Giving Sorrow Words

Give sorrow words;
the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart
and bids it break.
~ William Shakespeare, in Macbeth, Act IV, Scene III

Yesterday evening, I overlooked a group of about ten young men huddle up as a group to take a picture with the camera at their feet, an upshot of their faces. I smiled as I looked on--they didn't know I was watching them as they crammed together to make sure everyone fit in; it seems like such a cool thing for these boys to do in celebration of the moment.

It is hard for me to imagine that the seniors whose graduation I witnessed last night began as freshmen the same year I began teaching at my current site. Most are taller, more worldly, more mature. It is my hope that all will go on to lives that are rich in joy, fulfilled by what makes them happy. There are so many unique and strong individuals comprising this class; they've endured so much together. Though through all the hardships they've had to weather, I have always been impressed by their ability to recognize the moments that deserve to be celebrated rather than focus on the despair.

Even though school officially ended for them last night, I will see many of these graduates tomorrow at yet another memorial for a classmate from 2011 who left us too soon. I am proud of my students' ability to make this a celebration of the young man B---- was when it would be so easy to focus on the loss of the man he would have been had he lived.

I don't know how they navigate it so well, these young people; I never knew how to find happiness one moment while grieving in another when I was their age. Somehow, they manage. I wish they didn't have to.

I console myself with the memories I have of this young man; the after class chats with his two close friends, "The trio" Canadian Bacon, Burrito, and Lasagna; the Cubs shirt he loved; the book talk where he told me The Alchemist was the best book he'd ever read and he gave it to his friend to read because the idea that he had a personal legend to fulfill was true.

Tomorrow, I will celebrate that this young man's personal legend is reflected in all those who will come together to say goodbye and remember the impact he had on each of us. There are so many mourning his loss and wishing he had stayed longer; it is a reflection of the happiness he brought to us all as a friend, son, brother, student.

How Johnny Cash got stuck in my head during labor

"Are you sure you don't want to reach down there and feel her head?"

"I'm sure."

"Don't you even want to look with the mirror?"

God, am I freak for not wanting to pause during pushing and check out my crotch in the mirror?

When we checked into the hospital, I was already halfway dilated. Since I had reached my pain limit and wanted to run off the pain from each contraction, I gave in and requested an epidural. I wasn't crazy about the idea; I really wanted to be able to say I gave birth naturally but I know my limits and the limit was met. Laboring for 24 hours at home to only be halfway AND it was nighttime (which means I would want to sleep) meant that it was only logical to do something about the pain. 

But of course the epidural didn't work. This is my life, afterall. Something weird is bound to happen. 

The doctor and nurse did say I was remarkably calm for having someone poke around in my spine. I'm keeping that compliment close because I'm not normally told that I'm calm. 

The epi only numbed me enough so I could sleep but I still felt the contractions. My left leg went completely numb like a wet noodle, the right was still very much able to feel sensation. When it came time to push, the little relief I did feel from the epi was gone. Also, I itched like I had spent the night rolling in poison ivy, then poison oak and then went swimming with some jellyfish who stung me all over. A product of the basically useless epidural, the nurses said. Neat. 

At 6:30 AM, it was time to push. I had previously told Jerry that I didn't want him to be near the scene of the action because that's gross and he's a bit woozy. I had vain hopes that he wouldn't see "down there" and would then only think of "down there" as a husband does his wife. This was not possible because I grossly underestimated how much space there would be around the delivery bed because even if he wanted to avoid the action, he couldn't have escaped the first row seat.

At 8AM, Cora was head out. At least, that's what they kept telling me. 

"Her head is showing! Oh she has hair!"

"She has hair?! Why aren't you pulling her out?!"

I must have missed the part in birthing class where they explained that "head out" means her head is showing. I assumed head out meant her head is ALL the way out so I didn't understand why the rest of her wasn't coming out quickly like they said she would. 

The pain was beginning to become so severe that I started to panic. I couldn't do it, I cried. 

A midwife I've never met appeared out of nowhere, her face in my face. 

