Category: Uncategorized

About Sorry

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“I’m sorry” Molly said as the LOWES cashier flipped the large box she’d just plopped down at the register, UPC code facing down. Only moments earlier my daughter said sorry to a guy in Appliances when they almost bumped into each other. He was coming at her as fast as she was him so no ‘fault’ was involved. Molly’s not a pushover, just polite. But hearing her say ‘sorry’ twice within 5 minutes set off an alarm bell in my head so I said, to her “Please don’t be a woman who apologizes for everything.” The cashier, a young woman about Molly’s age, piped in that she also says sorry too much. We laughed and joked how of course men don’t do this, not like we do.

According to this study  “…it’s not that men are reluctant to admit wrongdoing, the study shows. It’s just that they have a higher threshold for what they think warrants reparation.”

Eh. I don’t know about that. I think it’s deeper and not about ‘thresholds’ and reparations, more like a reflex. Where the hell does this come from? Why are we ‘sorry’? If anything, us gals have some apologies due us for a litany of insults and injustices, don’t you think? (Donald??)

In a fantastic, funny-but-true Amy Schumer skit of a few months ago, a panel of extraordinarily accomplished women apologize non-stop. (Watch _’Inside Amy Schumer’_ I’m Sorry_ at New York Magazine) In June there was this piece on the Opinion Pages of the New York Times. Do a search of “Women apologizing” and you’ll turn up plenty more.

I’ve been paying attention to when I’m apt to say ‘sorry’ and to whether I am indeed sorry. I’m afraid I often use it passive aggressively. ‘Sorry, but I just can’t…’ while flouncing around and washing dishes someone else’s dishes. That sort of not very nice thing. (I can be such a bitch)

As Sloane Croasley wrote in the New York Times piece linked above, “It’s not what we’re saying that’s the problem, it’s what we’re not saying. The sorrys are taking up airtime that should be used for making logical, declarative statements, expressing opinions and relaying accurate impressions of what we want.”

But what about when we actually want to ask someone’s forgiveness?

When we fuck up, there’s a right way and a wrong way to apologize. And I’m not talking about putting the box down so the UPC is hard to reach or because we are about to collide with someone or because we need to complain about service or our food or someone else’s mistake. I mean when we’ve been unkind, rude or said something we shouldn’t. When we’ve done wrong.

When apologizing for real, don’t say sorry and then try and expand and explain ABC because of XYZ (i.e. the Brian Williams apology) That doesn’t count. Sorry-not-sorry sucks. Rather than owning lousy behavior this says: I’m really right.

Of course there’s no guarantee we’ll be forgiven but just asking for it can make us feel better as long as we do it sincerely. For me, this requires letting go of my righteousness, stepping into the shoes of the person I’ve hurt. From this place, it’s easier to move on from the anger of conflict to peace. Hopefully, (if you have a sweet child like I do) the aggrieved can do the same. Molly had to call me on my XYZing a few times (you know us Mothers are always right) before I realized how lame an apology I was delivering. It doesn’t work.

And sometimes, the best apology and most beautiful flowers in the world won’t work either. Just because someone asks us to forgive them does not mean that we must. Anyone who has lived with a drug or alcohol abuser knows the hollowness of a too often repeated apology. Proof is sometimes the only way towards healing and forgiveness. Sorry.

How many times a day do you say sorry?

If You Know What’s Good For You…

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I get up at 5:30 on weekdays and about 7:00 on weekends. I’ve been doing this for the past few years so I can write for about an hour before taking care of required life business. Too often, instead of writing I do the following:

  • Water the garden
  • Pick blueberries from the yard (okay, this is lovely, right?)
  • Check emails – mostly from Talbots, Lord & Taylor, J. Jill, Real Beauty (??) – I never shop at any of these places
  • Look at Facebook posts
  • Read other people’s blog posts
  • Clean the kitchen
  • Grocery shop before the weekend hordes descend
  • Read the newspaper
  • Cook
  • Laundry

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Yes, a few of these are necessary, constructive and nourishing things to do. But this is supposed to be my writing time. Why don’t I honor that? Why am I distracted by nonsense?

