“It’s the one place in the city where truly anything can happen. That kind of potential is crucial for the San Francisco art community,” one woman on a recent grant-funding panel had said of the organization. It was true. Anything could happen in the safety of those walls, and it did. Now, I was ready to build new walls and tear down old ones. I had a new family to protect, Daddy needed me now, and so did my baby to be.
On March 2nd at about 4:30 a.m., a blood-tinged, snot-like mucous plug dropped from the hole of my cervix into the toilet. My focus shifted. For two weeks I’d been having pre-labor contractions and frantically attempting to finish all of the dangling projects and meet impending deadlines before the real labor began. From this moment on, any essays, deadlines, or press inquiries would be swept aside; I would focus on guiding my daughter into this world one contraction at a time, one breath at time, one painful stretch of the cervix at a time.
My uterus started to tremble, undulating waves of sensation and pressure spread throughout my organ that was now the size of a watermelon. My daughter’s head pressed hard and heavy against my cervix. We were both fighting to make our way into a new world.
I watched the green digital LED clock on the kitchen stove as I sat cross-legged on the linoleum floor. Every five minutes a contraction hit my body. I eagerly awaited each new contraction; I would let Daddy keep sleeping for now. As the sun came up I watched him snore in the family room on the mattress on the floor; his long, lanky body rising and falling under our deep violet satin sheets. I smiled as I listened to the nasal, wispy exhale seep from his gaping mouth. It gave him a charming bit of humanity.
I sent a simple text: “Labor has started. I lost my mucous plug. I think this it,” to our doula, Dani, as well as to Annie, Beth, and my mom. My mom would tell my dad.
I could feel my insides pushing their way to the outside: fetus, placenta, and all my love and fear tied up in blood vessels and nerve endings that would soon be exposed. I wonder, am I ready to let it all go? Am I ready to be torn wide open? I was not sure if I was willing to release all that fear and trauma yet, I had been holding onto a lot emotionally. All of the words left unsaid between James and me that once stuck in my throat had grown over the past year, burrowing deep into the bowels of my body.
Daddy woke up as one of the contractions subsided and I closed my eyes as he gently and tentatively touched my shoulder. I wanted to vomit up our recent past, but when I looked at him I had hope. I knew that if I kept space for him to return to, he would come back. It was my turn to take care of Daddy, and right now that meant waiting while Daddy found himself and knew himself, not just as my hero but as a man with flaws and scars and stories and histories that shaped him into a person I still loved.
Daddy was from the Emerald City of Seattle—the man behind the curtain, with a larger-than-life image. He was my hero when I needed one, when the questions seemed too hard to answer. The reality is that we all have heroic moments. Sometimes, we have to be our own heroes and sometimes our heroes need our help. They are, after all, human, too.
The sun was just peeking up over the horizon and I was approaching twenty-seven hours of labor. It had been a long day and night of waddling up and down the squeaky wooden floorboards in the hallway. When a contraction started I leaned up against the white walls of our apartment, pressing my face against the cool plaster and stared into the eyes of a painting that hung on our wall. The square stretch of canvas portrayed a girl with waves of red fiery hair, scarlet lips opened in a pouty display of pleasure, rope cinched tightly around her breasts. It was the girl I once was. I inhaled that image and exhaled something different, the swollen, throbbing discomfort of change.
I was seated on the mattress, and Daddy settled behind me. His body enveloped mine, his lips on my neck, his arms cradled around my hard round belly, as we breathed together through each contraction. I sobbed as I felt the past melting away, the intimacy and closeness I hadn’t felt in so very long felt as though it was returning. Daddy seemed intertwined with my pain, I could breathe through it with him there whispering in my ear, “Breathe…breathe…you can do it, Maddie. You can do anything.” I believed him.
When the sun came up for the second time during my labor, I was ready to go to the hospital. Daddy called to let them know we were on our way. James grabbed our hospital bag equipped with all of the necessities: toiletries, clothes, my waterproof vibrator, clothes and blankets for the baby, snacks, and water bottles. We’re ready.
