Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Nativity: one-hour version
(WORD FILE ATTACHED ABOVE)
NATIVITY ? 57-MINUTE VERSION
Brief baby cry.
ROTH: Well I think childbirth is sacred. It's a sacred time.
Baby sound.
ROSE: Well I was very excited, actually. I mean, I was stunned and I was scared and I was horrified, but I was very excited.
Baby sound.
JC TODD: It was a great birth. And I think it?s the smartest I?ve been, in terms of being a whole human being with a full intelligence in every cell of your body. Toenails included. Just that hour or whatever of pushing, and being very clear about what it was all about. That was great. that was great, it was so great I vowed never to do it again.
Music in.
CB: This is a special program about something very common. It happens worldwide among the human species about a hundred thirty million times a year. Birth. I?m Conrad Bishop?
EF: And Elizabeth Fuller. Over the course of a year, we celebrate lots of births. Our own, our kids, our friends. We have a holiday, sort of, for mothers. We shoot off fireworks for the birth of a nation; many of us even celebrate the birth of a god, same day in fact as the Middle East once marked the birth of the god Mithras and the Romans feasted the rebirth of the sun.
CB: But most of the stories we tell each other ? thousands and thousands of movies and TV shows and Shakespearean tragedies, and millions of news headlines ? are about death, death, death? well so, how about at least one hour of stories about making life? And here?s a strange thought:
ELIZ: Wow. You know, it?s kind of like looking in the face of God. That?s what God would look like is something that?s just (laughs)... I don?t know, I see God in a lot of places, but certainly that...
EF: Every religion has its stories of divine birth. One god is born from a thunderstorm, another out of the earth, another in a manger. And yeh, as a mom I don?t know how other people define the word ?sacred? or ?divine,? but for me, childbirth comes pretty close to it.
CB: We thought maybe we should do a broad, cross-cultural documentary about what it?s like birthing a reportedly godlike creature. We should interview women from all races and nationalities. But we didn?t, we just spoke to a couple dozen of our neighbors about their giving birth to ? you.
EF: And we?ve left out the myriad other things that people give birth to. But whether it?s a baby, or a poem, or a casserole, it?s a lot of work, it?s messy, and it?s a gift. This is ?Nativity.?
CB: Chapter One: The Source.
Music change. Voice in Latin. Voiceover in English:
FIRST: AND BEHOLD, THOU SHALT CONCEIVE IN THY WOMB, AND BRING FORTH A SON...
SECOND: DIONYSUS, SON OF ZEUS AND THE VIRGIN SEMELE, HIDDEN IN A CAVE...
THIRD: IN THE DEEP ABYSS, MARDUK WAS MADE.
IN THE HEART OF THE APSU, LIGHTS FLARED IN HIS EYES.
Latin fades. Music sustain, then out.
CB: We asked, Who did you tell first? The first person you told?
YEAGER: Probably my husband. ?I?m afraid I?m pregnant.? (laughs)
MEALY: I was with my husband and we did the pregnancy test together and so we looked at it together. My own response was fear, fear, and like, yes I wanted this, but the fact that it actually worked was frightening. (laugh)
WALKER: I told my then husband. I have a vivid recollection of it, we were on a trip, and I just woke up one morning and I thought, oh, something?s different. And I felt this glow, sort of in me and around me. And I just knew, I knew that I was pregnant and I told him, I think I?m pregnant. Oh he just, (laughs), well he?s my ex-husband. He was very, oh, great, where do you want to go for breakfast?
MIMI: I didn't, somebody told me. I went to a friend's wedding and there was a man on the front steps who was one of the Haight-Ashbury Seers, we called him father, he held his arms up to me and he said Mimi you?re a child and you're with child. And I didn't really know what he meant, and I told my friends about it and they said he means you?re pregnant. Because I was really little, I was young, I was thirteen.
MILLS: Well I was 16 years old, so the first person I had to tell was my mother. And it was very scary. And we sat down in the living room and I just told her, I said, Mom, I'm pregnant. And she burst into tears.
ULLA: I was totally in panic. Because of the circumstances it was just not the right time.
ROSE: I called the clinic from a pay phone while I was doing my work study job, I was setting tables in one of the college dorms, and I called on the pay phone and I got the answer. Everything changed in a minute, my whole life changed in a minute. And I didn?t expect to feel the way I felt, I didn?t expect the surge of joy and excitement, but I think there was something that awakened in me at the moment about being a woman.
VANEK: Well, my father had died just a month before I found out I was pregnant, so I guess this felt like a real joy in the darkness.
WINTERS: It was not a happy moment. He was not pleased either. We grieved together because we both realized the thing for us to do was get an abortion and that?s what we did.
M.TRESSA: And we even drove to another town to get tested so nobody would know. And they told me that, well it?s positive, and I went Yay, I'm positively not pregnant and they said no that means you are pregnant. So I promptly fell on the floor practically, and...
ROSE: We were up in Seattle, it was Christmas. We were with my family, we got the long-distance phone call from the fertility clinic, the whole staff was on the speaker phone congratulating us, it was just one of those moments, we were just laughing and crying and screaming and (laughs) you know, it was just unbelievable.
