Birth Fireworks

Two days of cramps culminated
in twenty four hours of
sixty minute increments of
mamabear groans and mental jake-brakes,
slowing the mack truck progress of labor.

My fetal vessel was taut
and shiny for weeks while
the rest of my body battled
a head cold and my mind
staved off boredom with jigsaw puzzles
and the intentions of inundating the kitchen
with the welcoming whiff of nutmeg,
cinnamon, oven-fresh bread.

Far from home for the holidays,
soon-to-be grammie and I watched
my little bun in the oven rise
while we stayed warm walking
in malls & department stores,
urging the baby to drop before the ball
in Times Square. A Consumer Christmas
spent together and alone.

While party-goers put on their
Blue Moon New Year's dancing shoes,
my midwife checked my cervix:
"The birthing room is ready when you are."
Daddy, Grandpa, and Auntie made
the mad rush
13 minute flight and 90 mile drive
in 2 hours flat, downing Xanax on the way.

The lights were as low as my moaning
and the soaking tub was brimming
with warm water and a promise of
relaxation and progress.
I heard the countdown to the new year
as a contraction
gripped my uterus in an ecstasy
so intense my midwife reminded me
to keep on top of it. I thought of
a freight train, heard the humming rails
groaning under its weight.
Steady, chugging slow and low.

A New Year's kiss,
no Blue Moon baby,
retreat to the work of birth.
Up until this point I had thought of child-rearing
as a cooperative project between woman and midwife,
mother and father.
But as the evening drugged the others with sleepiness,
my oxytocin flowed, and like a lone wolf
I slunk off to my lair of womanwork.

Left to my animalistic self, I crooned to the unborn.
I sat on the toilet and wanted to push.
The urge is so utterly primal,
so imminent, so base.
Daddy guffawed.
Are we gonna have this baby on the john?
Relieving pressure, my midwife breaks my water.
As if the relief made room for common sense,
I move to a smooth wooden birthing chair,
pausing for a contraction in the arms of my man,
my sleepy strong man made timid
with anticipation.

Fireworks. Clenching bursts of light behind eyelids.
More tension loosened as birthcanal widens and burns.
In the darkness of the birthroom, our new light
announced his arrival with a wholesome wail.
"My baby, my baby, finally my baby"
I held his head to mine,
rocking, weeping.
A cloak of calm enshrouded us
as a new snowfall lit on the winter ground.

unrequited love revisited

he came and saw me once again in my sleep. i never ask him to return. every few months, suddenly, i awake from a nap or an early morning snooze session, and i slowly come to the realization that i was just dreaming about my ex-lover. and his appearance during slumber is not just a familiar face passing by or in a room of friends. we always have some kind of life together. we are sometimes rekindling, other times comfortably involved. there have also been sex dreams.

these are not harbingers of the future, i don't believe. i have run into him a time or two since our abruptly loose-ended parting- i felt no spark, most times just a kind of pity or protective instinct. almost motherly.

we had a rough-hewn love that we never really polished because we didn't know how to just say what we meant. we were both english majors, and one would think we could have found the right words, but we had way too many words- i think they got in the way of  feeling the moment we inhabited. and although we both said we valued the quietude of our undramatic bond, now i can see that we each tried to liven it up in our own ways.

i couldn't understand his devotion to the life of music. he tried to explain it as a completely different ilk of love, but this love would materialize in songs like "Ezmerelda" (sic) about a closet-dominatrix who can stare straight in to the sun, and i realize that i was jealous of his muse. or just wanted more of him. which led to his statement that he couldn't "sacrifice" enough for this relationship. i remember that being a touchstone word for a while there. we must have had different understandings of the definition of it. i took what he was saying as a throwing-up of his hands: take what i have to offer, or don't take me at all. i'm still not sure what his exact intention was, but it didn't seem like there was much chance of compromise on his part.
i reacted to my rejection of sorts by drinking, badgering, belittling the band's talent, and crying. and mostly just making an ass out of myself. i guess i finally grasped that i wanted more than he was ready to part with of himself, so i decided to leave state for the fall (which was a time that  i would associate with him for years afterward). California. as soon as it set in that we would be apart, our closeness strengthened, of course only until i was gone.

yeah, i fell in love in California with someone who turned all my unrecieved love back on me- threefold. my dad called him "the inundater", a moniker harkening to the piles of letters he wrote me while his band toured the west coast. a real smotherer. i came clean of it, and was given an ultimatum.

i truly believe that before i even made a decision, he was planning to make a fool of me. we never once talked about any reason why i might have fallen in love with someone else.

we tried to start a small rural life once we finished college that spring in my hometown fishing village. my people, not his. his music needed admirers and an atmosphere a little different than i envisioned for our new home. he completed his usual summer festival circuit and returned with a confession of his own, and she'd be coming to town for our local music festival.

all teeth and a wiener dog. while i worked wiping tables and chopping onions, she toured my town in his truck. everyone asked me who she was. meltdown after meltdown on my part. we chatted over a beer; "this is a nice place to visit," she crooned. he agreed.

he had a hard time making the break. "i need to ask her if i'm just a ghost to her," he hemmed cryptically and hawed metaphorically. apparently her first love drowned in a lake. "i just hate to throw out my longest relationship," as if we were a trophy in tribute to stagnacity.

ferries came and ferries departed without him aboard. the we of us had dissolved into reserved friendship, albeit grudgingly on my part. i never tried to woo him again. he slowly packed his milk crates with records, notebooks, navajo textiles, flannel shirts and corduroys. he took his time embarking as if savoring the last salty sweet morsel of What Had Been, because surely he forgot once i was out of sight.

sadly, i haven't forgotten. i've barely moved on- or up, i should say. i've moved on to older men, unconscious men, mainstream men, in that order. and i shudder every now and then at the thought that my deliberation has been compromised. will that one college love be my starry opus?

and yet of course, we all come of age and learn that the burgeoning lofty ideals of early adulthood aren't always easy to uphold. Thoreau, Whitman, and Emerson aren't mentioned by murdoch. existentialism outshouts zen buddhism in the din of daily traffic. better to hold on to one strand of enlightenment stubbornly than blissfully let go and be engulfed in the mainstream current. could his memory just be that single tenacious sinew that links me forever to a lifestyle i've left behind?