do you sing for death or birth?

true I do not remember the pain often now. Nor do I remember the poem I read at Willow's blessingway pregnancy ritual. Instead I hear as a melodious chant in my mind, a rune from a Madeleine L'Engle book: "Lords of snow and rain and wind, / Lords of water, fire, and earth, / Do you know the one you send? / Does it call for tears or mirth? / Shall we sing for death, or birth?" I do not remember if the day was warm or cold. It was June, a meteorological toss-up for Portland, and the colors of my memory are only grey. All should have been bright. I had eagerly anticipated my sister-in-law's baby shower. I'd considered throwing her one but of course her mother, and her mother's many generous friends, were giddy with delight over her pregnancy and the invitations predated my half-conceived magnanimity. Willow was the first among a group of childhood companions to be pregnant, and among my siblings it was only the second baby, two years since I became the first of my parents' five children to provide a grandchild. My husband and I had resolved before we'd even exchanged a goodly number of "I love you"s that we were destined to have a big family. Our own family would be growing soon and, in my brother and his wife, we now had a couple of companions in our low-budget dynasty. That spring, I was thrilled with a climate of pregnancy. Four friends in my mom's group had announced in the past few months that they were pregnant, and the sight of burgeoning bellies at our Monday night gatherings made my cheeks warm with pleasure and expectation. And then, as if we'd all undergone a mystically-effective fertility ritual, I was pregnant, too. This would be a girl, I knew. Before I even made my first appointment with my new obstetrician, I'd already named her "Josephine" and started a pregnancy journal. My former obstetrician? On maternity leave. I brought out my copy of The Red Tent, bought at a garage sale, and glowed. At times I wrapped myself with my arms and imagined the whole world was expecting. I was easily brought to glad tears; I saw the universe's signs of maternity everywhere, in the grocery store, on the playground, in music heard through windows. My new practitioner wanted to see me soon and I was glad. The several online pregnancy calculators I'd consulted all agreed I would be about eight weeks and four days along. Or thereabouts. I finished the last entry on the "week seven" page of my journal and was early to the appointment. I liked her from the first moment, the nurse-midwife, loved her, really. Her eyes were wise and I could feel her smiles as she opened the door. We had a lot to discuss. My obstetric history (one pregnancy, one live child, those matter-of-fact questions always gave me a shiver), my son's birth. It was a c-section, an outcome that still rankled. I wanted more than anything for this baby to be delivered without surgical intervention. A birth experience, that's what I was hoping for. We talked about diet, third-trimester strategies, yoga. I calculated how many appointments we'd have together. A lot. I was glad. Technology had changed in the two-and-a-half years since I'd first been with child. Women were now ushered into a mini-ultrasound room at their initial prenatal visit for a "confirmation." And I thought pregnancy tests were 99.9% accurate! I thought, shaking my head. What is there to confirm? Though I would prolong accepting the reality through the next two days, the blurry evening at home, the long awful wait in the imaging reception room, the painfully tactless ultrasound technician, the yawning silence as she searched the screen for an answer, somewhere in the logical part of me I knew immediately. One centimeter was the difference. Little Josephine should have rightly been two centimeters long, but she wasn't, she was the size of a seven-weeker. In another context I might be tickled at her diminutive nature, but a glance at the nurse-midwife's face told me that, for an eight-week-old fetus, size matters. Size is everything. It was a terrible injustice that my husband was certain that he had seen a flicker. He had not. There was no heartbeat. There were options. In the end, late the next day after many hours of numbness and half-hopes, I would pick the "abortion pill" to cease my arrested gestation. I would sign stacks of papers worded for women ending unwanted pregnancies. I would protest wildly inside, sobbing invisibly, "but I needed this baby! She had a name, and red hair!", but I would say nothing out loud and I would sign. After I had set down the pen, shaking, the nurse would pat my hand. I expected more pain, or perhaps less, or perhaps I expected there to not be all this blood. It was messy and awful, every time I went to the toilet I was looking for a meaningful clump. And that next day was Willow's baby shower. I hadn't called her to tell her the news. How could I? Could I ever? What would I say? "Congratulations! Let me tell you something, the baby we prayed for at your blessingway, well..." no. I choked on the memory of the ceremonial smoke that filled the dorm apartment she shared with my brother, the poem I read for her, the verses