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| Hide and seek became harder for Myra. |
A very plump Myra sat patiently next to me in the waiting
room.
“Do you
want a boy or a girl?” she repeated the same question that she had multiple
times before, but with new meaning as we had decided to find out the gender of
our baby during this visit.
I repeated
what had become my standard answer, “I want a healthy human with ten fingers
and ten toes.”
However,
inside a little voice kept saying, “Let it be a boy, let it be a boy.”
Our
18-year-old daughter, Romay, sat at home also wondering whether her little
sibling would be a boy or a girl. We had
already raised one girl, adopting her when she was eight. She had been my hunting, trapping, fishing,
gardening, get greasy in the garage buddy since the day she called me Dad.
There was
just some stereotypical urge to father a son.
Myra’s name
was called and I followed her back to the ultrasound room where the technician
helped Myra pull up her shirt exposing the little water melon of a belly it had
been poorly hiding.
The tech
made pleasant small talk while she lubed up the transducer probe with what
looked like an entire jar of goo.
“I
absolutely love my job,” she bubbled. “I
get to meet expectant parents and show them their babies every day.”
It wasn’t
an act. This isn’t an advertisement for
Chief Andrew Isaac Native Clinic in Fairbanks, but I do have to say that it is
the nicest native clinic I have ever been too, and quite possibly one of the
nicest clinics of any kind I have ever seen.
This tech is only one of the reasons I give them such high reviews.
“I’ll take
the measurements that I need, and we’ll see if we can get your baby to show us
a gender near the end,” she explained while moving the probe around and showing
us what our baby looked and sounded like.
A little
face came into view with a mouth opening and closing at about 60 miles per
hour. My eyes moved back and forth
between the miracle on the screen and the miracle that was carrying and growing
this little human inside of her.
“Looks like
we’ve got a talker,” the tech pointed out, “won’t guarantee it, but I’d say
over 90% of the babies I see moving their mouth like that during an ultrasound
are girls.”
The little
voice inside of me wanting a boy didn’t say a word as he too sat transfixed by
what he saw on the screen.
The tech
moved the probe around getting what she needed and then slid it down and
applied some pressure to Myra’s belly to see if she could get the little alien
in there to move just right to reveal the secret he or she was hiding.
“Don’t know
if we’ll be able to tell,” she said as we all stared and willed the little baby
to move, “oh, there it is…”
The little
voice in my head got excited, here was the news finally he had been waiting
for.
“Looks to
be a girl.”
“We’re
having a little girl,” the voice repeated inside of my head. “We’re having a little girl,” and it was not
with a tone of disappointment. “Our best
friend is carrying our little girl.”
“Are you
happy we are having a girl,” Myra asked as we carefully walked to the car.
“Absolutely,”
I reassured.
I thought
back to Romay and the little girl she had been: sitting in my lap in church,
dancing with me in the living room, cuddling on the couch during movies,
greasing up her face with camo face paint when we went out duck hunting.
“I thought
I wanted a boy,” I said truthfully, “but God wants me to be a father of
daughters,” I smiled.
We had seen
our little girl, but there was still a long wait ahead. It was not quite spring yet, and we would not
head to Fairbanks to wait until the end of June (the baby was not due until the
end of July). Once in Fairbanks, we
would wait through one of the hottest summers they had seen in a while with a
baby deciding she wanted to hang out as long as possible in momma’s little hot
tub.
We went to
minor league baseball games in a breezy park, saw movies just for the sake of
air conditioning, and went to the pool everyday where Myra continued to swim at
least a mile each time.
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| Trying to stay cool at a Gold Panners game. |
On July 25th,
we made our annual barge run where we loaded a truck full of groceries and
various other supplies into a U-haul and
drove it to Nenana to unload at the barge landing. Ruby Marine would haul it via
river barge for us to Galena.
Upon
return, I helped a very plump Myra into our rental car and we gingerly drove up
Murphy Dome in Fairbanks to a friend’s dry (It is a short word… don’t miss it,
means no running water or flushing toilet) cabin where we would continue to
wait until Ellen (she got a name sometime in there) decided she was ready to
enter the world. The house we had been
staying at was no longer available.
The road
was a pretty steep grade with some pretty large chunks of rock in it. We drove up to what looked like the
description: a powerline going across the road next to a small trail leading
into the woods. I walked in and found
the cabin before going back to get Myra and then making two trips to get our
stuff.
I happily
did not marry a normal woman.
“Oh, this
is nice,” Myra said as she sat down on the couch.
An old .410
hung above the door, the cabin had been decorated with a variety of fur and
feathers and furnished out of a Value Village (pronounced Vil-loo Vil-laage).
I went up
in the loft and made the bed and then helped Myra out to the outhouse so that
she could bed down and rest after what had become a very long day.
It felt
like my eyes had just closed when I woke to Myra saying, “I’m not sure, but I
think it’s time.”
The drive
to the cabin had taken longer than the time we had slept there as I helped Myra
back up the trail, into the car, and opened the bottle of coffee I had bought
the night before just in case a drive like this was necessary.
Myra called
the hospital and described what was going on as we made our way back down the
hill and toward town.
“Better
come on in,” I could hear the nurse on the other side of the conversation say.
“We’ll get
there, and they’ll just tell us it’s a false alarm,” Myra said with
certainty.
This was
after all our first go around with this.
We checked
in, the nurse checked out what was going on and said, “yup, it’s happening.”
We still
weren’t too sure, but they got Myra suited up as though it were the real thing.
The real
thing is nothing like the movies.
Nothing goes quickly. Myra walked
laps around the entire baby birthing level of the hospital, she bounced on an
exercise ball, she breathed, she got measured, the doctor came in and out of
the room, and hours passed.
Then things
amplified. Ellen started becoming
insistent (she has remained so since that day).
More breathing, some hissing, and me holding Myra’s left leg while the
doctor told jokes (not sure if that is standard medical training or if we were
just lucky).
“Better get
the other nurses in here,” the doctor said to the woman working with him,
“we’re about ready.”
I thought
that was what was said twelve hours earlier.
The nurses
filed into the little room.
“Wow, what
is she on right now?” one of the nurses calmly asked.
The doctor
made eye contact with the nurse for emphasis and said very slowly, “Not a
thing.”
“Noooo,”
was the incredulous chorale response.
The doctor
just emphatically nodded his head.
And then
Ellen finally decided it was time. With
one last push, she came skipping across the table bouncing three times before
landing in the doctor’s hands. People
who know Ellen now should not be surprised by that entrance.
I clipped
the cord and collapsed into a chair.
“You okay?”
the doctor asked concerned for me, “not going to pass out are you?”
“My husband
butchers moose,” Myra bragged.
The doctor
placed the brand new baby on Myra’s chest and she nuzzled and drew life.
Ten
fingers, ten toes, healthy.
“We have a
little girl,” the voice cheered inside of me.
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| Ten fingers and ten toes. |
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