JOI: The first person was my lover at the time, who was her father. I was really surprised, ?cuz when I had gone to a clinic when I was a much younger teenager, doing the whole sneaking around so my parents wouldn?t know I was looking at birth control and stuff, they, one of the multitudes of people that I saw being a very nervous fourteen-year-old was, like, you can?t get pregnant. So I thought I couldn?t get pregnant. So I was very surprised. And it was very amusing because the man I was lovers with at the time had been told that he was sterile. So we decided, well, you know, neither of us are supposed to be able to do this, so we must be doing it for a reason. And there it was. (laugh)
M.TRESSA: She wrote me a letter and just said ok you can go to an unwed mothers home, you can go to your aunt Jackie's, till it's done. Either way the baby?s adopted, or you can have abortion. And I said no I don't think so, I'm going to have this baby. And the whirlwind started.
Music.
EF: The whirlwind.
CB: So he?s wondering... What?s it like being pregnant? Feeling the body change? The first movement? The space invader? When you know this is inevitably going to happen? When you hear other women?s stories about it? When you try to prepare? When you still have to go on doing whatever it is you do?
Music change.
FIRST: IN THE MORNING, SHE ROASTED CORN. HE CHANGED HIMSELF INTO CORN, SHE ATE IT AND CONCEIVED. THE PARENTS SAID, ?DAUGHTER YOU ARE WITH CHILD.? SHE SAID, ?I ATE ROAST CORN.?
Music out.
SUSAN: I really felt exhilaration. I loved being pregnant, just the idea. What I loved most about it was that my body did what it needed to do and there was nothing that I, all I could do was facilitate this life growing inside me. That's all I could do, and I could just flow with it...
YEAGER: It was just hell. Just sick all the time. I put on much too much weight, had to take off almost a hundred pounds after that. The others were fairly normal, except the last one, my daughter was born when I was 45, and I had to spend all nine months in bed. But a daughter?s worth it.
WILDFL: I loved rye bread with cinnamon and sugar on it. And I remember I would always eat that and then I would go to brush my teeth, and I would gag and I would lose it.
STELLA: Well I was a vegetarian and I really wanted meat. And I let myself have it. It was all sacrifice for my son. Boy it tasted good.
ULLA: He was my dolphin. I called him my dolphin. I loved being pregnant. I thought finally I have a purpose in life. I could just sit there and be pregnant.
WALKER: I was really kind of big, I was eight months, maybe, seven and a half months, right in there, and feeling very full, you know. My stomach was just under my breasts, and really distended and all that. And just for a fleeting moment, as I was driving I thought, oh, I was overwhelmed with this feeling of oh my god there?s no going back.
MARIS: Yeh, I had fears of, dreams of giving birth to puppies and that sort of thing. Sure.
WALKER: When I was laying down in bed, reading one evening, I was about five months pregnant, maybe six months, somewhere right about there. And I was grieving to some degree about my father?s condition, he was dying at the time. So I decided to pray, and I put my book down and I started to pray. And as I was praying I was crying. And all of a sudden, from a distance, I felt something shift, like a, you know how you feel when someone walks into the room, you know, you can just sense that there?s a shift. And all of a sudden my tears stopped bang, just like that, just abruptly. And I was, I was like, oh, you?re the one, you?re that ... it?s you and I knew it was the being who was going to take over this body, I just knew it instantly. And it was one of those knowings where it?s not a calculated knowing, it?s just, you just know, like a mother knows oh my baby needs me. And I just thought, man this is cool.
Music. Egyptian chant, sustained.
FIRST: SENTI-NA EM ABT-A TCHES-A
KHEPER ASHT KHEPERU NU KHEPERU EM KEHEPERU NU MESU
EM KHEPERU NU MESU-SEN?
SECOND: MITHRAS, CONCEIVED SOLO AESTUS LIBINUS,
SENT TO BANISH DARKNESS...
Music fades.
MARIS: Yeh, I was lying on my bed. And felt like a little goldfish was moving inside me. This tiny little fish.
WINTERS: Like being scratched from the inside. A little small sensation, it was just someone saying I?m here.
M.TRESSA: I was sitting downtown at a bus stop in Petaluma. And this little butterfly thing just went across my belly and I thought, what is, I know what this is. And I sat there, I didn't even go on the bus, I just sat there, I actually walked home instead just holding my belly, and just big smile on my face.
JOI: The first time I felt her move? I remember sitting with a bunch of friends, you know, playing guitar and doing the standard, you know, hippies hanging out, and just was like, whoa, what was that?? (laugh)...
PINEDA: First pregnancy, the movement was very gentle, I could feel him sucking his thumb later on, he would sleep a great deal, but he was rather of a placid disposition. The second one was a pugilist. I mean I received kicks and punches all day long, I was exhausted at the end of the day. I had a prizefighter in there.
ROSE: Well I think I was very excited, and I think it made it real to me. And it made it real to my mother, because she said well, I guess you really are having a baby, and we sort of joked about, she maybe thought there was a watermelon in there, one of those classic mom/daughter jokes. But I think it?s true, that until that baby moves, I don?t know, it?s just not real in the same way, and I?m sure my mother was secretly hoping it wasn?t real, you know. So it kinda confirmed that we were on this path and we were going to see it through.
