KeebleTalk: Janis Joplin Delivered My Baby: An OG Mother’s Caution

KeebleTalk: Janis Joplin Delivered My Baby: An OG Mother’s Caution

Janis Joplin Delivered My Baby: An OG Mother’s Caution

I begin with a disclaimer:  I birthed two daughters, almost exactly two years apart and I am so glad they’re here.  Given a choice,  I would do it again.  I think I did the world a favor by having them especially since they both have grown into the kind of funny, brilliant, thoughtful and flawed women I enjoy having as friends.

That said, I’m wondering why the world doesn’t thank women more often:  I mean really.  We women, we moms, repeatedly and voluntarily choose through the birth process to traumatize ourselves emotionally and physically in order to propagate our thankless species.  We choose to allow our pepper-tight figures to stretch and swell beyond reason, to bloat, to descend to such a low-bottom level we don’t even recognize ourselves.  We enter into the birthing contract with the understanding that we will never be the same.  (Relinquish vanity).

We commit to stop working (often), to stop smoking, to stop drinking (well, yeah).  We commit ourselves to eating right, staying out of The Club (although we do find exceptions).  We take up lighter exercise routines--I remember the day I earned my first tummy stretch marks at seven months pregnant trying to hit a backhand on Morehouse’s tennis courts.  No more high impact sports; take it easy now, you’re going to be a mom.  (Relinquish self-indulgence). 

The world can never thank women enough.  One lousy day set aside in May could not possibly compensate for womanhood’s beasty commitment to posterity.  How can sunflowers, pancakes, eggs, and fresh squeezed orange juice repay or pay forward the debt the world owes its women?  I think about trumpets sounding each morning as we wake.

The day I realized I would have a second child I thought about my little baby, then I thought about the little me who would miss my figure, my work, my drink.  Forget about The Club.  But wait—what about the pain? (Awesome birth control for the naturalists).  For the next 30 weeks I would pretend someone else would experience the pain for me.  To try to keep calm I would need to pretend someone else was going to go through that stupendous pain:  the due date lingered at the back of my mind like a student loan I'd casually accepted and had to pay off eventually. 

For so long I promoted an infantile sanguinity about childbirth.  But as I age, all the previously seductive images of those three actually soupy hot days I spent in Atlanta hospitals ease further out of my mind.  The delusions are gone.  For me, giving birth was physically brutal and emotionally sacrificial.  I better understand the faces of those older women who saw me out as I walked to the co-op, pregnant with my first child. 

“Is this your first baby?” 

“Yes ma’am.”

“Awww… .” They’d tilt their heads and smile a crooked smile that I didn’t quite understand.  They held something back looking at me, a rookie cop; they were the veteran cops watching me walk, like a complete mark, into a darkened alley.

I wore pink frosty glasses before.  My perception made me say things like, “Oh, I don’t have a doctor.  I have a nurse-midwife.  I want to give birth in a welcoming warm, quiet room.  And the nurse-midwife is going to be right there.  No doctor.”  I had a song in my voice.  That was before labor.

On my due date, July 6, 1991 my oldest daughter announced her coming through intensifying contractions after I’d hung blinds in my bedroom; my mother was coming to town after all.  Her father drove me to the hospital after we passed through a drunk driver checkpoint on Ralph David Abernathy, in Atlanta.  It had just rained and steam mixed with the rubber on our skinny tires concocting an odor that made me sick to my stomach.  After we parked in the stacked up circular garage, I thought only about air conditioning.  Where was the closest air conditioner?  We rode the elevator up to the OB floor, and after the assistants hooked me up to the monitors the nurse midwife told me she wanted to break my water. 

“I don’t want you to do that.”

“Why?”

“Well, because I know that one intervention could easily lead to another intervention

that could eventually lead me to a C-section.  And I don’t want a C-section.”

“Well, you want a live baby don’t you?”  For the first time I noticed the nurse midwife looked a lot like Janis Joplin, her brownish hair wild on her head, her face plain, unremarkable. 

