Birth from the Father's Perspective

Been quite some time since either of us have managed an entry, and with good reason. Our family of two is now three...everybody, please welcome Eva Jean Laurie! Kate's been working hard for the past nine-plus months, carrying the little bean, taking obsessive care of herself.

At times her anxiety would rise to levels that made her cry, however softly: she wanted so desperately to have a healthy baby, and was more conscious day by day that she was part steward, part bystander in this process where a new life weaves itself a human form and emerges.

Now we have the beautiful baby...a quiet, occasionally squidgy little girl named Eva, one who loves to sleep right on a person's chest (though she seems to prefer Kate to me so far). Without getting ahead of myself--I'm going to tell this story beginning from back in Alaska, when the birth was still in the pleasant haze of the future. But I'll share a few of my strongest impressions of the baby right now, before I begin. First, is how immediate the parental connection is. Eva came out--I was right there in the delivery room, and did better than my own joking predictions that I'd be out cold--and was the pink, shriveled prune that most babies are, and she started crying right away. And so did Kate and I. There was nothing different about Eva from virtually any other child ever born, but Katie and I both know her for ours, and that made every trait, every sound, every motion of first importance to us.

Second, now that we're home, is how much I love the sound even of the little baby's occasionally labored breathing. Babies are developing quickly, so I'm learning, and their body systems are still adjusting to being in the air, on top of being tiny and barely functional. So she often coughs and wheezes, and squirms quite a bit, and every detail of her activity endears her to me. This isn't a doting thing. It's an immediate connection, one I don't even feel with Kate because she's an adult like me, already proven she can survive for a few decades and create her own life. But it's not all protective, either...think of a human kitten. They're frail and helpless, but adorable and beautiful too. That's a baby.

Third, kind of part of the second, but a bit more particular: how happy and relieved I am when I hear her start to scramble and squall and complain at night. Every cry is preceded by a few seconds' gasping warm-up, sort of like those old-fashioned sirens which had to wind up and down before and after an alarm. And that warm-up is my first signal, after any silence, that she's doing just fine. Phantoms exist. In the high-technology, populated world, there are phantoms whose presence and power we don't deny, because we hear about them constantly in the news, and hope desperately that we'll not be visited. Cancer. Abduction. Poverty. Their effects in our minds aren't unlike old-world superstitions of the devil, and the corresponding anxious vigils we mount. And in Kate's and my case right now, the spectre of SIDS sits in the back of our minds, barely stirring, but large and malevolent. So we follow the one rule we've been taught to rely on: position the baby on its back. (Now, of course, there's the answering syndrome: Infant Flat-Head Syndrome. So word has become, position the infant, somehow, on its side...to be followed, I'd guess, by something like Infant Dislocated Shoulder Syndrome.) Anyhow, I'm rambling. Of course we fear for the survival of this little ray of sunshine in our lives, and every sign she gives us that she's ornery and strong is water to minds parched by fear.

Last, something I've touched on already, is just how EJ ramps up for a good cry. It's a whole-body process. It begins either with the eyes clenching and mouth starting to open, or with the fists clenching and starting to shake. Then the arms and legs together begin to tremble, as little Eva's whole body convulses--slowly and mildly, but there's no other word for a full-body spasm--before the trouble re-expresses itself in the face, where here eyes clench more and she begins to splutter. After a few squeaks, half-coughs and spits, a brief cry bursts out of her. A few more splutters and she's ready for full-volume production. Needless to say, thus far Kate's responding well before Eva reaches the high alarm, but on those occasions when she makes it, it's still enchanting...not to mention a relief when she settles back down.

Anyway, I need to dial this post back two weeks and two days from now, to Monday, September 7, Labor Day and the last day of the rootin' tootinest, biggest, most flabulous fair in all of Alaska...the Alaska State Fair, ten days, right there in Palmer. I missed the demolition derby, and spent most of the holiday weekend in Anchorage, either at the library or the bookstore. Monday evening Kate and I were chatting via webcam again, when she mentioned that her sister Cori, who was pregnant and due only slightly earlier than Kate herself, had begun having contractions. Cori is notorious in the family for the efficiency and ease of her (now, four! And all at home) deliveries. Implication was heavy in the air.

Not having much of a coherent emotional response, I filed it under, "Another sign that we're getting close."

Next morning, I was at work, at 9:15 AM (1:15 EDT...the four-hour difference is manageable but awkward at times), when I got a text: "1 cm dilated".

I went into a bit of a dither. Was she talking about her sister Cori or herself?

I went quickly outside and called, for clarification. "No, silly, Cori delivered last night. She always goes quickly," Katie answered on the phone. "It's me."

I didn't know anything more than the next guy about delivery, so this "dilated" stuff, sure, I could gather the meaning, but what did "1 cm" imply? She's ready to go? She's still a month off? She's in pain already and cursing my name between breaths?

"The doctor says that I could go in a few days, or a few weeks."

Oh good. That cleared things up.

So we started talking about a new plan: maybe I come home sooner, so as to be more sure I wouldn't miss the birth, and we'd take the time afterward as it came. Seemed good to both of us so I arranged in the office for the time off and the flight: out of Anchorage, potentially after a full day of work, Saturday night shortly after midnight, through Seattle and Cleveland and into Providence at 5:30 PM Sunday. I love red-eyes. Very manly (i.e. somewhat self-destructive) way to travel. So that was that.

Until Wednesday, when I got another call, that Katie's urine test that morning had shown elevated protein levels. I couldn't tell anybody what this might mean, except that the fact that it was news, probably made it bad. (Sherlock has nothing on me. I read all his books and everything.)

So that morning I learned about eclampsia, the very dangerous state where kidneys and liver don't properly remove waste from the blood. It's potentially fatal to both mother and baby, so doctors keep a sharp lookout for it. The onset is called pre-eclampsia, and it manifests through protein-rich urine and high blood pressure.

Suddenly, Katie's pregnancy was in some trouble. Not tremendous trouble: her blood pressure was still normal to low (the nurses wondered if she were an athlete--that's my bengal!), and EJ was late in term, so even an immediate C-section wouldn't require emergency incubation. She was viable already. But Katie faced the possibility of (a) a pregnancy wrecked by a sudden condition (very small), or (b) being denied the satisfaction of delivering naturally, after carrying for nearly ten months (quite a bit more likely). And it bears mentioning that there is at least some crow to be served among three competitive sisters who like showing the others how tough and capable they are.

So on numerous levels, from the deadly serious to the slightly comic, Katie suddenly had a mental cliff in front of her. It was one of my most impotent moments as a husband, hearing the concentrated fear in her voice and being able to do nothing. Not only was I thousands of miles away, but I was ignorant. And then Kate showed me what she's made of. She handled the whole situation with real intelligence, learning from the midwives and doctors what was likely to happen, and the fact that her pregnancy was not at serious risk, and hearing the likeliest courses of action. But I know my little bengal, and to abuse the image a bit, most everybody else sees the stripes, green eyes and fangs, but I feel the midnight trembles. I knew she needed company.

That was not the first time her mother came to the rescue, and drove down Thursday night to keep Katie company through Friday and Saturday's appointments and tests, and the loud countdown to whatever might follow. I already had my tickets--and was upset at myself for picking Saturday, when it turned out Friday was a perfect field day and we were done 24 hours sooner than I'd expected--so I was just waiting too. As the plan stood, Kate would have her test results by Saturday night, Eastern time, and she'd know then if the doctors wanted to bring her in on Sunday to induce her. So I faced the prospect of being picked up at the airport by my bride and mother-in-law, and being whisked off without so much as a face washing or cup of coffee to the hospital, where Kate would get down to business. The scenario had an element of romance.

