Bringing Up Mommy: Only a mother can do this -- on giving birth Sept 28, 1988

An excerpt from my collection of 
newspaper columns, Bringing Up Mommy,

written 23 years ago, posted now in honor of the birth day of 

Christopher Harkness Hook 23 years ago, Sept. 28, 1988.

                                                                                    ---Photo by Ginger Pinson
 

During her pregnancy, a woman reads a lot of books and talks to a lot of mothers as she searches for answers: How will I know when it's time for the baby to come? What will I feel? Will it hurt? Can I do this? She clings go mothers who had good experiences, hoping for the same.

And yet, as author and childbirth educator Fritzi Kallop says in her "Birth Book":
"As inconvenient as it is to have labor begin spontaneously, it seems fitting to have inexplicable forces controlling one of the most important events in life. Scientists may marvel as they observe the wonders of our farflung universe; it is equally miraculous to contemplate the birth of a child. Not one is ever routine."

At some point, then, the mommy hopeful realizes there aren't any answers. Her experience is hers, alone, to endure.

I began feeling the intensity of this predicament two weeks before my baby was due. Big and tired, I had decided to take maternity leave from my job as a newspaper reporter to rest up for the days and weeks ahead. I thought I might enjoy this respite, sitting at home with my feet up, daydreaming about holding my baby for the first time. This was so very much not true, as it turns out. At least at work, I could try to be like everybody else. At home, I was isolated, trapped by Oprah, Beaver and a phone that rang incessantly. "Anything yet?" callers demanded, as if this baby was theirs, not mine.

Finally, on the morning of Sept. 28, while I toddled alone about the confines of my house, I felt the telltale trickle of water. The nurse at the OB's office confirmed what I knew to be true. "Your water has broken."

I must say I was excited as I arrived at the hospital. My husband and I settled into one of those Home and Garden delivery rooms that make you think you're going to have a cocktail party instead of a baby. Time settled into a warp as we lounged toe-to-toe on a mauve sofa under dim lights. We chatted intimately as contraction after contraction passed without a grimace. Perfect. We could have been in a movie for Lamaze.

But, oh, lest a laboring woman get too comfortable, the transition stage of labor, when the cervix opens that last little bit, was only gaining steam. Some women told me they moved up to this "real work" of labor gradually. For me, transition came fast. Nothing in the pregnancy books could have prepared me for the intensity -- or the aloneness I felt.

I remember thinking I was the only one who could do this. I remember wishing I hadn't said I didn't want an epidural. I remember getting up on all fours because the baby wasn't getting enough oxygen. I remember feeling scared. I remember forceps.

I especially remember my husband dropping his head to my shoulder and whispering, "Thank God" when we were told, "You have a healthy son."

Then he was gone. Because the cord had been around his chest, they whisked my baby into the nursery before I could look into his eyes, count his toes, feed him.

I didn't get to "bond." Steve didn't get to cut the cord. I didn't feel any of those miraculous feelings.

The experience I had anticipated for months was over, my baby was gone and so was my husband, who went to stand by the nursery window. And I was left alone with the clean-up crew who mopped up my body and wheeled me into a room where I choked down half a dry turkey sandwich and made a few phone calls. My husband came in and out of the room. He said I still looked pregnant.

Time settled into a warp again until sometime after dark, when Steve poked his head inside the door and said I had a visitor.

I grimaced then, wondering who would be coming to see us now.

Steve opened the door wide. A nurse came in, pulling a tiny cart behind her.

I cried out loud as my baby was laid in my arms while his father looked on.

There had been nothing in the books to prepare me for the feelings I had then, either.

I was not alone anymore.

~

Bringing Up Mommy: One more trick-or-treat

DEBRA-LYNN HOOK
BRINGING UP MOMMY
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
-------------

Looks like my family might have one more trick-or-treat in its repertoire.

He's 13, he's the youngest of my three, and he wants to be an Avatar.

I don't tell him that visions of the blue people from the 2009 movie have given me a two-Advil headache ever since he announced his choice. Or that I have a co-dependent relationship with Halloween costumes in general.

He needs a bow and arrow, he tells me. No, he needs a spear. He needs his skin to be blue, and kind of glittery in the face. He needs slanted eyes and pointy ears.

He tells me what he needs.

What I need is therapy to find out why I believe Halloween costumes are the measure of a mother's worth. Just as in past years when all three children simultaneously requested the most complicated costumes from my inadequate hands, I still don't know how to sew on a machine. I refuse, like my mother before me, to buy store-bought costumes and masks, or to send my children off to the dress-up box to do-it-yourself.