If I write at the very beginning of the day, I get to walk around all day with a happy secret practically humming inside of me. It’s beautiful. I can physically locate that good feeling right below my ribs. Yes, as I sit here I feel like I’m charging my Solar Plexus – like I’ve got a little Sun in there glowing brighter as I put words to page.

Only in writing this today did I realize the physicality of what happens to me when I write, that I can actually locate a place in my body (besides my stiff shoulders) where I feel this. Of course I had to step away for a minute for a little (distraction??) online research and found this on balancechakra.com:

Solar Plexus Chakra – Manipura

The Solar Plexus Chakra is a center of personal strength, learning and comprehension. It guides you through life by creating a strong sense of self, setting personal boundaries and building self esteem and willpower. The ability to bring change into your life and to the world is born within this Chakra.

No wonder starting the day by writing feels good! I’m feeling my Solar Plexus, baby!

So why do I procrastinate rather than head directly to a beautiful accessible place? Do I need to look at those pictures of Amal and George Clooney instead? Really?

Yes, I do shit like that. Do you?

I Went Nowhere

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I’ve been on vacation this week and spent it getting reacquainted with my old friend, solitude. After making breakfast and packing lunches and smoothies for my loved ones, I sent them off with a kiss to their jobs and my pup and I stayed home.

I love my gal and my guy but I cherish solitude. I love my job requiring me to talk to people but going a whole day without speaking to a soul is bliss. I’m overdue for visits with many beloved friends but I made no plans for lunch or coffee. This week, I indulged my neglected introvert.

Just for fun I took one of those goofy online tests to see whether I am an introvert or extrovert. I’m both. I love meeting new people, talk easily and with pleasure with anyone — but my need for solitude is important enough for me to get out of bed ridiculously early so I have some time alone. I’m grateful my loved ones are big sleepers more inclined to stay in bed till noon than worry about getting any worms. Mornings belong to Tetley and me and even he usually goes back for a nap after his quick morning outing.

During this week’s abundance of alone time, I did experience some pangs. I remembered the other side of the coin: the loneliness of being alone. It’s a fine line. In my pre-family past, when I lived alone, I often felt an ache of longing – to have someone in my life, wanting love, to be wanted, needed. Rarely did I own up to this, sure it was a sign of weakness, of being a loser, of not fitting my self-image – or at least the one I hoped to cultivate. I’d take lovers anyone else could spot would not be right for me, sure they’d fill the spot I’d reserved. With varying degrees of drama, these affairs crashed and burned. I marveled at my mated friends – envied their sense of being a unit even when they squabbled. Okay, then maybe not so much – I know how lonely it can be even when someone is sleeping next to you.

I used to hate the feeling of loneliness. Now I recognize the pangs of desolation as first steps on the road to where I like to be, as a sign I’m going in the right direction on the way to get somewhere interesting. It may be tough to climb the mountain, but how great the view is. I understand better how to dive into this place of alone.

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Being good at solitude is a little like a muscle and if you don’t use it, you lose it. For me, it’s the same group of muscles I use to create. My best work grows from a quiet place deep within me – a whole different terrain than the day to day business of being in the world, going to my job, being an extrovert. Like all of my muscles, I want to keep this one limber, the one that gets me to a quiet place where I can best hear what’s really going on.

It was a good week. I went nowhere.

A Tale of Two Chairs on a Thursday

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My dental hygienist alerted me to erosion in my one remaining upper wisdom tooth, way back where I could barely fit my toothbrush. Ever since, I regularly squirmed my tongue around it to feel the roughness, the beginnings of a cavity sure to cause me pain sooner of later. If I there’s pain ahead, I try and dodge it. Wouldn’t you? Out with the tooth, I decided.

