A Lotus Grows in the Mud (21 page)

“Kink,” he says finally, turning to me, his eyes locking with mine, “you understand me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I do.”

Rocking back in his chair, looking out at the landscape, he says, “Go?”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Never forget how good a glass of water tastes.”

“I won’t, Daddy. I promise.”

S
ome people have wonderful relationships with their fathers; others don’t. I was lucky. Daddy was my first love, and it was he who shaped me. There was no other man that I ever loved more than him. He was the one for me, for better or worse. One look could have crushed me. One pat on the back could have made me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. He had that power, as all men do with their little girls.

That is why it is so vital that men understand their value and what effect they can have on their little girls. How they shape their lives is the singular most important thing that they will ever do. How our fathers define us becomes how we see ourselves, or how we don’t see ourselves; how we feel sexually, how we don’t feel sexually. They inform so much of how we view ourselves as females and how we view men—not only as providers, lovers or givers of the seeds of life but also as friends.

My father wasn’t perfect. He hurt my mother badly, and I don’t think she ever fully recovered. There were things he didn’t do for me too, never snuggling or offering cuddles. I never heard him say, “Hey, Go, come and sit in my lap.” I just did because I needed to.

This treasured sojourn in Colorado was the last time we were able to spend this sort of quality time together. I was embarking on a new relationship, which was to lead to a new marriage and parenthood for the first time. I always planned to go on a cross-country trip with Daddy one day in his little Volkswagen Bug, but somehow life got in the way.

We wonder who we take after. We wonder if we are more like our fathers or our mothers. The truth is, we are never like just one of them, but are a conglomeration of the two. It was certainly the sweetest of luck to have them both in my life. Everything that I am is thanks to the great love they gave me. My father’s gypsy spirit lives on in me, as does my mother’s need to nurture. I am both the genetic fruit of their loins and the product of the environment they created for me, good and bad. What happened to their marriage, sadly, was also a great reminder of how important it is to stay truthful to your feelings.

I think if I were to answer the question honestly, I’d have to say I’m
more like my father. I am just the same gypsy he was—traveling, questing, learning and constantly inventing new ways to make life funnier. And, thanks to him, I never forget what that glass of water tastes like.

T
he following Christmas morning, Daddy couldn’t wait to give me my present. He handed me the strange-shaped package, gift-wrapped as usual in old newspaper (always the funny papers), and laughed as he watched me unwrap its jangling contents.

The first thing I saw was a laminated picture of Central City, welded into some rusty old frame. Beneath it, suspended on nails, were eight metal railroad bolts, undoubtedly some of the ones he had found with his metal detector in Colorado.

Lifting the strange contraption out of its wrapping, he held it up and struck each of the bolts in turn. Each bolt was perfectly in tune; each one had been painstakingly chosen for its tone.

As I sat there in openmouthed wonder, my daddy played me his own special rendition of the song he felt best summed up our time together in Colorado. He played “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” It was one of the greatest moments of my life.

T
his is my first baby. I am three weeks overdue and feel like I am spawning a whale. My feet are a distant memory. Just getting out of a chair requires assistance. This fifty pounds of love is an adjunct to my belly.

To say I have eaten my way through pregnancy would be an under-statement. Vichyssoise and coconut cake are my dietary staples, and my mother—who seems ever-present—makes my every culinary wish her command.

But the days of eating for two are coming to an end—or so I hope. This baby doesn’t seem in any hurry to present himself. Or maybe he just likes it in there. I take long walks, hoping to coax him into the world, pointing out its beauties. But he seems attached to his amniotic bliss.

It is 5:30
A
.
M
. Outside, birds sing. Through the window, the sun shines early-morning hues on my bed. Lying next to me, fast asleep, is my new husband of less than a month, Bill Hudson, a singer in a band. This time, my wedding was arranged by my mother, down to the last detail. Determined to take charge of this one, she left no stone unturned. The backyard where I grew up, at number 9 Cleveland Avenue, was transformed into a Garden of Eden.

I was eight months pregnant in a silk cream-colored jersey dress with ruffles around the shoulders. I looked like a great white whale. I had to strap my belly button down so it wouldn’t show through my wedding dress.

My prudish father, dressed in a blue suit, looked like one tall drink of water, hips thrust forward. He swaggered down the steps of the back
porch, me holding on to his arm for dear life as I negotiated the stairs in heels. Walking down the aisle, my heels sinking into the soft grass, I was having a real wedding at last. Our family and friends all flew in. Waiting for us were a priest and a rabbi, to keep both sides of the family happy.

Standing there in my backyard, the place where I had always imagined getting married, I looked around at everybody from my past—Jean Lynn, David and Jimmy Fisher, my aunt Sarah and uncle Charlie—and grinned. This is what I’d longed for when I put crinolines on my head as a child and pretended to be a bride. Here I was—me, my father and my belly full of baby Oliver.

Now, a month later, September 7, 1976, Oliver’s big day arrives with a bang. Pain. Yes, pain. My long-awaited, longed-for baby is on its way. I slip out of bed, calm and in control. I pull some things together, pack them in a bag, take a shower and wake Daddy Bill to tell him it is time.

“Time?” he cries, popping out of bed like a firecracker. I assure him there is nothing to worry about. My mother appears at our bedroom door, dressed in her long white cotton nightgown, making me feel all is right with the world.

“Is it time, kids?” she asks in her warm, gravelly voice. “I’ll get a ride to the hospital. Don’t worry. You get going.”

We fly down the empty streets of Beverly Hills with the excitement of young children on Christmas morning. As I gaze out the window, I can hear my mother’s words of warning: “Goldie, dear, you know when you have a baby, your life will change. You will have to say good-bye to your much-cherished alone time.” She is right. But, at thirty-one years old, it isn’t just my alone time that will change. It will be my faith in God and the miracles that life can bring. Little do I know what I am about to face.

They bind a fetal monitor tight around my belly. I can see the heartbeat of this new life I have come to know so intimately. I think of all the times I sat by the fire and talked to him while he gently rolled around inside me. I told him I could feel his kindness and his poetry. I promised him I would be the best mother I could be, and his most trusted friend. I shared with him my most intimate thoughts about the universe, how connected we are to nature. Together, we were doing our job of making more good humans to grace the earth.

But now the cold, green walls of the labor room are beginning to close in on me. There is not much pain, not much change. Morning seems to morph into afternoon, and the baby still isn’t moving down that narrow passage into the world.

“He’s going to take his time,” I announce with a grin. “He’s showing us who’s boss already.”

No one laughs.

My doctor, Fred Pasternak, a beloved and trusted friend, examines me again with a seriousness that makes me uneasy. Then a brigade of unfamiliar interns marches into my room and examines me, one at a time. I study their expressions as they poke and probe inside me.

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.