In this same notebook, I have written notes from our trip to Astoria last September: "Stephen Weber arrives and takes an oyster shooter, I beat both men at two games of bowling at Lower Columbia Bowl." The Astoria trip was a getaway of our favorite kind, and one of the best trips we'd taken in a long time. About a month after returning from that trip, we found out we were expecting a baby. We had gone to the grocery store one day and I'd thrown a pregnancy test in the cart. It was a Fred Meyer and Robert had bought a belt in the men's clothing section. When we returned home, the buckle broke for him immediately, and I went to the bathroom to grab the receipt from the wastepaper basket. I took the pregnancy test, and the result was positive. I came out and said, "I'm sorry about your belt, but the good news is we're having a kid." There is a blank page in my notebook after my account from the Astoria trip, then, as if no time had passed, a note from January: "I thought my baby would be an athlete. I won two games of bowling last September in Astoria, and I played my best game of mini golf to date on my brother's birthday last December across the Canadian border." I wrote those notes days after finding out my baby wasn't going to live.
The first time I heard his heartbeat, I knew he'd be a soldier. It was found immediately, loud and persistent, and the look on the doctor's face was the look of satisfaction, of pride, that everything was good and strong, as it should be. The first ultrasound at 10 weeks showed arms and legs swimming, waving, and we laughed because here we had quite the character; our baby was already hamming it up for the camera. I remember asking the tech at that time if she could see the right amount of arms and legs, if it was a human, if everything looked as it should on the screen, and of course it did. This was first time mother stuff, the jitters of someone who hoped her body was home enough for a child to live and grow.
My father has this ongoing family joke about me that has to do with my ability to escape tragedy. When I was living in Idaho and taking the greyhound bus back and forth over the pass several times a year, every time there was a setback due to weather, or an accident reported on the road, I was always on the bus that had just managed to squeak by. We were living in the San Francisco Bay Area during the time of the big earthquake in 1989, and while everyone else in my family had felt it, I happened to be riding in the back of a carpool minivan coming home from piano lessons, and I hadn't even known it had happened. After the news about my baby came, my best friend since the age of thirteen said to me, crying over the telephone, that she was sorry she hadn't prayed every day for my baby's health, but that it was me, it was my baby and there was no question in her mind that of course he was going to be healthy.
And suddenly you're speaking with a social worker in Seattle and she's asking you what you'd like done with your son's remains, and she's asking if he has a name, and you have paperwork you need to fill out. Suddenly you're filling out paperwork and you're slightly drugged for your nerves, and you see this line that absolutely stuns you, and you are even confused for a moment because you can't believe what you are doing, and it's asking for your relation to the baby, and you forget for a moment what that is, because you always wondered if you even had the instinct in you, and now you know you do because you couldn't save him, and all you can do is look up at the ceiling in that small enclosed room and close your eyes for a second before writing, for the very first time, "Mother."
Read More
The first time I heard his heartbeat, I knew he'd be a soldier. It was found immediately, loud and persistent, and the look on the doctor's face was the look of satisfaction, of pride, that everything was good and strong, as it should be. The first ultrasound at 10 weeks showed arms and legs swimming, waving, and we laughed because here we had quite the character; our baby was already hamming it up for the camera. I remember asking the tech at that time if she could see the right amount of arms and legs, if it was a human, if everything looked as it should on the screen, and of course it did. This was first time mother stuff, the jitters of someone who hoped her body was home enough for a child to live and grow.
My father has this ongoing family joke about me that has to do with my ability to escape tragedy. When I was living in Idaho and taking the greyhound bus back and forth over the pass several times a year, every time there was a setback due to weather, or an accident reported on the road, I was always on the bus that had just managed to squeak by. We were living in the San Francisco Bay Area during the time of the big earthquake in 1989, and while everyone else in my family had felt it, I happened to be riding in the back of a carpool minivan coming home from piano lessons, and I hadn't even known it had happened. After the news about my baby came, my best friend since the age of thirteen said to me, crying over the telephone, that she was sorry she hadn't prayed every day for my baby's health, but that it was me, it was my baby and there was no question in her mind that of course he was going to be healthy.
And suddenly you're speaking with a social worker in Seattle and she's asking you what you'd like done with your son's remains, and she's asking if he has a name, and you have paperwork you need to fill out. Suddenly you're filling out paperwork and you're slightly drugged for your nerves, and you see this line that absolutely stuns you, and you are even confused for a moment because you can't believe what you are doing, and it's asking for your relation to the baby, and you forget for a moment what that is, because you always wondered if you even had the instinct in you, and now you know you do because you couldn't save him, and all you can do is look up at the ceiling in that small enclosed room and close your eyes for a second before writing, for the very first time, "Mother."
