The words didn’t come out of my mouth, but they came close, derailed somewhere on the way from my brain to my tongue. And they stuck there, in the back of my throat, settling like ash. I was left staring down into my daughter’s eyes, not knowing what to say, surprised at my unchecked response.
That thought had never entered my mind about anyone else before in my life, that there were people you shouldn’t pray for. Her words stirred around in my mind.
Make sure you pray for him in prison, she had said. You know, pray that he’ll have a good night’s sleep.
* * * * *
Today, I’m posting over at Deeper Story. You can read the rest of the post HERE.
I woke up at 1am and I couldn’t stop shaking. Every muscle in my arms and legs, my back and neck, convulsed and shook. I was freezing cold. I pulled the comforter tighter around me and tried to warm up, but the shaking seemed to move deeper inside of me, and soon my breathing was coming fast and shallow.
I stood up out of bed and nearly collapsed. I mumbled something to Maile, something incoherent. What I meant to say was,
“I’m freezing cold. I’m going to go get in the shower.”
But I’m not sure what I actually said. I stumbled out of the room and down the hall. The shakes made the stairs difficult. I depended on the bannister. I turned on the hot water in the downstairs shower and stood in the steam, then undressed and got in. I still couldn’t stop shaking. My breath dried out my mouth, and soon I was gasping for each gulp of air.
I can’t keep this up, I thought. In five minutes I might not be conscious.
I pulled the shower curtain back and shouted.
“Maile!”
I sat down in the shower because my legs were giving out. In all the shaking I banged my head against the tile wile. I wondered if she would be able to hear me above the fans and the air conditioner.
“Maile!” I shouted again. Panic.
This isn’t it, right? I mean, I’m sick, but this couldn’t kill me. Right?
I felt myself nearly pass out. I gathered myself and shouted for Maile as loud as I could. I heard her footsteps come out of the bed, down the hall, down the steps. The bathroom door opened.
“Mai,” I said, between the gasps and the shaking that made my voice waver. “You have to call 911.”
* * * * *
That’s how I found myself in an ambulance on the way to Lancaster General Hospital. When I arrived they stuck me with two IVs, one with icy cold fluid I could feel oozing up my arm. My temperature was over 103. My heart rate clipped along at 140. My blood pressure didn’t even have two numbers. It was 41. They packed ice around my body to bring down my temperature.
Cat scan. Chest x-ray. Antibiotics. By 6am they wheeled me up to a room on the 8th floor of the hospital. I slept on and off, my IV machine beeping, nurses coming in every thirty minutes to check my temperature, my blood pressure, my heart rate.
By the time the morning came, I felt weak but calm. Outside my window I watched the life flight helicopter come and go a few times a day, landing on a section of the hospital roof a few floors behind me. In and out. Life and death.
* * * * *
My room was divided by a curtain, and on the other side was a man in his 80s. He had fallen at his house, and they weren’t sure why, so he was under observation.
“The doctor says I can go home this afternoon,” his wavering voice said quietly to one of the nurses.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Garvey, but you’re not going home today. Remember? We’ve already talked about this. You’re being transferred to physical therapy for ten days.”
Silence. The nurse leaves. Then, a few minutes later, the old man’s voice ventures out in the now-empty room. I can’t see him. I can only hear him behind the curtain. I’m pretty sure he’s not talking to me.
“The doctor says I can go home this afternoon.”
* * * * *
The doctor spoke in matter-of-fact terms. No big deal. It is what it is.
“You have a six-inch section of your small intestine that’s severely inflamed,” he explained. “And in the center of that section it’s almost completely closed. You need some rest and we’re going to try to bring the swelling down. Liquids only, for now, and we’re going to keep you in here until you can eat some solids.”
* * * * *
Three days later, I walked out of the hospital. We live two blocks away. The sun was warm but the day felt cool for July, and as I walked out of that place, no longer tethered to my IV cart, I was very aware of each free step, each breath. I stopped at a bench along James Street and just sat there for a moment. The world felt like it had slowed down.
Leaves scuttled across the sidewalk. Cars spun by. I wanted to stop each person in the street and remind them that they are here, in the world. They are walking around. The sun is shining, for goodness’ sake.
Man alive.
I got home and no one was there so I sat on the front porch and watched the traffic go by. I was reminded again, in a way I hadn’t been since my trip to Istanbul 18 months ago, that all of this busy-ness we create is a mirage that cloaks reality. We spin our webs and the storms blow them down and we spin again, ceaselessly rubbing our hands together, never stopping to look. Never stopping to live.
So I sat there and I waited for my family and the day passed and that night I held ten-day-old Leo on my chest, his eyes heavy, each blink taking longer than the one before. His breathing came in short, jerky spurts, then slowed into an even rhythm as his dreams melted into night.