"Yes, you can. You are! Just keeping doing it. You're going to feel a 'ring of fire' and I want you to just push through that ring of fire. I know you can do it!"

What the hell?? Did she just allude to Johnny Cash as I'm about to give birth? 

Now, what most people don't understand is that "Ring of Fire" doesn't conjure up classic Cash for Jerry, our friends, or me. "Ring of Fire" means drinking pitchers upon pitchers of cheap beer and drunkenly eating fries while Steve Langdon sings his version of Cash's classic; his with the lyrics changed to something about a burning STD.   

So, that's what I was singing in my head while my mother and my husband held my legs during each contraction. 

Burn, Burn, Burn, that ring of fire...something something something...gonorrhea! 

After one particularly intense contraction, the nurse told me again that her head was out even more. Exasperated, I cried, "Get!!! it!!!! OUT!!!" 

And for that, I owe Cora her first apology. I'm sorry that I referred to you as an "it." You don't seem to hold it against me. 

Finally, at 8:15 AM, Cora was officially born. I don't remember a whole lot about right before that because I basically blacked out from the pain. Survival-mode is probably the best description of the situation. When the doctor lifted Cora up and placed her on my belly, the first thing I said was:

"Oh my god; she's huge!!"

Because she was, for me. I was small the entire pregnancy and my doctor had estimated Cora to be about 7 to 7.5 pounds. Cora actually weighed in at 8 and a half pounds and 21 inches. No wonder she was always kicking the crap out of me; she obviously didn't have any room to move around! 

Jerry followed up my exclamation with, "Holllllyyyy shit!" The next time I saw him, he was sitting in a chair, all color gone from his face. He says as soon as he realized Cora was alright and that I was, too; the grossness of everything hit him and he started to pass out. 

And with that, everything was perfect. Cora nursed like she was mad at the world for bringing her into the it and her little head went right to a nice round shape right away. 

In the nearly seven weeks that she's been here, every day has only reaffirmed for me how absolutely grateful I am to have been given the chance to experience motherhood. Thankfully, Cora makes up for the hellish pregnancy by being a remarkably easy baby. She eats well and she's so mellow I have been able to shower every single day since her birth. She's so much of Jerry; when I look at her I'm not sure what resembles me. Maybe her lips, but that's debatable, too. I hope she keeps his temperament though I hope she has my nose. 

But most importantly, she's made an already overstuffed house absolutely whole. 

I already knew Jerry was going to be a fantastic and attentive father but I wasn't prepared for when he looked his best friend and said, "If I had known having a baby was going to be this awesome, I would have had one years ago." That's even after he's had poop on him, lost sleep and gotten punched in the eye by a tiny fist. Watching him gingerly navigate changing her into pajamas or read her a story before bed (complete with voices) is a whole new reason to love the man for whom I already have a thousand reasons for loving. 

And giving birth to my first born has allowed me to love our first daughter in ways I previously tried but didn't know how. I feel so much more maternal towards Vanessa, because I see her be a sister to Cora and I love her so much more than I was able to before. 

The cats are protective of her. I can't keep Mithrandir away from her. The second I sit down to feed her, he's in my lap. Today, I caught him on the monitor sneaking in to her crib to snuggle at her feet. 

Unlike the poor "Ring of Fire" metaphor, she's perfection.

On April 4th, I learned a lot about opossums.

Waiting to go into labor is a strange event. Every out of the ordinary bodily function sends you Googling “Is __________ a sign of labor?” and every text message you receive asks if there is any change. Suddenly, topics that would never have been discussed within earshot of your father are fair game: “How does your uterus feel?” “Any more bloody show?”

I experienced most every labor symptom possible starting on April Fool’s Day because what kind of a kid would I be having if Cora didn’t play a trick on me before she even took her first breath? So at 7 in the morning April 4^th, I just figured it was more false labor.

Of course those contractions coming every 7 minutes don’t mean anything.

