Labor Day

The calm is not enough to lull you. It's the microseconds after a hard sprint, before the rush of endorphins washes strain from your muscles, where every sensation tells you that your body is still struggling, still suffering, though you no longer make progress. It is planting your second foot firmly in the snow at 14,000 feet, gasping for breath in the oxygen-thin air, succumbing to your body's demand for respite, but knowing that you've lost your acclimation to the pain when the next step begins. And in that lucid moment you have in pause, you are cognizant enough to look up in search of the aspired for mountain apex, but it's whereabouts are obscured, by cloud or by false summits.

There is an end. You know that in fact, but you cannot know it in feeling. In the animal part of your brain, facts are a weak opponent to what you feel.

Yet you take your next step, always climbing, each step more trying than the last. Each step a commitment to ignore the protests of your muscles, your bones and joints, to pursue your crazed obsession. But here, there is no choice. While mountain fever might possess one to never give up until the top is reached, the option always remains. Turn back. Turn around and instantly feel thicker air with each step. Let gravity ease your burden.

But this is different. The next contraction is an event already decided on 9 months previous. There is no turning back any more.

You may be engulfed into your own personal world of pain laying down, or perhaps sitting. But I stand, arms wrapped around the neck of co-manufacturer of my condition, in the midst of calm. Well before the next wave comes, I can already feel the involuntary tightening ball in my midsection. Oh no. I utter, and the signal is given that soon I will be far from this place, and anything my body does while I am gone is of no concern to me any more.

The sensation grows, sucking me into a black-hole of pain, throwing out only the gamma radiation of primal cries, manufactured by my body in the absence of commands from a now vacated mind. The body has no better instruction and knows no better response.

Information, once entering this black-hole, can never escape. Even the memory of the pain cannot be retained. The knowledge that it was experienced survives from outside the event horizon, but the experience itself will never surface again. At least, until the next contraction.

Slowly, it releases me back to my body, and I am in the moment, understanding only that I am back in the calm I look down. A fat drop of blood, laid thickly in deep red, forms a perfect circle on the laminate hospital floor. I stare at it until the next wave overtakes me.

When I surface, another drop. And I plunge into the world of pain again.

Three drops. Then gone. Four. Five.

Now there are too many drops to count. They have overwhelmed the floor and begun to coalesce and form a crimson pond.

Hours ago, I could remind myself, soon, this experience would all be just a memory. Now, there is no opportunity for such self-reassurances. The mind is unable to collect itself in time to do anything more than recognize its own existence between bouts of oblivion.

Time does not exist as it does normally. Ninety seconds are an eternity, yet the hours that pass collectively are no longer constructed by the minutes and seconds of the clock. They are a series of waves and calms, lined up together, one by one, like beads on a string. There is no end in sight, but neither was there a beginning. This world simply always was, is and will be. The end of labor, like before its start, does not dictate it existence. It has merely defined my visit.

The end of labor and the start of active pushing brings me back the real world. Pain now has purpose. It is active and prophetic. The calms, the few that exist, now host the possibility of hope, desire, fear and anxiety. It is a place where strength of mind and heart can make a difference. Where it is possible to have courage.

Oh no, I utter as each pushing contraction begins to build, but their quality has changed. Before I was dragged away, helpless and passive, to an isolated plane of existence. Now, this pain, andmy words steel me and provide strength. Screams are not the absence of the mind They are products of will.

Here it comes. I gather my strength!

Push! Mind and body act as one with determination.

Do not give up! Now is the time to show strength.

“Okay, look down!” the doctor tells me and I do. Surprising to me, somewhere in the middle of the battle a child was born.

Welcome to the outside world, Eiger.

Neil and Gord

Here I am, newly moved into the first house we've ever bought, nearing the end of what has been a miserable 7 months of pregnancy with our first child, and this is what keeps coming back to me:

Neil Young got a hot new girlfriend, and Gord Downie got brain cancer.

The significance of these juxtaposed Ontario-born and bred singers comes from the fact that they are creative minds behind the music my spouse and I cherish the most. For him, songs of Cinnamon Girls, Southern Men and Hearts of Gold have put him the most as ease. For me, The Tragically Hip has never been far from my side. And now their lead singer has a death sentence that numbers in perhaps months.

Which is to say there is no significance to the fates of these two Canucks – the one who left Canada to become a big name in music in the United States, and the other who never quite penetrated the northern border, but became a symbol of what it means to be Canadian. But I am the daughter of a very long line of devout Roman Catholics. Pattern recognition and finding meaning where coincidence masquerades as divine is a part of my DNA.

