A letter to my daughter on her 40th, September 16, 2018

Happy birthday my beautiful daughter. Let me tell you about my earliest memories of you...

Your father and I were living in a handyman’s special in Thurman, NY with 30 sled dogs. While I felt something was different and that I might be pregnant, I thought how unbelievably coincidental it would be that, like 4 co-workers at my little school in Hudson Falls, I too was pregnant. We did think there was something magical about that water. While I wasn’t trying to get pregnant, we weren’t taking any precautions either so nature took her course. 

I remember literally doing a happy dance in our beat-up old kitchen, complete with wood stove as our only heat source, being completely joyful to be pregnant with my first child. I was 26. I knew that this hippie lifestyle would have to change and that I would have to “grow up,” move to a proper house closer to civilization and get a Volvo 😉, the safest car being touted at the time.

We moved to a picturesque little lake with a bazillion stairs going down to it. It was warm and cozy with a great front porch. I painted a rainbow over your head and bought an antique nursing crib that was intended to be put near the mother’s bed with deep in my womb were your first movements. Later there would be elbows, knees and feet making an imprint under my swollen belly. I would push them back in only to have a limb poke through on the other side. I loved knowing you were in there for real. I didn’t know your gender. Ultrasounds were for problematic pregnancies back then. I also didn’t know your due date. I happily consumed chocolate milkshakes throughout my pregnancy and put on 28 lbs. August’s heat was brutal and I felt huge. 

I had to decide what kind of delivery I wanted. Would it be a home birth with a midwife? Would I sit in a tub or squat letting gravity do some of the work?? Would I want your father to be at my side during labor and your birth??? Would I deliver without an epidural or episiotomy???? Would I breast feed????? Would I join the la leche league and nurse you til the age of 5?????? Where would I sign up for the Lamaze classes???????

I had 2 friends that gave me 2 models to consider. My friend Jane would deliver entirely drug and surgery-free, squatting, in a hospital birthing room (new concept at the time).  Her very strong will overrode her Dr’s better judgement. Her baby was in distress, she refused a Caesarian and her baby was still-born. She was a redhead and she named her Hannah. She buried her newborn on her property and started a support group for mothers who lost babies. It was profoundly sad and the first and only infant death in our small circle of pregnant friends. It scared us all about a possibility of things not going well. For me, it clarified what I needed to do.

Another friend chose a midwife and home birth. She was our neighbor in the mountains and because of the extreme conditions where she lived, her dr agreed to deliver her baby at home but only if she was near a hospital. She had an Rh factor. She had her baby in our home on the lake.

As it turned out, I chose natural childbirth in a birthing room, using the Lamaze method (and yoga breathing) and I planned to breast feed for a year. Your father would have to be there if I did and he attended every Lamaze class with me. 

Strangely you and Joann’s baby were born the same day. She had a healthy delivery and named him Shane. I came home 3 days later and named you Shannon. I was in labor 16 hours and despite my girth, I delivered a 6 lb baby which was very surprising to me. You were born around 5pm. You were so petite with bright red hair and a healthy set of lungs. Your apgar score was perfect. I was ready to take you home but you developed jaundice. I was told I could leave but you had to stay an extra day. I sobbed at the thought of leaving without you and doing so was unimaginable. We all went homeJoann had dinner waiting, full of energy and not nursing an episiotomy as I was. She made a seafood stew. I was very impressed with her resilience. She went home the next day. 

Our lives were complete. We were very happy. You moved into your little room with neutral colors and a rainbow with a doll knitted by grandma as your first toy. Grandma made an abundance of things for the first girl in the Scheffer family. Grandma and Grandpa Scheffer came to stay first and Grandpa Herrick came 2 weeks later. You were the first grandchild for the Scheffers and the 4th for the Herricks. 

