Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 28, 1993 TAG: 9312280058
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ERMA BOMBECK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
My life was going well. How could I be depressed? In two months, my first book would be published. The publisher was sending me on a book tour of Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland, and I was even going to New York, to be on the "Tonight Show."
Besides, age just wasn't that important to me. It wasn't the number of years you lived your life; it was what you did with those years. What were a few wrinkles? Badges of courage for living. You can only stay young by being active, I always said. Sit down and your feet swell. That was my philosophy. February 21 was just another day in my life.
February 21!
Wait a minute; it couldn't be. I grabbed a calendar. I was six weeks overdue. I numbed as the reality set in. I was an old woman who barely had time to feed herself and I was going to have a baby!
No, wait. It was probably menopause. That was it. I'd have a few meltdowns . . . yell at the dog . . . and . . . I was feeling a little queasy. Who was I kidding? It wasn't menopause. I was pregnant. I wanted to make my mark as a writer. Instead I was going to be remembered as the oldest woman in North America to give birth.
I would end up in the "Guinness Book of World Records" next to Josimar Carbauba of Brazil, who had 38 children -the last one when she was 54 years old - or in the same paragraph with Ruth Kistler, who gave birth to a daughter in 1946 when she was 47 years and 129 days old.
It wasn't the idea of a child. I loved children.
It wasn't even the prospect of having something interfere with my career. I could write with swollen ankles.
The timing was all wrong.
When the kid outgrew naps, I'd be taking them.
When he was ready for a temporary driving permit, I'd be popping estrogen and trying to figure out whether my deafness was caused by the car radio or by deterioration.
When I was going to bed, he would be going out; when I got up, he'd be going to bed.
He'd amuse himself in the car on vacations by connecting liver spots on my hands.
I'd give him a graduation party with my Medicare check.
There are a few moments in a woman's married life when she feels totally alone. Approaching motherhood at age 40 is one of them.
The first thought that crossed my mind surprised even me. "Who can I pay to tell my mother?"
Selfishly, I came back to me. It wasn't fair. All my friends were moving on. They had burned their maternity clothes behind them like bridges. They had gone on diets, put their highchairs at the curb for Salvation Army to claim, and gone in debt over their heads. The batteries had died on their biological clocks. What did I have to look forward to? Lamb-stained bibs, sleepless nights, Girl Scout cookies, Show and Tell, car pools, field trips, fevers at midnight. Their conversation would be full of sex therapist Dr. Reuben. Mine would be Dr. Spock.
After nine years of freedom, I was out of practice, out of patience and out of the mood. I did not want a baby at age 40.
Then a sobering realization hit me. This wasn't just "my baby." It was "our baby." Bill had a stake in this and he was 40 years old, too. "Of course, he would feel the same as me. There would probably be a lot of doubts going through his mind when I told him. Would he have to postpone his mid-life crisis to sit cross-legged at a Scouts powwow? Would the kid borrow his clothes for a nostalgia party at the dorm while he was still wearing them? When he explained sex to his teen-age son, would he have to lecture from notes?
I felt better already. If we could cling to one another, we could get through it together. Not for a minute did I consider abortion. I just wanted someone to feel sorry for me and suffer with me. I knew this man so well. He would be just as disappointed about this pregnancy as I was. Besides, his concern for me having a baby at my age would probably draw us closer together.
I told him one night after diner just after the kids had split to go wherever it is they go when there are dirty dishes, "I am pregnant."
"That's great?" he said excitedly. "When?"
"You don't have to pretend to be happy," I said.
"Who's pretending?" he smiled. "I'm thrilled to death. We're going to have another disciple."
"Bill, you're not listening. I'm 40 years old," I reminded him.
"Forty is nothing," he gushed.
"If I were a tree in a national park you could drive a car through me."
"Nonsense. Have you told the kids? They are going to be so excited. Especially Betsy. She's always after you to have a baby brother or sister."
"Betsy gets excited when she doesn't have to split a whole Pepsi with her brothers."
"Honey, I know it's a lot of work and it's nothing we planned," he said gently, "but the kids will help." (The kids had the attention span of gnats.) "Besides," he added, "a baby will keep us young."
Right. I was only six weeks overdue and already I looked older than the pyramids.
The pregnancy continued. The nausea, the swollen ankles, the exhaustion. But inside something important was beginning to happen as it has to women since the beginning to time. Life was forming and, in a few months, we were bound together so closely there was no definite line between where I began and the child ended.
This didn't mean I was ready to give up on my S and S (Suffering and Sacrifice), but I was beginning to mellow and adjust. There were, after all, a few bright spots. I could use the same stretch marks and didn't have to lay new tracks. I had baby clothes by the boxes. I didn't have to suck in my stomach anymore.
In my fourth month, I sensed things were not going well. I didn't feel good, was extremely tired, and frankly didn't feel or look very pregnant.
My obstetrician voiced his concern and thought we should terminate the pregnancy. At that moment, I realized I had never wanted this baby more. I wasn't ready to give up on it. "Give it a few more months," I begged. I knew the life inside of me would begin to move.
For the next few months I did a lot of thinking about life and did a lot of bargaining with God. God doesn't deal.
In my sixth month, I had lost weight and was barely able to drag myself around. I was carrying a dead fetus.
I lost the baby.
The personal pronoun is important here. It was always, "We are going to have a baby," but when it comes down to the termination of a pregnancy, it's always the mother who confesses, "I lost it."
As I lay there mumbling "I am so sorry," the guilt was unbearable. Feelings of self-recrimination came and went like waves of nausea. I wanted that baby. Why hadn't I told anyone?
I had received a gift and had said, "I don't want it." In our marriage, it was just another lesson in sensitivity and forgiveness.
For me, it was to be the last time I would feel a miracle stirring within me. I had now joined a group of women who had to give a child back. They look like other women and they function like other women. But there is an emptiness inside of them that never goes away. At any given time of year when no one knows what they are talking about, they will look wistful and remark that the baby would be 3 years old today, or five, or 10. They play with the probabilities . . . the would have beens . . . could have beens . . . should have beens . . . and forever question, "Why?"
Permission of Harpercollins
Publishers\ \ Universal Press Syndicate
by CNB