Embarking on our journey as a parent

The phone rang.   I instinctively looked at the clock before answering it.  It was 4:30 am.  Any time the phone rings before 7 am I am overcome with anxiety and a foreboding feeling that something bad has happened.

The divorce and its fallout have been the source of my most recent anxiety.  But I have always lived with a lot of anxiety.    Anxiety overshadowed or maybe even defined my early years as a parent. 

I didn’t want to answer the telephone that morning.  Calls at such hours rarely bring good news.   But I was able to see the name of the caller displayed on caller ID.   I still panicked.   I picked up the phone.   “I have to go to the hospital,”   her voice said over the phone.  “Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.  “No, not now.  D is going with me,” she said.  “I will call when I need you”.   “I love you," I said.  I hung up the phone.  I lay awake in bed for several hours until it was time to get up and take my youngest child to school.  During that time I didn’t really have any cohesive thoughts just a lot of anxiety.     

“I need you to come now,” she called to say sometime later that morning.   I headed for the garage.   Along the way, I stopped to clean the kitchen.  I unloaded the dishwasher. I put a load of clothes in the washing machine.  It was until about 45 minutes later that I remembered I was supposed to be somewhere else.  No, I am not senile although my children often joke that I am.  

 “What you doing?” I asked myself in an exasperated voice.   I talk to myself often, sometimes even out loud.  I became aware that I was avoiding the trip.  I was terrified to see my daughter suffer physically or emotionally.    I am such a wimp when it comes to my children.  I have had to learn, painfully, to step back so as not to rob them of their growing pains and experiences.  They need to learn for themselves.  This experience will mature my daughter, Jessica, greatly I say to myself somewhat convincingly.   Still I wish I could endure the suffering for her. As I drove to the hospital my thoughts were mired in the past.

“Are you here all alone?”  the nurse asked me.   “Yes,” I replied.  I had been alone in that room for what seemed like an eternity.  I think I was actually in there all by myself for about 12 hours before I was wheeled to the surgical room and moved onto a cold hard metal table.  At least in the delivery room I had the company of the doctor and the nurse.  

 “Where are you taking her?”  I asked the nurse as she was removing my newborn daughter from my arms.   “She has to go to the nursery and get checked out,” the nurse replied.   “You can see her tomorrow,” she said.  I was wheeled into the recovery room where I again spent a long time period of time alone.  I didn’t see my baby, Jessica, again until sometime the next morning.  My heart sank when they brought Jessica into my room. “Why is she in an incubator?  What is wrong with her?”  I shot off in panic.  “It is just a precaution because of the condition you had while you were pregnant,” the nurse replied.   I emitted a huge, audible sigh of relief.  I took Jessica into my arms.  There really are no words to describe the rush of feelings you experience when you hold your newborn child.

 The “script” set out for my generation provided that women got married and had children at a young age by today’s standards.   I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or what I was getting into when I became a parent.   It makes sense that new parents typically look to their parents to learn how to parent.  But I knew even before I had Jessica that such a plan wouldn’t work for me.   When Jessica arrived essentially all I knew about parenting was that I didn’t not want to be a mother like my Mother.  That was the extent of my knowledge along with a little bit of experience I gained from babysitting some of the neighborhood children when I was a teenager.

 For me, becoming a parent was the most significant maturing experience of my life.   I was totally responsible for another person.  I would have to put her needs first and always think about what was best for her in everything I did.  My primary focus was no longer and could no longer be myself.   I don’t know that I was afraid or overwhelmed by any of that.  It all just seemed to be part of the natural progression of life.  

Many women of my generation didn’t follow the “script”.  They elected not to have children.  I really didn’t think of that as an option when I was young.   I am thankful that I was blissfully ignorant of the other choice.   While I enjoy the company of these women tremendously there is a chasm that divides us.  They never learned to put another first.  They never experienced the kind of love where you would sacrifice everything for another –your child.   What a loss!  From the moment Jessica was born my life would never be the same.  Being a parent has brought me the most joy and the most pain in my life.   It has enriched my life beyond measure.

