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The First and Last Time
My husband generously volunteered that we would not only take Victoria to the hospital for ankle surgery but that one of us would spend the first night with her since her husband was out of town.
Victoria and Mike lived in a one-room cabin attached to their barn. Part of the room was the kitchen and the rest was a king-size bed facing a built-in entertainment center holding the television, stereo, and computer desk. This setup stated the obvious. I would be the one spending the night.
The post-surgery sleeping arrangements were planned. Vic would be sleeping on the bathroom side of the king-size bed and I would use the kitchen side. On the floor next to my assigned space sat the cat-food and water bowls. She assured me that the cats would not be climbing over my face in the night which gave a sense of safety.
Several days before the surgery I received the call. Victoria, animal lover and rescuer that she is, told me that the previous week a new visitor had arrived. Animal shy that I am, she in good conscience felt it important to inform me. The new friend, she announced, was a darling, precious, adolescent skunk. But, Vic continued, she only comes in once a night, walks behind the bed, and helps herself to the cat-food.
I nearly imploded. My insides were screaming. Vic has crossed my line in the sand. I will not sleep with a skunk!!!. Knowing that it would be a stretch for me, she went on to say that the ankle surgery was out-patient, and there was no need for me to spend the night. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Surgery day arrived. My husband and I were happily sitting in the generously magazine-stocked waiting area. The doctor entered to report that the surgery had gone well. He continued, “Because of the amount of drugs in her system, do not leave her alone tonight.” I was dumb-struck. Victoria’s promise of only one-skunk-visit per night gave me limited consolation.
In spite of anxiety, I fell asleep. The patient was still knocked-out from the anesthesia and pain pills. Just as I was about to fall into deep rest, I was startled awake by a loud crunch, crunch, crunch sound definitely distinctly different from a cat’s munch, munch, munch. I played breath-holding paralyzed possum. My mind chanted, Don’t move, keep your eyes shut. Don’t look. Vic said only once a night. It’s almost over.
Thirty minutes later came crunch, crunch, crunch, Don’t move. Don’t breathe.
Thirty minutes later, crunch, crunch, crunch, repeating all night long.
The next night to my delight Victoria was on her own. I tended to my blood-shot eyes and jumpiness from jolting interupted sleep. Upon checking-in the following morning I noticed a can of paint in front of the cat-door. Vic explained that the silly skunk kept coming in all night and she used her crutch to drag the gallon of paint to block the entry. I stifled a giggle.
As I left Vic asked me to please put some cat-food in a special bowl outside for her precious, new friend. I quietly granted her request and kept my opinions to myself until I was alone in the car; then I screamed.
Never say never, but I pray it was the first and the last night with a skunk.
The first time your child stumbles, it’s a physical mishap; he trips, plops to the floor, and cuts his lip. Blood and tears are soon resolved with hugs and a popsicle.
The first time your child is critiqued, is during preschool. The teacher tells you that his cute little drawings are “immature” for his age, and you wonder what is wrong with this woman.
The first time you see your child struggle, it’s kindergarten. He’s beating to his own drum, already a round peg, that will never quite fit into a square-peg world.
The first time you get those “looks” from the perfect mothers, all absorbed in their tidy, constrained little lives, you become angry at yourself for feeling less.
The first time you lose a friend because your child finds it nearly impossible to navigate himself in the expected fashion, you mourn. And then you realize that your true friends will show their integrity by sticking around.
The first time the school does irreparable harm to your child, you find yourself consumed with rage, barely able to function, yet forced to contain that anger if only for your child’s sake.
The first time you don’t quite manage to control your rage, you realize, with just a little bit of glee, that it’s probably a good idea that they learn you’re not one to piss off.
But, you also remember those first firsts – the first time that your son spoke, or walked or smiled, or danced, and you remember how the world felt perfect.
The first time your son is excited to see you, or says, “I love you dearly,” or “You’re the best Mom,” or “You’re so adorable,” you find yourself filled with a love that mere words cannot do justice.
And the first time your son rides a bike, does a full body flip, masters a Pogo stick, is a perfect gentleman during First Holy Communion, earns a Karate Green Belt, cares for a physically disabled friend, asks an enormously profound question, or says “I love you,” even though he’s eleven, and even though someone is watching, you fill with a pride that causes a mother lump in your throat.
