16 September, 1997 Saturday
St Kitts, West Indies
Saturday morning in St Kitts, West Indies, I’m up just after 5AM, not because I really want to be just because I cannot seem to sleep much later. The sun isn’t quite up so I head to my computer to catch up on some overdue business writing. The ocean at this hour is dark blue, almost mysterious. Smallish waves mount the beach less than a hundred feet from where I sit. There is not much wind this morning, that likely means it will be hot today.
It’s our daughter Natalie’s birthday today. I will write something about her birth and send it to her. Maureen is due up at 6:50 to go walking with Laura Wright and Lynn Millard. At 6:35 I sit down beside her and watch her sleep. She’s curled up on her side sleeping peacefully. Seeing her this way is strongly reminiscent of watching our daughter’s slumber when they were very young. Looking now very much like a young girl herself, Maureen lies crosswise on the bed with her head just barely on the mattress and her feet pulled up so they are not quite hanging off the other side. She is calm, lovely, and serene. I leave the room silently and head back to my computer – moments later her alarm blares out destroying the quiet dawn.
Minutes later Maureen is off on her morning walk – rather impressive actually, over two miles of up and down, ranging from the Atlantic side of Frigate Bay across the golf course and up the bluffs to Half Moon Bay’s look-out point, around the course and down to Timothy Beach on the Caribbean side of the island and then home. She has to walk fairly early, even at this hour during hurricane season it is hot – mid eighties and the sun has just come up.
Today my mind seems to be functioning better, and I am making progress with work related matters. By the time Maureen comes through the door and collapses on her bed, my mind is clear. How odd that sounds - her bed, not our bed. I suppose it is our bed and we do usually sleep together on it when we first retire in the evening, but my weird sleeping habits have me up several times during the night and rather than disturb Maureen I typically end up in the loft bed above my desk and computer. For the past few weeks, I have been seriously congested, which only made matters worse. My coughing and wheezing through the night forced me up and the only fair thing to do was stay in another room and sleep on another bed. Still, it sounds strange to think of our bed as her bed, and yet that is exactly what it has become.
A call to breakfast from the other room, it’s a special treat. The second formal breakfast at home in six weeks. Maureen has made wonderful Spanish omelets complimented with bacon and toast, chips, salsa and chili rellenos.
The sun is now streaming through the patio doors, and the ocean no longer broods in darkness. Right now, at this very moment, everything seems fun and beautiful and especially bright. Life is good.
We somehow find ourselves discussing the value of gratitude and from there move on to the need to show greater appreciation to one another. We recall the crazy circumstances around Natalie’s birth and determine to get it down in writing. Two hours pass quickly in deep conversation while the weather begins to change alarmingly. Black clouds blow in and a rain squall strikes fast and powerfully. My earlier prediction of heat was wrong. The rain cools the island, and a gentle wind follows and although stormy clouds lay on the horizon, the sky clears here. We decide to go exploring, there are beaches we’ve seen at a distance but never walked and so we’re off. I’ll write about Natalie when we return.
Natalie’s Birth
During the course of Maureen’s pregnancy with Natalie, we were in and out of the hospital several times. It was a confusing period. At one point, Jane, Maureen’s mother, returned from the family cabin at Randsburg, in the California desert, formerly a gold mining ghost town where police officers from the LAPD had purchased all the old houses. Randsburg, along with Johannesburg and Red Mountain, were ghost towns close to one another. They were all once mining operations along U.S. Highway 395 between Ridgecrest and Boron, in California. Oddly, they were all named after mining towns in South Africa. A year earlier, Maureen and I had been shooting 22 rifles at targets we placed on the slag pile of the deserted gold mine known as the Yellow Aster. At one time, it had been the top producing gold mine in California from 1910 through 1919, but by the time we were there it was just a huge pile of debris.
