Arms Wide Open

by Patricia Harman

  His question about what he should do with his life takes me aback. I’m usually so full of motherly advice. The one time I’m asked, I go blank. I finish rinsing the stainless steel sink before I speak.

  “You OK? I know it’s a hard time for you.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I cried a lot today though.” He flashes a half smile, carries one of Tom’s hand-thrown pottery coffee mugs into the living room, and plops his narrow, six-foot-three body on the blue and mauve upholstered pine factory sofa. I follow with a cup of peppermint tea.

  “It’s good to cry sometimes.” My son doesn’t shed tears easily and I can tell by his revelation that he wants to talk.

  I rest my feet up on the sturdy wooden coffee table and study his face, the clear skin, high cheekbones, and gray eyes. A good-looking young man, but the gray eyes are sad. His hair is short now and sticks up at the crown.

  “I went up to the state park this morning and walked in the woods all the way to the cliffs. You know, where you can see for miles and hear the river roaring below? I could do anything with my life. I’m smart enough, and creative.” He gives me a sideways glance, grinning at his immodesty, and goes on. “I could be an architect, a photographer, a physician.”

  Zen is the most intellectually complex of my boys. I catch Van Morrison singing on the stereo, a good song for him. Searching for the philosopher’s stone.

  “You’ll figure something out. I didn’t go back to school to be a nurse-midwife until I was thirty-two . . .”

  Tom interrupts this mother-and-son conversation when he sticks his head in the front door dressed in his white bee suit. “You ready?”

  Zen jerks to his feet. “Got to go, Mom.”

  Prayer

  Father and son are off to tend our beehives. We have five on our property, positioned on a platform on the hillside below the garden, and ten others on two nearby farms. I pull on my worn running shoes with the one broken lace; time for me to get to work too. My task this weekend is the garden.

  In the garage, I assemble my tools and load the plants in the old red wheelbarrow. By the calendar, it’s too early to put in tomatoes, but it’s been a very warm spring. I’ll take a chance. For two hours, I dig holes with a spade, then crawl along the rows, gently placing the seedlings and tucking them in like their earth mama.

  This is work that I can do without thinking. Sometimes, with my hands in the dirt, I feel like the young woman in Minnesota, planting potatoes for the long winter, and then I look up and see the gazebo and realize I live in Blue Rock Estates, a gated lakeside development of mansions and condos and more ordinary contemporary houses like ours.

  How many years have Tom and I participated in this yearly sowing and gathering? You turn over the dense and stubborn soil, enrich it with compost, drop in the seeds, and wait for their tiny green leaves to emerge. You water. You weed.

  You protect the plants from bugs, birds, and deer. We could purchase packaged vegetables in a supermarket much easier, but this is our link to the days when we believed we could change the world. This is a prayer, a strange way of hoping.

  My mind drifts to my coming excursion to New York City with Mara. Tom has to be on call, so I was thrilled when my old friend, who now teaches women’s studies in Maryland, agreed to join me on this trip to visit Mica and Emma and their new daughter, Rose. It’s been four months since I held the baby.

  When I stand to stretch, I’m surprised to see the men already returning in Zen’s sputtering pickup. They get out wearing white cotton coveralls and their beekeepers’ hats, veils, and gloves, and walk stiffly toward the garden like scientists from the CDC protected from deadly viruses. Tom carries a beekeeper’s bellow that belches foul smoke. Zen has an armful of hive tools.

  “We finished the Johnsons’ farm,” my husband reports, his face creased with worry behind the bee veil. “They look weak, and I don’t know why. Four of the hives are completely dead. It’s a bad scene. I fed them sugar water for a month this spring and I medicated them for mites, but they aren’t making brood like they should be and I can’t find one of the queens. It might be that colony collapse disorder that’s happening all over the country. We’re going to work on the hives below the garden now.” Father and son disappear behind the forsythia bushes, two men, careful in their work, moving gently among the potentially dangerous insects.

