Today I was the one to cram myself into the white zip-up jumpsuit that made me look like the Easter Bunny's long lost sister. I was the one who slipped on the blue booties and hairnet, and tied on my face mask.
Today I was the one sitting on the bench in the hall while they wheeled my writhing, sobbing partner into the unknown. I was the one who wondered if the anesthesia would work or if they would need to knock her out and the next time I saw her she'd have a baby in her arms.
An older man sat down next to me on the bench. "You doin' okay?" He asked, and he genuinely cared about my answer. I could tell by the way his gentle eyes rested on mine. My bootie-covered toes tapped the carpet. "Yeah, I'm good." Because I was good, protected from terrifying reality by the distance of professionalism. She was not my blood or my reason for being, but rather someone who knew she would need help when her child was born. It's easy to be good when you don't stand to risk it all. Then I asked the concerned gentleman about the newest addition to his family. It was a granddaughter, his son's first child. He beamed, then busied himself texting and grumbling at his new-fangled phone.
I wondered if that muffled cry was her.
"I promise they won't forget about you. It just seems like it," said a nurse who had passed me twice now.
"I'm just hot." My body heat collected within the kinda-sterile clothing. The rise in temperature brought my stomach to a boil, a particularly unpleasant feeling for someone about to step foot into an Operating Suite. Pictures flashed in my mind of passing out on the OR floor, or vomiting on the face of the expectant mother. I unzipped the bunny suit and fanned the air between my layers.
Eventually they called me back. I was no longer on the verge of heat stroke--for that I was thankful.
"Sit on the grey chair next to her head," the nurse said. "Don't touch anything blue."
I sat in the grey chair. My partner barely acknowledged me. Almost immediately, the smell of burning flesh filled the air. Then it was gone.
We don't see a thing, just a giant blue tissue curtain. Somewhere beyond that the baby floated in a sea of instructions and chatter.
My partner wished to relay a request to the surgeon, the last two items left on an X-ed- out birth plan. Her voice failed from long hours of struggled breathing. She turned to me to be her voice. Neither of us knew who was there or who would hear us. I turned to the anesthesiologist, who clearly didn't want to interrupt the surgical team. She could see the team, though. I was just guessing.
"Lots of pressure," Someone said.
"You're going to feel some tugging. Just concentrate on your breathing," Someone else said.
We stared at the blue abyss and waited for the next thing to happen.
The baby cried and gurgled, cut off by someone's bulb suctioning.
"It's your baby!" I smiled. Tears filled her bloodshot eyes. "Congratulations, Mama!"
The baby traveled to another end of the OR, X-ing off the rest of my partner's wishes. A nurse remarked about what a sweetheart the baby was, and how adorable. We saw blue while a stranger spent those first precious moments with my partner's baby. This didn't upset the mother nearly as much as it upset me. I wanted to brave the gore and hospital policy to grab the little one and put her where she belonged--cheek-to-cheek with the one whose body took care of her for nine months. But I didn't, because today I wasn't the doula. I was something else, entirely.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Saturday, May 3, 2014
So You Want To Be a Writer...
Photo credit, CreateSpace
I'll start this post by admitting that I am, by no stretch of the imagination, an expert on writing. If you came here looking for a secret formula or the nuts and bolts of wordsmithing, well, I'm sorry to say you've come to the wrong place. Crafting a story, and doing it well, entails a lot more than could ever fit on one lousy blog post. Rules. Punctuation. Plots. Dialogue. So much to know before you can actually write. This doesn't align with our instant-gratification world.
You should probably stop here. It's too much work.
But what if I told you that you could pick up your favorite pen--c'mon, you know you have a favorite!--or your laptop and GO? You don't have to have the perfect beginning, middle, and end. It's not likely that you'll sit down with a cup of coffee and plunk out War and Peace on that first go. What stares back at you from the page might suck, and "suck" might be the understatement of the century. But even stories sucky-beyond-all-reason can be shaped into something more. A blank page cannot, at least not until your words end up there.
Though I've always written for my own enjoyment, I never considered anything would come with it. Writing would be nothing more than a hobby. In 2011, my attitude changed. I wanted to take writing more seriously, to write books instead of rambling blog posts about coffee and kid-induced nervous breakdowns. And then came that day when I said, "Enough! I'm writing a book!" I didn't even have a story in mind, I just followed Chris Baty's advice and wrote the book I wanted to read. My first words after my attitude adjustment were,
"I'm what you would call a simple girl, a chameleon."
If you think about it, that sentence doesn't make sense at all. Simple girls have nothing in common with ever-changing chameleons. And, if we're being real, it's a bit cliche to call yourself "simple". But those flawed words led to over 200,000 more. With a lot of hard, literally hands-on work, they have grown into stronger, more flexible versions of themselves. That never would have happened if I'd let the blank screen call my bluff. I wade through the suck every time I sit down to write, and you will, too. In the end, it's not about whether the writing is excellent or cringe-worthy. It's about letting the ideas out of your head and seeing what happens. It's getting past saying, "I always wanted to write a book/story/article/whatever" to actually doing it.
I can't read through that first manuscript without feeling sick to my stomach at its sheer awfulness, but I didn't let it stop me. That sheer awfulness became the first of three books in my Hope Creek series, which gained the attention of a publisher. While that might not happen for you, you can't possibly know for sure if you don't write that first word. And then the next. And then the one after that, and so on.
My advice to you? Go forth. Write all the horrible, wrong words. Laugh at yourself, and don't give up.
That's truly all it takes to be a writer.
You should probably stop here. It's too much work.
But what if I told you that you could pick up your favorite pen--c'mon, you know you have a favorite!--or your laptop and GO? You don't have to have the perfect beginning, middle, and end. It's not likely that you'll sit down with a cup of coffee and plunk out War and Peace on that first go. What stares back at you from the page might suck, and "suck" might be the understatement of the century. But even stories sucky-beyond-all-reason can be shaped into something more. A blank page cannot, at least not until your words end up there.
Though I've always written for my own enjoyment, I never considered anything would come with it. Writing would be nothing more than a hobby. In 2011, my attitude changed. I wanted to take writing more seriously, to write books instead of rambling blog posts about coffee and kid-induced nervous breakdowns. And then came that day when I said, "Enough! I'm writing a book!" I didn't even have a story in mind, I just followed Chris Baty's advice and wrote the book I wanted to read. My first words after my attitude adjustment were,
"I'm what you would call a simple girl, a chameleon."
If you think about it, that sentence doesn't make sense at all. Simple girls have nothing in common with ever-changing chameleons. And, if we're being real, it's a bit cliche to call yourself "simple". But those flawed words led to over 200,000 more. With a lot of hard, literally hands-on work, they have grown into stronger, more flexible versions of themselves. That never would have happened if I'd let the blank screen call my bluff. I wade through the suck every time I sit down to write, and you will, too. In the end, it's not about whether the writing is excellent or cringe-worthy. It's about letting the ideas out of your head and seeing what happens. It's getting past saying, "I always wanted to write a book/story/article/whatever" to actually doing it.
I can't read through that first manuscript without feeling sick to my stomach at its sheer awfulness, but I didn't let it stop me. That sheer awfulness became the first of three books in my Hope Creek series, which gained the attention of a publisher. While that might not happen for you, you can't possibly know for sure if you don't write that first word. And then the next. And then the one after that, and so on.
My advice to you? Go forth. Write all the horrible, wrong words. Laugh at yourself, and don't give up.
That's truly all it takes to be a writer.
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