Jane had been in the desert with all four of Maureen’s teenaged siblings. Jane stopped by our apartment and left all four kids with us saying she was going to buy cigarettes. She did not come back. It was just one of a number of incredibly stressful events with Maureen’s family. We did not know where Jane had gone. We were only seventeen and I simply could not figure out how to pay for all the extra mouths to feed. We had a simple one-bedroom apartment and only one twin bed for the two of us. Her brother and sisters slept on the floor. A few days later, we took the kids to their father, Joe Donnelly. Jane and Joe were divorced for the third time from each other at the same time Maureen and I were married. Jane kept the children, as required by California law at the time.
When Maureen and I tracked down Joe, he had just remarried a week or so earlier. He married Audrey, a single mom with five kids still at home. In those early days, Audrey and Joe were the only people that treated Maureen and I as adults. We liked them both very much. However, Audrey was obviously upset that Joe’s four older children were now shoved into her three-bedroom home without any prior notice. Maureen felt as though her siblings were her personal responsibility. She begged me to help her brother and her sisters. I did what I could, but we were very pressed for money, and taking time off to keep helping the kids eventually caused me to lose my job.
I began looking for another job. After three weeks I began working at a Chevron station on 7th avenue in Long Beach, and even though I was young, I was put in charge within six weeks. (Nobody checked ID’s in those days, and the owner thought I was in my 20’s) Almost immediately, I found myself doing mechanical things I had not done before. Complete brake jobs, front end alignments, I even rebuilt a rear end. When at sixteen, I was supposed to be a senior in high school, I had the credits for early graduation and went to Long Beach City College instead. The only class I really remember, besides creative writing, was that I took a 3-hour a day lab class on auto mechanics, much to the great chagrin of my father. Why had I done this instead of more academic studies? Because like every young man I knew, I was obsessed with muscle cars. I learned to rebuild engines from the ground up, and that training followed me the rest of life.
With a new job, and responsibility to open and close the station, I was gone about twelve hours a day. When I would get home, Maureen and I would play checkers, chess, or card games, and eat whatever she was able to prepare. We did not have a TV. During the days, Maureen would read. By this time in the pregnancy, Maureen had grown a round little belly, looking very much like she had stuck a basketball under her smock. On the night prior to Natalie’s arrival, Maureen was frustrated and uncomfortable. She could not control her pee and kept wetting herself. How stupid we were. We did not know her water bag was pinched and in the process of breaking. I did not even know what that was. But anyway, at that point, it was simply leaking. We were playing chess. She finally had to stand in the bathtub with what we thought was urine running down her legs. I was so hot and tired I could not think, and even in her crazy condition she beat me at chess, while standing in a bathtub with the board perched on the sink.
A fascinating thing about Maureen, which remained true throughout her life, was that she was way smarter than anyone knew. Although, for a long time, it was hard to admit, she was also a better shot with a 22 rifle than I was, and I had gone through the entire NRA training program at age 12 and 13. I earned all the metals and patches graduating as Sharpshooter, one step beyond Expert. Very few of the guys in my classes ever made it that far. So, here it was, that without any training at all, Maureen was dead on target over and over again. I quit shooting with her. It was more than my vulnerable ego could handle. It’s quite humorous as I look back on it. Stupid boy ego.
This particular night when she had beat me at chess while standing in the bathtub, I took the mattress off the box spring of our twin bed and set it on the floor. We had gone through the entire pregnancy sleeping on a single twin bed side by side. But this auspicious night, I slept on the mattress on the floor. She was right beside me on the box spring. Poor thing, she was miserable, terribly uncomfortable, and leaking. But she needed the extra height of the bed frame to get up and go to the bathroom. At floor level she had real trouble getting up. It was late when we went to bed. It was past midnight.
Because I was closing the station at night, I did not get home until about 10 PM. She had been having contractions for days, but we had already been to hospital on one false go, and neither of us wanted to do that again. But, a few hours later she woke me with the quiet words: “Terry, it’s time.” I jumped up trying to figure out where I was and ran into the wall. I staggered around, got her bundled up in a blanket, and took her down to our car. She was still in her night gown. She was having hard contractions. I was so out of it I forgot my shoes and was afraid to take the time to run back upstairs to the apartment and look for them. I would spend the entire day in the hospital barefoot.