Late-night airport trips have a whiff, to my grandiose and occasionally mundane imagination, of the heroic. The night is impenetrable, full of mystery. He's up late, well after hours, sacrificing a night's rest to put two whole days together, sparing everyone else the tedium of the extra wait. A gallon of his blood for an ounce of their convenience.

Truth is, not so much. I talked to the cabbie for the whole nervous hour from Palmer to Anchorage, and once at the gate, sat there feeling stoned waiting for the plane to arrive. Once it did, I boarded in ill temper with the other haggard folks. There had been a generic announcement of overbooking and volunteers possibly being needed to step off and wait. A scene formed itself in my head: me being randomly selected to wait, and, what with extra books (disallowed by the airline's luggage weight limit) and heavyweight jacket (unable to be fit into the bag) making me sweat like I'd been running, me going off in outrage at the slightly taken-aback ticket agent, who would promptly call guards and have me hauled away to a holding room, with me shouting at the top of my lungs, "My wife is giving BIRTH tomorrow, and you're telling me to wait!?"

Fortunately reality was different. The plane was only half full, and I had a whole row to myself--a whole row in which to learn just how wretched a bed three airline seats make. Suffice it to say, there's neither length, width nor cushion enough to make any position comfortable. I passed the three hours from Anchorage to Seattle in various states of discomfort, with my eyes closed. At about 5 AM local, I found my way to the next gate and waited there. The question: coffee or no coffee? Rally or rest? I opted for rest.

On the next flight, five hours to Cleveland, I managed to sleep fitfully, in my middle seat, for probably a total of three hours on the day. Better than I'd expected leaving Anchorage, at least. The hop from Cleveland to Providence was comparatively quick, with a few catnaps, and some polite conversation with the man next to me, a young Texan heading up to Rhode Island for a conference on wind power. I don't think he'd been expecting to run into such an environmental egghead, though, so he turned the conversation more to the restaurants and casinos he was hoping to visit throughout the week.

That brought me to Providence, and my lovely little bengal, who can flub things endearingly from time to time. Like last February, when I'd driven up from Lafayette, Louisiana (straight shot, 25 hours. A boom-boom...whooooo doo you looo-ooo-ooovvve...boom, boom, boom, a-boom-boom. For you Thorogood fans out there). But her cell phone was dead,and she didn't get any of my text messages from New York, Connecticut or Rhode Island about how close I was getting. I arrived home to nobody but the cat, and had to call her grandmother's when I realized she wasn't here.

This time it was kind of my own doing...the flight from Cleveland had been delayed 20 minutes, so I texted her that fact. We must've made very good time in the air, though, so we landed at the scheduled time, 5:30...only Katie and her mother weren't there. They hadn't even left the condo, apparently. Since she was expecting me at 5:50, she thought that would mean more like six...so, I hung out in the terminal. At least I finally got my espresso, after collecting my luggage. I had only just finished before that familiar Toyota drove up with my dear anxious wife inside.

We didn't take long for a greeting, since we were in the loading zone, after all, and there was a general urgency to the whole situation. And besides...Katie and I never seem to stand on any ceremony. Hellos and goodbyes, except on the phone, which are always awkward and difficult, are very easy with us. I can't look at her without smiling, even if it's the last look I'll get in a while. And when it's the first look I've had in some time, it's just as easy, as if the time in between hadn't passed. That in itself isn't so strange, but the degree to which it's been true for us I've always found a bit amazing. Maybe next time, leaving Eva Jean as well, will be worse. I don't know yet.

So I tossed my stuff in the truck and we headed to Women & Infants'. We checked in, which took some amount of time but it was all a blur to me, pretty much. Up in the pre-natal/post-natal room, nurses were doing all kinds of things to Kate, most of which I forget now but included a lot of vital signs. She'd been given some pre-induction drugs to help ripen the cervix, so we were just waiting now either for contractions to pick up on their own, or to begin with the IV drug in the morning.

Since we were just sitting around, the ladies gave me permission to run home, shower, change into something less smelly and more comfortable, have a bite to eat, and not least at all, say hello to the cat. I did that, and wound up wearing something only a five-year-old boy could love: my comfortable fleece pants, bright red, white and blue plaid; my Porsche racing T-shirt; and sneakers. That's prime Saturday morning comfort wear there. Not the kind of thing you might put on to cut an elegant dash anywhere. Suffice it to say, I didn't really resemble an adult (aside from the slightly graying hair and facial stubble, that is).

Back at the hospital, it was a fairly tough night. That I could sleep at all in the fold-out chair alongside Kate's bed was testament to how exhausted I was, as I learned a week later. Kate herself was having mild contractions, and was upset enough about the entire procedure that her face was a constant mask of worry, annoyance, resignation and fear.

In the morning--and my recollection of these events is somewhat hazy--Katie walked into the delivery room, and hooked up to the IV drip for antibiotics, saline, and pitocin, the inducing drug. But then another doctor, whom we hadn't spoken to yet, showed up and laid out an extensive course of reasoning for why the hospital staff was now considering stopping the inducement. I'd basically fallen asleep in the chair beside Katie. I figured that I was still butt-tired, and when the time came for me to rally, I would. Until then, I snoozed, holding her hand, and she snoozed too. (I'd like to think I relaxed her, but I didn't ask.)

After the doctor, a midwife came in, defended their earlier decision to induce, and probed to see Katie's progress--causing Kate so much pain that tears were sliding down her face as she begged the midwife to stop. "You're far enough along, we should induce. And if that hurt so much, you'll definitely want an epidural."

At this point I could feel the defeat in Katie's demeanor: this had turned into everything she'd hoped it wouldn't, a coldhearted, industrial nightmare. No windows, a parade of unfamiliar faces spouting all kinds of information, and Katie herself merely the inert subject, being talked at and not to. The mother had been separated in the medical staff's minds from the welfare of her own baby. It's safe to say this isn't how the little bengal had spent nine months imagining the birth of her baby daughter would go.

Another nurse--a kindhearted and somewhat impulsive woman, who spoke her heart--came back in and expressed her outrage at this back-and-forth indecisiveness. The inducement was now off, the drugs had been disconnected and only the saline was running through the IV. The nurse removed all the now-unneeded tubes and left us three sitting there, angry and frustrated. Then Katie's mom made a fateful remark: "You should just pull the IV out of your arm and leave."

It wasn't long before words were action.

Perhaps twenty minutes of sitting alone in the delivery room, with no visits by any staff, had brought all of our anger to a much hotter degree. So Katie stood up and grimaced while I pulled the medical tape off her forearm, and then pulled the needle from her vein. Only we hadn't planned on how much the puncture would bleed afterward, and I stood cupping the red stuff in my two hands as Kate's mom ran for some paper towels. We contained the bleed, wiped up the floor, and got the mess cleaned up before Katie took the next step: popped her head out the door and called loudly for a nurse.

When they realized she'd pulled the IV from her arm they got a lot more attentive, and within moments we were surrounded by a crowd of doctors and nurses with forms and instructions and apologies. The gist: they overreacted on the pre-eclampsia, and should never have tried to induce two weeks before the due date, which is still too soon. I was still kind of bleary but Katie's and her mother's anger pretty much powered the whole "let's-get-the-release-forms-and-get-the-hell-out-of-here" animus, and we were on our way soon after that.

We got home, dropped our bags, and Katie went upstairs for a good quality cry. I can't claim to know what she was thinking or feeling, but I think the frustration, the stress, and the exhaustion got the better of her, as well as the apprehension that she still might need to go through something that demeaning again. But once the wave of energy had passed and she'd relaxed, I realized that (a) we hadn't had more than a few harried minutes to ourselves since I'd come home, and we hadn't been together at all since July; and (b) I hadn't eaten good food in several days at least. So I thought, damn the budget. We both need a night out.

