Unto Us a Child Is Born

You might guess by its title that this post is about Christmas and you would be partly right. It is about a particular Christmas and a particular child.  No, not the Child.  This post is about my second daughter, Chloe, who, as it happens, was also born on Christmas Day, but a mere 8 years ago and to infinitely less significant parents.

Chloe will always be my favorite Christmas present of my favorite Christmas. She was actually due on December 16th. I was excited about that due date as it afforded me the joys of a Christmastime baby with enough of a buffer to be pretty well back on my feet by the holidays. Sometime in November, though, my doctors inexplicably changed my due date to the 20th.  I nodded obediently, but muttered something under my breath about knowing the conception date and silently resolved not to let go of the 16th as my real due date. So, when December 17th rolled around, in my mind, I was a day overdue.

On December 23rd, a week late (or 3 days, depending on who you trusted and I only trusted myself), Anthony sent me for a 90 minute prenatal massage.  I knew the spa where he had booked it, so I imagined the beautiful candlelit room with its soothing New Agey music. I hoped for the soft-spoken Middle Eastern therapist with the beautiful accent and the expensive perfume. She was always so sweet and quiet; she would make me feel better. I could feel the tension start to ebb just thinking about it.

As I checked in for my appointment however, the receptionist informed me that, she was very sorry: The music in the massage therapy rooms wasn't working. Did I want to reschedule? This gave me pause, but I was desperate. Unfortunately, I didn't get the quiet, expensively perfumed Middle Eastern lady either. Instead,  I got some woman who I had just seen leaning against the building on a cigarette break before I came in.  She had tried to clean up a bit, so now she smelled like smokey soap (or maybe it was soapy smoke) and never stopped talking the entire 90 minutes about all manner of grim topics that had to do with other kinds of massage establishments recently raided by the authorities.  Before you ask, the answer to the question "Why didn't you tell her to stop talking?" is this:  I'm a wimp. Instead, I kept my monosyllabic responses as infrequent as possible hoping she would get the hint (she didn't). Lying on my side, I attempted to hide my crying face in my armpit. Practicing effleurage on my round, draped belly with my free hand, I silently prayed, "Lord, in the Bible, you made a donkey talk.  Please make this one shut up."

Nevertheless, by Christmas Eve, all the disappointment, discomfort, and disturbing massage experiences were forgotten.  I was calm and ready to have a nice Christmas with my little girl, 22 month old Bronte, and my husband.  We would welcome our new baby after Christmas and that would be just as wonderful as if she had come before Christmas. In fact, it gave me a chance to make up for some of the time I had wasted whining and acting like an all-around sissy instead of appreciating a few more special days with my Bronte before the new baby arrived.   We got all dressed up: My husband in a tie, me in a black dress with a red rose print and--why not?--black, high heel boots, and Bronte in a little red velvet tunic and pants to match the Santa dress Nicki had bought the baby.  We had a wonderful dinner at my mother-in-law's house, exchanged gifts with her, and headed home, happy and content. I settled into bed at 11pm and fell asleep instantly.

Only to wake up abruptly at 11:07 pm.

My water broke.

My eyes flew open, but I didn't move. Anthony was still awake next to me watching TV.

"Anthony? I think my water broke."

"What?!  No way.  Maybe you wet your pants."

"That's totally possible at this point in the game, but I don't think so."

He got up and walked around to my side of the bed and ripped back the comforter.  "Oh my gosh, get off the bed.  You are going to ruin the mattress!"

I couldn't help laughing as he hoisted me from the bed and up to a standing position ("Isn't gravity going to make it worse?" I asked),  then he ran to get some towels.  I picked up the phone and called my mom, as she was coming with us to the hospital. After an emergency C-section with Bronte, Anthony and I wanted her 20+ years experience as a Lamaze instructor and natural childbirth coach to help us avoid another one if possible (Translation:  Sometimes a girl just wants her mother!). She answered the phone the same way she had every time I called her for the last week:  "Did your water break?"

"Yes," I told her, laughing.

"I don't believe you."

"It did! Ask Anthony. Anthony!" I held up the phone for him to yell a confirmation to her and looked over to him, startled because mere seconds had passed and yet he was now somehow fully dressed and packing a suitcase.  I was still standing in my nightgown squeezing a towel between my knees and had every intention of showering, doing my hair, and putting on my make up.  Oh, and I hadn't called the doctor yet.  It struck me that he might be nervous.  I returned my attention to the phone.  "He's packing, but trust me. I'm standing on a stack of towels.  In fact, I should go.  My doctor told me to call if my water broke."

