Birth Day

It’s the thirty-first anniversary today of the day I became a mother. Which means, of course, that it’s my oldest child’s birthday today. Happy birthday, Hank! How in the world did you get so old?

My kids’ birthdays are very important days to me. In some ways, they are more profound than my own. I can’t remember the day I was born, so when I celebrate that, I am celebrating a rather fictional event. Of course I WAS born, and of course it did happen and I have heard tales (my grandmother was so excited on the day of my birth that she walked through a plate glass window and the woman never had a drink in her life as far as I know) but I have no memories of the event myself.

But I can certainly remember my own children’s births. The cliché of I can remember it like it was yesterday is not a cliché here. It’s only the simple truth. My first memory of after Hank was born is of the doctor holding up my child after my 28 hours of labor and me, understandably, reaching for this miracle I’d produced while the doctor screamed, “Don’t touch me! I’m sterile!” Of course he wasn’t. You can’t actually sterilize a birth field, but he was pretty convinced that if I touched his rubber glove, something awful would happen. I did touch him, trying to grab my baby, and he swore a bit and had to change gloves after he handed Hank not to me, but to a nurse.

Bah! No wonder I had the rest of my children at home.

I took that baby home just a few hours after the birth, which was unheard of in 1976. They brought the head of the nursery in to dissuade me from such a foolish and irresponsible decision. She leaned over my bedrails and said sternly, “Now listen. You’re fine. You could go home right this second, but we need to keep watch over your baby. A lot of things can go wrong in the first twenty four hours.”
“I know,” I said. “But we’re going home.”

Next my OB came in. “Now listen,” he said gravely, “That baby is strong and fine and could go home right now. But I’m worried about you. You bled more than you should have. You need to be watched closely for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Whatever,” I said. “We’re going home.”

And we did.
And I didn’t bleed to death and friends came over to meet this new baby of mine and Hank actually laughed outloud when the young daughter of a friend of mine tickled him and talked to him in kid-speak.

All was well.

It was a beautiful day, that day. Every day that I gave birth was a remarkably beautiful, holy day and I remember every one of them and I like to celebrate them. I’ve made a lot of birthday cakes for these celebrations. By my estimation, I’ve made well over eighty, just for the four kids. And that’s one way to celebrate.

But I like to celebrate by myself some, too. I like to dress up, put on some pretty jewelry, spray on a little perfume, honor myself for bringing a life into the world. I remember well the feeling of being reborn myself after each child’s birth- a most amazing feeling, as if I’d come back from a perilous and hazy place to find myself whole and safe with a precious new life that I’d retrieved from that place.

Today I’ve found myself with a few moments alone, which hasn’t happened much recently, but something that I prize immensely. I’ve hung the clothes on the line and done a little yoga. I’ve read a bit of a magazine and had fresh blueberries on my cereal. I haven’t taken a shower yet or made the cake or started the bread for the birthday supper, but I have time. Just sitting here in my office, writing this with the doors open and the fan on, my dogs napping on the rug behind me- that’s a luxury and a joy, albeit common ones and giving birth is the most common thing in the world. We all got here when our mamas had us. Duh. But it’s like I always thought when I was in labor- how can the regular, normal world be going on it’s normal, regular way when this, this, is happening? This unbelievably painful, powerful process?

And yet it does. The world is going about its business right this second as thousands and thousands of women all over the world, in city hospitals and in mud huts and in jungle clinics and in European bedrooms and in boats, in beds and on floors, on straw and on fine linen, awake, unconscious, in pain, in bliss, in joy, in fear, in complete awareness and in complete ignorance, struggle and breath and bleed and labor to give birth.

Right this second, there is a cry and a woman is reaching out for her baby.

I would wish for her that whoever is holding that baby smiles at her and hands her the child so that she can feel him, smell her, welcome her with kisses and with sweet milk and loving gazes to the planet.

I honor that woman and her child, just as I honor myself and Hank and I say, Welcome to the world, newest life on the planet! Let it all begin again. Birth for the baby, rebirth for the mother.
I celebrate you. I celebrate us all, each and every one of us the most common, prosaic, amazing miracles you'll ever see.