Baby Blues

I am not a particularly musical person. I never was.

In my childhood– and I think my sibling would feel the same way– a lot more of our time was focused on school and sports than it was on music.

It’s not to say that we didn’t enjoy music and it wasn’t present: Music was always there.

In fact, my family has deep roots to music with my grandmother studying at Carngeie Mellon and pursuing a career as a singer. But, in those busy years of three kids running in every direction, career growth and homemaking, it didn’t look like we were a “musical” family. We took the mandatory instrument classes in middle school and my parents were in the privileged position to expose us to Broadway musicals and the ballet. But, not one of us was in the marching band or any of the musicals put on in school.

However, in those breakneck, formative years, where music made the most impact was in dad’s car.

My dad was a curator of the playlist well before the iPod. He had CD’s, mixed tapes and invested in the software to digitize all his old records in the late 90s. My mom would often worry about our ears, claiming he was destroying them at the decibel of volume we listened to his tunes in his car. And, for a road trip? He always came prepared.

My dad graduated high school in 1973 so there were the popular bands from the 60s and 70s like Chicago, The Beach Boys and The Monkee’s.We listened to The Beatles… a lot. Sammy Davis Jr’s, “The Candy Man,” was always a hit and we would scream-sing along with, “Rhapsody in the RAYYY-AYYYNNN.” In the 90’s, he and my mom both got into Mary Chapin Carpenter, my first taste of country. But, despite the CDs invested in and concerts they went to, the favorite “Carpenter” was Karen Carpenter.

The “doo-wap” sounds and cute lyrics of The Carpenters were family road trip favorite. Lots of “Stop- oh yes! Wait a minute Mr. Postman!” and “Sha-lalala’s” and “Woah-oh-oh’s.”

I considered “Close To You” as the song that my dad and I would dance to at my wedding. It was edged out by “Unforgettable” in a nod to both my memories of the songs that would play in our house when my parents hosted dinner parties and those of my grandmother, my dad’s mom, who passed away a couple months before my wedding.

But, I always liked “Close To You.” In my little girl mind, the lyrics came to life. I saw the little birds, like the blue ones who were friends with Cinderella and Snow White, flying around and angels scheming in the clouds to make the day I was born the most beautiful day. Sprinkling moon dust, golden starlight and flowers everywhere.

My eyes are blue, but it turns out the day I was born it rained so much Chicago flooded. Per the newspaper clippings in my baby book, it wasn’t pretty. But, it still didn’t stop my imagination from seeing that dreamy, magical, fairy tale-like image even into adulthood. Picturing it in my mind while pregnant for the first time. Feeling the meaningful magnitude of key change as Karen sings:

On the day that you were born

The angels got together

And decided to create a dream come true.

Just hours after returning home from Theo’s birth and hours before I would head back to the hospital with postpartum preeclampsia, I started to process all that had happened. I cried with my mom in my bedroom wondering how it had all gone so wrong and why everything still hurt so bad. I looked to Adam and told him nothing about this, about the birth, any of it was beautiful.

Adam agreed.

In the weeks leading up to the birth, we had taken lamaze together and imagined what our birth experience might look like. We imagined it being this beautiful moment. The imagery still in my memory is laughable now. But, I saw it so clear. I saw it being something primal and pretty. Relaxing and revelatory. Something that moved us as we worked together to begin our family.

But, there were were, shell shocked from it all and still so clueless about what was to come.

In my mind, everything had gone wrong and I wanted a do-over.

I wanted to try again.

And somewhere in the mix of drugs and hormones, I started to believe it was possible. I wanted the blue birds and angels to give me my dream come true. I wanted the beautiful birth I had imagined, not the sampler platter of interventions I had received over two days only to end up with an emergency C-Section. I didn’t want the NICU stay or the massive swelling making it hard for me to simply bend my knees. I didn’t want the return to the hospital that was coming and the diagnosis of postpartum preecplamsia. I didn’t want any of it.

In my bedroom that afternoon, I had the thought that was, and still is, the hardest for me to think back on: I wanted to do it over so badly that I thought if there was a way to go back to before Theo was born and try it again, I would. And here is the most shameful, awful part: Even if it meant not getting him, but some other baby.

Just like how lyrics could come to life in my head, this thought did too. Even though it was complete fantasy, the thought was methodical and clear– like many of the thoughts that would come in the next few weeks.

I knew immediately it was a terrible thing to think and I hated myself for it. Something that would become a slow, weird form of torture, the knowing my thoughts were strange and bad and wondering how or why I could think such things.

This is the hardest part for me to write in my book and I am editing these scenes right now.

Hindsight and time helps me help me see the beauty that was so clearly there all along. So has working through those thoughts on my own and with Adam. We have had real conversations about what we are comfortable about sharing in the book and this one where I wanted a “do-over” and how my mind made up a way that might be possible has been the biggest question for me.

But, when I brought it to Adam, it was a surprisingly quick, “You need to share that.”

We talked about how it might impact Theo and committed to one another to make sure he knows everything. He needs to know that we looked forward to his birth so much; but in reality, it was so hard and scary over and over and we never imagined it being that way.

He will know that there are challenges in all that we do, even with check lists and preparation. That life and expectations are precious things, not always fairy tales. Pain and feelings are so valid– especially his own– and he will be encouraged to express them.

And, if I do ever publish and get feedback from a woman finally able to acknowledge her own experience and feelings, he will know about it. He will know that he was always wanted, loved and since Day 1 he has the ability to make a massive impact just by being him.

He will know that day the angels did get together and, even if it didn’t always look like fairy tale blue birds floating around, they did create a dream come true.

That, and his eyes of blue.

In my continued exploration of art in 2021, I am in a four week poetry course. Truly, the nexus of me signing up for this class was inspired by the cleverness and imagery I find in song lyrics.

Here is a poem I did our first week that fits with this blog post:

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