 Now my daughter was about to embark on this sobering and enriching experience herself.  Life has come full circle as they say - whoever “they” are.   My daughter, Jessica, is now giving birth to her first child.  In fact as I write this I am sitting in her “birthing” room with her.  Writing this would distract from my worries or so I hoped.

The nurse bustled into the room and checked some machines - those annoying things that kept beeping.   She was very brusque with a no nonsense attitude.  She never said much.   “How is everything going?” I asked.  “You’ll make it. When I had my babies my husband was in the Navy.   They knocked you out and you woke up with a baby.   Those nurses gave you no sympathy,” she said.   Things haven’t changed much I said to myself.  She was my only human contact during many long hours of labor.

 “Is that you making all of that noise?” I heard someone ask.   I turned to see my doctor standing by my bedside.  It was very dark outside now. When I arrived the sun was just coming up.   She reached out and touched my arm.   My entire body relaxed and I a feeling of warmth and comfort literally spread from where she touched my arm through my entire body.  It was overwhelming.  I was struck, in spite of all my desperation, by the power of the human touch.   I feel it now as I recall that night.  I have tried so hard to remember to touch my children.  It is not something I grew up with so I have to remind myself to do it.    My great grandfather expressed the importance of the human touch much better than I ever could:

              Tis the human touch in this world that counts,

                        The touch of your hand and mine,

            Which means far more to the fainting heart

                        Than shelter and bread and wine

            For shelter is gone when the night is o’er,

                        And bread lasts only a day,

            But the touch of the hand and the sound of the voice

                        Sing in the soul away.

 The birthing process was, thankfully, so different for Jessica. I felt both envious and relieved.  I am relieved that she will not suffer physically or emotionally as I did.  She has her husband by her side and other family members when she wants.   The nurses are so kind.   She can dispense her own pain medication.  They even gave her medication to speed up the process.

  I wanted to forget my first birthing experience other than the moment when I first held that beautiful baby girl in my arms.   The only time I wanted to remember is when we mothers were telling our “war stories”.   We would compete as to who had the worst and most painful childbirth experience. I have some pretty gruesome “war” experiences to relate.   In true puritan WASP fashion I felt I had to forgo any comforts to give birth.   If I had taken any medication or made it in any way easy on myself I would not have been blessed with my beautiful baby or so I unconsciously believed. 

I unconsciously believed that everything in life was earned including good fortune and happiness. They are earned through suffering.   Suffering has the added benefit of keeping anxiety at bay.   Something bad is already happening so I didn’t have to be anxious as to what misfortune lie ahead.   Is this a vestige of the Biblical teaching of Adam and Eve that the price of sin is suffering?  

 I have always had a difficult time with the concept that love and good fortune are gifts to be appreciated and enjoyed.   I had difficulty accepting such gifts, any gifts.  I felt everything had to be earned including love.   I also believed I had to go it totally alone on this journey.  Isn’t it a sign of weakness to need anyone or any help?  I would never want to appear weak.   These attitudes would leave a mark on my early years as a parent.   I would make things as difficult as possible for myself to test myself, to earn love and good fortune and keep anxiety at bay.  I was unconsciously seeking out difficult circumstances to see if I could survive them.  It was a test I could never complete.   Unfortunately my drive to make things as difficult for myself also made things incredibly difficult for my children.  I think I was just unaware that I was operating under this principle at all.  That is just how I functioned.  So I was oblivious to the consequences to my children as well.  You can see now why I assess myself as a terrible parent.  There are other compelling reasons as well. 

“There are no purple hearts given out for suffering and pain,” the Jessica’s doctor said.   I could see, on Jessica’s face that she was struggling with the concept that she will not suffer as much as she should.  (Maybe she has heard too many war stories).  Thankfully she is able to fight off that WASP urge to suffer.   “You can control the medication with this pump,” the nurse told her.  “It will numb the pain and speed up the process.”  Jessica nodded that she understood.    This to me was a triumph.   Jessica was able to accept the help of modern science and the comfort offered by her loved ones.  

