I thought a long time about this blog post last night. I thought maybe this would be the year I could do it. Talk about my feelings. Share my experience. But here in the cold hard light of day, I'm finding it harder and harder by the minute. Maybe I'll just try...
I should start by telling you that I wasn't in NYC that day. I live in the Great Lakes/ Midwest. I hope it doesn't seem like I'm diminishing your feelings or grief if you were there by telling my story. If it does, I'm sorry. But the day is part of my history too. And if you love me at all, you'll understand this day changed everything for me too. Call it survivor's guilt if you want to.
Call me a bitch too, if you want to.
I probably even deserve it.
Because I couldn't have cared any less about any other human being on earth that morning more than I cared about myself.
PengBlue was a beautiful six week old little girl. And she was dying. She wasn't born early. She wasn't born with any disease. There was no birth trauma. But she failed to thrive. Our nearly 10 pound baby girl was a mere 8 pounds, 2 ounces on September 11, 2001. She just couldn't eat enough to live. She didn't nurse well. She wouldn't take a bottle. The only way I could get any sustenance into her body was with an eye dropper and even that didn't go well. She was a cuddly sweet girl. She smiled all the time. But she was growing weaker and weaker. The doctors were all mystified.
Everyone had suggestions. None of them good. Like, "Put lemon juice in her mouth so she'll want to drink and then she'll nurse to get rid of the taste."
I couldn't do it.
Referral after referral was handed to us. I had a enough appointment cards to fill a Rolodex. We live in a state that boasts not one, but two of the finest children's hospitals in the world.
And nothin'.
The night of September 10, 2001, as we lay in bed saying our prayers together, praying Peng wouldn't have to be hospitalized and given IV nutrition, Axl dejectedly announced he was tired of watching his daughter die and wanted us to start praying for God to take her since He obviously wasn't going to heal her.
I f*cking hated him.
How dare he pray my baby dead! How dare he give up on the child I had made for him! How dare he even say that out loud to me! I have never hated another human being so much in my life, Young Lovers. And hating someone you love more than life itself, with that kind of intensity, rips your soul apart.
I got up the next morning with nothing left inside. I couldn't take one more damned thing.
It was too bad for me though, because like every day since I'd come home from the hospital after my c-section, we had a calendar full of appointments. We had only one car. We had three kids under the age of 4 and Axl worked second shift 50 miles away. So I had to get moving.
I woke Kat and Sonny as gently as I could at 5 o'clock in the morning. Made sure their pants were clean. Filled sippy cups with apple juice and snuggled them into their car seats with quilts so they could go back to sleep.
At 5:25, I found Axl's sweats and made him a To-Go cup of coffee for later. He stumbled about bleary eyed trying to get his shoes on.
At 5:30 on the dot, Peng woke up crying with hunger. But she forced the dropper out of her mouth with her tongue and spat out what little milk I managed to get into it.
By 5:50, tears should have been streaming down my face as I carried all the car seats out to the car. But I felt nothing. All I could think was, I WILL NOT LET THIS CHILD DIE. So I dragged Axl out the door and guided him to the front passenger seat of our 1988 Crown Victoria, plopped myself in the driver's seat and burned rubber.
Axl had presurgical labs for his vasectomy at 6:15, which meant I had about 25 minutes to do a 35 minute drive. All three babies were crying. Axl was passed out asleep, snoring. I turned on the radio and closed my ears, looking straight down the highway.
Thank God Crown Vic's were made for cops. I was going 70mph. I just kept thinking, THERE HAS GOT TO BE A WAY.
6:17: Axl had a blood draw.
6:45: I checked in across town for my 6week postpartum check-up with the nurse-midwife and got thoroughly reamed out about never giving up on a breast feeding infant. I'm the type who cries if you look at me funny. I just looked at her funny.
7:29: Pediatrician's waiting room for an hour, only to be told the doctor was in an emergency c-section and needed to reschedule.
8:42: McDonald's drive through line with crying kids and faint-y Axl.
8:56: Speeding down the State hwy trying to make a 9:00 meeting of nursing mothers at another community hospital 30 miles away.
All the while, I'm telling myself, YOU CAN NOT LET THIS BABY F***ING DIE.