The first time you realize that time is passing too quickly, and you’ve let the outside world taint your family, that, that, fills you with a sickening remorse and sadness.
And so you plod through the first time of every day, as you grieve with each painful first, breathe through the difficult firsts, laugh at each joyful first, and shine with each heartfelt first.
The first time I heard the sound of the ocean, the rhythmic call of evening tides on the Gulf of Mexico, my soul leapt forward. I knew that song. I felt that music within me. The gulf has spoken to me all of my life, calling out a salty welcome when I first run across the dunes on my trips back home. The emerald sea murmurs comfort when I go there in grief. The turquoise water whispers in soft hushing waves when I go seeking calm. That same body of water, slate gray or bottle green, can crash onto the shore with a thundering roar, reminding me of strength and power when I need it most.
The first time I tasted a vine-ripe tomato, straight from the garden, still warm from the sun, with salt and pepper sprinkled liberally over the first bite – I sighed in pleasure. Tomato juice dripped down my chin as I stood next to my father’s tiny garden at our first off-base home, in Pensacola, Florida. To celebrate our new land ownership, we planted a garden that year, Staff Sergeant Dewayne Queen and his three young daughters, tomatoes and cucumber, green pepper and radishes, and a row of watermelon vines. And we learned how to eat a ripe tomato that summer, in the way I still love best.
The first time I saw fireflies, dancing lanterns in the dusky summer sky, I gasped, enchanted at the tiny twinkling lights, their intermittent glow illuminating the open meadow like miniature lighthouses. These days they are hard to find, and my breath catches whenever I see one, a small flash of magic lightning, heralding summer and a return to childhood.
The first time I smelled orange blossoms, they arrived by Special Delivery, in a box where they were wrapped in damp paper towels to keep them moist. The fragrance that wafted up when I tore open the mysterious package was the stuff of kings, of exotic baths and boudoirs, of tropical warmth drenched in sweet perfume. My mother wanted me to marry their sender, John Rehill, on principle.
The first time I tasted French bread, it came from the bakery in Metz, just a block down from our housing area. I was so proud of learning the phrase, “Deux pain, s’il vous plait,” and when I used it with my freckled, gap-toothed grin on the round, rosy-cheeked woman at the bakery, I was rewarded with two warm and crusty loaves of fresh-baked bread. “No one ever does this in the States!” I told my mother when I returned with my fragrant purchases, the end of one loaf ripped off and chomped enthusiastically on my walk home.
The first time I remember smelling North Carolina, we had just entered the Smoky Mountains by the Greenville state line. We had driven all night from Florida, and my mother and sisters were asleep. I was standing behind my father, leaning on the back of his seat as he drove his baby blue Buick through the night, singing along to the radio and smoking Winstons to stay awake. As dawn broke through the inky night and cast beams of pale light across the winding road, I leaned my head out the window. The air smelled green and damp, like mountain creeks and clover and the scent of my grandparents’ yards. I took great gulps of it, memorizing the sweet clean fragrance of my birthplace.
Trucker movies made popular in the seventies were my first encounter with life as an ‘over the road’ truck driver. I loved the camaraderie and cheesy Americana in those films. I wasn’t alone either as C.B. antennas shot up on cars and houses pretty quick at that time. The movies definitely didn’t portray truck driving as a job and maybe that’s what made it appealing? It looked like non-stop fun and games just out running the state and local police for whatever reason.
Exactly eleven years later my life would imitate art and like Jerry Reed and Kris Kristofferson I would hit the open road in a tractor trailer. My first trip to the west coast would be non-stop because I had an experienced ‘co-driver’ to help keep the truck moving. Even with a co-driver I figured the pay would be better than the usual ten dollars an hour all straight time I had been earning thus far. It hadn’t occurred to me that being in a rolling tractor trailer nonstop for a week straight meant no ‘down time’ which lowered my overall hourly pay to pennies on the hour.
