I'm writing a book about pregnancy and infertility and I've just reached the part in the proposal where my son is born-- you know, The Boith.
Let's go there now, shall we? Picture a wiggly flash-back cross fade to an earlier time, a gentler time. I'm in my hospital bed, waiting for my slacker anesthesiologist to saunter by and give me an epidural, which I requested some time ago.
And this, ladies and germs, is what's going through my pain-addled mind:
In birth class, our nurse/instructor/lie monger had told us to bring in a photo that we might tape to the side of our beds and draw strength from-- really hone in on during contractions. So, do I bring in a photo of a warrior? For example, a sweaty 6’1” Venus Williams reaching for an outside court shot, teeth gritted, brow furrowed, a look of rage and fierce determination on her face? No. In what I don’t realize until it’s too late as a stunning lack of forethought, I tape a photo of Jim and me standing under a palm tree on a warm, sunny day to the side of my hospital bed. The contractions come at me like great spears of white hot heat and all I can think about as I look at the photo of these two unknowing dingbats, standing there like garden gnomes in Hawaiian print clothes, grinning at me, is, “Youuuu idiooots!!”
What foolish naïfs these two? They are no help to me whatsoever. In fact, they got me into this mess. So I focus on the pretty, puffy clouds in the background. At least they have their dignity. Next time, I’ll bring in a photo of a mighty comic book heroine riding into battle on a snorting steed. She’ll be wearing a fringed bikini top of platinum to corral her mighty double Ds, red leather chaps on her stainless steel calves, and will be wielding a 25lb dagger forged from the spines of peevish dragons. Or maybe she’ll be standing on a precipice of fire and brimstone, legs planted firmly apart, torpedoes for thighs, H-bombs for boobs, wearing a chain mail unitard and chrome thong, leaning into the wind in ready position, a roll of quarters in each fist. Ready for what? Ha. Not a breezy day on the Big Island, that’s for sure. Ready for my epidural, you ninny. Ready for Child Birth.
The anesthesiologist has the bedside manner of a mortician and I stare at my husband's eyeball so hard while the giant Frankenstein needle's going into my spine that I fully expect Jim’s eyeball to explode from my awesome telekinetic powers. I'm barely breathing. Any air left in my body is leaking out my eyeball, which, thankfully, is firmly affixed to Jim’s. As I lean my spine into the Twinge of Salvation, Jim asks if I’m OK. I nod, yes, with my eyeball. Jim tells me later that he thought I was dying with my eyes open.
He asks me to say something. He looks terrified. I’d better say something, but if he looks away or takes his pupil away from me, my soul will collapse. I run through the catalogue of words I know: cat, spoon, flyswatter. None of them seem appropriate. He’s waiting for a word and I’ve entered a space-time rift where time stands still so that I can come up with the perfect word that will be the payoff to the story we’ll tell around the campfire when are children are teens. But I can’t think of anything.
Time’s up. I finally eek out a, “Hello?” in a teensy, cartoon mouse voice. Ah, well. So much for future ribald family lore. At least he knows I’m still alive, which he signals to me by blinking. I’m scolding myself for not knowing Morse code when I’m interrupted by a million little silver, icy, tingles, spreading out into my back and reaching down into my toes like Charlotte’s baby spiders crawling across a vast and intricate web. York peppermint patties fill my veins and I giggle. I detach my pupil from Jim’s retina and hoot like a cowgirl on the inside. The epidural’s kicking in and it looks like I may not die after all.
