Arms Wide Open

by Patricia Harman

  Here I can look down through the trees at the lights on the other side of Hope Lake, gold streaks on the dark water. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. It’s been a rough few years, but I shouldn’t get so freaked out by a phone call. The practice is on solid ground since Dr. Parsons joined. Our three boys are grown and out of college. Two are already fathers.

  My secret sadness is that, after thirty years, we no longer deliver babies. I still see patients for early prenatal care, but since the medical malpractice crisis, a few years ago, we gave up our obstetrical liability insurance.

  Get over it, girl! I admonish myself. You’re still caring for mothers and teens and red-hot mamas sweltering through menopause. I lean my arms on the porch rail, staring across the dark water, remembering another phone call twenty years ago.

  “It’s for you,” the ward secretary chirps as she holds out the black receiver. I’m working the 3–11 shift in labor and delivery as an RN at a little hospital north of Columbus. Tom, who after becoming a paramedic had switched to pre-med, was at home with the kids studying bio-chem.

  Unusual, I think, to get a personal call at work. I hope one of the boys isn’t sick.

  “Patsy Harman, RN. Can I help you?”

  “This is Monica Stewart, coordinator of the University of Minnesota Nurse-Midwifery Program. How are you?”

  My heart does a flop. “Fine, thank you.” I’d applied to their program six months ago and been put on the wait list, thirteenth in the queue, not an auspicious number. I’m wondering how and why she tracked me down. The program only takes ten students, so Tom and I figured I’d be admitted next year.

  “Well, I’ll get right to the point,” Ms. Stewart goes on. “A student that was supposed to begin our midwifery program had to defer. I’m going through the applications and I wonder if you’d be interested in starting this September.”

  “This September?”

  “Yes. Three weeks. I know it’s short notice . . .”

  I get it now. Most applicants on the wait list couldn’t just pick up and leave, so she’s down to me.

  “There’d be a small graduate stipend, and we have money for scholarships from the NIH.”

  “I’d have to get student loans. We don’t have any savings. Could I do that in time?”

  “We could defer payment until your federal student aid came through.”

  “OK.”

  “OK? Don’t you need time to think about it? Ask your husband?”

  “No. This is what I want to do. This is all I want to do . . .”

  For the next hour, while I take care of one labor patient and two postpartum moms, I float two inches above the linoleum floor of the Birthing Suite, waiting to call Tom at break. Finally I get back to a phone.

  “Guess what? The University of Minnesota called. They want me to start the midwifery program in three weeks. Someone dropped out and no one wants her spot. They got clear down to number thirteen.”

  “Lucky thirteen. That’s great, Pats.”

  “You don’t mind? I said yes, but it’s so soon. We’d have to get up there and find jobs and a place to live . . .”

  “We can do it. What’s that to all the other things that we’ve done?”

  Funny how things work out. I release a long sigh, still staring down at Hope Lake, then bend my head back to look at the stars. There’s the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, the Seven Sisters, the tiny lights that have guided me since I was twenty. A falling star catches my eye and I reach my hands wide . . . then bring them together in a wordless prayer. Thank you.

  Refuge

  “Whoa, did you see that?” Tom’s leaning over the porch, pointing down into the woods. After three days of slashing rain, the tail of another Gulf hurricane is gone and we’re sitting on the porch of our cedar-sided home, looking down at the lake, enjoying the smells and the sights of our three acres of grass, gardens, and woods. Innocent, small white cumulus clouds, the kind you might see on a postcard, dot the blue sky.

  This is our worship, on Sunday mornings, a time of ease and private reflection, a day to make love, to heal, to play music together, to walk in the woods and work in the garden. Well, it was private, until Zen, our youngest son, came home a week ago and parked his battered gray Toyota pickup, crammed with all his worldly possessions, in the drive. It’s temporary, he tells us. He and his love of the last five years have separated and he’s come home to get his head together. My words, not his.

