musings

Licorice, white wine, good, and bad

My Trader Joe’s shopping cart this afternoon.
With apologies to people who don’t like lists. It’s all I’ve got today.

Things I am not good at:

Eating
Sleeping
Paying attention
Being patient
Being present
Riding in a car (tip: don’t go on safari)
Driving a car
Laundry
Walking without tripping
Details
Growing fingernails without chewing them
Leaving blemishes alone (blemishes? me? of course not)
Running without limping
Talking to new people (or, really, most people)
Belts and tucked-in shirts
Checking my voicemail

Things I am good at:

Tetris
Airport security
Checking my email
Thank you notes

Shocking

I read about the case of New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. V.M. and B.G. with horror. The story of a laboring woman refusing a cesarean section and, as a direct result, having her newborn daughter (healthy after a vaginal delivery) removed from her custody shocks me. She was declared to have abused her unborn daughter and was described as having been uncooperative and belligerent in labor.

I am not a lawyer and am sure there are nuances to this case that I do not understand. But at the most basic level this case privileges the medical establishment and judgment of a doctor over the rights and instincts of a woman in a way that I find tremendously alarming. I utterly reject the logic that says that for challenging the medical establishment’s assumptions, V.M. is a mother so unfit as to deserve having her daughter permanently removed from her custody. How is this different from a parent deciding to spare a child with cancer a painful and low-odds chemotherapy treatment? In that case, the parent is deemed humane. Here, V.M. was deemed unfit and reckless.

My understanding is that informed consent is a part of all medical procedures, particularly those involving major surgery. Clearly there is a fine line here to be walked; in some small percentage of cases, cesarean sections unquestionably save lives. That said, the US averages about 33% of deliveries by c-section, whereas in western Europe it is about 5%. This discrepancy suggests, at least to me, that a great deal of US c-sections might be avoided. We know for a fact that there are many interventions in modern childbirth that are neither medically necessary nor, perhaps more alarmingly, completely understood by the laboring mother. I do not judge in the least how people choose to deliver their babies, but I think it is understandable that the laboring V.M. might have questioned the absolute need for a c-section in her case (and she was proven right).

By implying – in fact, asserting – that V.M. ought to have submitted without question to the medical authorities and procedures, the ruling sets a scary precedent that reminds me of the era of “twilight sleep” at the beginning of the 20th century, when women delivered their babies in a semi-conscious state and often had no memory of the experience. Do we really want to return to a world where a laboring mother is nothing other than a vessel, whose rights are forfeited in favor of the norms of the medical establishment?

This case seems to tread on both the tricky landscape of the abortion debate (where the rights of a woman intersect with those of her unborn child) and that of the neonatal ward (where questions of when and how much lifesaving effort should be applied to very very premature babies). I am no expert on either topic and I understand that there are deep moral complexities involved. I do believe, however, in the primacy of a woman’s right to her own body and, certainly in this case, where a healthy vaginal delivery ensued, find the removal of the baby from the mother’s care to be punitive in the extreme. It is one thing for a hospital staff to be disgruntled that a mother would not sign a blanket c-section waiver, but quite another to deem that mother as unfit after the child has been born and the c-section is proven to have been unnecessary.

Furthermore, to use V.M.’s “uncooperative” behavior during labor as evidence of her unfitness as a mother is ludicrous. I’ve delivered two babies and I was certainly neither placid nor quiet during either experience. There is no reason to extrapolate from a woman’s behavior in labor that she is not concerned above all with the health of her baby. While I absolutely acknowledge that there may be more to this case, both legally and medically, than I understand, the basic facts of it trouble me deeply. A woman who questions the assumptions of the modern hospital birth and chooses to follow her own intuition is not abusive, and she does not deserve to lose her maternal rights. In fact, I would go further and say that a woman who is educated, engaged, and aware enough to actively participate in her own labor and delivery deserves to be celebrated, not punished.

Happiness and sadness as they arise

Be open to your happiness and sadness as they arise. – John M. Thomas

I love this (also yet another sky photograph). As my Landslide post described, happiness and sadness arise for me out of thin air sometimes, swamping like an unanticipated wave. At other times they come up with a steadier drumbeat, reaching a more conventional crescendo.