 I have anticipated this day with much joy and much fear and trepidation.  I fear that my daughter will have to suffer too much or experience some life threatening complication.   I am joyful that there will be a new person in this world to care for and to love.   I fear that, even with all the tools of modern science, the baby may not be healthy. 

I have fears about getting older.  I am apprehensive about becoming a grandmother. After all grandmothers smell like formaldehyde and are totally out of touch with what goes on in the world.  I don’t want to be one of those grandmas nor do I want to be one of those modern grandmas who strive to look like the mother rather than the grandmother.   With the birth of my first grandchild staring me in the face, I can no longer deny the passage of years simply by refusing to look closely at myself in the mirror.  

Jessica’s husband came into the waiting room.   “We have a beautiful, healthy baby girl!”  he said with such joy and relief.  “Mom she is healthy!” Jessica said to me when I was able to enter the birthing room.  We all had the same concerns I thought to myself.   Why didn’t we share our concerns with each other?  Were we afraid to speak to each other about them for fear we would upset each other by discussing what in reality we all already knew.  How silly to think that everyone would not be aware of the potential dangers.    Worries and fears that are shared are so much less powerful I think.  Oh the WASP ways are so ever powerful!

“Can you come to the hospital with me?” is what I should have asked him.  Instead I was silent and David went to work – a business trip – from which he would have to be called back after Jessica was born.  I did not want to appear like I needed any help.  I would do it on my own.  I don’t think David really wanted to be present for the birth anyway.  David arrived at the hospital after I had been moved from the recovery room to my hospital room. “You should have been here an hour or so ago.  What took you so long to get here?”  I asked.  “Well I had to go home and shower before I came here,” he replied.   “The baby was born about an hour ago,” I said to him.  David stayed just a few minutes and then left.  After all I was totally exhausted.

You are going to cry,” Jessica said making fun of me.  “No I am not,” I replied as I looked into the face of the new baby.  The resemblance to Jessica was absolutely uncanny at least in my mind.  I felt a little numb.  Memories flooded into the present and sometimes I couldn’t distinguish between the past and the present.  I kept repeating to Jessica, “She looks just like you!”  until even Jessica got sick of hearing it.   I felt like I was somewhere outside of my body watching this all happen.  Maybe that is just my defense mechanism when my emotions overpower me and I can’t control them.

 “How did you know it was the right time to have a baby,” a friend of mine asked a few months after Jessica was born.   She was much older than I and had been married for many years.  “We need to save more money and James has to get a better job so I can quit working,” she said.  She continued to tell me all the things that would have to change or occur before she would be ready to have a baby.   I listened.  “There is never a perfect time to have a baby.  You just do it.  If you wait for the perfect time it will never happen,” I replied in all my immature wisdom. That turned out to be all too true for my friend.   She never had a baby even though I know she desperately wanted one.  I guess it was never the perfect time for her.  Is it ever?  Isn’t dealing with the unpredictability of life a catalyst for personal growth?  I am not advocating the absence of planning but, as with everything, shouldn’t there be a balance?   Doesn’t too much planning make life stale?

        

Will we always feel a connection to our partner even after the relationship ends bitterly?

           I looked across the table over the heads of the two lawyers.  Our eyes met and I felt a huge surge of love flowing in both directions and then a wave of despair rolled over me.  Wasn’t it only yesterday – 8 years ago is like yesterday when you are my age – when we looked across at each other in a very different setting with a huge surge of love.  I had just seen our wedding photos.  He had introduced them into evidence at the trial.  I did not want to cry here in front of him, the judge and the lawyers.  It was difficult to hold back the tears as my lawyer began to ask me the questions that are a prerequisite to the granting of a divorce.

