voice to Lawrence Welk’s orchestra.
Ay-yah. Hmmm, most any afternoon at five…
Mama, it’s time.
We’ll be so glad…
It’s time!
It’s a familiar scenario: a suitcase already packed, a doctor on call, a pregnant woman saying,
It’s time.
What’s missing is the jittery husband standing ready to transport his wife to the hospital. In this story my grandmother
is the one who’s ready. She’d been the one who packed the suitcase. And she’d been sleeping with the car keys on her bedside
stand, along with a flashlight and a battery-powered clock radio in the unlikely event that a storm blew down the electrical
lines and she had to orient herself in the dark.
There was no storm that night. There was a rising moon casting a silver light, turning the contrails of a cumulus mass into
streams of melted iron. There was a warm breeze rattling the cones that had fallen from the pines onto the driveway. And there
was my grandmother, standing with the suitcase in her hand, urging her daughter, my mother, to hurry, hurry, hurry.
My grandmother and mother would often laugh about what followed: the rush to the car, the wild drive to the hospital with
my grandmother blasting the horn as she ran through every red light. My grandmother parked the Chevette half on the sidewalk
in front of the emergency entrance and swept my mother through the open doors, shouting for a doctor, the violence of her
voice causing a temporary stir among the medical staff, though what the nurses found as they gathered around was my pregnant
mother resting her folded arms on the ridge of her swollen belly, calmly surveying a fire-hazard notice on the wall while
she let out a leisurely burp.
As punishment for causing unnecessary havoc, my grandmother was directed to a bench and given a dozen forms to fill out before
any help would be offered.
Name, date, address, policy number, patient history, reason for visit. Name, date, address, policy number, emergency contact.
Name, date, policy number, home phone, work phone. Name, date…
Like as not, folks won’t be noticed until they generate a folder stuffed with unnecessary forms, my grandmother would grumble.
You’d think life begins and ends on paper.
Only after she’d finished signing her name on the last sheet was my grandmother taken to the waiting room and my mother officially
admitted to the hospital. Irked at being left alone, my grandmother ignored the No Smoking sign and lit a cigarette. In the
story she tells about that night, no one came to tell her to put her cigarette out. She didn’t wait long after finishing the
first one to light another.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t making my entrance easy for my mother. I’d accomplished a full somersault during my last week of gestation
and was presenting breech, as if to demonstrate my reluctance. And though my mother’s contractions intensified, by the time
of her first exam in the maternity ward her cervix had hardly dilated.
She was given a shot of morphine to relax her. The drug relaxed me as well, causing me to loosen my grip, and I began slipping
into this world, though my resistance continued to slow the process, so what should have progressed quickly from that point
took ten hours, along with ten Lucky Strikes and the remaining fluid in my grandmother’s lighter.
Ass-first I descended through the squeeze of the canal. Ass-first in what my grandmother Sally would cite as my first great
act of disrespect.
Craziness mirroring craziness. You and me, Grandma. I knew there was something I wouldn’t want to face, so I turned my back
and tried to hang on to the center, gripped my mother the way I’d grip the branch of a tree high above the ground. And then,
helpless to gravity, feeling my hands weaken, the weakness spreading numbness up my wrists. Centimeter by centimeter, letting
go. One Lucky Strike after another.
The sky above the courtyard was a velvety blue when a mockingbird outside the
Ay-yah. Hmmm, most any afternoon at five…
Mama, it’s time.
We’ll be so glad…
It’s time!
It’s a familiar scenario: a suitcase already packed, a doctor on call, a pregnant woman saying,
It’s time.
What’s missing is the jittery husband standing ready to transport his wife to the hospital. In this story my grandmother
is the one who’s ready. She’d been the one who packed the suitcase. And she’d been sleeping with the car keys on her bedside
stand, along with a flashlight and a battery-powered clock radio in the unlikely event that a storm blew down the electrical
lines and she had to orient herself in the dark.
There was no storm that night. There was a rising moon casting a silver light, turning the contrails of a cumulus mass into
streams of melted iron. There was a warm breeze rattling the cones that had fallen from the pines onto the driveway. And there
was my grandmother, standing with the suitcase in her hand, urging her daughter, my mother, to hurry, hurry, hurry.
My grandmother and mother would often laugh about what followed: the rush to the car, the wild drive to the hospital with
my grandmother blasting the horn as she ran through every red light. My grandmother parked the Chevette half on the sidewalk
in front of the emergency entrance and swept my mother through the open doors, shouting for a doctor, the violence of her
voice causing a temporary stir among the medical staff, though what the nurses found as they gathered around was my pregnant
mother resting her folded arms on the ridge of her swollen belly, calmly surveying a fire-hazard notice on the wall while
she let out a leisurely burp.
As punishment for causing unnecessary havoc, my grandmother was directed to a bench and given a dozen forms to fill out before
any help would be offered.
Name, date, address, policy number, patient history, reason for visit. Name, date, address, policy number, emergency contact.
Name, date, policy number, home phone, work phone. Name, date…
Like as not, folks won’t be noticed until they generate a folder stuffed with unnecessary forms, my grandmother would grumble.
You’d think life begins and ends on paper.
Only after she’d finished signing her name on the last sheet was my grandmother taken to the waiting room and my mother officially
admitted to the hospital. Irked at being left alone, my grandmother ignored the No Smoking sign and lit a cigarette. In the
story she tells about that night, no one came to tell her to put her cigarette out. She didn’t wait long after finishing the
first one to light another.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t making my entrance easy for my mother. I’d accomplished a full somersault during my last week of gestation
and was presenting breech, as if to demonstrate my reluctance. And though my mother’s contractions intensified, by the time
of her first exam in the maternity ward her cervix had hardly dilated.
She was given a shot of morphine to relax her. The drug relaxed me as well, causing me to loosen my grip, and I began slipping
into this world, though my resistance continued to slow the process, so what should have progressed quickly from that point
took ten hours, along with ten Lucky Strikes and the remaining fluid in my grandmother’s lighter.
Ass-first I descended through the squeeze of the canal. Ass-first in what my grandmother Sally would cite as my first great
act of disrespect.
Craziness mirroring craziness. You and me, Grandma. I knew there was something I wouldn’t want to face, so I turned my back
and tried to hang on to the center, gripped my mother the way I’d grip the branch of a tree high above the ground. And then,
helpless to gravity, feeling my hands weaken, the weakness spreading numbness up my wrists. Centimeter by centimeter, letting
go. One Lucky Strike after another.
The sky above the courtyard was a velvety blue when a mockingbird outside the
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