How's It Going to Be?

Upon being reminded of this heartwarming story about the high school couple with Down's syndrome who became homecoming king and queen, I was brought back to a day more than seven years ago when I had to make some extremely difficult decisions.

I was 29 years old when I got pregnant for the first time. Lenny was born when we were 30. I had no risk factors during the pregnancy, though I did develop pregnancy-related hypertension later on and was put on modified bed rest until she was induced 10 days early. None of my friends had kids and I didn't know any other pregnant women at the time. So when I went in for various prenatal appointments, I had no idea what to expect or what was supposed to happen. If they said they were going to do blood tests, I handed my arm over. I tried not to read too much or get too paranoid about all of the random things that could potentially go wrong. I was thrilled about having my first child, but I didn't particularly like being pregnant. I know there are those glowing, maternal bundles of pregnant happiness out there, and I'm happy for them, but I wasn't one of them.

Then, one day when I was about 18 weeks pregnant, soon after my 30th birthday, I went on a business trip to Washington, DC. My brother lived in Virginia at the time and was scheduled to pick me up at the airport. As I was waiting for him, I checked my voicemail and there was a long, involved message from my OB/GYN. I could tell from the tone of his voice that there was a problem, even before I heard his words.

He was telling me that one of the tests I had done, the one testing for Down's syndrome, came back problematic. He went on and on about the prevalence of false positives, about how the test doesn't even test for Down's but rather for the potential of Down's, or something, but of course I didn't hear that. He said I needed to call him.

So I did. And then this tearful conversation ensued, where my excitement and happiness about my first pregnancy was torn apart, not because I would not love a baby with Down's, but because I was suddenly worried in a way I didn't realize I could be worried. What if she was in the 50% with heart problems? How would it feel to be made aware, before birth, that my child had a massively reduced life expectancy? Would we be able to take her to the daycare we had lined up, or would she need special care? What would her life be like?

Except I didn't think "her" because I did not know the gender of my child. I decided that I would have an amnio, not because I would not have the baby if she had Down's, but because I wanted to be able to plan for these potential scenarios if she did.

I had long tearful conversations with my husband, my mom, and others from the hotel room in DC. I felt so guilty admitting that it bothered me to imagine having a kid with these issues. My mom told me that you never know what is going to happen with your kids. You can't plan for anything. My guilt was exacerbated by the reminder that I was not exactly a child lacking issues. I had epilepsy, something that is potentially much more devastating than Down's. There is no "test" for epilepsy, and if there was, I obviously would hope that my parents would have chosen to have me anyway. I began to have conversations with parents of kids with Down's or people who worked with such kids, and I heard nothing but positive remarks about these kids and how awesome they were. And so, I learned the most important lesson that there was to learn about parenthood before my kid was even born.

All you want is for your kids to be happy.

It's nice if they're smart, and conventionally attractive, and all of that, sure. But you want them to have friends, to love and be loved, to just be happy. And I've never heard someone talk about a person with Down's without using the word "happy."

And so I made my peace with it, and decided to have the amnio in order to prepare for the potential problem, but also for this reason. I knew if I did the amnio that the doctors would know everything there was to know about my baby's chromosomes, and I decided to find out the gender, so that I could name the baby and feel closer to it by naming it.

Before the procedure, I had to go through counseling. I got a little angry with this poor woman tasked with talking to me about potential risks from the procedure, when I would need to make a decision about abortion, etc. I'm having this baby. I just want to know what I'm dealing with, I told her. God help me if anyone had been able to predict the shit that would go down with me and my body and my brain in this life.

The procedure was painful, and I had complications. I had cramping for days, not hours. I had to call the emergency hotline at my practice, and some doctor who was not mine answered; he was gruff and insulting, honestly. He asked me if I was having contractions, and I said I didn't know. He told me I would know. Now that I've had two kids, I know that I WAS having contractions, and I am faced with the reality that I came close to losing my beautiful baby girl just because of a test I did for something I would have dealt with one way or the other. And of course we learned that our baby was fine, and that she was a girl, and we named her Lenora, or Lenny, because that is the only name I ever wanted to give any daughter of mine.

Labor and delivery were extremely difficult with Lenny. When she was finally born, she was small. She had jaundice. She couldn't hear out of one ear. She refused to eat. In fact, she never really learned, and at 5 weeks I had to stop nursing her and I pumped exclusively until she was 7 months old and I couldn't take it anymore. She didn't even cry when she was born, and Gabe thought she had died. The doctor had to slap her to get her to make a sound. She was a runt; if she'd been an animal in the wild, she wouldn't have made it. She seemed to have no survival instinct at all.

