Raw Edges: A Memoir

Precarious Edge of Life

: : 102 : : I was pregnant again and, after the fact, made an appointment with my ob-gyn to ask him if it was all right to have another baby. He said because we’d had a normal child, it would be safe to try again. Then, after a few more questions, he realized I was already pregnant. “Why did you come and ask me if it’s all right?” he asked, exasperated, refraining from using the word “foolish,” even “foolish Mormon who feels this bizarre pressure to have a big family,” which I suspect might have been on the tip of his tongue. Salt Lake City had a great divide between Mormons and non-Mormons/Saints and Gentiles. Arrogance and disdain could be found on both sides of the fence. I attended a church talent show one evening in March, having been asked to play a piano solo and accompany a singer of arias. As I sat on a wooden bench in the chapel, listening to a violinist play a Vivaldi sonata, the baby in utero kicked like a wild man, almost as if responding to this particular music, almost as if anxious to get out and romance the world with his own violin. When the piece was over, the kicking stopped. I wondered what might be in store for this child. We had no tests performed pre-baby as sonography was uncommon at the time. On the 28th of May, 1971, Jeremy Scott Barber was born at the :: The Precarious Edge of Life :: The Precarious Edge of Life : : 103 University of Utah Hospital. Immediately screened for hemophilia while I was still in the hospital, we were informed he was free and clear. The long wait we’d had to endure for Chris’s diagnosis was a thing of the past. I wanted to leap out of my hospital bed and dance on the ceiling with joy. I’d been born in May. David and I were married in May. And, even though Geoffrey died a year earlier in May, we now had another son to bless our lives in this once again merry month of May. I savored this black-haired, charming baby who smiled and bleated. Holding this lamb of a child felt like holding my own heart. He’d suckle for a few moments and then something else would catch his attention. It was as if he heard music or something urgent in the air, as if he were a gypsy listening for the call of the road. Thank God for a baby in my arms again, a well baby no less, my little Jeremy Scott. The world seemed to be returning to some kind of normalcy. Christopher, though, showed signs of feeling overshadowed and excluded . The competition began. One of our hardest challenges as parents was to prove to both boys that they were on equal footing, that they both mattered more than they’d ever know, but I was oh-so-happy to hold this second-chance baby, to kiss his head and his cheeks and his thumbs, to blow on his tummy and make him laugh like ten Happy Buddhas when I changed his diapers. :: The Uintahs in eastern Utah. A Saturday morning. David and I were hiking with Chris and Jeremy—a weekend getaway, a chance to spend time together. We both loved to be outdoors as often as possible in our busy lives and wanted our boys to love it, too. “These new boots are killing me.” David bent over to loosen the laces of his unbroken-in boots while the sun baked the path and the rocks. No rain had fallen lately. Dust covered the leaves of the bushes and the toes of our boots. The heat was closing in and wrapping around our necks. Streaked with sweat and caked dirt, I pulled bandanas out of David’s daypack. We took turns wrapping them around the boys’ necks kerchief style. Three-month-old Jeremy rode on my back in a baby carrier while David helped Chris over rocks and sometimes boulders. This wouldn’t be a long 104 : : r a w e d g e s hike, as little legs could climb only so far. And little boys could be carried only so long before parents wore out. Chris picked up a rock flecked with pyrite. “Sunshine,” he said, massaging it as it caught sunlight and glittered. “Fool’s gold...