  Maybe Zen should be a professional beekeeper, I consider. Now there’s an idea! Wild bees are almost nonexistent in the United States . . . If it weren’t for people like my husband, fussing over the domestic ones, few plants could pollinate. Bees are more important than animals in terms of human survival. If bees were to disappear, plants couldn’t propagate and human life would soon flicker out. I sit back on my knees and gaze at our fruit trees, their blossoms already setting small peaches.

  The sun is just dipping below the horizon when the three of us finish our chores and lie down in the grass. The sun drifts lower and drops crimson behind the mountains. I let out a long sigh, feel the earth beneath me, and reach for Tom’s wide hand on one side and Zen’s long thin hand on the other.

  ZEN

  The feeling of the earth under me is always healing. The day I went into labor with Zen, I lay on the grass with Tom, just like this, and the earth gave me peace that day too.

  It’s February 13, a warm shirtsleeve day in Spencer. Above us, bare branches net the sun.

  Contractions are every twelve minutes. As usual I was a few weeks past my due date, a few weeks or a few days, I never knew because my periods were so irregular and we didn’t have ultrasounds then. Or maybe they had them in the big cities, but not in Roane Country.

  “Do you think we called the midwives too early? This could be false labor. I’m not leaking fluid. What if they drive all this way and nothing happens?” Tom puts his arm around me.

  “Come on, Pats. They live in Athens, two hours away. It’s your third baby. You might go fast.”

  “Right!” This is uttered with sarcasm. “Mica took twenty-four hours. Orion took fifteen.” I massage my belly as another contraction comes on.

  “Mmmf. They are picking up though. Let’s keep walking.” Tom helps me up and once again we march around the block, humming John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Uphill and down we march, around and around, until we get back to the Gray House, a little bungalow we’re renting in town while I attend Arch Moore Vocational to become an LPN. Mica is with my two women friends from school, Tara and Kris, the only other hippie chicks in the program. Orion is with Mara at her place.

  Alone in the two-bedroom cottage, Tom and I make love. Not our most romantic. I’m in a get-it-done mood. Then he helps me with an enema, thinking it will increase the contractions. Neither of us have ever done this before, and we’re laughing so hard, I almost don’t make it to the toilet. By the time my midwives, Lucy and Clo, arrive, it’s getting dark and my cervix is five centimeters dilated.

  The labor creeps on while James Taylor sings on our little boom box. Tom and I slow dance, while the birth attendants sip herbal tea in the kitchen and carefully monitor the sound of my voice. When the pitch goes up, they’ll know I’m seven or eight centimeters. When it drops, I’m ready to push.

  For the first time, I realize what I need to do to make the contractions more effective and less painful is just sink down on them. I bounce with my knees and they don’t hurt as much. Though I’ve coached scores of women through labor, this is a revelation.

  Around eleven, I get cranky and stomp into the bedroom. “I’m sick of Steamroller Blues! I’m tired and I wish everyone would go home!”

  Lucy realizes without checking me that I’m in transition. “We’re calling in the troops,” she announces and gets on the phone. “Put some hot water on and lay the birth stuff out.” By the time Tara and Kris show up with Mica and, a few minutes later, Mara arrives with Orion, Zen’s h
ead is almost crowning.

  This time I’m not pushing the baby out; it’s pushing me. No slow buildup like a freight train getting started . . . I’m skidding along the tracks in front of the cowcatcher.

  When I open my eyes during a contraction, I see Orion and Mica, holding on to each other, at the end of the bed, in a circle of candlelight. They look so worried I stop midpush. “It’s OK,” I reassure them. “Mama’s just working hard.”

  Tom sits behind me, holding me up, and, for a change, lets the midwife catch. When Zen emerges, three minutes after midnight on St. Valentine’s Day, he greets the world with a long trembling wail.

  “Is he OK? Is he OK?” I ask. It’s obvious he is, but as soon as the placenta comes out, I just want to sleep. I’ve never been like this after a delivery.

  “Take my blood pressure, Lucy! I feel weird. Something must be wrong.”

  “Nope, you’re fine . . . one twenty over eighty.”

  “I’m shaking so hard, I feel like I’ve been run over. I just want to close my eyes and shut everything out.”

