[Here’s another chapter from the first unpublished book, For a Season. It contains one of my favorite stories from my married life…]
It was Thursday, and my due date was merely seven days away. I went in for a routine weekly check up. After I left my urine sample, the nurse weighed me, and then whisked me in to the examination room to take my blood pressure.
“Humph…It’s a little high,” she said as she unwound the device from my arm. Worry flashed into her face, which then sank into my heart. “Let’s see what the doctor says.”
Shortly after, my doctor came into the room and examined my swelling belly. He punched in some numbers onto his laptop. After a few clicks of the keys, he noted my rising blood pressure numbers as well as the presence of protein in my urine – a no-no for this pregnant woman with gestational diabetes.
“Melissa, you are full term now,” he began to say. “As I look at these numbers for your blood pressure, the protein, and your gestational status, I’d rather get this kid out now rather than later.”
My heart rate quickened, and my mouth went dry. “So what are you suggesting?” I asked.
“I’m suggesting that we have the front desk schedule an induction. For Tuesday.”
My due date was for Thursday, not Tuesday. I must have looked wide-eyed and perhaps fearful at the prospect of an earlier time slot; my doctor extended his arms as if to hug me; instead, he rubbed my shoulders as he spoke reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Melissa. I’ll be right there. We’ll get this baby out together. It’s time. And it’s gonna be alright.” I guess I felt utter shock because I hadn’t thought that inducing might be an option; I had enlisted friends and coworkers at school to be ready to take me in on a moment’s notice. Inducing seemed too easy, too simple. Suddenly the last nine months condensed into a flicker of merely five minutes I was going to become a mother very soon. Tuesday, in fact.
Overall, my pregnancy was a smooth ride. Even with gestational diabetes, which altered my diet and forced me to do a little exercise, I really had no complaints about this journey, soon to end in a local hospital. Admittedly, I could have done without my father’s diagnosis with cancer. Life is sometimes messy, and certainly, our coexisting conditions of pregnancy and cancer provided a cruel example. Yet, people prayed for us, sent us white light, positive vibes. Late at night, I wondered if that really helped. And I often asked, was God even listening? Watching?
My doctor made the appointment for that following Tuesday for my induction. I somehow floated out the door just like the day I found out I was pregnant. Then another reality hit: Rachel’s room still wasn’t ready! I sank into my car, fished out my cell phone, found Jim’s number, and hit send.
“Honey, we’re inducing.”
“Really?” he asked, somewhat surprised.
“That’s what the doctor said. We’ve made appointments and everything. Tuesday’s the day,” I said. My own shock had melted into sweat, trickling down my neck and back, causing me to shiver in the cool December air. “So, shall we paint Rachel’s room, or what?”
“Right after work tomorrow, I’ll get the room painted,” he said with conviction. “And is your mom still helping with that border for Rachel’s room?”
“Absolutely. Listen, I gotta concentrate on driving. I’m on my way home now.” I signed off and swung onto the highway.
All throughout my pregnancy, my mother kept asking me about the baby’s room. Many women have it done months in advance. As much as I wanted to get the room ready, teaching and grading essays sidetracked me. Seems that’s all I do, sometimes. It didn’t help that Jim kept putting it off. My mother offered to help, to do something, anything to get things ready. As we got closer to Thanksgiving, my mother bought the changing table in hopes that this would get Jim going. That didn’t seem to work.
Early on, we did find a lovely pale yellow for her room, and my mom bought a gorgeous wallpaper border that both matched the yellow and displayed the letters of the alphabet. That Friday, as promised, Jim quickly emptied out Rachel’s room and painted it. We arranged for my parents to come out that Sunday and help us put up the wallpaper border in our daughter’s room since neither one of us had done that before.
As he worked on her room, I couldn’t help remembering when we painted the kitchen a few years ago. However, it was a slightly different shade of yellow.
“Honey did you finally throw out the can of the original kitchen yellow?”
“After all the grief you gave me, yes. It’s all gone. Unless you want me run to Sears right now. We could do it all again?”
