” She had her seven-year-old face – earnest, determined.

At one point, after a particularly hard contraction, she looked around the room at all the people sitting vigil – nurses, midwife, doula, Anne, Paul, me – quietly attentive.

“I guess I really am glad you are all here,” she said, “I thought I wanted to do this alone, but this is so much better.”

At eleven-thirty the doctor checked her again. He shook his head. No progress. It was time for decisions. Add pitocin to make the contractions work harder and keep pushing. Or go for a C-section.

My worried, exhausted daughter looked at the doctors and the nurses and said, “Could you give us a minute to talk, please?” dismissing them, like a queen dispatching servants. We all started to leave, giving her and Paul their privacy.

“Mom, you can stay.”

She wanted input. Paul said he would go with whatever she wanted. I said that trying pitocin might be just the trick, or using it on a tired uterus might mean a section anyway. She was the one who had been in labor almost thirty hours. Her call.

She looked at Paul, then at me, then, “Let’s have this baby. Tell the doctor I want a section.”

My grandson was born by cesarean section twelve minutes later. He was eight pounds, eleven ounces. And perfect. My daughter was radiant. Relieved. Exhausted. She held her son against her chest and told him how happy she was to see him.

No one tells you when you deliver that you may be surprised to find one day that you do not have the child you thought you had. That you will feel, in the course of her life, happy, horrified, frightened, homicidal, jubilant and relieved, by turns. That, in the end, if you are really lucky, you will be able to deliver the mother’s blessing that I silently wished on my daughter that day:

I hope you have a child just like yourself.

If God is good, may it be so.

(Lynne getting her first look at Silas)

* This essay was written in January, at a writing workshop offered by Andrea Hurst.

Animal Lover

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:02:29 -0500

The island where I live has a colorful mix of citizens – generations of island families, left-leaning newcomers (like me), rich retirees, and erstwhile business folk trying to make a go. I love the soup that it makes of values, ideals, opinions, politics and lifestyles. Small town America with a moat.

Because this is an island, I ride a ferry to work. Usually an early ferry. Mostly this means a lot of sleepy drivers conked out in their cars for twenty minutes, or using the time to grab coffee or put on make-up in the vanity mirror on the visor. Sometimes it means parking behind someone who wants to advertise an opinion. “Wag More, Bark Less,” “Wage Peace,” “Boeing Workers Do It – Right!” etc.

This morning I parked behind an animal lover. The bumper sticker, at eye level for me because it was on a large truck/SUV, said, “I Love Animals… They’re Delicious” with the number 800-343-HUNT underneath. The driver was not behind the wheel. I pictured some old white guy, with an Elmer Fudd cap and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth, upstairs getting coffee.

***

I’m not so big on hunting. It never seemed exactly fair or kind to me – chasing something down, scaring the crap out of it, and then shooting it. On the other hand, I know a lot of people who hunt, and I like these people. One of them pointed out that the elk she shot for winter meat had lived a much happier, more humane life than that chicken I served for dinner. Okay, point taken. Before I pretend to be the Dalai Lama I’ll listen to all sides.

The 5:10 ferry seems an unlikely place for a philosophical inquiry into the ethical boundaries of killing sentient beings. But there I was, staring at the lights of Everett, Washington on the horizon, and pondering the extent of my own responsibility for the taking of life on the planet.

As the boat pulled into the slip, I spotted the animal lover making his way back to his truck. I knew it was he. Tall, bearded and lumbering. He walked with that swaying motion that comes from thighs so large that your legs are not really parallel anymore, but more of an inverted V – hips and knees beginning to wear under the burden of so many pounds for so many years.

This was undoubtedly a man who loved animals. A lot. For breakfast, lunch and dinner. This was a guy who might look up from a gurney in the ER and say, “What the fuck do you mean, a heart attack? I’m only forty-six!” and then remember that his dad had died at fifty-one of a massive coronary. A meat and potatoes sort of fellow. Not the sort of guy you’d peg as much of a listener, but, yes, an animal lover at heart.

He opened the large truck door and hefted himself into the driver’s seat. The steering wheel was tilted up to make room for his XXL belly. I felt sad for him. I wondered what I could possibly say to him. He shot a scowl at me in the rear view mirror. No, there really wasn’t anything I could do. I wondered if he smoked too. My guess would be yes.

This morning, that bumper sticker seemed wincingly ironic. I love animals too – probably even the one pulling out onto a rainy Washington highway, heading for his next meatball sub.

Usually I love ironies… They’re delicious. This one, not so much.

Holiday Letters

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 01:12:53 -0500

Tech bloggers and Facebook fanatics tell me that the Christmas letter is, like, “so over.” A quaint, antiquated, useless custom. Or worse yet, déclassé. They use phrases like “back in the day” or “retro,” and they don’t mean charming or hip. They imply that my holiday letters will go the way of polyester leisure suits or the Bumpit – straight to the I-can’t-believe-we-ever-did-that bin.