Music.
CB: I was always fascinated, growing up Presbyterian, with the realism of the Christian story. The Greek gods get born Bam! Athena pops out of Zeus?s forehead. But my mom had always told me how she?d taken trains and buses all over the west when she was pregnant, following my dad from one construction job to another, and as a kid, I thought about Mary getting on the bus to Denver ? no, to Bethlehem ? no, a donkey ?and it was very real to me.
Music change. Biblical narrative in Latin, then voice overlays that in Spanish, then a third in Chinese.
VOICES: AND JOSEPH ALSO WENT UP FROM GALILEE, OUT OF THE CITY OF NAZARETH, INTO JUDEA, UNTO THE CITY OF DAVID, WHICH IS CALLED BETHLEHEM. TO BE TAXED WITH MARY, HIS ESPOUSED WIFE, BEING GREAT WITH CHILD.
CB: And knowing that the marriage was starting to go on the rocks ? not Mary?s, but my mother, Margaret, because my Dad didn?t really want a kid, but it was gonna happen, and she happened to be in Denver, very scared and very happy?
Music change.
EF: What I remember...
That old loose nylon tiger-striped dress...
Cutting out the front of an old pair of pants, sewing a stretch panel in...
Aureoles darkening, nipples tingling, dark line down the belly...
My God, starting to spot, panic...
On the ferryboat to Michigan, felt the quickening...
How bizarre to be a container...
Searched at the airport: hiding something?...
Pregnant at my dad?s funeral...
Crawling into a pup tent in Berlin with a seven month belly...
Can?t sleep on my back...
Have to choose a name that this kid?ll have to put up with...
Want to hug the belly, rock it, cradle it...
It will inevitably happen...
Music out.
VANEK: I mean I just remember just weird, like this living thing in my body was very bizarre, but at the same time very exciting.
CYNTHE: And then the other thing is ?cuz you?re getting so crowded you have to arch back sometimes in your chair just to literally, to get some breathing space...
VANEK: I was always holding, my hands were always on my stomach, supporting him, holding him, taking him with me.
WINTERS: I remember feeling like a vessel and being aware that my body was a vessel for another living being. And that was truly amazing and different for me.
ELIZ: Well, I would say that predominant emotion or feeling I had was feeling so much like a goddess. Like so honored to be carrying a child, that a soul had chosen me, and just, it felt like an incredibly powerful time. Yeah, I can?t think of any time that was quite like that.
PINEDA: And all I had in mind was, well, if cats can do it, and little kittens just pop right out, if they can do it, we can do it.
JOI: And inside of that it was like I was dancing with this being inside me. and just feeling ... feeling what that was to have another life contained in my body. And it was just the amazing feeling of connection and consent with the living being that was inside me. Was... was one of the things that sustained me through all of the difficult parenting moments. Of knowing that, no, this is right. There is something to be learned even through this, I mean there is always something to be learned through the difficult parts, but you know that was one of the dfining moments of I am not giving up. There is a reason why this has happened this way. And whether it?s a Jungian reason, or a religious reason or a spiritist reason, or you know, whatever reason, it?s a reason. You know, the multiverse had a plan. Works for me.
Music in.
JOI: Got up the next morning, puttering around, my back hurt really bad, I squatted down to put water on for coffee on the fire, and my water broke.
WILDFL: My water broke...
ROTH: And then the water broke...
STELLA: And let?s see, it was my water broke...
PINEDA: But anyway, I knew that my waters were going to burst. and I said to him, gangway...
VANEK: And the next morning my water broke, and I had my child.
Music out, 10 sec.
(OPTIONAL BREAK)
Baby cry. Dry:
MARIS: Yeh, it was like a journey. At first it was like being on the wrong drug with no drug to bring me back. Just going on this journey, on this incredible trip, that there was no turning back from.
Music in.
CB: This is ?Nativity.?
EF: Chapter Two: Birth.
FIRST: EM KHEPERU NU MESU-SEN...
SECOND: FROM OUT OF THE THINGS WHICH CAME INTO BEING OF THEIR BIRTHS...
FIRST: MEN-NA HER-SEN KHEPER RETH PU EM REMU PER EM MAAT-A...
SECOND: I WEPT, AND CAME INTO BEING MEN AND WOMEN FROM THE TEARS WHICH CAME FORTH FROM MY EYE.
Music sustain.
SUSAN: It was very, you know, it was like I was taking orders from the process that was happening. And in the birth I remember he was a month early, and the nurse wanted to take him away, and I just yelled at her and said no, you give him to me, he's mine, and I just literally, I grabbed onto her it and she gave me the-my baby, and I just put him to my breast, it was such a primal thing, I had to do that now. And they let me, and it was so horrible because they would stick your legs up and these foot rests and it was barbaric. And there I was with my legs up in these things and hospital stuff's all round and I just took the baby and I remember my gown and I just ripped it down, and thrust this baby at my breasts. I was not to be denied and what needed to happen here was not to be denied.
Music out.