“Um, that would be a NO!”
Years ago, when my husband and I began searching for a house to buy, we came upon a kitchen painted with this wonderful, warm Southwestern yellow that we both fell in love with. I imagined the name of paint to be something like Arizona Sunset. While we didn’t buy that particular house, we often dreamt about that color choice.
A few months after we bought our house, my husband went out to find the yellow paint we liked so well to grace our kitchen with its fine warm glow.
When he walked in the door, he handed me the receipt and said, “I found the paint, and I love it. You will too.” I glanced at the receipt, which read “Sears.” That should have been my first clue that something was wrong, very, very wrong. When I was growing up and it was time to decorate, my parents packed the family into the car and headed to a store that sold nothing but paint. Silly me, I thought that everybody did this. Not so. I guess I had always thought of Sears as the place where you can score a lawn mower or a toaster or a showerhead. But paint? This I had to see.
I glanced at the slip from Sears: two cans of paint for about 50 bucks. I had two ways to respond to this situation: on one side of the ring was honesty, hopping around like a boxer, waiting for the bell, and on the other was patience, sitting on the stool, playing it cool. I go with patience. Maybe I am wrong, I thought, maybe it’ll be terrific.
When I was a kid, my mother laid out my clothes – rather color coordinated outfits – on the bed so she knew that I would match. From this, I learned the basics of patterns, prints, and stripes. Either my husband, a very bright guy, doesn’t get into matching colors or plain doesn’t care. I’ll never forget it when he found an unclaimed, long-sleeved paisley shirt in our apartment laundry room. He brought it home to add to his eclectic wardrobe collection. A week later, he put the said paisley shirt on over the black Homer Simpson “I See Dumb People” tee shirt, which made my eyes bleed.
At the time of painting the kitchen, he was in between jobs, so working on the house made him feel useful. One day after I came home from teaching all day, I walked into my freshly painted yellow kitchen.
Picture this: I saw a stark, harsh highlighter yellow, flashing a warning of impending doom instead of a room with a warm, Southwestern glow, making me thirsty for a margarita. It reminded me of the thin “Do Not Cross” ticker tape police use at a crime scene. My eyes bled once again. Nevertheless, I kept this to myself. At least I tried to. I offered vague phrases like, “I see…” “Interesting…” He looked at me and sensed disapproval.
“You don’t like it, do you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but your body did.”
It was true – I did not like it. Just like Sam did not like Green Eggs and Ham. However, I still was willing to try it out to see if I would change my mind, or better yet, he would change his.
In the next few weeks, friends and family dropped by and observed the paint job. They were all honest, either in or out of earshot of my husband, noting the rather unusual brightness of the room or asking who picked out this color.
My mother, the one with an eye for colors and fabrics, took one look at it, pulled me aside, and said, “My god, honey. It’s awful. How can you put up with this? And why did he go to Sears? They only have about eight colors to choose from.” I pictured quite a funny visual: you only need one swatch for all eight colors.
Finally, after some time had passed, my stepsons came over for dinner and a round of video games with their dad. Seth, the oldest son, wasted no time with his comments once he figured out that his father picked out the color for the kitchen.
“Dad, it’s ugly.”
“No it’s not!” my husband replied defensively. “It’s…bright and cheery.”
“Yeah, if you are a mental patient,” said Seth, rubbing his temples from the glare. “And if you were normal before, the paint color could make you scream for the padded room.” I could have kissed my stepson right then and there. Thanks to the brutal honesty of the first-born son, the negotiations of paint color could begin once again. Now our kitchen is a bright, cheery green apple color, and luckily, no one has checked into the funny farm…yet.
The Sunday after Jim painted Rachel’s room, at right about two in the afternoon, my father and mother pulled into our driveway. In the time of my father’s illness, my mother often drove, and she did so that day. She had on old, worn blue sweats and bright, white tennis shoes. She carried the wallpaper border, some tools, and homemade curtains to match the border. I imagined her sewing those curtains in between her visits to the hospital with Dad.
