My Life in Words, Part Three: Three mothers

My mom's life story continues, it started here, and continued here. Follow along, its far from over. 

"hyperbole from women who were born with southern story telling in their genes..."

 Evelyn (my grandmother)

 So my grandmother collapsed, grieving for an infant that she hadn’t even known about four months earlier.  While accepting the imminent death of a baby she didn’t know, she prayed for the life of the baby she DID know – her firstborn who yes, had made a mistake, but still deserved to live.  Great aunts who were there at the hospital to support their sister-in-law told me snippets of the story as I grew up.  They marveled at the size of my grandmother’s swollen feet.  Swollen from hours and hours of standing by her daughter’s bed, surely praying silently that she would live.  Other’s talked about the head of the bed being put on blocks so that the whatever blood had not been lost would have be sent to the areas of the body which most needed it.  The parts of the story I most enjoyed were the ones where each aunt told her version of the joy that was expressed when the news was first reported that the baby who was thought to be dead was actually living.  Not just barely living, but living and breathing and kicking, and doing everything that newborn babies are expected to do.  The nuns called it a miracle for sure.  But those who lacked that same religious connection also called it a miracle.  And suddenly, all the prayers which had been divided between a dying baby and a dying mother became directed to the mother, just a 17 year old girl, who still was in that comatose state between life and death.  She remained there for two days. Many many stories grew out of those two days.  There was no lack of hyperbole from women who were born with southern story telling in their genes.  Oddly enough, there appeared to be no males in this story, with the exception of the obstetrician.  The girl’s father, the grandfather, who was there, of course, was the epitome of the stoic.  Silently smoking Lucky Strike after Lucky Strike, keeping all his prayers, worries, and thoughts to himself.  Not once in my life did he ever talk about those dark days.  But many many times he broke through his upbringing to tell me how much he loved me and how happy he was that I was his.

"Those same fates must have seen the challenges that were to come..."

I believe that the fates knew how difficult it was going to be to fit me into a family with very mixed emotions about my arrival.  So the easiest way to ensure my acceptance would be to make my head the right size, make my eyes expressive, and make my cooing sound as though it was directed to whoever happened to be holding me at the time.  Those same fates must have seen the challenges that were to come so they went overboard in one area – they made me a beautiful baby.  Beautiful to the point where strangers would stop and remark on my loveliness.  And I was sweet natured.  To hear the memories, I rarely cried.  The Good Sister, who became the Good Aunt at my birth, was only 15 when I entered the family.  In a real sense, she then gave up her position of being the baby.  Her reality was that she became one of my mothers. Each “mother” took a role in my development.  Sadly, the biggest role of my actual genetic mother, was just that.  She went through the difficult pregnancy and horrific birth to get me to this realm.  Then her job became receiving compliments I generated.  That went on for the largest part of my life.  The Good Aunt became just that – a good aunt.  She was the one I waited on each day to come through the door.  My first words were her name.  It was her back that nearly broke from bending over to hold my hands while I practiced the act of walking.  She hovered when I was with my mother as she was always fearful that something bad would happen to me.  She projected the events of her life onto my life.  And she never, ever stopped doing that.

(Aunt Beth on the left, Evelyn on the right and the overexposed baby Cathy.)

But the biggest role was the mother who did the mothering things.  And that fell to my grandmother.  She was only 34 when I was born, and that was certainly more the age to be a mother than a grandmother.  But she didn’t fight to make her daughter assume the role of mother.  I think that it worked out just as she wanted it to in her heart.  She became my mother.  She prepared my food and she fed me.  She washed my clothes and she dressed me.  She bought my books and she read to me.  She filled every need I had, and in some cases, she created a need for the only reason of filling it for me.  She would have denied that, of course, but all those who were close enough knew it.  The greatest thing she did was to tell me every day – most often several times a day – that I was loved.

My Mom's three mothers: 

Me-Maw, Aunt Beth, Evelyn

My Life in Words, Part Two: People who never learned to weather the storm.

My mother is writing her story, for part one, start here

(found this in the memory book my Grandmother made for me... the lack of finer detail makes sense now that my mom is writing her story.)