Yesterday, in the midst of printing out my annual letter, writing notes on cards, licking envelopes and correcting labels, I asked myself, “Okay. Why? Every year it’s the same thing. Why do you do this to yourself? You could be spending your time finishing up that alpaca scarf or watching reruns of Frasier – time honored holiday customs. But no, here you are again, writing and stamping and checking your watch. It’s late. You’re tired. Is this really *&$#ing worth it?”

From the foggy, all-but-atrophied holiday area of my brain came a resounding, “Yes!” And then, “Leave me alone to finish my cards.”

Why DO I do this to myself? Most of my friends send eCards or, more commonly, nothing. There are a few diehards like myself who send cute greetings, or a family photo. A couple even include a holiday letter. But no one expects it anymore. Printing out letters isn’t “green.” Writing one that doesn’t put people instantly to sleep takes effort. Who really cares?

Answer: I do.

In 1980 I moved halfway across the country from New York to Minnesota. Six months pregnant, newly married and desperately lonely. By Christmas I had a month-old colicky daughter, a C-section scar, and no visible friends. Looking out my apartment window into a frigid St. Paul afternoon I needed perspective; I needed companionship; I needed to write.

When my daughter found enough comfort to fall asleep, I opened a box of Christmas cards and started writing. I think I sent about twenty cards that year, and every one of them contained some version of my hand-written tale of hospitals, diapers, gratitude and hope. With each one I felt a little better. A little less alone.

It took me three days to finish those twenty cards – frequent interruptions to breastfeed, marvel at the perfect child in my lap, and turn up the thermostat slowed the process to a disjointed crawl. But I finished them. I enclosed a picture of my daughter in most of them. Mailed them. Rested in the comfort of having connected to the people I sorely missed.

Since that year I have looked forward to writing my Christmas letter as a sacred rite of winter. Like the solstice or the New Year, it is a tiny hatch mark on my timeline. Subsequent letters were written by hand and Xeroxed, then on a typewriter, then on various computers. I abandoned the card-by-card sagas in order to tell a larger story to everyone: We’re here; we’re fine; we miss you; we love you.

There were some years that weren’t really so fine – when it was hard to write. Could I really stand to hear about other people’s children headed for Stanford when my own daughter had spent a night in juvie? How do you tell people you’ve left your husband for the love of your life without seeming like a selfish gadfly? Will anyone care about these things? And who will want to know that my daughters have turned into glorious young women with lives and families of their own?

Answer again: I will.

What I realized as I sat down to write the holiday letter this year is that I write it for myself. I realize that it probably goes directly into some recycle piles. But I also know that it gets passed to others and read aloud. I know that people laugh at the funny parts and understand the hard parts without having to suffer all the details. Over the years friends have told me, “Yours is the letter I wait for every year.” Or, “I loved that part about your dad being the ‘hydro-engineer’ when he waters your garden.” Or, “That picture of you with the girls is tucked into my Bible to remind me to pray for you.”

When I revisit letters from previous years, I read again between the lines. Like photos of a vacation when everyone fights between stops, but smiles for the camera, it looks a little happier than it actually was. But that is the privilege of the artist, isn’t it? To decide which details to magnify, which to delete. The final product reveals what the creator wants to share, nothing more or less.

And what I realize most of all is how much I still need to do this. I need to sit down and capture twelve months of drama and calm. I need to draw the whole crazy picture and then use literary Photoshop to soften the edges, color up the good parts, and sharpen the focus on what matters most. By the time I’m done, I don’t need a dorky Christmas movie to remind me how very lucky I am to have such riches to describe. In the end I have an elegant snapshot of my life and year. A colorful synopsis of mishaps and blessings; details and impressions. I have the chapters of a life, one December at a time.

These cards, then, are my tidings of comfort and joy. I send them out like little reindeer notes in bottles. Some of them will wash up on shores to be read and cherished. Some will be so much holiday flotsam in people’s mailboxes. I don’t concern myself with their fate.

What washes back in the surf is a feeling of completion. The writing itself brings me hope, perspective, and what the holidays are supposed to deliver to every one of us:

Peace.

On Worry and Wingflapping

Fri, 14 May 2010 18:05:29 -0400

This morning a friend sent me a YouTube link of a hummingbird, rescued by a man who returned it each day to the park where he found it. After a few days, the hummingbird’s mama appeared, feeding it again -- sometimes in the hands of the man who rescued it. It was a touching documentation; a heartwarming story.

I watched the five minutes of video intently. I identified with it. Not with the poor little hummingbird whose injured wing started the whole tale – although God knows my own wings have been broken and healed many times over. And not with the gentle man who found and nursed the little creature – although my Buddhist studies would applaud this work. (That hummingbird could have been his mother in another life…)

No, I identified with the valiant, if exhausted, mother hummingbird who came back into the picture to feed her little one, despite the giant stranger whose intentions might have been either to bandage a wing or feed Junior to the cat. She observed circumstances and decided to ignore the danger. A mother after my own heart. (Or maybe a Dad – I have no knowledge of hummingbird gender identification.)

My own little hummingbirds flew early and angry into their own lives. Did I hover too close? Not provide enough nectar? Devise too many rules for the nest? I’m not sure.

They flew blindly into dangerous territory, and suffered injuries and calamities galore, while I watched from the bushes, beak full of sugar water, hoping for an opening.