And yet, I want the perfect costume, the perfect fantasy - the perfect childhood moment - which leaves me every October, and then some, quietly agonizing, then apologizing, while they dream about the number of Reese's Cups they will collect in their pillow cases.

I tell myself this year I'm not going to reach for the stars or even the perfect shade of Avatar blue. I will, in chance moments, saunter around the costume and fabric shops, until I find adequate-enough supplies. I will, in perfect harmony with human limitations, accept my Singer-less self by joyfully, calmly, stitching whatever needs sewing by hand.

Mostly I will find happiness in my intimate attachment to this hallowed of all childhood-pretend days, which threatens to disappear from my repertoire, like sippy cups and tire swings and the blue stool in front of the bathroom sink.

"When did Emily and Chris quit trick-or-treating?" he wanted to know the other day about his older brother and sister, who are 22 and 18.

"I think they were 14 or 15," I said.

I don't really know the answer for sure. But if 14 or 15 will keep him trick-or-treating one more year, that's what I choose to say. That's what I choose to believe, much like I believe I will one day quit being a perfectionist mother.

One more trick-or-treat.

One more fantasy costume in a reality-show world.

One more opportunity for me to enjoy all of Halloween, including the lead-up, including the pure privilege of putting together a costume that means one of my children is just that, my child for whom I am responsible.

One more Oct. 31, patting the ears in place and the blue paint not too thick, then hurrying him out the door to join the Batmen, Dorothys and ghosts of the world.

One more pot of chili simmering on the stove, waiting for him and his friends to come flying back in the door, some of them flying for real on Harry Potter brooms.

One more watching in the living room, while he and his friends dump their candy in separate piles, and then begin trading Milky Ways and Three Musketeers, Mary Janes, candy corn and pennies.

One more year of me sidling into his room midday while he is at school, to steal my favorites from his pillow case, and hope he doesn't notice because, I justify, he has too much anyway.

One more opportunity to hear him, in the still-sweet voice of a boy still young enough to look past the imperfection of his mother: "Thank you, Mom, for doing such a nice job on my costume."

One more childhood moment.

Unless he decides next year that 14 isn't too old either.

And I will gladly be imperfect again.