Then around ten AM, one of our dogs, Holly, started making the most unusual bark. Holly has pretty distinct sounds depending on what she is trying to tell us: high-pitched and whiny when scared, deep and guttural for  when she thinks danger is near, and obnoxious for when she’s too dumb to know what she’s barking at anymore. This bark, though, was something else. When I went outside to figure out 

what the hell she was doing, I found this:

Dammit, Holly. I’m in the middle of a contraction and you’re trying to snack on a baby opossum. This is why you’re only “Jerry’s dog” and not “our dog.”

I called Jerry who told me not to touch it (like I was going to!) to leave it until he gets home (8 hours later!).  

“I’ll just get a shoebox and put it in there like we used to do when my cats caught birds back in Bakersfield. Then, I’ll put it on the side of the house out front where it will be safe and Jerry can do whatever it is you do with slobbered on opossums when he gets home from work. I’m a genius.”

After another round of contractions, I decided the poop-scoop was probably my best bet to get the mangled marsupial into the box. Once I finally got it secured on the side of the house, I went back into the backyard to let out the shepherd and Sammy, our schnauzer, both of whom I’d locked in the garage during the fiasco (Lucy, the lonely lab, hangs out in the dog run by herself because she and Holly don’t get along).

Damn, I was proud of myself. I know putting a small but gross opossum in a shoebox for safekeeping until your husband gets home from work is nothing to brag about but dead animals and could-have-a-disease animals are not something I mess with. Rescuing and socializing feral kittens? I’m a pro. Catching tiny bouncing mockingbirds so they also don’t become dog food is pushing it but I will in a pinch. Snarling, spitting, opossums are solely Jerry’s responsibility. Snarling, spitting opossums while also contracting now every 6 minutes now should definitely be Jerry’s problem.

My slightly inflated ego only lasted about 3 minutes. When I let the two confined dogs out of the garage, Sammy made a bee-line for the corner of the yard. That’s when I saw it.

“It” was a much bigger version of the baby I had just wrangled into the shoebox. A very large, and very stiff version.

“Son of a bitch”, I groaned, half because another contraction began and half because I realized that big, rigid opossum was accompanied by five other babies that were roaming around my backyard, all going 

various directions. My two dogs were in heaven. 

I shuffled the dogs back into the garage and inspected the mama opossum.

Dead or playing dead? No idea. Looked bona-fide dead to me. I looked around and the five little guys and called Jerry, crying.

“Come home now, please!”

“What’s up? Are you in labor?”

“No (uh, yes!), but that opossum I found has a bunch of friends and I think the mom is dead! The babies are just crawling around it and it is so sad! I need you to come home and get rid of her.”

“Maybe she’s playing dead. Leave her alone and I bet she gets up and walks away later. I’ll come home in a few hours before my meeting tonight.”

After I composed myself, I put Lucy in the house because that opossum would never get up and wander off with Lucy barking at her.

So, I went inside and decided to move the couches around and put slip covers on them. Excellent idea, woman in denial over being in labor.

Several hours later I went back outside to inspect the opossum. The flies buzzing around her led me to believe she was in fact, very dead.

Some Googling taught me the following:

Opossums are the American marsupial hanging out in my backyard. Possums are the Austrialian version and theirs are much cuter. See?

(Photo courtesy photolaps) 

An opossum can have up to 22 babies but only 13 will survive because that’s how many nipples she has.

They are usually not rabid because their low body temperature protects them.

If you come across a dead one, you should check the opossum’s pouch because often times, her babies can survive in her pouch for several days.

There was no way in hell I was going to rummage around in that possum’s pouch for the other 7 babies. I don’t care how low of a body temperature they have, I’m not sticking my fingers in there.

My only hope was Animal Control because it was after hours by this point. I figured they’d tell me no since prior experiences with them taught me they will not remove a dead animal from private property. Thankfully, DJ the dispatcher was super cool and asked me to round up the remaining babies and they’d send someone out to collect them.

So, eventually Animal Control arrived and took the live babies out of my eager dogs’ reach to the rehab (yes, rehab) clinic at Project Wildlife and three hours later when Jerry got home, my contractions were so bad that I actually tried to get up and run it off. It was then that I decided it was time to go to the hospital. At ten PM that night, we headed to the hospital where I was promptly admitted for delivery…

(April 5^th to follow)