As she got out of the car, she presented a smile that possessed a mixture of worry, relief, and love. As I stood at our doorway, watching, one look at her composure could deposit that same combination of feelings into me in an instant. I attributed this to our mother/daughter bond, strengthening by the moment. I wondered if my future child and I were bound for the same unity.
My father emerged carefully out of the car, with at least three layers of sweats, complete with a grey hoodie and a baseball cap to cover his hairless head. He recently had recovered from a mild chest infection as well as an unexpected rash that covered a great deal of his body. He had been at the hospital for 11 days straight, so he cherished being home with Mom. After this last round of chemo, he moved slower.
Once my parents were inside, my mother instructed both my dad and I to rest in front of the television while she and Jim got to work. We talked about anything under the sun but cancer. Dad lodged questions about work and students. I channel-surfed for a football game for suitable distraction. We aimed to be and act normal. In the meantime, my mother and Jim tackled the border for Rachel’s room. I could hear their conversation upstairs when there was a lull in ours.
“OK, Jim. You can start this process by running some lukewarm bathwater.” Jim followed orders, while Mom scrutinized the yellow walls. “Jim, nice job painting, by the way.” Jim just smiled and thanked her. The yellow kitchen story is safely in the family book of lore, doomed for grief and necessary repetition at Jim’s expense.
After they had finished the border, Mom and Jim moved the changing table and dresser in their places, and brought two chairs in from the living room for Dad and me to sit on. For the next hour, my mother folded Rachel’s clothes and put them away. For months, I had been peering at all these pink clothes, wondering how they would look on my daughter. I tried to imagine us together in this room as a family, but from the moment my doctor said the word induce, I had been in a state of shock. It stunted my ability to see too far into the future. I could only live in the moment.
After we put everything away, my brother’s girlfriend Sara, who brought her mother for a visit, took photos of all of us. All throughout my pregnancy, I had precious few pictures of pregnant me. Sara took a color photo of Jim and me, standing in Rachel’s room. A warm yellow glow frames us as I sheepishly smile and hold my large belly and look into the camera.
She also took a picture of dad and me. In it, his skin looked ashen and pale. His eye sockets resemble moon craters, as if the chemo pulled his life force inward. Doctors and nurses will tell cancer patients that chemo brings its victims to the brink of death, and my father’s Holocaust profile that I noticed at the shower remained prevalent. We embrace each other and smile wanly for the shot. We smile for the moment, we smile in spite of the unknown, and we smile for each other.
By dinnertime, everyone had left. Jim took a step back and admired the room.
“Not too shabby,” he said, looking up and down the walls. “It’s the second best looking room in the house next to your office.” One of the bargains I struck living a ways out of town was my own office. I spend a great deal of time in a soothing, comforting place.
“You must be pleased that something is yellow in this house,” I teased, with my hand on my belly.
“You won’t let me live that down, will you?”
“I’m afraid not. In fact no one will.” I paused to take a deep breath. “The room looks really nice, honey.”
For a moment, we were quiet. We simply stood there, holding each other. I stole a quick glance up at his face. I can tell when he’s deep in thought: he doesn’t just look at things; he looks through them, as if he’s searching for an answer he cannot see. Perhaps he was thinking about becoming a father all over again, close to the age of fifty. Perhaps he was anticipating holding his own daughter, one answer to one of his many, many prayers.
Nevertheless, in that moment, I felt peaceful despite the chaos. I had decided that I wasn’t fearful of giving birth and all the pain and work that go with it. My father’s cancer trumped that fear of pain and replaced it with a fear of his absence: will he be around for Rachel? That was my fear. I held Jim tightly, and he squeezed back.
“Just a few days away now. A baby will be here, in this house. Here I go again. I’m close to fifty!”
“I know. Hey, let’s get something to eat. I need to put my feet up anyway. We both need our rest.”
“Sure. Let me clean up a bit.”
As Jim put the tools away and swept up Rachel’s room, a thought entered my mind for the millionth time: could she be the angel of light we all needed in this room shadowed by my father’s illness?
It was time to find out.