JOI: We had gone camping because it was like two weeks before my due date, and it was the full moon, and we needed to do this whole, you know, made the birth be easy, ritual with the moon, and the women?s circle I was part of. And yes, we were a little too effective. And I couldn?t sit. It hurt way too bad. I couldn?t sit down in the truck. So I had to stand up in the back of the pickup truck. Fortunately it was a full body pickup, full bed pickup with wooden railings stuck in it, so I had something I could hold onto. But we were like fifteen miles out of town, out in the hills. So I got to truck-surf, in labor, all the way from like, 3rd Gate Road down into downtown Willits, and saw the son, the oldest son of the woman who was going to be you know, kind of my labor coach, one of my support people, and I was screaming at him, go get your mother, I?m having the baby! in the middle of the street while we were driving. And we got to the local hospital, where they checked,and then I had to go to the birthing center which was 30 miles away on the coast, along Highway 20, which is all nothing but switchbacks and hairpins. And I kept going, I am not going to deliver behind a logging truck, I am not going to deliver behind a logging truck.
From Willits to Ft. Bragg, I was facing backwards, kneeling in the front seat of like a Ranchero, screaming along the road. And as I was saying before, my little sister was with us, cuz she?d been with us on the camping trip and she was like either seven or eight, and every now and then, throughout all the other conversation, or me bemoaning my fate to the gods, or whatever, came this little voice. ?This is boring. This is so boring. Why didn?t she just adopt one? over and over and over again.
Music. Scripture in Latin. Voiceover in English:
FIRST: MANOID DREAMT OF A CHILD. PEDN SPREAD A CLOTH FOR THE FRUIT TO FALL ON. THE FRUIT FELL, IT BECAME A CHILD.
SECOND: NUT BORE SONS TO GEB, RED AND ROUND FROM HER VULVA. RA, THE GOLDEN SUN. THOTH, THE SILVER MOON.
THIRD: AND SHE BROUGHT FORTH HER FIRST-BORN SON, AND WRAPPED HIM IN SWADDLING CLOTHES, AND LAID HIM IN A MANGER; BECAUSE THERE WAS NO ROOM FOR THEM IN THE INN.
Music sustains.
EF: The water breaks for Eve. The water breaks for Mary. The water breaks for the mother of Moses, Mohammed?s mother, the Buddha?s mother, for Krishna?s mother, Dionysus? mother, the Corn Mother?
YEAGER: How totally unprepared I was...
MILLS: I was left alone in a room, in a dark room with the curtains pulled and my husband was sent away...
EF: And for a young frightened teenage girl named Mary Fuller, who carried me through the Brooklyn winter of 1940, and felt her water break. This young woman who pushed me on that long long journey a few inches down the birth canal.
ROSE: A very sterile room...
ELIZ: I was in such a kind of halfway not there space,
ROSE: Standard episiotomy, standard everything, standard epidural...
GAIL: They had sterile sheets on, they had my feet in stirrups...
ROSE: A very classic hospital birth.
EF: Where was she then? Who was around her? Doctors? Midwives? Shepherds? Magi? Don?t we all deserve some Magi?
Music out.
STELLA: I guess in the back of my mind I was apprehensive about the actual birth. And I?d heard a lot of stories about women acting crazy and getting angry or being really afraid, or one girlfriend told me she actually got up off the table and said I'm going home now. And that didn?t sound very promising to me.
WINTERS: I remember sweating. I remember trembling. I remember feeling excited and fearful at the same time.
STELLA: And I remember I really, you know, suddenly in my fear I wasn?t sure I wanted a baby, I didn?t know if I wanted a family. I surely thought I couldn?t do this. And you know the only way out was going to be a Caesarean, because they would put me out and I didn?t have to be there, and then there would be a baby and it?d be over.
WINTERS: Then finally, well I had been sorta leaning backwards at a 45 degree angle in my husband?s arms, he was holding me up, and uh, for a very long time, I don?t know, an hour or more in that position, with the crowning happening, and perineum really on fire with the pain.
STELLA: I remember my husband saying he never saw anybody work so hard in his life. And that was really really something to hear. Still however, my son was very large and he was posterior, and I wasn?t able to push him completely out, his head kept crowning and going back. But, they had to attach something to his head to pull him out.
WINTERS: And then at some point I just flipped over on all fours and out he came, very fast, in a rush.
Music.
MEGAN: It was under a giant apple tree. and the apple tree is still there, I go back to visit it regularly. And I had always dreamed of having this child outside, I had lived on this farm where people had had their babies. So we moved a bunch of quilts and things, and went outside and the baby was born shortly thereafter. And the apple was just like the king or queen of the garden, and it was over my head, so that as I laid there, and I was on my back for a large part of my labor, it was more comfortable for me that way. I could just look up into the magic of the leaves. Very quiet day, very warm, and it was noontime, he was born at 12:30. So it was just the bright sun going over through the leaves was right above me. He came right out and was happy to be here ever since.
Music out.
EF: But no guarantees.