You cried more than I expected and nursing did not go as well as I planned. You were colicky tho no one labeled it that. You had projectile vomiting for quite awhile so we switched to formula after 3 months. I worried that you were getting enough nutrition.  When I was awake at night, I researched any symptom I thought was problematic, books instead of internet. You developed asthma and had to take the most vile medicine that you couldn’t keep down. I had to take you for a chest X-ray to rule out pneumonia. They put you in a kind of harness that kept your arms up so they could get a good picture of your lungs. You screamed and I sobbed. When you were older you developed motion sickness. 

Despite these little things, you were perfectly healthy and I  thought you were the most beautiful creature on the planet. When you woke in the middle of the night, I rocked you in the rocking chair in your bedroom and sang Circle Game by Joni Mitchell. Strangers always wanted to touch your red hair. Grandma was so proud to have a red-headed granddaughter that everyone said looked like her. Of course everyone thought you looked more like your father than me but I thought you took the best qualities we had to offer from both of us. 

The experience of giving you birth was magic and I wanted you to have my story as I remembered it to commemorate your 40th. 

On a side note, you were born on a full moon and the Grateful Dead were playing at the pyramids in Egypt under that same full moon. Music has always underscored events in my life. I had forgotten this detail til now. 

Celebrate the beauty in your life as I have in the miracle of you. 

Love you always, 

Mom❤️

A Shattered Childhood

Before

"Can mommy die?" As incomprehensible as this possibility seemed to my eleven year old mind, I boldly asked my older sister the question gnawing at me. I was only slightly appeased by her emphatic "no!" - announced  with all the confidence she could muster as though trying to convince herself.  I knew my mother was sick, very sick but the facts were buried in whispers and covert maneuvers. She had been hospitalized for a long time. My younger brother and I were told that she had had a tonsillectomy. I found out later that she had breast cancer and had had a mastectomy. When she finally came home from the hospital, she had come home to die.

While lying in bed the night before she died, I could hear my mother's labored breathing. I padded softly to her bedroom door and whispered, "Mommy, are you ok?" She scolded me to go back to bed. Hours later, an ambulance was summoned and took my mother back to the hospital. I peered out my bedroom window to watch the ambulance go. I remember it was snowing. My world was still normal when I went off to school the next morning. It was December 12th, 1963. My mother was forty-two. 

When I walked home from school for lunch, the midday gathering of family and friends at my house was anything but normal.  The startled, deer in headlights look of people as I walked through the door betrayed the devastating news.  My mother was dead. DEAD! I felt my childhood innocence shatter into a million jagged questions. "What are you saying?! Mommy is dead? Where is her body? Where is her soul? Can I see her one more time?  Can I kiss her good night? Can I cuddle with her on the couch just one more time? Who will bake me cherry pies, make me dresses with a bow in the back, knit my Barbie doll clothes, wash my hair under the kitchen sink?  Who will hug me when I walk through the door or chase me through the house when she's mad and laugh at her folly in trying to catch me?  Who will teach me to hoola hoop? Who will replace her as my girl scout leader? Who will take care of me, my father and my brothers and sister?! Whose mother dies?! What kind of God would take away a child's mom?! " 

While death was still an abstract concept, I was old enough to understand its permanence. From that day forward, and for most of my young life, I suspected that crushing despair lurked around every corner. Nothing was for certain. Nothing was permanent. On December 12th, I felt the first inkling that now I was different from my peers...I was a motherless child. This was a tectonic shift in what I knew to be normal and the changes just kept coming.
One of the most horrifying memories was the image of my father lying prone on my sister's bed sobbing loudly while family and friends tried to console him. I was coming up the stairs when he saw me. I turned away quickly and so did he. He sat up abruptly and pulled himself together but it was too late, the image was seared in my brain.  My father, heretofore always strong, strict, a proud marine, was now fallible, flawed, breakable and broken. I saw a lot of adults cry in the days following my mother's death. My mother's mother, my beloved grandmother, was devastated. The adults could not be counted on for anything. They were crying like babies.

