Now You See the Sky

by Catharine H. Murray

  After a week in this new home, this retreat, we returned to the river, but now I knew we had this to come back to, an escape from the heat and mosquitoes and business of our life on the river. The quiet magic of the place stayed with me like a good secret.

  ONE WORLD

  Now that we were parents, we realized we needed to think more seriously about how to support ourselves beyond the little we made with the guest house and part-time teaching. At a friend’s suggestion, we decided to combine our love of bicycling with our passion for learning about, respecting, and preserving indigenous cultures. We created a bike tour business we called One World Bicycle Expeditions. We envisioned taking small groups of tourists beyond the facade of Thailand’s hotels and guest houses and into “real” culture. Our mission was to support local industries while showing foreigners the elegance and beauty of traditional ways of life. We were so familiar with the Western and missionary perspectives on “developing” countries as less advanced and in need of Western ideas about education and progress. Our experience of local culture was the opposite, that ancient beliefs and ways of working with the land and communities were far more sustainable and sensible than the capitalist model Western aid organizations espoused. We wanted to bring this knowledge to foreigners. We also wanted to support organic farmers and villagers and craftspeople by bringing small groups of bikers through their communities in an environmentally low-impact way. It seemed to us that by increasing their markets we would be sharing the income we received from our clients and supporting rural economies. We had already seen the way the increased Westernization of Thailand was pulling able-bodied adults away from their villages to Bangkok and smaller cities in order to work in construction or kitchens or factories, to send money home to their families. This often meant young parents leaving their infants and children in the villages with grandparents. As young parents ourselves this seemed cruel, more to the parents than the children. We wanted to keep families together, and we thought the idea of bicycle expeditions might in some small way help with what we saw as a problem.

  When Cody was six months old, we welcomed our first tour. We’d placed ads in Bicycling and Adventure Cycling magazines, and, much to my surprise, people had responded. This was in the early days of the Internet, so e-mail and websites were a novelty. I learned enough, though, to explain to potential clients that they’d have to mail me a check for the full amount of the tour before arriving in Thailand. Something must have made them trust us because they always did this without complaint. Dtaw and I imagined and created everything ourselves: the brochures we mailed to people, the routes, and the other logistics. Dtaw even designed a special removable rack for the van we rented to carry the bikes when we went to meet the clients at the airport in Udon, a city four hours away from our home. Cam agreed to ride with us to help on the tours. He took one of the new mountain bikes we’d purchased in Bangkok back with him to the village to practice using the gears and get used to riding long distances. He was a lifelong farmer and laborer, so strength and endurance wouldn’t be a problem, but we needed to be sure he could be comfortable spending whole days on a bike.

  We didn’t think twice about whether or not to bring a six-month-old baby on the trips. Ever since returning to Thailand after Cody’s birth, we had been taking him on long rides. With the upcoming tours in mind, we had arranged to have Burley, one of the first companies to make these lightweight contraptions for towing kids behind bikes, provide us one free of charge for the tours. We had brought Cody’s car seat with us from America, and since he was too tiny to sit up and be strapped in with the trailer’s safety belts, we cinched the car seat in and let him ride that way. We had to take numerous test rides before perfecting the shade we rigged with cloth and bungee cords to keep the hot sun off him during the long hours of riding. Once we had it right, we decided he was happy and comfortable riding along the river behind my bike. That first group of bikers was made up of Americans and a man from Israel who made himself Cody’s honorary grandfather on the tour. Our clients seemed to enjoy having Cody’s company along the way. We were so enamored of our son, we couldn’t have imagined any other reaction.

