by Goldie Hawn
The nurse says, “She’s only dilated one centimeter. I don’t think the baby’s coming out.” She walks away mumbling something about meconium.
“‘Meconium’?”
The doctor shows me. It looks like caramel, or sap, a golden brown goo—not at all what I expect to come out of my body.
The atmosphere changes. Bill stops telling jokes.
“Is something wrong?” I ask, but no one answers me. The fetal monitor begins to make discordant beeps. “What’s that?”
“Fetal distress,” one of the interns replies.
“What do you mean?” My heart races. Is my baby choking? Is the cord wrapped around his neck? I begin to shake.
“Prepare for surgery,” Dr. Pasternak snaps. “I’m taking this baby.”
“Taking my baby?” I repeat senselessly.
They jam a needle in my arm before masked strangers lift me onto a gurney and fly me down a series of long corridors. Daddy Bill, who, moments before, was making everyone laugh, looks petrified. He lays his cold, clammy hand in mine as he runs alongside, trying to reassure me. The automatic door to the operating room flies open, and that is the last I see of him. The rest is up to me, my baby and my doctor.
The room feels like a meat locker, cold and unwelcoming. I haven’t seen an operating room since I was seven and had my tonsils out. I wish I were seven again because my mother always made everything safe. I know she is outside somewhere, but I want her with me, telling me I’ll be fine, just as she did when I was afraid to get a shot, or I feared the Russians were going to bomb us. Or the time that I thought I’d caught cerebral palsy in my sleep and she stroked my head and told me it was only a dream.
But I am no longer a child who can call for her mommy anymore. I have to do this alone.
“Is everything going to be all right?” I ask.
Again, no answer. They are too busy trying to save a life, and it isn’t mine.
I am numb from the waist down. Nothing but a white sheet lies between me and my as-yet-unborn child. The epidural makes me shake uncontrollably. Chattering through my teeth, I try to keep it light.
“Hey, you guys behind the curtain? Can you see his head yet?”
“Not yet,” comes the reply. “I’m just cutting the last layer. In about two minutes, you’ll see your baby.”
I look at the big round clock on the wall: 8:25 P.M. My God, where has the day gone? Suddenly, I feel a strong tug, like a tooth being pulled.
“It’s a boy!” An explosion of joy erupts beyond the white curtain.
I shriek along with them. “I knew it was a boy, I just knew it!” I want to jump up, scream, kiss my doctor and the nurses. I want to thank the whole world for this moment. But I am paralyzed—a piece of meat on a slab. I can’t get to my baby.
Grinning like a half-wit and craning my neck, I try to catch a glimpse of his face as they clean him up and suction the mucus from his nostrils and mouth. The sound is horrible. What a way to start life, with a cold probe going down your nose and throat. He coughs and spews. It doesn’t sound quite right to me, but, then, what do I know? I chalk it up to my first experience as a nervous mother.
I can’t wait to hold him. They swaddle him in a blanket and present him to me like a prize. His beautiful face is rosy, round and perfect. I lean over and kiss his little pink lips. The floodgates open and I begin to sob.
“I’ve waited so long for you, little Oliver Hudson…”
They whisk him away before I can finish my sentence. Where are they taking him? Why can’t he stay next to me? I want to bring him to my breast and give him his first taste of life. I’ve been abandoned. The doctor is busy sewing me back together. Nausea overcomes me.
“I feel sick,” I say, and begin to heave uncontrollably.
The doctor orders the anesthesiologist to give me something to put me out. Next thing I know, the room is filled with soft clouds. As I start to float off on one of them, I hear a distant voice say, “He’s in ICU.”
In spite of the fog in my head, I ask, “Are you talking about my baby?”
The anesthesiologist strokes my brow and tells me that everything is going to be all right. I drop into oblivion, a safe place that shields me from reality and the truth. But not for long.
I awake in Recovery, sucking my thumb. My belly hurts. I am exhausted and thirsty. I look up to see Bill standing over me. I am almost too weak to speak. “Where’s our baby?”