Our favorite, a little local place that serves autentico 'taliano, Sergio's, was closed. Somewhat at a loss, we turned north, and without much premeditation or clue of any sort, decided on a somewhat upscale place in East Greenwich, Meritage. (And no, I don't mean to make this blog seem like a commercial. But I do believe in steering friends and family toward places I like.) Anyway, this restaurant had a similar ambiance to where we'd had our first date, and it was a pretty good antidote to the day just past. I managed to get some smiles and laughs out of her, and by the end of the dinner the day's cares had lifted off and floated away. We were back to our sometimes dreamy demeanor with each other by the time we left.

Whatever was to come in the days ahead, we'd greet together, composedly, with Katie having gained quite a bit of confidence in her own sensibility. She wouldn't be hounded a second time into decisions she didn't agree with.

The rest of the week passed quietly enough. The four-hour time difference, and horrible two nights' sleep, left me out of sorts for three days, and I got some schoolwork done--not much, but some. Kate had several clinic appointments, to monitor her blood and overall health. The elevated protein level, the cause for the original alarm, was still present and still cause for observation at least. Her primary midwife, Fiona, was very apologetic for the entire weekend's debacle, and her own role in it, of having called the first alarm. But her reasoning seemed sound: the protein count implied strongly that the onset of pre-eclampsia would eventually become actual pre-eclampsia, so it was wise to try to anticipate that and induce.

This was hard to deny, so once Kate had digested all the medical data and timelines and my own back-to-work schedules she made up her mind: if the doctors would let her walk around the delivery room, as opposed to lying helplessly on the bed, she'd agree to be induced on Monday, provided she hadn't delivered by then. If the doctors refused that, then to hell with them, and she'd continue carrying to term. Our next deadline was Sunday morning, an appointment with one of the midwife team at Women & Infants'.

We'd gone out on another date Friday. This one kind of evolved. Kate had suggested going to see Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, a computer animation of a children's book that I'd said I wanted to watch (in one of my semi-conscious moments at the hospital, apparently). Plus, we both lusted for some food at Sergio's. So dinner and a movie...of course, we were the only adults in the theater who weren't chaperoning a group of kids, but so what. And it just so turned out, that we saw a very important preview...

I'm a big Roald Dahl fan. He's written all kinds of things. Sexual thrillers, horror, suspense, children's stories and children's novels...like Poe, and even more than Stephen King, he's a writer gifted with a terrifically strange imagination who shows much different forms of fantasy have in common, and how slight the differences can be. In Poe's case, science fiction, mystery, and horror. In Dahl's case, thrillers, horror and children's books. It would be no tremendous stretch to turn the premise of James and the Giant Peach into a genuinely blood-curdling tale...and one of my favorites, Danny the Champion of the World, features the hero Danny's father being shot, arrested and thrown in prison for poaching. Tinges of darkness...but my favorite is Fantastic Mr. Fox.

I mean, come on. Is there a cooler fictional animal than the fox? Debonair, cunning, courageous, always a step ahead...foxes just rule. (They come off as kind of snivelly and weak when lions are around, but to hell with the lions. They're mostly bombastic oafs anyway.) So...Fantastic Mr. Fox. I'd mentioned to Kate and her mom that this book, in light of all the comic and children's books being made into feature-length films these days, was just screaming to be made into a movie. (And of course I'm not going to spoil the plot!)

Of course I was thrilled to see the preview trailer. I like the animation style, too: stop-frame models, like in the old Christmas claymations. December this year. The Sutherland family will be going (well, maybe Eva will stay home with a babysitter, but we'll work that out later). So we watched the Meatballs movie, and then after a coffee and dessert, I was feeling the caffeine and the fox thing and so I suggested to Kate that we ramble on up to the bookstore and hunt for kids' books. She agreed (we also stopped to pick up some castor oil, in case she wanted to try Fiona's suggestion for a do-it-yourself version of inducement...the unopened bottle is still sitting on the kitchen counter). After browsing the kids' section we came away with Katie's favorite Chris Van Allsburg book, one or two others, and my Fantastic Mr. Fox. Good news...

...so I read half to her that night, until her eyes closed. Saturday was quiet, and I finished reading to her that night. Next morning we were both hoping would bring the start of Eva's journey to us.

We went to bed at two, I'd set the alarm for eight, and when it rang I turned it off and rolled back over. Appointment, schmappointment...the midwife would be there all day. No need to be early...when Kate got herself out of bed at 8:30 and headed into the bathroom, I knew something was up. I can count on one hand the number of days she's beaten me out of bed.

When she emerged from the shower she told me, "I'm having contractions...and I felt some motion last night that I hadn't felt before. I think this might be it."

I'd already hit the panic button once in Palmer, Alaska, so this time I was a bit more sane. No need to hurry or be a fool, but no time to dawdle either. We were both ready to go by about 9:30, and out we went. After picking up my obligatory morning coffee (she wanted nothing, another hopeful sign) we headed on up to the hospital.

Once in the examination room, the midwife on call, Amy, walked in, asked a few questions, and did an inspection. "Five centimeters dilated, 90% effaced. Today's the day."

Having been through one false alarm, I wasn't going to let myself fly off the handle, but I felt a surge of energy. I can't imagine what Katie felt (on top of the increasing strength of the contractions, that is). She walked into the delivery room--looking quite cute in her johnny and white Nikes--and we settled in.

At this point, I needed to know if it was time for me to get my hopes way up too, and when I asked one of the nurses, she answered, "Today is absolutely the day." So I called Kate's mom (it was about 11:30), told her to get here ASAP, and got ready to work.

Kate had her choice of lying on the bed, or standing up, or using the birthing ball (known as exercise balls at gyms--those big, heavy-duty beach balls that people contort themselves on). A few nurses came in with Amy, and told us what was going to happen: basically, Katie's own body would conduct everything, and the rest of us were there to keep an eye out and give her encouragement (my job in particular was the encouragement).

And then they abandoned us. Well, not abandoned us, totally. But they had other women getting ready to deliver too, obviously, and lots of work to do besides hover over us. Besides, the whole premise of midwives' work is to leave the birth in the control of the mother, so that's what they did. "Talk to me, babe, tell me I can do it," Kate asked, fairly early on. Amy concurred immediately, so I began a quiet, persistent stream of "Breathe deep, that's it, you can do it...just like your mother said, one contraction at at time...just get through this one...doing great, babe..."

I mean, what else could I say? Katie was now in hard labor and I had no idea what she was going through actually felt like, but I could see the stress in her face and in her whole posture, and the monitors hooked up to her told me that the muscle activity was getting steadily more powerful...I could rub her back, and try to egg her on like a runner staggering through the last of a marathon, but I really didn't have a very good clue as to how she was doing. So I just kept at it and hoped for the best.

Amy had mentioned perhaps twenty or thirty times that going into the jacuzzi would help initiate the final pushing stage. After moving between standing and sitting on the ball five or six times, and with me murmuring the same encouragements over and over into her ear for about three hours, Kate let us know that she was ready for the hot tub. So she shuffled slowly in, sat down in the water, and waited. It took only about three contractions, I guess (so she told me), before she announced that she was ready to push. (I might mention here that the nearly three hours between Katie's walking into the delivery room, and out again to the jacuzzi, felt more like five minutes. It passed by with serious speed.)

So out she came again, none too quickly of course, but moving gradually back to the big, brightly windowed delivery room. We had about eight attentive nurses surrounding us (childbirth is their mission in work, clearly), and Kate lay down on the bed, painfully and carefully, ready for the home stretch.

It was about quarter to three, and I was starting to think that her mother might not make it in time, but would arrive to see her granddaughter already bundled up, crying and lying on her daughter's chest. The midwife and nurse were right there now, telling Kate to push, while I stood at her left side, helping hold her knees wide and up adjacent to her ribs, to open the pelvis and help her push. And with each contraction, she began pushing.

