by Steve Almond
Death #7: Asphyxiation
Age of Deceased: 43 hours
As a rule, the nurses have no patience for us dads. We are clumsy, luggish, good for nothing. We have purchased our proximity to the miracle of birth with a thimbleful of sperm, and the bargain strikes them, perhaps appropriately, as outrageous.
Mostly we stay out of the way. We gather in the common room and stuff our mouths with muffins and murmur things like “Scary shit, man” and “Way to go” and “Yeah, we did it.” We do the stiff-armed man hug. We promenade our babies up and down the halls when they’re cranky and nod to each other wearily, like we’ve just been through hell and back and boy aren’t our vaginal canals sore!
The fact that I am finger feeding grants me a certain measure of maternity cred,4 and I make it a point to flaunt my role. “Do you have any spare syringes?” I say loudly, whenever I pass by the nurses’ station. “Yeah, I’ve got another feeding just now. I’m going with the index finger this time around. The pinkie made her a little gassy.”
Following the Hot Mustard debacle, Micki has explained to me that I must keep the syringe lower than my finger, so as to force Baby to suck against gravity and prevent her from gorging. But I am already conducting my fourth feeding, which naturally means I know more about the process than anyone else on earth. And thus it should be taken as no problem at all when I lift the syringe quickly, in an effort to scratch my neck, and it comes to rest a foot or so above Baby’s mouth, meaning that she is—with no actual warning—shotgunning formula.
Alas, Baby is not used to shotgunning. Baby has not even pledged a sorority. She signifies this by promptly sputtering, gagging, and reverting to her fallback asphyxiation shade (winter plum). Baby then vomits, which seems encouraging, except that I have failed to turn Baby on her side, so the vomit funnels back down her throat.
I have Jimi Hendrixed my daughter to death.
Death #8: Poison
Age of Deceased: 51 hours
The nurses have begun openly to hate me. This has to do not just with my regular and tiresome fears of having killed my daughter, but the fact that I have begun stealing unreasonable quantities of hospital property: diapers, formula, syringes, blankets, waterproof bed pads, petroleum jelly, hospital gowns, socks, bagels.5 The nurses watch from their station, flabbergasted, as I ferry the goods down to the parking lot in bulging plastic sacks. They are too embarrassed to stop me.
Why am I doing this? For one thing, the other dads have encouraged me. They have indicated that absconding with items is standard protocol. I have simply taken the practice to a new level, a level perhaps best described as grand larceny.
The truth is, having been relieved of finger feeding duty (see Death #7) I am bored. Thus I am trying to prove myself useful. I am—by a rather loose definition—hunting and gathering. It might also be conjectured that I am somewhat nervous about leaving the hospital with Baby and am therefore attempting to take a significant portion of the hospital home with me.
Nonetheless, after two days, a frightfully young pediatrician appears, examines Baby, and hands us our walking papers. Chief Nurse Kelly does not say, “We’re sorry to see you go!” She does not say, “Do you need anything else?” She does not say, “What a cute baby!” She says, “I assume you’ll have room in the cah for your daughtah.”
We arrive home and place Baby in the fancy frilled bassinet Erin managed to secure from friends.6 We stare at Baby for several minutes and wait—as do all parents in such circumstances—for a detailed instruction manual to float down from heaven and land in our hands.
Instead, we are left to fend for ourselves. Baby continues to latch improperly. I am placed back on finger feeding duty. The single item I failed to steal from the hospital now becomes apparent: the tape used to bind feeding tube to finger.
Is it wise for me to use duct tape instead? I suppose it is not. But when you are face-to-face with a hysterical newborn at three in the morning, your judgment clouds. And the duct tape works like a charm. Baby chows down, making her endearing Viking slurps and, toward the end of the feeding, producing a Mustard Explosion so prodigious it blows out the edges of her diaper.7 Only later do I realize that Baby’s power suckling has stripped away a portion of the duct tape from my finger and that Baby has thus ingested a good deal of the adhesive.
