Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [62]
I hike out to update Mills. He’s in the saggy green chair nursing his Big Gulp, reading the papers grandpa-style, each section neatly folded and stacked beside the chair as it’s finished. I suppose he can tell just from my face that things have gone fine, but I have to say so anyway.
“Everything’s 10–2,” I announce. Old-school emergency radio code. We learned it together twenty years ago. “10–2” means everyone’s safe and everything’s OK.
If Mills had grinned any bigger he’d have sprained his ears. He stood up, grabbed my hand, and shook it good.
He walks to the house with me. Climbs the stairs, says a quick, gentle hello to Anneliese, peeks at the baby, and takes his leave. At the top of the stairs, he stops. “Need anything?” “Nope,” I say. And away he goes. Among the bedrock gifts of time are friendships expressible in five syllables or less.
When Anneliese gave birth to Amy, there were no afterglow moments—torn and hemorrhaging, she went straight to surgery. Today she has a small tear but instead of surgery another local midwife drives out to the house and sews her up right there on our own blankets. As I hold Anneliese’s hand while the sutures are placed, I am grateful that we have been allowed this gentler transition. When the repair is complete, there is brief happy chatter. Then someone hands the baby back to Anneliese. Amy snuggles in between us, and we—we four—are left in quiet.
By dusk everyone has cleared out and left us alone in our old house. A local man who came here turkey hunting once told me his grandfather was born between these walls, and I try to imagine the birth scene then. No blue tub, I think, as I unspool the garden hose and siphon the water down the laundry room drain. Amy helps me break the tub down and scrub it clean while Anneliese and the baby rest. Donna has made food for supper and several prepared meals for the days ahead, and in the fridge I see food containers left by my mom. Leah stayed to do several rounds of vital signs and assessments of Anneliese and the baby, and set us up with a bedside checklist of our own, including a sheet of paper listing every imaginable perinatal complication broken down in two categories: “Yellow Flags” and “Red Flags.” I dared not read it, but I kept it close. Before she departed, Leah left a large jar of homemade bran muffin batter in the refrigerator. Donna baked a batch, and I thought it was a fine thing to be given the gift of a house filled with the smell of fresh baking.
Being in our own home on this, the first night of our child’s life, is comforting, but without the official interruption of a hospital trip I am left with a formless sense of unreality—up the stairs we came without a baby, and now looky here. It’s a soft-focus Shazam! Naturally, mingled with the glow in our hearts there is some trepidation, but at 10:45 p.m. the child poops. I take this as an affirmation of life.
At midnight, she poops again.
In the morning there is snow on the ground.
Leah and her apprentice return the following day to perform the newborn screen, and when they make the foot imprints to accompany the birth certificate, we get a taste of exactly what we have unleashed in this world. Unhappy with being dangled feetfirst in the air, the baby skips past crying and rockets straight to the furthest purple fringe of outrage. Such blaring. Not howling, not wailing, but a full-on sustained brass note fit to raise a regiment. Golly. It sounds like a blowout in the bugle