  I remember how it hurt to leave Stacy, tore something out of me, though I knew it was the right thing to do. Whether you’re married or not, for whatever reason, to separate is so painful. In many cases you lose not just your lover, but also your best friend.

  “Shit. Did you see?” Tom exclaims. “A big bird. I mean really big! It just flew across the cove, over by the cottages where the ducks and crows are raising a racket.”

  “Maybe it’s a hawk.”

  “No, bigger than that. A buzzard, maybe. I’m going to get the binoculars.” My husband, still wearing his plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a South Park T-shirt, steps back through the glass bedroom door and returns with two pairs and our well-used Peterson Field Guide to Birds. He rests his wire-rim glasses on the rail and adjusts the focus.

  The large-winged creature with a white head swoops through the bare branches once more. I look at Tom with big eyes. “An eagle?” We both follow the flight pattern as the wild mallards and tame white ducks that overwinter in the cove amplify a cry of alarm.

  The raptor lands in an oak on the slope just below the house. I study its outline. Dark body, white head, white-fanned tail feathers; the predator hunches over, securing its catch with its talons. “A bald eagle!” I whisper. “But eagles don’t live here. Maybe higher in the mountains but never here. Do you think it was driven in by the storm?”

  Tom doesn’t answer. “What’s it eating?” he asks in an undertone. Though we’re one hundred feet away, we’re afraid of spooking the wildlife. Even our movements are careful and muted.

  “A fish?”

  “No, it’s a duck. The eagle is eating one of the ducks!” I’m trying to adjust the new binoculars my husband gave me for my birthday. “I can see the yellow bill, and the duck’s still alive!”

  We’ve never before, in fifteen years at Hope Lake, seen eagles. The top of the avian food chain has been the red-tailed hawk, and I wonder at this shift in the ecosystem.

  The climate is changing. One-hundred-thousand-year-old ice caps are melting. The ocean temperature’s rising. Why shouldn’t there be an alteration in the bird life in West Virginia? I scan the cottages on the other side of the cove. No one else stands on his or her porch with his or her mouth open. They must be at church.

  “Should I call Zen to come see?” I ask Tom.

  “Nah, let him sleep.”

  For twenty minutes we lean on the porch rail, witnessing this biological event. The crows and the ducks continue their warnings. The oaks and the maples say nothing.

  I could never stand people who stay in bed all day, even as a hippie. It depresses me. No matter what, I bounce out of bed. There’s too much to see, too much to do. I should have used the eagle sighting as an excuse to wake our son. Now the bird’s gone . . .

  I’m wiping the kitchen counter and Tom’s making lunch, grilled cheese sandwiches on sourdough bread, when I hear the clump, clump, clump of Zen’s size-thirteen bare feet coming up the stairs from his bedroom on the lower level. His dark, short straight hair sticks up like he’s been on a two-day bender. He pours himself a cup of black coffee.

  “I think I was better off when I was living with Callie,” Zen finally announces with a long mournful sigh.

  In homes all over the U.S., golf course mansions and walk-up apartments, young men and women are returning to their parents’ homes when their relationships fall apart, th
ey lose their jobs, or run out of money. Tom and I had prided ourselves that our boys, at least, had finished college and were out earning their way. Now Zen comes home, three pairs of his athletic shoes are scattered on the floor of the front hall, every cupboard door is open in the kitchen, and I can’t walk around in my underwear anymore.

  “You were better off when you lived together?” I ask, like a shrink, not knowing what else to say.

  “Yeah. Here at home, I regress, fall into a black pit.”

  “Maybe you should go back to her,” my husband offers. “Maybe you could still make a go of it.” Both Tom and I admire Callie, a grad student in environmental engineering at Yale.

  “I don’t want to go back. I love her, but I was just spinning my wheels in New Haven. I couldn’t find work, all I had were a few jobs in Web site design. Not enough to make a living, and anyway, I don’t really like sitting at a computer all day. We both agree. I need to find a sense of direction.”