Kate's mother walked in cheerfully now, chatting briefly with the nurses before she came over to Kate, asked how things were going, and assumed her position next to the midwife. Her mom now gave some advice of her own, as Kate began groaning with the next push: "Push down with that breath! Don't let it out with a noise, use it to push the baby out!" So Kate quieted down immediately and kept working.

This was my first real surprise of the whole process: subtract the pain that every guy hears about (repeatedly, for our whole entire life long), subtract the anticipation of a young child about to emerge and draw its first breaths, and in the mother, you're left with sheer determination. I was a little stunned--not because I didn't think she had it, but because I didn't realize how major a part in giving birth it plays. I was a little stunned at the hardness of the resolve in Kate's face. There was nothing there but will to finish the work. Her jaw was clenched and jutting out, her eyes were wide open, just a little narrowed, and there were no furrows of worry on her brow: her facial expression was clear and hard.

My little tiger at work.

She didn't make every push in silence, though. She'd give a cry now and then, spasmodically, which reminded me that, yes, she was also in very real pain. But she kept going, and soon the midwife announced, "I can see the head! Oh, it's got a lot of hair!"

Now, of course, the midwife is a pro at this, so she had a much more practiced eye than I did. I looked, and I can say honestly that I couldn't find the skull or the hair she was talking about. But, I figured I'd see it soon enough, so I turned my attention back to Katie. I also availed myself of a moment between contractions to snap a few photos of her face (risking being killed for it later, but so be it). I just needed to preserve that look of resolution. While it's in her character, and not always too far from the surface, it rarely shows itself in such pure, brilliant form. So I snapped the photos (but they're not going in the blog...I'd really deserve to be hurt for that).

A few pushes later, I really could see the top of the head. Katie was crying out more often now. The midwife was trying to help pull the baby out, but there wasn't enough for her to get a grip on. Kate barked out, "Get it out of me!" The midwife's immediate answer, "Push it out!"

No coach could challenge an athlete more directly than that. Not in football, not in hockey, not in a weightroom. Kate had no choice, so she kept on pushing. She made the same yell a few more times, and Amy had the same answer. "It's about to turn the corner," one nurse said, "one more push and she'll be on her way out."

I really had no clue what I was talking about, but I was saying things like "One more push, babe! Just one more and she'll be with us!...she's almost here...I can see her...you're almost done!" I was starting to get pretty emotional myself. I didn't want this pain to continue, especially since the baby was partway out...with the next push, the head finally emerged.

Man, that thing was huge. This was my second big surprise. The little bit of skull I'd seen earlier, when Amy began trying to assist, was only the top. The whole head looked like the Alien, long, narrow and bean-shaped, wet of course and covered with a mat of dark hair. The whole baby followed almost immediately, and seconds later she began to cry. I leaned down to Kate and whispered, "You did it, babe, she's finally here," and we both bawled.

Now Eva kind of resembled a bright-red prune when she came out, and her hands especially looked like she'd just taken a four-hour bath (they still kind of do, actually). Her eyes were swollen shut. So when one nurse said, not more than ten seconds after Eva had come out, "She looks just like her father," I said, "Yeah, sure, when I've just woken up," but the consensus of everyone so far is that she looks just like me. I guess.

I mean, what is it with women and identifying facial features in babies? I see two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two ears and hair. What's to tell? She's still so small. Her skull is still soft--it's not even a complete skull yet, for cripes' sake. And they can already tell that she looks just like me? I mean, I'll take it on faith that it's a compliment, and they are talking about my daughter, and I don't care what she looks like--but I just have no idea.

We both cried, not for long, but still a real squall of tears. I'd thought at times that Eva's birth would be for me an answer to Mom's and Dad's death, a catharsis from pain to joy, and I'd cry for ten or twenty minutes. Not so. Grief isn't anything close to being so simple. Emotional processes like that overlap and tangle themselves in our lives, for as long as we live. So the joy and relief of having a new child is simply that, joy and relief for the new child. It removes none of the grief of things before. Silly that I'd thought it might be otherwise...

Of course, birth doesn't end with the emergence of the child. There's the umbilical cord, the placenta and the blood. The nurses clipped off the umbilical cord, handed me a pair of scissors, and told me where to cut. It was kind of like cutting a wet shoelace--not difficult, but a little tougher than you'd expect at first--and that was that. Amy was tending to the placenta as the nurse put a freshly wiped-down Eva on her chest. And so we celebrated our new baby...

...but Amy was having trouble with the placenta. The cord had come detached, and Katie's pushing wasn't accomplishing much. So here Amy showed her colors as a pro. She reached in and began feeling for it, to pull it out. Kate barked again, begging her to stop, but Amy disregarded her and kept working. For about twenty seconds Amy kept at it, and when she'd finally drawn it out, inspected it and looked very dissatisfied. "It's not good that the cord came detached. I think some of the placenta is still in the uterus, and that will be a problem."

As I was told, any remaining placenta on the uterus wall is basically an open spigot for blood. It would be an almost surely fatal condition to leave it, so Amy called for the doctor, saying it was an emergency.

I'm no stranger to death or trauma (not as used to it as my sister Lisa the physician's assistant, but I've had my experiences). So the midwife calling "Emergency!" raised my eyebrows, but that was all. I could see Kate, her complexion still healthy, still bathed in the joy of giving birth to Eva, and the nurses around us, all tending to one task or another. I didn't see echoes of Amy's alarm in anyone else. The thought occurred to me--not for the first time--that I might lose my little bengal, and have to raise Eva on my own, with her being my best living reminder of the woman I loved.

But I never at any moment seriously feared that, because both Kate and the other nurses seemed too composed. Doctor Tetrault came in, said the situation was common enough and could be remedied by, essentially, vacuuming out the uterus. "It's a five-minute procedure," she said, "and once we're done, and Kate has sensation again in her feet, we'll bring her up to the recovery room."

So they wheeled Katie to OR, and put Eva into a rolling bassinet to bring her up to the nursery. Kate's mom and I followed, and once on the sixth floor, I tried walking right into the nursery too, but the nurse stopped me. "We don't allow family members in. We'll tag her, and you'll see that her number matches the number on your wristband. If you'd like to watch, you can walk around to the windows on the other side."

I didn't want to be any more than two feet away from my daughter, but the nurse seemed pretty believable so I walked around and watched as they unwrapped the blankets from around her, sprinkled water on her and rinsed off her head and chest, and wrapped her up again. I saw her face crinkle and her mouth open as she was getting her bath, but then grow calm again once she was wrapped up and placed in an incubator.

Kate's mom and I waited in the recovery room, and about an hour later, Kate herself was wheeled in, not drugged up like I'd feared, but weary and happy. Soon after that Eva was brought in to join us, a tiny little package with a pink ski cap and a red face. She was quiet, as she lay on Kate's chest...then Kate tried to breastfeed her, just to get started and give the baby some colostrom.

Right from the start, Eva latched on with no difficulty or hesitation. Now I can see Sutherland resemblance in that: a big mouth, and no problems with bodily functions. (That too is still the case...it's become one of Katie's favorite jibes, that Eva Jean is definitely my daughter.)

Only problem was, once Katie stopped, Eva missed it...I got my first practice calming a squalling baby. And maybe Eva's pretty easy, but she settled down very quickly once I picked her up, nestled her in my forearms and bounced her ever so slightly up and down. That was immensely reassuring, that I could do something to comfort my own baby.

Since most of our readers are veterans of the kid process themselves, they won't be surprised that I'm dwelling on the details like this--in fact, I could go much further in. But if you haven't been through the process yourself, even as one of the professionals helping, then you probably don't have the emotional recognition of it, the physical memory of how important, and amazing, each moment is.

My mother told me once that seeing a baby born would make anyone believe in God. I don't share that belief, but I do believe that birth is the most awe-inspiring thing I've ever witnessed. The months of anticipation, the building anxiety, the intensity and effort and pain of the birth itself, and the overwhelming sense of peace and calm afterward, make every other experience in life pale in comparison.

