Forty Years Ago Now

Forty years ago just about this minute, which is to say at 7:46 on December 31st, I was in the delivery room with my OB/GYN who had decided to induce labor even though I wasn't even due yet -  so that, as he put it, "he could give Dad here the tax deduction, har-har." (Oh the sexism in those days! He had also told us two weeks before the birth that while I did my "huffing and puffing," my husband was welcome to "come in and heckle" if he liked, - as if this were all about HIS brilliant performance!)When, at 6 o'clock that morning,  we showed up at the hospital as we were told to do, he ordered the full humiliating 'prep' done and then personally inserted a kind of knitting needle into me to make my waters break, so of course the child was born with tiny cuts on her head. Then later, when things weren't moving fast enough for him, he brought on the Pitocin and as the time passed, went on to crank the dose up and up until I was almost levitating off the gurney. Someplace in there came the Epidural, one of life's great blessings, so everything else was easy. But if my body was blissed out, my mind was as clear as can be and I do remember him telling one nurse to call his wife and say that he'd be at the New Year's Eve party by 10.And I guess he was. By 10 the three of us were cozily ensconced in a room. At 11:55 exactly, the nurses on duty brought us a split of champagne and we toasted the future.Ah memories!We see backward so clearly. We see ahead so poorly. We didn't know this baby would be the first of three, or that she would be such a mild philosophical child. She was easy from the start - well, except for that 8th grade year when she was doing the hard work of separating from us.

in 9th grade with her cousin Katy at the beach

Today though, she is altogether launched. Today she is 40, thirteen years older than I was when I gave birth to her. Can that even BE?  We had a wonderful first winter as I think back on it. I wrote thank-you notes for baby gifts and the three of us napped and napped......resting up for the excitement of watching that landmark series Roots based on the remarkable book by Alex Haley.She was too thin at first and then she chubbed up - and before we knew it, Spring came and she crawled down from our laps and away from us, as all babies must.How blessed we are though, because all these years later we can still get to her in 22 short minutes. Oh Happy birthday Carr! What a joy it has been to watch you grow!   

My Almost Famous House

A text arrived from my next-door neighbor saying that a “location manager” had just spoken to her about using both her house and ours as the setting for a major motion picture. Could he ring our doorbell too in a bit?“Sure,” I said, and 20 minutes later he was here.This wouldn’t be the first time a film crew had chosen our house. Fifteen years ago, a public utility made a commercial here using just the outside. Then, five years after that, some college kids used the inside too, to make a movie that affixed so many wires and cable to our newly painted trim that we had cause to muse on the futility of any and all home-improvement projects.“Oh, but this is the big time!” said the man, and that sounded true enough to me when I heard the names of two of the actors who have already signed to the project. “When we leave, you won’t know we were here at all.”“Even with that crew of 80 you mentioned?" I asked. “Even with that crew of 80," he said. All we had to do was (a) agree to be relocated for “seven weeks give or take”, (b) allow all our furniture be relocated too, and (c) give permission for the walls be repainted and the wallpaper be covered with other, temporary, paper as the film’s visionaries saw fit.But! All would be restored when the project was complete. AND, besides covering our housing costs, we would be compensated for our trouble with a fee to be mutually agreed upon.He took scads of pictures, talked more to my husband David, newly returned from the office, and left, with the understanding that he would come back in a week with six even bigger bigshots.When, that evening, I told my cousin about this potential offer, her reaction was swift. “WHY though? Why would you do this at all?” It was a good question.Over the next few days I began to see that I would say yes to the project mostly to see if we still had wings, as well as roots. Were we still capable of signing up for such radically new “dance suggestions” from the universe?Because we have been here one very long time: Little House on the Prairie was still airing fresh episodes when we got here. For almost four decades, I have watched the morning sun touch the tops of the tall oak trees across the street.David, who is equanimity itself, thought it might be an adventure, but I happen to know that he can be happy anywhere as long as he has his books and the daily crossword.I am not like that.I got worried about my houseplants, all still at ‘summer camp’ on the screened-in porch? Where would they go, some storage facility in South Boston? And could I actually live in a hotel, even for those seven weeks 'give or take'?As promised, the man came back with the bigshots, who spoke not a word but slithered like eels, all silent, around our rooms. As they left, our man thanked us and said he would call in a week with the decision.And when he did call, it was to say that they had decided to go with an another house in another town.Was there disappointment around here? Not for my houseplants. Not for the two rooms we freshly repainted just last month. I walked outside to where I could see those trees that greet me each morning and felt a slow smile cross my face. Because how lucky a thing is it to go from youth to age looking out at the same window at the tops of the same stately familiar trees, not just those oaks across the street, but this ginkgo and her graceful final shedding.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVv1vsHXHmQ[/embed]