While
waiting for my grandchild Lucia to be born doesn’t bear the absurdist burden of
waiting for Godot—who never shows up—it does require distraction. How this
distraction fits into daily life is where the anxiety comes in. Do I start a
new article because I know I need something for next week’s La Jicarita or because it’s going to
make the time pass until the phone rings and Jakob tells me, “Casey’s in labor”?
Do I need to make time to
water the houseplants and hoop house and flower garden RIGHT NOW in case the
phone rings and I have to get in the car and go to Albuquerque (my bag is
already packed)? Do I dare take a hike? Should I write a blog post because I
can’t really focus on anything else? Obviously, the latter possibility prevailed.
I
went to the neighbors’ house for dinner last night—Jakob knows the number (no
cell phones in El Valle)—and with several generations of mothers present the
talk naturally turned to birth stories. When we were younger, having our kids,
we told our birth stories over and over again, partly to delight in our shared
experience and partly to reaffirm in our own minds that we actually did this,
we birthed these little creatures who would go on to consume our lives forever.
Now
that we’re grandmothers, or impending grandmothers, we get to tell our stories
all over again. And what a diversity of experience they reveal: a homebirth
where the midwife had to walk up the impassable muddy road because of the
spring mud; 12 hour homebirths with older kids in attendance; first births that
came in two hours; induced labor births that ended in c-sections. When the
discussion turned to the option of epidurals when complications or extended
labors demand relief, the dad who was listening in said something about difficulties
that may result from a spinal. He was quickly put in his place when his wife
said if she’d have had access to an epidural during her long labor—she
delivered at home—she’d have taken it in a heartbeat. Casey will soon have her
own story to tell, and it will be fascinating.
I’m
reading a book of essays by Elinor Lipman, who is mostly known for her novels
of “Austen-like wit.” In one essay she writes that her son “is the best idea we
ever had.” That bold claim seems absurd when put in context. I worry about
Lucia being born in a time of NSA surveillance, climate change, unquestioned
technological change, increasing income disparity, and on and on. Of course, my
kids were born during the Reagan administration, which set the course for the
neoliberal agenda that is the cause of much of what I’m worrying about for
Lucia. I was worried then, too, but I still had my babies. Maybe we keep having
them because they help allay these fears through both their need and their gift:
parenthood. I’m very glad I didn’t miss it.
The
fact that they’re now having babies—or one of them is—is mind boggling. It
won’t really register until I’m in the delivery room holding my granddaughter.
So I’m waiting, Lucia, as are your mom and dad. Please let them know it’s time
for the phone call.