My willingness to get a tooth yanked was based on previous experience. My left top one was removed a few years ago with little fanfare thanks to nitrous oxide. I recalled the experience as almost fun, me acting like a bad drunk, cracking stupid jokes through a mouthful of gauze. This time I was determined to keep silent and enjoy the other worldly experience of laughing gas without the follow-up embarrassment.

Calling me ‘honey’, the lovely assistant who was young enough to be my kid, held my hand as the oral surgeon shot me with novocaine, a little nose mask of gas blissfully distracting me from the needle as it pierced the roof of my mouth. After a dreamy pause while the numbing took effect, they both returned and after a snap! snap! snap! of rubber gloves, the surgeon came down towards me humming only a few notes of a tune I vaguely recognized. Usually I keep my eyes tightly shut while in a dentist chair, not wanting to see drills, needles or blood – and mostly I did today too – but for some reason, I peeked and caught a blur of two sets of hands – a tug and then a shadow as a tongs passed my tooth to lovely assistant. Next a push of gauze to staunch bleeding and a few more tugs of stitching. In and out and delivered in less than 30 minutes, to Molly, my chauffeur for the day. As pleasant as something like that can be.

I kicked myself a little when I went to pay the bill and discovered everything but the laughing gas was covered by my insurance.  I’d dropped $150 on a quick high to make the yank a little more bearable when really, the numbing would have done the job fine. What a wimp.

“Let’s go for a pedicure.” I suggested, thinking I deserved some pampering after my mini-non-ordeal and knowing Molly would appreciate the perk. Perhaps, as I suspect my daughter imagined, I was still high. I almost never venture into any of these ubiquitous salons. I can’t bear to have my fingernails scraped and filed nor the suffocating feeling of the polish on my fingers. Toenails are another matter and recently, looking down at my bare feet in a public place, I noticed they could use a little grooming.  We flip-flopped our way into a nail salon.

I chose red polish and sat down in one of the chairs and immediately remembered this disturbing expose in the New York Times in May. “Paul” and “Jane” greeted us and went to work. Did they, like the people profiled in Sarah Maslin Nir’s article, live in overcrowded rooms in Queens? Were they also woefully underpaid? Maybe abused? (read that fine article, please) What the hell was I doing sitting here being pummeled by an electronic massage chair with my feet in a plastic bin? In that tiny salon, at least 30 people were bent over hands and feet – mostly Chinese with a few Latina women (even more underpaid if the article holds true for this shop) cleaning up and offering massages. I hated it.  And I really hate emory boards – the sound, sight and especially feel of one being sawed across my toes made me wish I’d had a dose of novocain beforehand.

I overtipped and hurried out, the tissue still twirled between my crimson toes. This had not felt like pampering to me. I found it hard relaxing when… when – what? When paying someone to mess with my feet? Yes, having someone I cannot converse with, whose story I cannot know but only imagine as including dreams unlikely to be achieved by hunkering over my feet. Knowing they’re probably getting paid shit, makes me uncomfortable. I feel like I’m participating in something unjust. I am.

So my toes look great, my rotting tooth is gone and I barely felt a thing.

 

Shared Notes of Love in the Public Schools

 

Molly & Darius

Molly and I pulled into a mostly empty lot at her old middle school 15 minutes before the start of a retirement send-off of her former Strings teacher. After 42 years of teaching, Barbara is hanging up her baton. I suggested to Molly we walk because it might be hard to park, imagining the lot overflowing as it often does when there are special events at the school. A little dismayed, I reminded myself Barbara was an orchestra teacher not a football coach. The arts in this struggling city get short shrift unlike the nearby wealthier and homogenous suburbs where near-infants are enrolled in Suzuki school.

Norwalk is more of a sports town. The soccer team is great, usually composed of children of newer immigrants from places where soccer is the real football.  The football team isn’t too bad either and the heavily supported band performing at all the football games always wins awards. Strings are trickier. Unable to march in the parade on Memorial Day with no pretty girls in leotards twirling flags and wooden guns over their heads, Classical music – orchestras have less mass appeal. After all, there’s no spectacle! You must sit and listen – quietly – no hotdog eating, no cheering.