At about 9:25, I ditched Axl and the older kids in the backseat with a bag of Legos and bolted for the maternity classroom with Peng literally under my arm. As I burst into the room the first thing I saw was a giant TV screen showing a chopper flying over NYC and smoke rising off one of the Twin Towers. I was breathing so hard and trying to get myself in nursing mode, I didn't even think this was odd. After all, one of the tricks to relaxing enough to allow your milk to let down and not stress your baby with your own anxiety, is to watch television. The Today show logo was in the corner of the screen. Seemed typical enough. Aren't there always fires in big cities?
So I settled in with a fussy Peng who was arching her back as she death-gripped my nipple in her gums and trying to suck and squeal at the same time. I closed my eyes for one brief moment and inhaled the deepest breath I could possibly manage. I had no idea that would be the last breath I'd ever take in the world as I knew it.
When I exhaled and opened my eyes, there was the Pentagon with a gaping burning hole. At first, my head was filled with rational thoughts. Crash landings aren't really that rare in D.C. I'd flown into "National" myself once. You wind down the Potomac on your way in. Planes miss the tarmac and end in the river sometimes. Then I started mentally calculating the distance and trajectory of the Pentagon and the Potomac. My brain was turning so slowly as my eyes took in way more than it could process before my mouth just fell open.
"A plane actually went all the way into the Pentagon?" I said the words out loud as I was still manufacturing the full picture.
And then, THE most annoying, aggravating thing I have ever experienced in my life, happened. One of the other mothers shrieked, "Don't you know what's happening!!!!!!!!!"
I can still see her face. I still hear her over the decade. I still hate, hate, hate, HATE to think of it.
In that moment, I was so angry, I wanted to kill.
Not the mom, not the terrorists, not even bloody sodding Axl. But God, himself!
I don't really remember much of the rest of Peng's and my time in the hospital that morning. I only vaguely remember getting in the car and Axl was listening to the radio, pounding on the dashboard. He seemed to think "we'd been bombed."
We got home around 11AM. I laid Peng in the bassinet, put Kat and Sonny in the bathroom on step stools so they could wash up under the guise of "floating boats," and found Axl's work clothes.
While he was getting dressed, I started opening cans of ravioli. It felt so good to tear open metal with metal.
"I won't go in," Axl said quietly behind me.
"I want you too."
"No, you don't."
"Yes."
Just then the phone rang. Neither of us gave it much notice. Everyone who knew us was aware the noon hour was when I made our hot meal and Axl got ready for his commute and the next ten to sixteen hours at work.
The answering machine clicked on and Axl's best friend and co-worker, Jeb, started talking.
"Axe. Jeb. Hey, brother, if you're coming in, you better leave now, they're going to declare a state of emergency for our county and the next over at noon. I don't know about where the plant is, but I'm already here and they're setting up cots for Thirds that worked over and Firsts to stay. They say you can go home, but any work you miss will count against you in spite of the state of emergency. Billie was just up here from HR and she said to 'plan to stay or plan to stay away. Permanently.' I don't know how they can do that, but she was dead serious. I'd get here if you can. Tell the cops, if they stop you...sh*t... I don't know what you tell 'em. Just get in your car little brother."
Our eyes met as the machine clicked off.
"Go," I said.
I laid the can opener down and pulled open the fridge while Axl pulled on his shoes. I slapped six slices of bread across the edge of the top of the fridge door and followed them with three squirts of strawberry jelly and three smears of peanut butter. I held up three fingers for Sonny, who had toddled into the fray, and he pulled three apples out of the crisper.
"Give Daddy the whole bag of pretzels."
He tossed it and the apples into the little red igloo cooler as I whipped waxed paper around the sandwiches and dropped them in on top. I dumped my purse and handed Axl all the change I had for him to buy pop, and the last of my cash, a fiver, for whatever.
"I'll call," he said as he kissed each kid's head and was out the door.
It's funny. I remember all this detail, but I have never remembered whether or not he kissed me. In those days, we never left the house without kissing. Usually making out. We were young. Twenty-six. It would have been strange if we hadn't kissed. We probably did. But I don't remember.
