Announcements came in the mail with pictures of nearly grown kids leaning against tree trunks or hay bales or standing in parks with ponds in the background. Invitations in swirly lettering asked us to witness the graduation march of our nieces and nephews.
Yes, Bill and I said, of course. We would love to.
Through the mid-nineties and for years beyond, we sat with family on bleachers in shiny-floored gymnasiums or football fields while Tawna, JD, Carrie Sue, David, Eric, Annilee, Shannon, Amber, Jared, Alyson, Joely, and the others that came after, took their diplomas, shook hands with principals, wore gowns and tassels, and gave smiles and hugs for pictures.
“It’s hard,” one mother said after the ceremony. “My kids have been the focus of everything I do.” She looked around to her right, to her left, like she was looking for the toddlers her children used to be.
I felt compassion for her. The struggle she faced was akin to what I’d been exploring for years: Who will I be without children? I felt smug with the idea that I’d trekked further along in the search. The years she’d been distracted with kids, I’d had to meet myself without.
While I had a taste, by proximity, of what it is like to shepherd children to the moments of letting go, one thing I could not know was the experience of giving birth. The mystery of it still compelled me, drew my eyes to each pregnant woman, kept me listening to stories of birth.
I’d known our niece Christy, Bill’s brother’s daughter, since she was ten. Now she was twenty and pregnant. This baby would make me a great-aunt for the first time.
Like my great aunt Lena.
I was thirty-eight years old. I wasn’t lonely. I wasn’t bitter.
Christy needed all the help she could get. Though she and the father of the baby were on good terms, they were no longer a couple.
I hosted a baby shower for her. Invitations and balloons and a decorated cake with pink rattles, paper plates and napkins with tiny baby carriages.
Women gathered on sofas and chairs in my living room. Christy opened gifts that we passed around the room. Cousins and aunts held up tiny onesies and stuffed toys and said, “Isn’t that the cutest?” to each thing.
“I can’t wait to hold her,” Christy said when she announced the baby would be a girl. “I love babies. I’ve always loved babies.”
So have I, I thought. But her strong desire to have a child overpowered any worries that might stop her. Worries about not being with the father, or what she would need to care for a baby, or how she could afford it. This stunned me. How different we were. I’d always had reasons and worries to balance my wanting.
At the end of the afternoon, we put the baby gifts back in bags and boxes and carried them to the car. Christy said, “I want to ask you something.”
I put an armful in the back seat and said, “Uh-huh.” Not expecting anything more than maybe she wanted the recipe for the punch, or a ride to the doctor.
“And you can say no if you don’t want to.”
Now she had my attention.
“Will you be there when the baby comes?”
“Yes,” I said. “We both will.” In the waiting room. With whoever else would be in the waiting room waiting to hear the baby was born.
“No,” Christy said. “Mom can’t be there.” Her mother lived a few states away. She wouldn’t be able to get there in time. “I mean will you be in the room with me?”
The one thing I couldn’t know any other way. This was as close as I would get.
Yes. Of course. I’d love to.
Even though I’d said yes, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it would be too hard. Maybe this would be the time when it hurt, completely hurt. The time when I would know bitterness and regret.
I reminded myself that this was for Christy, not for me. I would be there to help, to support her through the pain and power of bringing life.
A few weeks later she told me her boyfriend would be there too, to coach her. Not the father of the baby but her new boyfriend. I didn’t know if she’d known this all along or if this was something new. I asked, did she still want me there?
Yes, she said. I do.
Maybe she’d asked me to be there for me, not for her. Maybe she knew more about me than I thought I’d shown. The missing in me. Was this love and generosity? Was it pity?
It didn’t matter. I wanted to see this baby be born.
In the weeks before the birth, I waited for the call. I made myself ready. I packed my heart, as if in a small suitcase of tissue and silk, ready any time to go to the hospital. The heart of a witness.
At first, in the birthing room, time moved slowly. The nurses checked monitors and medication. I watched and asked the nurses questions about monitors and medication. The boyfriend was there. Christy’s dad, Clint, and Bill came in for a while. The room was more festive than the usual hospital visit. We were all waiting for the next thing.
When the next thing started, more frequent contractions, the nurse adjusting dials, checking dilation, I didn’t know what to do or how to help.
The boyfriend was by Christy’s side, holding her hand and cheering her on through each contraction. He would be there for her all the way through; maybe she didn’t need me. But she’d asked me to be here. To witness her child coming into the world.
And then it didn’t matter because things sped up. Contractions came faster and faster. The doctor came in and sat on a black stool with silver wheels. She wheeled forward to the triangle made by Christy’s legs. A mirror was set up so we could all see. But I didn’t need to help, and I didn’t have to use the mirror. I stayed near the doctor, saw what she saw as Christy pushed and pushed.
It was like births I’d seen on TV, or even more detailed in health class birthing videos in college. Like the calves that had come in winter. Birth follows a pattern. Seeing it here, in real life, didn’t seem new or shocking.
But I couldn’t take my eyes away.
How the body can open. The mess and the capacity. The blood and mucous. The baby’s dark hair came from Christy’s swollen pink flesh. The head, the shoulders. What Christy had held for so long, she let go with a sudden, final slipping out, and the baby came.
Birth was awful. Birth was beautiful.
I stayed close by while the doctor clamped the cord; the placenta came, more blood and mess, stitches for Christy. The nurse quick-treated the baby with the immediate things, then placed her on Christy’s chest. The baby tucked her legs, like still in the womb, her dark hair slick, her small cry.
A new girl had come into the world. I was in her life from the first moment. Maybe a touch closer to what it might have been like to give birth. But this was not knowing. This was witnessing.
This girl, M’ari is her name, will be in my life as the days go by. One day I will watch her cross the stage for a diploma, watch her mother’s dismay that the years went so fast.
But before that, I will walk on an Oregon beach with her. She will be six years old. Her little sister Ariana will be on my other side.
The Pacific Ocean will be blue and gray and white and birds and clouds and fine sand. Foam and salt and rot and wind. Water in and water out. There will be driftwood, and boulders that can be reached only when the tide is out.
M’ari will take my hand. “Let’s pretend you’re our mom,” she’ll say.
Yes. Of course. I would love to.