NEW BORN

By Riva Pomerantz

Courtesy of Family First Magazine

The social worker was in twice this morning, pleading with me to do the impossible.

“It’s best to talk about it, Mrs. Schloss,” she says, gesturing.  At my haunted eyes.  At my deaf ears.  She is oblivious to my need for solitude.  “I know you are struggling, but it get easier once you process your emotions.  I’m here for you, if you’d like to talk,” she says, presenting a lipsticked smile that reeks of a compassion I find repulsive.

I would not like to talk.  Not to her.  Not to my husband.  Not to my mother.  Not to anyone.  I would like to escape.  I would like to fall into a deep slumber and when I awake, the nurses and doctors will laugh, embarrassed, and say, “Oh, we are so sorry.  There was a terrible mix-up.”  And they will bring me my baby—soft and perfect, like all babies that have come before.  Like all the babies that fill the nursery.  I will cradle her and love her and cherish her forever.

But instead, I am left in oozing darkness.

“You’re disappointed, dear,” one of the nurses tells me after they bring me to the baby, yet again.  “It’s natural for you to be disappointed.  But just because you’re disappointed doesn’t mean that you can’t love this baby.  She’s yours.”  She leans close to my ear, oblivious to my cold, spiteful stare.  “G-d designed her exactly for you.  Perfect!”  She bobs her head with sage smugness.

I want to rail at this woman, and snatch her horrible word from where they have lodged themselves in my brain.  How dare she! Can she even imagine?  I leave the NICU trembling with rage.

I am alone in this rage.  My husband, Gedalia, has left me behind in his wake of faith.  He says he sees the imprint of the Ribono Shel Olam in every fiber of his baby’s being and that he feels a strong, instinctive love for his daughter already.

My parents have left me, too.  “Rochella,” my mother whispered, crushing me in her embrace.  “She’s beautiful.  She’s special.  We will love her and give her the best treatments.  You’ll see—she’ll be exactly like the other kids.  She’ll bring so much joy to your home!”

They want me to shake off this too-heavy blanket of despair.  They want me to pretend that I am happy to have received this baby.  That she is a gift.

I want to yell at them with all my might.  “Hypocrites!” I wanted to yell.  You buy a ten dollar shirt and it’s defective.  Do you keep it and love it and wear it anyway? No! You complain! You get upset! You call the manufacturer!  You demand your money back or a brand new shirt!  And me?  I should just be quiet and accept?

But when those words bubble up in my mind, my head becomes so stuffed with tears that nothing comes out.  One of those tears landed on the baby last night and she flinched, as though the tear had singed her soft, newborn skin.

This baby has shattered my world, down to its very core.  She has rendered her mother—once confident and carefree—impotent, bleak, a heaving mass of emotions.  I want her back, that long-ago mother who never dreamed of defects and doctors.  I want to recapture her innocence and preserve it in glass.  I want to steal her carefree smile and make it my own.  This stranger I have become is all wood and lead and there is no light that can penetrate her soul.  What have you done, little child, with your entrance into my life?

Words that used to flutter free now land heavily on my aching heart.  “You’re not normal!  That’s retarded!”  I will throttle the next person  who uses those words blithely in my presence.  I have crossed a bridge I thought I’d never cross.  My eyes have been opened, suddenly and cruelly.  Like a glaring stream of light shined into blinking pupils coming out of darkness, these opened eyes are hurting, reeling.  I would give anything to go back to that comfortable, familiar darkness.  I really would.  But to admit it is to be smothered with a thick, sour barrage of comments.

“You have to have emunah!” they will say.  “How dare you question Hashem!  At least you have a child—six of them, to be exact, and five that were born perfectly free of any defect.  What an ingrate you are!  Don’t you know that there are some women who would give anything for a child—any child!  And you?  You get this precious little baby and you’re complaining? Scandalous!”

I know that they will say it.  I see it in their eyes.  I read it in their minds.  And so I keep my mouth shut tight, barely uttering so much as a word.  I am in this all alone.  It is the most exquisitely painful experience of my entire lifetime.  I do not know that I will emerge from it whole.

This twisted mass of tubes is my baby, and she is oblivious to her mother’s angst.  Her slate grey eyes open briefly to  stare up at me in sleepy wonder.  Those eyes will change color.  They will perhaps become blue as the mid-morning sky, like Shlomo’s.  Or stormy blue like Lazer’s.  Or maybe they will take after Gedalia’s family and become greenish-brown, like Shifra’s and Pessi’s.  Will she be colicky, like the first two, or mild, like the last ones?

My mind clamps down firmly, chiding.  The nurse whisks over in my direction.

“She’s beautiful,” she chirps.  “And she’s making wonderful progress.  We’ll be taking out her feeding tube  tomorrow.  You’ll probably be good to go in about a week.”

I can barely breathe.  She is waiting for me to say something.  Instead, I turn and flee.

“Mrs. Schloss!”

I am wrenched back, in mid-flight, heart flailing wildly.  She is standing uniformed, arms hanging loosely, and there is something in her eyes—not contempt, not condescension, but understanding.

“Your daughter wants to tell you something,” she says, very quietly.

I am choking.  I am gasping for something that is not air.  For a life-giving substance that is far purer and more essential than oxygen.  Something that I have sought for an entire interminable week, and have not yet found.

This nurse, this anonymous nurse, beckons me closer.  Any moment now  and I will implode.  The edges of her eyes crinkle in a smile.  “Your baby wants to tell you that she loves you.  She told me so.”  She winks.  “They love us, despite our failings.  Isn’t that right, honey?”  And she strokes the drawn, silken cheek.

Rivers of tears slosh down the front of my sterile garb.  Are tears contaminating? These tears surely aren’t. From out of nowhere, my husband appears.  I sense it is him through the glistening rivulets that spill from my eyes in cleansing, cascading waves.

“Are you okay?” he asks, worriedly.  “What happened?  What’s wrong?”

The torrential thunderstorm clears.  The sun comes out.  I rub my eyes like a sleepy young child.

“I’m fine,” I mumble, scanning the horizon for that nurse, who loves that baby in a way that I want to love her, too. But she is nowhere to be seen.  My baby jerks her head and she seems to reach for me.

“Are you okay?” Gedalia asks again.  He has been worried sick—not over his baby, but over his wife.

“Yeah,” I say, breathing in fresh, moist air.  Like after a thunderstorm in May.  I can almost smell the tulips.

The next day, I break ground.  I tell the social worker that it is hard for me to talk.  She nods understandingly, touches my shoulder, and sits with me in a silence that feels warm and healing.

The day after, my mother brings me a book.  It says that it’s common for people to lament and struggle when their children are born “irregular”.  It says that it’s okay to have questions and to mourn; that Hashem allows us out feelings, and that it’s not ungrateful for us to be disappointed.  It says that we can accept our reactions instead of fighting with ourselves to think and feel differently.  It says that things get much, much better, and that at the end of the day, most parents of “special” children wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.

In the evening, the baby smiles.

“She smiled,” I tell Gedalia.  I take a deep breath.  “This nurse”—I gesture and my hands feel like wings, groping towards flight—“she said, uh, that the baby loves me.”

He looks at me, unsure of how to respond.  I, too, am unsure.

“We should name her.”  These very big words, laden with meaning, burst from my lips before I am even aware I was thinking them.

My husband grins so big you would think he’s won the lottery.

It is three weeks later, a solitary evening, and I cradle my baby and touch the soft, silky skin where the imprint of her mother’s tear will remain forever.  The moon probes our faces and the only sounds are the rocking chair and our joint heartbeats.

“You know what?” I whisper finally.  “Your mommy’s not perfect either.”