Baby appears to be sleeping peacefully, but I cannot shake the fear that this adhesive is toxic and that Baby will soon begin foaming at the mouth. I tiptoe over and stare down at her in the dim light. Her breathing seems shallow and hurried. I scurry to my computer and Google “duct tape” and “toxic adhesive.” There is a wealth of information about sealants and thermal insulation, but nothing on whether I’ve killed my daughter. I return to the bedroom and hover over Baby for the next twenty minutes.
“What’s the matter?” Erin murmurs. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I say. “How much do you know about duct tape?”
She rushes over to the bassinet and reaches for Baby, who jolts awake at her touch and throws a drowsy left jab.
Death #9: Heat Stroke
Age of Deceased: 59 hours
Issues have arisen as to heating. Erin would like the house at 70 degrees, so as to avoid freezing the child to death. I would prefer the low sixties, arguing that we can dress Baby in layers. After a brief discussion involving the possibility of separate dwellings, the thermostat is set at 70 degrees.
Owing to the general decrepitude of our home heating system—which appears to operate by means of a small British orphan shoveling coal into a burning sock—it is determined that 70 degrees is not warm enough. I drag my ancient portable heater into the bedroom. A few hours later I awaken, bathed in sweat. We are on the brink of dawn, the pink hour at which the room should be chilliest. It is a sauna. I have forgotten this crucial fact about the heater: It is an extremely badass piece of equipment. And now I realize, with sinking dread, that I have placed this monstrosity right next to Baby’s crib and that (therefore) its supercharged heat quasars have been blasting Baby for the last four hours straight, a fact that explains her uncharacteristic silence.
I have boiled Baby’s blood.
Unlike the many other forms of distress I’ve inflicted on my daughter thus far, heat is a silent killer. No coughing. No crying. Just a moist descent into coma, followed by the noiseless simmering of internal organs. I throw the blankets off, rip the heater’s cord from the wall, and stagger to the foot of the bed. I burrow my thumb under Baby’s onesie, searching for her tiny poached heart. When I feel the flicker, I drop to my knees.
Baby stares at me with her fuzzy gray eyes and yawns.
Death #10: Grief
Age of Deceased: 77 hours
Baby is crying. Baby will not stop crying. We have tried everything in our limited repertoire: food, a new diaper, rocking. We have run through all five of the measures recommended by the creepy doctor in our Happiest Baby on the Block video. We have even blasted the eerie amniotic horror music at the end of the DVD, a very bad decision for all involved.
Erin is becoming panicky, so I send her downstairs to do laundry.
Now it is just me and Baby. I walk her from room to room and whisper my secret vows of love, and Baby yells and weeps and chokes on her tears. Her face appears frozen in a gummy frown. Her ears are tiny red seashells. There is a hot momentum to her misery; she is speaking in tongues, an ecstatic.
It is her right as a citizen of earth, this aria of sorrow, this abject declaration. She puts everything she is, every ounce of her, into each shriek. Her breath is so sweet I want to climb inside her mouth. I kiss her cheek and she cries harder.
And as I watch her, as I listen to her crescendo, as I feel her muscles tense against my chest, I begin to recognize the source of my own terror. The world will kill this child, day by day, wish by wish. I can do little to protect her, almost nothing. The very love I inflict on her will only sharpen her disappointment in the end. She is a part of the great cosmic joke now, the daily lame
ntation of a species born into pain. Baby is only telling me the truth: It hurts so much right now I could die.
This is when it happens a final time. Baby seizes up. Her throat catches. Her body, with a culminating exhalation, falls limp against me.
Erin appears with a load of warm blankets. The house has gone still. It smells of garlic and burned sugar. A half moon hangs over us. The silence sounds now like the warm echo of the creature I am holding. Erin sets her hand on the small of my back. She rests her forehead against my chest. She stares at our baby with a love so dumb and fierce as to forgive everything.
“You got her to sleep,” she says softly. “Nice work, Papa.”