I don't find myself often moved by the lives of celebrities. When David Bowie died, I heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth among friends and family, and the world. But his music still exists. I can still watch the Labyrinth at any time and the summation of my relationship with David Bowie is alive as ever. Alan Rickman died, and in some small way, that is sad to me, but I still get a chuckle out of Dogma, or appreciate his dour Professor Snape. Nothing has changed. I never knew these men past their works.

And in many ways, the way I have interacted with The Tragically Hip will remain the same when Gord Downie is gone. The same Silver Jet, way overhead, exists as it did when it punctuated the bittersweet feelings I had as I prepared to leave my life in Japan and return to the United States. It takes all your power to prove that you don't care, but I didn't even try. Even in that awkward state between the blanket of childhood and the declaration of adulthood, the gift of Cordelia from the blonde afro wielding Toronto classmate, along with the shrugged off sentiment of “Yeah, you kind of aren't allowed to be Canadian if you don't like them” had me instantly hooked.

And in the days at the height of my own transient life, the voice of Gord Downie validated my cabin fever, and onward I went, to the next country, the next state, singing “And change yourself into something you love when you leave, when you leave, when you leave?” The quality of my departures differed, yet those lyrics seemed to apply as much to an exciting start to life in rural Japan as it did fleeing deep Appalachia.

Like as with the other close men and women of my life, surely I have sewn my wild oats among other purveyors of song. Perhaps that is even too trite a description, as like with those men and women, my interaction with the movement of words to music were significant to the past lives of younger days. But much like with my spouse, there has always been one set of songs I find myself coming back to, each time, infusing my life with new meaning.

And that's what it means to live a relationship, doesn't it? To continually grow, to constantly see with new eyes what has been before them for years. To change, while staying the same. To live and grow up in synchronicity.

Although perhaps impact has been largely one way. A conversation with back-up singer Paul Langlois about the Canadian Mockumentary Trailer Park Boys in the quiet back parking lot of the Vogue in Indianapolis is a memory only I keep, likely, and Gord extending his hand to mine mid-song in New York City was a product his musical compulsion, I suspect. But with my hand, I wanted to help you lift enormous things, a pinch a sting I don't feel a thing, as the earth revolves around the sun.

On the flipside of this meaninglessly significant contrast of singers, lies another relationship with the music of one Mr. Neil Young. The man who, after 38 years of quintessential love bound in marriage, left his wife and found another woman in short order. Suddenly, the cheerleading I had gotten from him in his ode to old love, that I had grappled onto as I jumped into the unknown world of sticking around instead of running off to the next adventure, seemed to have been disingenuous. Because I'm still in love with you, I want to see you dance again, because I'm still in love with you, on this harvest moon. Once rock solid and supportive, they've become cheap.

Neil Young got a hot new girlfriend, and Gord Downie got brain cancer. Gord, I thought you beat death of inevitability to death just a little bit. I thought you beat the inevitability of death to death just a little bit.

Never Grown Up

When I was a little kid, my dad ate Wasa every morning for breakfast.

I'd sit, with my fruity loops or charms of luck, sugary sweet in my bowl, milk turning a sickly pink, kicking my legs back and forth, as they wouldn't touch the ground for several years. I'd watch him eat Wasa and wonder, how anyone could eat such a dry looking, tasteless cracker, and nothing else, every morning. Well, Wasa and the foul smelling dark, bitter liquid known as coffee. What sort of strange mind-control could possibly posses someone to choose a stiff sheet of crusted bread over sweet marsh-mellows and rainbow colors, to choose the taste of burning beans over the smooth and chocolaty goodness of flavored milk?. My breakfast smiled at me with big joyful eyes from a box every morning, but his hid behind brown paper packaging and four lonely letters, Double Ew, Ayyy, Ess, Ayyy.

What was clear to me was that adulthood was the process of finding boring things, interesting. It meant choosing a monotonous drone about the weather over a colorful cartoon about medieval monsters living in New York City. Taking a walk around the neighborhood instead of climbing rocks and digging up salamanders in the backyard. Spending a Saturday afternoon snoozing instead of adventuring in made up castles, battlefields and space ships. Going to the beach, but never going into the water.

I knew it wasn't that adults liked boring things. I understood there was something I just couldn't see. Why did the man who listed numbers on the TV hold such rapt attention of the tall people around me?