This is, I believe, one of the major tasks of my life: to learn to ride these various swells and ebbs without fear, to honor each moment as it comes, to trust that sadness will eventually make way to happiness again as firmly as I already know that joy will fade away to melancholy.

And after all, the happiness means nothing without the sadness. That is another of the few things I know for sure. I don’t much care for The Prophet, finding it slightly hackneyed, but one of Gibran’s lines encapsulates this more perfectly than I ever could: The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Landslide

The first 90 minutes of my day today perfectly illustrate the potent combination of randomness and emotion that defines my current life.

Whit emerged from his room wearing his Tonka tee shirt, shorts, a plastic Police helmet, and wielding a paper towel roll that had clearly been repurposed as a gun. He leapt out into the hall (I was sitting at my desk, right there) with the kind of energy and frantic gun-pointing that I associate with the Law & Order folks breaking into an apartment that the dangerously armed perp might still be hiding in.

After Eggo waffles, Whit begs to bring his paper towel roll gun to camp and I refuse. “But it’s just cardboard, mummy!” he pleads. I give him a “don’t BS me” glare and he huffs, “Okay, fine! But I want it here when I get home!” before throwing it down by the door.

Grace made her own fashion statement today in pink madras bermuda shorts and a size 2T Elmo tee shirt (both short and snug). Adequately sartorially styled, the three of us piled into the car to go to Starbucks and then camp. I almost don’t need to mention, so regular an occurence has it been this summer: it is pouring.

As Whit is climbing into the car, slipping around in his too-small hand-me-down rainboots (I encouraged him to wear crocs, he insisted on the boots, more on that later) I scooped out of his seat a handful of puffy My Little Pony stickers that had been favors at last weekend’s birthday party. I shoved them into the pocket of my raincoat to surreptitiously throw away, gambling that he had forgotten about them.

After Starbucks and the drive-through ATM, we head to Grace’s camp. She is singing along with alarming comfort to the Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow.” I asked her how she knows every single word and she shrugs, “We sing this at camp.” When did she turn into a teenager? Glancing in the rearview mirror, I see her long, tanned legs dangling towards the floor and feel as though I can see her fourteen year old self in her six year old body.

“Gracie, you know how we are going out for a special dinner tonight at the American Girl Doll store? With Caroline and her mummy?”

“Yes, today is the day!” (she had been counting down, no joke, on an hourly basis since I told her about this plan on Monday).

“Well, do you mind if we go a few minutes early and you do one errand with me?”

“Oh, mummy, I’d be delighted!” Again with the mini adult language.

After we drop Grace off, Whit and I head over to his camp. This is across town and takes a surprisingly long time in the rush hour traffic. As we sit at a red light, Landslide comes on the radio. I am flooded with emotions, and tears fill my eyes. Thoughts run through my head about change, people growing older, life moving ahead, and how much I fear uncertainty and the unknown. I reach over and pull on a pair of big shades (I always have one at the ready, part of my wrinkle mania), never mind the pouring rain.

Whit is happily oblivious to my little emotional attack in the front seat. I am navigating through back streets like the local I am, avoiding as many lights as possible, peering through my tears and my dark glasses, when I hear, “Hey, Mummy! Good way to go!” This causes a laugh to break through my sudden gloom. My son is opining on the best way to snake through Cambridge so as to avoid traffic and lights. For some reason this strikes me as hilarious.

When we arrive at camp, Whit pitches a small fit that he doesn’t have his crocs on. He whines, loudly, “Oh, mummy, you are just not a good mummy! You forgot to bring my crocs!” I grit my teeth and continue pulling him by the hand through the crowded parking lot, choosing not to even rise to the bait. They know how to pull the strings, these children of mine! Moments after arriving at the purple room he is happily scampering around in sock feet. Fine.

And now I am staring out the window at the downpour, thinking about how every hour of my life seems to contain an amalgam of puffy stickers, venti nonfat lattes, and crashing waves of emotion and melancholy.