  The tour was a success. Everyone told us their eyes had been opened by the experiences they had meeting the hosts in the village homes where we slept on the floor and shared meals with the families. The clients loved stopping along the way to join farmers in the rice and cassava and cotton harvesting. They learned about weaving and dying and cooking and fermenting, all from standing beside the makers and taking part in the process. And, of course, the fresh organic meals we carefully planned to showcase the best, most wholesome local foods amazed people. We were far more satisfied than we’d ever imagined by seeing how Westerners’ sense of “other” had been transformed by the trips. Together, Dtaw and I had created and executed a dream come true. Despite the challenges of running a business as a couple, we loved our new venture because we saw it as contributing to our shared vision of international understanding, a way to reinforce peace in a crazy world.

  Trips were sporadic, so I continued to teach, and we continued to run our guest house, but the bike tours became our mission and passion.

  Blessing

  Two years after Cody and Jew were born, I was pregnant again. My mother-in-law sat at the feet of the old monk in the temple at the end of our road as he listened to her words. His daily fast had been broken by the morning meal she and the other supplicants had cooked and brought from their homes. Mei Ya talked of the imminent birth of her eighth grandchild and asked for the blessing string that, properly blessed and tied, would keep the new baby safe and healthy. The monk turned to the spool of cotton string beside him and unwound a generous length of it, clipping it neatly with his teeth. Having been held in the hands of all twenty-one monks as they sat side by side reciting the holy scriptures and chanting over meals, this string was imbued with blessings.

  The abbot turned back to Mei Ya and put a clean square of saffron-colored handkerchief on the smooth cement floor in front of where he sat on the platform above her kneeling figure. He lay the coil of string on the cloth so that he would not have to place it directly into her hands.

  She raised her gnarled fingers, palms together, in front of her forehead, the highest point of her body, to show the highest respect, reserved for monks and elders, and to thank him. She took the string without needing to think about touching his robes accidentally. She’d grown up with the knowledge that for a monk to have even his robes brushed by a woman was not permitted. That awareness was second nature for both. Settling back on her haunches, toes curled under her strong feet, she put her hands together high in front again, bent forward at the waist until her forehead kissed the cool cement, and pressed both palms flat against the floor. Immediately she rose back up to sitting, bringing her palms together again, and repeated the movement until she had bowed three times to honor each of the triple gems: the Buddha, the teachings, and the community of practitioners.

  Labor

  I wanted a home birth, so we invited our midwife Schyla, who had attended Cody’s birth in Portland, to come to Thailand. Only half a generation earlier, all births in this area had been home births, but the miracle of Western medicine and the profitization of health care had also brought the medicalization of birth. By the time I was pregnant, home birth only existed in the most remote villages.

  Part of welcoming our American midwife included trips into the outlying countryside to meet village midwives and ask them about their experiences and opinions of home birth. In one village, we stood in the yard next to a bamboo hut talking with an old woman. She told us about giving birth in the field as she worked. The wiry woman squatted and put her hands below her crotch, demonstrating the correct position for catching your own baby. She reminded me, “Don’t forget to tear the membranes with your fingers after it’s born. Your new baby will need to breathe, so you must remember to do this.” And there under the bright sky, she curved her forefinger and middle finger into
hooks and tore open the imaginary bag around the imaginary baby between her legs.

  I loved visiting these women, listening to them, letting them lay their hands on my huge belly to feel the baby’s position and announce him perfectly ready to be born. I drank in the relaxed confidence with which they talked and moved. “It will be an easy birth.” I heard this phrase repeated from each strong, wrinkled woman we met. I hoped so. An hour from any real medical care other than our midwife and the ill-equipped local hospital, I was counting on an easy birth.

  * * *

  The due date came and went. Schyla had been trying for weeks to help move me into labor with various tinctures and herbal teas. A few days after I started the Blue Cohosh, contractions like hard cramps began to twist around my belly. Each night I went to sleep sure I’d wake up ready to give birth. On the fifth day after the cramps had started, Schyla tried to stretch my cervix and strip the membranes. This should have caused cramps and backache, if not labor. Nothing.

