It was 20 years ago tomorrow, that my friend Sandra hosted a luncheon at her house for a few ladies, in honor of our friend Michelle's birthday.
Wow. If you only knew how many directions I could take this post with a statement like that. I could talk about those ladies, and about how after 20 years, they're still so dear to me. Four Life Friends, Sandra, Michelle, Marty, and myself, formed over the common bond of new marriage, and the desire we all shared to have children.
I could talk about how Marty was the first of us to actually have a baby. About how we all doted over her little Casey K., and about how heartbroken we were when James and Marty moved their family to Florida. And then I could add that Miss Casey is now a Mrs., and expecting a baby of her own. What a miracle time can be.
And while we are on the subject grand babies, Sandra is expecting her first one any day now. We keep looking for the updates with great anticipation. Can it be? Can this group of newly marrieds really be bringing in grandchildren?
What about Michelle? I could share a lot about her. About how she moved from California to Idaho just a few years before I moved back to California from Nebraska, and about how I've been mad at long distance friendships ever since. Nah. I'd rather keep it positive, and share that her firstborn is sleeping in a college dorm these days, and about how proud she is of her bunch. Also about how inspiring she has been to us all as she has weathered severe illness with her husband of nearly 25 years, and about how we marvel that she has stayed above rising flood waters through her husband's battle with liver cancer, which culminated in a liver transplant last year.
These ladies rock Proverbs 31 like champions, and I am so proud to have them as my friends.
But it isn't about them that I wish to write. Because you see, as we gathered around Sandra's delicately set luncheon table, I was past my due date as I carried my own first born child, whom I was certain, with a deeply set maternal instinct, was a boy. His name was to be Stephen. (In spite of a dream I had two weeks prior, where I lay in a hospital bed with my baby bundled in pink beside me. With blue eyes, she looked up at me and said, and I quote, "I wuv you." Seriously. She said wuv.)
For over a week, I had been so uncomfortable, that I could barely walk. I moved, all hunched over, with a horrific pain in my back and fanny, and it was all I could do to move. But to not go to celebrate Michelle's birthday was not an option. Things were going well, we were enjoying fun conversation, good food, and then a contraction hit. And it hit hard. I got up from the table to excuse myself from the dining room, and got only as far as the chair next to me. Before I knew it, I was crouching down, gripping the back of the chair with white knuckles, and I growled at poor Debbie, sitting across the table. Debbie was another friend who was with us, and had one of those labor and delivery stories that included words such as beautiful, easy, and one push (it might have been three pushes, but the story gets better every year). Anyway, with bloodshot eyes, I growled, "I thought you said this was going to be easy!!!!!"
Starvation is my first symptom of pregnancy, and it lasts until the baby is born. So, once the wave subsided, I resumed my spot, eating, naturally. But then another one hit.
I went to the doctor that day. Yep. Activity. Real contractions. But the baby, though seemingly low, was up too far for them to admit me. First babies. They take a little longer. But the doctor said I should expect to come back in a few hours.
Like Quasimoto, I cleaned whatever looked like hadn't been cleaned in the last day, and then I cleaned it again.
At 2:00 the next morning, I was arriving at the hospital. By 7am, I was dilated to 10, and ready to start pushing. Except, the epidural was too strong, and I couldn't feel the urge to push. So, they had me push when the machine told us I was needing to. Then, the entire hospital staff left my ex-husband and me to do this on our own, while they had some sort of a party in the break room. I could hear them laughing. I wanted whatever it was they were eating.
After a couple of hours, a thickly accented Filipino nurse came in and decided we needed help. She grabbed the right foot, had my ex-husband grab the left, and they pushed my knees up to my forehead. This was fine, actually, as I've always been a bit agile. But for an anal retentive female, the next part was a bit of a shock. She kept yelling at me, "Push like you poop!" So I did, for another hour. No baby. Finally, she told me to stop. "Baby too big. Need C-Section. Can't push out." I was crushed.
A while later, my doctor strutted in. "Nope! She can do it. Babies are made to be pushed out. Their heads fold in at the top of their skull (he clenched his two hands together to illustrate). That's why they have a soft spot. The baby will come out. Keep pushing." Then, my doctor and spitfire nurse got into a heated argument in the corner of the room. The doctor won. And he returned to the party.
girl first child! Not Stephen. Tessa Renee. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. A gorgeous complexion. Honey-colored hair.
They took her, cleaned her, weighed her, and with all of the family present at this point, the nurse entered the room and had us all guess the birth weight. We threw out 8's, and 9's and then she held up two hands. With all ten fingers. My first baby weighed ten pounds. I felt like a SHE-woman.
The staff dubbed her "Pudge." She looked like a 2 month-old in the nursery next to the other babies.
But with all of the happy memories, I can't help but to think back about the doctor, and how agitated he was when he fixed me up right after the baby came out. At the time, I thought I had done something to make him mad. He was nervous, and snappy. But with reflection, I think he pooped like he pushed when he saw how big the baby was. I have a small frame. When I became pregnant with Tessa, I was 112 pounds. I think he was freaking out. He isn't a doctor anymore, so there might have been other bad calls as well. Just sayin'.
But back to happy. When I think of Tessa, I think of blond, bouncing curls. I think of blue eyes. Yes, in spite of the fact that her father and I both have brown eyes, Tessa has blue eyes. Just like my dream. But she doesn't say, "Wuv." Even when she was little, she wouldn't say something like that. Don't know what's up with that part of the dream, but the rest was spot on.
Tessa is brilliant. She is dry-witted. She is a surprisingly sensitive young lady, as she tends to give off a more gruff facade. She loves chocolate, but she hates meatballs and gravy over rice because a fly fell in her gravy once back in Nebraska. Grossed her out. She was a vegetarian for a while, but alas, her carnivorous roots dominated, and she's been tearing into the meat ever since.
She can watch a famous, modern-day movie and tell you who the composer was. She's not a fan of high heels.
She's fascinating. And I just can't get enough of her. To celebrate her 20th birthday is a mystery to me. How can this be?
Time is a mystery. Life is a mystery. We live, day by day, and we sometimes fail to realize how what seem to be every day occurrences shape us. Some of the strangest things stay in our memory. Like the way the back of Sandra's chair felt as I gripped it. Or the
We live, we lose, we gain, we die. There's a time for everything, as someone smart once said. Time stops for nobody, or nothing. And before we know it, we're expecting grandchildren.
Sandra is in that state of anticipation that can sometimes feel like agony. She wants that grandchild born, and she wants him born today. She's believing that God has the perfect time, but she's really hoping that that time is now.
I had a suggestion for her. I suggested she host a ladies' luncheon at her house. It worked for me, 20 years ago. She just might want to give it a shot.
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