Here We Go With the Lobster Again….

Lindsay has a long history with lobster.  It all began just before she was turning three.  Mark and I were celebrating our 7^th wedding anniversary and we decided to make a fancy lobster dinner at home to celebrate.  We had put Lindsay to bed earlier and as we began to “crack into” our meal; she tiptoed down the stairs and tilting her petite curly-topped head with the little ringlets that bounced like echoes, in her sing-song voice, said,  “What are you eating?”   We told her it was lobster and she asked if she could try some.  I think at first, she just wanted to be part of our party.  But the minute she tasted that lobster meat, it became her favorite of all time. 

She wasn’t even three and all of a sudden there was nothing on the kids’ meal menus at restaurants that appealed to her champagne taste.  She became a financial liability when we would go out to eat.  She always wanted lobster. This continued on through her childhood, adolescence and adulthood and even earned her a nickname from the caterer of her wedding.  Lindsay’s main request was that she and Scott have lobster for dinner during the wedding, cracked for them of course.  Hence, they were named- The Lobster Couple.  There are two entries I wrote in my first blog, Mother of the Bride: A Wedding Journey about the lobster couple.* 

So, here we are, at 38 weeks into this pregnancy.  I say “we” because at this point I feel as if I’m pregnant too.  Everything I plan now is based upon the upcoming arrival of my new love.  And while on this journey I also feel like I’m getting a fresh education on pregnancy.  I am learning things I never knew before.  There’s the medical lexicon- like “effacement”.  Effacement is when the cervix thins out and stretches to prepare for the baby to exit the birth canal.  Lindsay is now 80% effaced.  Then there’s the “stations” which describes how far the baby has dropped into the pelvis.  Lindsay’s baby is presently at a “0” station, which means that she’s at the middle of the pelvis.  When the baby is ready to emerge, she will be at +3 station.  It’s like riding the subway.  Right now we’re stuck at Union Square on our way to Whitehall Street.  I speak metaphorically to give some meaning to all this jargon.  I had two children of my own, but that was in a different century when there was no Internet to look things up and all the doctor told you was, “Nope, you’re not ready, see you next week.”

In additional to the medical terminology, there are also the “fad” pregnancy expressions and events for this new generation of mothers- for example- gender reveal parties (see blog entry-The Big Reveal- 1/6/13).  And babymoon- when the expectant couple takes their last trip before the baby arrives (see blog entry- Babymoons and Winter Blues- 2/3/13).  And the push present, which is a gift the father gives to the mother to mark the occasion of the birth of their child.  You want to know what I got for my push present? …The baby.  And hemorrhoids. 

There are also Lindsay’s pregnancy expressions, like my girls-, which refers to her Bouncing Babies group on Facebook.  These are girls from around the country who are either pregnant or just gave birth.  They share their stories, information and advice in a closed forum, which seems to be my daughter’s newfound religion.  Apparently they are her go-to people.  As a matter of fact when she spoke last night about when she goes into labor, she said she would be on her iPhone the whole time, communicating with “my girls”.   (I guess she won’t need me.  What do I know anyway?  I only just gave birth to her and her sister…This is what my alter ego Jewish-guilt mother says). 

The latest information Lindsay has been researching is how to get this baby out of her.  This past Friday night while I was at her house helping her organize to make more room for the baby, she showed me a list of things that help induce labor: for example,

1.    a pedicure,

2.    a cervical sweep,

3.    spicy food,

4.    castor oil,

5.    walking,

6.    lobster

7.    sex (I put that last because that is the last thing any 9-month pregnant woman wants.  However, it’s the first and only thing her obg-gyn suggested.)

She had the pedicure this week- no luck.  Castor oil is out of the question- yuck.  I reluctantly asked her what the cervical sweep was because I kept on having visions of Bert, the chimneysweeper, from Mary Poppins.  At that point Scott came out holding up a Swiffer duster that he was using to clean the house and chuckled “They use something like this.”  Not a pretty picture.  So, the cervical sweep and castor oil go in the “No” column.  We had plenty left in the “Yes” column.

