Post #122 – Women’s Memoirs, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Women’s Memoirs continues today with the publication of one of our award-winning contest entries. Linda Austin’s story receives an Honorable Mention – in our Memoir Writing Contest — APRILS PAST, April Birthdays category. Congratulations Linda.
AND A CHILD WAS BORN
by Linda Austin
I was sent home from work for being too pregnant, but I didn’t give birth. Not yet. Even standing in front of the full moon like some goddess of rotund fertility did not pull my first child out. The doctor wanted to induce, but I wanted to wait it out. It would be another week before I woke my husband at midnight to drive me to the hospital after an evening of suspicions. And still the child did not want to come out. Did she, encased in that cradle of mother-warmth, suspect the cold world that awaited her? But it was April, and the ruby lips of tulips were pouting towards the sun, and periwinkle rolled out its blue welcome mat at the door.
This was a stubborn child, and I was new at giving birth. I had told the doctor I did not want medication for pain, but at the first serious contraction after the waters broke, I was begging the nurse for an epidural. These were not just some monthly cramps to curl into and escape! But, the drug that dulls the pain leaves the body unable to feel what it is doing. All night long, husband dozing into the corner, I repeatedly awoke to puff-puff-puff — that Lamaze technique the nurse had to remind me to do — and to try to push-push-push without knowing how-how-how. Finally, well after the sun had called out the morning, the doctor took pity on me and vacuumed the child into her new life. I cried with relief as I held a tiny swaddled girl with round dark eyes staring, studying my existence as I studied hers. Then, I fell into the deep, exhausted sleep of a hard labor completed.
When I was young, I said I never wanted children, and felt a husband was unnecessary. I expected independence and a career in science. My mother told me never to tell this to anyone. But life surprises us. After seven years of marriage and the freedom to come and go as we pleased, my husband and I approached that crossroad when I as the aging wife had to make the final decision whether to have a child. We were unsure, but I felt it was now or never, and I chose now.
Until we have life’s surprise in hand we fear the future, the new event, the unknown, because how can we know? The experience and opinions of others are not ours. We can only extrapolate, and what if that extrapolation is untrue, a fallacy of the mathematical equation? When I was pregnant, I had nightmares relating to my mothering abilities—who would I save if we all fell into the middle of a river? And how silly, because I couldn’t swim in the first place.
But, as I held my child with the curious eyes and the poor misshapen head from her prolonged stay in the birth canal, as I smelled the sweet honey of her being, she became the most precious and beautiful creature in the world. I learned, at the age of 31, the ferocious intensity of a mother’s love. The kind of love that can tear the heart out of one’s chest. The kind of love that can melt like caramel in a warm hand. Every snuffle and mewling cry was a call to motherhood that I answered. I could leave the hospital now and go home with a new confidence.
And it was April! When all the earth gives birth and the air is fresh with green and new flowers dance in the breeze. And a child was born!
