How primitive we humans are, with our warring tribes, still thinking we can solve the world’s problems of supply and demand with weapons, swords, spears, and bombs. I stare at the flames, flickering orange and green. It’s my turn to pick a song.
“You, know,” I say to Tom, “I can’t sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ anymore, did I tell you? I used to think I had the answers, knew how to make the world better. All we had to do was start a revolution. Now I feel so confused and I guess I don’t think we can overcome.” I throw him a small smile.
My husband shrugs and tosses another log on the campfire. The flames shoot up and illuminate his face. “Did you really think we would overcome, Pats?”
“Yeah . . . . didn’t you? I thought if men and women stood together for what was right, we would win. Like Gandhi . . .” I study my friend. “Didn’t you?”
Tom kicks the chunk of wood farther into the fire. “I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s like the great mandala.”
I hear the song in my mind. Take your place on the Great Mandala.
He goes on. “We just find our place on the wheel of life and do our best. To overcome won’t take one generation, but many . . .” The waves slosh up under the break wall and pull away.
“I’ve been thinking, too,” he says. “I’d like to invest in an energy-efficient heat pump at home and solar panels for the roof of the house. Maybe a wind generator up here at the island. I know it’s not much, but maybe we could get some other people in Blue Rock Estates interested in alternative energy. We need another ten-year plan.”
My head snaps up. “You mean like when we left the farm?”
“’Bout time for another one, don’t you think?” Tom grins his old grin.
“Maybe this year we could invest in a hybrid car,” I add tentatively. “Or maybe we shouldn’t . . . The economy’s still a disaster, we better hold off.”
Tom gives my hand a squeeze. “No, we should move ahead. Nothing will change if everyone waits. Forget that saving the earth doesn’t seem possible in the time required. We just need to do what we can. If it’s not possible, we’ll find out later.” He pulls out a small notepad from the back of his jeans, crouches forward in the firelight, and begins to write. I lean on him, watching.
First the heading: New Ten-Year Plan. Then,
Energy-efficient heater at home
Wind generator at the cottage
Solar panels
Hybrid car
“I’d like to volunteer for more international medical missions too. What else?” he asks.
Once again we plow into dreams and timelines. We’re a different Tom and Patsy than thirty years ago, but in some essential way the same. It isn’t what’s on the list that matters, but that we’re moving forward.
It’s a dark night. No moon yet and the Milky Way spreads across the sky.
“OK.” I take a big breath, tentatively getting into the spirit. “We should shop locally. Use the farmer’s market for vegetables that we don’t grow and find someone who lives out in the country where we could buy eggs and meat if we want . . . or go back to being vegetarians . . . That’s doable, isn’t it? And you’ve been talking about volunteering for Doctors Without Borders. We should both go. You could do surgery and I could run a women’s clinic, maybe teach local midwives, or deliver babies in a refugee camp.”
Tom continues to take notes as the flames die down and then flare up again. The page fills and he flips it over and starts on the back. Finally he reclines in his lawn chair . . . and surprises me when he starts to sing “Paul and Silas.” I join in, staring up at the stars, the same stars that shone over the campfire in Minnesota and on the communal ridge. This time we make it to the third verse. Now the only thing that we did was right was the day we started to fight.
This is a song I can sing with conviction.
I get it now. It doesn’t matter if we overcome, we just have to take it, step by step, and keep our eyes on the prize. I belt out the song at the top of my lungs. Tom flicks me a look to remind me that we have neighbors. I laugh and sing louder.
Keep your eye on the prize. Hold on!
Hallelujah
The habit of wakefulness is hard to forgo. At 1:00 a.m., on Pelee Island, it’s no different. I still pad through the dark living room, go out and inspect the sky like I do almost every night. The scent of the lilacs is calling me.
When I step on the narrow side porch, I draw in my breath. The full moon, like a new silver dollar, a circle of light, is just rising over Lake Erie and our beach towels and swimsuits twist on the clothesline like ghosts in the wind. Moon shadows, I think. Like in the Cat Stevens song. Leaping and hopping.
I reenter the bedroom and shake my husband on the shoulder. “Tom.” He’s hard to wake up. I shake him again. “Tom . . .”
“What?” he finally responds, sitting upright, not sure where he is.
“Come on. You have to see this. It’s the full moon.” I pull back his covers. “Come, please. You don’t need to get dressed.” Tom swings his feet over the edge of the bed and rises slowly, rubbing his eyes.
“What?” he asks again.
“You’ll see.” I lead him through the shadowy rooms, open the screen door, and push him out on the side porch in front of me. He stands running his hands through his hair and then peers around.
“Look, moon shadows! There’s light everywhere, coming down from the bright sky and reflecting up from the huge body of water. It’s magical.”