Barbara M & D

Barbara ignited a love of music in countless children in our urban community, including Molly who joined the elementary school’s orchestra program in third grade. Like many an arts teacher in struggling urban communities, Barbara juggled the elementary school strings program along with the middle school – traveling from school to school because the budget didn’t allow for a teacher in each.

On Stage

I needn’t have worried about a turnout at Barbara’s send-off. In no time at all, the stage filled with former students — kids sitting next to adults — some in their early 50s themselves — hard to believe when you look at their ageless mentor. Generations of students – some now teachers themselves – with cellos, violas, violins – even two bass players showed up, hauling their gigantic instruments like old friends.

I confess, I dreaded, especially in the early days, Molly’s school concerts – screechy selections of cheesy music grinding on for hours, but over the years, they got better and yesterday, I grinned through the whole jolly celebration of love. Love of music, of the shared bonds of the orchestra, of the woman who stood before them as quick with a hug and a stellar smile as with a stern word for her players to pay attention punctuated with appropriate baton tapping.

M & D playing

I sat right up front (more were on stage than in the audience) so I could watch my girl – who sings (like an angel) now but hasn’t picked up her violin in ages. Here she was again, paired like the old days with her dear friend Darius who I have watched grow up into a lovely man. How easily they slid into an easy rapport, sharing smiles and wise cracks behind their music stand. A lovely throwback to a sweet time not so long past but now, perhaps gone forever. United for last songs, with generations of one woman’s students, making gloriously, imperfect music together.

If You Can Read…

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The walk to Kingsbridge Library meant passing a ferocious dog. I dreaded that stretch of sidewalk. Running as fast as I could, heart pounding, I kept my eyes on the corner ahead, willing the dog not to leap from the second floor terrace from where he snarled. But on the day I went to sign up for my first library card, my heart beat with anticipation so I barely noticed the barking canine. The requirement was you needed to be able to write your name and after practicing like mad, I was ready to sign on the dotted line. I can still conjure that moment when I received the manila piece of cardboard, my name typed on it, a ticket to borrow books for free. The first and most precious document I’d ever signed up for and I was 5.  Through the library and reading I entered a world beyond any walls or city streets I knew.

A few years later we moved to our new neighborhood on Broadway across from VanCortlandt Park and Riverdale Library became my new destination. According to my memory, walking to either library took about half an hour but a quick Mapquest search of my old addresses indicates that they’re both less than 15 minutes on foot from where we lived, the distance greater because of the always heavy load of books I carried each way.

In elementary school, I tore through books about dogs and especially Collies, obsessed by Lad and the Sunnybank Collie series by Albert Payson Terhune. By 6th grade and through Junior High School, I haunted the Nature section particularly loving memoirs by naturalists and accounts and guides about surviving in nature. A country girl trapped in the city, I became a Euell Gibbons devotee, stalking mostly park dandelions and my favorite – fragrant Black Locust Blossoms delicious because of the sugar and batter they were fried in.

When adolescence hit, I discovered May Sarton and coveted a life like hers, observing nature, befriending the animals. Now, as an adult, I recognize a loneliness in her pronounced solitude and realize that probably resonated with me too. I read travel books and dreamed of living in Australia with all that weird wildlife. From a library in the Bronx I learned about tracking animals and when my parents bought a weekend house in the Berkshires, I wandered the forest searching mud and snow for prints and once, came upon a deer walking ahead of me on the quiet path – the ultimate prize for my solitary walks.

Reading was a common thread in my otherwise fractured family. Our faces were in books the way today’s kids are in their phones. The day my father moved out he told me he wanted to pursue his dream of writing, (not that he’d fallen in love with another woman) and that reading was his excuse for not writing. Within an hour of his reveal, he began packing his books, removing familiar titles I’d grown up with, leaving empty, dusty shelves.