Yesterday, we had a plan.  We were going to tackle #s 3,5 and 6.  So I picked up lobster, coincidently on sale for $7.99/lb at Best Yet, for dinner that night, explaining my scheme to the fishmonger and cashier– they wished me luck.  Then Lindsay, my mom and I went to Chipotle for a spicy Mexican lunch, followed by Tums for our indigestion.  We did a lot of walking around Babies R Us, then a little bit more at the mall.   We returned home to steam our lobster, of which Lindsay had two along with champagne, which apparently also is supposed to help.  A full moon was in the forecast- another good sign for giving birth.  We believed we had the right formula.  After all, wouldn’t it make sense for Lindsay, our ardent lobster lover, not to mention, ‘The Lobster Couple’ to have their first child after having a lobster dinner?  Wouldn’t it?

Apparently, Mother Nature, who also decided to bring back winter during Memorial Day weekend with wind and rain and temperatures in the low 50s, along with my granddaughter had a good laugh at our stratagem.  

And you know what my mother said, the wise 89 year-old Sylvia Waltzer-Berman, who gave birth to four children?  'You know when she’ll be born.  I’ll tell you.  When she’s good and ready.  That’s when.'

Well at least we got to eat lobster…  On to week 39 and the wait continues….

*Here are links to the other blogs mentioned. 

http://motherofthebrideaweddingjourney.blogspot.com/2009/08/right-place.html

http://motherofthebrideaweddingjourney.blogspot.com/2009/09/lobster-couple-cooks-lobster.html

Letter to My Daughter, the Mother to Be, on Mother’s Day

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

Dear Lindsay, 

Yesterday (Saturday) you were officially 36 weeks or 9 months pregnant.  Today we will celebrate Mother’s Day- your unofficial “first” Mother’s Day as “Mommy to Be”.   And soon, very, very soon, you will become a mother for the first time.  So, I am writing this letter to you to tell you what it was like for me when I became a mother because of you.   

This past week you began “nesting”.  My friend Roselee told me that when she called to find out how you were doing.  I told her you were busy, busy, busy­­–– washing and folding all the baby’s clothes and packing and preparing your bag for the hospital.  “She’s nesting,” chuckled Roselee, “preparing for the baby.”  I looked it up online.  It’s an instinct all mothers go through to get ready for their soon-to-be-born baby.  They reorganize, clean, sort, cook, etc.  Coincidently, Aunt Claire came in from Arizona to visit and taught you how to make tomato sauce.  You put this sauce into containers to store in your freezer, so you’d have dinners already prepared while you are adjusting to everything else that comes with motherhood. 

I don’t remember nesting until the night before the morning you were born.  I had sat down in my kitchen and had a sudden urge to wash the floor.  It was after 11pm.  I had a sinking suspicion that I was getting that surge of energy I heard about that women get before they give birth.  That terrified me.  Then I realized I still had over two weeks, so I decided to go to bed, instead.  And then, my world changed forever.  I was trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in, which is next to impossible when you’re 9 months pregnant and as I turned over I felt a strange trickle of liquid run down my leg.  I jumped up and the rest came gushing out of me as if a dam exploded.  My water broke. 

I woke your father up from a sound sleep.  It was pandemonium from then on.  We called Dr. Kliot, my ob-gyn, and he said I probably would not go into labor for a while.  He was wrong.  I started contractions 30 minutes afterwards that were five minutes apart.  We called Dr. Kliot back.  He told us to go to the hospital, but that I probably wouldn’t give birth so soon.  He was wrong about that too.

  

I remember your father asking me to get the suitcase I packed.  I looked at him and admitted meekly, I didn’t pack one yet.  Then he asked me if I could remember what goes in that suitcase and I couldn’t answer because he was making me so nervous.  Truth be told, I totally forgot what goes in the suitcase.  “Washcloths!  And lollypops!” he shouted, “That’s what I remember.”  I watched him run to the linen closet to get washcloths and then he asked me if I had lollypops.  Of course I had no lollypops. He started yelling at me because there were no lollypops.  I told him that I think I could give birth without the lollypops. 

