story of your life

I love people.  That isn't entirely true, not even remotely true for the most part.  By and large I hate people, they are annoying and I don't have time for them.  I love some people.  A few people, but those few I love hard, and for the rest of their lives unless they break that love with repeated, unforgivable, horrendous actions.  Somewhere nestled between the ranks of the hated and thus completely  ignored, and the beloved are those who have somehow broken into my life but I don't know what to think of them yet.  I love their stories.  So, I suppose, when I say I love people what I really mean to say is that I love people's stories: the details of their lives, the quiet subtleties they think don't make a difference to the arc, the huge fireworks inducing spectacular moments.  Everybody has a story, and the more stories that I listen to the more I find that every story is the same story.  We humans are predictable.  We make the same choices for the same reasons and experience the same emotions to the same events in our life cycles.  But what keeps us from being boring uninteresting robots is the way that though the colors are the same they come in different hues for each of us, the shades are all unique, there are infinite variations on the theme of humanness and this thrills me.

I not only love stories, but I need them.  I Need them in the way that the word covet is defined by Merriam Webster:

1   : to wish for earnestly <covet an award>

2

:  to desire (what belongs to another) inordinately or culpably

intransitive verb

:  to feel inordinate desire for what belongs to another

I want the stories poured out of the soul of their possessors and to lock them away in a secret wardrobe in a chamber of my heart to keep and compare to others and sort and retell if only to myself.  I think that this is less of a Buffalo Bill style sign of serial killer-like psychosis and more of an indicator that I really want to use all of these stories to write my own story about the (wait for the cliche) human condition.

The need I have for other people's stories leads me to constantly ask questions.  "So what's your story?" is usually the entree that may seem like a polite casual inquiry bordering on small talk but will actually lead to an unending litany of questions that will eventually feel like they are designed to steal your soul and will only end if you insist.

Sometimes the questioning gives the wrong impression.  A person might think such pointed and persistent questioning is a sign that the one asking is interested in them, especially in a romantic way if we're talking about a guy, but it is just curiosity.  Curiosity killed the cat you know.  One might think it is rude or prying, but they have got me all wrong, I just love people...or their stories...or somehow a person's story makes me love them more? at all?  I find friendships and loves and and relationships of all kinds through their stories.  There is something about being given a free pass through a window of knowing the source of the exhilaration, ecstasy, jubilation, bliss, agony, anguish, defeat, depression, misery, contentment, amusement, anger in someone.  It binds you to them, ties you with the thread of commonality, so that we are all stitched together to some extent: more tightly to some and loosely to others, but inexorably tied through our stories.

So, this is the new year

Today is the first day of 2014.  I know thanks for the sherlock report, right. But just in case you were still so drunk that you can't figure out what day it is, after all of your mad reveling last night, I thought I'd state the obvious.  2014 is going to be a different sort of year for me, and I'll tell you why.

I'm a bit of a mocker and a scorner as far as New Year's resolutions go.  In fact, I am downright derisive of goal setting in general.  I grew up with a subliminal distaste for setting a clear endgame and grinding away in pursuit of it.  And look how far flying by the seat of my pants has gotten me. So it seems like the New Year, which already comes with a tradition of goal setting, is the perfect time to resolve to be just a little different than in years past.  Maybe it's time to let a new thing spring forth even now, in my own life.

I am going to start out with resolving to write something every day.  I am not saying I will blog every day.  I will practice writing every day in some manner.  This is a goal, so if I don't reach it immediately, I'm also not going to completely give up.  Writing is really the only thing that I know I'm good at, and I really love.  It's taken me three decades to come to this point where I don't constantly hear the negative voices of self loathing and self doubt and no longer care what I imagine people might think of what I write.  I love it and I'm doing it.  The missing ingredients here are the "grind" mentality of doing the work every day in this arena, and (perhaps most importantly) an education in writing.  (For you newbies, my education in is Biology; it would seem one should have a doctorate in the Letters from Oxford or some such in order to be taken seriously in the field of literature.)