So when my dad came home at night and turned on the business news, I joined him. He asked if I liked the show and I said I did. I did. The stream of up and down arrows, numbers and figures nearly put me to sleep, and the fat man talking reminded me of a stinky uncle, but I liked watching the business news. I pretended to be an adult, with my dad. We were being adults together.

When I turned 6 and a half, (a tough part of becoming an adult means forgetting the importance of half birthdays. At that time, I had not yet forgotten.), two things happened. Celebrating by now very advanced age, I resolved to try Wasa. It was crunchy cardboard. In spite of the smile I put on in attempt to mirror my dad's face, I never tried it with him again. Clearly, adulthood was still a far off dream.

The second thing that happened was an announcement from my parents. I was a big sister. My baby brother or sister would come a month after I turned 7, so we could think of the baby as my birthday present. That's what they said to me, anyway.

We all changed with that announcement. My father gave the unborn baby a name; Philip, a male name. That was when I found out he had done the same with me. I was to be Joseph, after him. Sadly, his namesake-to-be didn't turn out the way he had planned as a girl, but now was a new chance for a real boy.

"How is my son?" he would ask my mother, in spite of her protests that it could just as easily be his daughter she carried.

"SHE, is doing fine," she'd say and they'd both have a laugh.

"Why do you want a boy?" I asked my father. "Don't you like girls?"

"Of course, I love you," he replied, unhesitatingly, "But there are some things I can do with you, and some things I can do with a boy."

"Like what?"

He smiled, perhaps not realizing the sense of insecurity I suddenly had, "When I was a boy, I would go fishing with my father. We'd build treehouses and he taught me chess."

"I want to play chess too!" I shouted.

"Helen, you never had any interest in chess. Remember when I tried to teach you checkers? You wouldn’t stop fidgeting. Chess is a lot harder. You need to concentrate."

"Can a boy concentrate better than a girl?" I asked.

"That's not what I meant." End of conversation.

By chance, dad had been right and the baby was a boy. He was a chubby baby that looked to me like a sack of potatoes. His arms didn't work right and he couldn't even walk. Not like me, I thought. I could walk, talk and not poop my pants. I knew the whole alphabet and could read up to Level 2 books! Philip couldn't do any of those things, but my father disappeared to his side, nonetheless.

Dad still ate Wasa but we didn't watch business news together anymore. He spent that time with the baby. Maybe this was another level of adulthood, I thought. Not only could they find boring things interesting, they found fussy, stinky babies charming. Being an adult must really mess up your head, I concluded.

Philip learned chess, eventually. He also built a treehouse with dad, and they went fishing. I wanted to go fishing too, but I never asked. When he got older, dad sent him to some “Young Programers” camp, a hundred miles away or so. The Bay Area wasn't what it was like back then. The Silicon Valley of my childhood is a memory when the internet was still nascent but bathed in an era of the revolutionary optimism; of dot-coms and start ups. But some people remembered the area when the idea of a “computer on a chip” was revolutionary, including my father. Dad knew saw how much the area was changing the world, and he wanted his son to be a part of it.

Philip was 9 the first time. He returned with a hero's welcome from both of my parents. Somewhere along the line dad had sold to mom the idea of a future that included a wildly successful child who would shape the future world. At 16, I never made the mistake of thinking they talked about me.

But Philip had a different opinion. Next summer, as dad was preparing the car I caught my brother in his room, alone and face down on the bed. It looked like he was whimpering, but when he turned around to my touch I couldn't see tears.

“I hate camp.” Philip admitted to me. “They make you sit in a classroom for 6 hours a day. All my friends from school are going hiking or playing baseball. I don't want to go back. Can you tell them something? I'm sick. Something. Or break my leg?”

“Then you'd be going to camp in a cast,” I joked mirthlessly. Philip scowled.

“Phil gets really homesick when he goes to camp.” I lied to mom.

“Oh that's so sweet. Your brother really loves his family. Joe, did you hear that?” My dad had just entered the kitchen where my mom was packing lunches.

“What's that?” my dad responded.

“Phil really misses us when he goes off to camp.”

“Maybe this year he shouldn't go,” I offered, calling upon my couple of summers' experience as a lifeguard to inject the maximum amount of authority allowed in a 17 year old's voice.

I had not even finished speaking when dad responded to mom. “What a great kid. There's nothing more important than loyalty to your family.”