We called Nanny and Poppy to come meet us at the hospital and to bring lollypops if they had them.  Meanwhile, your father told me to go stay in the bathroom because I was still leaking.  He went out and lined the passenger seat of our car- a 1980 Toyota Celica Black Package- with towels to protect it from the amniotic fluid.  When he finished, he took me and the bag with the washcloths out to the car. 

When we arrived at the hospital, the nurses in the maternity ward would not admit me because they said I was able to smile too easily.  Yes. They actually said that.  I tried not to smile, but they still wouldn’t let me in.  Instead, they instructed me to walk up and down the lobby of the hospital to make my labor progress a little faster.  So your father, Nanny and I walked back and forth for about three hours in the lobby of Brookdale Hospital while your Poppy read the Newspaper.  Nanny did bring the lollypops and says I was sucking them as I walked.  I don’t remember this at all, but she swears by it and your father corroborates her story. 

Finally, the nurses put me in an examination room.  I was about 8 centimeters dilated by then and Dr. Kliot had not arrived yet.  Every person who walked in the room examined me, I think even the janitor, but at that point I didn’t care.  One doctor told me that Dr. Kliot would probably not make it in time for the birth.  I was determined not to let that happen.

Everything progressed so quickly after that.  They wheeled me into a labor room and told me to push.  I told them I didn’t know how to push because I didn’t finish my Lamaze classes and we hadn’t gone over “pushing” yet.  This started an argument between me and your father, who insisted I could push anyway.  I told him he’s welcome to take my place and push if he thinks it’s so easy.  At last, Dr. Kliot, showed up, literally a half-hour before you were born.  He took one look at me (and I don’t mean my face) and he said, “Oh this is a small baby.  I can pull it out myself.”  And in the next second, he just reached inside and pulled you right out, all five pounds of you and a second later announced you were a girl.  I asked your father if he was upset because he had referred to you as his son while I was pregnant.  He looked at me through happy tears and said, “No, not at all.  She’s perfect.  Thank you.” 

You let out several screams, then stopped, and then screamed again and stopped.  I remember hearing you before I actually got a chance to see you.  It was more of a bellow than a cry– a beautiful, melodious bellow, which filled the room and tugged on my heart as if there was an invisible string attached, forever.

It was a while before I got to hold you.  They wanted to check you out first because you were a bit early and weighed only five pounds.  When they saw that you were fine, they put you in my arms.  In that moment, I understood love like never before– in its most purest and complete form. 

But also in that same moment I was overwhelmed with a feeling of absolute responsibility I had never felt before.  Actually, it was more a dichotomy of inexplicable joy mixed with a bit of terror and the clear knowledge that life would never be the same again.  That’s what it’s like when you suddenly enter motherhood– a conglomeration of sensations.

From the moment your child is born, it is as if you stepped out of one world into another.  You will have instinctive urges of trying to control the uncontrollable.  From the moment you put that infant down in the crib, then check five more times in all of five minutes to make sure she’s breathing- that’s what it means to be a mother. To be jubilant over a burp, a first step, a smile, a laugh and one milestone after another.  Along with that comes the uncertainty of caring for that fussy baby, that curious toddler, that unpredictable child, that insolent adolescent and that delightful young woman.  It’s the most demanding, most unpredictable, most difficult, most wonderful job I have had in my lifetime.   

Your father always says to me, “I thought I cut the umbilical cord, but I guess I didn’t.”  He literally did cut the umbilical cord that attached us.  But that invisible string that holds fast to my heart could never be severed.  It will connect us forever. 

Happy Mother’s Day to the one who made me a mother.

I love you.

Always,  

Mom  

Spring. Finally.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.”  

-Charles Dickens

Finally.  Any signs of winter have disappeared.  Blue permeates the skies now for the last several days and the heat of the sun is warming the lingering chill of the morning air.  Instead of the clacking of the heat traveling through the baseboards, each morning I am awoken by the sounds of busy chirping birds and the smell of fresh cut grass.  My neighbors' gardens are filled with tulips or daffodils or brightly colored azaleas announcing the beginning of spring.  I have even spotted a few bushy tailed bunnies on the lawns, taunting Sonny with their freedom.  They make it official.  Finally.