  The three of us sit down at the table and reach for each other’s hands, the same way we’ve done for so many years. My moment of silence is filled with hope and regret. I had thought, after almost ten years of worry, that our boys were settled in adult life, two of them with children of their own, all of them out of college. Now Zen is home again, and I wonder if we’ve set our children’s ideals too high and if that golden bar makes it hard for them.

  Love should be passionate and forever! Sex should be ecstatic! Work should be rewarding and fun. Your life should contribute to the greater good and be socially constructive. But there’s more . . .

  Deer should walk through your yard and eagles fly through the trees below your house. If you choose to have children, they should be happy and healthy and free from fear . . . Trouble is, I still aspire to those things myself.

  We squeeze hands at the end of our silent prayer and I break into the Johnny Appleseed song. The Lord’s been good to me. And so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the rain and the sun and the apple trees . . .

  “Love you guys,” Zen says, and he lights the table with a wide grin just like Tom’s. Handsome and intelligent, wounded and uncertain, he is home. He is our boy.

  HOPE

  At noon, I rest my elbows on the conference room table of the women’s clinic, thinking about my last patient. I’d spent longer with her than I meant to, but once she started talking, I couldn’t move. This happens a lot. The women tell me their stories as they sit in my little exam room on the end of the table in their thin blue cotton exam gowns, and I am spellbound. Carissa had attempted a homebirth and things hadn’t gone well. She’d been transferred to the hospital for an emergency C-section. The baby lived, but she still has nightmares. Birth trauma can happen to both women and men, and it will take Carissa a long time to heal. The experience of childbirth is so important. Whether it’s wonderful or horrible, the memory imprints.

  We are just wrapping up our monthly meeting for the secretarial staff in which we go over ideas to make our office run more smoothly. Tom rarely comes. He leaves the clinic administration to me, having had more meetings than he could stand during our commune days.

  “So . . .” says Linda, our vivacious blond receptionist, leaning forward in her chair. She’s the practical joker who slaps stickers on your back that say KICK ME and she loves to get me going. All six of the staff look up.

  “So . . . tell us about the first delivery you ever did, Patsy. Back in the hippie days . . . The one that got you started.”

  I smile. “I already told you . . .”

  “Not the new people. We have the time.”

  I replace my apple core in my lunch bag. “You sure?” Everyone nods. They’re still munching their french fries.

  “Well, this is interesting. I was just talking about that delivery with Tom a few nights ago. We were living on the commune back then, remember, and I was teaching childbirth classes in Spencer.

  “I guess you know that in those days, going to the hospital to have your baby was pretty brutal. All women were literally strapped down, given a spinal or saddle block, and delivered with forceps. The fathers weren’t allowed in the delivery room and the babies were taken away. You didn’t even get to touch them.”

  “Really?” “No!” “That’s awful.” These young women in their twenties and thirties are shocked.

  “I’m just telling you this to give you some background. Actually, the first birth I did was an accident. Tom was there, but he wasn’t a doctor or even a paramedic yet.

  “This one evening I went to Laura and Lou’s farm out in the country to do one more class. Tom and Mica came, too. When I asked Tom what he remembered about the birth, I was surprised how little he could recall. He mostly remembered the barn they lived in.”

  “Come on! They lived in a barn . . . like a manger?” That’s Linda, the smart aleck.

  “No, a really cool, converted, insulated barn. Tom reminded me what it looked like. The whole middle space was empty, with a beautiful kitchen. He could even describe the gas stove, an old-fashioned green enameled affair. Have you ever seen one?” Some of the women nod. “We just had a cast-iron woodstove on our commune . . .

  “There was also a library and a sitting room and upstairs around the balcony, bedrooms and bathrooms for the four couples and their kids. Above it all, in the center of the structure, and this is the part that Tom loved, there was a white parachute hanging like a canopy. I had forgotten all this, but he could describe it in detail.

