i write emails now almost exclusively and so, oddly, i open an email to write a "journal" entry. one year ago i took sevi to dance class at mark morris. the wait for the bus is so unpleasant that we ran for the bus at about 4:30 so that we wouldn't have to wait for another. had dinner. she went to bed. doing dishes around 8 i noticed tension in my belly. i could hardly believe it -- all around and not painful but distinct. it had to be contractions. but how significant? i sat down at my "desk" at the dining table and started to track intervals. i wrote emails (just read them now) frantically, against borrowed time. i kept it to myself b/c i knew kevin would flip. i wanted to track it and see. it was about 12 min, and regular. sometime after midnight i relented, told kevin and i probably called the dr although i don't remember that specifically, and we were off again to the hospital. this time peggy crawled into our sheets after sevi was asleep. oh, it's almost too much to bear to recollect. the word came, actually a few days later, that it was actual labor. but meanwhile they treated it as such. late night. dark halls. dark windows. chilly. iv drip. drugs to relax the muscles. steroid shots. kevin leaving and taking a note i wrote to sevi as the strong drugs made my hand wobble. alone. bad food. incredible nurse that night. lucky. later there were many. and not any single doctor i had a relationship with, just yael's partner, paka. and then francis who had heard the story of my treatment a week earlier and had been outraged. residents coming and going. making calls the next morning about a bfs event, a playdate with alex that obviously wasn't going to happen. worried. what was happening to this little guy. the next 30 days are too much to chronicle, but i don't think i'll ever forget them. desperately trying to maintain equanimity. for sevi. for my belly. for us all. "mama's regular" of toast, fried egg, cooked sliced turkey, and, for a special treat, cheese, too. making ornaments on the bed. reading. wearing that stupid belt to record contractions for matria. ordering in from second helpings. chicken salad wrap. jabbing myself w/ the needle.
and now, as i write, our film is showing on pbs. the interview we were supposed to have when i was in the hospital but did in march instead leads and closes the film. somehow w/ over a month of bedrest, a preemie, and all that entails, we pulled that film together. and now it airs. i am proud. i am astonished we pulled it off. probably both of our children suffered for it, by having parents highly distracted. but we -- and they -- muddled through. and we moved. vivid images of the old apartment, the ceiling, the window btwn the rooms, the alcove w/ the filthy window, the floors, the sunsets out the dining window, the aesthetically painful bathroom, franny's paw prints on the wall where she pushed off to get to the high window sill, and on and on. that's where it all happened. the incubation. and here is the celebration. we will need to create here, too. but until then we seem to be still regaining our equilibrium. from hospital halls at night to pbs. a good direction.