We went through the motions in the days that followed using questionable Catholic traditions to structure our movements- three days of viewing at the funeral home, followed by a mass and burial. I can still recall the putrid smell of so many floral arrangements in the funeral home. I went to the viewing once, that I recall, and remember my maternal grandmother saying how beautiful my mother looked. As I gazed down at my heavily made-up mother, I remember thinking, "Beautiful?!  My mother looks dead!!!"  There was nothing more horrifying!

The adults were very busy making funeral arrangements.  Soon after my mother died, I remember being told to go outside and play.  It had snowed and the neighborhood kids were sledding.  It was the first time I experienced the part of me that I labeled the observer.  I remember watching myself from above, as though through a one way mirror, sledding with a neighbor.  It felt like I was "playing" at being a kid, as though nothing profoundly traumatic had just happened. I recognize it now as a kind of dissociation that helped me cope with the unbearable pain of losing my mother. Splitting off from reality kept me from feeling too deeply so that I could function in the real world. Even today, there are times I feel separated from my physical body and watch myself play-acting, not fully present.  Its purpose in protecting me has diminished over the years but I am aware that the observer is still part of my personality.

To shorten a very long story of years of upheaval, I'll give you the abridged version. My grandmother stayed with us in the days following my mother's death and her presence helped, though I was aware that she was fighting with my father...alot!  Within a year, my father remarried. All of my mother's things were donated or given away and my childhood home was sold. My sister married. My older brother didn't get along with his new stepbrother so he moved out.  There was just my brother and myself living in a new house with a new family. Oh yeah, and I was supposed to call this new woman "mom."  A year or two later there would be a divorce and a move to Connecticut.  Soon after, my father's place of employment burned down so we moved back to my childhood hometown in New Jersey in 11th grade.  I took up with old friends and life finally began to feel normal again. I went away to college, became a teacher, married and had a beautiful family of my own. Having my own children to love and mother helped to fill some of the gaps in my own life. My parenting skills were not without mistakes and misgivings but on the whole, my children gave me great joy and completed me.  My boundless love for them helped me realize the love my mother must have felt for me.

Now sixty-three, the loss of my mother is less painful. Through years of counseling I learned to record the loss in adult language.  My shattered childhood is but one chapter in my long life and it doesn't define me. A psychic recently told me that my purpose in this life is to go back and nurture that broken little girl and to love myself. Appreciating the joy and love that I have experienced along the way has done a great deal to heal the broken little girl. She is in the past.  I'm all for staying in the present.  As for loving myself, I work on that daily. Every time I tell myself that I'm not smart enough, pretty enough, thin enough...ad nauseam, I work to change the self talk and to love and appreciate my good qualities. (I'll have to explore self image another time.)

Life's journey takes many twists and turns, with incredible highs and unbearable lows and something called normal in between. I have learned that I am resilient and strong. This piece has been the most challenging to write thus far.  My daughter asked me to explore the loss of my mother and I'm glad she did.  Thank you my darling Shannon, for instinctively knowing what I need to write about better than I do. 

After

  

Motherhood

 

I remember the words "You're pregnant!" like it was yesterday. I also remember that the nurse practitioner's exclamation sounded more like a question in case I didn't think this was happy news. After all, it was the 1970s, an era of feminism and women's rights, and the right to choose hung heavy in the air; all of that was the furthest thing from my mind. I was thrilled at the news and said so with a grin from ear to ear.

I was 26. My husband and I hadn't planned to start a family, but the prospect of motherhood filled me with a sense of "shock and awe" that we were indeed at the stage in life that we could and would do so. Before I got the medical confirmation, I suspected that I was pregnant because of the subtle changes in my body. Though I had nothing to compare it to, as I never had morning sickness, somehow I just knew.  Something felt different.  With the obstetrician's confirmation, I excitedly told my husband we were having a baby!  He loved the idea.  Full of optimism for a healthy pregnancy, we announced the news immediately to family and friends.

I was a new teacher in a small school working with other young teachers, all in their twenties. There were five of us pregnant at the same time, which was crazy, but it just added to the camaraderie we had already established. We were a close-knit group. We hung out together, and a group of us became close friends. The prospect of raising families together was very cool.