My mom yelled to my father and my younger sisters, Megan and Erin, "Renee's water just broke!" then to me, "I still don't believe you."

"Okay, well. I'm going to the hospital, so....if you're still coming with us, come on over in like an hour."

I hung up and called Nicki.  She picked up the phone saying "No way."

Eventually, I convinced my doubting family that I was, in fact, going to have this child, whether they believed it or not.  My mother drove Erin over to our house so she could stay with Bronte. I kissed my sweet, sleeping child goodbye, vaguely aware that when I came back, she wasn't going to be my "baby" any more but a toddler, a little girl. I thought of how we had fawned over our only child--one that I thought I would never have--for the last 22 months. I remembered finding out I was pregnant with this second baby and looking over at Bronte sitting regally in her high chair, playing with her Cheerios: As happy as I was with my news, I had the fleeting, guilty thought:  "She has no idea what's coming her way: She's about to be dethroned!"  But then I realized I was only slightly older than her when Nicki was born. I don't remember ever being an only child and Bronte wouldn't either.  Now, about to give birth, I looked down at my girl, still my baby for a few more hours, with her head full of dark curls, sweaty with sleep.  I can't imagine a minute of my life without Nicki.  "I'm going to get you a best friend for Christmas," I whispered.  Anthony and I crept quietly downstairs, exchanged gifts by the tree, and headed for the hospital.

 ***

Like most expectant moms, I had a birth plan. Like most birth plans, mine didn't work out as expected. My doctor had promised me I would be free to move around, to make myself as comfortable as possible so I could work with my body as it worked with my baby.  In reality, I was hooked up to no less than nine different things at once and flat on my back most of the time. My focal point was a beautiful Willow Tree sculpture my mom had given me of a mother holding her toddler. She told me it reminded her of Bronte and me. As I was lying there getting an amnio-infusion, watching my birth plan go up in smoke and fearing another c-section, I was staring intently at my sculpture perched on the bed tray when the nurse came in and pushed the tray aside. I saw the mother and child start to wobble a little, and then a lot.  I looked to my own mother whose eyes were widening. She grasped desperately for the tray edge as it rolled out of reach and the little wooden figure picked up momentum, now swaying precariously from side to side.  I opened my mouth to cry out then closed it just as I watched it tumble to the hard floor and snap in half.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, my mother had pulled her chair up closer to me.  She leaned toward me, looked in my face and said, "Renee, I know exactly what you are thinking and this isn't a sign that you are going to have another cesarean. It is just an accident. We shouldn't have put it on the tray is all." I nodded through my tears, hoping she was right.

Anthony is a solutions guy by nature and he immediately went into action.  He picked up the two pieces of my broken figurine and went out to the nurses station, hunting down some glue and white bandage-like tape.  He and the poor nurse, who felt just awful and kept apologizing, poor thing, put my little focal point back together, and perched her right back up on the tray, barking at anyone who came near it the rest of the day.

Whatever the setbacks, the discarded birth plans, the broken focal points, no one gave up on me. They helped me push through, in every sense of the word, and deliver the old fashioned way.

My doctor handed me my baby girl at 3:15 p.m. on Christmas Day, 2003.

Our Christmas Baby

Anthony leaned over my shoulder and stroked her head with his forefinger.  "Hello, Chloe Renee. We love you!"

"A Christmas baby!" my mom sighed.

"Ha! Too bad we can't name her Chloe Christmas!" I laughed.

"Chloe Noelle!" we all said at once. And that was that. When this favorite little Christmas gift of ours was about three years old or whatever age toddlers become aware that they have middle names, we explained that her name means "Christmas" in French and so, for a number of months, that's exactly how she answered new friends who asked her her name:  "Oh, I'm Chloe Christmas Mora."

Besties

***

A couple Saturdays ago, all three of the girls scrambled up onto our bed to present us with their Christmas lists. They were very precise. I launched into a mini-lesson explaining that while I understand how exciting it is to write wish lists or letters to Santa, part of the fun of gift giving is for the gift giver, too. It's fun to look around for a special gift, something I think you will love or that suits you perfectly, maybe something you've never thought of!  So, yes, make your list.  But keep in mind,  it is merely a list of ideas or wishes, not a list of demands.  Not a ransom note.

Finally writing out Chloe's birth story, I feel a little sheepish, considering my lecture to the girls . My wish list--a time line, a birth plan, the perfect circumstances as I would design them--had been a ransom note.  I'm so grateful that my body didn't cave to its demands. God's perfect timing was far more dramatic and exciting than the tidy and comparatively dull plans I had drawn up for myself.