Bill looks like a young deer caught in the headlights. He touches my forehead. “Goldie, our baby is very sick. He is in the neonatal unit. He might not make it.”
My doctor appears through the mist in my eyes and takes my hand. “They are doing everything in their power. I promise you, Goldie, he will be all right.” But I can see fear in his eyes. I close mine and slip back to the void, where it is safer.
The slow ride to my hospital room feels like traveling through the catacombs of hell. My belly is empty of life. My baby is dying, and my mother is nowhere to be seen. My world has changed. What seemed to be a blessed life, radiant with love and joy, has evaporated.
Sun floods through the window, just as it did the day before, when I was so happy. Yesterday, I waited for a new life. Now I anticipate death. My body contracts every time the door opens. I hold my breath with each update, afraid they will tell me that they have done all they can. There is no release from the agony. I can’t even cry. My chest will explode if I do, I feel sure. I will bleed to death from a broken heart.
Dr. Pasternak comes with a wheelchair to take me to see my son. The journey to the seventh floor is interminable. Butterflies flutter in my empty belly. What if he dies? What if he looks up at me and brands me his for life? I will melt at the sight of him and love will cement us forever. I can’t handle having that and then losing it. For the first time in my life, I am afraid of falling in love.
Bill is beside me, cracking jokes. I will forever be grateful for that comfort. As I travel that long hallway, I glance into other rooms. Flowers. Balloons. Teddy bears. Healthy babies being fawned over by jubilant parents and grandparents. I have no flowers. No mother or father. No bouncing baby boy.
As I enter the elevator, a revelation comes to me. My mother lost her firstborn, also a boy. She named him Edward Rutledge, after my father. It was against Jewish law to name a child after someone still living, but she wanted to keep this fine American name alive. It was her gift to my dad.
She found her baby dead in his crib when she went to his room for his 6:00 A.M. feeding. I now recall her voice in my head, “Honey, please don’t name your baby after Daddy.” I assured her that I would only use Rutledge as a middle name, and that it was all superstition anyway. But was it? Was I suffering the same fate as my mother? Was God punishing me too? The thought is too much to bear.
The elevator doors open, and they wheel me into another world. A world of uncertainty and fear, of beginnings and endings. A discordant cacophony of buzzes and beeps fills the room. I look frantically for Oliver. I begin to tremble in anticipation of seeing him again.
I spot my baby right away. No mistaking him. He looks exactly like my father. His tiny, sedated body lies passive on a metal slab. Heat lamps warm him as his little chest mechanically inflates and deflates, a breathing tube pumping oxygen into his lungs. Other tubes sprout from his head and his feet. The nurses hover near him, pushing chemical cocktails through the narrow lifelines. But it suddenly occurs to me that the only true lifeline isn’t connected. That of a mother’s love. My love.
Reaching out, I touch his chest. I kiss his face and watch the beat of his heart flutter methodically across the monitor. The nurses tell me it is too slow. I feel so helpless. Where is our God? The God I prayed to as a little girl with Jean Lynn when we were frightened of the bomb? Who brought me peace before I fell asleep with Nixi? The Almighty Who’d answer my prayers, if only I asked?
Rising from my wheelchair, as if airlifted to my baby’s side, I lean over and whisper in his ear. “Oliver Rutledge Hudson,
you are going to live.” And, with that, I place my right hand on his torturously heaving chest. “Please, dear God, make me the conduit of Your healing. Send Your healing power to my child that he might recover and be strong enough to fight for the life he has chosen here on earth. I know he will be gentle and kind, a true gift to humanity. I will mother him with the laws of nature, so he will be a living mirror of Your kind heart.”
Suddenly, a warm blue sensation courses through my veins. I become intensely calm. A wonderful aura of unconditional love permeates the space around us. I look up at the monitor and watch it show definite signs of change.