I'm not denigrating the rest of life: it's full of passion, triumph and defeat, and plenty of work and anticipation as well: but life begetting life is why we're here. All our thoughts, all our ideas, all our philosophies, sciences and histories, are trappings draped on existence itself. An Indian mystic might tell me that I have it backwards, that existence is the veil draped on thought. And the mystic might be right. But in either case, the thought is formless without the existence...and when you've participated in bringing a new, breathing life into the world, and you've helped prolong existence...it's a lifelong memory.

And if you're like me, you become a bit of a doting fool.

I guess I'll leave the follow-up either for a later post, or untold. This one's long enough, a record of what led up to the Sutherland family of two becoming three. From now on, it's Eva's story too...

My Feline Companion!

Hello folks ... I know, once again it's been awhile. But just when you think I've complete relinquished the entire blog to Mike, you can be sure I will pop back in with my two cents on life!

I do have one quick announcement before I delve into the actual point of my post ... You'll all be happy to know my feet are looking 100% normal today! Not many of you have an accurate reference as to what not-normal looked like ... but they had been pretty hideously swollen for the past few weeks. I woke this morning though to a wonderful site ... definition of bones and veins in both of my newly pedicured tootsies! Seriously, this made my day and even though I'm still 40 lbs heavier than last fall ... seeing my feet in this state put my self-esteem through the roof!

I guess I should count my blessings that Mike is missing this part of my pregnancy ... Now, he can certainly account for a couple of sudden mood swings during my second trimester, but those were more teary, quiet moments of estrogen overload. This last month however has been quite a bit more trying and I'll admit to actually having a quite few private *a'hem* tantrums! Working with teenagers (no further adjectives necessary ... but oh so wanting to write them) all day long, explaining how life works and all the lovely common sense things that should have been taught to them years ago was trying enough. The addition of standing on the two balloons posing as feet while doing this just added to the fun! By the end of the day I'd walk through the door at home loathing every stitch of clothing. Oh and heaven forbid I see anyone on my way up to the second floor of the condo who just had too tell me how great I looked. LIARS! I'd smile at them with my chipmunk cheeks, as a drip of sweat trickled down my back (pooling, only Lord knows where), feet throbbing in my STUPID clown Crocs, and count down the steps to the front door! 3 ... scrambling for my key ... 2 ... got it in, go, go, go ... 1 ... ahhh, solitude at last! I'd plop my arm full of bags onto the counter along with the mail, rush over to the fan, promptly setting it to HIGH (now close your eyes kids), peel off my "professional" maternity ensemble and collapse on the coach like one of those old school toys!

 

So, finally after about 10 or 15 minutes, once the steam had settled ... 

The one, the only, the infamous, little ibbily, Jasper would appear with a little *PppuurrrRR?!* As if he were asking if it was safe to come out. An uncontrollable smile would seep across my face and I'd answer back with the only three words in "Cat" that I know! He'd usually respond a little more quietly and start meandering over my way. Once by my side his gaze would fall from my face down to my bare, basket ball shaped, mid section, and back up again. As if it weren't insulting enough to have some new attention stealer thing growing in my belly, I just had to add the injury of baring some skin! He'd stare me down awhile longer, perhaps hoping he would accomplish some kind of change to the situation, and then realize it was hopeless ... at least for today.

My heart would melt for the poor little guy ... his best friend left him stranded with some dumb pregnant broad, with no cozy stomach to lay on, doesn't rough house with him, and who can't even accurately notify him when dinner is ready! Needless to say I've done my best over the past few weeks to step up my game! Before bed each night I'll toss him on the bed and beat around a bit (still far more gently then Mike does though), wear cozy sweat shirts (when cool mornings and evenings permit, as they have been lately), and make sure I scratch the sweet spot on his tummy whenever I catch him asleep on his back! Really all that is the least I can do, when the little guy is always so tuned into me and my needs.

Quite honestly, I have never met a feline so smart, or so sensitive! Much like a dog, he knows exactly when I'm feeling down and need some extra love ... or even when I'm feeling fine, but would just like some extra love. There are those moments when I'm sitting on the coach in the evenings a bit teary from missing Mike, and he'll come right over plop himself down on me and proceed to give me a hug (as I like to call it), nuzzling his head underneath my chin! Then there are nights when he curls up next to me in bed, only inches away from the edge, almost as if to tell me he'd risk his life just to bring me some comfort! I'm sure Mike would say it's just 'cause he's a cat and doesn't have the common sense to realize there is a whole other side of the bed to lay on. I'm convinced he is sending a much deeper meta-message though ... that's how we felines work PUP!

I stick to my theory here, not only because I know how felines think ... but because Jasper actually proved my theory  a couple weeks back when he allowed himself a sleepy morning of indulgence ... on our big new poofy comforter! When Mike was first away, it was slightly strange getting used to sleeping in a HUGE bed all by myself ... so I folded up our new comforter and placed it on the opposite side (where I usually sleep) as sort of a body double! (Lame, I know.) Now to my surprise, one morning I woke only to find Jasper curled up right in the middle of this cloud like blanket!

This, the cat who if you put a kitty bed and a plastic bag down on the floor in front of him will immediately lie down on the plastic bag! I was in somewhat a state of shock ... I rolled out of bed gently not wanting to disturb his highness, figuring once I'd done showering I'd find him appropriately on his place on the sill. Nope, wouldn't you know it, the darn cat didn't even look up at me once, through the hustle and bustle of my morning routine, toilet flushing, hair blow drying, flash photography (okay that's out of the norm) ... and was still curled up as I walked out the door! He was sooooo content he didn't even care about spending the day in his office (the meadow) ... for an instant I worried he might be sick, but that night I came home and found that plainly was not the case. The little guy just allowed himself a morning of luxury ... and I had a strange feeling of pride that he'd done so! After all the love and sacrifice (sleeping on the edge of the bed) he does for us, he deserves to spoil himself on occasion!

There are other times when he needs some direct and intentional love as well, and he's just about as apprehensive as I am when it comes to asking for it. That being the case, I can usually tell the signs, namely when he's on the counter (cringe now, mom, get it out) and starts pacing back and forth trying to get as close to me as possible without falling off the edge, his eyes wide! I'll walk up close and pat my shoulder and after a few test touches he'll stretch out onto me and I'll scoop him up! It's endearing how timid he can be with me at times ... not that he's scared, just shy and cautious more than anything else.

What I love MOST about Jasper though, is he's creative nesting spots ... 

Usually at night he will start out on the bath mat next to the shower (if not on the edge of the bed), but by morning he's most often found wedged on the sill between the bedroom window and the back of my dresser! 

Since Mike's been gone though I've been doing a bit of, what I like to call, lady-like-construction ... which Jasper has seemed to enjoy as well, finding himself a new spot on a vacant towel shelf for awhile, which much to Jasper's despair I have now filled. Sorry pal!

The best spot by far however, he stumbled upon in the midst of a mad laundry frenzy I did a couple weeks ago when I washed all the baby clothes, blankets etc ... Little rascal nearly gave me a heart attack when I found him waiting to be put through the FLUFF cycle!

Priceless! Though I can't help but wonder what the lint filter might have looked like if he HAD gone for 30 minute spin?! 

Needless to say, Jasper quickly gained a place in my heart last fall ... and has only been taking up more of it since then! What some might view as cute little subtleties I have come to perceive as overtly obvious statements of opinion and complex emotion! He's no ordinary cat ... not even a dog like cat, as I have so often said ... nope, he's a Jasper, plain and simple, in such an extraordinary way!

I'll let you be the judge of what he's expressing in this shot!

