Saturday, May 4, 2013

Further On Down The Line

The days spent in Macon were healing for my soul. What was missing was some stability in other affairs. Instinctively, I knew that with a baby I was more vulnerable, and had to depend on someone I found to be increasingly undependable.

What happened next was predictable- I got pregnant and had another baby. This time I was able to plan a little better, and had a beautiful birth in the birthing room at a local hospital with a lay midwife in attendance just up to the point of delivery. My son was born at sunrise on Easter morning in 1983.

Soon after that we decided to move back to Birmingham so that my husband could go back to school at UAB in engineering- I guess a last ditch effort to meet the very real challenges of two young children. It was a noble gesture, but one that was only that- a gesture.

All this in perspective of age and experience, along with the accumulated wisdom of other women who went through the 80s and the childbearing and the realities, makes for empathy. At the time, survival was the predominant mode.

The nice part about returning to Birmingham was that we lived in Homewood, in a great place for raising children. Our neighbors also had young children and the support that offered was at least equal to the support I had in Macon. My children also got to interact with grandparents and their cousins. Somehow though the melancholy of Birmingham began to creep back in, and I began to feel rather despondent. When I had my last baby, a fussy little girl, I was ready to throw in the towel.

That was the place in my life when I quit running - both from what I didn't want and toward something I wanted -and looked squarely at the facts of my life. I took inventory you might say. As hard as it was to look at the deficits and the baggage, I found I could not take another step forward without doing so. I found that I would have to have help to do this, and I reached out. This was a huge turning point in my life. That was 1985.

1 comment:

  1. Hope you're well, sister. I never lived on the southside, but I played baseball there when I was younger. Went to the Wooden Nickel and the Midnight's Voice a lot when I was certainly too young to be in either place. We have the same tastes in music. I'm no hippie, though. Spent a lifetime in the military. Kind of still in it. Spend a lot of time in Macon now, too. Best wishes to you and yours,

    Jeff

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