My mother devoured The New Yorker, novels, and religiously, The New York Times. When she gave a sharp shake of her paper, I knew that meant she was about to read a passage that incensed or amused her, wanting to share her outrage or joy with me. If I also had a section of the paper, I’d do my best to snap my own pages to communicate my annoyance, on the ridiculous chance that she might understand my code and be quiet. I confess, now a mother myself, I do this — wanting to read something with my daughter who of course, also hates it but tells me so and I stop.

My sister and I are crazy about each other and in our weekly phone gabs, drill each other about our lives. What are you making for dinner tonight? (We wish we were at each other’s tables …) How’s work? What are you doing this weekend? And of course, what are you reading? Inevitably, we both have a few titles to recommend and so my daunting tower of books-to-be read grows.

Family Christmas presents are easy – we all love books. Kevin is an omnivorous reader with eclectic, far ranging interests. My other brother always has something specific and often obscure – a literary title or the latest guide to wild mushrooms.

When Molly was little, our Saturday morning of errands always included a stop at the Westport library – not our town but a far better endowed one than the one I live in with  a beautiful space and key: lots of parking.  We’d go through the shelves together, picking out picture books to add to the vast choice she already owned, for our nightly 5 books-a-bed reading. We lingered in the play area, her scouting out new friends over the wooden toy collection while I scanned the new book section. Did I tell you I work in a bookstore? My librarian friends who knew me from the store teased me about my ‘bus-man’s holiday’ – and of course, I knew them too. We’re like that, us book people, we just can’t get enough.

I cannot imagine my life without reading, without the crazy towers of books around me and it astounds me that not everyone shares this pleasure. During the years I gave tours at the United Nations, when I had groups of children, I always paused in front of the beautiful photo above, taken by former UN photographer and  dear friend John Isaac, to talk about literacy. I’d ask them, “What can you do if you can read?” The children piped up and I’d add “Cook!” (because I believe anyone can) and we’d go on endlessly with our list concluding, that if you can read, you can do ANYTHING.

IF YOU CAN READ YOU CAN DO ANYTHING! Sorry to yell but I just want to shout that from the rooftops.

PS: Conversely, if you can’t read… well, you’re screwed. Here’s some depressing information about the unnecessary illiteracy rate in the United States:  http://literacyprojectfoundation.org/community/statistics/ 

What Would You Say to the HONY Guy?

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Let’s say you were walking in Grand Central or relaxing on a bench in Central Park, and the guy from Humans of New York sauntered over and asked if he could take your photo? Would you agree?

In case you aren’t familiar with Brandon Stanton’s work here’s a link to his website or you can follow his HONY site on Facebook. These vignettes – a photo and a few sentences, capture a flash of someone’s life. Usually, people look straight at the camera and within minutes of meeting, tell this stranger intimate things, sometimes sharing secrets — and in doing so, expose themselves to the world. The results are moving, transformative or sometimes, like his kid and dog shots, simply delightful. They are snaps of life, a compelling, random smattering of who we are, what we do, what happens to us, us humans in New York, on this planet.

What would you say? Presuming you don’t say fuck off, I don’t want you to take my picture and it’s none of your B-I-bizness? How would you answer his query: What’s your biggest struggle? What was the happiest moment of your life? What was the saddest moment of your life? Could you answer these questions on the fly without wracking your brain? (I can’t) If you could, would you reach down into your heart and reveal to Brandon and the world, your deepest wishes, desires, regrets, dreams? Your pain or joy? Would you be honest like so many hundreds have been with him, with us?

I’m not sure. I surprise myself, for how can I blog and write memoir yet feel private?  In this unguarded cyber-space and in my memoir, I share intimate details of my life, past and present, the struggle of my marriage to my late husband, living with his addiction, after his suicide, I write about dashed and now, renewed hopes and dreams. I write to better understand myself. I am private in that I have no longing for fame, only for connection. It’s this feeling of connecting that is so moving in Brandon’s work, we feel it because he made it, he won that trust from his subjects. So why would I shy away from his camera and his question? Because I don’t know what I would say.