Blurb

Late night, when my housemates have gone to sleep, is becoming my time to do a little last bit of reading, and also collect my thoughts (such as they are these days) and do something with them, like now, type in another quick blog entry. (Katie envisioned this being more her blog than mine, I think, when we started it, but I'm a garrulous kind of guy and I've taken to it. Writing to me, I guess, is like blues guitar to House.)

Anyway, a little over a month ago, I posted my rationale about going away for a while, seeing new places and new people, and bringing the spirit of the adventure home with me to Kate. Now that's a fine idea, but really, my life out here is made up of stoplights, pickup trucks, Windows Vista, Wal-Mart, frozen pizza, gyms with freeweights, and espresso. (To say nothing of the work, which is in some cases new to me, but mostly what I know already.) So, basically, this adventure ain't all that adventurous.

Sure, Alaska's got its unique features. The omnipotent mountains. The eternal daylight, giving way at an astonishing clip now to surrounding night. A city like Anchorage, housing nearly half the state's population, which still has something of an edge-of-the-world feel to it. The log-cabin style homes and buildings, with their especially defiant huge front windows...and you can see, that I'm lapsing into more and more familiar, human things. What little I've seen of Alaska is the inhabited part, and I'm in no immediate hurry to wander into the uninhabited parts. "Into the Wild" isn't really a story I admire (though the soundtrack is pretty good and "Big Hard Sun" is a fantastic song). I'm not nearly that much of a misanthrope and I don't really care to put my survival skills to the test.

There's plenty of awe-inspiring and fascinating natural history for me to pay attention to, which is why I'm being a bit of a bookworm. But the upshot is, the spirit of adventure I bring home with me to Kate in Rhode Island won't be the, I-met-dragons-and-fought-with-ogres variety, but a quieter, more patient kind of spirit: that of learning new ways continually to keep my eyes and mind open to what's around me. The kind of spirit which itself leads to adventures.

Hard Work

We're both laboring here. I've slipped into a decent rhythm for living while I'm up here, from getting to work (on non-field days) between 8 and 9, working till about 5:30, heading to a local gym (signed up, though it probably would've been smarter for me to wait until payday...but anyway), having an espresso and reading (or talking to my little bengal) at the nearby coffee shop, and heading home. I try not to spend much time at the house because it's crowded now and someone is guaranteed to be watching TV at night, and with no place to escape to, I get little done.

It's at moments of idleness, like the afternoon letdowns I mentioned in the last post, that I feel the anxiety of separation the most, as well as moments of conversation, either via phone or e-mail, when I sense Katie's, and I feel responsible.

A quick tangent here. Last winter, after Katie had learned that she was pregnant, and we'd begun making plans to get married, I headed back out on the water for another stint on the survey boat. One of my coworkers had a way of offhandedly telling really horrifying stories (I still don't know if he was just oblivious, or really a manipulative jerk). As he and I talked over the pregnancy and Katie's and my plans to marry, he told me about his own child out of wedlock, and the rough relationship he had with the mother at the time, and her horrifically difficult pregnancy which incurred nearly $200,000 in medical bills--all billable to the US Government (I might add that he's a proud Texan who claims to resent federal overreach, but that's another matter) because the mother--later his wife--remained single. I was predictably terrified of the medical bill, the moral of the story being, "Don't get married if you can stay single and charge everything to the (evil) feds."

Of course I was scared that if Katie had any complications, I'd go bankrupt trying to pay for them, as my Blue Cross Blue Shield wouldn't cover her pre-existing condition, the pregnancy. In the heat of my panic I called her, as the boat steamed down a Louisiana canal toward the Gulf, to spill this story and to wonder aloud if getting married right away was really the best thing to do. I was fear-stricken and breathless as I hurtled through the story and my other worries, and the message Katie picked up from me was, pretty much, "I don't want to get married."

I began fearing that I'd overshot the mark when I heard her voice weaken and break on the other end, and then sob, "Don't you think I'm scared too?"

I wasn't aware yet of the fear I'd put in my fiancee--I thought I was telling her that maybe we should wait a few months. She thought I was telling her goodbye.

Then my phone went out of range, and our internet connection on the boat went down for two straight days, and Katie was left to think that I'd dumped her, child and all, and was moving on. Reality was otherwise, of course--I was just about as frantic to get back in touch with her as she was to hear from me, and finally, two days later, around 5:30 AM my time (Louisiana's an hour behind the east coast) the boat was near shore again, so I texted her, and we talked. We were both calmer, and I made her realize that I had no plans to leave her, I was only worried about timing. And she was reassured and told me (not for the last time!) to follow our collective heart and have faith that events would work themselves out around our decision. So we held to the choice to get married.

Katie and I haven't had that kind of breakdown of communication since I've been in Alaska (though I did kind of tick her off by overdrafting a checking account...twice). But her moving out here to join me is a decision of similar magnitude to our choice to marry immediately. We know we'll be back together eventually, and my coming to Palmer this summer was primarily a matter of securing an income to provide for the family. Last winter, I'd already promised her that I wanted to marry her, and (after all, we're pretty much all big boys and girls reading this blog) that there was the chance she might get pregnant anyhow. When she gave me the news (I'll eventually get there in the Pup & Ben history, but not for a little while), it was faster than I'd expected but nothing more than confirmation of what I wanted anyway. At first I looked upon the ritual of marriage slightly, but Katie's instincts were to make it a genuine celebration, and I'll always be glad we did.

Now, we both know that living apart is a temporary arrangement. Whether one or two months, or three or four or possibly more, we're not sure. But unlike the choice to get married, we have a clearer intelligence about what will happen, but our feelings (and I can say with certainty, mine) have been more mixed. There was no serious debate in my mind last winter about marrying Kate: it was only a matter of when. But I've been debating, fiercely, whether I want to bring my young wife and even younger baby (not to mention a timid and loving cat) out to this dark and frozen wilderness.

Katie's pretty bold and on top of that, extremely lonely, so she was up for it. We began making plans to rent or sell the condo, when my opposite feelings began speaking up. I've already held one real estate fire sale this summer, and it was a humiliating, infuriating experience which I never want to repeat, and I did it only because I needed to feed and shelter my wife. (I've learned to manage a lot of fury this year.) And if we move out here, at the onset of winter...we need to pack up our belongings in RI first, a few weeks' hard work at least...with my Rhode Island degree still unfinished, and not being sure, in any circumstances, how long we'd want to live so far from what we both think of as home. (And check a map--Anchorage is almost as far west of Seattle, as Seattle is from Providence, Rhode Island--it's as far when you count the northward part of the trip.) It was anguish thinking of uprooting the family and casting away the home we've made, for a future whose near-term is still unsure.

And the final aspect to this thinking and re-thinking: I might be working outside of Alaska this winter anyhow, either in the Gulf (boy, I hope not) or on one of the international ventures. Then Katie would be stuck...in Alaska...with pretty much no friends, and absolutely no family...where temperatures average 25 deg F (mild by Alaskan standards) and there are four hours of sort-of daylight.


Maybe we've watched a little too much House together, but I've seen some episodes where a mother goes crazy and somebody gets hurt. And if there's something that might push my lovely, high-strung bengal to go nuts, it's being stuck in a darkened icebox with nobody to talk to but an infant and a cat.

The point of this increasingly dismal post? We're fighting to create the least bad plan to navigate this separation while the economy prevents me from finding work closer to our home. I'm giving Alaska an honest try, and there's a lot to love about this magnificent state where the geology and the weather both display their extreme forms, but I and Kate are both weighing, every day, the pain of separation with the rest of the disruption a total move would cause.

There's just no simple answer and there are fleeting moments when I worry about our ability to communicate, thinned and frayed by such sparse contact as we have while I'm here. But those moments' fears are swept away by the emotion and humor of when we do recover ourselves, and come to an understanding of whatever the issue was, or one of us makes the other smile, which makes us both smile--and I know that our gift of easy communication with each other is intact.