Next, I'm resolving to work out 5 times a week.  This one needs no explanation.  I have had a sporadic, at best, workout regimen this past year.  Don't get it twisted, I'm not trying to run a marathon (or a half marathon, cuz i'm only half insane), enter anyone's garage games or anything like that...I'm just trynna be workin' on my fitness and han'lin' my bidniz...so that just in case the fight or flight instinct should kick in, I will be ready and able to heed its call.

Third, I am steadfastly committing to cleansing my constant inner monologue of all inactionable thought trash. 2013 has been host to an obscenely busy brain locked inside my skull, through whose gray matter freeways have been carved out by repetitive rehashing of thoughts that don't need thinking.  So, if I cannot act upon the thought and it isn't adding to my life by its truth and loveliness then I will, as Nanny would say, schlingitiva! castitute! get rid of it.  I have a tendency to wrap myself in the warm blanket of obsessively looking down several roads that diverge in a wood and then going on a walter mitty style walkabout down each and every one of those meandering roads.  This is an utter waste of time. It ends as of today.

This next one should probably have been first, but I'm also bad at prioritizing: cling to Jesus like my life depends on it.  Grow closer to Him, learn His voice, listen to His voice, allow Him to have His way in my life.  I'll probably need a few more moments of solitude, a little more of the little things that bring you closer to God.  I am bad at these things and my resolve seems weak in this matter.  Jesus will most literally have to take the wheel on this resolution.

Included in my resolutions this year are some travel plans: I'm taking my sons on an epic road trip this year...one that requires planning and perhaps a bigger vacation budget than in years past and I'm going solo to Europe...so, I suppose I should head straight to the passport office tomorrow. Or the next day.

So there they are. They are simple resolutions for the most part-hopefully that is going to translate into some of them lasting the year.  Or not. We will have to see. Happy New Year's and if you live in Malaysia and have been checking out my blog please leave a comment!

Merry X-mas (yes x, look up the etymology/symbolism fools!) Libretto

Another thing besides sporadic blogging that I like to do is make a playlist.  This is most certainly a vestige of my gen x youth during which I made, gave away, and received many a mix tape.  Oh memorex!  Usually I make a playlist for one of two reasons: the celebration of the birth of Christ and the death of someone's loved one.

So here we are December 22nd and I feel safe releasing this year's playlist to the world.  Some of the songs may take you back, others might educate you; some you may love and there are ones I guarantee you will hate.  Each song has made it onto this playlist for a special reason, and, as far as it is appropriate, I will let you in on those reasons.

1. Ave Maria-Christina Perri:  The closet Catholic in me loves the Ave Maria in all of its forms.  This year it is making a Christina Perri turn because I have a sneaking suspicion that 14 year old Mary would have sung in this kind of voice.  Mary is a perfect example of humility and submission through faith, yielding her will and her body and reputation along with it to the unfathomable plan of the Holy Spirit for our reconciliation to the Father.  Full, indeed, of grace, as grace itself dwelt within her for nine months, through the power of only grace.

2.  Mary Did You Know-C-Lo  Green:  The Prov Dance Troupe makes me cry every year, throw this song in the mix, sung by that crazy animal lovin' former Goodie Mobster and I'm just bawling my eyes out.  But really, Mary did you know?  As a mom, it's a legit question.

3.  Hark!  The Herald Angels Sing- Nat King Cole:  In the movie of my life, Nat King Cole is my grandfather and sings me sweet Christmas carols  like this one.  "Mild He lay His glory by, born that man no more must die." Gets me EVERY time.

4.  All I Want for Christmas is You-Mariah Carey:  Mom danced a wild hybrid jig/charleston with such abandon about the kitchen to this song. I am sad for all of those who never saw it.  I'm pretty sure my little brother relived this in leopard tights and a foxy shirt the year mom died, the last year we all christmas'd together.  This song holds the perfectly ironic mix of joy unspeakable and abject heartbreak for me.  Laugh 'til you cry.

5.  Mele Kalikimaka-Bing Crosby:  I have had a secret love affair with Bing Crosby since I was a very young child.  I suppose I first fell in love with his voice and then later with all those black and white movie musicals he was in.  Living in Florida is reminiscent of the sentiment in this song, especially today, at the beach.