  “That night, a spring snowstorm came up, covering the ground and making their dirt road too slick to get out, so we slept over. About ten, we went to bed in a spare bedroom upstairs. I woke in the middle of the night with tapping on the door . . .

  “One of the women from the commune, Star was her name, stood there with a kerosene lantern, her long yellow hair shining like a halo. ‘Can you come, Patsy? Can you come see Laura? Something’s going on. She says the baby’s coming.’

  “I crawled out of the covers, not wanting to wake Mica or Tom, but I shouldn’t have worried, they both sleep like logs. I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt and followed her up the stairs.

  “At the end of the hall, candlelight flickers from an open doorway and I can hear moaning. Holy shit! I think. This sounds like the real thing! Music plays on the stereo, something sweet and mellow with violins.

  “When I step into the room, there’s Laura, naked on her hands and knees, her dark hair hanging down and her white butt wagging back and forth.

  “‘Oh, Patsy,’ she says. ‘Help me!’

  “Like, what was I going to do? I’d only seen three babies born, and one was Mica, in a mirror. Lou, the husband, a guy with a long ponytail, filled me in. ‘Laura’s been having back pain all night, Patsy. We didn’t realize it was labor until she felt the urge to push. I just can’t believe this. I thought we’d see a bloody show or something! We planned a homebirth and I was supposed to deliver. But I can’t. Just look at me, I’m a wreck.’ He holds out his trembling hands.

  “I lean down to get a better view of Laura’s bottom and there’s something weird and shiny showing at her vagina.

  “‘Do you have exam gloves or something, Lou? A birth kit?’” He looks around wildly.

  “‘Top drawer, bureau . . . ’ That was Laura. Despite her moaning and panting she’s still got it together. Better than Lou does, that’s for sure.”

  The women around the table are rapt.

  “Well, I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I had to find out if the baby was at least head down, otherwise we were in deep doo-doo. It was an hour to the nearest hospital, even without the snow.

  “So I checked. Turns out, the shiny thing at the opening was the intact amniotic sac. I’d never seen one before. It looks like a silver water balloon.

  “I pull on a pair of gloves and stick my fingers in there to fe
el for the presenting part and the water bag pops. Amniotic fluid squirts all over the place and the hairy little head slides down an inch. This kid is coming, ready or not!

  “‘Go get Tom, Star!’” I order.

  “Tom wanders in. You know him; he never hurries. At a glance he sees what’s happening and without any instruction lays the birth stuff out on a baby blanket and puts on gloves.

  “‘Shit!’ Laura growls. ‘My back hurts so bad, like nails stabbing into me.’ A little poop comes out as the head moves down and Tom wipes it up.”

  Janie, the youngest of the staff, winces. She’s the only one that hasn’t given birth and may not know this is common.

  “The baby was posterior,” I explain to the women. “Sunny-side up. That’s what usually causes severe back labor, and women in second stage often have a little bowel movement when the baby’s head compresses the rectum.”

  “So what happened next?” Janie asks.

  “Well, I didn’t know what I was doing, remember? I’d never delivered a baby before, so I just held on to Laura’s bottom to give support.

  “She growled like a water buffalo, and slowly the baby’s head emerged, the dark hair, then the eyes, then the nose, then the whole body. The baby cried right away, thank God. Everyone was laughing.

  “‘It’s Hope,’ Lou said. ‘I knew it was a girl.’

  “When I looked behind me, the whole commune was standing in the doorway, in the golden candlelight, like angels. That birth changed my life. I’d found my calling.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Lost

  “What should I do with my life, Mom?”

  After a week in New York City, looking for interesting work and visiting his older brother and his family, Zen is back home again. Neither Mica, an investment consultant, nor his wife, Emma, a reporter, knew of any jobs. For the past two days Zen has prowled the house, lost. He stays up until three and then wakes at noon. I’ve given up on nagging him.