Here’s a post from three years ago that made me chuckle. This week I’m taking a little break from the blog, so I’ll be reposting some old stuff as well as sharing a few posts from others. Enjoy, and tune in next week to hear all about my exciting ambulance ride and three-day hospital stay.
I’m sitting in our bed. Maile is asleep. I just heard thunder outside (either that, or the neighbors up the hill are shooting fireworks again). Two lights are on in the house – the one beside the bed and the one in the hall. That hall light is for the kids, because how would they find their way to our bed in the middle of the night if it was completely dark? They rarely make the trek, but they also like to know that, if they need to, they can.
Our living room is a wreck – looks like our minivan over-ate and then threw up in there. Suitcases and tote bags and plastic bags filled with dirty clothes are lined up. There’s a bag full of peed-in clothes – I’ll get to that in a minute. We got home late, so tomorrow is clean up day.
The first half of the drive went fast. By 1pm we had arrived at Andi’s house in Bremo Bluff, Virginia where she served us a beautiful lunch and we got to meet and hang out with Laurie and Jack Jensen. Later on, when home came within reach, we asked the kids what their favorite part of our two-week trek had been: without hesitation their voices chimed, “Andi’s house!” The tractors, the dog, the cats, the frogs, the blackberry picking…all of it made for a great halfway point.
The second half of the drive, the five-hour stretch from central Virginia to central Pennsylvania, stunk like feet. Somewhere on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, 3-year-old Abra started saying in her most hysterical voice, “I have to make a pee! I have to make a pee!” At that moment I knew we were in trouble – she is notorious for waiting until the last second to make her intentions known. Maile pulled on to the very narrow shoulder, then up over the curb and into the grass.
I jumped out, but as I opened my door I heard her frantic cry change.
“I have to pee! I have to pee! I have to…I peed! I peed! I peed!”
Oh, my.
So I got her out and stripped her down and cleaned her with the miracle fleece (baby wipes). I sat her naked on my seat and began looking for the bag with her clothes.
“I have to pee!” Cade shouted.
“Me, too!” Lucy yelled.
So I helped the entire family pee, right there on the narrow curb of the Baltimore-Washington Expressway. Cade and Lucy climbed back in. I couldn’t find Abra’s bag so I dressed her in some of Cade’s underwear and one of his pajama shirts. Then I tried to remove Abra’s baby seat from the back of the van.
“Aw, Dad, you dripped pee on me!” Cade shouted.
Oh, my.
I handed him some wipes. Seats were rearranged. The rest of the trip seemed spoiled – everyone was tense, hungry and irritable after having to pee on the side of a highway.
But that seems so long ago now. The house is quiet. A few minutes ago I snuck over to their rooms to stare at their four sleeping faces.
Our good friends Steve and Coral had a child the very same day that our son Leo came into the world. Steve posted this on his Facebook page and I thought it was so well said that I asked him if I could share it here as well. Maeve is the name of one of his older children.
* * * * *
I was delighted, and surprised, honestly, that Maeve wanted to come to church with me this morning. We walked in and found our spot all the way at the end of the pew along the aisle and just about as soon as we sat down I heard over my shoulder,
“Morning Steve, would you like to bring up the gifts?”
I was, again, delighted and surprised. I’d never presented the gifts before. Maeve was quick to tell me that she had. I’d never even given the idea much thought beyond thinking that, as a matter of expediency, the people sitting closest to the bread and wine were asked to give it to the priest when the appropriate time came. Not much to it.
But I was suddenly overwhelmed.
* * * * *
I made a point to get to mass this morning because out of all the feelings that I’ve had over the past few days the one dominant and persistent feeling has been thankfulness.
We made it. 35 ½ weeks, complication after complication, hospital visit after hospital visit, the day finally came. Then Cesarean, then neonatal intensive care, then leaving the hospital without our daughter – but we made it. We made it and she’s perfect and lovely and we are crazy about her. I am so thankful – for my wife, my youngest daughter, my kids, my life – I thank God for it all.
* * * * *
I said “ Yes, of course.”
“How’s Coral?”
“Great! We had the baby!”
“Wonderful, congratulations!”
Then, standing, I look up at the stained-glass window above the tabernacle and the image of Christ on the cross and I think, “Bring up the gifts? What gift can I bring? What thing could I present that could possibly show my gratitude?” How could anything that I offer show the depth of humility I felt holding that sweet baby and knowing that I did nothing to bring her here safe and sound, I did nothing to deserve her, I can do nothing to keep her – She is 100% blessing and grace. She is the gratuitous love of God poured out on me, my wife and our family.
