Take It Easy

by Pat Rosier

  Knitting baby clothes was really fast, they were so small. I shocked Bob’s mother by using colours that were darker than pastel. She said things like they aren’t babies for long it’s a shame to make them too grown-up too soon, but I liked the little navy blue jackets and green and fawn striped bootees. Doing the cleaning and shopping and cooking didn’t take very long each day so I had plenty of time to read and knit. I walked to the library every week, and caught the bus back unless I went via my mother’s and had a cup of tea or lunch with her. We would sit there and both knit and talk. I don’t remember anything much of what we talked about, babies and my father I suppose, and maybe Bob a bit but I couldn’t very often think of things to say about him. Sometimes it felt very ordinary and nice knitting and talking with my mother and sometimes my whole body would feel tense and strung out and part of me would want to run screaming out of the room. Of course I didn’t. If my father came in we might do the Listener crossword, or talk about the weather, we were both very interested in the weather and my mother wasn’t. I think we all talked about what was in the news sometimes.

  I sewed some clothes, too, mostly for myself, maternity dresses. They were awful, except for one, which was out of a linen sort of material, but it wasn’t linen because it didn’t crush, in a murky kind of blue with no pattern. I liked that dress and mostly wore it, until my mother said if I liked it so much why didn’t I make another one out of the same pattern but I didn’t want to and I tried to remember not to always be wearing that dress when I was going to her place.

  One thing my mother did that really, really annoyed me, was if I said something about the news or anything and she told it to my father, she always said Bob had said it, never me. I pulled her up on it once or twice and she wasn’t bothered, she didn’t get why it was so annoying and pretty much kept on doing it. I think my father got it because he would sometimes look at me and wink or raise one eyebrow.

  Bob and my father were strained with each other. I think Bob thought my father was not too bright or not savvy or something — when he said anything to me about him it always seemed a bit of a put-down. My father still liked making things out of bits and pieces he found or got for nothing, mostly bits of wood. He made these beautiful cribs for the babies, two of them, matching, with patterns carved on the outside and cabriole legs. He did cabriole legs on everything. There were hours and hours of work in them and they were beautifully made, but they looked kind of awkward. A lot of the things my father made were like that and I think he knew and kept trying and trying to make something graceful.

