Brenna's birth—Word Association #55

If one of these associations suggests a story from my life, I will try to tell it.

1. Angel:: daisydumont's icon
   
2. Birth:: Brenna
   
3. Logic:: Fuzzy
   
4. Stars:: Dust
   
5. Nursery:: Trees
   
6. View:: Fantastic
   
7. Hart:: to Hart
   
8. Creation:: Evolution
   
9. End:: Dead
   
10. Fortune:: Fantasy
    

Marian's birth was difficult and ended in an emergency C-section. The doctor did not make the same mistake for my wife's next pregnancy, so a C-section was planned.

I was allowed to attend both births but I remember Brenna's better because we were both relatively calm and relaxed. A low curtain was set up so that I could be present with my wife without watching the operation, but when the time came I suppressed my usual squeamishness and peaked over the top to observe the wonder of birth. I saw two pairs of hands lift Brenna pink and glistening from the obscure opening in Karen's belly.

I caught an inkling of both daughters' personalities the days they were born. With Brenna, in fact, I sensed it during the pregnancy. My wife expressed no intuition about it, so these hunches came from my own interaction with the fetus. I knew the second baby would be calmer than Marian.

This was confirmed when I saw her lifted from the darkness and, a few moments later, handed to me. She cried a little, but seemed generally unperturbed. I immediately sensed the sunshine spirit and peculiar humour that would eventually allow Brenna to smile and tease when everyone else was irritable and cranky.

A couple hours later, disaster struck. Karen hemorrhaged. I didn't realize what was happening. The nurses whisked me and the baby out of her room without much explanation. The problem was soon taken under control, but for a few moments I was terrified that I would be left alone to raise a toddler and a newborn baby.

At practicaly the same moment, my parents arrived. They had come down the night before, stayed at the house while I took Karen to the hospital, and brought Marian over as soon as we thought everything was fine. As it turned out, they couldn't see Karen and I was in a panic. But we had the baby, who was healthy and not yet named. Mom and Dad had also brought our video camera.

We have this video of them sitting in the hall: Nanum holding the newborn infant and Grandad beside her. Marian, 23 months old and usually a ball of noisy determination, is quiet and detached, sitting on the other side.

"Marian, do you want to touch your baby sister?" asks my mother. It takes some coaxing, and Mom repeats the question several times.

Then Marian, with her usual gusto, gives the baby's head a good, hard smack.

Baby Brenna pics

This is one of my favourite images of Brenna, which I call her Marilyn Monroe picture. I believe it was taken the summer of 1997 when she was three, at Poplar Bluff on Lake Erie.



Brenna was born on November 15, 1993. My wife took this picture a couple weeks later. I was 29.



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Spring flood

Tonight I am going to attend an open mic poetry reading that occurs every second Sunday at the -bar. I went to several a couple years ago but couldn't stand listening to the lurid ravings of Tad, a Born Again, bipolar, homophobic nudist. It was against the organizer's policy to disinvite him, but readings were discontinued for a while. Since they resumed, no one has bothered to reinvite Tad. I guess I'll try it out.

While pulling together some verses to take, I found a writing exercise I did several weeks ago, revised it heavily, and turned it into a poem.

~~~~~~~~~

Spring flood

Brothers rise against the blood banks.
Sisters in shadows knit bones of righteousness.
Memory frozen: denial of access.

White crosses stem the jordan flow.
Damn the blood!

Lambs our daughters
march to the shearing
calves to the brand name leather
skin collision of cloth on skeleton.

Songs of slaughter
raise your heads to the sullied crosses,
raging, ringing.

We are alive
upon these banks
while brave larks fly
amid the bones
which row on row
still mar our face.

Mothers in curtains
reap no more than sorrow
feel the flow of crimson ice
that veins our wasted land
with children wrung and ploughed
beneath the long dry shadow of soil.

A strategy made of lives
beneath a banner call no brighter
than a dotard muttering
in leather skins
with grasshoppers caught
between his teeth.