So, I’m standing there with tears puddling in the corners of my eyes (okay, streaming down my face) and now, finally, I’m thinking about the gifts. What are they? What does that mean, the gifts? Indeed, I have nothing to offer- no thing, no deed that could be credited to me as my own. The Bible puts it this way, “every good and perfect gift is from above.” So then what am I doing? And it strikes me in a new and poignant way that even the gifts I offer, the gifts that we offer together, come from above. We know that God looks with favor and love on the offering that Jesus made on our behalf. We know he did then and we know that he does now when we do this in remembrance of Him. But while the offering is ours – its only ours because it is a gift from above. St. Augustine said that “when God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing else but his own gifts.”
* * * * *
I hand the wafers to Maeve, take the wine in my hands, and as we approach the altar I’m acutely aware that I have nothing to give but that which I have been given. And I have been given so much.
Baby Leo being held by Maile’s father. Photo by the wonderful Kimberly Sanderson of Sanderson Images.
Maile kneels in the large tub, sitting back on her ankles, her knees spread apart. The water is still. She leans forward against the side of the tub, facing the corner of the room. She doesn’t make a sound, at least not until the next contraction comes. Then her voice starts in a quiet hum, growing louder and only slightly higher as the contraction peaks.
“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHH…”
She takes a deep breath and exhales, and the world has come back. For a moment there was nothing but the contraction, nothing but finding a path to the other side of that growing pain. But she is through. For now.
I kneel beside the tub and wait, my knees on a foam mat, my head in my hands. Waiting is like prayer. Kneeling there in the dim light, a summer thunderstorm gathering outside, my wife in the tub humming through each contraction, I have this revelation: it’s no wonder older traditions worshiped the female form, this vessel of beauty and power that brought forth life, seemingly on its own.
It’s no wonder older traditions worshiped the goddess. But perhaps those ancient goddesses needed priests in order to hide their humanity. Because we are, all of us, human.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Maile says quietly, urgently, and I help this goddess from the (holy?) water and into the adjoining bathroom. At some point her determination turns to uncertainty.
“I remember this,” she says. “I remember this point where you suddenly think, ‘I have decided I don’t actually want to do this anymore.'” She looks up at me with her big blue eyes. “I’m at that point.”
“You can do it,” I say, because what else is a husband supposed to say at that point?
She nods and bites her lip in pain, then the breathing.
“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”
* * * * *
Earlier that same day, about ten hours earlier, Maile woke me up. She stood at the foot of the bed, a visiting angel.
Do not be afraid.
“I’m having contractions,” she said, smiling. “They’re about ten minutes apart.”
I was suddenly awake.
“And I think we have to change the baby’s name,” she blurted out, cringing. “It just doesn’t feel right. I don’t think I can do it.”
What’s a husband supposed to say at that point? She’s having my baby, she’s having contractions, and she wants to change the name. Of course. You can do whatever you want. You can buy whatever you want. You can leap tall buildings in a single bound.
So we had to come up with another name. And he was on the way.
* * * * *
“You’re doing great,” the midwife says to Maile after four and a half hours.
“But I’m not,” Maile whimpers. “I want to push but I don’t think it’s time yet.”
“Would you like me to check you?” the midwife asks.
Maile nods, and the midwife pushes her fingers up inside, up into the source of life, the center of the pain. How often that is the case, that the center of our pain will also become the source of life. Maile grimaces, then groans, then cries out.
“Okay,” the midwife says, adjusting her reach, feeling around. “You still have two small pieces of your uterus covering baby’s head. If you push, that might start to get inflamed and then you won’t dilate fully. Can you breathe through the contractions for just a little while, give that uterus a chance to fully dilate?”
Maile nods, then closes her eyes.
“Here comes another one,” she whispers.
“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”
* * * * *
There is life in all of us, things that need to be birthed. Dreams. Desires. There is something that has been forming over time, something crucial to us, and it wants to come into being. It cannot stay hidden forever.
But let me tell you – I’ve seen babies being born, and I’ve tried to live out a dream, and none of them come into being without labor. There are contractions, and there is what seems an impossibility, and there is blood. Just when the birth is closest, the fear is greatest. Just when you think it will never happen, the midwife says those words.
“Okay, you can go ahead and push.”
* * * * *
But we hadn’t reached that point yet.
“Ask her to check me again,” Maile whispered, now on all fours, now on her side, now clinging to the headboard of the bed. Now back on her side again.
The midwife checked.
“The uterus is still in the way. If you want me to, and only if you want me to, I can reach in during your next contraction and try to slip it out of the way.”
Maile nods. Anything. She grits her teeth.
“Here’s another one.”
The midwife reaches in while Maile contracts. Maile makes a sound that’s somewhere between a shriek and a shout. The contraction seems to last forever, and the midwife works her hand around. The contraction ends. Maile gasps for breath, while the midwife examines her.
“There’s just one more small part of your uterus on baby’s head,” she says. Her voice is so calm, like still water. “After that, you’ll be good to push. Just breathe through this next contraction. One more. You can do it.”
