In the old days,
fathers were not allowed in the delivery rooms. Admittance for them beyond a
series of swinging doors even in the early stages of a wife’s labor was
strictly forbidden.
Go, sit in the waiting room, watch the
television high up on the wall, we’ll keep you informed of the ritual secret
birth and call you when your life has changed in unimaginable ways, when you
and your wife are forever marked as blessed by a tiny life you’ll come to love
above all else. So go on, pace the halls and lobby of The Woman’s Hospital if
you must but never ever go through those swinging doors because you are germ-filled
and are only the father.
Dee woke me early
Thanksgiving in the still-dark morning and told me she was in labor. No old
Dick Van Dyke routine with a cap on the top of the headboard, ready to sit up
in bed and put it on in one quick motion, no fumbling for a suitcase that
springs open and dumps all the womanly clothing and items needed after becoming
a mother. It was simply excitement and a call to the doctor who said he would
meet us at the hospital. So eyes puffy from lack of sleep, excited heartbeats felt
in our throats, we met the doctor and he said Dee was barely dilated, to go on
home and enjoy Thanksgiving. So we mentally put my baseball cap back on the
headboard and had breakfast and waited for the Thanksgiving meal at Dee’s
mother’s apartment. Miriam had baked the requisite turkey and her usual
delicious fare of dressing and squash and butterbeans and cranberries cooked
fresh that morning, a late afternoon feast with Dee’s brothers, David and
Ricky, rounding out the family.
Once seated and
no prayer, my first forkful of food heading toward my mouth, I swear, the first
forkful heading up on an arc toward waiting teeth and tongue, and Dee said
quietly, My water just broke. My fork
clattered down on the plate and catapulted a piece of turkey to the other side
of the white linen tablecloth like some invading eat-or-die mongrel hoard
launching the only ammunition they had left.
A quick trip home
to retrieve the suitcase and we were back at the hospital, me handling the
check-in paperwork, Dee in a wheelchair facing the corridor of swinging doors
leading to the Labor Room and, ultimately, the Secret Birth Room and special
reclining chairs with here’s-one-for-the-boys-in-the-balcony
leg stirrups in a wishbone Y. Hurried kisses and reassuring hugs, finally
losing sight of Dee through a small window before being exiled in the waiting
room.
Dee attempted
Natural Child Birth but it was a long hard labor, stretching on into the night
and all the next day, so long, in fact, that when they did finally wheel an exhausted
Dee into the hallway and finally allowing me back by her side, she put her hand
on my face and told me we had a daughter and wondered if worry made a man’s
beard grow.
When she went
into labor with Jennifer two years later, two weeks after Christmas in January
of 1972, Dee remembered the two long days trying to deliver Laurie. She started
holding out her arm for a shot as soon as we hit the hospital parking lot—or at
least as soon as we cleared the first doors of the hospital. But Jen’s birth
came much easier, not nearly the physical ordeal of Laurie’s first appearance
on the Cothern stage.
I posted a sign
on the door of The Rainy Day Bookstore that we owned, saying the store would be
closed for a day or so and giving proud father details on Jennifer’s birth and
weight. A reporter for a newspaper from one of the smaller towns around Baton
Rouge took a photograph of the birth notice and we were told it had been
published, one of those feel good items smaller newspapers seemed particularly
fond of trumpeting.
During the time
both daughters were born, their historical holiday birthstones included the
still raging Vietnam War and the sometimes violent push for racial equality.
While the Beatles’ “Come Together” / “Something” was climbing Billboard’s Hot 100 as a two-sided
single (and would peak at Number One on Laurie’s birthday of November 29,
1969), The Plain Dealer published
shocking photographs of the massacre of Vietnam villagers at My Lai, and in a
more subtle approach John Lennon returned his MBE medal to protest his
government’s support of the war in Vietnam. Two days after Laurie was born (and
something that concerned her father), the first Draft lottery was held in this
country since World War II. Three days before Jennifer’s birth on the 13th
of January, 1972, a local reporter and anchorman, Bob Johnson, and his
cameraman, Henry Baptiste, were covering a rally for a group claiming to be
Muslims from outside the state who parked cars in the middle of North Boulevard
to protest racial discrimination. The crowd grew, 200 or more strong, deputies
arrived, and bottles and bricks flew. Two by three they died, two deputies,
three Muslims, and the enraged crowd attacked Johnson and Baptiste as they
fled, and it was Baptiste, a black man, who dragged from the scene his
co-worker and friend, Johnson, a now comatose white man, who would remain in a
coma for almost four decades.
So in all the
years down the road, there were celebrations of birthdays while historical
events swirled amid the holidays, always making reflections of the season a
little deeper, more poignant. The girls grew up so quickly, and in the rush and
hassle of living day to day we sometimes blinded ourselves to the simple
sentimental facts that no matter the season of discord in the world, loving and
sharing and protecting and giving to one another were the best gifts we had to
offer.