“my” birth story      

          The rest of that chapter is very garbled.  It is something I must have studied when I was tired.  I almost remember it but maybe the details don’t gel, or facts are fuzzy. It could have been that the instructor, my aunt, was too cautious about how she taught me the truth of my beginnings.  She didn’t want to hurt me, but wanted to be truthful and believable.  Even though I was forty, it was the first time I had been told “my” birth story.  And as much as she wanted to give me the feel good phrases that other babies are given, instead she was left with painful, ugly facts which she had to spin into a story that at best she could make humorous.  She glossed over the supreme family explosion that occurred that night in September when a sixteen year old was confronted about her sexuality and thus, the state of her body – which by that time was “our” body.   Her mother yelled, her father cried, and each one pulled and tugged and demanded until the name of the perpetrator (never called my father) was revealed.  Then came the movie script version that was reality.  A posse of fathers and uncles tracked down this donor and pulled him from under a bed, and under the threat of a gun carried by one uncle, a courthouse wedding quickly ensued.  Too bad a marriage never followed.  Well, nothing that could be called a marriage anyway.  The teen egg carrier returned to her suburban existence of living with her parents and arguing with her sister about whose turn it was to do the dishes.  The only change was that now there were other reasons for the younger sister to resent the older one.  The pregnant one, despite doing something BAD, got treated royally.  She was given steak to eat when everyone else had cheap cuts.  She got fresh fish while the family got canned mackerel patties. Bad Girl didn’t have to cut the grass, carry full laundry baskets, or go to school.  But the younger sister, who had done nothing wrong, had to go to school and walk down the hallways which by then were full or rumors about her family secret.  It became so bad, the family moved.  And younger sister – good sister – lost all her friends, teachers, routines, and security, to move to a new neighborhood where no one knew about the ugliness.  The resentment that began during the teen years of the younger sister never left her – not even at her death. And in some perverse twist, Good Sister ended up caring for Bad Sister as she died from a disease directly related to another habit she started as an act of rebellion, smoking.  And so, the end of their lives mirrored the beginning.  Struggle, anger, and bitterness existing in a sad dance of two people who never learned to weather the storm.

 It is said that babies come into the world in the exact form needed to insure bonding.

                My troublesome trip into existence didn’t end with a calm, peaceful birth, a delicate moment of a baby being placed in the arms of a waiting, but labor-tired mother.  No, I fought my way into this life, and very nearly took the life of the girl-woman giving birth.  As the pregnancy reached its end, everyone waited, as people have done since time began, for the signals of an impending birth.  But nothing happened.  No twinges of contractions, no stabbing back pains, and no tiny show of blood that would herald what was to come.  Even the doctor expressed his concern, and so a date was set when science would override nature, and labor was going to be started with medicine..  By the time that date arrived, the doctor had become ill with the flu.  Yet he was so concerned about my mom and her birth, he came to the hospital to preside over the events himself.  That fact was often repeated to me, the reasoning being that I would understand how wanted I was and how important even the doctor thought I was.  He remained the doctor who took care of our family’s gynecological needs for many years until his retirement.  Even he told me how my birth was one of his most memorable deliveries. To understand my delivery, you have to put your mind back to a past that had no ultrasounds, no heartbeat monitors, and no epidurals.  Doctors had stethoscopes, their hands, and years of training and experience.  Or at least, one would hope that the doctor standing between her legs had training and experience.  There was no internet to check those facts out, to be sure. 

                It is said that babies come into the world in the exact form needed to insure bonding.  Maybe that is why I was beautiful.  For many years, older relatives would tell me that I was the most beautiful baby they had ever seen.   Now, when I look back on my life, I think that from the point of my birth on, I had to do everything possible to make people fall in love with me.  I disrupted a family, I uprooted the social and educational life of a popular teenager, and I very nearly killed the one who job it was to birth me.  If you go back and read that sentence about the doctor deciding to kickstart the labor process, it has no predicting hints of what that one decision would cause.  I think the doctor always remembered my birth because two lives were very nearly lost – mine and my mothers.  No one knew, or suspected I guess, that my in utero food source – the very one that was the beneficiary of all those steaks and fish – was blocking my doorway to the world. Science calls it placenta previa, but in 1953 – and even today actually – it could be called death.  When the staff realized what was happening, my mother, still in her laboring bed, was rolled into an operating room.  She was hemorrhaging.   It was awful, I was told.  A nun/nurse came out to the waiting area and asked to speak to the mother’s parents.  They were told that there would not be a baby – not a live one anyway.  She explained what had happened, and that in those cases, the babies cannot live without a source of oxygen.  Without a source of life is what she was really saying.  I couldn’t breathe air yet, and I no longer had that lifeline umbilical cord attached to a placenta.  I was in a dying limbo.  But so was the teenager who had to have had conflicting emotions about the baby inside her. She wanted that life.  But she was ashamed of that life and if it went away, maybe things would be easier. 

Part three here

My Life in Words, Part One: The changes in her body.

I love words, I asked my mom to give me the best gift ever - her words.

