When Jeff is home, there’s so much I’d love for us to be doing to prepare for the baby, but he insists that I stay put and let him take care of me. As I watch him around the house, there’s a tiny little piece of me that would love to keep this man all to myself forever, but in our conversations with each other, we’re both counting down the days until Ryland arrives and our life changes from a couple into a family.
Chapter Two
Baby Signs
My birthing video is recorded in the same spirit that I suspect every birthing video ever made has been shot: from behind the camera, my dad films a joyous anticipation in the delivery room the night before our first child, and the first grandchild on both sides, will arrive. I’m sure any parent can relate to the raw, humorous, occasionally intense moments throughout the video . . . but looking back, there was some remarkable foreshadowing about Ryland’s life from even before birth.
The video begins early on the evening of Friday, November 30, 2007. In all of the preterm labor worries of these last couple of months, two of the things we felt very sure about were that we wanted to document the live birth, and we wanted to know the baby’s gender beforehand. One of those decisions was easy, cut-and-dried.
The other will come to carry more significance in our lives than we know is possible at that time.
In the video, Jeff—wearing a plaid ball cap and a hooded sweatshirt—supervises the situation with the calmness, control, and optimism that caused me to fall in love with him. Behind him are chatter and laughs from my parents, Jeff’s parents, and Jeff’s brother Scott, who had moved home to San Diego from San Francisco in time for Ryland’s arrival. Scott is loyal, levelheaded, and revered as the family peacemaker among his two brothers. Scott is also gay, and thanks in part to the fact that my father-in-law’s sister is a lesbian and a longtime LGBTQ activist, the family has embraced Scott with pure love. I do, too—he’s one of my best friends. Occasionally, I have even accompanied him on nights out to the gay bars in Hillcrest, the neighborhood in San Diego that’s known for its diversity, love, and acceptance.
There are moments captured in the video that have persisted throughout my experience as Ryland’s mother. “There’s Hillary, the proud mother!” my dad says at one point when I’m in labor, while at another point I say to my doctor: “I’m in a lot of pain. Is this normal?” A few minutes later, my dad announces his good-natured intention to turn off the camera to conserve the battery “until the real heavy stuff comes,” he says—the real heavy stuff a reference to the pushing that was ahead very early the next morning. But none of us could have anticipated how heavy some parts of our future would be.
Next comes the magical moment. I had always imagined that my child would come out screaming, but in the video, for a few seconds after Ryland arrives, she actually remains peaceful, allowing the nurse to suction out her mouth a few times, before she finally releases a muscle of a cry. With tears, I laugh as they hand my baby to me. “Oh my God!” I kiss her. “Ohmygodohmygod!”
As the doctor stitches me up, our family all enters the room again while Jeff comforts me and scratches my scalp through my hair. “You’re so strong,” he says, kissing my head. “You did it.”
And then in the background, there is a moment of question among two nurses, one of whom has just arrived to start the morning shift. “Is it a boy or a girl?” she asks.
“It is . . .” The nurse who had suctioned Ryland’s mouth pauses as if to check the chart; as if twenty seconds ago, the bottom of a baby girl hadn’t been turned up at the world as they bundled her up for me to hold her. “A girl.”
Every time I watch the video, I remember how surreal it was for me to hear the voice of the little human whose whole entire life until minutes before had taken place silently, inside me. When I witness the experience now, more than seven years later, I remember the sheer awe I felt with every sound she made as soon as she entered the world. How long has she had that voice? I wondered. What is she trying to tell us?
Indeed, from the very beginning, there were some very important things that Ryland needed us to know.
The first instance of real concern comes just a few minutes later. “I think she’s a little sleepy from having the umbilical cord around her neck,” says another nurse. I look at my mom, then my dad, then at Jeff’s family. There’s an alarmed silence in the room, and when the nurse registers our responses, she jumps in with a further explanation to alleviate our worry. “It takes them a minute,” she says. “She’s alert and crying and everything, but we’d just like her to be a little more alert. We have high expectations.” We all laugh, softened with the relief of her levity. “She just dropped onto the planet, and we want it all.”
Ryland coughs, then cries. I look at the camera, then to Jeff. “Is she okay?” I ask him.
“I think so,” he says.
And like so many parents before us, we both turn to her expectantly, trying to decipher the mystery of what her cries are telling us.
FOR THE FIRST year after Ryland’s arrival, I sometimes joke that I feel as though my life is like Groundhog Day. Almost the moment that we arrive home from the hospital, Jeff agrees with me that it would be best for me to stay at home with the baby . . . but because of what that means for us financially, he works around the clock to make ends meet.
In the mornings, I feed Ryland and do things around our condo—Kobe always on my heels, seeking more attention than I have the hands to give him. When I’m cooking or just standing back to watch her, Ryland plays with toys in the living room—always drawn to those with motion or flashing lights, like the fire truck my parents bought for her. Its siren wails throughout the condo so loudly that I’m concerned we’re bothering the neighbors, but Ryland absolutely loves the red light as it swirls around the plastic dome.
I feed her and walk her in the stroller to the supermarket to grab groceries for dinner, cooking giant meals to spoil Jeff when he gets home from working his second job, which he’s secured to help make us a little extra money.