He held my hand as I carefully made my way down our apartment staircase. The next time I entered through this door, we would be a trio. I looked up at James with this realization and smiled.
Dani was downstairs waiting for us. She smiled and looked up and at James and me. Her hands were wrapped around a gold, glittery thermos of coffee with a drawing of a pin-up model reading a book. Above the figure reads in bold typed font: “BRAINIACS ARE SEXY.” It was a drizzly morning and she was bundled warmly in dark denim jeans, a white long-sleeve thermal shirt, and a green puffy vest. She leaned in to me, kissed me on the cheek, and looked me in the eyes.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, placing a hand on my shoulder as the cab pulled up to the apartment.
“I’m ready to have this baby, Dani.” James opened the taxi door and we both awkwardly maneuvered our bodies into the back seat while Dani settled in front with the driver.
When we arrived, James and Dani led me down the long, sterile hallway of the maternity ward. The walls were a sunny yellow decorated with beautiful black and white framed portraits of small, wrinkly babies with squinty little eyes. I held Daddy’s hand tight as I watched a woman being wheeled out of a birthing room wearing a baby blue hospital gown, their newborn baby followed in a small clear plastic basinet. The baby was tiny and swaddled tightly in a blanket, its violet face scrunched up and screaming. The mother looked exhausted, red and sweaty, her hair in tangles, her expression resting somewhere in between a look of severe pain and a weak smile of bliss.
Her husband, standing next to them, was smiling ear to ear. He must have seen the look of pure fear on my face as I walked past; he laughed, taunting, “I’d turn back if I were you.”
I exhaled and nodded, forcing a smile. Grasping now both Dani’s hand and Daddy’s, Dani looked at me with a sweet smile. “Maddie, just remember there are plenty of people out there without much brains that do an awful lot of talking. Especially men.” I looked up at her and laughed, a welcome respite.
In the birthing room, Daddy helped me slip on my hospital gown while Dani unpacked our hospital bag. Out came photographs, angels, oils, flowers, vibrator, and birthing plan. A young doctor walked in. She was beautiful, with a short bob of blonde hair and pools of blue eyes. I carefully pulled my way up onto the stirrups and table and spread my legs. I was in labor but my cervix was only dilated three centimeters; at ten centimeters we pushed. We had a while to go.
I wanted to be immersed in warmth, in water. My muscles ached and my joints creaked, so, delirious with exhaustion, I lowered myself slowly into the bathtub in the hospital’s birthing suite.
Annie and Beth arrived from Santa Cruz, and eased their way into the room.
“Knock, knock. How is our beautiful mama?” Annie knelt down beside the tub of water.
“I’m so happy you’re here, Annie. I love you both so much.” I took Annie’s hand as a contraction came and we breathed together.
“I brought something for you.” Annie said. “It’s a scented oil. This one is lavender. Would you like me to place a little of it on your heart chakra?”
“I’d love that, Annie. Thank you.” She dabbed the lavender oils on my chakras and pulse points and I felt calmness and comfort set in. My heart was at ease in her presence.
Beth guarded the door, keeping staff and doctors from invading the intimate space we were creating for this birth. James set the mood, dimming the lights, setting the water to the perfec
t temperature and arming me with the waterproof vibrator. I touched the vibrator to my clitoris and practiced a deep exhale. Daddy, Beth, and Annie all joined in. Annie and Beth vocalized oms and chants while they shook the ritual percussive instruments they brought along for this special moment.
Daddy’s always good at details, it’s a talent of his. He knelt by the tub and combed his fingers through my hair, tenderly tracing my face with his hands. The doctors knocked on the door and Beth looked to me for the go ahead to let them in. She was my courageous lioness and I felt safe under her guard. As my labor continued hour after exhausting hour, we all feared the doctors would start to push for a caesarean. Beth knew I wanted a vaginal birth. I wanted to be present and connected for every long and exhaustive moment of the birth and labor.