MG: (laugh), The funny thing of course was I had all the scientific stuff, boy, I?d had read it all, I?d done Lamaze, I?d read all these books on natural childbirth and how if you do your breathing, and you do all this stuff it isn?t going to hurt. So I knew all about it My mother and all the women around me that had actually had children said, man, you gotta understand that this is very likely to be the most painful experience of your life, physically, and right right right, that?s just because you didn?t do it right. Well all of a sudden I woke up about eight o?clock that morning, and I thought that I had somehow rolled over wrong or done something bad. And I thought, could this be labor? Oh, no no no, this has got to be something wrong because this hurts. You know. I?m doing all my exercises here, this is not supposed to hurt. They said, no, that?s what labor is. And they confirmed it, and when they said, see, this a contraction happening, well this isn?t all right! You know? I?ve been gypped! They told me that if I did all this stuff, that it wasn?t going to hurt! This hurts horribly. And the one woman just looked at me, and she just grinned, and she just said, you?ll stand it. Millions of women for millions of years have stood it, and you?ll stand it too. Welcome to the truth. It hurts.
So the actual labor was really hellacious. The thing that got me through this was my partner. I can?t imagine how women have babies without the men that they conceived them with there with them, I can?t imagine what that must be like. I guess they just tough it out because that?s what women do when they have babies. And when we got through the worst of it, and when I went through the transition, and pushed and pushed and pushed, and I thought that I was going to burst, he was able to be there to take the baby out, with the midwife...
Music.
CB: So, which is the typical story? The words we hear are: magical, hellacious, drugged, transcendent, orgasmic, sacred, messy, excruciating, easy, impossible...
Biblical narrative in Latin, then voice overlays that in Spanish, then a third in Chinese.
VOICES: AND SHE BROUGHT FORTH HER FIRST-BORN SON...
BROUGHT FORTH HER FIRST-BORN...
BROUGHT FORTH HER FIRST-BORN...
BROUGHT FORTH HER FIRST-BORN...
ELIZ: So I had the urge to push...
ROSE: I was pushing, I'm pushing...
DIANE: And it became remarkably surreal...
ELIZ: We didn?t know if I was ready to push...
ROTH: So long that I had had not to push when I felt like pushing so that when it was really time to push...
DIANE: And very surprising...
MARIS: When I felt her body move through me, move through my pelvis...
Music out.
DIANE: By the waves of the intensity of pushing, and I remember having a strong connection with some large cat. That was also giving birth, I remember feeling my link to all female mammals, all mammals that had ever given birth throughout time, I was in that place where we all go. And I started making really loud kind of roaring sounds. And began pushing, really strongly pushing, and I didn't have to push very long and I remember how much it hurt when his head started to come through. And just this feeling as if there was way too much matter in way too small a space.
MARIS: Because it?s impossible, it?s absolutely impossible to accomplish this, I felt like I had to, what happened, all my boundaries, every single one of my boundaries were just exploded, that?s the only way I could get through this, it was really like dying in a way. So I felt like I died, and in the end I felt like I was born also. But I` definitely felt like i was dying. I had to die to who I thought I was and what I thought my body was.
MILLS: And the local town doctor had said he would come out to help me out but he was out of town that day. And the labor went rather quickly and I ended up delivering my son myself. So the labor was about three and half hours and as he was about to be borne I simply reached down and took his shoulders and brought him onto my chest and I remember the most overwhelming feeling was a feeling of adequacy.
WILDFL: And I remember, you know, after a few hours, what happened was the person who was the midwife, who was going to help, she started having sympathetic labor pains, and ended up getting her cycle, so she became nonfunctional, and ended up laying down on the bed with me.
ROSE: So then as I was pushing, the last pushes, my wonderful doctor was saying, oh she said, I?m getting so much girl energy from this baby, I just have a real feeling about girl, and then out came Matthew. So we?ve teased her about that to this day, about her doctorly intuition. (laughs)
MIMI: And the doctor Di Domenico, he had a mirror up behind him so I got to watch and he put his hand inside me, and turned her around and then he guided her head out, she got one arm out and used her elbow to kind of push and then she spun out in a spiral, and he held her up with her head in one hand and her butt in the other and said it?s an angel, what are you gonna call her?
PINEDA: And then my child was born. And that was just an amazing thing. Just the amazing, you know those Russian dolls, a smaller person coming out of a larger person. That to me was the most amazing, mysterious, numinous thing, that out of one body another body could come. And that it could conceivably go on that way until the end of what humans like to call time.
Music.
KARIN: So when Jonah was born, I think the first thing I said, they said it?s a boy, and I said I have a baby? And he?s alive? And there was an incredible joy...
WILDFL: Oh, he was beautiful, he was purple....
KARIN: There was a mirror, I saw him coming out. He was blue, you know you see these gods painted blue...
ULLA: He was blue, totally blue...
WILDFL: And blond, long blond curly hair...
WALKER: Winston Churchill...
MG: She was the color of copper. She was just this beautiful, beautiful copper color like a suntan...
YEAGER: They all had black hair. Except my daughter, who was totally bald.
CODY: Bald. (laughs) Huge head, great big head and little body...
KARIN: And it was four hours later,that I got to see him and hold him and at that point he had all kinds of wires and monitors and stuff on him...
ROSE: And I just felt like, this is so unreal, this is so unreal. I?m taking their word for it that this is my child, but it totally felt unreal, I had no connection with her...
JOI: She had a thick head of hair, but it was in this strip. It was very broad. She just basically didn?t have hair over her ears, and I was like, she?s got a Mohawk! YAY!
MG: Swimming on my belly like a seal, all around with her hungry little mouth and her eyes, that were just open...