“How was your day?” he asks after he’s taken a few minutes to unwind, and I tease him.
“Same as yesterday,” I sigh, then break into a grin. He knows nesting like this is exactly what I wanted.
These nights, we often catch ourselves standing together over Ryland and staring in awe of her perfection—those dimpled cheeks she gets from her dad that turn to two shiny apples when she smiles, the way her eyes squint when she giggles wildly as Jeff blows raspberry kisses on her neck, her chubby little fists resting peacefully on her belly when she sleeps. I dress her the way I’d always dreamed of dressing a baby girl, in ruffles and flowers and shades of pink as soft as her little lips. We take pictures and videos almost daily and then entertain ourselves for hours by watching them over and over after we’ve put her down.
In the summer of 2008, Jeff’s college buddies beg him to join them on their surf trip to Indonesia—“We need a paramedic with us, we’ve all pitched in for him to come!” Zach, the “badass” with two little girls, pleads to me.
“Honey,” I tell him.
“I know, I know . . .” he says. “We have an eight-month-old, I can’t leave you.”
“No. What I was going to say is, I think you should go.”
“Really?” His eyes are as wide as Ryland’s are whenever I blow bubbles from the wand on the front porch . . . then his expression changes, as if he’s hesitant. “You’re sure?”
“I’m very sure,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around his waist. “You work hard for us, and this is the trip of a lifetime. Your mom and dad will be around. Ryland and I will be fine.”
“You know this makes you the cool wife, right?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I know.”
But when he takes off in August, Peg and Rand are also out of town, and Ryland and I are on our own. A week into Jeff’s absence, when I’m nearing my wit’s end with loneliness, I call one of my few friends who is also a mom—Brandy, an old college pal. She lives i
n San Jose with her husband and baby boy, Christopher, who arrived two months after Ryland did. “Fly down here with the baby and let’s go to the beach,” I tell her. “We need a mom’s day out.”
She makes arrangements to buzz down for the weekend to stay at my in-laws’ weekend house on the boardwalk. We call around and invite a couple other girlfriends, and Macie—Jeff’s longtime friend whom I’ve grown close with, and who is the only non–family member I leave Ryland with—offers to come along and babysit so that Brandy and I can relax. “You’re welcome to host the girls at the beach house, but please be careful,” Rand tells me when he calls to check in on us. “Remember what happened to those two girls not too long ago.”
I remember. In October 2006, two girls from the University of San Diego and their boyfriends were staying at a condo near the boardwalk. In the middle of the night, three masked men found the front door unlocked, entered the house, forced the male victims into a bathroom at gunpoint, and gang-raped the two young women. Not only had it been all over the news for months, and not only were the defendants convicted and sentenced to life in prison in early 2008, but a family friend who was a detective told Jeff and Rand that it was the worst case of sexual assault that he’d seen in the history of his career. It was in a rougher part of Mission Beach, where a lot of college kids rent condos, and it was a good distance from Jeff’s family’s beach house. “I’ll be careful,” I promise Rand. “There will be a lot of us there, and we’ll only be out in the daytime.”
My childhood best friend Casey and five other girlfriends join us, and the only difference between this and the old days is that Ryland, now eight months old, and six-month-old Christopher have joined us to supply even more laughs than ever. We spend the day lounging on the beach until the late afternoon, when we put on sundresses and open a bottle of wine to relax in the front room. Macie takes the babies upstairs and puts them to bed as the rest of us kick around the thought of going for a bike ride on the boardwalk. Brandy comes with me to the kitchen to prepare a few snacks, telling me about a sign language class in which she’s just enrolled Christopher.
“Sign language?” I ask her. “He eats and he sleeps. What could he possibly need to tell you?”
“No, Hill, it’s amazing. They learn the signs to tell you when they’re hungry, or when their tummies are full,” she says. “They learn ‘mommy,’ and ‘daddy’ . . . honestly, you should think about it.”
Right then, I hear the front door open. Stretching my neck into the living room, I can’t place who would just be entering. Peering around the kitchen doorway, I meet my girlfriends’ faces—all blank, as if they’re stifling some kind of panic. “What in the . . .” I step slowly into the room to join them, and find two men—wearing baggy shorts and white socks up to their knees, with shaved heads and tattoos—who have cruised through the front door and are standing in our living room. Their arms are crossed; they look me up and down, bold as can be.
The first thing that comes to my mind is the infamous attack of the USD students.
The second thing that comes to my mind: Our babies are upstairs.
My friends all sit frozen, their eyes planted on me in silent terror. My fight-or-flight response kicks in immediately.
I march toward the men and stick my finger in one of their faces. “My husband is upstairs, and he will not be happy if he comes down here right now!”
His stare moves from my mouth to my hand . . . where I see him take note that I’m wearing a wedding band. He squints his eyes, and stares me down. We stay this way for what feels like minutes—in reality, maybe a couple of breaths, if I were calm enough to breathe right now.
Slowly, he turns his face and looks toward his friend. This is it, I think. This is the pivotal moment: either they have weapons and they’ll attack us, or they’ll turn around and back out.