  Iris reported that Chris was better, he would have the operation on his arm in a few days. He wouldn’t be coming to New Zealand, he said, he’d go to the flat with Eleni when he came out of hospital, his work was being very generous. And that was all right, now, Iris said, she had had to get used to the fact that he really was a grown up man, making his own decisions, not her little boy.

  ~~~

  Chapter 08

  By the time I was eight months pregnant I had a great pile of baby clothes, lots of them made by my mother and me and others from Bob’s mother – including the woollen singlets – and even some from my sister in Melbourne. Shirley’s were the only shop clothes. There were the cribs my father had made, too, and Bob bought a double pram that would turn into a double pushchair later. He came home with it one day and wanted me to be more pleased than I was. I had seen one I wanted and was going to talk to him about it but he bought this different one before I had brought it up, so that was that. I couldn’t see how I would ever get the pram he bought onto the front of the bus and that meant I would have to walk both ways to the library and that would mean pushing it up the long hill on the way home with two babies and the library books. I must have said something because I remember Bob saying how I wouldn’t have time to be reading that rubbish after the babies were born and the panicky feeling that gave me.

  I had to go to the main hospital to have the babies because of it being my first and twins, my doctor said. When I said wouldn’t the actual birth be easier because the babies would be smaller he looked away and didn’t say anything for a while. I remember that because I got that old feeling that I had said something wrong and I didn’t know what it was. It was important for the babies, I was told, to go full term. At the end of the pregnancy they would come out and I would be a leftover.

  I did go to ante-natal classes and learn how to breathe through contractions and pant and not push and then push – there was a film and we never saw the mother’s face, just the baby coming out between her legs and then the back of her head while she held the baby and a hearty voice-over that could have been a woman or a man and said at the end of the film what a good job the mother had done in a really patronizing way. The classes were at the local maternity hospital and I could walk to them. I didn’t say anything because everyone else was saying how wonderful the film was.

  Lots of the other mothers-to-be were dropped off for the classes and picked up by husbands but we didn’t have a car. Once Bob walked and met me on the way home, and that was nice and I told him it was nice and he didn’t say anything and didn’t do it again. It might have been nearly the end of the classes.

  It was only about the second class when the nurse running it told everyone I was having twins and some of them were different towards me after that, as though I had some kind of special status. It didn’t have anything to do with me that I was having twins. Some of them started having morning teas and things and hoping they would be in hospital at the same time. Not me, though I think I remember being asked once, and anyway I was going to the big hospital. If I didn’t think about that I didn’t get too scared. Bob and his father were making some arrangement about driving me there when I started labour and if I didn’t start by two days after the day I was due, I was to go into hospital anyway for an induction. When I asked how they would do that they just said something that was meant to be reassuring I suppose, like ‘Don’t you worry about it,’ and didn’t tell me anything and I did worry so I found out in a book in the library. I tried to tell them that I wasn’t very good at pain and they should give me drugs but they didn’t take much notice, I got more of that reassuring stuff that did no good at all.

  I can’t remember what bits were said by my doctor, who I didn’t like — he was hearty and patronizing — and what was said at the visit I made to the big hospital a few weeks before I was due. The nurses were nice, they told me things when I knew what to ask and sometimes they told me helpful things anyway, like the babies stayed in the nursery at night and I could get them taken away in the daytime too if I wanted to sleep, except that I had to feed them at feeding time, but a nurse would help me, especially at first, because there were two. They asked me if I wanted to breast feed and I didn’t know, but the books had said it was good for babies to be breastfed so I said I did want to.

  I was six months pregnant and showing when the Lawson Quins were born. Four girls and a boy. That was awful. Everybody talked about it and made jokes about what if I had more than twins, and look at all the help you got and it was one way of having a family all at once. I couldn’t imagine being in Mrs Lawson’s position and thought all that fuss and publicity and everyone having opinions and being given things and having to be grateful and never having any time to yourself, all that would be a nightmare. Mrs Lawson actually looked quite calm, and her hair was always tidily backcombed into a beehive hairdo.

  The Lawson Quins became part of the maternity that was swirling all around me, babies and Bob and my parents and his parents and nurses and doctors and babies. Babies, baby things, how to have them, how to look after them. None of it had anything to do with me, it just rushed around and around me while I did ordinary things like housework and shopping and cooking and knitting and even talking to people and nobody seemed to notice that I wasn’t really there. That was partly their fault because they didn’t behave as though I was there, the babies were there, they were what it was all for and about and I had
to do all the right things for them, the babies the babies the babies. I always longed for some time by myself so I could read myself into another world, a sleazy Chicago or a refined, intellectual Oxford, where people got murdered and murderers got caught and it all had nothing to do with me or babies so it was right that I not be there.

  I do remember when we – the country, or Prime Minister Keith Holyoake anyway – announced we were sending troops to Vietnam. I was already pregnant but not far gone. Bob suggested once that he might volunteer and join the army but nothing came of it.— then I found out that only regular soldiers were going. What I remember is thinking if I had a son – I didn’t know there were twins then – who was the age to go to war I would help him be a pacifist. I even imagined hiding him in a ceiling or a basement, and thinking that if nobody would fight there wouldn’t be a war.

  ‘How naive!” flashed into Isobel’s mind and then a memory of her mother saying exactly that. ‘How naïve’, her mother had said, ‘How naïve we were.' She had said it, probably on more than one occasion when her father had been talking – as he often did - about the first Labour Government and how excited they had been by the new welfare state and how then it had seemed that the country would get gradually better and fairer to live in for everyone. The next generation and the next and so on would have a better and better life and everyone would have jobs or be looked after and no-one would be very rich and no-one very poor. But Isobel wanted to keep writing, she was remembering so much more than she thought she could, and she wanted desperately to get all of it down in case it disappeared again, so she turned off that other strand of remembering.

  I remember the first contraction, like a wire was pulled tight around something inside me and just when it got absolutely unbearable, it gradually eased off. And I remember thinking, well that’s something I got right, because it was exactly the day the twins were supposed to be born. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and Bob was at work. I was allowed to ring him about that and he rushed home and his father came with the car and everything was happening all around me and I just did what people expected me to do and was glad I had gone to the classes and learnt about breathing through the contractions because it helped a lot. Just when I was getting into the car wetness ran down my legs and I think I yelled and I remember exactly standing there by the car all wet, looking down and waiting for someone to do something. Bob’s father said, ‘Get a towel – no, several towels’ and Bob did and I got in the back of the car with some under me and some more to hold. As we drove off Bob asked me how long it was between contractions and I felt silly because I had forgotten to time them. It was seven minutes. His father was driving slowly and carefully like he thought I might break. I think I said something about how I wouldn’t break and he could go faster and Bob turned around from the front seat and glared at me and said, ‘You’re not going to have them in the car are you?’ and I said no, of course not, though really I didn’t have a clue.

  Iris came home from Australia into wild Wellington winter weather and Isobel drove them both home from the airport in a hail storm. Eleni would care for Chris in his convalescence, because Chris had said that was what he wanted, to get back into his life, and she, Iris, had accepted that. Because he had been on his way from one job to another for his firm, they were looking after him, he said, money wasn’t going to be a problem. The truck driver who ran into his car was being prosecuted.

  ‘I don’t like feeling redundant,’ Iris said, ‘but I am in the sense that he doesn’t need a mother any more. And I’m trying to be pleased about that.' She allowed herself to ring the hospital, then, once Chris had been discharged, his and Eleni’s flat no more than every other day, and tried not to invite them both to come and stay every time. She told Isobel several times how generous and helpful and undemanding Shirley and Brian had been.

  ‘It’s been good to get to know them better,’ she said, ‘And you know, I think Shirley would really like to be more in touch.’

  ‘There’s two ends to a phone, and an email.’ Isobel hadn’t meant to sound ungracious, so she went on, ‘I’m pleased they made you welcome, maybe we’ll both make more effort.’

  ‘I won’t hold my breath. Sometimes I think if it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t ever see any of your family … not that I ever met … ,’ her voice trailed off. ‘I can’t be dealing with that right now,’ she said and went into the kitchen and started loading the dishwasher.

  ‘Iris.’ Isobel was standing in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘What?’ Iris didn’t turn around.

  ‘Oh, nothing. I’ll put out the rubbish, then I’ll take Barney for a walk. Do you want to come?’

  ‘No thanks.' Iris was measuring washing powder and putting it in the machine.

  Isobel never decided to stop writing in the diary, but she didn’t do it any more.