It was impossible to believe that driving six thousand miles in six or seven days wouldn’t pay really well. The ‘interview’ for the job should have tipped me off though as I was handed a bunch of papers to sign as soon as I walked in the door. The meeting was more like an orientation and it happened only two days before I got into the truck. The manager gave a pretty scripted description of the job in what felt like a single breath,
“You get paid trip pay with this company, $1100 to go to the west coast and back. Try to remember you pay your own taxes since you are an independent contract driver. Some guys have us advance almost their whole pay before they come back and they don’t put anything aside to pay Uncle Sam…”
I wanted to interrupt and ask what he meant by ‘independent contractor’ and ‘paying my own taxes’, but never got the chance. I was also afraid to lose the job I was still naively unsure I had. The education on paying back taxes would occur soon enough though, with or without his thorough explanation. My inner thoughts piled up like academic footnotes to his dissertation of the job. Eventually I lost track of everything as he continued,
“… If you don’t have any money to start off, we will send a com-data check to the first fuel stop in Columbus, Ohio. Usually most guys ask for $150 or so to pay for their meals and stuff. There is a $7.00 charge for every com-check we send after the first one, the first one is free, so take as much as you think you will need. There will be an outbound trip packet envelope waiting for you at the guard shack. Use the same one when you get back and put your fuel card, receipts and log pages…the legal ones that is, in the envelope and give it to the guard when you get back. You will be driving with Dave; he’s been with the company for a year so he will show you how things work. Welcome to the company, have a safe trip.”
I would re-call that conversation several times as I lay in my sleeper compartment wide awake and over hearing my ‘co-driver’ singing and yelling on the C.B. radio for much of his time spent behind the wheel. To say I was nervous would be an understatement given the conditions of the road in mid-January. Any time I actually started to drift off to sleep I would eventually get jarred awake by the sound of the screaming diesel engine as Dave was now, ‘hammer down to the floor’ and going maximum speed.
The speed we were doing was quite surprising since the total weight of the vehicle was roughly eighty thousand pounds. Dave’s first order of business as lead driver had been to illegally tweak the engine’s fuel pump. This effectively removed the governor and allowed us to ‘cruise’ at speeds close to ninety miles an hour. We were taking the southern route which meant driving through the heart of Texas and were able to do in seven hours less time than if we were doing the state speed limit.
Arriving in California in less than three days almost made the nerve wracking trip worth it. The contrast in weather was really nice and since we were picking up produce on the Mexican border there was plenty of fresh fruit to enjoy. On the way back to the east coast I noticed Dave was unusually quiet during his shift. He had been doing all the night driving up to this point because it was his preference to do so. Finally I decided to peek through the curtain and was alarmed to see he had the inside dome lights on and was wearing sunglasses. I could see the moonlit desert flying by and I knew something was not right. It was then that I noticed his feet were moving as though he was either tap dancing or running in place with the cruise control on full acceleration. I had heard about drivers using speed to stay awake and it was obvious that my co-driver was using amphetamines or speed for the trip back. I surmised that he had probably purchased the drugs on his ‘visit to Mexico’ while I waited for our load of iceberg lettuce. We made it back without incident and I requested a different co-driver for the next trip. On my next three round trips and for different reasons I changed co-drivers three more times. One driver thought it important to carry a loaded .45 caliber hand gun in his briefcase and so on. Finally I found a co-driver whose only quirk was pulling to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere to dig for gold. I figured there was no harm in that especially if one of his ‘gut feelings’ about a certain area turned out to be correct. As time went on, I found myself wishing movies about successful doctors or lawyers had been really popular in the seventies.
There we were, standing on the curb, our thumbs pointing to the sky.
I was six, my best friend, Louise, was a year older, and this was the first time we ever hitched a ride.
We’d seen Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis hitchhike in one of their movies. It was 1954, the year Louise turned seven and deemed old enough to walk me to the Saturday matinees.
On the Saturdays we didn’t go to the movies, we’d sell nickel-a-cup lemonade from a stand my father built for me. One afternoon, when sales were slow and we were bored, we decided to try our luck at hitchhiking, just like in the movie!
We stood side by side on the curb in front of my house, and stuck our thumbs out. “Oh, here comes a car!” Louise squealed. “Maybe, they’ll stop.” They didn’t. But we saw another one coming right behind and, before we realized what was happening, a young woman was holding the door open for us to get in. A young man sat behind the wheel. “Where you headed?”