“Yes, I want a live baby.  Go ahead.” She broke my water.

Back up: my naturalist opinions had earlier met with discouragement from birthing magazines to convince me that epidurals might permanently damage my spine and my baby's brain so—you want to talk about ouch?!  My baby would have one of the cutest little  heads in the natal ward but at that moment her head felt like a flaming ball of oversized hostile fire.  I shut out the sounds of Janis Joplin telling me to breath, then push.

“Ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

I will fear no evil, for thou art with me…”

My daughter’s father, “You’re doing greeeaaaat.”

"Thy rod and thy staff comfort me."

My daughter was born distressed.  I was holding her in when I wanted to push because I remembered the nurse midwife telling me not to push until she said push.  So as best I could, I held the baby in when I had those intense contractions. The nurses grabbed my baby and washed her up, gave her an Apgar score—her first among many standardized tests, and handed her to me.  Janis Joplin leaned into me, snatched down my gown, and said,  “Here, now feed her.”   

I went home the next day because I couldn’t eat the hospital food and my mom was coming to town; I had to do laundry.  My first baby is now 21.  I’ll blame my poor assessment of the reality of childbirth on the roots she worked on me with her giddiness, beauty and warmth. 

Don’t misunderstand.  I don’t want to scare young women away from having babies.  I frankly do not believe anything I say could defy biology anyway; something about our hormones, driving our bodies and our thinking at a particular age (for me it was 23, 24, 25) makes us go ahead and take up the challenge of motherhood despite everything that seasoned vets, those OG women mothers, warn against.  Women will continue to have babies and humankind will go on.  Women my age will nod their heads in understanding.  Women my daughter’s age will shake their heads in disagreement, a twinkle still left in their eyes. 

Post Script:

My second labor, ending June 22, 1993 spread itself out over a lovely 48 hours--no epidural, thereby shattering all of my delusions about having children.

KeebleTalk: Starlit Evening: Oakland Prostitution and California Schools

KeebleTalk: Starlit Evening: Oakland Prostitution and California Schools

The Human Cost of Being Human: Don't Leave Me

I left a job I love today.  Before pushing the one-way lock and walking off the campus, I saw a former student, AnnMarie.  She said, "Hi! Ms. Keeble!" her braces sparkling through her frosty lip gloss.   She asked me a question about next year.  I let her finish, then said, "Ohhh, Ann Marie, you know I'm not gonna be here next year."  Her eyes bucked, she opened her mouth wide.

          

"What?  You can't."

"I'm sorry, you didn't know?"

"You should have made an announcement."

"I announced it on facebook.  I thought that would be

 enough."

"But I love you Ms. Keeble.  You're my favorite teacher!"  Now the lump in my throat is messing with my eyes.

"I love you too, Ann Marie."  We hugged.  I snapped back.  "But dang girl, you only had me for about   a month!  How do you think I felt when you left for Fresno?"

I remember the day she abruptly departed.  She dragged in with a white sign out sheet.  I asked her what it was, and she said she had to leave, her mom was sick.  I hugged her, gave her a grade, wished her good luck and turned back to continue with the lesson I was teaching.  I remember the sadness I felt seeing her walk out the door.  This scene repeats all year long, at least five or six times.  Students come, then they go, often with no notice.

"I know I left," she says.  But I came back!"

"I know."

Damn it.  I'd almost gotten away clean.  But not really.  I am stuck.  Nailed.  I haven't a clue what to do with grief.  What to do with guilt, the guilt of causing grief in others?  I am reminded of something a psychiatrist once told me when I asked him how to get through a task I saw as completely impossible.  I guess you just have to do it.  Though battered by fear, apprehension, anxiety, and dread--I guess you/I just have to do it.  When faced with moments that we'd rather avoid altogether, including making decisions that we know may lead to grief, the challenge has always been and continues to be--to stay in it.  Make the best decision and feel the consequences.  Don't run.  At some point the running has to end.