  ~~~~

  Part Two

  No Place Like Home

  There’s no place like home.

  Proverb

  Chapter 09

  When they pulled up in front of the hospital Bob and his father looked at Isobel as if they were waiting for her to do something. Getting out of the car with wet towels and trying to hold them and walk and maybe breathe through another contraction was too much, she was the one who needed help and they just stood there and looked. Finally, when she doubled over with pain, Bob ran inside and came out with a nurse pushing a wheelchair and taking charge, crouching in the car doorway and holding Isobel’s hand until the contraction was over, then helping her into the chair before the next one started, tossing the wet towels back into the car. Bob’s father drove off and Bob followed Isobel and the nurse into the building. When the nurse pointed out the father’s waiting room Bob moved off towards it, then stopped, turned to Isobel and squeezed her shoulder. ‘Good girl,’ he said, and was gone. Isobel barely had time to register irritation before she was engulfed in another contraction.

  ‘How long …,’ she gasped to the nurse. They were moving quickly along a corridor that seemed to have no end.

  ‘You’ve hardly started,’ said the nurse cheerfully, ‘you’re barely at five minutes. Some get further on than you and just stop and have to go home.’

  ‘No!’‘Don’t worry.’ Were all the nurses such joy-germs Isobel wondered. ‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse said again, ‘your waters have broken, there’s no going back now. And you’re the twins, aren’t you?’

  Isobel nodded. She certainly was. The twins, the babies, that was her. No point in fighting it.

  ‘Here we are.’ The wheelchair slowed for a sharp turn into a small white room with a bed and an array of equipment and a wheeled trolley with a pristinely white smooth sheet over what must be a small mattress and a shiny metal barrier that was surely too low and the trolley was so high.

  ‘Wouldn’t a baby …’ She never got to finish asking whether a baby would be in any danger of rolling and falling off, the pain was grabbing at her again. She hurried into the hospital gown and onto the bed. I’m getting the hang of this, she thought — start doing something as the pain is finishing and you’ll be done before the next one. She knew from the classes that there would be an enema and a nurse would shave her pubic hair. ‘Never again, never again,’ was the refrain in her head, until the razor-wielding nurse said cheerfully — another nurse, same hearty cheerfulness ‘All you mothers say that,’ and carried on scooping away the hair.

  Then yet another nurse was putting something cool and damp on her forehead and saying, ‘It’s not that bad, you’re not going to die you know,’ and she realised she had been yelling. ’Groaning more than yelling, groaning very loudly,’ said the nurse when she apologized. Isobel thought the groaning helped and decided to keep doing it. She could do a really loud groan on her out breath. After all, they could stop her noise by giving her drugs if they didn’t like it. ‘Breathe,’ she said to herself, as she felt it all starting again, ruthless and relentless. She groaned.

  A doctor appeared, then another; one f
or her and one for the babies apparently. At least she rated a doctor for herself. The paediatrician looked — she had hardly been aware of her legs being put in stirrups, they were wide open — said, ‘Call me,’ to a nurse and went away.

  She was given a mask to breathe from when the pain got bad. It floated her off somewhere up by the ceiling. She learned to anticipate the tightening vice around her belly that preceded the worst of the pain, breathe deeply from the mask, float away and come back as the spasm was diminishing. People in white came and went. She was given something cold and sweet to drink. From time to time someone said she was doing well, everything was fine, don’t push, she was opening beautifully.

  There was nothing except this white room and the white people and herself and the mask and the pain coming and going and coming and going endlessly like waves at the beach. Reiterating. She asked the time. Someone had taken her watch off. The nurse looked up at the clock over the door and she felt silly. Four o’clock in the afternoon. Bob might have gone back to work. From time to time she could hear noises from down the corridor. There must be a whole row of women in little rooms, just like her, giving birth, just like her. Giving birth, that was a funny way to say it — breathe from the mask, float away — She didn’t feel like she was giving anything, something was about to be ripped out of her and she didn’t have any control of it at all, when you gave something, you decided to do it, this was all the result of a big mistake. Breathe, float, return, a nurse put on a rubber glove and disappeared behind the sheet over her strung-up legs.