“You’re living in a crank house? And you like it there because there are no rules?” (This lasted until the first morning she awoke to find her stereo and CDs stolen. Maybe a little boundary recognition is a good thing? Off to find a roommate…)

“How about coming for dinner every Sunday. You can do laundry…” (and I can eyeball you to see if you are nourished and clothed.)

“How can living in a studio apartment in a drug-ridden neighborhood possibly be better than your room here at home??” (I suppose a certain amount of waiting on tables and night school is good for the soul, but really, at what age does reason set in)

“How can you be pregnant? You aren’t even dating anyone…” (Monthly stipends -- aka: sugar water -- while you finish school and parent my grandson. Retirement is overrated anyway...)

They flapped about on the ground while I furiously beat my wings, watching them elude dark fates, lawn mowers, and hungry raccoons.

***

In the YouTube story, the bird was rehabilitated at a wildlife refuge, and released into the wild.

Tell me: where are the wildlife refuges for adolescent daughters who need a nice little furnished cage while they get their wings under them?

All I know is that I can tell you exactly what that mother hummingbird was thinking when that little one took off and started nosing flowers on its own. She was thinking, “Hallelujah, Darling! I’ll be over here with a good book and a glass of wine. Give me a call when you get a minute.”

Dear Rick – I Married Your Daughter!

Fri, 4 Sep 2009 22:09:40 -0400

Have you ever almost married someone for the wrong reasons? Mmm hmm. Me too.

In the seventies I dated this guy I really liked. And though I loved who he was, our connection wasn’t the “in love” sort of thing that I had in mind at the time. Rick was great. Tall, handsome, bright, funny. And he had a couple of other things that really impressed me: Shelly and Joelle. His daughters.

I adored his kids. Shelly, the older, was a “spirited” child. One of those old-soul kids who confound and vex anyone who thinks having your own thoughts is just too danged uppity for an eight-year-old. Joelle was quieter. She was more likely to take off on her bike than stand there and argue. They were darling. They were challenging. They were themselves, and he let them be exactly that. I watched the way he fathered them. I watched the way they adored him.

Joelle and Shelly, circa 1978

When he asked me to marry him, I thought about it. Seriously. I liked him well enough, and life with him would not be boring. I was crazy about his girls, and, with their mom in California and him with custody, I’d see a lot of the little ones. I pondered life with their family. I pondered the value of being “in love.”

In the end I said, “no.” It seemed like the only fair thing to do. I didn’t get that pitty-pat vibe with him. And there were all those empty Genesee beer bottles in his trash. No, best let this one go. So I did. We stayed friends.

About four years later, he died.

Now, in the way that life takes you on little spins and drops you where you didn’t expect, I landed on the West Coast – in Seattle. Having lost touch with Rick’s girls over the years, one day I got curious and googled them. Hmm. Shelly was a therapist. Still in California, where she had gone to live with her mom after Rick died. I couldn’t find Joelle. I clicked on Shelly’s website. Oh my. There she was. A lovely grown-up version of her little self. And she looked exactly like her dad. Exactly. Same lanky build, same hair, same face, same smile. Oy.

Next stop, Facebook. Yes, there she was.

A quick email through Facebook: Hi Shelly, you may not remember me but I dated your dad a long time ago…

A quick response: Yes! I do remember you, and in such a positive way.

What followed was a series of emails, then online chats, then phone calls. She was thriving; she was in love; she was starving for stories about her dad. We talked about all of it. Who she used to be; who she was now; who he used to be; what I remembered; what she remembered. I felt like a biological mom catching up with a child she hasn’t seen – we compared notes, cried, laughed, remembered the bright, goofy guy her father had been. Celebrated the intense, playful woman she had become. We filled in the blanks for each other: The last date I had with her dad (Going to Grease at the drive-in, Shelly and Joelle in tow). The last time she saw Rick alive (Mouthing “I love you” from inside an oxygen tent in the hospital. Shelly was twelve).

Then a surprising email to me. “Kate, will you marry me? Um. Wait. That doesn’t sound right… Kate, would you perform the wedding ceremony for Jed and me?”

Yes. This was a right thing. This was exactly what Rick would want. “Oh. Of course. I’d be honored!”

Ordination in the Universal Life Church. (Online – no muss, no fuss, no cumbersome classes to take.) And then a wedding. A small ceremony in a warm vineyard near Paso Robles, California.

The bride was glowing. The groom was handsome. (And earnest. And real.)

Joelle’s daughters were the princess bridesmaids – little reprises of Shelly and Joelle when I first knew them.

Joelle read about love from The Prophet, one of Rick’s favorite books.

Do you, Shelly…

I pronounced them man and wife. He kissed the bride. Everyone cried, and everyone smiled.

The little bridesmaids ran like the wind – two fairies bursting with joy.

Leila and Naima, fairy princesses

Rick, I love your daughters. You’d be awfully proud of who they are, of who they married, and of those fairy granddaughters running like the wind.

We missed you.

Shelly and Joelle, circa 2009

Shelly and Jed_{(Photo by ByCherry Photography}₎