Now they’re both staring at me, their lips puckered up tough. They exchange one more glance between themselves. In my peripheral vision I keep my attention on their hands, holding my breath, anchoring my leg to kick one of them in the groin and poke the other in the eye, just as Jeff has taught me.
Then, they both turn around and swagger out the front door.
I slam it behind them. “Lock everything! Close all the blinds!”
My friends all scramble to secure every possible entryway while I dial 911. Within a few minutes, the police arrive. After they leave with full descriptions of the two men, we split the blinds open to find them being arrested on the boardwalk. Later, the police tell us that their excuse was that they’d mistaken our beach house for a bar, but they both end up in the back of police cars and in jail for the night with a public drunkenness charge.
As the police cars drive off, my friends are in awe. “I thought I was a protective mama bear!” Brandy says. The event proves—to me, even more than to any of them—the courage I possess when it comes to Ryland’s well-being. I’m willing to put my own life in danger for my child, and in this moment, I embrace my new role in the world: I’m Ryland’s protector, for as long as I live.
AFTER ANOTHER WEEK with little communication beyond the occasional email, Jeff returns safely from Indonesia. On hearing the story, he asks me to vow to stay closer to home, and I agree without hesitation.
Most mornings, I put Ryland in the stroller and walk to the supermarket to pick up groceries for dinner or to shop at one of the discount department stores that are located in the plaza a few blocks from our house. We’re on a tight budget, so it’s rare that I actually shop, but we visit so frequently that I learn what days of the week their new shipments arrive, so sometimes I pick up a cute new dress for my baby girl.
One afternoon, in the checkout line, Ryland sits calmly in the stroller when I spot the most adorable little bow fastened around the head of the baby in front of us. “I love her bow!” I tell the mother, and when she turns around, it’s clear she’s about my age.
“Oh, thank you!” she says. “Actually my sister makes these and sells them really cheap.”
“It’s so cute. Ryland, do you like the baby’s bow?” Ryland stares at me with wide eyes, then bobs her head toward the baby.
“I’m going to see my sister next weekend,” the mom says. “I’d be happy to get one for your little girl, if you like?”
We both pay in haste and shuffle toward the store’s exit to exchange phone numbers. I realize that this woman—Jenn, as she introduces herself—and her husband live just a few minutes from Jeff and me. Similar to our situation, her husband works a lot, and Jenn craves having a buddy to get out with in the daytime.
The following week, we meet up. She hands me a bundle of hair bows in fabrics of polka dots and butterflies and my favorite of all, one that’s leopard print and pink. “Gosh, I can’t tell you how happy I am to meet another mom,” I tell her.
“So am I,” she says. “I need more friends around here with children!” We make a plan for later in the week to take our babies on a walk around nearby Lake Murray. Ryland and Jenn’s baby, Gianna, are within a few weeks of each other’s age, so Jenn and I keep each other in patient company when one of us needs to stop for a bench break to feed one of the babies. During these moments of quiet sharing, many of our conversations center around grief. Jenn lost her brother-in-law, with whom she and her husband were extremely close, right around the same time that my brother passed away. Like me, she’s trying to balance taking full responsibility for another human being—Gianna—with the emotional side of herself, which still needs so much care. I understand this completely, and between us, there’s a sense of belonging and togetherness. For the first time in a very long time, I don’t feel lonely.
Our mornings out together also give me a confidence in my mothering that frees me up to stand back and enjoy watching Ryland learn and develop. Jenn inspires me—whereas I’m usually in capris and a ball cap, she always does her lipstick and slides on sunglasses, looking pulled together and complete. In college, she studied early childhood education and always has the
latest news on what we should be feeding the girls and cool new techniques to stimulate their brains and overall development. I learn so much as we push our daughters along the hike-and-bike trail around Lake Murray, absorbing the sun and this, the pure satisfaction and indulgence of motherhood. Our girls clap and laugh and stretch their arms wide open toward all there is to take in around us: the ducks dipping their beaks into the lake in search of fish, the tall reeds swaying in the breeze, the prickly pear cactus plants dotting the surroundings with their bright red figs. Gianna is very vocal, constantly cooing and giggling and trying to engage Ryland’s attention, while Ryland is quieter, like a little sponge with how she observes everything we pass. As she glances around in awe of the beautiful world she’s found herself in, the sunlight beams on my little girl’s shiny blond hair like a halo. “Ryland,” I say, but I’m pleased when she is too caught up in wonder to crane her glance back toward me from the seat of her stroller. I know Jenn is thinking the same thought about Gianna that I’m thinking about Ryland: I wish I could keep her this happy forever.
After a couple of months, Jenn shares an idea that she’s been pondering. “I’m thinking about signing Gianna up for baby sign language classes.”
“It’s so funny you say that,” I tell her. “Right before I met you, one of my friends who lives up in San Jose told me she’d just signed her baby up for those.”
“I took three years of ASL in college. They say that babies know what they want but don’t have the verbal capacity to express it, and that really frustrates them—”
“They’re infants!” I say with a laugh. “It’s so funny to think they have any frustration in the world.”
Raising Ryland Page 3