It was time to go and Philip flashed me a betrayed look. I gave him a sympathetic shrug that got forgotten as my mother started on about how they'd send him care packages every week.

I went off to college the following year. Needing space, I had only applied to out-of-state colleges, which was something that would pain my wallet years later. But at that time, going to Colorado State was one of the best decisions of my life. I joined the Rams Cycling Team and I made some amazing friends I still keep to this day.

But the most important thing I gained at CSU was a sense of confidence. I quickly fell in love with my biology classes. Truly, the boring had become interesting to me and I knew I was arriving at adulthood. Charts and scans held my undivided attention. Sitting still for hours going over slides and cultures were exhilarating. Coffee started to taste good as it kept me up long nights in the lab. Wasa, an easy way to get breakfast on little time, became delicious. I might have put jelly or cheese on it from time to time.

So started my career in medicine and neuroscience.

Philip kept going to camp though. Later, a 4 year stint at UC Berkeley gave my parents what they had always wanted: their son in computer science.

I stayed in Colorado, did a residency but ended up back at the university as a full time researcher, studying memory, but I visited California often. Christmas dinners were full of conversations from the political to the philosophical, but nothing held the attention of my parents so much as Philip's technological mumbo-jumbo. I say that affectionately. I'm sure I'd lose him just as easily if I had brought up medical mumbo-jumbo.

Three years ago was the last Christmas with my parents. Philip had been in mid-conversation about his work in semi-conductors when he casually mentioned that Melinda had been berating him for coming home so late in the past few months. Luckily, my sister-in-law was not present.

“What an ungrateful woman!” My mother shouted, “She doesn't know how lucky she is to have such a high earning, high achieving husband like you. You should divorce her!”

Phil and I were shocked. The fact that my father was not, concerned me. He had gotten up and gently patted her on the back soothingly.

“It's alright, dear. They are fine. Don't worry about it.” Within minutes my mother had calmed back down to her usual cheery self.

I waited until my brother had left before cornered my father.

“How long has this been going on for?”

“What?” he mumbled, pretending to no know what I was talking about.

“Mom. How long has she been having outbursts?”

“Give your mother a break Helen. She's been having a lot of stress lately with your grandmother in hospice now. She didn't mean anything by it.”

“That's not what I mean, Dad. This could be serious.”

“She got really angry the first time three months ago or so.” he finally conceded, “Which, I will remind you, is when your grandpop died and grandma entered the nursing home. She's just stressed. That's all.”

“Please. Get her to see a neurologist. At least.” I didn't want to voice my biggest concern, but the words brain cancer stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“You worry too much. Don't be over dramatic.”

“Dad, please.” I pleaded. Visions of my mother spiraling down into mental infancy flooded my mind. I tried to put myself as if I were in front of any patient or research subject and make my next words as clinical as possible. “This is my professional opinion.”

I knew before the end of the sentence I had failed. In the atmosphere around my father, my every word transformed into that of a whiny 12 year old.

“I'll take her tomorrow.” I offered.

“You won't. Your flight.” he replied firmly.

“I'll change it. This is important.”

For all his failings, my dad was a fairly calm man. I can only recall him yelling at me once, courtesy of my poor decision to sneak away in the family car to visit a boyfriend as a teen. I was instantly transported back in time to that Christmas. His voice rose in crescendo.

“You will not. You are making a big deal out of nothing. The only thing you will do is stress your mother out even more. We are not speaking about this anymore.”

Five months later I got a call. Not from my father. From Philip.

“Mom got diagnosed with cancer today.” he informed me. “It's too late to treat.”

“How much time does she have left?” I asked, not sure which was stronger, a life-time of indignation, or the sadness of the impending loss of a parent. My concern for my mother won out. I didn't have a useful target for the indignation anyway.

“Doctor said a couple of weeks, at most. You should get over here soon.”

“What about dad?”

“He's in total shock. This has been a real surprise for all of us.”

My thirst for indignation made a stunning comeback. “He didn't tell you what I told him.” It was a statement, not a question.

“What?”

“I'm done, Phil. Sorry.”

Within the week I had made arrangements to see my mother, one last time, but I told no-one except my husband. She was unconscious and the doctors told me she probably wasn't waking up again. I held her hand and said my goodbyes mentally. I said them to her. I said them to Philip. But to my father, I said nothing. His goodbye had already been said to me, long, long ago, about the time a little girl tried to eat Wasa and like it.