She was perfect.

And she was so, so beautiful. One of the nurses liked her so much we thought she would try to steal her. My OB came to tell me how beautiful she was and I nodded, rolling my eyes. He said no really, I don't actually think a lot of newborns are cute. THAT is a cute baby.

And she was SO smart and SO alert that she never slept, and we had to entertain her as if she was an adult, talking to her, explaining the world to her. She barely napped; she just watched everything with those big eyes. We were exhausted all the time, for years.

She was perfect.

And so when I got pregnant the second time, after a year of secondary infertility that is the subject for another post, I refused all testing. I said look, I'm having this kid. I know now how much I'll love him no matter what. We found out his gender, which is easier with a boy, obviously. We named him. We decided against circumcising him, because I was operating under this assumption that voluntary surgery on a newborn seemed like a bad idea.

I've got to do an aside here about that. When making that decision, I was basically waiting for someone to give me one solid medical reason for circumcision. I had no feelings about it one way or the other. We are not Jewish, so there's one major reason that didn't apply to us. If people gave the reason that there were slightly higher rates of STD transmission from uncircumcised men, I would say, ok, well, I'm pretty sure we are middle class people living in a society with excellent medical care, and I can teach my son to take care of himself and even to use a condom.

Then, we would get all these bizarre arguments both in favor and against the procedure. I loved the logic from men who wanted their sons to "look like" them and they were circumcised so obviously, their sons should be too. Um, really? Do fathers and sons compare penises? And how about the part where HE IS A NEWBORN BABY? And therefore, he really doesn't look like you, in any way. By the time he's old enough to look like you, I'm hoping that you won't be comparing. And then there are the arguments about other boys teasing him in the locker room, or on the other side of the coin, how sex is better with an uncut guy, or whatever. And I said, so. I am supposed to make a decision about this surgery based on his hypothetical sex life years and years from now or with the idea of what his penis will look like when he's a grown man, though HE IS A TINY BABY AND HE IS MY SON. I mean, this from the society where parents would rather their daughters have cancer than get the Gardasil shot, because that implies an acceptance of girls' sexuality? Not interested in thinking about my tiny kid's sex life or what he'll look like naked at 18. NO THANKS.

One friend who had not circumcised her son gave me a rationale for her decision that made sense to me, though it didn't convince me one way or the other. Once Augie was born, I understood exactly what she was saying, however. We decided against circumcision because no one could prove a negative to this stubborn researcher who doesn't believe that "that's what we do" is a good reason for being one of a tiny few societies in the world that engages in a certain practice. Gabe is circumcised but he was unconvinced too, and he hated cleaning Lenny's umbilical cord so much, he was so worried about the potential for infection, that anything that could potentially cause more concerns like that was not appealing to him.

So there we were, in the hospital when I was 37 weeks pregnant, having that kid 3 weeks early, and we told the doctors we did not want to circumcise. Now, someday I will tell my birth stories, as they are both pretty damn good, but not today. Labor and delivery with Augie were so comparatively easy. He came into the world screaming, pissed off, started nursing furiously right away, scored off the charts on his APGAR and had absolutely nothing wrong with him. I'm still convinced he was born early because he was sparing my bum hips the 8 to 9 pounds he would've weighed if he had gone to term.

My friend's words came back to me when the nurse held him by the scruff of his neck, like a chicken, by the scale. There's my newborn son. He is perfect. How could I cut him?

After roaring into the world, he promptly fell asleep and stayed that way for about three months, apparently saving up his energy for later.


We didn't know what was coming that day, with him, with Lenny, with me. We did not know what to expect. We did not know how they would be, or how we would be, or, in my case, IF I would be, at least not for the long haul. And this long, long story is just a way to say that I am glad we took it on faith, and loved them, before they were born and after. I'm glad we were able to see them the way they are, the way this homecoming king and queen's parents see them, because it's the truth.

They're perfect.

In the first picture above, that's Augie on the left, Lenny on the right.

No Words

I have no words that are adequate to describe what any parent, any person, any rational human being feels about the tragedy that unfolded in a Connecticut elementary school today. I have not watched the news. I have read a few articles about it. My mother called me to inform me right after it was publicized, telling me "you don't want to know this." And I didn't. I couldn't think about it right then, or at least I could not think about it in relation to myself or my own children. A few hours later, I sat here crying.

I hardly ever, ever cry.

And I don't know what to say.