            The love was still there and at that moment it felt as strong as it had on our wedding day.  Why hadn’t we – he and I – been able to build on that powerful feeling of love to create a fulfilling and lasting relationship?  I wanted to shout to the judge – stop we still love each other – we could still make a go of it.  It had to be a mistake if that feeling could last through all of the acrimony of the last two years.  What if we just changed a few things – then it would work.  I forgot.  We, or at least I, had already tried all of those things.  Then the reality set in.  It was over.  The feeling of despair swept over me like the force of a powerful wind.  I felt like I swayed from the power of that force.  I had to sit down for a moment.

            He had already moved onto another relationship.  It was eerily similar to what we had shared – at least outwardly.  When I heard this I felt a huge emptiness and I was angry with myself for having that feeling.  As if feelings can be bad!  But I was raised on that.  By this time I understood that we can’t control feelings only our response to them.  But of course that went out of my head in the power of the moment.  He was creep, a cad.  He had used me.  How could I be stupid enough to still have feelings for him?  Love – in whatever way shape or form is such a mystery. 

I wanted to reconnect even if just for a few moments after the judge announced that we were divorced.  We had actually connected briefly a little earlier.  I was sitting in a small conference room with my lawyer waiting for the trial to begin.  The door opened.  “Can I talk to you alone?” he asked but it was his eyes that pleaded with me to let him in.  This was probably just another con or so I thought.  I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in over 6 months.  Any contact was too acrimonious so I stopped communicating.  I finally accepted that this marriage would never end in even a remotely amicable fashion.  So I was very surprised when he poked his head in the door.  I signaled to my lawyer that it was OK.  She left the room reluctantly. 

His voice and demeanor were so soft and loving that I couldn’t help responding.  It was such a complete contrast to the anger and animosity of our communications of the past two years.  He started talking to me about his new life and business.  I wondered to myself why I was listening.  What did I care about his new life and why would he think I would care?  Still I listened.  I found myself listening intently, asking questions, caring if he was happy.  He confided in me.  But I was better now at distinguishing between his lies and his truth.  I needed to engage my brain to remind me that no matter how I felt at this moment – this relationship was over – it was not good for me even though he was right now acting like the person I had fallen in love with.  He was at his best but, as in the past, circumstances would call up the worst in him.  That is not to say that was not true for me as well but only that this is my story to tell, not his.

Stress was his Achilles heel.  Stress brought out the worst in his personality as, I think, it does everyone.  Just like pain some people have a lower tolerance to stress.  For him stress was created by anything that didn’t go his way.  He couldn’t adapt.  That forced me to unconsciously work to create a world for him where everything went his way.  It was exhausting and I lost myself in the process.  It seems the more I compromised and the harder I tried the less he tried.  Could I have forced him to compromise more by being more unyielding myself or would it just have sped up the inevitable demise of the relationship?  The seeds of the end were planted at the very beginning.  Here we were at the legal end.  I so wanted it to be the emotional end as well.

He seemed anxious to return to his new relationship and busy life.  The new life that was so eerily similar to the life we had shared.  I suspect that helped him bury the pain if he felt any.  We sat and talked in that small conference room adjacent to the court room in that intimate way married people can and do.  It amazed me how easily we slipped back into that mode.  He asked about my children.  I asked about his.  We asked about each other’s parents.  We had a history of experiences and connections that was unique to the two of us.  We relived that connection if only for those few moments.  I knew that a part of him was trying to tap into that connection in order to get a good deal in the divorce but it still felt good to connect again.

After a few moments we had nothing else to say to each other.  He said what he really came to say – a dollar amount he wanted from me to settle the matter.  I nodded and said, “Let me talk to my lawyer.”  He tried to get me to agree without her but I resisted.  He silently left the room. As I waited for my lawyer to return I was struck by the irony of it all.  The most intimate relationship in the world was boiling down to a business decision about money.

As I testified he continued to look at me with that same loving look he had in the conference room.  I was frantically searching for some way to get through this time on the witness stand with some dignity.  Tears were welling up in my eyes.  “STOP,” I wanted to shout.  We can make it work.  We still love each other.  Didn’t our meeting in the small conference room prove that?

