Breathing

I have been watching my son’s breaths since he was born, 22 years ago in a cabin in the woods, welcomed by his sister and brother and father, welcomed to a circle of light and peace by his midwives.

Nights watching your child breathe can be long sometimes. The terrors of pneumonia, the times I sat up holding him against my body, willing his breath to continue, in, out, in, moment by moment while the moon crossed the sky and the dawn slowly unfolded, with birdsong & exhaustion—those were times at the edge.

I almost fell. It was an April morning the last time I seriously considered an early exit from this beautiful and painful world, an exit in which I felt I had to take my fragile child. I am a good mother.

I sought and received help. But I have faced inner and outer bleakness, and these nights as I set up machines to help my boy relax and breathe and sleep, as I adjust the mask and hoses, as I time my heartbeats by the pulse of oxygen, and do not sleep, I consider this fragile world.

There’s a rush of image and information. There’s my throat closing with grief.

My son stopped speaking during the bombing of Gaza two years ago, first telling me he loved all his family but, as he said, “thinking hurts too much”. Be-fore that he had begged me to save the children, to stop the walls from falling, to deal with the wolves that came out of the air and frightened him.

Last night I read of two NATO bombings in Libya and I gasped with pain. Yes, one was the strike—such an innocuous word, like the lighting of a birthday candle—that murdered Khadafi’s 29 year old youngest son, and three grand-children under 12.

I felt the walls falling, as I do each time I see those dry reports across a geography of pain—a wedding party, a young soldier, a marketplace, a dance, a school, a hospital.

The other report from Libya was of the bombing of a school for children who, like my son, have Down Syndrome.

I remember a photo from Iraq, maybe 5 years ago, from such a school. Smiling children who looked a bit like Gabe danced in a careful circle, wearing bright paper hats, as the sky shattered with bombs.

Sometimes my son’s efforts to get oxygen to his heart and fingertips and brain only get him to a bit above 60% of the 100% oxygen the human body craves.

I think we are all gasping for air now. Gasping for hope, compassion, sense.

I watched the Royal Wedding as I timed Gabe’s breaths and monitored the machines. Such lovely lace, such luxurious satin. How sweet the little brides-maids, with their lily of the valley crowns, and how pretty the row of trees. Hornbeam trees, beautiful trees of the ancient British forests, brought into the abbey to make a pretty, artificial forest to delight our eyes. Oh, I love romance and happily ever after. Yes, I once was sure I was a lost princess, when I was four.

It passed the time, this wedding. For a while I didn’t think of children dying or truth tellers imprisoned, of babies without their mothers, of lost elders, of hungry people right on my own mainstreet, of despair. I just thought, gratefully, how pretty, my mind a wash of white satin and bridal bouquets.

And then I kept trying to breathe myself, adjusting the machines, the darkness there. My son was sleeping well. Dawn came again, with birdsong and a wash of pink light.

And I don’t know, really, what to do with this precious world but to love it. And I don’t know what to do with all the wrongs I see but name them.

And keep breathing.

did kafka write this story?

It was court day today for Reign and her mom and all the support people with our official notices to appear. 8:30am sharp in the city to the north. I was awake at 5. Well, I didn't really get much sleep in any case.

Into the ribbed tights, the acceptable suit, the nice little boots, the sterling pendant. Cup of very strong tea, long journey through the forests under the dawn light.

In the corridors of justice we waited. And waited. And waited. I said hello to the paternal grandmother and the birth father. I hugged Reign's mom, I chatted with other support people. I watched the social workers gather, each holding reams of paper.

At last Eddiethepublicdefender darted from the stairwell into the room. Reams of paper in his arms too. He came directly to me and said "have you heard, we have a settlement". Ever skeptical I asked what the terms were, what was given, what was taken. As he started to tell me--Reign would go into state custody, but maybe someday her mom could have her, wasn't that nice, and the state would no longer charge the mother with starving her child, and...
As he started to tell me, as I was about to say something...well, I was so tempted to swear, but I am a ladylike soul--the CPS lady across from us said "Eddie, Eddie, we don't have a deal".

Consternation on the lawyer's face, confusion everywhere. Does this sound familar? Are we in some careful Noh play? Or perhaps it is a novel by Kafka?

The attorney for the birthfather stomped by saying to the father and his mother "I am shocked to even see you here, why are you here?" Heidi said "my granddaughter's life is on the line, why wouldn't I be here?"

And I looked at my midwife friend beside me and said "something is very wrong here; there is evil in this hall now".

She looked at me and did not disagree.

Into the courtroom for ceremonial announcements of who we were. Lawyer bluster. Confusion.

Afterwards I spoke with one of the CPS lawyers who informed me that they had grave concern over the mother's mental state and her ability to care for her baby and she needed to prove her ability. I said "I saw her and her baby daily during the first month and I have no doubts. It's a bit hard for her to demonstrate her mothering without a baby to mother." I said "don't you people realize there is a baby with a whole vast family and everyone is hurting now?"

