These Precious Days

“I was in New York on business and checked in with Marti, who was about to have a baby.  She said she and her husband, Barry, were on their way to the hospital and I should come by and hang out.  “We can walk the halls,” Marti said cheerfully. Marti had a tendency to make the difficult things look easy.  She was thirty-one and this was her second child.

“Won’t you be really busy?” I asked.

“Well, sure, but you’re here,” she said. “I want to see you.”

So I went to the hospital, and her husband and I took turns looping the ward with Marti on our arm. At regular intervals she would stop, take a breath, look up at the ceiling and say, “Okay,” then start to walk again. Back in the room, the nurse would check her dilation. Everything was going according to schedule.  “Do you want to just stay?” she asked me.

“If you stayed, you could take the pictures,” her husband said.  They were trying to make me feel welcome, useful, even though it didn’t seem like a party I should be crashing at the last minute. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine telling them I had plans. I must have had plans, but I don’t remember what they were. I stuck around to see Katherine being born.  It wasn’t much of a wait. Marti was all business.

That was the one part of the decision not to have children that did in fact make me feel like I missed out. I am deeply moved by what a woman’s body is capable of, but just because I could do something didn’t mean that I should.  Marti and Barry gave me a tremendous gift that day by letting me stay and watch their daughter come into the world. Katherine! From the first minute, she was a force every bit as recognizable as her mother.  That feeling of life coming into the room was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before, a flood of joy.  I thought of it ten years later when I climbed into my grandmother’s bed and held her while she died.  The light pouring in and the light going out. I never would have known how close those two things were if it wasn’t for Marti and Barry and Katherine.”