By the late 1970s, women I knew were deeply vested in "women's lib." As it related to childbirth, if the woman had to be present at the delivery of her child, so did the husband. The term "we're pregnant" entered the lexicon. There was a mix of new birthing techniques and a return to "the old ways." Ultrasound was not yet commonplace, so the sex of the baby would still be a surprise. Breast milk was preferred to formula.  Women pumped their milk so the fathers could participate in the feedings. We nursed publicly, albeit discretely.  "Co-parenting" was the new buzzword. Liberated women of my time refused an epidural in favor of natural childbirth. Lamaze and La Leche were popular supports for birthing and nursing. Birthing rooms were becoming more common, but were not widely available. Midwives and home births were back in vogue.  Some women chose to deliver in water, others birthed in an upright position using gravity to their advantage.

I knew I had the constitution for natural childbirth, and, after all, my husband would be present throughout.  What I didn't know was whether my style would be that of a screaming banshee that would send my horror-stricken husband sprinting from the room or a calm and confident mother-to-be panting through her pain.  We chose a hospital setting, and I delivered my firstborn naturally with my husband by my side.

My beautiful, healthy angel was born at 5:00 p.m. on September 16, 1978, weighing in at 6 lbs. even.  We named our red-headed baby of Irish heritage Shannon.  She was such an unimaginably small and perfect bundle of joy.  While I felt that motherhood began the moment I found out I was pregnant, my newborn made me feel motherhood to the depths of my soul.  My world was forever altered with her presence in my life. The future glowed with hope and promise for my budding family.

My young, naïve self thought that I had created the perfect sidekick for my life's adventures.  I was and have always been a hopeless romantic and ridiculously optimistic, with an intelligent mind that was often overruled by my heart.  As it turned out, my dream of motherhood did not always measure up to the reality. Intermingled with moments of pure joy were sleepless nights, incessant crying, projectile vomiting, asthma, chicken pox, temper tantrums...all things typical of childhood, but things I hadn't given much thought to.

Still loving motherhood, I had a second child, a son, whom Shannon named Erik. Not long after, the dream completely shattered.  There was a divorce and abandonment. Fear of going it alone undermined the joys of motherhood.  As a single parent, I became an anxious mother: insecure, angry, scared, exhausted, worried about everything.  I eventually got my footing, but my daughter no longer wanted to be my sidekick. As a teen, she would have pulled away anyway, but she ran from me full speed in any direction but the one I wanted her to go.

It's 2015. I'm a mother of two adult children now. My daughter has given me two beautiful grandchildren. She had an epidural and knew both times the sex of her children in utero.  Birthing rooms are the norm. Breastfeeding is still preferred to formula. She never discussed alternative delivery options but certified nurse midwives have mostly moved to a hospital rather than a home setting.  And motherhood...still the same awesome responsibility it always was, buoyed by Googling the latest parenting advice on the Internet.  Some families have a strong foundation and some mothers still go it alone. There is still disparity in women's wages, with many more single parents living in poverty. At this point in my life, motherhood's sharp edges have dulled and smoothed. I worry less. I have raised my children to adulthood. And...my daughter has indeed become my sidekick. 

Walking Down A Country Road

While visiting my brother in Colorado, I took a long walk down a country road one morning. My memories bubbled to the surface like a fresh water spring and I was in touch with my inner country girl again.  I became aware that a rural setting always sets my spirit free. As I gazed across the wide open spaces, I was reminded that I felt more relaxed and peaceful in this setting  than anywhere else.  For miles there is nothing but prairie. The expansive landscape is dotted by small clusters of tidy farms, horses and cattle. The air smells clean. Wild sunflowers and lupine grow along the side of the road, haphazardly and untamed.

I guess you could say I was raised a city girl. For the most part, I lived in a small suburban town in north Jersey with the Manhattan skyline on my horizon. My father moved my brother and me to a city in Connecticut for a brief stint but it was in the NJ suburb that I lived for most of my formative years. But I always had a country girl spirit.

