The story it has taken me 26 years to write (plus a few days)
part two
It is morning. Sunny. Beautiful late May spring sun. The kind that holds so much promise in it. The sweet mewling noise my son makes as he stretches wakes me. He fell asleep in bed with me as the storm passed. I recall thinking I hoped the sunshine was a talisman that would stay with him through his life. It is still early, though. The maternity ward is quiet, and they put me at the end of it, not near anyone, so I wouldn't have to see all the happy families — their joyful faces, balloons, departing for home — parading past me. I recall being thankful for small mercies.
Usually the protocol was for the birth mother to be separated from her child right away, and put on a gynecological ward, rather than an obstetric one, but I didn't want my son to spend the first few days of his life by himself, with no one to give him cuddles, to feed him, to fuss over him. He didn't deserve to start out without the feeling of warmth and kisses from someone, and someone cooing over him. I knew it would make it harder for me, but I was determined. Stubborn, yes, possibly stupid (definitely, given how I would feel a few days later), but he deserved love from the moment he entered the world. So there he was, with me.
A nurse came into the room, checking on him, and took him away to change him, and do a quick few checks, and told me she would be back with his bottle in a few minutes. After she left, for the first time, I allowed myself to cry. This was not abstract anymore. This was far more reality than I was ready for. Until now, the SATs and taking my driver’s license test had been the height of my reality tests. Filling in university applications and watching the ‘yes’ and ‘no’s’ arrive. This wasn't a different level of reality. It was a different world. ‘The baby’ wasn't just an elbow getting in my way, or a possible USA 2014 World Cup striker, but my baby. A boy. A beautiful boy who I would know and have memories of — no matter how painful — but whom I know wouldn't remember me, wouldn't remember everything I explained to him the night before and hopefully be able to feel comforted by hearing from me why I thought putting him up for adoption was best for him, and how it took much more love, and guts, than keeping him. He wouldn't remember me telling him that I was amazed, floored, speechless, and a completely changed person for feeling everything I did the moment they put him in my arms. He wouldn't remember me telling me that I was so proud of him for surviving Jen’s rally driving, and thanking him for the rather speedy birth he was delivered with. He wouldn't remember the minutes I sat there just whispering into his ear ‘Please don't forget this ever….I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.’
As I cried, looking out the window, trying to shove as much of his blanket into my mouth both to muffle the tears and soothe myself with his scent, a nurse’s aide came in. She was Hispanic, and I remember her heavily accented, but poetic sounding English as clearly as if she were here with me today. She came up and said ‘Shhh, no cry. No cry. There is a better way. God no want you to give your baby away. That is not what you do, that is not what my people would do.’ I looked up confused, hormonal, in shock, and not knowing what to do….at first she looked and sounded comforting. And now? To question me when my mind felt on the razor edge of changing from minute to minute? I remember looking at her and in a deranged moment thinking if I mustered up some Spanish that Miss Kamerman had taught us all at RBC, it would perhaps get us on the same page.
¿Que? I said, thinking I sounded like I was shouting. That my voice sounded like it was fraying. Possibly so was my sanity.
She said ‘No, you keep baby. Raise baby. Otherwise, you go to hell.’
Then I know I screamed.
There was a bit of pandemonium. Screaming — except that from babies — is not normally heard on the maternity ward, and coming from the room that had all the stickers on the file ‘adoption’ (I always think it would say ‘handle with care’ too, but I think that is a bit much. As they say, just the facts, ma’am, and nothing more.) sent a gaggle of staff in my direction. At this point the nurses aide was on her knees doing a mix of the rosary and screaming at me to not give my baby away. I'd always loved horror films, but this was like being in one, and I was not loving it. In fact, my body revolted in full panic attack mode (as I learned later, I had no idea what was happening to me at the time — I'd never had them before, but I've had them ever since.) The nurse’s aide was being pulled away (later, I learned, to Human Resources, apparently this wasn't her first attempt at an “intervention”.) She'd probably been of greater use on the addiction ward, I thought, when I learned this fantastic fact.
It was at this moment in my life that I again learned the magic of IVs. I didn't really mind needles, but didn't go actively looking to get blood taken or get flu shots. But the whatever it was they gave me after my son was born was magical, and fast, and again now, magically, the panic attack evaporated, and they brought my baby back. I grabbed him and held onto him for dear life, as if he was a liferaft. He, in turn, took his bottle as if nothing had happened and drank it in record time. His parents were going to go broke, I thought, feeding this guy.
Through the next two days people came and visited. There is nothing more disconcerting to a maternity ward than watching teenagers in the well known local Catholic high school uniforms come through. Oddly, we'd managed to keep this from my grandmother, and my 3 younger sisters (or so we thought…years later I learned my sister Alison had somehow figured it out, and knew where I kept a photo album, and when I came home from university used to sneak into my room to look at it. ) My parents were in and out. Jen was there, as stalwart as she was in the delivery room, although I assumed she drove in a more controlled way to visit. My mom, a great one for displacement activity, came in with the white dress I would wear to my high school graduation in two weeks (“Isn't it beautiful?” or some such thing came out of her mouth and I began to feel more and more there were parallel universes running through my life.) She meant well, but wanted to look ahead. I wanted to stay in the now, which wasn't much longer. And I recall being petrified in First Grade by Sister Charlotte telling me about Limbo, where unbaptised babies go, so I wanted my son baptised. You would have thought I asked the Diocese if I could set a church on fire. With people inside. I had selected Catholic Charities to put my son up for adoption through, so I thought they would help. That would be a no. I tried calling our parish. I wanted to do what? This is the clear point where the Catholic Church and I began to take different paths. Essentially, I wanted someone to give him a head bath, in blessed water, and mumble some words and do a sign of a cross. You seriously would have thought I was asking for permission to do human sacrifice. In the end, Jen came through again. Her father was a deacon, and was so over the run around, that he declared he would baptize my son. I have a lovely photo I look at often of myself and Deacon Bob just after the baptism. I am a hot mess, and look young, but happy. My stubborness had gotten my son — again— what I wanted him to have. Like my dad would always say, don't get my Irish AND Brooklyn raised at the same time.
So my son was baptized into the Catholic Church, uncomfortable bedfellows we had become, with my friend Jen proudly standing as his godmother, and my brother Craig standing as his godfather.
Like I said, I am stubborn. My son became Julian Ryan. Ryan was the name I liked, but Catholic Charities was very into NOT using names you liked, in case you wanted to use them on future children (such a caring sentiment…creepy, I thought). So I had just finished watching Less Than Zero and had already decided he would be Christian if he was blond, and Ryan if he was dark haired. But after the film, and the ooo’ing and aaahhhing about not using Ryan, I picked Julian from the film. I knew it wouldn't be his name, that his parents would choose his name, and just needed something for the birth and baptism certificates, and that was it (I blame the drugs — recalling the character in Julian, who in their non-drug addled, panic attack, hormonal mind would name a child after THAT character?)
In the end he faked me out anyway. He was born with a full head of dark hair, that all fell out when he was about three months, and he turned blond by six months. Punk.
And, for part two, I think my keyboard has taken in all the tears it can. So it is off to make a vodka & tonic, I think I need / have earned one.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at kristine.kirby@btinternet.com. I appreciate all feedback.