To deny ourselves the splendor of the wide open spaces before us because we prefer our current mitigated comfort over the promise of future unmitigated grief is to deny our own human frailty.  The double-edge is unavoidable.  I cannot sit with what I know doesn't satisfy my internal life because I fear the pain of loss.  But doesn't it hurt?  And isn't the pain inevitable?  Of course.  And accepting that frees me to live with a peace that is also inevitable.  I can't know one without knowing the other.  I forget that most days.  I seek comfort when pain arises.  Comfort in the form of homemade chocolate cake or endless games of chess on the Internet.  My brother Kofi, the Chessmaster, tells me to study to become better.  I say to him, "Kofi, I don't play to get better, I play for entertainment."  I really play to distract myself.  I used to have a drink after work.  Now I play about four or five games of chess.  Guess which one people find more impressive.  A former partner and I often talked about how we both took up compulsions that society tends to reward:  games of intellect and hours of sharply focused work.  Both are admired by society, and both tend to leave those with whom we should be most intimately connected feeling neglected, shut out of our focus zone.  Unfortunately, simply acknowledging our failings doesn't save us from their consequence.  

Some of us are required to monitor our comfort seeking.  We watch for where we turn away from pain.  Where do we turn toward pleasure?  We mark it, for therein lies the nature of avoidance-driven addiction.  We practice sitting with the discomfort we so naturally wish to avoid.  Pema Chodron says "there are so many ways we have dreamt up to avoid the moment, soften its hard edge, deaden its impact so we don't have to feel the full impact of the pain." (When Things Fall Apart)

Yet the pain is unavoidable. It is inevitable.  And in the end, it is moreover, valuable.  

During my daughter's naming ceremony, her father placed on her seven-day old tongue milk, salt, honey, and cayenne.  Each drop was meant to prepare her to be able to handle all that her life would offer:  boredom, difficulty, pleasure, and tragedy.  And considering the woman my daughter has grown into, I can say I would recommend such a ceremony to all the mothers I know.   I have watched her face, without blinking, without running, so very many losses.

        
      

Lazy But Talented: The Big Fail

                Last week I had a meltdown.  Never unusual; but, this one was purposeful. 

All year I have tried, often subversively, to attach a degree of urgency to the

work I assign in my classes, particularly the work I assign to my AP students. 

I am charged with trying to get high school juniors to pass a freshman college composition course, an exam I know many of my adult friends, even English majors could not pass (and no, I'm not talking about you).  It is timed.  And it is extremely difficult.  The work I assign is specifically, strategically designed to allow them to understand, retain, and apply the often brand new skills they need to learn in order to pass this exam.  At the appointed time, they must exhibit some level of mastery.  Problem is that I have only a handful of students in a class of  about 30 who seem to feel the urgency in the way I wish them to feel it.  I say this only because they often do not do their homework--which is always a combination of critical reading, writing and thinking.  If they do not do the homework, I know they may pass my class (because of the weight given essays and tests, projects, etc.), but they may not have developed enough automaticity with the needed skills to succeed on the AP exam.  Thursday of last week, as we approach the test date, most of the class walked in not having read, nor having written what I assigned.  We had to have a talk.

I try not to add any stress to children's lives, so I kept my voice

even.  I first asked these youngsters what happened.  No consistent response.  I

thought maybe--the moon--the game--the BET Awards--what could it have been?  The

sun (it was a sunny week)?  I got a whole bunch of I just didn't do it.  One

said, "You know, I think I have A-D-D." I didn't say I think so too, but instead,

"Hummm...maybe you need to look into that.  Tell your mom."  Following her

semi-legitimate excuse came a cacophony of shoulder shrugs:  shoulders up, smile,

shoulders down, befuddled looks.  I was befuddled, frustrated beyond frustration

and ready to just say F-it.  You guys don't care, why should I?  But that would

not be very teacherly of me...I searched for a connection. 

                 
"I wanna get real with you guys.  Can I do that?"

"Of course, Ms. Keeble."  They smile so innocently.  