Long silhouettes of the willow and maple and hackberry lean across the lawn. A stiff breeze comes in from the south and the willow leaves rattle. I take Tom’s hand and we cross the dew-covered grass in our bare feet and climb the stairs to the deck on the break wall.
“Look, you can see clumps of sea grass, it’s so bright. And the stones under water!” I pull off my pajama top. Tom takes in my white breasts. He’s back to his old self, I can tell. I pull up Tom’s shirt too and put my arms around him, chest to chest.
“Come on. Let’s go swimming,” I beg. “No one can see us. It’s not safe if I swim alone . . .”
Tom grins. “I’ll guard you from here.” He knows that the shallow sandy South Bay stretches for almost a quarter of a mile before it’s up to our chins; not much risk of a swimming accident. The waves roll in against the rocks like molten silver. I step out of my pajama bottoms and pad down the wooden steps.
“Come on,” I plead again, looking back over my shoulder, wiggling my butt. “It will be fun!” Then I plow through the water toward the full moon. When I’m up to my thighs, I plunge in, holding my breath as long as I can, my eyes closed, letting the bubbles out of my mouth until the air’s gone. The lake is cold, but just enough to make me shiver and soon I’m used to it.
I hear a splash and look back. Tom is running naked through the water, his head thrown back, laughing. When he catches up, I open my legs and hold onto him like a koala bear. We are swimming in silver and Lake Erie stretches for miles as smooth as gray silk. Above, it’s so light that the stars are invisible, yet I know they exist . . . And there is music.
I begin to hum Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from the Ninth Symphony. Tom picks up the tune and we hum in two-part harmony, floating on our backs, in the healing liquid, holding hands, far from shore.
“Look,” I say. “When your eyes are just above the water, the reflection of the moon leads right to you, a river of light.” Tom ducks his head like I do. “Do you see it?” I spread wide my arms. “This is our church.”
Tom is still humming. Now he picks out the words. Joyful, joyful, we adore thee . . . God of glory, Lord of love . . .
He’s on his feet and turns, moving slowly back toward shore, his hands outstretched, caressing the water with his fingertips. “I’m going inside; you coming?”
“Not yet. Soon . . . It’
s so beautiful . . .”
Joyful. Joyful. There is music like prayer, a prayer with one word. Hallelujah. These songs lift me up and at the same time bring me to my knees. I watch Tom, already climbing the wooden steps to the deck. I’m alone in the silver moon water, all alone on the little planet we call Earth.
It comes to me, then, that the caterpillar I saw at home, dangling by a thin filament in the wind, the day Zen almost got killed in the auto wreck, probably inched his way back to the roof.
Ruby Tuesday is gone but Zen is alive, and it might have been otherwise. We thought Rose couldn’t hear, but she has a baby hearing aid and will learn to talk and to sing.
Joyful. Joyful. We adore thee. Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea . . . Teach us how to love each other. Tom and I are together again and the moonlight spreads out across the water.
For a long time I float on my back with my arms wide open, letting the silver liquid hold me, reflecting on my life as a midwife. What a gift it has been to me, a long journey, not yet over. Jasmine came to the office to show off her newborn baby, Karma, last week. The tiny girl was wearing tie-dyed cloth diapers.
I picture my boys, grown men, each on his own journey, slipping and sliding over the rocks, sometimes making a wrong turn, then finding their way again. Will they wake some moonlit night and go skinny-dipping?
I think of my grandchildren, growing up in this dark world.
I’m not a wise woman . . . but I must remember . . . to lead them into the water.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank those who made Arms Wide Open possible: My writing consultant, Dorothy Walls, for her encouragement. My agent, Barbara Braun, and her team, for their faith in the message. My editor, Helene Atwan, and the hardworking professionals at Beacon Press, for their commitment to publishing books that are real, true, and beautiful.
I’d also like to thank my staff at our women’s clinic for their support; my boys, who have allowed me to share pieces of our family life . . . and finally my husband, Tom, the best back-up doctor a midwife ever had.
Arms Wide Open is dedicated to the women and men who taught me what it is to be brave and to all idealists who try, in their own way, to make the world better. We can never do enough, but we can try.
And finally to you Dear Reader, I send a message: Do not give up hope. In these difficult times the sun still rises, there is light on the water, and the full moon shines, once a month, in the dark sky.
Beacon Press
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© 2010 by Patricia Harman
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harman, Patricia.
Arms wide open : a midwife’s journey / Patricia Harman.
p. ; cm.
EPUB ISBN 978-0-8070-0139-4
ISBN 978-0-8070-0138-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Harman, Patricia, 1943– 2. Midwives—United States—Biography. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Harman, Patricia, 1943– 2. Nurse Midwives—Personal Narratives. 3. Midwifery—Personal Narratives. WZ 100]
RG950.H357 2008
618.20092—dc22
[B]
2010034526
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