‘What would you say to HONY’ could be the new party question to replace ‘what do you want to have on your epitaph’. What sound-bite would I want to sum up my life for the world to see?

‘In spite of some terrible shit in my past, I’m joyfully ready for the next adventure and most of all, determined not to live in fear.’

That might work.

What would you say? Or would you (nicely) say fuck off?

I’d Like to Walk (More)

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In this car-dependent community where I live, walking is something I do with intention. I walk my dog Tetley before and after work. More ambitiously I walk with my friend Chris. We walk fast and far and sometimes with weights – for the fresh air and exercise. Where I live, like most American communities, walking is not a viable way to take care of daily business. I miss that.

I did not own a car until I moved to Connecticut in my 30s. I lived in Kyoto, Japan; New York City; Zagreb, Croatia; even Cincinnati, Ohio (I lived in the city) and never owned a car because I didn’t need one. Stores, markets to buy food – were in every neighborhood. And public transportation was accessible and good. Or, I rode a bicycle with a basket big enough to fill with groceries. I knew the fastest, scenic, safest routes to work.  I became familiar with the patterns of light, cracks on sidewalks, faces and sometimes the names of shopkeepers, my neighbors. All of my senses were attuned to my place in the world. In Kyoto, the sound of ancient weaving machines heaving away down the narrow streets of my neighborhood, were my cues I was nearing the old wooden house where I lived, as did the splashing of water from the tofu shop on the corner. When I moved farther north in the city, I smelled the fermenting kimchee from the Korean community on the next street, the scent of the pine forests up the hill and felt the wind, the first snow.

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In Zagreb, I befriended neighbors and shopkeepers passed daily on my walk to catch the tram to work. After Molly was born, I walked with her pram to the market where I piled fresh produce and maybe something from the butcher in the rack beneath her.  In Cincinnati I lived at the edge of a ghetto surrounded by empty buildings, accepted by the few residents in that mostly abandoned neighborhood, as one of the weird artists that lived in the building that used to be a school. I only felt nervous when I had to leave at 4:30 in the morning to pick up a waitress shift at the hotel downtown – I’d throw my ten speed onto my shoulder, dash down the broken church steps and pedal furiously through the empty streets – the dark morning terrifying and thrilling me.

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And New York – well, everyone knows New York – half the fun of being there is just walking, walking, walking. Most days I happily joined the river of pedestrians rushing down Broadway, dodging around the slowpokes, when I remembered to have change handy in my pocket, giving to the usual gauntlet of panhandlers. Sometimes I’d choose West End Avenue – a wider, emptier expanse of only apartment buildings with no shops – a short reprieve from the masses before cutting over to join the flow at 96th Street where we descended to the subway.

But here, an hour outside of New York City, I’ve never even boarded the bus. The grocery store is at least a mile away so not practical to walk to unless I’m just buying milk. Work is 5 miles and my job requires a car for visits to schools and companies.

Except for the hurried morning Tetley walks  – so short they hardly qualify – me following him at a snails pace as he sniffs and pees, sniffs and pees, barks at long-gone creatures from the night before. I have to get to work so we barely make it down the street before I have to tug him to hurry along and take care of business. Still, I get a glimpse of the day, a sense of the seasons.

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Recently, I walked a different route to pick up my car. Not a pretty street, but one I drive down often. And in walking it, I noticed new things. This company’s name intrigued me – its a wholesale distributor of body jewelry – so if you’re in the market for nipple rings, check them out.

American communities do not encourage pedestrian life. In fact, walking can be deadly. Sidewalks are intermittent — even along busy thoroughfares like the Boston Post Road. I’ve seen families pushing baby carriages along a busy stretch between strip malls, hugging the curb while traffic barrels past. Throw in the frozen snow banks of winter and a texting teen…

According to the CDC: “In 2012, 4,743 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in the United States, and another 76,000 pedestrians were injured. This averages to one crash-related pedestrian death every 2 hours, and a pedestrian injury every 7 minutes. Pedestrians are 1.5 times more likely than passenger vehicle occupants to be killed in a car crash on each trip.”