I just deleted three paragraphs of text about my kids, about this day, about the comfort of normalcy, even when normalcy is getting as angry as you ever get at your 3 year old son because he is completely, wildly out of control and misbehaving at the CVS minute clinic where you spent the evening, only to find that three of the four of you have strep throat.

But that didn't seem right. So I'm going to talk about guns.

I am sick of hearing that such a conversation politicizes something personal and tragic. There is nothing personal about killing 27 people who never did anything to you. People have the right to take themselves out, but people make terrible, horrifying decisions that impact the lives of other people and sometimes, some awful times, take the lives of tiny children. Children who spent the last short minutes of their short lives in terror, probably asking for mommy or daddy.

There is nothing personal about living in a city that has 500 homicides a year, most of them via gunshot, of living in a place where it is not uncommon to hear of a dozen people getting shot in 24 hours.

It is not personal. It is political.

I won't get into the fact that the founding fathers did not foresee the kind of weapons that we have today, nor, probably, the kind of lunacy. They did not have media nor copycat killers. They also did not all agree on the right to bear arms, which we often conveniently forget. And as a collective, they upheld slavery and believed that women were not full human beings. So perhaps we could stand to modernize their words.

If now is not the time to do something about this problem, then when is the time?

Close to 11,000 people are killed with handguns in this country every year.

How many people successfully defend themselves with weapons? How many lives are saved in the name of self defense? I would like to see one legitimate statistic on that. I doubt it is in the ballpark of 11,000.

It is unconscionable.

If people are going to judge me for being too political, or hate me, or change their opinion of me, then I will offer a quick solution to that problem. I will do what I am good at, and tell a personal story.

To all those who ask, wouldn't you want to defend yourself? Wouldn't you like to be able to protect yourself and your family? I have a question: Have you ever been the victim of gun violence?

Because I have.

No, I have not been shot. But feeling the coldness of metal at your temple, while a scared kid tries to decide whether to pull the trigger, still qualifies.

I was 24 years old. I had been dating a 28 year old man for a few weeks after he pursued me for a few months. He was the second person I dated, and the first person I slept with, after I ended a very long and very serious relationship. He was also entirely wrong for me.

He taught me that I didn't know how to date. I was so used to being independent, so used to the total lack of jealousy and the comfortably separate lives that my previous boyfriend and I had shared for all those years, that I didn't know how to be normal, to live by the rules men expected women to follow. After all, the last time I had really started dating, I was all of 17.

So, when I was invited to a colleague's birthday party, a lively affair at a sushi place one Saturday evening, I did not invite my boyfriend. This was not out of spite, nor negligence. I just didn't think he would want to go, since he didn't know anyone, and, well, I kind of wanted to go by myself. He really wanted to see me that night, so I said we could meet up afterwards. He sounded hurt, but I was clueless. I did not understand why that would bother him.

In his doggedly pursuant fashion, he met me at a bar after dinner, we had a drink, and he proceeded to escort me home on the Green line. It wasn't very late; maybe 10:30, and I had not invited him to spend the night. We were not sleeping together yet. It still amazes me that he did those things in those early days--escorted me home, hoping he would be asked to spend the night and yet not expecting it, and then taking two different trains home to his own place.

We boarded the train, which only had two cars running. There were maybe 8 other people on the train car. We were the only couple, and the only white people. Those things became relevant later, though neither of us noticed at the time.

At one stop, two young men, the oldest no older than 19, entered the train. As soon as they got on, they cocked their guns. Everything on the floor, they said. Money. Phones. Now or you gonna get it. The older one was laughing, acting as if he did this every day, because, well, he probably did. The other one was younger, and terrified. He was shaking, his hand was faltering with the gun.

He was, obviously, the one to fear. The one who might make a mistake.

He was also the one who walked over to us.

Give me your bag! he was screaming at me. I slowly started to hand it over. No purses, bags, or wallets had been stolen at that time. Only cash and phones. What's this, what you got? He was rifling through my messenger bag, pulling out some insufferably nerdy novel or whatever I had in there. I told him to just take it. I had my hand in the bag, and I slowly removed my keys, because I didn't want them to have my address and my keys; that was, bar none, perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever done. He didn't notice, luckily. He started getting more agitated. I was terrified of my boyfriend's potential reaction. He was a tough guy, a guy with quite a storied past, a guy I didn't know well enough to trust in that situation.

He looked at me but didn't move. He handed his wallet over when asked. Then, things got more interesting. The kid put the gun close to my head. He was playing cool, looking at his buddy, trying to look like a big man.

What you gonna do about it, white boy? What you gonna do?