Oliver’s tiny heart begins to beat faster and faster, its rate climbing steadily. From 58 beats to 69, then back to 61, then up to 72, then back to 68, then up to 76. Rising with every second.
“Nurse!” I cry. “Doctor Pasternak! Come! Look!”
They gather round as I stand next to my child, my hand covering his heart. Afraid to take it away, I am prepared to leave it there for as long as they’ll let me. Bill places his hand next to mine, and we revert to being the kids we were, giddy with excitement.
“I prayed so hard.”
“You see, Goldie,” Dr. Pasternak says, smiling. “If only mothers would understand the power they have to heal their children. We see this kind of thing happen time and again. Your baby feels you. He smells you and hears you. I mean, after all, he was in your belly for nine months. He needs to feel your closeness and the comfort of his mother.”
When Oliver is stable and showing sure signs of improvement, Dr. Pasternak places his hand on my shoulder and says, “He’s going to be okay. It’s time for you to get some rest, young lady.”
It is so hard to leave. No one else could have persuaded me to leave my son. Nodding my reluctant assent, I lean over once more and whisper in Oliver’s ear, “I’ll be back soon, my darling. I just need to sleep. We both need our rest.”
Down I go, sinking back into the chair, impossibly tired. As Bill wheels me back to my room, I feel as if the umbilical cord is being stretched all the way from Oliver’s crib, along the corridor and into my room.
I had no idea then just how sick I was. I learned much later that for several days after the birth I had toxemia. I was being monitored as closely as my son.
Something remarkable happened the day that Oliver was born. I learned that day that miracles can happen. That prayer is powerful. That faith in something is extremely important.
It was one of the first times in my life that I realized that by focusing on something and willing it with all my might, I could actually change or rearrange the course of events. This experience started me on a journey. It led me to a lifelong interest in these sorts of phenomena and in the theory of small things, which is called “the new physics” or “quantum physics”—investigating and exploring the new frontiers of consciousness.
We are all made up of waves of energy. The neurons that are constantly firing in our brains have small tentacles called “dendrites.” Attached to the end of these little guys is a receptor like a radio. Scientists have now learned that these little radios can pick up information—even other people’s thoughts. The brain is awesome. It has amazing potential; it is far more advanced than any computer that man could make. We have resources that we are only now beginning to tap into.
We are all miracle workers, and we can all heal others. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Ultimately, I couldn’t save others I loved from dying. They have had their time. In the end, we’re all going through the same door in heaven. I continue to pray every day, not for miracles but for a peaceful and compassionate world. Maybe that will take a miracle. Who knows?
One truth we can be sure of: praying for someone’s well-being while they are still on this earth, by reaching out and trying to help them in any way we can, by developing more compassion in our hearts and in our lives and in our spirits, will help make a better world.
Looking back on Oliver’s birth now, I know that through prayer and love we both were healed. All these years later I can say that everything I promised Oliver that he would be he has become: a mirror of the heart of God.
I call him my “little man on the hill.”
postcard
Rod Stewart rasps out “Maggie May” from the battered old jukebox that dominates a corner of Alice’s Restaurant on Malibu Pier.
Sitting alone at a table, nursing a glass of wine, I stare out at the couples strolling hand in hand under the pier’s swaying lights—happy people so close I can almost touch them.
It is 1977, and I am living out in my beautiful beach house perched on a cliff at Point Dume in Malibu. I designed it myself as our love nest. I had hearts embossed in the floors, stone hearts in the fireplace and heart-shaped balusters. But Daddy Bill is out on the road making his music, and little Oliver and I are together in our little house of hearts alone.
Seeing the sun setting orange and vibrant on the horizon, I am restless. Leaving Oliver in the care of his nanny, I take a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway for a closer look. The warm night’s breeze tousling my hair, I head my car north as the pelicans rise majestically from the waves, dripping silver trails.
Something draws me to Alice’s, an age-old Malibu landmark shaped like a lighthouse at the head of the pier. I feel the need to be among people for a while, strangers. I need to think.