Thoughts from Alaska

More thoughts from the Great Bright North, where darkness is finally coming before 11 PM (and we're losing daylight at more than 5 minutes/day at this point...you may not notice from one day to the next, but after a week or two, you really feel the difference). It's moved from summer--which is roughly the equivalent to New England's late spring, minus the rain--to fall. Right now, in late August, it's roughly like mid- to late October back in the northeast, my home.

I write that wistfully because I do long for it. Katie and I have been discussing--by phone, text and e-mail (and to a lesser extent, this blog)--what it's like for each of us while we're apart, and what plan makes the most sense. Of course money is a constant concern. Having this job hasn't eliminated our problems. It's a huge step in the right direction, but we're still fighting a slowly losing battle. My hope is to keep the steady loss slow enough that circumstances might change around us and we'll pull ahead. And--though my father the banker would cringe were he to read this--but financial trouble doesn't worry me all that much. We can survive, we'll be together, with little EJ, and cutting some losses, however small or big, in the long run will amount to nothing. I've never been one of the "I-want-to-earn-this-much" folks, of whom I met so many in college and at various jobs. Living a clean, comfortable life and keeping my family healthy and happy are my financial goals. My real career goals are intellectual. I want to use the geology and remote sensing I'm learning now to explore the Bronze and Iron Age trade routes of the Phoenicians--but that's not here and now in Alaska, so it won't be the topic of this post.

The occasional heartache of missing my wife and even the wombly growth of little EJ has me questioning myself pretty harshly at times. Estimating from what Katie tells me, I think she deals with feelings of loss, and all the worries which surround them, more consistently than I do (though that's for her to say in her blog entries, and she's already pointed out a flaw or two in my accounts of things ). I can immerse myself in studying Alaska, or in the fieldwork (so far limited to the Cook Inlet just outside of Anchorage harbor), for several hours at a time, or even just daydream while staring at the almost appalling mountains. (And I use the word "appalling" because huge vertical extents of rock have always excited something like fear in me, over the forces which shoved them up, and the almost menacing way they hang overhead when you're near them. Mountains impress me, deeply. The ocean is too fluid to inspire that fearful kind of admiration in me--unless it's a big storm, and I'm looking at a dark field of gray oncoming waves. And that's only happened once or twice.) And Katie's certainly devoted many hours, over many days, wholeheartedly to her counseling job this summer, so we've both faced challenging jobs.

But the sense I get from her, when she tells me about sitting by the phone waiting for my call (on one specific occasion, at least...and I'll admit, I kind of dropped the ball on that one), or letting our kitty cat Jasper provide his tiny, warm companionship, that she feels the ache of separation for longer stretches than I do. But when I feel it, it nearly buckles my knees. For some reason, I tend to feel worst in the middle of the afternoon, if I'm not busy at something. Perhaps I'm thinking of the old image of the day as a lifetime, with birth at dawn, youth in the morning, maturity at noon, age in the afternoon, old age in the evening, and death at nightfall. I look at the afternoon and I can imagine feeling time itself passing, with me inert, far from my family, for some indistinct and inadequate purpose. I'm aware only of the passage of time, and our separation. No ambition or plan or promise can overcome that sense. Right now, I have one response to it: put my head down and get to work.

Any story needs its touchstones, its moments of emotional recognition where the character reveals his or her kinship to you. Without that touchstone, without that emotional recognition, the characters would become wholly foreign, with no real relation to anyone in the audience, beyond empathy, and meaningless. The Iliad is studded with such moments, and the one in my mind now is the family scene of Hector, the Trojan hero, his wife Andromache, and their baby son Astyanax. Andromache begs Hector not to fight, and he knows the danger but feels responsibility toward Troy (he is the crown prince, after all), and as he puts his helmet on to ride out, Astyanax cries at the suddenly fearsome sight. The lines say nothing of Hector's heartbreak on frightening his child, but they don't need to.

Another--probably the most powerful and blinding in its sudden strength that I know of--is in the Odyssey, after Odysseus has made it home after nineteen years' wandering across the sea (which did include eighteen years sleeping with the goddess Circe on her island...probably not something he emphasized to Penelope). Odysseus and his son Telemachus have killed all the suitors, he's cleaned up the mess, confronted Penelope and convinced her that he's really Odysseus, her husband. They make love. I'll paraphrase the passage that follows, which turns the entire plot and imagery of the whole poem on its head, and suggests in a flash the entire second story, a whole other epic, untold: "So, as a sailor wrecked at sea and clinging to the few remaining planks of his destroyed craft, is swept ashore by the waves, feels again the solid ground beneath his feet and rejoices,...so Penelope felt, again in the arms of her long-missed husband."

More modestly, from a movie I enjoy quite a bit (though I hate watching tragedy), Dead Poets' Society (one of if not the best performance of Robin Williams in a film). Robin, the teacher, is in his room at night, working alone, when a student visits him. The student points to a small framed picture of a woman, sitting on the desk beside the light, and asks him who that is. The teacher smiles, demurs and switches the subject.

Kate's and my relationship is young enough, and even though I'm older

than she is, we're both young enough to enjoy looking forward toward what life may hold for us. So feelings of doubt and despair don't sit on my shoulder for long--their talons can't get a firm enough grip. And there are enough issues these days--from Katie's and my struggle to stay solvent, to the similar situations of millions of families across the country, to the civil war which it seems some conservatives are trying to start--that the modest and majestic love which she and I share shines like a beacon in the cloudy darkness of my mind.

I'm used to the clouds and the darkness, and the beacon is a welcome presence.

So our plans are changing, toward her coming out much sooner than later, probably in October--pretty much, once she's acclimated to caring for the baby, and it's safe to bring the infant on a trip. (And we will look into that.) I still have despairing thoughts about pulling Katie out here with me, after she's lived a somewhat rootless life for several years, and she's started making some genuine friends in Rhode Island, on top of being near family again. But she corrected me again today, as she's so often wont to do, when she said, "My roots are with you, not in Rhode Island."

Thoughts like that put me at ease, but she and I are both cursed worriers, and sometimes the worry overwhelms even the strongest assurances. This year for me has been, among other things, a test in mental and emotional flexibility, in keeping my composure while I feel I've lost almost all control over events in my life. I'm talking about being unemployed and searching for any income I could find--a state of affairs that left me ashamed, afraid and at times full of rage. Now that I have a means to bail out the boat, so to speak, even if slightly more slowly than the water's coming in, I at least have more control. But moving suddenly across the continent and so close to the Arctic Circle (about six degrees latitude away) was never in my career plan, and I alternate between happiness at the unexpected, refreshing opportunity, and despair at the hideous derailment which has befallen my school career. Depends on my mood, and right now it's rather on the better side--most likely because I'm writing.

I'm homespun enough that I like the idea of buying a rusty old Suburban for 500 bucks and rattling through the winter with it (there's a neat red one for sale here in Palmer, but the guy won't answer my e-mail). But I know that if I nest too earnestly, I'll forget the hopes and interests which led to my coming here in the first place, by however sidelong a means. I think a little of Plato's Academy, which he supposedly placed in a swamp outside of Athens--remote enough so the city was not a temptation, and an unhealthy enough location that the students were all a little ill and therefore not tempted to practice athletics or be vain: instead they focused on philosophy. So I've called the home I want to have with Kate here, our Athens in Alaska: our own little enclave of intelligence and imagination, resisting the temptation to limit our vision to the things immediately around us.

It helps that the Sox have positively gone into the toilet since I've come up here. I think the Fenway-style scoreboard I put on our fridge blackboard hasn't been updated since July, when the Sox were 5 1/2 up on the Yanks. As far as I'm concerned, I'll let the season end there. Until they're back in first again, anyway.

Alaska!