As a child, I played cowgirl...a lot!  In my suburban yard there was an old garage with a water trough and a hayloft with hay dust still covering the floor. I was convinced it would be perfect for a pony and so I asked for one for my birthday or Christmas. I argued that I wanted just a small pony I could keep in the garage since we had that trough. Sadly my parents never obliged.

There would be the occasional trip to the country to visit my father's cousins and a vague memory of visiting a farm with my grandmother. I became aware of a growing desire to have a different life away from the confines of a city.

As soon as I was able, I acted on my desire. At the beginning of my junior year of college, I moved off campus to a small farm. For the next thirteen years of my young adult life I chose rural environs to make my home.

The most remote location was a seven acre property in the Adirondack region of upstate NY.  In the mid '70s, my young husband and I raised sled dogs for amateur racing. We heated the house with a wood stove and I tried my hand at organic gardening, baking bread and preserving the meager harvest. We tapped maple trees and cooked our own syrup. I took long walks in the woods.

I haven't spent an extended period of time in a remote country setting until now. Back in touch with my inner country girl, I am reminded that this is where I need to be once in awhile...to relax, regroup, be inspired and creative. It is here that I have gotten back to writing and I realize that it's no coincidence.

Well-Worn Shoes

It's the first day of school in Broward County, Florida, and I'm on the other side of the country in Elbert, Colorado, visiting my brother and his wife, Shannon.

I feel elated as a retiree. I'm relaxed and staying in the moment. Got nowhere I need to be and content to be right where I am, sitting outside with a view of the Bijou Basin and writing my first blog.

This August I have not had to suffer the first-day-of-school blues nor the inevitable night-before anxiety about the unknown demands that await me in the morning. In contrast, my ultra laid back mood is exquisitely sublime.

In my relaxed state, I ponder the root cause of years of anxiety on the eve of the first day of school and on every Sunday night before the work week began. A simple analogy would be to liken it to the dread one might feel turning over the role of driver, and therefore the control of one's life, to a speed demon, wreckless and insensitive to this passenger's white-knuckling grip on her seat. I would no longer have control of the speed or the destination, nor the way we got there.

More recently, this anxious feeling has arisen more  from my role as a member of my school's leadership team than in my role as autism coach. In my role as a school leader with this latest principal, I would finish the first week of teacher preparation feeling like I was careening down a treacherous, mountain road in a blinding rain. The year's expectations would be gloriously presented to attract buy-in but I long-ago learned that the path was littered with minefields.  To his credit, this  principal had high expectations for my school's special needs population. I took no issue with his desire to set lofty goals for a new school year but there would be an ominous underpinning of his message for the administrative team shivering both literally and figuratively in the meat locker he called his office, behind closed doors. 

It went without saying that I would be expected to tow the line, get out the principal's often unpopular message and uncomfortably admonish my peers when asked to do so. While the leadership team's opinions were expressly welcomed, the spider lay in the center of the web waiting for his prey to take the bait. This man did NOT like to be challenged! Inviting discussion was an empty gesture, forgotten as soon as it was offered. My often critical, brilliant but calculating, and combative principal saw no need to motivate or inspire, as he felt he was not responsible for employee morale and said so frequently.  Ultimately, the staff would do the job they were paid to do or suffer the consequence of "progressive discipline."  Feeling a sense of unease, I would toss and turn Sunday night and limp to the starting gate on the first day of school Monday morning.

It's a different school now. There was a mass exodus of old timers; seven this past year and several more during this principal's tenure. I'm part of that past and I knew it was also time for me to leave. It was a good run and I've been deeply satisfied in my role as a teacher - of students and adults. No regrets. Now it's somebody else's turn to fill my well worn shoes because I'm back in the driver's seat. Today I am a retired educator and as I drive off into that proverbial sunset, I look over my shoulder and give a wink and a nod to the past.