The summer of pickles

BRINGING UP MOMMY COLUMN
BY DEBRA-LYNN B. HOOK
PUBLISHED BY MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
JULY 2010
~~~~~~~~
THE SUMMER OF PICKLES

My 13-year-old spends his summer days hanging with a gang we call The Pickle Boys.

It's not a gang in the street sense of the word.

Think instead Spanky and Alfalfa.

Think freckles and braces and five 12- and 13-year-old boys who have been best friends since pre-school. Think long, hot days in a cool, black lake. Think Four Square and Frisbee and Pickle in the Middle, a keep-away game they play so much that one parent borrowed the name and gave it to them. Think World Cup parties evolving into burgers and watermelon, evolving into S'mores and sleepovers, and when the order has been given for lights off, the sound of boys' muffled laughter and chatter into the night from tents in the back yard or from the basement where they've lain their sleeping bags side-by-side.

The Pickle Boys are not without their modern distractions. Like millions of other American boys, they have their DSs, their Wiis, their PlayStations and their iPods, from which they have to be pulled away.

But together, they are bigger than their gadgets. In a culture of organized activities and a constant struggle against summer boredom, the Pickle Boys are their own organization, like the neighborhood gangs of eras gone by, especially apparent during the easy, accessible days of summer when it's just as simple for five to hang out, as it is for two or three or four.

The beauty of the Pickle Boys lies in this collective loyalty and in a shared joie de vivre, captured in endless afternoons of driveway basketball and pickup soccer, captured in a summer snapshot during a safety break at the pool one afternoon, their chests bare while they laugh over a book that in later years might very well be a centerfold in Playboy, but this summer is the "The Ultimate List of Top Ten Lists" and the Top Ten Poisonous Foods We Love to Eat.

It lies in chronology. Old enough this summer finally - to walk the several blocks to each other's houses, they are yet young enough that a simple game of Pickle in the Middle is enough to sustain and entertain.

It lies in longevity. They've known each other since they were 3, riding the halls of Tree City Preschool on three-wheelers.

We parents look on gratefully, knowing what we have here. Not geeks or nerds, not artsy or jocks, not yet flirty with the girls or snippy with their mothers, here is a gang of boys whose parents stayed in the same place long enough for five boys' shared interests and temperaments to bond together in friendships that have carried them almost as long as their families, through all of pre-school and elementary school, into the notoriously fractious years of middle school.

We also know the summer before eighth grade doesn't last forever. Next summer is the summer before high school. Someone will go into summer sports training. Somebody will get a girlfriend. Paths will change. Other interests will form.

But for now, the ones among the Pickle Boys who have braces tell the orthodontist, "Lime green bands, please," because of a pact they made to keep the same color on their teeth.

They rise in the morning, wondering what they will do today. They go to bed at night, often next to one another under twinkly lights strung up in the basement.

These days will change one day; we don't know how.

For right now, right here, in a small town in northeast Ohio, this is a summer where memories are being made. They are memories for us, too, one gracious summer of watermelon and sleepovers, of laughter and simple pleasure and a gang we called the Pickle Boys.

Forever moments

My 13-year-old son and youngest child is away at camp. For a month. Ahem. Did you hear me correctly? A month. Thirteen years old. What is up with that? I miss him, and so I am reprinting this "Bringing Up Mommy" column I wrote for Knight-Ridder/Tribune News when he was 9.

FOREVER MOMENTS
The best part of summer vacation was not the pizza with the award-winning sauce or the shuffleboard game or even the soft-serve cones that were big as Mrs. Simpson's hair and cost only a dollar.

The best part was the sky.

"Look! The sky is purple!" said my 9-year-old son as the two of us walked through the village square along the shore of Lake Erie.

It was a signal.

And as the sun cast its last reflection of the day on this great expanse of Great Lake named after an Indian tribe, my young son and I stopped.

"What else?" I whispered.

"I hear flip-flops flopping and a basketball."

I waited, quiet, so we could offer full attention to the unmistakable sounds of a child's summer sandals slapping against the sidewalk, and, sure enough, a basketball bouncing on the village court.

"I smell fish from the lake," I said.

"Hmmmm," my son said, and he took in a deep breath through his nose.

"I see the lights of the boats," he said, his eyes wide open now.

"I feel a light breeze on my arm," I said.

"I feel happy in my heart, and peace," he said.

"I feel safe," I said.

With each pronouncement, with each observation, my son and I experienced the summer night more deeply, until we were satisfied we had imprinted another "forever moment," as we have come to call them.

It was not unlike the moment we chanced upon a few weeks ago while riding bikes: Instead of racing along the trail in a hurry, always rushing to see what's around the bend, we had decided to open our hearts and our five senses, one-by-one, to each curve along the path.

"I see shadows on the trail from the sun."

"I hear the sound of a lawn mower."

"I smell the crispness of the air."

"I see a turtle!"

We saw nuances and details that we typically overlook when we are thinking about what we're going to have for lunch or when boys' soccer practice is going to start up again.

We noticed that the leaves on the same tree appeared to be different shades of green because of the slant of the sun. We distinguished between the call of doves, crows and what I call tweety birds. We experienced and recognized the wind and the sun in our faces. We felt peace.

The constant, the mainstay, in these moments is what we feel inside. So far, when my son and I have stopped to be where we are, we have reported to each other feelings of safety, happiness and peace, which makes me wonder why we, why all of us in our family, why all of us everywhere, don't allow ourselves these moments all the time.

When my husband and I are sitting at the soccer field watching our children, when our family is all together at the dinner table, when we are playing a board game, when we are saying our long, ritualistic good-nights, cuddled up to each other, instead of thinking of what we have to do tomorrow, instead of worrying how much higher gas prices are going to go or how we're going to pay for college, we could be having a different experience.

"I hear the tick tock of the clock."

"I hear an owl outside."

"I feel your skin against mine."

"I feel the love between me and you."

We've all read the pundits, the philosophers and the theologians who remind us to live in the present moment: "The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time," sings James Taylor. "Do not dwell in the past. Do not dream in the future. Concentrate the mind on the present moment," said Buddha. "This it the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it," says the Psalmist.

I had thought this would require some kind of paradigm shift, some measure of life-commanding attention.

Now, having had these moments with my willing child, I know that the present moment is as easy as leaving my post, stepping outside and calling to my young son, "Want to have a forever moment?"

We sit on the front stoop, him in his sweaty, dirty play clothes and me in my apron from the kitchen where I've started supper. And we listen to the wings of the birds and the beginning of a summer evening, emblazoned now forever.