The blonde doctor poked her head inside our small retreat and was embarrassed by the vibrator. She had seen the battery-powered device lying on the table in the birthing room a few hours earlier and jokingly asked if I was planning on singing some karaoke during the labor.
It was time for another examination. I toweled off, slipped on my gown, and headed back to the stirrups and table.
“This might be a little awkward,” the doctor commented while inserting her gloved, lubed hand. This was the least awkward part of my laboring experience. She removed her hand and shakes her head, “Hmm, well that’s not good…” then jotted something down in my file.
“What?” I started to panic, assuming something must be wrong with the labor.
“Well...your cervix is swelling. You have been laboring so long and so intensely that you’re now down to only two centimeters of dilation in your cervix, due to the swelling.” I wondered what this meant for the baby and me. Daddy held my hand and Annie, Beth, and Dani all huddled close to my shaking body. I started to cry. I was now forty hours into labor, I had been traveling down this yellow brick road for nearly two days; the door was closing in my face and I felt helpless and defeated. There was no turning around, I needed to be the one to release this child. I wanted to bring hope and life into our world through my own breath, through my own power. As the doctors started to swarm like flying monkeys I cried, nodded and accepted an epidural.
Annie dabbed a little lavender oil on my pillow, kissing my tear-streaked cheek.
I woke with Daddy by my side. He pulled a red Popsicle from a plastic bag, “I have a little something for you.” The strawberry popsicle melted in my mouth, sweet frozen perfection in my foggy state of consciousness. “She’s awake, Doctor.”
I had only been asleep for an hour and a half, but it was the first hour of sleep I’d had in two days. I woke up feeling reenergized and reinvigorated, with a renewed sense of accomplishment. The doctor examined me once more and smiles, “We’re ready to push. Are you ready for this?” I don’t know that I’ll ever fully be ready for this moment, but this is my chance. My moment for transformation, the beginning of my journey back home began. I looked up at the room full of people who loved me and believed in me.
“You can do this, Maddie.” Daddy said, holding my right hand, while Dani coached me through. My breathing and pushing and contractions approached one after the other. Annie chanted and Beth shared courageous, encouraging affirmations.
“Go for it, Maddie. You can do it. I know you have this in you.” Daddy said. His eyes had changed, they twinkled with life, and I felt so much closer to him. He stepped out from behind his curtain with a new bravery that I hadn’t seen before. His eyes teared up as his lips meet mine. He pushed my tangles of hair aside and whispered, “You are my hero, Maddie. You are my hero. You can do this, baby. I believe in you.”
Emma’s head began to crown and I pushed with love and courage and fight. The doctors scurried about and caught her, then cut the umbilical cord. Daddy, remembering that I wanted her placed on my breast immediately after the birth, ripped my hospital gown open and revealed my swollen milky breasts and still swollen belly. Emma latched her mouth around my breast and suckled. I looked up at Daddy and cried, “I did it, Papa. I did it.”
Daddy smiled with love and vulnerability that was new for him. He was a father, I was a mother, and our world was changing. We created something so much greater than ourselves to serve and care for.
“Can I hold her?” James asked, gazing down at our small, reddish-purple child, her head already covered with dark black hair and a streak of blonde running down the middle.
I planted my hands firmly on the cool, gray cement of the shaded patio floor. My legs stood tall, rooting me deeply into the earth below. My spine sloped from my hips to the crown of my head in downward dog. I gazed over at my toddling child mimicking my yoga position.
“Very good, Em. That is downward dog.” Her long, snowy blonde hair fell down over her blue eyes. Her cloth diaper bulged around her butt and poked its way out around her tan, chubby thighs.
“Dog,” she repeated, then stuck her tongue out and panted like a puppy. She maintained her yoga position until I moved into cobra. My belly touched the floor, my palms firm against the ground. As I arched my back I felt a strong bolt of radiant energy release from the crown of my head, pulling me upward toward the intense light of the sun.
