It was a
secret. We had just discovered the truth. A baby.
We were going to have a baby.
Back in the
old days, (old days: a mere 35 years!) There were no home-pregnancy tests, and
to discover the truth you had to wait until you were two weeks beyond your
missed period before going to your doctor. Then you waited for a call because
the test itself, even at the doctor’s office, took a good two hours for
results, and often it was inconclusive and you had to go back to the doctor and
start the process again. So in those days you were lucky to know for absolute fact that you were pregnant before being eight weeks along. We had just hit that mark, and had told no one.
Al’s sister, Martha
was down from Ithica, N.Y., visiting a friend for Russian Christmas in Lake
Orion, Michigan and invited us to the party. Al and Martha were close, yet not
close, as so many siblings are, but we knew she would be the first to hear our
news.
The log
cabin sparkled through the snow with lights and conviviality. There was
laughter and talking, and there may have even been music, but I don’t remember
that now.
Being
somewhat introverted, I sat a bit apart and watched. I was twenty, but young
with it. That was really the first party I had attended as an adult. So I sat
and watched and thought about the life within me.
On the sofa
facing mine sat two young mothers, their babies asleep beside them. One in a
stroller, one in one of those Moses baskets I desperately wanted.
One mother
tapped her friend on the knee and pointed upstairs to the bathroom. Her friend
nodded and watched her go to stake out her place in line. In the way of babies
everywhere, as soon as Momma was gone, she started fussing. The friend who
stayed moved to sit between her baby and her friend’s and rocked the Moses
basket, making shushing noises, but it soon became apparent that this baby wasn’t
going to settle so easily.
The friend
picked up the baby and began to sway and hum, but the baby began to fuss more,
and to pull at the woman’s shirt. Without a thought, without a look around, the
woman put her friend’s baby to her breast.
In that
moment the world tilted a little, and I became a mother. Or maybe I should say
I became one of the collective.
Of course I knew that all
people were one. I was fortunate in having a mother who believed in equality for
everyone; I was fortunate in having two gay ‘uncles’ whom I loved, and in having grown up in
Southern California in the 1970s, where I had friends of many races and backgrounds.
I do understand
anger, and I do understand resentment, and hatred and I know how awful the world can be, and that that the world is bigger than a group of people at a party.
But it was at that moment,
sitting at a party among strangers, hugging to myself the knowledge of the life
growing inside me, as a young, black mother put her friend’s white baby to her
breast, that I felt that core-deep connection to humanity that bonded me to mankind
for all time.
We are one.