“Counsel if you present me with the divorce decree tomorrow I will sign it,” the judge pronounced.  “You are excused,” he said to me in the witness box.  The pronouncement felt like an execution – at least of the relationship.  We gathered up our papers and left the courtroom.   The bailiff locked the courtroom door behind us.  The closing of the door and the clicking of the lock resonated with me. It was like the door to our relationship was forever closed and locked but unfortunately not forgotten. 

He ran ahead and hurriedly got into the elevator alone.  He had many important things to get back to or at least that is the impression he wanted to give me.  I walked more slowly discussing and dissecting what had happened that day with my lawyer from a legal standpoint.  This settlement had come as a complete surprise to both of us.  The halls, along with my soul, echoed with emptiness as the bailiffs shooed away the last few occupants of the building.  I was alone when I left the courthouse.  This was it. This was the end to a beautiful beginning which had been so full of promise and love that even after all the intense animosity of the past years my composure was shattered thinking of it.  I kept telling myself how stupid I was to feel this way but that didn’t help me regain my composure or feel less pain.  Change is so much our enemy and so much our friend.

         I called him on his cell phone after I left the courthouse.  He answered.  We talked more about his life.  He talked of including me in his new life with an offer to play some part in one of his new business ventures.  I think we both knew that would never happen but we discussed it anyway.  We talked for 30 minutes or so and I hung up only when I reached my friend’s house where I was to have dinner.  He called me back about an hour later while I was still at my friend’s house.  I didn’t answer the phone.  My friends wouldn’t understand.  He didn’t leave a message. 

        My friends wanted to go out and celebrate the granting of the divorce.  I couldn’t stop crying.  You see he and I had loved each other very much once at least I thought we did. We were happy together for a number of years.  In spite of the ordeal of the last few years I was sad over the loss of that love. 

I am not bitter.  I think you can only be bitter if you blame someone other than yourself for a situation.  I have acquired at least enough maturity and experience to realize that I am responsible for the present situation.  I made the choices that brought me here.  I alone am to blame, not him.  He could only be who he is.  I could not expect him to be otherwise.  Sure he could have changed if he wanted to but he didn’t want to.  His number one priority was getting what he wanted and I was a means to that end.  When I stopped serving that purpose the relationship was over.

“Maybe we can celebrate another day” I said to my friends.  I stayed home that evening and cried.  There seems to be something so wrong about celebrating the end of a beautiful beginning. I couldn’t do that.  I haven’t spoken to for heard from Warren since the day the divorce was granted.  I am thankful for that. 

Have you ever been haunted by the what ifs of your life?

     I have been haunted by a nagging compulsion to make sense of my life for the last several years.  It became even more intense upon the demise of this, my last marriage.  Something is pushing me down this path.  I feel agitated every time I put this “project” on hold.  I will have no peace until I do.  It seems like a silly and useless thing to do.  The past can’t be changed.  I can’t change myself much at my age.  My life shaping decisions were made long ago when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  I have passed more than the halfway mark in my life.  What is the point?  I don’t have too many places to go in the future.  What could the future possibly have in store for me at this time in my life?  Still some irrational force is pushing me to sift through my life.

Venice, Rome, Florence, Piso, Orvieto – great food, great sights, great history, great wine, great company, exhilarating romance.  Is there a better place to fall in love than Italy?  Romance does not always have to lead to commitment except for me.  I hadn’t learned as much as I thought I guess.  I was raised that love and sex could not be separated from commitment.  This new generation seems to be at the other end of the spectrum – sex without love or commitment.  As a therapist said to me, “You don’t have to marry everyone you have sex with.”  If only I could have internalized that.  

Perhaps my Sister put it best when she so crudely said, about the trip to Italy , “I thought you just wanted to get laid.  You didn’t have to turn it into something more”. If only I had listened to my Sisters vulgar words of wisdom.  What if I had taken her advice?  What would my life look like now?  Would I be happier or more content?  Did I get anything positive out of my last marriage or was it all just one big terrible mistake?  What if I read too much into my chance encounter with Warren? What if “Fate” really had other choices in mind for me other than the one I took?