Chloe's birth wasn't the dream birth I had envisioned, but then, whose is? I'm sure Mary didn't sit around staring at a feeding trough and imagine laying her infant Son in it. I rather doubt, in her last trimester, she would have included "take long journey on donkey" in her birth plan. In the moments that she first realized how it was all going to play out, I wonder if she wanted her mother? I'm sure Joseph was desperate to make things right for her. But when it was all said and done, when she was was catching her breath, resting with her child snuggled up to her neck, she "treasured all theses things and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19).

All mothers have their treasures. Mine is my very own Christmas story to cherish and pass on to my daughter.

I'll Be Home(schooling) For Christmas

Every year, we take the entire month of December off from our homeschool lessons so we can enjoy the Christmas season. My expectations for this time of year are always wholly idealized and rarely realized.  

Whatever letdown I might experience when my plans are frustrated is forgotten from year to year, like the "discomfort" of childbirth (my mother raised me not to use the word "pain" in relation to the birthing process) is reduced enough in our memory that we're willing to do it again. So, as each December approaches I gear up, full of hope and anticipation, for a month full of nostalgic Christmas carols and inspiring worship services and creative baking and classic-Christmas-movie-watching and stress-less thoughtful gift-giving! 

Despite staying committed to packing away the books on December 1st each year, all those lovely things just never seem to happen. I see the stretch of school-less weeks before us and the expanse of free time and what do I do? I fill it! I over-commit (my specialty). The next thing I know, I'm frantically whipping up some cookies on December 23rd, more to avoid a feeling of failure than to enjoy the spirit of the season.

Side note: If you receive a Christmas-themed Chinese take-out box of rum balls from me, know that the strength of the rum balls is directly proportional to the level of failure I'm feeling at the time. If your confection has just a hint of something that might be rum or might just be rum extract, then I was jolly and felt I was pouring enough Christmas spirit from my heart into my baking.  If, on the other hand, your lips go numb and you don't feel comfortable breathing while lighting the candles of your Advent wreath, well, let's just say that rum ball is probably also seasoned with tears.

This year, things are different. Because we took a 2-week vacation in November, I decided not to take December off.  When the December 1st rolled around, the girls were ready to pack up their books ,as usual, despite the fact that we had only been back in town less than a week. When I reminded them we wouldn't be taking December off, they were horrified. 

We haven't succeeded in doing our schoolwork every single day and we'll definitely be doubling-up in January, but a curious thing has happened as we've continued to plug away at our lessons most days. We've baked a lot of cookies. We've watched a lot of Christmas movies. We actually did a craft that involved glitter and glue, two substances that should be illegal, in my opinion. The girls have choreographed The Twelve Days of Christmas. We only have Daddy left to shop for. We haven't quite finished decorating and I've decided not to send out Christmas cards for the first time since 1994. I still want to find time to take the girls for a picture with Santa, because I have a sad feeling that their belief in him will be packed away with the ornaments and lights this year.

I woke up today and decided we are not going to crack the books this week after all, but we are still going to learn.  Our lesson plans have been revised and simplified as follows:

• Reading: Luke 2:1-21; Usborne children's adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol; Van Allsburg's The Polar Express (I usually read this to them myself but they can never understand the last page because my "voice gets funny")
  
• Writing:  Re-write letter to Santa, fill out gift tags, address package labels
• 'Rithmatic: Measure ingredients for various baking projects, doubling when necessary

Will we still be doing schoolwork in July?  Maybe. 

Am I feeling like a failure about it?  Try one of my rum balls this year and decide for yourself.

No tears (or rum).  Just love.

A Contemplation of Death

"A Contemplation of Death" is a weighty title for a simple blog post. Actually, it is the definition of the word thanatopsis, which is also the title of one of my favorite poems. I reread the poem this morning, since yesterday my maternal grandfather died. He died 2 years and 5 days after his wife died, and at the exact same time: 1:10 p.m. He was surrounded by his children and he was listening to his favorite song, Moonlight Serenade, by the Glen Miller Orchestra.

Just the other day, my mother told my sister and me that after her mother died, friends would comment that it was so sad that she had died at Christmastime. My mother said that she found it comforting: "It's because of Christmas that I know I will see her again one day." I am sure Mom feels the same way about the passing of her father. I find her response to be a lovely illustration of being "sustain'd and soothed by an unfaltering trust."

For me, there is an acceptance of my grandfather's passing as a natural progression of life, but I am sad for my mother and her sisters and brother, living without parents. 

And I have an uneasy sense of time moving too quickly.   