6.  Silent Night-Sufjan Stevens:  I love that there are no lyrics sung in this version; it is properly silent.

7.  Christmas Day-Dido:  When I was younger and a good deal more naive and still believed in true love and that it was available for me, I loved this song, thinking I would in a single meeting fall in love with some knight of old and he would go off and promise to return to me on Christmas day, and that this would indeed come to fruition on that Christmas day when we would promptly get married.  Yes, after approximately 3 hours of knowing each other!  I failed to hear the key words in the last verse:  those were the last words she EVER heard him say.

8.  Happy Christmas-Maroon 5:  We all know and love the original.  But, I am currently in the midst of a very torrid and very REAL (imaginary) romance with Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine.  Grrrr...beard, plaid, singing, tats, hugging people on the voice.  Sometimes I get jealous of Blake Shelton.  And then later that night Adam phones me to say it's all just for ratings.

9.  Blue Christmas-Bright Eyes:  This version is just melancholie enough.  I don't know why, but there's always someone I can imaginate into this song, every year, without fail.

10.  Baby It's Cold Outside- James Taylor and Natalie Cole:  I actually dislike the arrangement, especially the instrumentals.  And while I love nat's voice, I am not a huge fan of natalie's.  But I love James Taylor, so I imagine a young James and Carly singing this in their innocence, before the marriage and fighting ruined the sweetness.

11.  You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch:  SERIOUSLY, I LOVE THIS SONG. "Given the choice between the two, I'd take the seasick crocodile!"

12.  Christmas Without You-OneRepublic:  Sometime you just need to get your Ryan Tedder on.

13.  Christmas Waltz-She & Him:  I like to think the disagreement between object and subject pronouns here is purposeful and adorable.  It's an adorable new Christmas song.  I love a new song.  Mix it up! Favorite line fragment: "in three quarter time."

14.  I Wonder as I Wander-Jewel:  Jewel really can disguise her voice.  No, really, is that ACTUALLY jewel?  Anyway the lyrics are grande.  Grande Latte.

15.  Oh Come All Ye Faithful-Phil Wickham:  His voice makes me think he really loves Jesus.  He really wants us to come and behold the king of angels with him.  Plus, I Love a Linus reading of the Christmas story!

16.  Oh Little Town of Bethlehem-Annie Lennox:  I am pretty sure Annie Lennox is ACTUALLY one of the Cherubim.  Does she or does she not appear to be (and sound like) a ferocious, fiery, angelic being dedicated to constant worship of God and the protection of His throne room from those who are not worthy to enter.  I don't always love when a songstress strays so far from the original tune, but Annie can do what she wants.  I love her voice. It is magic, angelic even.  Cherubic.  "Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today...come to us, abide in us, our Lord, Emmanuel."

17.  Away in a Manger-Drew Holcomb:  I was introduced to Drew through Blood Water Mission and the 1,000 Well Project, during a different stretch of my life, when I was really passionate about being an instrument in saving the world from all its social ills.  This version of this song sings to me of that time.

18.  Hark! The Herald: Vienna Boys Choir..This is incorrectly labelled as in Handel's Messiah it is actually entitled "For Unto Us a Child is Born."  It matters not.  I absolutely love Handel's Messiah.  On a recent journey home from North Caroline I listened to the entire performance by the London Symphony Orchestra.  It was insane.  It tells the whole story.  No stone left unturned.  The goosebumps caused by chills that I get listening to it actually hurt.

19.  Comfort and Joy-Tori Amos:  Tori is some sort of woodland faerie and she has a very interesting take on some lines from an old classic.

20. Evergreen-Switchfoot:  This song has the angst of the old grunge era of my teen years.  It also has a few lines that I believe to be a reference to a Pink Floyd song.  I love songs that refer to songs of yesteryear.  I love switchfoot but you guys already know that.  I do really want to be alive all year long, and these years I feel less and less alive thanks to a cold breeze that has been chilling the fervor in my heart annum after annum so that now all I have is an icicle of a heart that barely wakens from its hibernation for a few moments every year, but doesn't have the energy to sustain it so falls back asleep in hopes for something miraculous to happen and really thaw it out permanently.