As soon as I heard the car pull away, I exhaled for the first time all day. And then I saw all the kids.
What have I done, I asked myself, giving you all this life? In this world?
I scooped all three of them up and piled them in our bed. I don't know why. I guess I somehow thought they'd be safer there? And then I took their picture. I couldn't, for the life of me, tell you why. Maybe to remember life as it was?
I turned the news on. I sat on the edge of the bed feeding the kids goldfish crackers as I watched the images playing over and over again. I became afraid to turn it off lest I miss some important new development. The national news was discombobulated. Local news was non-existent other than a running script at the bottom of the screen declaring states of emergency, grounded air traffic and warning the citizenry to stay out of government buildings.
Why? I wondered. Was every statehouse in every state under siege? I sort of recalled the nurse that lead the breastfeeding group saying no one knew for sure. A panic gripped me so hard, my chest hurt.
I shook it off. The phone was ringing again.
It was my friend Nonny.
"Hey Raley, I was just sitting here thinking how I never brought you those baby clothes. Would it be alright if I just bring them now?"
I told her, yes, even though I couldn't see any point in securing clothes for a future that didn't extend beyond today in my mind.
Nonny was at my door within fifteen minutes. We sat on my couch staring at the muted TV. I don't know how long it actually was, but the sun began to go down. We didn't speak much. And if we never speak again in this life, it doesn't matter, we are bonded for life because of those precious moments.
The moments Axl was gone for good as far as I was concerned. The moments I couldn't see the beautiful blue sky, "September blue," they colloquialize it here. The moments neither of my or Axl's parents called to make sure we were ok.
For the time Nonny was in my house, I wasn't alone. I didn't have to think as she held my baby and handed cookies to my older kids. I was free to not feel and the world wasn't my responsibility. I needed that break more than anything I have ever needed in the whole world. So you see, Young Lovers, I had to divorce myself from it. Not permanently, but for those brief hours.
I remember lying down in the bed with all the sleeping kids that night and feeling absolutely nothing. I wasn't numb. I wasn't empty. I wasn't scared. I wasn't sad. I was truly nothing.
I would hold Axl close when he slipped in around 3AM. I would keep making appointments and knocking down doors in the medical community until later that month I'd discover the words, Sensory Processing Disorder. And I would finally cry ten days later when I lit candles in the dark room and watched Wyclef Jean sing Bob Marley on TV... http://youtu.be/THxjw9pX0WQ
And I would get shivers down my spine when Sonny would call out to Kat, "Come quick, little Kitty, it's happening again," and they would stand, holding hands, in front of the pictures of the towers falling. Four-year-old Sonny saying, "That's it. It's all gone." And two-year-old Kat replying, "A day of impany."
I would lament in sadness when one of my best girlfriends from school would call from another part of the world to see how I was coping and remark in passing that a whole generation of children would now be growing up in time of war. She didn't have any children. I had three. I had done this to them.
I would shake my head as the first babies conceived in the days following September Eleventh, as it became known, were born, wondering why anyone would bring still more children into this hateful insane world.
For a long time after that moment of nothing, I felt no hope. I just slogged through the days waking people, feeding them, and putting them to bed. In my spare time, I did therapy with Peng. I taught her to eat. She grew. They all did.
Then one day, about two years later, I stopped and realized that buzzing sound outside wasn't F-16's flying over but a bright blue 1970 Barracuda going down the street. And somehow I saw it. I mean really saw it. It reminded me of when Axl and I used to skip school to go to car shows. And I realized what a gift life is. What a treasure to have September blue skies, and growing babies! What joy to know life was short and that's what made it sweet.
I grew up. I became the woman I wanted to be. I started writing with purpose. I stopped hating. I let love Be.
Every day. I wake up. I do it again. It's all a process, and we are all connected, Young Lovers. I know that now.
I've opened myself up to the possibility of miracles as my bestie has come back from her mission abroad and we each gave birth to healthy baby boys last summer. Axl and I, as well as Sonny, Kat, and big sister, Peng, can't imagine a world without BabyBoyBlue. We may not be able to control his world, but we can fill it with love. And of course we must remember to "let go and let God." Isn't that the whole point?
