:: Listening ::

It was just after midnight and I had been laboring for 24 hours.  Things had stalled out and frankly I was glad for the respite.  As far as I was concerned, I could do for a good rest.  But the midwives knew that we needed to get things moving again and get that baby born.  I laid my head down on the dresser when I overheard the midwife ask Andy to put on some music.  She wanted something that we could dance to, something to raise the energy, and get labor moving again.  She told Andy to play something I’d like.

I lay with my head down and smiled to myself.  The midwife had set Andy on an impossible task.  Let’s just say that I’m not known for my expansive taste in music–especially danceable music.  I waited to see what he would put on, knowing there was no way he was going to get this right.  And then I heard the opening song from Traveling Wilburys Vol I, Handle Me with Care.

Everybody’s got somebody to lean on
Put your body next to mine, and dream on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8s9dmuAKvU

I straightened up and smiled.  I never would have picked this album, but it was just what I needed to hear.  All five of us started dancing around our tiny two room apartment.  I got so warm I opened the front door.  By now it was nearly 1 in the morning.  I can’t imagine what our neighbors thought!  And contractions started up again.  Soon enough we were in the birth pool and I could feel the bag of waters swell with every push.

Brian Doyle says “that everything that ever happened to you is resident in your body if you can find the key.”  Last night Andy was listening to music on Youtube, clicking from link to link as different songs were suggested–listen to this duet with George Harrison and Paul Simon.  And then the Wilburys came on.  And an over the hill supergroup tumbled open the locks of memory and brought that night right back to me.

And here’s our girl’s birth…

5 Comments

  1. And that very girl is celebrating her birthday very soon! I know the pictures by heart but didn’t know the song that was so appropriate. What a guy that Andy is … a wonderful husband and father and loved one in our family.

  2. And that very girl is celebrating her birthday very soon! I know the pictures by heart but didn’t know the song that was so appropriate. What a guy that Andy is … a wonderful husband and father and loved one in our family.

  3. This entire post stimulated a cascade of extraordinary and lasting memories. Eight home births, (thankfully one at a time).

    “Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot. But {we’ll} remember with advantages what feats {we} did that day…” Henry V

    Thanks for posting this Kortney! To quote a “way, way, very much over the hill” band, “It’s all too beautiful!” Thanks also for the Bruce Cockburn (I was expecting the Willburys and was so very pleasantly surprised).

  4. 25
    “In all the spice box of the orient,
    And all distilled deliriums combined,
    All ecstasies of heart or soul or mind,
    All of the lilac spring’s intoxicants,
    All rituals of song and sacrament,
    All the swirling mysteries that wind
    Through all infinitudes of every kind.
    In all the loves in Love’s experiment;
    Agape, Eros, Philo, filial,
    And all the thrill of the electric earth,
    I’ve known no essence more essential,
    More true, more pure, more righteous than your birth;
    Wholly carnal, wholly spiritual.
    No other hour of my life’s held such worth.”
    tlh
    From “Opsimathy” – (a few sonnets for the kids)

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