21.  Be Still-The Fray:  Everything about this song is just perfect.  I have been rereading Brennan Manning's Souvenirs of Solitude.  I am incapable of wrapping my mind around the idea of a lengthy, purposeful, silent retreat from all humans and other stimuli.  I have  a pretty serious case of adult ADHD so being still is impossible in my humanity.  "Be still, and know that I AM with you, and I will sing your name."  Beautiful.  It is a very real call on my heart.

22.  Beautiful Things-Gungor:  I really believe that next year is gonna be a beautiful year, in a practical, visceral, carnal, REAL, human way.  Not just spiritual.  But in my actual life, things are going to be really beautiful.  I am by nature a realist (read pessimist) but I am flippin the script this year.  Name it and claim it Jess is in effect.  Leggo, I'm finna take off! (Laura that was for you...shofar and all)

Merry CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!! Hands skyward, shoulder shrug, weird voice.

The Island

I have to take a break, which may be permanent, from blogging my novel. I will write it one day.  For now, here's a little something you might like to hear about.

There is an island I know like the island on Lost, only instead of floating in an actual ocean this island is suspended in the water above the land that separates the waters above and below, tethered to the time space continuum by a tattered thread that causes the island to spin and twist as the thread unravels. When I think about this island, I hear the song from Peter Pan, "it's not on any chart, you must find it with your heart" but sung by Union Station; and indeed there are aspects of it that are just like the island of lost boys.  You have to travel there under dark of night and think lovely thoughts and hold your breath as you pass through the waters.  You are ushered in by rows and rows of tall evergreens that are carefully manicured in a strangely germanic fashion - undergrowth and brush all cyclically burned away, leaving only the majestically tallest and strongest rooted in the ground, stretching through the sky.  The island itself is a small, quaint, quiet middle-class community of older homes made with natural materials hidden behind the contours of foliage that predates any human dwellers, and newer homes whose clean look and sparse landscaping speaks of an attempt at domestication of this feral terrain. The entire island is ensconced by immense guardian farms of storied landed gentry whose money is most certainly invested in keeping its secrets and protecting its inhabitants as much as they need protection or are willing to accept it.

When you get there you immediately feel the change.  The air is a bit cooler, crisper, and cleaner, and much heavier.  No the air is lighter and gravity is heavier, not so much heavier that it is crushing, but heavier enough to make you feel the earth beneath your feet a little more intimately.  I'm sure that compasses don't work there, due to some kind of ever changing spinning magnetic vortex.  Every time the tether to this earth makes a new pendulum swing, it changes the whole mood of the island and it takes some adjustment on your part as the visitor. As my sister would say, you have to get your sea legs.  Sometimes down is up, sometimes sideways is soup, and always winter is the hap-happiest season of all.  In real life, summer is the best season with its ocean and warmth and sun and tanned, fit, beach bodies and careless ease.  But that's when here there seems to be too much free time causing seriousness and summertime sadness that Lana del Rey sings about and while to me she is referring to the end of summertime to the island I know it is the actual summer itself.

The bite in the air the winter wind flies in with it wakes the island natives and draws new members of the pack in an attempt to prove their alpha status.  They become restless and wild, full of compliments and fire. Maybe no shave November plays a part turning the formerly clean shaven baby faces into refuges for a chorus of woodland creatures.  Maybe the increased gravity makes their muscles grow instantaneously and the winter husky is translated into chiseled bodies in contrast to the winter coat of hibernation insulation of the real world.  Maybe they're just on "that cycle" - finally.  Traps and lats and delts, triceps and biceps and even glutes are on prominent display. The uniform of the day is most obviously the shirts from that mystery flannel vintage etsy shop everyone keeps pinning.  The number and variety of shapes and sizes and softness and number of buttons that are undone (strangely it doesn't seem at all Miami vice of them to have 3 or even 4 unbuttoned buttons) invites a careful survey and cataloguing with margin notes that mimic the original intent of the facebook.  This winter shift turns mere mortals who might not normally even turn your head into the Thor-like hottest hottie mchottertons that ever hotted.