Me, Grandpa Jackson, and my sister, Nicki

THANATOPSIS

by: William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

O him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language; for his gayer hours

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile

And eloquence of beauty, and she glides

Into his darker musings, with a mild

And healing sympathy, that steals away

Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts

Of the last bitter hour come like a blight

Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,

Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;--

Go forth, under the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around--

Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--

Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up

Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix for ever with the elements,

To be a brother to the insensible rock,

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain

Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak

Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

 

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish

Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,

The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills

Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales

Stretching in pensive quietness between;

The venerable woods; rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,

Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,

Are shining on the sad abodes of death,

Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread

The globe are but a handful to the tribes

That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings

Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods

Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound

Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:

And millions in those solitudes, since first

The flight of years began, have laid them down

In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.

So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw

In silence from the living, and no friend

Take note of thy departure? All that breathe

Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh

When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care

Plod on, and each one as before will chase

His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave

Their mirth and their employments, and shall come

And make their bed with thee. As the long train

Of ages glides away, the sons of men,

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes

In the full strength of years, matron and maid,

The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--

Shall one by one be gathered to thy side

By those who in their turn shall follow them.

 

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan which moves

To that mysterious realm where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

 

Christmas Daydreams and Wake Up Calls

It's Christmastime and my genetic predisposition towards unrealistic expectations is in full swing.

We took most of December off from home schooling so that we could focus on baking, gift giving, card sending and holiday movie-watching. Some of these have been checked off our list (we've watched every holiday movie from Christmas in Connecticut to White Christmas), while others have been redesigned ("baking," for instance, has been replaced with "eating").

Shopping was successfully completed, even a bit early, and with a slightly lesser air of criminality than in previous years.  For some reason, I continue to try to Christmas shop with my children in tow. I really must stop doing this, especially since it never goes well. It may have been a no-brainer when the girls were clueless babies, but now I'm reduced to distracting them with "Wow! Have you ever seen such a huge package of toilet paper?!" while I frantically stuff gifts under our winter coats in the cart. While this is an improvement over the year I hid a Barbie in the coat I was wearing (those Target security people swooped in out of nowhere like so many Dementors), it still has a suspicious look to it that compels me to explain with a nervous laugh to every passing stranger, "Wow! It sure isn't easy to shop when you home school your kids! Seriously, I'm not stealing this."

Yesterday, I had just such a shopping adventure, made a bit more successful since my mother came along. We were able to divide and conquer, with Mom taking the girls to help get things off her list, while I made a mad dash down the toy aisles with my list (though still hiding everything under the coats). When we stopped for lunch, Chloe took one bite of her personal pan pizza and out came her first front tooth!  It was a cute little momentous occasion. She had hoped at least one, if not both of her front teeth would come out for Christmas, which is also her 7th birthday. I tucked the tooth away in my wallet to save for the pillow that night and we all went over to my mother's house to eat Christmas cookies and watch Elf for the tenth time this month.

Despite a little shopping stress during the day, the afternoon at Mom's was fun and relaxing, just the kind of day I'd had in mind when I planned this "month of Christmas merriment" for the girls and me. A sleepover  was decided on and so I fished the tooth out of my wallet, feeling sort of nostalgic about sharing Tooth Fairy duties with my parents. I wondered if they were thinking about how time goes by so quickly. I feel like it was only last year that I was in the hospital giving birth to my own Christmas baby. Do they feel like it was only yesterday they were putting a quarter under my pillow while I slept?

While I thought about these things, Chloe held her tooth in the palm of her hand. Carys wandered over and started haranguing Chloe for a turn at holding "da toof." Suddenly, a gasp and a faint clicking sound as the tiny tooth hit the linoleum on the kitchen floor.

As the girls dropped to their hands and knees and started searching for this white little tooth on a shiny white floor, as quick as a flash, Teddy, my parents' Morkie pup, darted out from under the kitchen table.  He immediately discovered the tooth.

And ate it.

For about a minute, I felt like crying, partly at the look of utter horror on the girls' faces, a little with the thought that a dog ate part of my kid, but mostly from quiet, self-conscious embarrassment at my own sentimental musings, so roughly interrupted by reality.  I decided now was as good a time as any for me to leave and let Mimi and Stampy handle it. They helped Chloe write a letter explaining the catastrophe to the Tooth Fairy, who would surely understand, and Chloe woke up this morning to find a crisp dollar bill waiting for her. The tooth-eating dog disaster was all but forgotten and inconsequential in light of her excitement.

As I think about the many holiday plans on my list, the ones I pulled off, those that still might happen, and the few that were foiled entirely, all that really matters is the end result. Christmas morning will come, whether I'm ready or not.  And it will be lovely, no matter what.