One small note...I've added my own name & e-mail to this blog, just to make it easier for folks to see who's writing. I think it'll be useful even for Kate and me, in years ahead, if we decide to take a look back at all the things we were writing so intently about earlier on in our marriage.

Right now I'm typing away in the small house owned by TerraSond on the East Cooper loop, more or less stranded here by lack of a car. TerraSond keeps this house as a dormitory for the transient workers--whether short-term hires, or folks imported from another office farther south for a specific project--and while free lodging is great, there are eight of us here right now, with anywhere from one to two company vehicles we can share. So if I want to do something simple like drive 10 miles down the road to Wasilla (yes, that Wasilla) and its great bookstore & coffee shop Pandemonium, with the astounding view and the carved salmon out front, I often can't. I'm a big fan of coffee shops--

they've sometimes helped determine my choice of where to live--so when I find a good one, I quickly become a regular. The kids at Pandemonium are already used to bringing me my double espresso.

But I'm not here to sit in coffee shops and sip beverages. I'm here to survey and make maps, either of the sea floor or the subsurface. TerraSond mostly does bathymetric mapping, the type of work you'll see in NOAA coastal charts for boating and shipping, but they also do land surveying and other types of submarine remote sensing. I like the company, and the work, and I am quickly learning to love the environment out here. Transferring my entire life to the icy northwest was something I'd never imagined doing, and now the prospect of doing just that gives me a bit of pause.

Katie, of course, is up for the challenge. Sub-freezing temperatures, twenty-hour nights, and living cut off by everything except phone and internet devices like this blog, is all outweighed by being together. I think she's felt the absence more acutely than I have, since I'm learning a new place and a new job, surrounded by new people--all the things you'd expect about being in a new place. Now working the upper cook Inlet near Anchorage isn't quite like hitting the high seas, but being on the water, surrounded by the Chugach and Kenai mountains to the south and west, and the distant, snowy Alaska Range to the north, is pretty impressive itself. I don't need to make lots of touristy visits on the weekends, when my workdays include views like that (and especially when I have no car of my own)! I do want to head to Glacier Bay for a few days at some point, and I'd love to spend some time around Denali. But I've heard so much about the bears around here that it gives me pause.

It depends on whom you ask, what methods you'll hear are best to deal with bears. The one point of agreement: make noise. A bad bear is a startled bear, so you want to give them plenty of warning, before they see you, that you're coming. I'm picturing a sort of hip gong, getting an aluminum saucepan and dangling a few cowbells on it, and hanging the whole shebang from my belt, to make a right nice clatter as I walk. But if one charges...Marta, the hydrographic survey chief and a decidedly crunchy person, advocates bear spray as better than guns. It's mace for bears, makes them miserable, and drives them off. (Though the scent later is an attractant for bears not sprayed in the face, I guess.) Another of the non-gun crew told me that it's all about dealing with the charge. Since most bear charges are bluffs, to make you run, you never run (you don't run from a charging dog either, since it makes you more vulnerable, so I can believe that). Instead, you stand your ground. If the bear doesn't break off its charge, what you do next depends on the species.

If it's a black bear, punch it in the nose. Since black bears are scavengers, and don't like to fight, you want to beat the crap out of it. So you just pound away at its face until it gives up and leaves. If it's a brown bear--and there's no separate species of grizzlies, they're just big brown bears--then you don't want to fight. Brown bears are fighters, so you don't want to try. That's the time to play dead. Since they don't like to eat things that are already dead, they'll probably just leave you alone and move on.

Now, I put about as much stock in that advice as you probably did right now reading it. Ask the guy at the gun counter of an outdoor sporting goods store, and he'll say that if you spray a bear with the Mace, the bear will lick it and keep on coming. And even if a brown bear is dumb enough to fall for the lying-down-like-you're-dead routine, he'll at least give you a couple of trial bites first. And the counter guy really won't have much of an idea on how you'd actually fight a black bear. No, the guy at the counter will tell you a gun's the way to go.

Shotguns work well, and they're cheaper than the others. Rifles cost a little more, and have the advantage of power, but they're a bit more cumbersome. Pistols can be very effective, but there are some problems. First, they're more than three times as expensive. A basic, light .357 magnum will cost you about a grand. (And they have a big kick. You need to hold it with both hands when you fire.) Plus, it takes more practice to aim a smaller gun. And, you need to buy one of the big-bore--a magnum. (Actually, the Indy lover in me doesn't mind the thought of carrying a piece. "After all, Marcus...you know what a careful fellow I am.")

So much for the bears.

Alaska is the land of mountains. The entire southern coast is a knotted mass of them, raised by the collisions of North America with small continents, and now the Pacific Ocean. I've yet to go far from Anchorage or the Cook Inlet, the most populated part of the state, and decidedly more temperate than the interior. (I'm looking forward to a winter average temp. of 25 F or so, as opposed to 0.) When I first touched down in Anchorage, it took me a while to find a cab, but by 9:30 I was safely en route to Palmer, and it was bright as day. (This was July 26.) The cab driver and I chatted on the drive up, and she pointed out the purple fireweed, in full bloom, and a sign that summer would soon be over--kind of Alaska's version of the cicada. As we passed one of ther bars, I was amazed that they were so full so early in the evening--and then I remembered that it was 10:30. By midnight the sky was still light, and I could walk outside and see clearly. I slept horribly that first night, maybe only an hour or two, and I was wide awake again by about 4:30. It was just too bright to sleep. I figured that one bad night, with its resulting fatigue, would let me sleep better the second night and on--and so it proved. It's still easy to stay up pretty late, but now, by mid-August, it gets legitimately dark by 11 PM.

I'm skipping stories about the jobs and the people, and I'll fill in some gaps as I go along. But there are two big impressions I want to describe right now. First, the mountains. They're on every side except the ocean, and they're steep, rocky, jagged and awesome. We're close enough to the ocean that lots of moisture-laden air comes wafting up the valley, and when it hits the mountains here and rises, the clouds form. So there are caps of clouds sitting on the peaks, and strands of mist floating along the slopes and over the ridges. The same mountain has so many outfits of cloud, shadow and sunlight, that it puts a woman to shame. I've missed a few opportunities for great photos out here, including the 747 taking off right over our boat (I hit the "off" switch instead of the zoom), and the Chugach ridge the other night from my Pandemonium office: lower part in shadow, the middle sheathed in clouds, the upper half with its peaks bathed in the orange light of sunset. They're an ongoing revelation of beauty.
Second is the change in the seasons. Night is growing noticeably, from nonexistent in July, to about six hours now. It grows quickly, and the weather is changing too. I arrived at the start of high summer: upper 60's and low 70's, mostly rainless, no more bugs. Monday morning, in Anchorage, I felt a crisp touch in the air, and for the first time, left my jacket on as we headed out on the water. Tuesday it was more humid and somewhat cool--my fingernails were slightly purple (no big deal but a sign that it's not warm). It's still shirt-and-pants weather, but the clouds sit lower on the mountains, rain is increasingly common, and the nights are dipping into the upper 40's. Summer lasted a little less than three weeks, and we're now moving quickly through autumn. I'm not sure when the birch leaves will turn, but judging by the weather and the daylight, it won't take long.

I do have a slightly ominous feeling about it, though that's largely assuaged by thoughts that Katie and little EJ might be joining me in the darkest part of the year. Without my local Red Sox cable channel and the video recorder I use to save my cartoons, I've gotten more efficient with my time, but that makes consolation, love and companionship all the more important. I don't love being back in dormitory-type conditions, especially when I have so few options outside of the house. The local library closes at 6 PM, Palmer's coffee shop Vagabond Blues (itself a great little place, and only a 5-min. walk away) closes at 8 PM, and only the bars are left. And that's a great choice for a clean, quiet, well-lit spot where I can geek it up for a few hours and not be disturbed. Sure.

So it will be good to have a home here--an overdue comfort, for both Kate and me.