I looked forward and focused my eyes on Daddy working in the garden. He was a tall tree of life among a landscape of dry lifeless desert in Southern California’s Inland Empire. It had been five months since we unpacked our complex San Francisco lives and moved into the large ranch-style suburban home in San Bernardino County. Here, our neighbors were retired police officers, United States generals, people who nailed crosses to their front doors and stuck Romney for President stickers to the bumper of their oversized pick-up trucks. Much of our belongings remained hidden away in boxes and crates in storage. Without Daddy’s position at KINK and my active touring schedule of workshops and filmmaking, our finances had run dry.
When we realized we couldn’t afford to stay in San Francisco, James picked up the phone and made an uncomfortable phone call to his older brother, Ed. They hadn’t spoken in ten years. Ed was a service man, a high-ranking lieutenant in the military. As a child, Ed was James’ hero—he had left their home in Massachusetts when he was eighteen, and James was only eight. Ed went out to see the world, serve his country, and escape their dysfunctional family and their alcoholic father.
Much of my adult life had revolved around a ten-block radius of our San Francisco apartment. It was a huge loss, and we were propelling into a frightening unknown. James and I were changing in every way possible. My belly was tiger-striped with stretch marks and I cut off all of my long red hair into a pixie cut since it had started falling out, a phenomenon known as post-partum shedding. My round, awkward body still clung onto twenty pounds of post-partum weight. When we left San Francisco, I felt like I was leaving behind a part of my identity; who was I if I didn’t reside within its queer, tattooed bosom?
Ed opened his home to us and graciously extended himself in every possible way. I tried to swallow my ego and accept the challenges we were handed. This could be a gift, a chance for James to reconnect with family and find a reprieve from the everyday triggers that reminded him of his recent unhappiness and posed a threat to his sobriety.
Now, James was turning the soil in Ed’s yard, seeding new plants in one of the raised beds, watering baskets of flowers and pruning overgrown basil and oregano. James wanted to grow a garden, to grow something for us. He wanted to cook and to nourish us. He saw the garden as something he could build and grow and then hand over to his brother when we were ready to leave. It was his tacit thank you.
I smiled and exhaled when he glanced back at me. Emma was squatting close to the floor. She studied my face and my smile, then reached out with her paint-covered hands to touch my cheeks, petting them gently: “Gentle Mama.”
Abandoning yoga, Em’s fingers pulled at her fair locks with great tension. Her hands fell with volition to her painted thighs, smacking h
er plump flesh with frustration at her sleepy body. I pulled her body to mine and whispered softly into her ear, “Shhhhh. Em, gentle. Be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with yourself and with those around you, my sweetheart.”
Shortly after Emma’s birth, my father came to visit us in San Francisco for the first time in the ten years I’d been living there. With the birth of his granddaughter, there were no more excuses. We were strolling slowly along the bay while James was busy securing a table at a seafood restaurant. I was holding Emma close to my body, as she was enveloped in a black fleece sling.
My dad stopped walking and looked out at the sea lions. It was windy and cold by the bay.
“Do you come say hello to the sea lions very often?” He plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and loudly blew his nose.
“No, Dad. This is pretty much for tourists.” There was an awkward pause. Between the waves crashing and the crowded Fisherman’s Wharf tourists, sound filled the air with a marriage of voices and white noise, but from the only voice I really cared to hear at that moment, there was silence.
“Why didn’t you ever come to see me, Dad? Why did you wait until now? My life is a mess right now. I wanted to make you proud of me.”
“I am proud of you. I’m proud of that little girl. I haven’t always been proud of myself. I know I haven’t always been the ideal father. But I love you. And of course I’m proud of you. How couldn’t I be proud of you? You followed your dreams. Now, those might not be the same as my dreams, but you followed them, and I love you for that. Hell, I love your brother and that boy can’t even find a dream! You’re family, you’re my daughter and you’ll always be my daughter, even when your life is a mess. I want to know that you’re okay.”
“I’m okay, Dad. Life is just a little scary right now.”
“Yeah. Life will do that, Tina. And it just gets scarier when you’ve got kids because then you start being scared for them.”
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