My daughter is having a baby. Her first. He will be my first grandchild. He will be here in five days.
There is a movie I think back upon. She's Having a Baby It's one of those John Hughes stories from the 80s. It's all of the above. What I mean is that you could have a checklist of romcom story parameters, and this one checks all the boxes. Laughs. Sweetness. Challenging situations. Tempted infidelity. Fear.
The fear part is what stuck with me. When this movie came out my wife and I were in our child bearing years. Our first-house-buying years. Our "not another business trip - are you ever coming home from work?" years. All those challenges that true love turns into.
The part that gets left out is that lots of the things we do in those early years have an origin in fear. The "we're going to run out of money," fear. The "oh my god we're going to be parents," fear.
There's a Kate Bush song in the soundtrack called This Woman's Work. It's played during the childbirth sequence. The Kevin Bacon character is hustled out of the delivery room when something goes wrong. He's sitting in the hospital waiting room, scared out of his mind, utterly helpless to do anything for a situation he helped create, and with which he felt to that moment was completely in his control.
See, back in the 80's we all went to lamaze classes when we were pregnant. They gave a job for the non-child-bearing partner to do. The job was actually trivial in terms of effort. Things got timed. Hands got squeezed. They were trying to prepare you for the stark reality of the childbirth you caused.
You looked into the pained eyes of your wife and the reality of the situation eroded any sense of security all the preparation might have given you. The immediacy of things: the stark overhead lights. The wires and tubes and machines spitting out biological data. OB nurses trying to be casual while incomprehensible things got urgent.
No way to know. No way to judge what was happening.
I was the Kevin Bacon character, kicked out of the delivery room when an emergency c-section was started. I sat in the hall in my scrubs. Wondering. What could I do? The emotion came up from the bottom of my gut. I thought I would be sick - not from the blood and yellow fluids - but from the fear. Would I lose my child? Would I lose my wife? Nothing that was happening seemed to be going smoothly. Nothing seemed right. Nobody was telling me anything.
The attendants thought the birth made me sick, but they were dead wrong. The docs had made a mistake and I witnessed it. I didn't know what I saw at the time, but now I do. They screwed up. Innocently, borne on nerves, I started speaking out of turn. There was a hand where a foot should be. I said so. I asked if I was right. The obstatrician looked at the nurses and they took me by the arm and made me leave.
I had seen the movie less than a year before. How could a movie be coming true? I tried not to cry. I needed everyone to believe I was strong.
But I wasn't. I was just a guy, gritting his teeth, staring at the pattern in the floor tile. Waiting to be told something awful. Waiting to turn into something else.
And I wonder, still, why is it that when things get razor real we worry
about the past. We envision loss, even in light of imminent happiness.
Why is it when we're afraid to the core that we abandon our thoughts of
hope. I did, in those minutes sitting on that chair in the hall. I
thought I had to summon strength to get through whatever they would tell
me, and I worried I had none left.
Then I was brought in and I held my daughter. All the fingers and toes were there. The eyes were blue. My wife was smiling as they sutured her, the only one in the room without a surgical mask. I had expended so much energy in fear I nearly collapsed when the reality turned to my favor.
That was it. Just another happy delivery for hospital staff. A dive into horror for me.
And so now the child I held that day is herself having a baby. I am thinking of those moments in the hall when it seemed we were on the verge of pain. Those moments that turned to the heights of joy in seconds.
I am running out of time on this planet - but hey - we all are. And sometime between now and Monday, my daughter and son-in-law will have a son. And my son-in-law will have his turn to sit and wonder if he's done everything right. Has he saved enough money. Does he have the right job. Can he fix the plumbing leak in the washroom, or the flickering light in the nursery. Will he be strong enough to be a provider and a protector.
The Kate Bush song is written as the thoughts of the father when he is removed from the birth. Never is a man so helpless. Never does he feel so weak. I think of wounded soldiers on battlefields calling for their mothers. Their wives. Because being afraid alone is hell. That's when you know for certain what lives in the spark of your beating heart. Are you who you always thought you were? Are you enough?
No. No chance. Changing from being "just some guy" into a father responsible for someone's entire life path is another frightening birth. And it doesn't end.
So I'm sitting here praying. My daughter has preeclampsia which is a moderately dangerous condition. The birth will not be routine. My son-in-law will suit up but may wait on that chair in the hall, wishing to go back to childhood.
And I'm no part of this at all. I stand outside my daughter's work. My daughter's world. Waiting for news. I made them their wedding rings out of a solid bar of titanium. I helped them buy their first house. We planted the fig tree in the front yard.
Have I done everything I could have done? Have I done everything I should have done?
I know you have a lot of life in you yet. I know you have a lot of strength left.
"Oh darling, make it go away." - This Woman's Work, Kate Bush