Confessions of a Family Man

After we had said our vows and kissed in front of all those witnesses— such a host of accountability!—my bride and I were relieved to walk down the aisle and out of sight. We were relieved to ride to the reception alone in a limo then to eat little barbecued shish kebabs, concentrating on keeping our fingers clean. But we became awkward as soon as the band leader called us forward for the “first dance.”

How hard to have all those eyes trained on us. Cathleen gazed into my eyes. I smiled back. But I found myself wondering whether the smile was for her or all the watchers.

When I pulled her in close, trying not to step on her wide expensive dress, I felt stiff. Her legs against mine made it hard to move. We toddled, turning slowly so that we might seem to be doing more than just putting weight on one foot then the other. Were we looking right, I wondered?

Our parents were invited to join us, and they came gliding onto the floor, each pair holding out a set of clasped hands like a prow. I looked to my father—large and graying—and I was amazed at how smoothly he swung his partner away and how easily he brought her home, sashaying. Away my mother spun and back again, chest to chest, legs finding space between legs. The two of them didn’t just turn in place but swooped across the floor, following their joined hands as if they held a secret purpose.

Halfway through this long dance, I felt my bride’s arms around my neck, pulling me close. I heard her whisper, “I love you.” I nuzzled her in return, whispering the expected response. I meant it. I loved her too. But I felt strangely frightened by the thought. My eyes were caught on my parents’ united movement—the way they had transformed into a single complex and graceful creature. When, I wondered, had they learned to dance like that?

________

“Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth,” I counseled, mantra-like, watching helplessly as my wife’s body assumed its herculean pose, readying like a bow bent back until it must make that final Oh-God-I-can’t-stop-now push.

And after? I was equally useless—while the baby, with wrinkled brow and closed eyes, bumped her leaking breast, opening its yearning mouth then turning spastic.

As our newborn wailed, I asked, “Is he getting anything?”

“I think so,” she replied. “Yeah, I think I felt something coming out.”

But how could I be sure, being so uninvolved, unable to monitor what was or was not getting vacuumed out of her body?

Ten days, the obstetrician said. Then we’ll have a check-up. However, when we got to our house in the suburbs of Chicago, the baby was always crying and Cathleen was always saying, “I hope he’s getting something. I mean he must. I’m practically spraying him.”

“Enough,” I said after six days of uncertainty. “We need to find out if everything’s alright.”

So we bundled the baby into the plastic car seat and drove through the frigid neighborhood, and when we arrived at the clinic, the doctor simply lifted a fold of skin on the infant’s arm.

After she released, the fold stayed raised and she frowned. “Possible failure to thrive,” she announced.

Seeing our alarm, she backpedaled. “I mean we can’t be for sure, but there’s no question this baby needs to go to the hospital. And I mean now!”

So that is how we found ourselves back in a hospital room with nurses coming and going. That is how we found ourselves trying to sleep on a recliner or sitting by the crib, stroking our gaunt son around his IV-needled arm and giving him tiny sips of formula from a syringe.

This time we shared the room with a mournful mother and a baby who had an IV tube in her scalp and a respirator tube in her nose. There...