  “So, sleep,” she says. “We’ll give you some space. Tom’s got the baby. It’s Zen, right? That’s his name?” They all withdraw into the kitchen and I pull a blanket over my head. It’s not that I’m so tired. I’m just so shaken by the power of the birth.

  In twenty minutes I’m myself again when little Orion toddles into the bedroom carrying the birthday cake and almost drops it on me.

  Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear Zen, we sing, and we are all so happy to have this new life.

  A breeze comes up and showers peach blossoms down on us. “Hey,” I laugh, holding my hands up into them. Zen, now a man, rests with Tom and me on the lawn, looking down at Hope Lake. I ask the green grass to enter his head, bring peace to his tangled brain.

  Voices

  It’s nearing midnight when the shadow of the Appalachian Ridge rises up in the distance like a great sleeping bear. My weekend in New York City wasn’t the easygoing visit with Mica and his family I expected. The first thing that happened was that Mica announced that he, Emma, and their baby, Anna, are moving to Moscow for five years. Emma has been offered her dream job as a foreign correspondent, and Mica has always been interested in living abroad. But Moscow, shit, that’s half a world away. I felt like crying, but I kept it together. Now my traveling companion and I are on our way home.

  “Thanks for being my navigator, Mara. You’re better at navigating and better at soothing my grandbaby. You’re more gracious than I am, sing tighter harmony, and keep up a more stimulating conversation. You’re even better at mothering my son than I am.”

  “What?”

  “When we said good-bye to Mica, you looked up in his eyes, held his shoulders, and said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ He needs to hear that from me. I don’t know when I last told him that. I was too freaked out that they are moving to Moscow to say something supportive. What I said was ‘Do you think you’ll be able to find a job there?’ What’s he going to do while Emma works as a reporter?”

  Mara, still married to Benny and now mother of her own three grown kids, reaches over and pats my leg comfortingly. “Thanks for the compliment, even if it’s not true, but you’re so brave and I’m so timid. If it hadn’t been for your invitation, I’d have never gotten to New York City.”

  “Brave?” I repeat. “I don’t think of myself as brave. I’m Chicken Little! . . . You’d think at my age I’d have everything figured out, but I don’t have a clue and I’m more confused than when I was thirty.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “No, really, get this. The other day, I was out in the driveway spraying the weeds in the cracks with Roundup, and at the same time pondering how we could get a wind generator to harness the energy of the wind off the lake. Then it strikes me. Get a grip, girl! You’re spraying the earth with a powerful toxin! I had to laugh.

  “It humbled me. How different are Tom and I from the average American? We used to try so hard to be socially and environmentally responsible. Nothing has changed in the world, except the things we tried to warn people about thirty years ago are now coming true.” I fade off, staring at the highway where it drops into the night.

  Thirty years. Has it really been that long?

  “Do you think we can make it, Mara? I mean, the planet. Things are changing so fast. It seems out of control. The climate is erratic . . . the atmosphere’s heating up. It’s a house of cards that could go down fast. What kind of world are we going to leave for our children and grandchildren?”

  Mara gives me a nudge and silently points to a deer on the side of the road. I’d better slow down. Hitting a deer is not a small accident.

  I think of my boys as we wind through the cut at Sideling Hill and speed past the Hazelton prison, all lit up like a fairy castle. Zen is in Maui with a friend, Joplin. It isn’t a solution to what he should do with his life, but at least he’s doing something.

  Orion is being a home daddy to his seven-month-old baby boy and the five-year-old stepdaughter he loves like his own, still doing his art, but as his drawings become more tender and refined, he gets more discouraged. Employment teaching art at the university level is hard to find. Let’s face it, employment of any kind, lately, is hard to find.

  And Mica and Emma are getting ready for their five-year sojourn in Moscow! I recall my own mother, how easily I left her to go hitchhiking around the country; I barely gave a thought to how she might feel, not seeing me, or her grandsons, but once or twice a year. Now my heart twists for her.