WILDFL: He looked right in my eyes as soon as he was born, I think before he was even all the way out of my body...
STELLA: And his eyes were wide open, and he looked up at me with a gaze I?ll never forget...
MEALY: She actually turned her head up to look at me. And blinked.
MARIS: And her smell was so delicious, unlike anything I?d ever smelled in my life ... and just seeing her, this miracle.
STELLA: And my first thought was, why didn?t anybody tell me it was going to be him.
WINTERS: Both of his ears were pointed, and there was dark hair on both ears. We attributed the hair to Hobbit blood, but the points, they were definitely elvish.
ROSE: And I wrapped her in the quilt I had made for her.
And then it got real.
Music change.
DIANE: And that was it. Any trepidation I may have had about being a single mother, any trepidation I may have had about raising a child in this world, was absolutely over and my commitment was absolute. And complete at that point and still is and he's 27. We?re sitting in his graphics office now having this conversation. And so they gave him to me and I held him and looked at his little fingers and just was totally, just immersed in this miracle.
Music out, 10 sec.
(OPTIONAL BREAK)
Baby cry. Dry:
MEALY: She bit my nipples and it really hurt. It just really really hurt. (laughs)
MARIS: It felt really natural and really ancient, I felt so useful.
WALKER: It was good, it was great, it was fun. It was fun having big boobs.
YEAGER: Oh yes. The electric synapses in one?s body do all sorts of strange connections, and I?ll never forget it.
MEALY: And then she would get this gleam in my eye, she?s look up at me, get this little gleam in my eye, and go chomp.
Music.
CB: This is ?Nativity.?
EF: Chapter Three: Shadow and Sun.
JOI: And it was scary and it was insecure and it was perfect and and I could feel it deep, going deep into my body, and, you know, yes, there?s the like anatomical reality of the sensation on the nipples tightens the uterus and does all that, but ... It was really mind-blowing, being a parent, just in general, is kind of mind-blowing.
Music change. Scripture in Latin. Voiceover in English:
FIRST: WHEN THE BODHISATTVA DESCENDED FROM THE TUSHITA BODY, THERE APPEARED A GREAT SPLENDOUR?
SECOND: IN PRISON DEVAKI BORE KRISHNA. SHE PRAYED TO LORD VISHNU TO SAVE THE CHILD. A LIGHT FILLED THE CELL. THE BABY SMILED. ?MOTHER AND FATHER,? HE SAID, ?WEEP NO MORE.?
THIRD: AND WHEN THEY WERE COME INTO THE HOUSE, THEY SAW THE YOUNG CHILD WITH MARY HIS MOTHER, AND FELL DOWN, AND WORSHIPPED HIM; AND WHEN THEY HAD OPENED THEIR TREASURES, THEY PRESENTED UNTO HIM GIFTS, GOLD, AND FRANKINCENSE, AND MYRRH...
Latin fades. Music sustain.
JOI: I remember just sitting and staring at her a lot. And then she?d be asleep and I would just be like watching her breathe and watching different muscles twitch on her body and her hands move, and just recognize neurons exploring themselves...
CODY: I think the lack of sleep was certainly the most difficult thing...
MARIS: And I felt really depressed a lot of the time and really sad and overwhelmed...
MIMI: But there were these triangular shaped diapers that the poop falls out. (laughs)
EF: The first weeks. This is what they talk about. No sleep. Wonder. Coping with advice. Problems with nursing. Sleep. Helpful mothers. Allergies. What about crying? Sleep. Connection. The naming. The people around. All the changes.
Music out.
PINEDA: Oh my God... I cried incessantly, the feeling of joy was absolutely overwhelming. It was not post-partum depression, it was a feeling of joy, I cry when I experience joy. But I have never cried for three or four days straight. And I pretty much did. And I had a very sensible mother-in-law. She?d say to me, Cecile, stop crying and eat your soup.
WALKER: Well there was one time when we were laying on the waterbed together, we were taking a nap together. I looked at her and she was looking at me, and when I woke up, she was like, this incredible expression of delight, her whole organism, her whole body was oh, like it?s you, kinda like the experience I had before she came out, oh it?s you.
MG: But she was utterly totally absorbing. Gary and I lay awake all that night just listening to her breathe, because we couldn?t believe that she was real, that such a perfect creature could have been possible, and that we were part of that, was just the biggest miracle.
Music.
EF: And the possibility of loss.
Biblical narrative in Latin, then voice overlays that in Spanish, then a third in Chinese.
THEN WAS FULFILLED THAT WHICH WAS SPOKEN BY JEREMY THE PROPHET, SAYING, IN RAMA WAS THERE A VOICE HEARD, LAMENTATION, AND WEEPING, AND GREAT MOURNING. RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, AND WOULD NOT BE COMFORTED BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT.
Music out.
LORNA: I fear them dying.
ROSE: I always light candles, I always talk to her. My current husband always remembers her with me...
CODY: Yes. Yes, his name is Sammy. Ooh. (sobs) I feel it more now. I think I allow myself to feel more now.
