Mother Person
How to make it work without any friends or family near us, just the two of us and this person, this boy, this child I had carried for nine months and spent seventy-two hours laboring to give birth to, was a mystery. I had been transformed, replaced, obliterated and then abandoned. I stood in front of the mirror and saw why I was given the body I was given. I stood in front of the mirror and grieved for the years of slender and unmarked beauty that I had regarded as never good enough. I was proud, sad, angry and confused.
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Thursday's Child
It took seventy-two additional hours of labor before our son was born. Several days before labor started, he suddenly stood up, a footling breech like the other children born into my family. My obstetrician, Yehudi Gordon, deliverer of celebrity babies, famous for water births, enemy of C-sections, and fond of suggesting to neurotic expectant mums that they accept their fears of motherhood, told me to come to his Harley Street office the next day and to bring Kevin. “We’ll turn him,” Yehudi said. “Easy as pie.” Not. At least not any pie I’ve ever attempted. Possibly, he could have claimed it was as easy as shooting, skinning, stuffing, and cooking a wild boar. The next day at his Harley Street office we were ushered into a small room containing an ultrasound machine. “Okay,” Yehudi said. “Let’s do this.” From above, it must have looked like an awful attack on a very pregnant woman. Yehudi placed both hands on either side of the baby bump and began to push clockwise. I had my feet braced against the wall as Kevin, ever the journalist, held my hand while positioning himself to watch my insides on the ultrasound. When the baby reluctantly circled, my husband asked the ultrasound operator, “What are those?”
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London Calling
Divorced after a disastrous relapse from sobriety marriage, I was finally on my feet professionally, a writer, teaching creative writing at Rutgers. I had been asked to interview for several full-time teaching positions at good colleges. I was sober and had several ideas about my future. I wanted a child and a partner but not necessarily in that order. I wanted to leave the cage-fighting world of Manhattan real estate and relationships and live somewhere normal.
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