On Christmas Day she sent a file with the start of her life story.  I am moved to tears. The story deserves to be shared. I asked if I could share it here. She said it is a gift to me and I can do with it what I want. So without further ado.. My Mom's story: 

              

  I had a lot of strange thoughts as a child.  The odd thing is that I didn’t think they were strange.  It was only upon the telling that I realized that others didn’t have that common belief system.  Now, don’t waste time trying to imagine what my strange thoughts were.  They weren’t interesting enough to waste your thoughts on.  Here’s an example.  I thought that as humans ate, the food filled up their bodies from the feet up.  One would only have to poop when that used up food reached the place that all poop needs to reach.  I don’t think that was my strangest thought, but I don’t think it was my least strangest either – it is just given as an example, so you can begin to know me as a child.

I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in what is most politely called the Deep South.

                I was considered quite bright as a child, which in a way complicated the building up of my knowledge base.  Family members just assumed that I knew things.  Extended family members (who made up most of the people we associated with) didn’t really care what I knew.  But I often ate little nibbles of information from the very table of life where others didn’t even know I dined.  You see, children were often unnoticed, much less assessed as to their intellect.  So I passed through my days, gathering tidbits of information which I somehow fitted into my knowledge base, while discarding other tidbits which no longer seemed accurate, interesting, or even believable.  I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in what is most politely called the Deep South.  Everyone I knew, even those I was not related to, were interesting.  If they weren’t interesting on their own, their neighbors and friends made them interesting by decorating their mundane lives with half truths about their pasts, presents, or futures.

                Oddly enough, the topic of which I knew the least was myself.  I didn’t know who I was.  I only knew that I had a mother, a grandmother, a grandfather, and an aunt.  Those were the people who lived in my house.  During my younger years, I never questioned – didn’t even wonder – about why the makeup of my household was nothing like the makeup of the other homes on the block.  When my friends had to go because a mom had called them inside, I was listening for the voice of a Me-Maw.  Only rarely did a child ask me what, or who, a Me-Maw was.  I knew intellectually that she was my grandmother, but I didn’t quite understand why she had taken on the jobs that were usually done by the moms of the neighborhood.  Since most of my early playmates were my cousins, I didn’t have to explain to them.  My adult self wonders what stories and explanations they had been told by their parents to explain the makeup of our household.  I could ask them now.  I am on good terms and in contact with at least two of them.  But I don’t want to.  I don’t want to know what mean or sad stories they were told about me.  Or maybe I don’t want to hear the lie they would have to make up quickly in order to respond to my question.  Either way, I’m content to just let it be.

               

“Good” girls didn’t come home pregnant

  Ahh.. Me-Maw.  Maybe Savior would have been a more appropriate name.  Now that I am as old as I ever expected to be, I can put myself in her place and get a glimmer of what it was like for me to join the family.  It was the fifties.  “Good” girls didn’t come home pregnant after meeting some boy at the skating rink. It wasn’t even on her radar.  It took forty years before my aunt finally told me the story, and after I heard it, I understood why it took that long.  It wasn’t pretty and there really wasn’t any way to pretty it up.  A sixteen year old girl took up with a seventeen year old boy who flattered her into doing things she hadn’t done before. And once he had enjoyed the experience, he made the decision not to enjoy it again.  It was a typical teenage flash-in-the-pan romance.  But there was this one little detail that wasn’t so typical.  In whatever uncomfortable, seedy location they found to couple, a miracle happened.  And I was that miracle. 

a swelling in a belly

                Later on in life, it became obvious that the joining of babymaking material was not something that was going to happen easily to my mother.  I can imagine her slowly coming to the realization of what had happened.  She was probably sick as only a newly pregnant woman can be.  And the changes in her body so obvious in the mirror, the shower, and the bath had to be hard to ignore.  But ignore she did.  Her brain helped of course.  When one doesn’t want to believe something, it doesn’t exist.  But you can’t deny a fetus into oblivion.  It keeps growing.  And growing.  And growing.  Every day, something is added to that mistake.  A heart starts to beat; little toes grow on little legs that soon begin kicking so hard, the movement is felt.  And a teenager lies in bed at night and tries to plan away something that cannot be planned away no matter how many prayers, how many threats, or how many pleas.  Until one day, all the plans explode, and the growing truth becomes too obvious for others not to see.  In this case, the teen with the secret is sent outside to hang the clothes on the clothesline because that is the way it was done in 1952.  But some reason – maybe a mother checking to see if the job was being done right, or maybe she just looked out to see a bird she heard chirp.  But what she saw took her breath the way that no bird could have done regardless of its beauty.  She saw the sun – the same sun that would dry her clothes and leave them smelling summer sweet – shining through the thin shirt her clothes-hanging daughter was wearing.  And the almost autumn sun showed a swelling in a belly that she recognized from the two times before when her body had looked the same way.  And the pit of her stomach told her what was true way before her mind – or her heart – could accept it.

To be continued...

Part two here