He told me I was being unreasonably argumentative.

So there are more hearings to come. And...my gut feeling? Reign is in state hands and due to be adopted. She will not know the story of how we fought for her. Her mother was poor, her mother was young, her mother was without shelter.

Those are crimes in our system. How can you fight that?

But yes, I'm still fighting.

Reign

In early December one of my street friends, she who once brought me a striped rose, who spent much of the warm days of summer and fall reading on my porch, who looked as though she had stepped, sweet and slightly grubby, from the frame of a PreRaphaelite painting, came into the shop and sat in the chair usually occupied by Champ.

For her, Champ was glad to make room.

She looked pale. The storms had been hard for a while, and she was staying beside the river with a friend. He, at least, had a tent. A little better than a single tarp to keep the rain and wind off.

"My stomach hurt all night long" she said.

I looked at her, considering. I knew she was pregnant, but she had said the baby would be coming in mid January. I had been looking for housing, support, and help for her and the coming child. We had just managed to get a copy of her birth certificate and started applications for services and foodstamps. She'd just had her first meeting with the midwife who delivered my babies, a dear friend, two days before.

"I didn't get any sleep at all" she said.

I asked what kind of pains these were. I asked if I could feel her stomach during a time of pain. It was rock hard. I made some phone calls, the last to a nurse friend at the clinic. He asked to talk with the young woman and then told me "Holy sh*t, get that girl to the ER".

Which I did, with the help of a customer who was browsing. I left the shop wide open, telling another customer to take her time and I'd be in touch later.

And a beautiful baby girl was born that night. Her mother called her Reign. She had her mother's red hair and the face of an angelic elf. Yes, I fell in love with her at first sight.

Child Protective Services immediately moved to take custody of this baby. I gathered all my contacts and all my fierceness and got the mother and child into a local women's shelter and got Child Welfare to back off for a moment.

And we had a party at the bookstore celebrating the child and her mother, a party to which everyone came--street kids and very important business people and folks from every corner of my community. Oh, we loved that baby and her mother, and we were so happy. The light itself seemed rose colored. Gifts and supplies poured to this baby and her mother from all over the country, not only from our little town. We were so glad.

I saw her daily, the little one and her mother. Her mom was having some new mother adjustments, for sure. Sleep was hard to come by. She couldn't have friends at the shelter, so met them in town. Child Welfare had watchers everywhere, who reported that the baby was out in all weathers with the mother.

I got calls from investigators. I told them I thought the mother and baby were doing quite well, thank you.

But the baby began to lose weight, and the public health nurse began questioning the young mother's feeding style. To me the mother cried "I am feeding her, I am doing everything they are telling me, I don't know what's happening."

The baby saw a pediatrician every week. He noted the weight loss but didn't seem alarmed, not really alarmed: "come back next week, we'll check".

The mother said the baby spat up a lot. I wondered. I asked the nurse, my midwife friend, and doctors "could there be a physical problem?"

All of them said no, all of them pointed at the mother--a street waif, after all, a little wanderer, a tough girl who didn't thank everyone for their advice--all of them said she was obviously not feeding the baby enough. Or at all.

I saw her feed Reign, often.

But a week ago the police backed up a child welfare person and my young friend was confronted at the local market. She unwrapped the snuggly sling that held Reign against her body as she shopped, and handed the little one to the waiting child welfare officer.

And then she went back to the shelter and cried all night long, rocking in a corner, clutching one of her daughter's sleepers.

I went to the meeting with Child Welfare the next day, to sit beside her and speak on her behalf. Perhaps my passion was admired, but "the baby has lost weight since birth" they said, and the baby was indeed hospitalized up north. Slam dunk neglect case. She was going to foster care; the hearing a few days later would just be a formality.

The next day the doctors at the hospital diagnosed Reign with pyloric stenosis, a condition whereby the infant could not assimilate her food; it would not pass into her intestines from her stomach in sufficient quantity. Surgery on Saturday.

I thought "well, it's obvious this isn't her mother's fault; she'll come back to mom". And Reign's mother was by her side as much as the hospital allowed, day and night, watching and holding the baby's hand and taking over some of the feedings under the watchful eyes of nurses.

The judge said she should have known her baby was sick. Clear neglect. There will be a trial at the end of the month.

So today Reign went away from the hospital with some foster parents; we will not be told who they are. I am sure they will love her.

And today Reign's mother came to me, with her bundles of legal papers, and her determination, and a sheaf of photos of the baby, and her bemusement.

Me, I alternate between tears and fury. But when I talked with the current child welfare worker and she asked "are you continuing as an advocate for this baby and mother?" I said yes, forever, wherever they are, whether they are together or apart. Yes, I am here for them.

Someone has to be.