There was the gun, metal and all, right there. At my head. Right there.

My boyfriend shook his head, and said, take it all man, take it. No one's going to stop you. You shouldn't do this man, just take it.

And he did.

This all happened in one El stop. They exited, we all looked at each other in shock. The entire train car had just been robbed, I had been threatened, this was some crazy shit. I said that we needed to call the police. Interestingly, a few other guys got off the train as soon as they heard us say that. They had looked terrified too, and they had lost money, but you know what?

They, also, had guns, I'm sure. Lots of people do, when riding lonely trains through the west side of Chicago alone. And they didn't want to mess with the police. I will point out that they did not have the time nor inclination to use those guns to protect even themselves.

As an aside that is not really an aside, I will point out that young black men with gang affiliations are by far the most likely victims of handgun violence in Chicago. Someone fitting that description gets shot in Chicago almost every single day. Probably all young men in gangs pack heat, right? And I have yet to ever hear a story where one of them is able to stop himself from getting shot because he too is carrying a weapon. Not when it happens in the 60 seconds it takes to get from one train stop to the next, not when someone drives their car down the street, rolls down the window, and you don't even have time to pray to God before you're gone.

But I digress.

We told the driver of the train what had happened. She was maybe 22 years old, and way out of her league. She called the police, who made the brilliant decision to meet us at our train stop several miles away, ensuring that they would never catch those kids nor get my bag out of whatever trash can it was lying in right outside the station. They also were weird when we saw them, unsure of how far west we were when we mentioned the train stop where it happened, talkative and almost uncomfortable. They made jokes about how we would never take the train again, right? We responded that neither of us had a car, so, actually, we would be back on the train on Monday. After a long interrogation period, they asked if we would like a ride home. Well, since we don't even have a dime between us, we have no phones, and we've just been robbed at gunpoint, we would rather not walk, officer. And then, upon arrival at my apartment building, they asked us this:

So, did anyone get shot or anything?

And I couldn't help myself. Do you think if there were people bleeding to death on that train that I would have been talking to you about the contents of my bag? They glared at me, I left the car, and there was no mention of an entire el car of people being robbed in the news, and nothing ever came of it. About two months after we had broken up, some officer called me to ask if I wanted to look at mugshots. I didn't, since so much time had passed, and I wasn't sure I could remember.

That night, I let my new guy spend the night.

In the back of my mind, I began to wonder more and more about him. I could not shake the memory of him explaining in exact and almost disturbing detail the make and model of the gun. Because he knew about that. He seemed almost excited by the story.

But here is the punchline: It is probably because he did not attempt to "man up" and protect me that I am still alive. He did everything right. He looked down at his hands, gave in to his own impotence in that situation, and that kid with so much to prove took the gun away from my head.

We were both scared, and angry, that night. I was paranoid the next day, but I did not experience any long-term trauma from that incident, unlike the kids who lost their innocence today. In fact, we told ourselves that our odds must go back to zero now, right? But of course we both knew that that is not how odds work.

Our relationship was dramatic, and ended badly. I found out a few years later that he had died at age 30, and I never have learned exactly what happened to him. He had told me at one point that he was in love with me. I did not feel the same, and I did not know what to say, and that is when everything spiraled downward. I didn't believe him, to be honest.

But now I know that he did love me, at least in the normal, human way that people love each other, in that they don't want to see harm come to one another.

He knew that he could not have stopped that kid from pulling that trigger by reaching for his own gun, if he had had one. Everyone on the train knew that. Maybe, if the gun had been at HIS head, he would have fought. But he didn't sacrifice me for bravado, and I will always be grateful to him and to his memory for that.

There it is. That is my story. It is more authentic and relevant than the hypothetical scenarios often thrown about in tragic times like these. And it is by experiencing that story that I can honestly say there is no scenario in which I would feel safer knowing that more people had guns, even if such people were hellbent on protecting me.

I'm sorry if this post is offensive to some, or if people think that this is a time to mourn, not evangelize. I believe it is impossible to do one without the other in this circumstance.

I cried earlier today. I yelled at my son. I listened to my daughter sing Christmas carols in her room, practicing her Elf part for the school play. I forced my husband to give in to our son's demands for his mama (pacifier), because tonight, of all nights, I could not stand to hear him cry.

I have the right to these moments. So did other mothers, who have lost that forever just because they sent their children to school. My heart breaks for them, and for so many others. But heartbreak will not bring their children back, nor stop this from happening again. Neither will prayers, hugs, or love.

If we must get into discussions about protecting our rights, fine. Let us protect the right to live past kindergarten.