Pushing open the door, I look around for a quiet table and hope that nobody bothers me. The one thing that celebrity has taken from me is my privacy in crowded spaces, which is especially hard for someone who has always enjoyed traveling in a party of one. I am in luck tonight; nobody seems to see me, perhaps because I am feeling so transparent.
Alice’s Restaurant has always been a funky place to go. There is sawdust on the floor, a long bar, picture windows looking out over the ocean and dozens of little tables and chairs lit by candles. The bar is buzzing with people, some eating, some dancing and some—like me—seeking solitude. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt, I find a quiet seat at the back, order a drink and sit there staring out at the ocean, my diary open on the table in front of me.
I haven’t worked for over two years. Not since The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox in Colorado with Daddy. People warned me that once I hit thirty, I’d be history. Men and animals don’t have that problem in this industry.
Being pregnant with Oliver, giving birth to him and then caring for him has kept me incredibly busy and fulfilled. Becoming a mother is one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me. My son lights the fire of my deepest happiness and fills me with such joy, I feel my heart will burst.
It is the rest of my life that is making me sad.
Remembering the wise counsel of Dr. Grearson, knowing how important it is to face up to my fears, I have come to Alice’s Restaurant to ponder my future.
Staring out at the ocean, I see that there are still a few fishermen hanging around, hoping for a late bite. The pier’s pretty little lamps cast pools of light onto the contented people strolling beneath them, chatting, holding hands or kissing. I feel more of an outsider than ever.
So what next, Goldie Hawn? I ask myself silently, my pen poised over a blank page of my diary. What does the future hold? Because it seems you are pretty much done with the movie business. Or, at least, it seems to be pretty much done with you.
The frustration is the not knowing, the uncertainty. Am I done yet? I want to ask someone, anyone who might know. Is this it? An Oscar? Six more movies, and then it’s over? Washed up at thirty-one? But I feel like I have so much more to offer. Please, someone, just let me know if that’s it. Because then I can gain a sense of control in my life and move on.
And if it is over, I ask myself, then what next? I have gone beyond the stage of ever going back to Takoma Park to be a dance teacher. I am a Hollywood actress, like it or not, but now I’m married, with a small baby. If I can’t star in any movies, I can only see a future for myself in producing them for other people.
I thin
k of Daddy. “So what did you learn today, Go?” he always asks. What am I learning from this fallow time, this period of insecurity and uncertainty?
Staring up at the moon, just as I did when I was a little girl, I try to summon up my childhood determination to be happy, come what may. Who are you, Goldie? I ask myself. Who are you really? I order a second glass of wine. When I was small, all I ever wanted to be was a wife and a mother, living in a pretty house with a picket fence. But now that I have tasted the bittersweet pill of stardom, I am caught between its addictive lure and the world I used to belong to, unable to be fully in one or the other.
Is that who you are? I ask myself. Just your career? Then what will happen when you are left sitting by yourself at the end of your life, wondering where your friends and family went?
Picking up my pen again, I try to write but abandon the attempt. Sipping my wine and staring out at the ocean, I hear my father’s words again in my head. “Go, whenever you feel too big for your britches just go out and stand in front of the ocean. Then you’ll see just how small you are.”
He taught me so much. He showed me how to stay real, keep grounded, not to rush through life too fast. Mostly, he taught me to keep that sense of wonder in my heart to sustain me through the hard times. Like now.
He’s right. I throw some dollar bills on the table and happily slip out of Alice’s Restaurant, completely unnoticed.
embracing strangers
Sometimes we feel there is nothing new under the sun and then suddenly springs a friendship like this, a flower. Treasures are waiting just beneath the earth, if only we look for them.
“Oliver’s not sleeping, Mom. He still has jet lag, and it’s already been two weeks. Mom, this is so hard!” I sob across the telephone’s long distances.
“I know, honey,” Mom soothes, “but you’re a working mother. You can’t have it both ways.”