my mother had read, the totems and talismans we'd prepared. No. This would be my own, unsaid weight for one more day. I put a TV show on for my little, alive son, and I sat down at the sewing machine, finishing the bright flannel mattress cover I was making for the family cradle, a gift for my niece or nephew. The next morning I packed the gifts and a bundle of feminine hygiene products, and my little boy and I drove three miles to a restored arts and crafts home, my sister-in-law's baby shower. There were so many yellow and green booties. I remember all the blood, still, four years later. I remember excusing myself surreptitiously to the upstairs bathroom, two, three times in a few hours. In the eight-by-six room there was honeycomb tile, a bowl of potpourri, a stainless steel garbage can. So much blood. Each time I crept down the creaky stairs as quietly as I could, my legs heavy with the ache of sadness. It was everything a baby shower should be. Lemonade and herbal tea and tiny pastries, hummus and crudites, a pile of gifts so enormous I wondered if it would all fit into my brother's apartment. I sat on the corner of a dining room chair and tried to squash pangs of jealousy. My own shower had been so quiet, a few women squeezed onto a couch, a half-dozen gifts, a cake made from a box. Mourning a miscarriage does not give one a particularly charitable spirit. I wondered hotly if she'd even use that baby bathtub. That Moses basket. Could her baby ever wear all those tiny clothes? I took a photograph that day. I had walked out to the front porch where older children were playing with skateboards; my son was thrilled to watch them, and I wondered how long it would be before I'd trust him on one of those. I turned to look inside at the women gathered around Willow as she held up the latest subject of oohhs and ahhhs. The photo is in black and white film and, unexpectedly looks so warm. But the reflection of the bright sky on the windows tells a different tale, whispers of my distance. An unpregnant woman standing on a cliff, considering a sea of rosy maternity. I tried to be gracious but was instead dissolutely aware of the cosmic injustice of the event, recounting it again and again in my head, turning over "unfair," "injustice," "wrong," "wrong!" as if the words themselves would leap out of me, sieze a pile of gifts and heft it into the nearest river. I was petulant. How dare she, I thought somewhere deep, a place I pretended was another hurting mama, someone who had given herself up to the darkest part of this. How dare she have so much happiness, so much love, so much stuff, in the face of my angry, messy, bloodiness. Why are you singing for birth? I asked them loudly inside my head. Here, right here, is all this death. It is not right. I could not wait to go home. My son did not want to leave the skateboards, and as I drove away down side streets, a little dizzy, he screamed in frustration. And I cried for the first time in three days. Big wracking sobs, as I drove over the freeway and through the streets of my childhood, he screamed angrily and I cried with everything I had. Later that afternoon I found a clot big enough, I thought, to be my tiny embryo. I curled up on my own bathroom floor. It was not honeycomb tile, it was cheap linoleum, stained and reeking mildly. I whispered goodbye and got up, awkwardly, shivering. I told my husband much later, and he tried to understand when I handed him a tiny wad of toilet paper to bury. It was weeks later and several days past Willow's due date when I finally told her that I had lost the pregnancy. She was so sorry for me, she said. Why had I wanted to come to her shower? I could not answer the question, why? I was losing a baby while she was creating a bed for another one. Death and birth, too many tones of grey. Her baby was born soon after. It was long, agonizing, dark, so intensely emotional I would almost throw up in the delivery room. Three months more, I would be pregnant again, and this one would result in a soulful baby boy, dark to his brother's light, quiet to his brother's loud, with a glow in his eyes that would stop adults in their tracks. His speech would be delayed, but when he first spoke sentences it would be in song, "Itsy bitsy spider" and "row, row, row your boat" and he would make me cry with happiness. He would never be grey, but brown, blue, bright yellow and red and green, he would point out everything beautiful, he would spend hours arranging his toy cars in rainbow hues. Do you sing for death or birth? Sometimes the answer is, inevitably, both. And though it is always too soon, too raw, too tossed with cosmic pitfalls, there is healing to be gained in the lowest, most painful notes of the music. Sing for both, sweet mama, I want to tell my younger self. Sing for both.

2008-09-29T01:11:18-07:00

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2009-06-02T19:32:22-07:00

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Willow = Destiny?

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2008-09-15T01:10:16-07:00

That spring, I was thrilled with a climate of pregnancy.

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