When I am old, I want to live part of the year in the no man's land between the island and the estates.  I want to buy a small shake shingle cottage with a wrap around porch in the woods.  It seems like the perfect place to write a book.  I can only take the island itself in short spurts.  A day, maybe two at the most, at a time.  I am not immune to believing that, like the Island on Lost, it is all real and it all matters and so I am susceptible to losing my bearing and an attachment to reality.  My actual life demands that I stay firmly planted on the land where I know in which direction north lies at all times.  But I can dip my toe in on a bi-monthly basis and drink from the fountain and let it keep me young for a little while longer.

Part 1c

John pulled the car to the patient pick up area near the main entrance of the hospital and an orderly rolled Wendy out to the curb in a wheelchair. Her mousy brown, medium length hair was scraggly and windswept and matted to the back of her head in a rat's nest of knots.  She wore no makeup.  She looked so frail to him, despite the 60 pounds she had packed on this last pregnancy, and woah had she packed 'em on this time.  She used to - for the first few pregnancies, anyway -  stay so fit and trim, playing tennis all the time and he supposed that being in her twenties didn't hurt the cause either. There was still that fierce glow in her eye, a lioness protecting her cubs, it made everyone else fade to a distant second.

Wendy looked at him from her chariot, and there are things that you aren't privy to as a child that run through your parents' heads and they ran through her head.

They headed down South Country Road in a pleasant silence somewhere in the vast gulf set between contempt and the mutual telepathy of beloveds wrought of their 22 year marriage and dad decided to "hoop" the dock.  A dim, setting November sun cast an icy glow over the bay from behind them.  The thin grey clouds hung low and seemed to claw at them and compel them not to return.  Stay here at the bay for a moment longer, forget the children at home and their inevitable questions and needs and constant demands. Get in a boat and sail away. Walk on water.

In the distance the whistle reported the arrival of the 5 o'clock train at Bellport Station.

"Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoe,"  mom sang.  They laughed as they remembered the beef and cheese smelling, quite overweight, travelling song and dance man who had visited their church a while back, and shared that bit of musical humor in a nasally vaudevillian voice.

SELF-PITY, FIT-THROWING INTERMISSION HERE:  DISCIPLINED WRITING IS SO DIFFICULT!

I heard the sound of the pebble driveway crunching beneath the tires and ran to the door.  I can remember mom rising out of her door: clad in a hospital nightgown and shrouded by a raccoon fur coat, glowing and reflecting the radiance of the sun.  It was if she was the inspiration for both Galadriel and the Ice Queen from Narnia a quarter of a century in advance.  She walked into the house and we fell all over her with hugs and kisses and cries of how we had missed her.  I missed her most of all.  I was small enough to slip between the bigger kids and get really close to her, and old enough and aware enough to want her more than anyone else. Dad shooed us away and led her to the bedroom.

Of course, we all followed her.  She crawled under the covers, coat and all.  Dad removed his shoes and hung his pants and shirt on his mahogany silent butler, and slipped in next to her.  We all piled on the king sized bed, which back then seemed so much larger than the king sized beds of today.  I know they are still the same size and I have only gotten larger, but memories have a way of tricking into believing that perception really is reality.  The two parents and 7 present children all fit perfectly.  Christa, who had driven over five hours to arrive the night before, brought Ben in and laid him in mom's arms.

She sang in his ear, "lalaloo, lalaloo, oh my little star sweeper, I'll sweep the stardust for you," in her low rich voice, evoking a cello and Patsy Cline, or any of the altos of the past. "...and may love be your keeper, lalaloo, lalaooo, la. la. loo." (It seems as if the alto is a dying breed, everyone wants to sing up in the stratosphere these days.)  It strummed my heart strings, and would yours if you could hear it, and lulled Ben into an easy sleep.  Over the soft tones of her sometimes humming sometimes singing, Dad waxed poetic about the day I was born.  Through the years I have become hardened toward this story, and for a time it rang completely false for me.  A romantic notion that ill represented the actual feelings the man demonstrated for me, because he couldn't have, or failed to have, the ones he imagined he did.