  The next step was castor oil. Schyla had heard of mixing it with cold Pepsi. Big mistake. Little clots of oil formed in the bubbles, and I could only manage one gulp before gagging. Putting it in the blender with grape juice and drinking it without even taking the time to put it in a glass made it possible to force most of the rest down. The gas it caused seemed to get things moving, with lots of cramps, but I woke up the next day still pregnant. On the tenth day, we talked about breaking the water, but when Schyla checked me, she found my cervix soft and thin and three centimeters dilated. She was able to stretch it out to six centimeters.

  “It’s got to be tonight,” she said. “You’re so open. Your cervix is like mush.”

  Three hours later I was in real labor, two weeks late and only a day before Schyla was scheduled to go back to Maine. By six p.m. the pains were five minutes apart. I sang to cope. “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “All Glory, Laud and Honor.” I needed enough of the lyrics to get me through one contraction at a time. Trying to keep the words and the tune gave me something to try to hold onto with my mind while the pain progressed. “Life, I love you. All is groovy . . .” As the intensity of the pain increased, I increased the volume of my singing to match it.

  I kept searching for the best position to lessen the pain: on my knees, on my back, on my feet; but, of course, there was no position. The pain wasn’t going away. I could feel part of each contraction in my back, some pressure, but not unbearable.

  I told Schyla not to tell me how far apart the contractions were because I was afraid of engaging the logical, clock-watching part of my mind. I needed to be as unintellectual as possible for this, I knew. I needed to be my animal self. Finally, I settled on the back porch floor on my mat with three pillows.

  As soon as I lay still and stopped trying to escape the pain, tried instead to fully experience it, things got easier. With every contraction, I reminded myself that it would end and even be short, not more than a minute or so. I visualized my cervix opening where the pain felt like a vertical slit midway between my pubic bone and belly button. My singing turned into wordless toning, louder and louder and higher and higher as the contraction built, dropping away as the pain did.

  Schyla sat at my feet. Dtaw came back and forth from the kitchen with chicken broth, ice, apple juice, and popsicles. I was able to joke between contractions. Dtaw made me smile telling me about Cody’s latest accomplishments: pouring juice, kicking a ball with his cousin.

  I knew the neighbors could hear me, but no one complained about the singing cries that arose from our house every three minutes. I kept saying how this labor was so much easier than Cody’s. It was good to be relaxed, not panicking, knowing my body would release this child. I enjoyed having Schyla’s and Dtaw’s full attention and support. I bossed them around without remorse.

  “Schyla, move your toe off my mat. Dtaw, bring me a popsicle now. Don’t hold my hand!”

  Schyla assured me this was the perfect time to fully inhabit my goddess persona.

  The pain intensified. I threw up twice. I remembered Schyla telling us in her birth class two years earlier that this was a great sign of opening and moving into transition.

  Dtaw gave me his hand to hold, but when I did I felt as if I would slip out of the place of power I’d worked hard to maintain. I was afraid of falling into the role of victim to the pain, and when I held my husband’s hand I started to feel like a weak, helpless woman, not a good attitude when facing the challenge of giving birth. I let go.

  Schyla waited for a chance between contractions to put her fingers in my cervix to see how much progress I’d made.

  “Katie, this baby is about to born,” she almost shouted with excitement and relief. “You’re nine centimeters dilated. I can feel his head and the water bag bulging out.”

  Dtaw and I looked at each other and laughed. I hadn’t expected her to say that at all. Things just hadn’t gotten that bad yet. After Cody’s birth in the US when the Pitocin-induced labor ended up being a thirty-six-hour ordeal, I had expected much worse.

  We had decided to have the birth in the bedroom, but there was momentary confusion as we considered doing it right there on the porch since I was so close. We finally settled on the bedroom and Schyla ran to unwrap her sterilized tools and prepare. While she was gone, Dtaw and I smiled at each other with anticipation.