The Hospital
It was dark as we drove to the hospital. The world seemed somehow surreal at 4 AM. Maureen was admitted quickly. I would not see her again until about 8 PM that night. We had no smartphones, no cell service, no internet, and there was no TV in the sterile waiting room. I did not know what to expect, a girl or boy. I was afraid to drive home, for fear I would not be there when baby was born. In retrospect, it would have been the right thing to do, considering I looked like something the cat drug in. I was completely disheveled and had no shoes. Some father to be I was. No wonder, literally no one took me seriously at the hospital.
It seems that when asked during her check-in, Maureen said she wanted to tell me personally the details of Natalie’s birth. In those days, men were the enemy. We were not allowed in the birthing area and basically treated very poorly. At least I was. There were a lot of ladies giving birth that day. It was crowded and noisy. I could hear women screaming. Basically, it was frightening, and I felt awful. The nurses were firm. They could not be bothered with a young man wanting to know what was going on. I was told to stay where I was, that I would know something soon enough. After hours of waiting, and listening to the screams of women, who were all apparently having natural childbirth at this particular facility, I got super worried. I would discover later that Natalie was born early in the day, and Maureen was doing fine, but there were so many women arriving, the rooms were all filled and there were women in beds up and down the halls waiting to deliver. Some were being delivered in the hallway, right behind the door I was sitting next too. Hence, the groans, and screaming women.
By nightfall, and still not knowing anything, I drove home to shower, eat, and get my shoes. When I got home, the phone was ringing. My boss. I had not opened the gas station. I didn’t have access to a phone at the hospital, and I had no way to contact anyone. Although I did not drink, my boss was convinced I was drunk. Basically, I was exhausted and emotionally drained. And, by this time, I was sure there was something seriously wrong with Maureen. I tried to explain; the owner of the gas station was extremely unhappy. He had given me the only set of keys to close up, and he had to get a locksmith to help him reopen when I did not show up.
The phone rang again. It was one of the Donnelly kids. I think it was Peggy, but I am not sure. She was asking me questions about how the birth had gone and how Maureen looked, etc. I was completely confused. I told her the situation. She was shocked, and more than a little suspicious to hear I was uninformed. I tried to explain. She told me that Maureen had a girl, that she heard Maureen was fine. I could not process this at all. How could she know anything when I had been there all day and couldn’t even get a message into Maureen? Turns out Peggy had heard from her father Joe, who called the kids from a phone in the Randsburg tavern. A bunch of LA police officers had opened up tavern in the ghost town and even got a phone line rigged up. I was not aware of this, so it did not make sense to me. Joe was not a drinker. And how could Joe, all the way out in Randsburg, in the middle of a nowhere ghost town, know anything? I wanted to believe it, but it made no sense to me.
Cleaned up and dressed more reasonably, and with shoes on, I drove back to the hospital. It was two cities away. At some point, that evening, I was allowed in to see Maureen where she was in recovery. It was all true. Natalie had been born, was simply beautiful, mama was drained, but in good spirits. It seems that everyone knew what was going on. I was the guy in the dark, even though I had been there the entire time.
The story began to unfold. It seems that once Maureen was in a recovery room, she was allowed to make a telephone call. She couldn’t reach me because I was in the hospital. She couldn’t reach the gas station as no one answered. So, she called the Sheriff’s department in Kern County. Her father was a police officer, so this was familiar territory for her. The sheriff closed his office and crossed the street to the courthouse and told the judge who was friends with Joe. The judge took a break from a court proceeding to call the bartender in Randsburg, which was likely the only phone in town. The bartender left the bar and tracked Joe down at his cabin. What Joe called the cabin was actually a small house, a couple of blocks away. The bartender told Joe he was a grandfather. Now, Joe was not a drinker. He had jailed too many drunks in his life, but this day he made an exception and went back to the bar and bought a round for everyone. His first grandchild. He tracked down the hospital and reached Maureen. They talked. No one could find me. All of this had taken place while I was sitting in the waiting room right outside the door to maternity deciding there was something super wrong because I could not see Maureen.
Natalie was simply beautiful. Maureen came home two days later, weighing only 95 pounds.