Originally published on Mother of Confusion
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on July 24, 2008

My son was born after midnight during the cooler days of May, before the Central Valley could blaze triple-digit temperatures.

The delivery room was packed full of people. The doctor, several nurses, my husband, my parents and my mother-in-law were in attendance. As my son emerged into the world, I expected him to gasp and then cry about the abrupt ejection.

He did not.

Instead he was quiet and blue. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his slender neck several times. Of course I didn’t know that yet, but the jubilant faces of the others gave way to peaked, pinched expressions.

When I asked what was wrong. The response was, “Nothing. Everything’s okay. It’s okay.”

The reassurances scared me. I was only 20-years-old, but already I knew people lied when things were really, really wrong.

Did I not push hard enough or fast enough? The doctor had yelled at me to stay focused, but I kept passing out. He had to assist the delivery with a vacuum device.

Before I could convince myself my baby wasn’t coming home, he cried.

Once assured my son would keep breathing, the doctor plopped him on my belly. When his skin touched mine, I panicked. My stomach felt as slippery as satin sheets on a waterbed. The baby was going to shoot right off and smack the floor. I grabbed on to him and asked for a blanket — something, anything — to give some traction.

Maternal fear knifed sharp and deep. The days of planning the nursery, rubbing my swollen belly and wishing my son would be born sooner, rather than later, felt whimsical. What the hell was I thinking?

I searched for my mom. She sat on the left side of me and appeared happy, but exhausted.

“Mom.” I felt shaky. “I can’t do this. I can’t.” I wanted her to hug me and to tell me it was going to be okay. I wanted to be reassured.

It took her a moment to process my proclamation. When she figured out what I’d meant, she chuckled. “Well, too late now kid. You already are.”

The editors and writers behind Blog Nosh Magazine are a motley bunch. Our stories are hilarious, colorful, transcendent, painful, absurd, and strong. They are what define us, make us interesting, and sharpen our eye for stories that we know will resonate with you.

I am not an exception to this rule. I have my story, as well, and as much as I try to fight its attempts to define me, it colors my every day.

Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast. When she left, she took my home with her. Down to the bare slab of concrete. I was far from alone in my loss.

Her reach was astonishing. Her strength was impressive. Her cruelty was deplorable. And yet, she left us with spirits far better defined than we thought possible in the days and hours before August 29, 2005.

Our feature today begs a little favoritism as I republish my own first writing of my family’s experience on the Mississippi Gulf Coast during and after Hurricane Katrina, playfully titled Victor Vito, after a Laurie Berkner song. Many of you have read it before, far more never even realized that I had a Katrina story. That’s one of my favorite things about the editors of Blog Nosh Magazine: we do not wear our tragedies on our sleeves. We are so much more than what we’ve witnessed. Plus, we much prefer to knock your socks off with them when you least expect it. It is then that we know you are listening.

While we have your delectably nibble-worthy ear, we would like to take a moment and thank one of this month’s sponsors of Blog Nosh Magazine, Tide Loads of Hope. A deliciously novel disaster-relief campaign, Tide Loads of Hope centers around a simple plan. After natural disasters, nationwide, a Loads of Hope truck equipped with 32 high-efficiency washers and dryers is sent out to meet one of the most basic human needs of families in crisis: clean clothes.

You can read much more about the Loads of Hope program at http://tideloadsofhope.com, as well as my personal response to their nationwide disaster relief efforts in my Hurricane Katrina 4th Anniversary post at Velveteen Mind. Only the end is about Tide…

{Originally published on John T. Unger Studio}

The best thing that ever happened to me was the night an angry, messed up cab driver pulled me into the back room of a 24 hour diner and held a huge handgun to my head for over ten minutes, all the while describing in intricately fetishistic detail exactly what would happen when he pulled the trigger.

Why? Because it changes you, staring down a nutjob holding a gun. After that, the small stuff just doesn’t get sweated. You either break, or break through to a mandatory satori of keeping things in proportion that most people never get to walk away from. It’s an ice calm I wouldn’t trade for anything.

The second best thing that ever happened to me was when the dot com crash of 2000 wiped out most of the design industry at the peak of my career as a freelance print designer. I went from turning away work every week to working exactly 7 days of the next year. I lost my girl. I lost my loft. I lost part of my thumb in an accident moving out of the loft. I pretty much lost it all.

Of course, the only reason I was working in offices was to fund the art career I wanted… materials, space, tools, etc. I worked eight hours in the office and ten in the studio, sleeping when I passed out involuntarily. I decided that if my industry had tanked, I was damned if I was gonna retrain to do something else I didn’t want to do. I chose to make the art be my sole means of support. I built some monumentally scaled commissions working out of borrowed shop space, with borrowed gear, sleeping on borrowed couches.

It worked. I’ve been making my living as an artist ever since, and these days I earn triple the income I ever did from the best corporate gigs.

The third best thing that ever happened was the day my studio building collapsed under a load of snow while I was standing on the roof shoveling. I rode that roof to the ground like a gut-shot rodeo pony. The building and some pricey tools were completely destroyed, but I was unharmed… until I spent the next three months (December, January and February) without heat, running water or a stove because the natural gas line into the house had been severed in the collapse. The gas company refused to fix the line until they could bury it in the spring. I lost a few brain cells, I’m sure, by running an unvented kerosene heater inside the house to stay alive.

{Originally published on Chicken and Cheese.}

Not too long ago, we bathed The Poo while chatting about all the people who love her.

We listed off all her grandparents, and then spent time explaining how we, her parents, were also children.

“Your grandma and grandpa are my mommy and daddy,” Mr. Chicken told her, as he sluiced shampoo from her hair using a small container of water. “And meema is Mommy’s mommy.”

Suddenly, without warning, The Poo realized a new truth about our extended family.

“Mommy!” she exclaimed, the gears in her head grinding away. “You don’t have a daddy!”

I winced, her words hitting me as hard as any blow. My father’s been on my mind of late.

This is, you see, my season of loss.

*****

Even as we welcome a new soul to our household, my mind wanders - dreadfully - to this date on the calendar. Four years ago today, at 3:30 in the afternoon, my father drew his last breath.

Each year I think the hours will come and go like any other, just a pair of numbers and nothing more. I believe I will keep house and tend children, spending my time as I would on an ordinary day.

But this day, this terrible day, will never be ordinary again.

The immediacy of my grief has faded; that much is true. No longer do I wake in the heart of the night, veins pounding with dreams the color of blood. No longer do I wake each Aug. 26 precisely at 4 a.m., the time my telephone rang with the news that an ambulance was ferrying my father to the emergency room.

But when August begins to wane, a bruise rises to the surface, tender and easily irritated. The warm weather and the slant of the sun prompt recollections I’d rather forget - walking my parents’ dog in the late afternoon the week before my dad died, while they were away at The Mayo Clinic; the hope I felt when the doctors reported that the cancer was dead; the terrible tremor in my dad’s voice the last time I spoke to him on the phone.

I called to tell my mother I wanted to come out to Minnesota. I was on vacation, and something inside urged me to get on a plane and be with them.

{Originally posted on Mid-Century Modern Moms}

Once upon a time, there was a little boy with a dream.