At about 9:25, I ditched Axl and the older kids in the backseat with a bag of Legos and bolted for the maternity classroom with Peng literally under my arm. As I burst into the room the first thing I saw was a giant TV screen showing a chopper flying over NYC and smoke rising off one of the Twin Towers. I was breathing so hard and trying to get myself in nursing mode, I didn't even think this was odd. After all, one of the tricks to relaxing enough to allow your milk to let down and not stress your baby with your own anxiety, is to watch television. The Today show logo was in the corner of the screen. Seemed typical enough. Aren't there always fires in big cities?
So I settled in with a fussy Peng who was arching her back as she death-gripped my nipple in her gums and trying to suck and squeal at the same time. I closed my eyes for one brief moment and inhaled the deepest breath I could possibly manage. I had no idea that would be the last breath I'd ever take in the world as I knew it.
When I exhaled and opened my eyes, there was the Pentagon with a gaping burning hole. At first, my head was filled with rational thoughts. Crash landings aren't really that rare in D.C. I'd flown into "National" myself once. You wind down the Potomac on your way in. Planes miss the tarmac and end in the river sometimes. Then I started mentally calculating the distance and trajectory of the Pentagon and the Potomac. My brain was turning so slowly as my eyes took in way more than it could process before my mouth just fell open.
"A plane actually went all the way into the Pentagon?" I said the words out loud as I was still manufacturing the full picture.
And then, THE most annoying, aggravating thing I have ever experienced in my life, happened. One of the other mothers shrieked, "Don't you know what's happening!!!!!!!!!"
I can still see her face. I still hear her over the decade. I still hate, hate, hate, HATE to think of it.
In that moment, I was so angry, I wanted to kill.
Not the mom, not the terrorists, not even bloody sodding Axl. But God, himself!
I don't really remember much of the rest of Peng's and my time in the hospital that morning. I only vaguely remember getting in the car and Axl was listening to the radio, pounding on the dashboard. He seemed to think "we'd been bombed."
We got home around 11AM. I laid Peng in the bassinet, put Kat and Sonny in the bathroom on step stools so they could wash up under the guise of "floating boats," and found Axl's work clothes.
While he was getting dressed, I started opening cans of ravioli. It felt so good to tear open metal with metal.
"I won't go in," Axl said quietly behind me.
"I want you too."
"No, you don't."
"Yes."
Just then the phone rang. Neither of us gave it much notice. Everyone who knew us was aware the noon hour was when I made our hot meal and Axl got ready for his commute and the next ten to sixteen hours at work.
The answering machine clicked on and Axl's best friend and co-worker, Jeb, started talking.
"Axe. Jeb. Hey, brother, if you're coming in, you better leave now, they're going to declare a state of emergency for our county and the next over at noon. I don't know about where the plant is, but I'm already here and they're setting up cots for Thirds that worked over and Firsts to stay. They say you can go home, but any work you miss will count against you in spite of the state of emergency. Billie was just up here from HR and she said to 'plan to stay or plan to stay away. Permanently.' I don't know how they can do that, but she was dead serious. I'd get here if you can. Tell the cops, if they stop you...sh*t... I don't know what you tell 'em. Just get in your car little brother."
Our eyes met as the machine clicked off.
"Go," I said.
I laid the can opener down and pulled open the fridge while Axl pulled on his shoes. I slapped six slices of bread across the edge of the top of the fridge door and followed them with three squirts of strawberry jelly and three smears of peanut butter. I held up three fingers for Sonny, who had toddled into the fray, and he pulled three apples out of the crisper.
"Give Daddy the whole bag of pretzels."
He tossed it and the apples into the little red igloo cooler as I whipped waxed paper around the sandwiches and dropped them in on top. I dumped my purse and handed Axl all the change I had for him to buy pop, and the last of my cash, a fiver, for whatever.
"I'll call," he said as he kissed each kid's head and was out the door.
It's funny. I remember all this detail, but I have never remembered whether or not he kissed me. In those days, we never left the house without kissing. Usually making out. We were young. Twenty-six. It would have been strange if we hadn't kissed. We probably did. But I don't remember.
