On this end-of-May, day—forty-five years ago—I arrived into the world at the tail-end of a trend of many women giving birth without dads in delivery rooms.
My father was with my mother through much of her labor but then just as I was about to emerge, she was rolled away into an operating room—bright lights all around.
When he first laid eyes on me, the forceps had been sterilized and put away and I had been bathed and wrapped in a soft, pink blanket—looking slightly bruised from the journey.
Afterward, he headed back to the house where a neighbor was looking after my sister and then came and went from the hospital in the next few days as my mother recovered.
This was before the time of drive-thru deliveries and returning home and being on your own sometimes within hours of giving birth.
On one of those days—and for many hours—my mother looked again and again at the watch on her small wrist, wondering where my father was.
He hadn’t shown up when he said he would.
I’m not sure why she didn’t call or even if she could have.
Much later—when he finally arrived—he explained that he had gotten caught-up mowing the lawn and that my grandmother was cooking chicken paprikash and so he couldn’t leave until she was finished but he was there now and oh look at the baby!
My father can be very charming—distracting from the topic at hand—and he does also go to great lengths to prioritize a well-kept lawn and fine food.
This is to say, my mother believed him—that he had lost track of time.
He had actually been across town at the children’s hospital with my sister—then, two years old—where she was having her stomach pumped of my aunt’s thyroid medication—swallowed, while unattended in the bathroom, in the time before helicopter parenting and safety lids.
It wasn’t until my mother came home from the hospital a few days later and was walking up a sidewalk toward the house that she discovered the truth.
My sister—with her platinum-blond hair and likely mismatched outfit—was sitting on the front steps waiting to greet us.
As my mother approached, she lifted her little arm up to show my mom the hospital tag around her tiny wrist.
Mommy, look at my bracelet!
That was just-the-start of all of the twists and turns of living that have transpired in these last four and a half decades.
In some ways it seems I’ve only just begun to get my bearings and come to understand what living is about.
In other ways it seems as if every-single-step-upon-this-path—and every misstep for that matter—has had a distinct purpose and been adding up to this very moment in time.
It can be tempting on birthdays to wish for something monumental to happen—a surprise, a thoughtful gift, a message from a long-lost friend.
It can be tempting to believe or project the opposite, as well—to brush aside the idea that a single-day-in-a-year can hold any particular relevance and insist instead on the normalcy of this truly miraculous event that marks the beginning of a life.
To discover a balance between the two seems like an apropos metaphor for the grand act of living as a whole.
Rising early on Sunday—sitting cross-legged on my couch in the quiet—I leaned forward to reach for my coffee perched on the leather ottoman bought a few years back to prevent head injury in wrestling children falling from the sofa.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of our fox.
It was the mother—the healthier of the two who have been making themselves comfortable on our property these last months, their den likely constructed nearby.
Her face was very still and staring distinctly down the stretch of lawn on one side of our house.
I thought maybe she was trying to decide whether it was safe to pass-through.
Then I noticed a rustling behind her.
I knew she had two pups—we had seen them on another day frolicking in our yard, fearless and naïve to the world around them.
I thought maybe she was holding them back standing there.
I decided to quietly get up and retrieve my binoculars from a closet across the room.
I knew it was risky.
I had barely risen from the couch when she heard me and began to move.
I knew in an instant what had been going on.
She had been standing there nursing her pups.
She began first trotting across the lawn, the little foxes still attached trying to get one last drink.
Then she began to run.
One small fox released itself and got its footing quickly and ran with her, away.
The other sat there dazed having been knocked loose.
His body language said, what just happened?
I remember having to suddenly stop nursing my own children at times—in a restaurant or some other inconvenient place—and them looking up at me with a similar, confused expression.
It reminds me of how it can be sometimes living out the human experience—confusing, disorienting, abrupt.
We do all eventually find our way—even when this doesn’t seem to be the case.
There is no right way, either.
This I have come to know.
A towering birch tree with its white, textured trunk and unusually draping branches stands tall outside the three picture windows a few feet from me—perhaps wilted from the steamy temperatures that have risen and fallen precipitously these last few days.
Every so often, a powerful gust of wind comes bursting forth brushing the branches to the side like long tresses of hair across a neckline—then just as suddenly stopping and bringing the flowing branches to stillness.
Subscribe to my mailing list!
Leave a comment (all fields required)
Comments will be approved before showing up.