"I drove home from the hospital that day, the angels were dancing on the bay, as the sun tickled the gentle waves the burning wind was whipping up on the no longer still bay.  The angels were singing! And I sang with them."  We all held our breath in lieu of covering our ears because he was about to break forth in his signature song, getting all the words wrong, and somehow escaping mom's correction driven by her strict adherence to pure song accuracy both melodic and lyrical. "HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH, let the hooooooooooooooly anthems rise!"  The next line was delivered with a fervor and a mixture of an irish brogue and an italian, operatic rolling of the "r", "AND the TERRRRRRRRRRRRORRRRRRRRR of the gibbet rise triumphant in the skies."  We would sing the song all wrong right along with him, his confidence signaling to us that these must most certainly be the right words, until in preparing for his funeral some 30 years later it turned out that he was stunningly 100% incorrect.

Part 1b

All that night, mom, who had just had her 9th child at the age of 42, laid in a tiny hospital bed at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital with an 18 gauge needle in her cephalic vein of her arm dripping someone else's A pos blood (11 someone elses' actually) into her nearly completely blood bare body.  What had actually transpired while I was having my dream, clearly induced by some peri-dream connection to reality, was that mom had given birth to a not quite bouncing baby boy and suffered a massive obstetric hemorrhage as the placenta failed to completely detach from her uterus.  The obstetrician from the hospital thought that she probably suffered from placenta accreta-basically the placenta invades and cannot separate from the uterine wall.  This is condition which often requires careful observation throughout the pregnancy and exquisite care  by skilled hands at the time of delivery and carries with it the threat of complications which are various and include maternal death.

"Well she's never had that problem before," barked John, feeling as if his doula powers were being called into question, "so why now?"

Dr. Jin fought back the urge to roll his eyes and raise his voice, and in his calmest best bedside manner fairly whispered, "There are several risk factors: advanced maternal age, multiparity-having a lot of kids..."

"I'm not an idiot, I am quite familiar with the English language!" Dad interrupted, in his not so best bedside manner voice.

"...And any damage to the uterine tissue itself during previous pregnancies or cesarean delivery."  He continued as if he had never been interrupted save for the long breath he took to allow Dad his outburst.  Rule number one of emergency obstetrics according to Dr. Jin: never get into a battle with a 6'5" irishman when his wife nearly died thanks to nine months and one insanely long night of rejecting western medicine.  That was actually more like rule #2403, made up, just then, on the fly...but it felt like number 1 from where all 5'4" of his bespectacled self stood currently.

"Well all of her deliveries have been completely natural, so there goes your cesarean theory."  Triumph mixed with white hot rage brought color up his neck and through his face.  And then a memory flashed through his brain.  Johnny or Tommy was it, I think it was one of the boys, had the doctor who had been impatient for the placenta to deliver.  I distinctly remember this jackanapes putting his hand where it didn't belong and yanking on the placenta.  Bet that loser scarred her with that move, hope he got to cocktail hour on time. Thanks for almost killing my wife, genius, guess that's why they pay you the big bucks. People are so lucky that I'm not litigious.

Mom awoke hours later, "Where's Ben?" she asked, barely enough energy to make a sound it came out like a scared whimper.  Her last memory was of a less than pink, too small, lacking muscle tone, barely moving baby being wrapped in towels as she slumped in the tub and told her namesake, "Wendy, I'm going to Jesus now."

"Oh, No. You. Don't." Cried Wendy the younger with all the strength she could summon, "You're not leaving me all along with that man," pointing to Dad, "and all THESE kids!" waving her arms in demonstration as if there were a crowd behind her.

"Ben's alright, he is at home," Dad assured her.

