Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [73]
I would have liked the chance to be with one of you, while you had a baby of your own. Presumptuous, I know. You might not have liked it—the fathers of these babies might have been horrified at the notion of having their mother-in-law (get me, old-fashioned—their partner’s mother, should I say!) muscling in. But I would have asked. I think it would have been amazing.
And now—unless one of you (PLEASE not Hannah) gets busy very soon—I’m afraid I won’t get the chance—even to ask. I do hope you have babies. I’m not interfering, honest. I’m just saying. It was, without doubt, the very, very best thing that ever happened to me. I know women can exist happily without children, and I know society shouldn’t pressure them—blah, blah, blah—and I get all of that—really I do—I’m quite modern, for an old girl. I just want my girls to have babies. That’s all. So they know what I know.
Lisa came on a Sunday, like I said. She was a week and a half late. Which felt like a year and a half. I was the size of a small cow. It was hot, and it had gotten so that my thighs rubbed together and got sore when I walked, so I tried to avoid that. I couldn’t get cool and I couldn’t get comfortable. And I couldn’t get you out, Lisa. Even drank castor oil, which I don’t recommend. When my waters went—rather theatrically, really late on Saturday night. I was half asleep on the sofa. Thought I’d wet myself—I was so excited. Because I was going to get to see my baby, of course—and don’t forget, we didn’t have scans and things like that, so we didn’t know whether you would be a girl (although I desperately wanted you to be one. I never said, because it seemed disloyal to a boy, but at night I used to lie in bed and imagine a girl, and dream of a girl)—but also because I figured I was finally going to get some sleep. I know—idiotic notion. But I was young and naïve. We didn’t have a car, so your dad called a taxi, and off we went. I had one of those hard-sided round suitcases. I’d had it to go on honeymoon. It was red. I’d been knitting matinee jackets, yellow and green, of course, all summer—I could have clothed the entire maternity ward. Off we went, and it was like I was heading for the Omaha landings; I’d spent nine months imagining that this was going to be the worst, the very worst, most agonizing pain a person could go through. For the woman in the bed next to me, it clearly was. I told myself I was a cabbage, and I just lay there, saying, in my head, “You’re a cabbage, you’re a cabbage.” Who knew I was an early practitioner of meditation technique in labor?! A pioneer. Thing was—I kept waiting for it to get really bad, waiting for death to seem like a good option, and it just never did. I remember this midwife—she was Welsh, and about five foot two; I could barely see the top of her head when she was down at the foot of the bed, coming to do a check on me, and asking her whether she thought my baby would come today. She’d laughed and said that she thought my baby would come within the hour and that they needed to get me down to the delivery ward right away. I couldn’t believe it! I’d just sent your dad to the pub down the road for a sandwich and a beer. It was all over by the time he got back. Not that he’d have been there if he’d been there, if you know what I mean. Really was the old days! Suited me fine. They let me tell him you were a little girl, after I’d got into a clean nightie, and they’d cleaned you up. None of this demand feeding stuff—you were promptly wheeled off to the night nursery.
You had the longest fingers. Everyone kept saying you’d make a great pianist. I loved them. You waved them around in front of your face, and they were so graceful and expressive. They said you