HAM FOR CHANUKAH
Every year, when Chanukah season rolled around, my brothers and I would make the suburban pilgrimage to the home of our grandparents, where we would ring in the holiday with a big, juicy Chanukah ham. We would then gather around the festively decorated Chanukah tree and tear open the brightly wrapped Chanukah gifts beneath, often while swilling syrupy Chanukah eggnog and munching Chanukah gingerbread cookies.1
It will be difficult to explain why, as full-blooded Jews, the spawn of actual rabbis, we took part in this deeply fucked-up ritual. But I am going to try to explain. Because that is what Jews do: We try to explain. I’ll need to start with my great-grandfathers Morris Rosenthal and David Almond. Both were scholars of the old-school variety, both, according to the available evidence, completely out of their minds.
David was renowned in his family for his fanatic theories concerning diet, the most pronounced of which ascribed to fresh milk certain miraculous health benefits. Every Saturday, he took his children on a long constitutional through the farmland surrounding Chicago, the despised culmination of which was a visit to a local dairy farmer for a ration of the freshest milk available. (I do not mean to imply that David forced his children to suck milk directly from the cow’s teat, though I rather like the image.) In his later years, by now a veteran rabbi, David managed to invent a scientific discipline; ontomology was devoted to establishing God’s existence using logical proofs. I have read his book on the subject, or tried to, and will offer no further comment at this time, as I do not believe in God or logic.
David Almond’s counterpart on the maternal side, Morris Rosenthal, was a yeshiva bocher in White Russia, meaning that he was kicked out of his house at age six and forced to become an itinerant student of the Talmud. Later, he was conscripted into the czar’s army, where he spent two years trading his sausage rations (not kosher) for potatoes and onions. As a young scholar fresh from the army, Morris attended a physics lecture at which the professor produced a rainbow by shining light through a misty veil of water. This demonstration was apparently enough to shake his faith in the Almighty. I suspect the privations of the clerical lifestyle played a role here as well. In any event, he emigrated to the Bronx and became, at age forty, a dentist of notorious methods. My mother still speaks shakily of her visits to Grandpa Morris’s office; he did not believe in anesthesia. Morris remained a student of the Old Testament throughout his life, though in the oppositional sense. He devoted his later years to the writing of a book which set out to prove God did not exist.2
I mention this history by way of making a simple point: The family’s proud rabbinical tradition was in fact marred by eccentricity, not to mention cranky despair. The children born to both men—can this come as a surprise?—turned away from formal modes of Judaism.
My paternal grandfather Gabriel endured a thorough Jewish education, then went off and became a famous political scientist. His basic attitude was that God had done some interesting work early on, but hadn’t published much lately.
The most influential member of the family, in regard to our own peculiar Chanukah ritual, was Gabriel’s wife, Dorothea. She was the only child of a wealthy German banker and a socialite, neither of whom was particularly observant. Dorothea and her parents escaped Germany before the worst of the atrocities, mostly because they were rich enough to get inside information about how bad it would get. (Other members of the family weren’t so lucky.)
But I don’t think Dorothea ever fully processed the experience. She remained intensely identified with German culture. Let me be more candid: She struck me as tacitly anti-Semitic, as if any acknowledgment of her Judaism would be an invitation to more upheaval. She was active in the Unitarian church. And it was she who insisted that the family gather at her home on Christmas Day, so that we could enact some good old consumerist gluttony in the name of the birth of Jesus Christ.
Do I sound bitter? I had hoped to avoid bitterness.
The obvious question is where my parents were in all this. They were where they always were during my childhood: in the land of Doing Their Best Under the Circumstances. They had three aggressively anxious boys to manage, after all, plus two complicated careers, and the aforementioned family ghosts.
My father was never permitted to experience his Judaism. The story that has always struck me as emblematic of his upbringing has him singing Christmas carols with a bunch of goyische buddies in Princeton, New Jersey. Among those serenaded was none other than Albert Einstein, who waved to them through his living room window. There is something almost unbearably tender and deluded to this image: my father (a Jew) singing “O Holy Night” to Einstein (another Jew); the benevolent, collaborating wave that passes between them. In my conjuring of this scene, I have put snow in the background, a golden nimbus of light all around, and, behind Einstein himself, a Christmas tree sparkling with ornaments.