As soon as I heard the car pull away, I exhaled for the first time all day. And then I saw all the kids.
What have I done, I asked myself, giving you all this life? In this world?
I scooped all three of them up and piled them in our bed. I don't know why. I guess I somehow thought they'd be safer there? And then I took their picture. I couldn't, for the life of me, tell you why. Maybe to remember life as it was?
I turned the news on. I sat on the edge of the bed feeding the kids goldfish crackers as I watched the images playing over and over again. I became afraid to turn it off lest I miss some important new development. The national news was discombobulated. Local news was non-existent other than a running script at the bottom of the screen declaring states of emergency, grounded air traffic and warning the citizenry to stay out of government buildings.
Why? I wondered. Was every statehouse in every state under siege? I sort of recalled the nurse that lead the breastfeeding group saying no one knew for sure. A panic gripped me so hard, my chest hurt.
I shook it off. The phone was ringing again.
It was my friend Nonny.
"Hey Raley, I was just sitting here thinking how I never brought you those baby clothes. Would it be alright if I just bring them now?"
I told her, yes, even though I couldn't see any point in securing clothes for a future that didn't extend beyond today in my mind.
Nonny was at my door within fifteen minutes. We sat on my couch staring at the muted TV. I don't know how long it actually was, but the sun began to go down. We didn't speak much. And if we never speak again in this life, it doesn't matter, we are bonded for life because of those precious moments.
The moments Axl was gone for good as far as I was concerned. The moments I couldn't see the beautiful blue sky, "September blue," they colloquialize it here. The moments neither of my or Axl's parents called to make sure we were ok.
For the time Nonny was in my house, I wasn't alone. I didn't have to think as she held my baby and handed cookies to my older kids. I was free to not feel and the world wasn't my responsibility. I needed that break more than anything I have ever needed in the whole world. So you see, Young Lovers, I had to divorce myself from it. Not permanently, but for those brief hours.
I remember lying down in the bed with all the sleeping kids that night and feeling absolutely nothing. I wasn't numb. I wasn't empty. I wasn't scared. I wasn't sad. I was truly nothing.
I would hold Axl close when he slipped in around 3AM. I would keep making appointments and knocking down doors in the medical community until later that month I'd discover the words, Sensory Processing Disorder. And I would finally cry ten days later when I lit candles in the dark room and watched Wyclef Jean sing Bob Marley on TV... http://youtu.be/THxjw9pX0WQ
And I would get shivers down my spine when Sonny would call out to Kat, "Come quick, little Kitty, it's happening again," and they would stand, holding hands, in front of the pictures of the towers falling. Four-year-old Sonny saying, "That's it. It's all gone." And two-year-old Kat replying, "A day of impany."
I would lament in sadness when one of my best girlfriends from school would call from another part of the world to see how I was coping and remark in passing that a whole generation of children would now be growing up in time of war. She didn't have any children. I had three. I had done this to them.
I would shake my head as the first babies conceived in the days following September Eleventh, as it became known, were born, wondering why anyone would bring still more children into this hateful insane world.
For a long time after that moment of nothing, I felt no hope. I just slogged through the days waking people, feeding them, and putting them to bed. In my spare time, I did therapy with Peng. I taught her to eat. She grew. They all did.
Then one day, about two years later, I stopped and realized that buzzing sound outside wasn't F-16's flying over but a bright blue 1970 Barracuda going down the street. And somehow I saw it. I mean really saw it. It reminded me of when Axl and I used to skip school to go to car shows. And I realized what a gift life is. What a treasure to have September blue skies, and growing babies! What joy to know life was short and that's what made it sweet.
I grew up. I became the woman I wanted to be. I started writing with purpose. I stopped hating. I let love Be.
Every day. I wake up. I do it again. It's all a process, and we are all connected, Young Lovers. I know that now.
I've opened myself up to the possibility of miracles as my bestie has come back from her mission abroad and we each gave birth to healthy baby boys last summer. Axl and I, as well as Sonny, Kat, and big sister, Peng, can't imagine a world without BabyBoyBlue. We may not be able to control his world, but we can fill it with love. And of course we must remember to "let go and let God." Isn't that the whole point?
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