  In the dim plywood-walled room on the bed where this baby was conceived and where Dtaw had been born, I kneeled on all fours. Cody, Jew, Mei Ya, Cam, and Tong sat outside the open door, waiting, ready to welcome the newest member of the family.

  “Okay, your water’s going to break, and then you’re going to have the baby,” Schyla said before she rushed to the bathroom to wash her hands.

  A contraction started to build. The bag exploded and water went everywhere.

  “Schyla, Schyla!” Dtaw yelled. Dtaw is normally not a yeller.

  “The water broke!” I shouted.

  She returned and Dtaw hurried out to wash his hands.

  “See,” she said, pointing to the water all over the bed, “Totally clear.” She was referring to Cody’s birth, which had been complicated by meconium staining.

  “What are those little bits of white stuff?” I asked.

  “Vernix.”

  She suggested I lie back on the bed so she could massage my perineum to prepare it for the crowning. The massage sounded like a good idea, but changing my position seemed impossible.

  Then another contraction started and I knew I had to try to push. I suddenly felt the baby’s head pressing against my perineum.

  “Ow! Ow! It hurts! It hurts!” I cried. This pain was much worse than the contractions. It was a sudden, raw, unfamiliar pain. I kept pushing to hurry up and get the baby out.

  “Okay, do you want someone to call Cody and Jew so they can be here for the birth?” Schyla asked.

  “I don’t care. Just get this baby out,” I gasped.

  Then, all at once, I felt the joy of relief and looked behind me to see a little baby on his back on the wet bed, blue umbilical cord spiraling up from his belly button into me. He was crying. Dtaw picked him up. They wanted to give him to me.

  “It’s okay.” I just wanted to catch my breath. I didn’t need to hold him. His daddy had him. Then they started to pass him to me.

  “The cord, the cord,” I said.

  They brought him back around and handed him to me through my legs. Somehow, I got up onto my knees and back onto the pillows.

  We looked at the clock and marked the minute of the miracle. He had slid so perfectly into our world. I felt strong and proud and pleased. By now Cody, Jew, Mei Ya, Cam, and Tong were gathered around the bed.

  “A perfect birth,” Schyla announced.

  Quiet and thoughtful, Chan lay on my breast in the yellow light of the hanging naked bulb. In no hurry to nurse, he seemed only interested in taking us all in. Silent, he watched as we admired him and murmured words of welcome. Schyla clamped the cord, not rushing to sever the physical tie between us.


  Now everyone’s attention was focused on my crotch, waiting for the placenta to tip out. I had no desire to push, but I could tell by looking at their faces how close it was to being out, though no one said a word until it fell onto the bed. Schyla scooped it into the big stainless steel bowl from the kitchen and examined it for integrity. She then asked if I was ready for Dtaw to cut the cord. I didn’t care. Dtaw cut through the dense blue-and-white spiral with the sharp scissors.

  Outside the crickets buzzed in the syrupy dark. Cody sat perched on the pillow by my right shoulder, nodding in and out of sleep. On my left, Jew sat with her small arm draped over my shoulders, smiling with a two-year-old’s look of triumph for the first photos Cam was dutifully taking.

  My mother-in-law came to me, looking from me to the baby. She’d been sitting for hours in the chair by the bedroom since she heard my labor cries before midnight. She had watched it all without concern, without interference. Birth was a simple fact in her world. She had borne six children, all at home, all with the help of only the village midwife.

  In her hand, she held the blessing strings she’d been pulling back and forth between her fingers. While she waited, she’d tied a single overhand knot in the center of each one. She gently laid her hands on her grandson’s tiny wrist and rolled the knot of it over his skin, back and forth, breathing words in Pali, the language of the Buddha, softly summoning blessings for health and wealth and happiness for this new child. She then joined the ends of the string on the other side of his wrists and tied the special knots she’d learned from her grandmother, knots that would keep all thirty-two spirits well-contained in his small body. If any of the spirits decided to go wandering, the consequences for the child could be disastrous.