YEAGER: Our big boy was killed in 1964 just before he went to swim in the Olympics. Drunk driver down in Belvedere. I could not believe it. Somebody came, but by that time I knew instinctively what had happened, because the parents of the other child called and came to the door to see how I was, and I knew then that they knew something that I didn?t. And eventually the Marin County sheriff came to the house. I screamed. Bloody murder. And then I just sat there. I was stunned. And my pastor was away on vacation, Bart was killed in August. My doctor was away on vacation. And we just, we just sat there. I telephoned my mom and dad because they were out for dinner. It was a shock. A terrible shock.
ROTH: Because a lot of times people don't understand what women go through when they go through a miscarriage.
WINTERS: And then after Braggi died I had Jeff go back and get his vasectomy reversed, and we were successful in getting pregnant again. But that one did not last either. And that was very very hard because it felt like my last chance to have a baby.
KARIN: Jeremiah was probably one and a half, maybe two pounds, and he was so perfectly formed. He was very tiny, but he was just, he was so perfectly formed. And after he was born I moved over and my husband climbed into the bed with me and we just held him until we were ready to say goodbye.
M.TRESSA: Losing custody especially in that time, my husband had a lot of connections, a lot of money, it's kind of like a movie. I move out, I go on a weekend to pick him up, he's gone, the house is empty. I spent five years trying to find him, only to find out that my family knew where he was and his family knew where he was and everybody thought it was better this way. And in that time and that five years I found out they had actually told him I had died, so that he didn't have a real mommy anymore and that sent me into a huge, huge tailspin. And I did everything I could to get myself off this planet. Didn't work, still here (laughs).
Music.
EF: What I remember...Raising hell to get wheeled down the hall to look thru the glass at my son - my god, that word, ?son?...
The miracle of milk. I?m a successful animal...
The thunk of the baseball against his tiny forehead, and the wait outside x-ray...
Asthma, he can?t breathe, rush to the ER...
She?s a pearl, a beautiful pink pearl...
Walking long blocks through the snow. Groceries, a toddler, a newborn, and a
Caesarian scar. I?m not gonna make it... Waving goodbye to her at the airport. Long blonde hair. Nine months in France. And back off the plane comes a pixie- cut redhead. Cheekbones, six-foot frame, deep voice. I see his father at nineteen, and fall in love again.
Music sustain.
CB: The shadow, and the sun. I asked, what were the vivid moments in the growing up? For some, it?s been a beautiful journey. For some, much harder. The labor goes on.
Music. Biblical narrative in Latin, Voices over.
SECOND: SPIDER WOMAN TOOK DIRT, SPIT, MADE TWINS. SHE COVERED THEM AND SANG THE CREATION SONG. THEY SAT UP AND ASKED, ?WHO ARE WE? WHY ARE WE HERE??
Music out.
JOI: I mean it was this swirl of this is my thing I have to protect and take care of, and omigod this is an independently willed being, that right now has the imperial will of an infant, I mean, there?s no other word for it, it is the imperial will, I want reality to be my way, now!
SUSAN: We were in the kitchen and he must have been about three. And I wanted him to do something, and he said NO. And he slapped me and he had a temper tantrum. And I remember I was aghast and I looked at him and I, literally, I just left him, and I walked out and sat down in the living room and I sat down, and thought what do I do now. I just sat there for a while and he was screaming in the kitchen and pounding and having a real tantrum. And I thought now I need to make the next step up, and speak to him a different way now. I remember that moment very very well, oh you know, he?s... he's sniffing outside the nest, and having a little glance out there. It was really, I loved that, I love that, it was wonderful.
MEALY: Our oldest one, when she was about 18 months, and saw her first Christmas tree, and she looked at it and came up to it and it was really big, it was a very very big tree, so it was huge to her, and she went, ohh, trot trot trot trot, to another place and looked at it, ohh,...
ROTH: And he liked to see the Christmas trees, and I said you want me to drive by where the Christmas trees are in he said you know they're dead. I said oh, he had learned that the child care center with their Christmas trees that it was dead. And I said oh does that make you sad? He said it makes the tree sad.
LORNA: Naomi?s smile, Naomi?s light, that she eminates. Seeing that she?s not squashed down by her limitations in the physical plane. That?s joy, and last year she had a wonderful year. She was very included, she was invited to lots of birthday parties, kids wrote her little letters, gave her little presents, said she was their friend. That was joy. She loves other kids to see her light up, and other kids respond, that?s joy.
M TRESSA: When Nathaniel graduated from high school, it was a long haul for him through school Mom, people just don?t understand me, I?m so different. Um, and he?s mixed, he?s black dad, you know, white Anglo Irish mom kind of thing. And he had a lot of struggles with that. And the fact that we worked on that together, he knew exactly who he was. He had no problem connecting with anybody, and I remember that when he graduated, and I watched all these people come up that had been around him, all his friends since the time he was like seven, I noticed in that moment that there wer Asians and Blacks and Chicanos and White Anglos, and everybody around him - he drew in all this, and I just stood back and went Yeah...that?s what it?s about right there, there?s no division whatsoever, there?s no division, and my boy did that, and I helped. But he did that and in that moment, I ran over to him and he goes Mom we did it, we did it, and we fell on the grass, rolling around. And my mother is going Mary Tressa, get up, Mary Tressa, people are watching you. I didn?t care. And then his friends all dropped on the grass and all of us were rolling around together.