Nature is such a resplendent presence in our lives, if we just take time to pay attention.  Its simplicity is so profound, yet perhaps because its course is so predictable we forget to pay homage.  Instead we fill our days with preparation only because we must and then we’re sorry because we haven’t stopped to enjoy it enough before we notice it’s gone.    

Mark, my handyman husband, is out in the backyard now, opening our pool.  He has already re-stained the deck, put out the fire-pit and patio sets and hung the awning on the gazebo.  He is only halfway done.  He still has planting to do both in the front and back yards and needs to replace two lampposts and broken window screens.  I’m sure the list is much longer than that, which adds to Mark’s anxiety.  We are hosting the annual 4^th of July celebration this year with my friends and then we are hosting the baby naming, scheduled for September 8^th.  The yard must look pristine. 

Lindsay has admitted that she waddles now.  Her belly is ripening.  Nature’s course tells us 4 weeks 6 days are left to the countdown of the arrival of our spring sweetheart.  Scott is working on her room.  It was gutted and re-insulated.  New sheetrock was hung and new windows and carpeting will be installed.  I hope all this gets done before Lindsay gives birth.  She was 17 days early and her room was not ready when she was born; Mark and my brother had to paint it while Lindsay and I were in the hospital. 

This week my sister, Claire, is here to visit from Arizona and got a chance to see Lindsay pregnant with her first great niece and even got to feel a few kicks.  She bought her a battery operated Gund bear that plays peek-a-boo with a blanket that entertained us for a while.  It’s hard to believe how fast our own children have grown and that we’re at this milestone now of ushering in the next generation. 

While I was making space in the closet of my guest room for my sister, coincidently, a picture of the three of us, my two sisters and me, fell to the floor.  It was from the day of my brother’s bar mitzvah.  We were standing in front of the mirror in my parent’s bedroom- that same mirror that resides in my mother’s room in my house today.  We were lovely- my older sister, Margie was 21 at the time, I was 19 and Claire was 17.  Our skin was flawless, looking as smooth as glass, my sister Margie’s neck like a swan as she stood between us.  Such pretty young girls we were.  Long ago.  It’s coincidental that this photo is a mirror reflection of us, as if it was meant for me to stumble upon it in my late 50s and reflect on time passing– how those three young ladies have become three middle-aged women. 

When Lindsay was little, one of her favorite books was a Golden Book, titled, Where Did the Baby Go? 

It was about a little girl who found a photograph of a baby wearing a big floppy hat.  She asked her mother who this baby was and where did the baby go?  Her mother didn’t tell her; she just kept giving her clues, which led her in a search throughout her house looking for the baby.  Finally with the last clue- “the baby used to like to play dress-up with her mother’s clothes”- the little girl finds the same floppy hat in her mother’s closet and when she puts the hat on, she realizes that she was that baby. 

I used to read that book to Lindsay over and over again.  I have searched for it in my house to give it to Lindsay to read to my granddaughter, but to no avail.  I gave up looking in the house and in the stores and was able to find a very old, weathered copy on the Internet, which just arrived in the mail. 

The night I stumbled upon the photo of me and my sisters in the closet, I also found a small container with all of Lindsay’s and Kimberly’s favorite children’s books.  I opened it to find the Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes books and many others.  As I went through them, the memories of years past came flooding back and filled me with an ache I could never describe in words.  And then, in the midst of all this emotion, there it was, serendipitously– the book, Where Did the Baby Go?, in almost perfect condition, like an old friend I haven’t seen in years, but still looking the same as I’ve always remembered. 

I am looking forward now to a spring that will bring new joys and new memories.  And even though I sometimes yearn for the past, it wouldn’t be there if I had never yearned for the future.   

  

“Time it was

And what a time it was, it was

A time of innocence

A time of confidences

Long ago it must be

I have a photograph

Preserve your memories

They're all that's left you”

― Paul Simon, lyrics

The Berman Sisters: Claire, Margie and Jeannie (me),  [1975]