This doesn’t exactly make you want to break out your walking shoes, now does it?

I miss the easy exercise of being a functional walker but even more, I miss the intimate connections to the world around me only possible beyond the boundaries of my home, my car. I devour the blogs of madcap adventurers biking around the world, shlogging through all weather, up mountains, through cities, camping by rivers, part of it all – meeting up with hospitable citizens who share their food and drink because who doesn’t love a traveler – someone pedaling, walking, wanting to know about your place in the world? And in doing so, in getting out of a car, slowing down and being in a place, we make it a little bit, our own.

Don’t get me wrong – I love to drive around in the warmth or the cool of my car, my music playing. But so much of life is missed when you travel 30+ miles an hour.

What about where you live?

Early Mothering Skills and How I Learned Them: Praise for Italian Nurses

In the corner of the store, an obviously distraught mother sat with her wailing newborn yelling into a phone and awkwardly cradling her screaming baby. She might have been easy to dismiss as a crazy person – unless you were ever a new mother. Then, you’ll recognize those challenging early days.

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Molly was born 7 weeks early so we were not even in the right country – except, in my opinion, there’s nothing ‘wrong’ about Italy. Especially when it comes to babies. Even a scary looking thug is a natural baby expert and likely to coo over yours. The nurses at the hospital sang to our children and encouraged us moms to stay, kiss and cuddle our babies and – to nurse.  I’d just been working with UNICEF in Croatia and knew the importance of mother’s milk and the Italian nurses at Brindisi hospital never suggested any other option to me. They adjusted our babies and breasts as we attempted to nurse. While still in the hospital, we were mostly unsuccessful, our premies unable to adequately suck enough milk from our breasts. Eventually, bottles of our breast milk were brought out and feeling slightly defeated, we bottle-fed. Then we’d return to the hot and steamy mother’s room to pump away, filling bottles for the next session. Fresh mozzarella and pasta dished into big bowls from an enormous pot, sustained us. Not one baby formula sign anywhere. With this support, Molly was an only-breastfed baby.

Giving birth almost 2 months early and ending up in a Neonatology ward in Southern Italy felt an ordeal, but in retrospect I recognize those 3 weeks provided me with skills I needed to take care of my baby. I learned to hold the little mite, how to read her signals and most of all, how to trust myself. With no family or friends and not speaking the language, I relied on my instinct, books and what the Italian nurses taught me during those unexpected weeks in the hospital. I credit them with saving me from becoming a screaming mother in public places like this poor woman in the bookstore.

I approached the new mom and asked if I could help. She told me she couldn’t drive while the baby was crying and the problem was (she thought), the baby’s nose was stuffed. She swabbed at the tiny nostrils and the little thing screamed louder. The mom then reached for a half-full bottle and told me she was also concerned that the baby had not finished it. Even 2 decades later, my mother-muscle-memory kicked into gear. Channeling the loving Italian nurses, I suggested she not worry about trying to force milk down the baby – her infant knows what she needs – besides, the kid was clearly exhausted. I remembered the nurses shifting Molly in my arms so gravity could do the job when she had a stuffed nose. I suggested she hold her 5 week old daughter upright on her shoulder so her head was not tilting backward. She did and the baby quieted, collapsing in sleep.

The Doctors who saved Molly's life.
The Doctors who saved Molly’s life.

I walked away thinking — who is around to help this obviously struggling mom? Doulas, a great support for new mothers, standard in England and many other countries, are expensive here and not a service routinely provided as it should be. Mother and baby are ushered out of the hospital within only a day or so of giving birth. What if there is no supportive family waiting for you? Without the doctors and nurses of Brindisi hospital, I would have been up shit’s creek — obviously how this woman felt. My Italian stinks and the nurses spoke no English, but I recall no language barrier. Their love transcended all and of that, they had plenty. Oh, by the way, our hospital bill for 3 weeks of intensive, loving care? Niente. That’s right, Italy’s healthcare system is socialized and I was charged nothing.