And with that Mom got up, got dressed and discharged herself from the hospital.  Her son needed her.  Of course the doctors had different ideas, so she was forced to stay for another day.  But she was back home as soon as she could get there, whipping up oatmeal shakes and downing them to make enough milk to get some meat on the bare bones of baby Ben.

Part 1

I'm thinking about writing a book.  A novel dressed up as memoirs of someone who resembles me, made slightly more interesting by fudging some of the details that have become blurry over the years, whether as an act of self preservation or just thanks to this sieve that is now my brain. So I've decided to start writing down snippets of what would be in the book, try to train myself to see if I am really up to the task.  This is a story about love.  It is your typical love story, which means it is like no story about love you've ever heard before.  It is a story about humanity and our individually infinite capacity for love in the midst of living out our very hate filled, dirty, messy lives.  It’s my story, some of it may be true, most of it isn't, at least not in a historical sense.  But you may see in it a reflection of your story, and in that way it is completely true.

I first met him when I was six years old.  He had a third 21^st chromosome and he was far more perfect than any of us who had only 46 chromosomes.  His name was Ben and I fell instantly in love.  He was magical. His complete infantile helplessness was mesmerizing and demanded all of your time and attention and you gave it gladly.  I met him a dark late November night, when he entered this world and almost took our mother out of it in one fell swoop. 

I was so young that it is now hard to tell what parts of these memories are made up,   convoluted or proper, but I remember things from at least four years earlier than this, so it is probably safe to view the account as fairly accurate.  I went to bed November 18, 1983 amidst whispers of older siblings and mom and dad about preparations for a birth.  I climbed the stairs across the foyer from my parents’ bedroom oh so slowly, so as to hear as much as possible without overtly disobeying the instruction to go to bed.  With each of the thirteen steps the wood planks creaked beneath my feet, betraying the fact that I was still on them, but no one would notice this time, they were too busy in the master bedroom. 

I could imagine the scene without being in there to see it.  The gigantic room was dimly lit by low wattage bulbs ensconced in bulbous amber lampshades, which lent an orange glow somewhere halfway between gloomy and romantic.  Though the windows were closed, there was a wicked winter wind blowing from the northeast and slipping through the panes eerily rippling through the diaphanous cream sheers across the front of the room while the floral heavy damask drapes stood their watch on either end.  There was still a crib in the front left corner of the room; although it probably hadn't been used since I was the baby and even then not very often.  Mom, an avid breast feeder and an “attachment” parenting trailblazer even before it had a name, let most of us snuggle up next to her for the better part of our first two years.  The wall was covered in alternating stripes and florals wallpaper with a coffee, cream and maybe a hint of mauve color scheme.  One set of bare feet walked across the plush beige carpet, a boiling pot of water in hand, followed by another with a gigantic “placenta bowl” which also doubled as the popcorn bowl when no babies were being born.

At the time, dad was “furloughed” from the airlines, seemed that he couldn't ever pick the right airline at the right time and just make a ton of money flying for united or delta.  No, he had a bit of bad luck about things like that.  When he was younger he'd squandered a small fortune in Atlantic City and had to get bailed out of some drunken brawl over not being allowed to play past when he went bust by his little brother and was kindly asked never to return to the boardwalk again.  He was currently employed in some adult gambling accepted by polite society, known better as day trading on Wall Street.  Apparently having the same streak of luck as he'd always had in regards to money he was losing far more than he was making to bring home to his family of already 8 children, with the ninth on the way. None of the family members were insured and there were no doctors who would come  to the house to do the delivery for a nominal fee (so they wouldn't have to pay the hospital fees-because those are the ones that will break you) for fear of opening themselves up to malpractice claims.

This fit hand in hand with the wild religious kick mom and dad were currently on, the which they would later blame the other for, but I'll tell you that both of them were all in from where I stood.  Mom was a religious zealot, a true believer in everything she ever believed, and dad could use that kind of fervor to his favor and jumped right on board.   You see, believing that God is omnipotent and still does miracles and that it is only a lack of faith that necessitated the modern conveniences of medicine and doctors fit right into their present need to steer clear of those very things because they were uninsured.  So mom had no prenatal care with this pregnancy, and it seemed to go rather smoothly, so perhaps it was completely unnecessary anyway.  And here she was preparing for her second home birth in less than three years.