  Mara has fallen asleep, her head against the passenger window, so I turn on the radio, hoping the music will keep me awake. Leonard Cohen is singing “Hallelujah.” I first heard the song at Chester Creek House when I was twenty-seven. Jim played it over and over. The faces of those days recede, but the melody is part of me. The song is so beautiful and sad, the way life is, the way it seems when you’re older.

  Sounds of Silence

  Sometimes you can see trouble coming like a line of dark clouds on the horizon, moving over the mountains. Other times, trouble comes like a flash flood; suddenly the gulley fills with a torrent of muddy water and you’re flattened against the rocks.

  Saturday, while Tom and I are playing a duet, a minuet in G major by Bach, on the piano and string bass, the phone rings.

  It’s Mica, and he starts off with an expression of guilt about not calling. We put him on speakerphone.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t phoned or e-mailed. It’s just been so hectic here arranging to ship our stuff to Moscow and also, you know how I am, I didn’t want to say anything until I had the full story, but I guess you better get out another candle, Mom . . .” I go very still. The little votive that I light every night sits right by my prayer box.

  Tom doesn’t react one way or another. He’s slumped on the sofa, staring straight ahead, with his hairy legs and wide, bare hobbit feet on the coffee table.

  “You know how Rose didn’t pass her hearing screen when we left labor and delivery? The postpartum nurse said maybe her ear canals were still too little and to wait and have her examined later?”

  “I remember,” I cut in. “But so what? We didn’t even have hearing tests when we gave birth to you guys.”

  “Well, we didn’t go for a recheck right away because she seemed fine, reacted to what we said and everything, but last week we finally decided we’d better get it done before we moved.” Here his voice breaks. “And they think Rose can’t hear.”

  Tom and I sit in shock. Except for the bubbler in the fish tank, there’s no sound. Mica goes on.

  “What the doctors say is, they think she has a congenital inner-ear defect called bilateral atresia, closed canals, and what’s worse, it can be associated with terminal disorders of the kidneys and the heart, even Lou Gehrig’s disease and muscular dystrophy.” The living ro
om walls close around me.

  “Have you gotten a second opinion?” I finally break in.

  “We’re trying to. It takes weeks to get an appointment with a specialist at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.”

  I try to restore hope. “When I was there she seemed perfect to me, alert and responsive. I can’t believe she doesn’t hear. Remember when I sang to her in the rocker and she fell asleep? I’m sure she heard me.”

  Am I really sure? Or was it the rhythmic motion of the rocking chair and the vibrations that came from my chest?

  We hang up, and without saying anything head for the bedroom. Tom flops down on the bed. The smell of blooming locust trees comes in through the open door. With a heavy heart, I light my prayer candle and squirm into my husband’s strong arms.

  I want him to make everything better. He kisses my neck, pulls me against his chest, and does make things better, at least for this night.

  Lullaby

  The medical information about Rose’s condition dribbles in over the next few weeks. First the results of the ultrasounds. No heart defects. No kidney defects. All the baby’s vital systems are fine, but with each specialist appointment there is consensus: Rose’s ears are perfect on the outside, but the eustachian tubes are closed. She does, indeed, have bilateral atresia. We’ve never had a baby born with a physical disability in our family. Why did I think we were immune?

  I rest back in one of the white canvas chairs that face the corner living room windows. I’ve been so worried that something terminal was wrong with Rose that her being hearing impaired no longer seems terrible. Outside, the peach, pear, and apple trees are showing green lumps of fruit and the Shasta daisies are blooming.

  My mother-heart is scared to death for Rose . . . but my midwife-heart says, Hold on! Rose doesn’t know that there’s anything wrong with her. She’s happy, clean, breastfed, and loved. Watch. Wait. God will be with us.

  Good news comes when we learn that the audiologists believe that Rose may have only an 85 percent hearing loss, so her inner ear, the part that connects to the brain, is intact. If they’re correct, then Rose can be fitted with a tiny bone-conduction hearing aid, and when she’s five or six she may be eligible for surgery. The genetic test to determine if Rose is at risk for more lethal defects takes the longest to come back. I finally have to ask Mica over the phone.