"You are reminding me of myself when I was your age.”  They giggle, imagining me a teenager. 

“All of you are smart, very smart.  Sometimes when you’re smart like I was, like you are, maybe you think you don’t have to work like everyone else does.” 

“School and grades always came fairly easy for me, so I learned to get by by doing things last minute or not doing them at all.  I tried to figure out what was mandatory and what I could get away with not doing.  And if I’m going to be very real about it, I also thought that some work that we were assigned was for those other kids to do because they didn’t know stuff—not like I did.” 

“Can any of you identify?”  Furtive smiles and mumbles fill the room.

“Truth is that I learned to be lazy.  All my successes piled up to give me an out.  And I wanted an out because I had no discipline.  That worked for a long time, but as I got older, it worked less and less.  Outside the purview of limited vision, students my same age, were learning what I didn't have sense enough to know I need to learn.  My nonchalance outted me.  Competition grew.  My poor work habits left me standing in the middle of a room looking like a clown.” 

“I will never forget what my high school English teacher wrote in my yearbook, ‘You are one of the few people I know who can really think and maybe one day you will decide that the work is worth it.’  That was the moment it clicked for me.  He said the exact right thing and I was for the first time able to see how I was taking something for granted.”  I’m hoping they hear me.  But I don’t know.  I never know.  What inspires young people, or people in general to make adjustments to long-standing deleterious behaviors?  For me, at the core of my behavior, the desire to take the less challenging option, almost always was a desire to avoid feeling ill at ease.  The uneasiness could be physical (often) or emotional (more often). 

Physical discomfort arose whenever I had to exercise a muscle or organ that I hadn’t often extended:  like my lungs whenever I ran long distances; or my quads when I had to move furniture; or my abs when I had to bend over to clean my room; or my biceps whenever I had to clean the bathtub.  After a start, the muscle would begin to hurt, then ache.  I did not like that feeling and at the very moment I thought about doing some laborious task, I remembered that I didn’t like it.  Now some people learned, or were taught that the pain subsides after a time, that it eases the more you use a weak, under exercised apparatus.  No matter if anyone ever told me so, I never learned that.  I always remembered the pain that comes before the proverbial gain.  The pain dominated my thinking.  


So if I wanted to stretch toward any intended goal, I needed to push myself beyond where I felt comfortable.  I never did that.  I never knew that.  I never did long-distance anything.  I never pushed myself.  I thought that if it hurt, it meant I needed to stop—take it easy.  That meant I wouldn’t do something if it presented as a challenge.  In a sense, I learned to do only activities that came fairly easy to me at the first try, or if upon short practice, I could master the task.  That attitude left a lot undiscovered.  It also led me to disengage from potential challenges to my status quo without even consciously knowing I was doing so.  I imagine a number of my AP students can relate to that experience.  "Nahhhhh..., I'm good."  It’s a hard lesson to learn.

Not one of us is exempt from the work.  Those tedious tasks, repetitive, redundant, and dull in the extreme are necessary for growth, necessary for the acquisition of the skills that allow for substantive contribution to society and to the world-at- large.  We have to do the menial tasks:  scales, stretches, revisions, drafts—take those innumerable tiny, un-sexy steps.  There's no joy in it except when you finish.  But how can we otherwise equip ourselves to live in a meaningful way, to help someone who may be waiting down the road somewhere not even knowing we’re on our way?  That someone may not have had the benefits of access, support, or quiet that we so often take for granted.  

I remember trying to get one of my super smart, but totally unfocused young students to imagine a little girl somewhere, a girl she doesn’t yet know, but a little girl who may/may not look like her—a little girl who she will run into one day, who will need the benefit of what she (this student) has to offer.  Trying to inspire her to do her work, I asked her if she planned on being prepared to help that little girl.  She said of course.  I said Ok, then do your homework please.    

Our world, our communities, with so many complex, demanding, long-standing and dreadful challenges to meet and overcome, need our extra efforts.  We have to do the work because when called upon, we have to be able to share the benefit of our preparedness.