ULLA: Sometimes I think Jenny must have a very recent past life of her as the mother and me as the daughter because God, can she be the mother. Mother, are you wearing underwear?
MILLS: One of the most amazing things for me was to witness my daughter giving birth. Birthing my grandson and to watch your own child going through that process, and wanting you to be there, and relying on you...
Music out.
MEGAN: I had an old Mexican friend when I was in my 20?s who said, hold them on your lap for the first two years, just be there all the time, and then you will watch them get up and run away. They?ll look over your shoulder but they?ll be gone...
ROSE: There?s something that happens when a woman pushes a baby out of her body, which is unbelievably hard to do, that pushes you to a limit of physical endurance, and psychological endurance because, I can?t think of many other situations where you feel like you can?t do it, and your body is going to split open, and you are gonna die, and there is no way out, there is no going back. And there is something psychologically that has to shift there for you to persevere and just go through it. I think there?s something about that that awakens in you a power that you?re going to need throughout your life as a mother, cuz you?re gonna, that?s only the beginning of things you?re gonna have to do that have that have that same effect of sort of ripping you open, and pulling out of you a strength you didn?t know you had, or a wisdom...
MG: There are times when, I know, my daughter kind of goes, why in the world did you ever have me. You were too busy doing other things to really give me all the attention I really needed. And the answer is well, probably my reasons weren?t as good as they should have been, but Mother Nature has her own rhythm and her own agenda, and I think that I had a baby because the world needed the person that my daughter is.
PINEDA: Something else, childbirth, I wish it on the entire race. I think it would be wonderful if men could experience it, for maybe even just a half an hour because they would understand the purpose of the human neck. It connects the head with the body. I just read an amazing, I guess it was a response to a letter which had said Well the reason that there are more male representatives in Congress is that of course, we shed blood por la patria, um, and women don?t shed as much blood. And she wrote back and she said and what about the blood that we shed in childbirth, don?t you think that giving life is more important a priority than giving death?
STELLA: But I do remember a thought I had maybe looking at him sleeping, as I took in the whole experience of what it was like to have him. And this was maybe when he was one or two. That it was like God had come to live with us. And we had an opportunity to experience and learn unconditional love and forgiveness and joy and all the things that I think of when I think of God. And I don?t mean in any particular religious god sense, of a particular god, but my idea of that quality we all aspire to, that is pure in a child...
KARIN: And looked his little fingers and just was totally, just immersed in this miracle.
Music.
FIRST: AND THE CHILD GREW, AND WAXED STRONG IN SPIRIT, FILLED WITH WISDOM: AND THE GRACE OF GOD WAS UPON HIM.
SECOND: FIRST MOTHER WAS PREGNANT WITH TWINS. ONE WAS BORN FROM HER, THE OTHER BURST THROUGH HER SIDE. THEY BURIED HER. FROM HER BODY SPRANG THE PUMPKIN-VINE, THE MAIZE, THE BEAN.
Music concludes. Then new theme.
CB: This is ?Nativity.? The voices you heard were Cynthia Mealy, Mimi Begun, Betsy Rose, Betsy Yeager, Carol Vanek, Catherine Walker, Cecile Pineda, Cody Kirkham, Cynthe Brush, Diane Darling, Elizabeth Johnson, Gail Blum, Joi Wolfwoman, Karin Mortensen, Laurie Roth, Lorna Catford, Mary Tressa Farnham, Megan, Wildflower, Morning Glory Zell, Nancy Mills, Pamela Maris, Pat Winters, Stella Monday, Susan Uchatius, JC Todd, and Ulla Mentzel. Readings by Grace Fisher, Benjamin Zaragoza, and Thomasin Alyxander. Thanks for funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hitchhikers Guild, and the Public Radio Exchange.
EF: Responses? Visit our website: www.independenteye.org. Our many other CDs of real-life human portraits and audio-dramas are there to listen.
CB: This is Conrad Bishop?
EF: And Elizabeth Fuller. Wishing you, again, always, joy in what you bring to birth, and in the regularly scheduled cycle of the years.
Music tag.
M.TRESSA: I was terrified. Oh my gosh....I mean I know I can change him and I can feed him and I can do, but then all the questions: how do I teach this young man how to grow and how to learn, and and then the other thing was no, I need to protect him from all the things that were out there. And so I made myself kind of sick with the worry of it and finally got to a point with my mother-in-law saying, oh you worry too much, just put him in bed, let him sleep, get him up, feed him, put him back to bed, let him sleep, get him up, feed him. The next things will come to you, and they did, the next things just did.
Music out.
FIRST: SENTI-NA EM ABT-A TCHES-A...
SECOND: I MADE A FOUNDATION IN MY HEART MY OWN?
FIRST: KHEPER ASHT KHEPERU NU KHEPERU EM KEHEPERU NU MESU?
SECOND: AND THERE CAME INTO BEING THE MULTITUDES OF THINGS, WHICH CAME INTO BEING OF THE THINGS WHICH CAME INTO BEING?
FIRST: EM KHEPERU NU MESU-SEN?
SECOND: FROM OUT OF THE THINGS WHICH CAME INTO BEING OF BIRTHS?
Music out.