Maile’s eyes are closed and it looks like she’s fallen asleep. Completely still. Then her eyes press tight and she bites her lip. It’s coming. She cries out again as the midwife works, more urgently this time. The contraction fades and Maile closes her eyes. The midwife smiles.
“You’re all clear. You can push. Go ahead and give us a push.”
Maile’s tank is empty, but there is a goddess in her still, and she bears down. I stand beside the bed and hold her leg up so that she can push on her side. This is it. This is the moment. She pushes and I can see the baby’s crown coming into the light. Then the baby’s hair, lots of it, and the head is nearly clear. The midwife reaches down and without a word gently pulls out the cord and unwraps it from around the baby’s neck. We have five children, and that is always the strangest moment of all, the time before the last push, when baby’s head is there, eyes open, waiting.
“Give us another good push,” she says, and I wonder where that calm voice is coming from – another world, perhaps. Another universe. Maile responds, and out slips a bundle of bones and displaced joints and skin and then it’s coming together into the form of a child. The cord is purple and red and the consistency of rubber. They are attached, the mother and the baby. They always will be.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
He lay there for a moment, the boy without a name, and he didn’t even cry. He just stared up at me, his dark eyes wide open. It was as if he was saying, Go ahead, have a good look. I’m here. It was surreal, that moment, when he should have been crying but he wasn’t, when he looked at me as if he knew me, as if he was a new part of me being born into existence for the first time.
I wondered what I saw when I was first born, what my eyes took in, what my skin felt, so fresh to the world.
The goddess lay on the bed, bleeding, smiling as if nothing had happened. The naked baby boy was on her naked body, already rooting around for food, and all was right with the world.
* * * * *
We asked everyone to leave the room and we talked about the name in hushed tones. All of our children have been named after characters in books, but this boy would be named after two authors.
Leo. As in Tolstoy.
Henri. As in Nouwen.
No pressure, buddy.
I’ve always seen Henri Nouwen as a fellow pilgrim. More than almost any other person, his words have shaped my view of a God who loves. I always remember his words about birthdays:
(Birthdays) remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.
* * * * *
The boy lay there and Maile was smiling and I was overwhelmed. I had my phone out and was texting family and friends and then I was on Facebook and oh the ache I felt when I remembered my dear friend Alise and how she recently lost a baby at birth, her little Elliott. I opened up the picture she had sent me of her little boy just after he was born. He was so beautiful, even though he was already gone. I showed the picture to Maile as she sat there holding Leo.
Maile asked me a question with tears in her eyes, a question that I don’t have an answer for.
“Why do some mommies get to go home with their babies while others do not?”
Me and Leo. Photo by Kimberly Sanderson of Sanderson Images.
There is life, and there is death, and the two are so entangled here, so interwoven and twisted together that sometimes you can’t see the end for the beginning. I sent Alise a message, telling her that Leo and Elliott will always be connected in my mind. She wrote me a kind, honest message in return.
I thought also of another friend, whose rejection post I am going to share later this week about getting married, wanting to have children, but not yet being able to conceive. Her words are beautiful and deep and wise. She was among the first to congratulate me on the arrival of Leo, and she is always among the first to “like” photos we share of him.
This is life. What can we do but laugh with one another? What can we do but weep each other’s tears? Sometimes both at once?
The day after Leo was born, Elliott’s mother Alise wrote this beautiful letter to Leo, and she quoted Frederick Buechner:
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
* * * * *
I woke up this morning with this boy on my chest. This little lion. His arms reach down each side of me, as if he is trying to hug the world. His breath is so gentle it is barely visible, the way a falling leaf stirs the air around it. I try to count the hairs on his head. I note the tiny formations that make up his lips, his earlobes, and they are a swirl of cells that will grow and change for as long as he is alive.
I love paying attention to how other creative people operate, especially those who have created things I admire. Maile and I had the great fortune of going to see Natalie Merchant perform a year or two ago, and it’s my favorite concert I’ve ever been to.
Here’s how she answered the question, How did becoming a parent change your songwriting process? Did that make it easier or harder?
My technique was completely altered by motherhood. I don’t have huge expanses of creative time like I used to have. I would put myself in a self-induced trance for days, and it was blissful — just alpha waves humming. It was great. Now I feel like I have to make appointments with my muse to meet at 3 a.m. So much of this new record was written during stolen moments in the middle of the night, whenever I could get away. During the day, when I’m doing laundry or making dinner, I’m not humming melodies or writing down lines. I have to sit and focus on the process, but finding the time to do it is so difficult. I blew so much time before I became a mother. I could have written novels, with all the time I used to have. When I talk to friends who have creative lives and children, we commiserate about all the time we wasted in our youth. Now time is the most precious thing in my life.
To read her entire interview over at Salon, click HERE.