Mom was laying in the middle of the king size, pine, four poster bed, with the covers turned down, in her white eyelet nightgown with towels spread under and around her.  I wondered then as I do now, why she wore that stark white dress for an event that is always bloody and would prove to be particularly so this time.  Another set of feet slipped and scratched across the carpet bringing a cup of ice and a pitcher of water.  Someone left and came back and brought with them the scissors that had been boiled in a pot of water and laid them on a towel on the side table.  She labored in near silence-but the quiet moans carried through the house and filled its occupants with a strange foreboding.  A chill ran down my spine as I reached the top of the stairs and heard dad say to the assembled crew, “Let’s get ready to have a baby.”

I was young, so I feel asleep rather quickly, and when you are young you dream vividly, and remember well.  I had one of the most memorable dreams of my life that night, I remember it like it happened last night, only I can't remember what I actually did dream last night.  I heard a scream coming from downstairs and it made me wake up.  I tiptoed to the top of the stairs and heard an argument between my father and a sister regarding whether or not to call 911.  There was no telling who won the argument, in fact I don't think either did, but another sister took advantage of the distraction to actually slip out to the kitchen and call the ambulance from there.  I went downstairs as the ambulance arrived with its male and female occupants.  He was tall and young, a caucasian with dirty blond hair, fit underneath a layer of comfortable fat, with a receding hairline that seemed out of synch with his round baby face.  She was short and somewhat older, stocky and voluptuous with a ton of gorgeous wavy black hair and she was telling her partner something in her Long Island/Puerto Rican accent. They entered the house and I followed them as they walked past the blood soaked carpet of the master bedroom, walked through the front hallway to the kitchen and grabbed something to eat.  They continued into the den and sat on the blue and gold peacock patterned sectional and began playing darts.  I found them to be interesting, which I knew was sinful and faithless.  And my interest invited them to read my thoughts somehow.  I didn't want them to take my mom away, even though that was their intended mission, so they gave me a shot of something that in my mind was most sinisterly intended to murder me and then made off with my mother in their truck.

I did not want to die in the dream, and quickly realized it was a dream, and shook myself awake. I woke up in a puddle of nightmarish sweat and heard only the whistling of the wind through the house.  No, there was something else, but instead of adding noise, it almost made the house seem more silent.  It was a low, lamb-like, weak, whimpering cry of a newborn, who didn't have enough energy to really let it rip. It was the sound of Ben, and it beckoned me to find it.  In a post nightmare, dream fog, I followed the sound, expecting to find my mother near its source, but finding only a tiny strange faced baby.  He had the face of an angel: a high round forehead, round wide set eyes with heavy folds pulling across them in almost an Asian way, ruby red lips and a tiny body wrapped in several towels.  He had been left there in the middle of the bed and I curled up next to him and as we breathed in concert with each other the little trembling bleating stopped and he fell asleep.  I looked down at him, lying on a bed that had no sheets and a huge bloodstain on it, beginning a trail that would lead to the carpet, then to the tiles in the bathroom and ultimately to what looked like the scene of a massacre in the bathtub.  I missed the signs that my mother almost died that night; at least in my conscious state I missed them, because I was so drawn in by this baby.  I couldn't take my eyes and thoughts off of him.  He wooed me and captured my heart and warmed me and I knew I would never let him go.  I was in love and in that love was a peace that didn't make any sense because later I would realize I should have been frightened that night.  But as I was lying there next to my last baby brother, the world felt perfect.  There were no angels singing or dancing their light off the early morning ripples of the bay, but an angelic love radiated from this baby.

Shuffling of feet in and out of the room and cleaning and whispering happened all night long.  It was as if it was happening in a different dimension and though I didn't sleep, I rested with my arm encircling Ben.  I wanted to savor every second of this night, I didn't  want to even close my eyes as if that might break the spell that he had weaved around us with his magic powers.  There was a sense that this wouldn't last forever but for as long as it could last, I would be completely present.