Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [82]
The next day, for a change, we made it all the way to the breathing exercises.
“Whoo—whoo—whoo—whoo—whoo—Whoo—whoo—whoo—whoo—whoo—” The rhythmic panting suddenly broke off.
“Wait! Forty-five seconds to go!” I urged her, rattling my electronic wristwatch in the air. But I saw she had given up entirely. She had lost her train of thought. “Try again.”
“Whoo—whoo—whoo—whoo—whoo—Whoo—whoo—whoo—whoo—whoo—”
We persisted in the pattern this time until the full ninety-second mock-contraction was over. Mary gasped for air, jubilant, eyes aglow.
“I think I’m getting the hang of it.”
The session ended even more desultorily than the day before.
We still had to master the pushing exercises. For a day or two, we forgot about them entirely, then suddenly as we finished the dishes, it struck us.
“Push. Two. Three. Four—Now remember to relax the pelvic floor. Eight. Nine. Ten. Push and relax at the same time. Twelve. Thirteen. Take a quick break. Release a little. Now push again. Two. Three. Four…”
Pushing was, if anything, easier than the other exercises. The only trick was for Mary to learn not to push too soon in delivery, or the emerging baby might impact the not-fully-dilated cervix. She had to learn also to un-push. “Okay, let out all your breath and take five or six short breaths. Now you have nothing to push with.”
It was the best workout yet, so I rewarded Mary with a massage.
“Ooooo. That feels wonderful. Some more there. Yes.”
I rubbed the rest of the pain away, and soon enough we turned over and went to…bed.
Seventeen
After the Fall: Even
Farmers Get the Blues
I just felt so sorry for you sitting there so lonesome, I had to come over and buy one,” said the man dressed in Western gear who had swaggered across the street from the Acme Boot Outlet. A gust of wind howled past, and this time, thankfully, my Sorghum Molasses/ Sweet Potatoes sign did not blow over.
I smiled and, removing a glove, pointed to the jars. “This one’s two-fifty, this one’s three-fifty, and this one’s…”
“Oh, just give me anything,” the man interrupted, turning to look at the blond woman who, I supposed, was waiting for him. She was seated in the passenger side of a yellow Corvette in the Acme parking lot, and returned a languorous smile.
“I recommend this,” I said, and he handed me three dollars and fifty cents for the medium-size jar. The label read:
Old-Timey Cooked
SORGHUM MOLASSES
(Cooked over a wood-fired pan)
As the man walked away, it dawned on me that perhaps I did look a little lonesome and forlorn. He was all set to hop into a souped-up vessel of comfort and control, but I had no visible means of transportation (my car was parked around the corner of the building). He must have assumed I was one of those local “Amish,” eking out a bare subsistence, abjectly dependent upon the patronage of caring folks like himself for my evening meal.
It was a blustery December day and I was seated at a table laden with sorghum jars, on a traffic island catty-corner from the regional shopping mall. I was reading Albert Camus’ The Stranger. And I was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat.
It was all so convincing, except for the existentialism.
I almost said something, but a scruple forestalled me. Best to let him go on thinking it. It would take a while to explain, and judging from his current preoccupation, I doubted he would even listen. Besides, today for some reason, I was starting to feel a little like the character in The Stranger. Maybe the fatigue of long anticipation was catching up with me, a kind of male counterpart to morning sickness. We were now in the third trimester, and time seemed to have slowed down to a crawl.
At the end of one long day, I went to Sylvan’s to see if he could sell my leftover sorghum jars to wholesalers for me. The path to his farm was well traveled. Sylvan’s place was bustling with straw-hatted workers,