As Louise and I settled onto the back seat, I had no thoughts of the spanking I’d get for breaking all the rules. I had no thoughts of danger. I was just trying to think of an address to give him.
“Eight-thirteen East Fifteenth Street,” I said as grownup as I could. Besides my own address, I only knew two others – Louise’s, which was two doors down from our house and the one I gave the driver. The car slowly pulled away from the curb, then turned right at the end of our block. The sheer excitement of our adventure took hold of me.
“Here we are,” the man said, stopping in front of our playmate Ronnie’s house at 813 E. 15th Street.
The woman let us out and we waved good-bye. Then we started jumping up and down, celebrating the thrill of it all. We had hitchhiked! We’d thumbed a ride, just like Dean and Jerry.
We put our heads together and giggled, like little girls do, and headed home to 817 E. 16th Street — exactly one block from where our adventure had begun.
The first time I saw you it was around 5:30 in the blessed am. I was exhausted, sore, and recovering from anesthesia. I looked down at your little pink face and thought ‘So you’re what all the fuss was about.’ I offered you a breast, which you took, and sometimes it feels like you haven’t stopped eating since. I looked back over the previous nine months and it seemed like only yesterday I was telling people “Dave got one over the goal post. We’re due in September.” The aggravated carpal tunnels, the endless stream of pants and shortness of breath were gone in a wink and there you were.
The one thing I do remember, even a year later, were the contractions. We had friends with children give us those “What to expect” books. No where in any of those chapters does it describe what labor feels like. I had heard Carol Burnett’s description of pulling your lower lip over your head. This got a lot less funny in August as I realized the physical equivalent of passing a bowling ball through a pencil sharpener was going to happen to me personally — and soon. YIKES!!
You were happy in the apartment and not interested in coming out on your own. Because I was 40 and considered “advanced maternal age” (thanks a lot!) and had gestational diabetes, we were scheduled to report to the hospital to be induced into labor. We got settled into a room and the doctor started giving me drugs. Six hours later, nothing; more drugs, six hours later, nothing, more drugs, six hours later, still nothing. Your father and I were wondering what next when the doctor decided on stronger drugs. Six hours later the first one hit.
I asked a friend of mine earlier what labor felt like and this was probably the one answer that should have been in those books. “Until it happens to you personally, it’s really hard to describe!” Carol Burnett aside, I will attempt to describe what it felt like. Take the worst deals-with-God-stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks menstrual cramp you’ve ever had in your life and multiply it by ten – you’re getting warm.
Every woman is different and for some, having a baby is not much more than the equivalent of hocking a vaginal luger and the baby comes right out. Our family is not of that ilk.
After another four hours of too much fun for humans, the stronger drugs started to affect your heart rate. The doctor looked in on us and didn’t like what she saw. In what I’m pretty sure was less than sixty seconds, I was slapped on a gurney, shaved, and prepped for surgery. Your father was chasing after me wheeling down the hall, pulling on his scrubs like a live action Goofy.
Less than another minute later we heard “Waaaaaaaah!!” and nurses were cleaning you off. It was funny that when your dad caught up and entered the operating room they didn’t want him to see the doctor delivering you. This was after he had already stepped over a container of “leftovers”. They didn’t know that he had spent time as an EMT years earlier and they thought he’d be upset by the gore.
Here’s the funny part, the nurses later told me that we were never actually in labor! If that’s the case, ‘Ignorance is bliss’ was the understatement of the year.
I found it ironic that after going through all this I look like I’d been hit by a truck and everyone wanted a picture. After some time in recovery, we got settled into a room and you and I were formally introduced. A few days later, we brought you home and survived the first twelve weeks of sleep deprivation, endless feedings and diaper changes. We really missed the nurses at the hospital during those days.
It’s been an unbelievable year. There was dancing in the streets when you slept through the night around four months. You got your first tooth around eight months. You took your first steps in front of your dad at eleven months. Your first coherent word was mommy ( yesssss!). It’s amazing to me how someone so small could change our lives in such a huge and pervasive way. Your father and I are still feeling the effects and memories of our life before you arrived are fuzzy. Rest assured we love you and wouldn’t change a thing. Happy first birthday Claire. We’ll try not to blink.