What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Nude Olympics

And now for something a lot lighter …

You know how certain songs just instantly transport you back to a moment in time? At least they do for me, which is kind of funny given that I am totally tone deaf. Music is not, shall we say, a strength. Still, certain songs come on the radio and I am swiftly and completely immersed in a particular memory. Recently “Under the Bridge” has taken me back to the Exeter grill and “Glory Days” to Princeton graduation. Today “Jesse’s Girl” was playing when I was driving on Storrow Drive and suddenly it was January, 1994, and it was snowing.

Not everyone was back at school after winter break. Princeton has that great tradition of exams after Christmas, which kind of takes away from the holidays. But it means everyone’s on campus for three weeks in January. Which is often when the first snow comes in New Jersey. And we all knew what that meant …

Only three of us were back in our tiny rooms in the Forbes attic. K was still in Florida. The morning dawned gray and cold, and the sky spat rain and sleet all day. The rumors ran through campus all day long … It’s tonight! It’s not tonight. It’s tonight! It strikes me how differently decisions like this must get made in an era of cell phones and email. We had to talk about it at the library and call each other from our land line phones. Anyway, by the time night fell there was a crust of ice on the ground and it was sleeting/snowing heavily.

This was it. It was our night. It was the Nude Olympics. Any sophomore who lived in Holder that night, site of where the run would take place, wound up hosting a party. I don’t remember much about the specifics other than my active decision not to drink alcohol. Not because I was a teetotaller but because I wanted to be sober to run on this slippery surface. What a great decision that turned out to be!

I remember as the parties wore on and midnight drew closer, somehow it just seemed natural that people started shedding their clothes. I remember that the gesticulations of smokers were suddenly really dangerous (it seems amazing to me that people just smoked at parties in those days – that is impossible to fathom now). I had cigarette burns on my arms, actually. And I remember that someone took a sharpie and wrote on my back “No longer Jesse’s girl.” (hence the song reference). I had indeed just broken up with my boyfriend, but I’m still not sure who wrote that on my back or why at that particular moment it was relevant. Despite my sobriety a palpable air of mischievousness and play coursed through the night and certain details are blurry.

At midnight groups of sophomores burst out of various Holder rooms and started running. It was slow going, and groups formed. There were a lot more guys than girls. There was a huge crowd watching and some flashbulbs going off (but no cellphone cameras – thank God). I have in my mind one picture that I saw later of several of my friends right in the front of the pack. My memory tells me someone was holding some kind of flag but I don’t know if I am right – it’s hard to imagine running with an American flag, so maybe it was a class of 1996 banner?

We did slow laps around Holder and out into other quads as well. I have no memory of being cold. And then it happened. I fell. I slipped on the sheet ice and wiped out. I stood up and remember thinking: I just broke my leg. Like the responsible young adult I was, I finished my lap with my friends, limping badly, and then went back to the Holder hallway where I had stowed my clothes. I recall how much it hurt to pull my pants over my hiking boot. I then limped to the infirmary.

I walked into the infirmary and started crying. My leg hurt so damned much and I could not believe what a graceless klutz I was (and still am). I told the nurse my leg was broken and she told me, somewhat coldly, that no way it was not and I had to wait until the morning when I could get an x-ray at the local hospital. I asked why I could not go to the ER for an x-ray. And I was told that was because my leg was most likely not broken. The hours that ensued were not fun. I remember C was there, though don’t recall if anyone else was.

I remember calling my mother and sobbing. I was in pain and I felt incredibly stupid for falling. I remember the nurse pulling me aside and asking me if I needed to talk to someone about an abusive relationship. I was flabbergasted by the question and then realized she was referring to the cigarette burns on my arms.

When morning finally dawned, I went to the hospital, got my x-ray, and found out my leg was in fact broken. I remember that my being glad I was right and the b*&%3 nurse wrong almost outweighed my dismay at … well, having a broken leg.

I was back in my room midafternoon with a thick, heavy cast on when the landline rang. It was K, from Florida. “Hey! I can’t believe I missed the Nude Olympics! Oh my God! And I heard someone broke their leg! Can you believe it?” Umm, yeah. I can.

When I crutched into the dining room of Forbes that evening a hush fell over the room. All eyes turned to me. Someone said, “That’s her!” I was mortified. To think I wasted my 15 minutes of fame on that.