An Unexpected Expat Birth

UNICEF’s mission is to protect children and their mothers so when bombs began falling on Zagreb in May 1995, my employers insisted I take an early maternity leave from my job as a Program Officer. I gladly exited the bitter Balkan war zone where I’d spent almost 4 years and joined my husband in Italy. He’d left a month earlier for a new job, renting an extravagant villa in the picturesque town of Ostuni – about 40 minutes away from his office in Brindisi.

me prego

Behind the villa, a narrow staircase led to a hidden lemon and lime grove. Cherry trees full of ripe fruit and a magnificent rose garden filled the grounds. I would while away the hot June days in this fantasy location before traveling to Oxford England where my friend Chloe, a breastfeeding specialist and midwife I’d worked with at UNICEF, would deliver our baby girl who was due August 1. That was our plan.

I spent my days waddling across the cool tile floors, napping in various rooms in the too-big house, picking fruit and deadheading flowers in the garden, reading Willa Cather, cooking delicious dinners — imagining that some how, all of this was practice for my imminent new life as mother. Those pregnant, sweaty days, strangely alone in Southern Italy, far from friends and family, I washed and folded the soft, tiny baby gear and imagined my baby, trying out different names aloud to no one but the cats.

On the roof, I wrestled our sheets over the laundry line where they dried within minutes in the hot wind whipping up the coast. Beyond the golden fields of sunflowers stretching out towards the horizon, shimmered a sliver of the Adriatic. Just across the sea from my little paradise, war still raged and I felt guilty about my own escape. Meanwhile my baby elbowed, shoved and squirmed within me, insisting I pay attention to her.

My maternal hankerings had survived 4 years of life in a war zone, even as I witnessed the worst in humans. There was nothing I wanted more than this baby although I had no idea how to care for an infant. Far from friends and my own mother, whose advice I might have disdained anyway, there were no baby showers, no chance for baby tips from my peers. I looked forward to traveling to England at the end of June where I could easily make friends in my own language with other new mothers-to-be in a birthing class I’d sign up for.

Instead, just after siesta time on June 13th, in a frantic fifteen minutes, my baby girl was delivered in a tiny hospital in Ostuni almost 2 months early. From there, they whisked her away by ambulance to Brindisi Hospital’s neonatology unit.

I woke from my drug induced sleep, in a dark hospital room that felt like a 1930’s movie set.  Other new mothers slept in the other 7 old fashioned, heavy metal framed beds.  A full moon shone in warped rays through the glass of the casement window, a weird spotlight on only my bed. I clutched the hospital gown closed behind me, while dodging balloons bobbing from the other beds, celebrating the babies safely swaddled just down the hall. Where was my baby? Hobbling barefoot past the life-size statue of Virgin Mary whose lightbulb halo lit the hall, my physical pain was indistinguishable from the psychic pain tearing through me. Was my daughter alive? With remembered prayers from my Catholic upbringing, I begged Mary for her intervention and continued down the hall where I was met by a nurse.

With a smattering of Italian words, I begged the sleepy woman to help me call my husband or the hospital to find out news of my baby. I knew no phone numbers, there were no cell phones. The nurse insisted everyone was asleep and I would need to wait until morning. She steered me back to the maternity ward where I sunk into my still moonlit mattress and wept.

premie 1

When morning finally arrived, my husband came barreling into an impossibly bright room, he was grinning. She was alive! He rushed to my bedside and told me his story of the day before: how he sped after the ambulance, about the sweet care and expertise of the doctors, of their assurance our baby would be fine, how he tried to call to tell me but the hospital insisted I was sleeping and was it okay that he had gone ahead and named our daughter, choosing our current favorite womb-name because they wanted a name at the hospital. Yes, yes, I said while trying, through tears to see my daughter in the photograph he’d brought. It was another 2 days until the hospital released me to go to her, and during that time I joyfully clutched that sad little image of my baby poked full of tubes, tiny limbs akimbo, and thought: she is perfect.

me at incubator

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