I’m not saying I blame my dad. He was the eldest son of a spectacularly self-absorbed academic and a distant mother. He was shuttled around the country as a kid. He wanted to fit in.
My mother’s situation was in some ways more extreme. Her parents were those crazy card-carrying Communists. Although culturally identified as Jews, they believed religion was the opiate of the masses. They were also scared stiff during the fifties. My mother never fully understood what all the anxiety was about as a child, which might have made matters worse.
As should be apparent, neither of my parents was given much grounding in the upside of Judaism. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that the Jewish influence took shape exclusively in the secular realm. They were people of ideas, intellectual, ambitious, socially responsible. To the extent that two professionals could, they embraced the heady idealism of the counterculture movement. They were not naïve or self-hating about their Judaism; they were simply overrun by competing interests.
And so our religious inheritance was, to put it Yiddishly, moyshe kapoyer. Consider our names: David Emmanuel, Michael Isaac, Steven Benjamin.3 Or consider our education. We were sent off to Sunday school for a few years, but I remember almost nothing of the experience: being forced to eat prune cookies at Purim, the acrid waft of a sun-softened blacktop. For the most part, we were public school kids, trying our best not to get our asses beaten by the toughs.
The apotheosis of our quasi-Jewish upbringing was the bar mitzvah ritual. I have implied on previous occasions that my bar mitzvah took place in our hot tub. This is not actually true. But it was a D.I.Y. home bar mitzvah, overseen by my father (as opposed to a rabbi). And it did feature a somewhat exclusive hot tub after-party. First, of course, came the traditional prayers, speech, and buffet, which took place in our living room/dining room, into which we crammed 150 folding chairs and a metric ton of cold cuts. My father, blessed be his mishagoss, helped us compose our speeches4 and prepared cheat sheets with the required Hebrew prayers spelled out phonetically (baw-rooch ah-taw ad-doh-noi…). I am hazy on the other details, mercifully so. I remember the itch of my blazer, a certain disembodied anxiety. I wanted very badly not to screw up and embarrass my pop. The comment that perhaps best sums up the liturgical experience came from my grandfather Irving, a man renowned more for candor than tact. “Was that supposed to be Hebrew?” he said to me, while forking sliced tongue onto his paper plate. “It sounded like you were speaking Spanish.�
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Yes, well, yo no hablo Hebrew.
And why didn’t we join a temple? Good question. My parents have expressed considerable regret over this in the past few years. They feel—and I tend to agree—that we could have found a larger community in this way, and relieved some of the pressures that beset the family. We were living in Palo Alto, after all, a suburb with no shortage of congregations. But the possibility never came up for discussion. And so the only time that religion impinged on our lives at all was during the holiday season.
Which brings us back to why, year after year, we schlepped over to the ancestral home on Old Trace Road and took part in our bizarre Chrisnukah ritual.
This, like most everything else in life, boils down to family politics. Dorothea was the one pushing the Christmas agenda, and she was a control freak of the first order. My mother was a control freak too. But she discerned pretty quickly that fighting Dorothea on the Christmas thing was wasted energy. Dorothea had the conviction—however misbegotten—and the material advantage. Because let’s face it: When you’re a kid, your allegiance to holidays boils down to loot. From this perspective, Chanukah has never stood a chance against Christmas, with its mighty, sleigh-riding, toy-pimping saint.
My parents did remind us that, despite the schweinfest at Grandma and Grandpa’s, we were Jews. Most years, we conducted an informal Chanukah ceremony, which meant gathering around the kitchen table to light the candles after dinner. What I remember of this ritual was the moment, just as my mother reached to light the candles on our battered menorah, when my father would turn to us and begin to sing the blessing in his soft baritone. The expression in his eyes was one of excruciating yearning. He wanted to know which of his sons would join him. Most of the time, we left him high and dry. Who were we to act all Jewy? It felt like a put-on. It made us squirm.