Column by Hal Walter
Birth – June 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
BEFORE WE GET STARTED, it must be noted that there is someone watching over my shoulder as I write here in my sunny new office. His editorial comments are fairly numerous and somewhat loud, but at this point are about as intelligible as some publishers for whom I’ve worked. His name is Harrison Jake Walter. As of this writing, he is nearly three weeks old.
Let’s back up. Last summer my wife Mary the obstetrics nurse had all the signs of early menopause. Her mother had gone through the change early at 44, and so Mary thought this was it. Well, she was right about the change, but it was a change of a different type. Two months later a pregnancy test showed a pink plus sign. We braced ourselves, as Mary had suffered four previous miscarriages. However, I noted right away that this tough kid had already run three pack-burro races in utero.
[Harrison Jake Walter]
It was an odd transformation to watch over the next seven months, a tumultuous time in which we lost two friends, one to cancer and the other to depression. My mother was undergoing chemotherapy. And my work situation was in a state of flux. Still, there was the joy of seeing a belly grow more plump, breasts more full. We started to think about names. Friends held baby showers. We moved the bedroom upstairs and my office downstairs, and repainted both. Time seemed to simultaneously drag and fly.
All the while I was apprehensive about the weather. The baby was due in mid-April, which really meant anytime between late March and late April. The previous year a 7-foot snowfall had stranded us here at our Wet Mountain homestead for five entire days. I had actually enjoyed the solitude that storm provided, but now the idea of having to deliver my own child was daunting. I asked a couple of experts what I should do in that event and they both said “nothing.”
The due date came and went, and the weather turned beautiful. Birds began to arrive, including mallards, kestrels, mourning doves, robins, bluebirds and flickers, but no storks. Then on a sunny Monday morning came a sign, followed by slight contractions. We packed up our bags and headed to Pueblo. A quick check at the clinic revealed that the baby was not arriving imminently, but the contractions continued. We went for lunch and then for a stroll on the riverwalk known as “HARP,” which I understand is an acronym for the Homeless Anglers Recreation Project.
Another check that evening suggested that we should just head back to the ranch. I left my bags in the car and made dinner, a lovely poor-man’s chicken Marsala. While we were cleaning up the kitchen Mary doubled over with a contraction. We started counting and timing. Then later we decided to go back to Pueblo, where at about 12:30 a.m. we checked into the birthing room at St. Mary Corwin, where Mary was actually born nearly 44 years ago, and where fresh out of nursing school she found her first job in the nursery.
The labor continued all night and into the next day. Mary’s friend Wendy Raso, who is a certified nurse midwife, arrived in the morning and spent the entire day acting as a “dula.” Since Mary is a former employee of the hospital and knows a lot of people in the business of delivering babies, we had plenty of helping hands. By the time the moment arrived, we had Wendy, two MDs, a resident and two RNs in the room. Two more RNs, friends of Mary’s from work, waited outside the door. I felt confident that if I were to have a heart attack while Mary was in labor there were enough medical professionals to handle it all in stride.
MEANWHILE, I alternated back and forth between manning a damp washcloth and two cameras, one film and one digital. I had already come to terms with the idea of being a dim moon orbiting a very bright planet. A Moon Daddy. Finally the delivering doctor said, “this next time is going to be it.” Sure enough, Mary pushed and a face appeared, much larger than I expected. There was a short delay and the shoulders squirmed out, followed by a shorter delay and then the rush of the child’s entire body greeting the air. I had the presence of mind to lift my right foot just before a gush of amniotic fluid would have soaked my shoe. One must always stay a step ahead of his child. There was silence followed by crying. It was 5:04 p.m., April 20.
Quickly the team medical professionals toweled him off and I was summoned to a table and handed a pair of scissors to cut the already crimped umbilical chord. I couldn’t quite see through the maze of arms and hands, and frankly my hands were not all that steady, so it took two cuts to completely sever the chord.
The new mom and baby had to stay in the hospital for observation for a couple of days. Meanwhile I drove home late both nights and back to Pueblo each morning. On Thursday we were discharged and brought our baby home, only to be greeted by the blizzard I had been dreading for a month.
IT ARRIVED pouring down snow like a summer rainstorm, and it probably would not have been any problem at all if Harrison were not slightly jaundiced, if his mother’s milk had not stopped flowing due to engorgement, or if the electricity had not begun to flicker on and off. After living here a number of years I’ve learned that you can sometimes get the jump on a storm like this simply by moving vehicles from the house uphill to the gate. Late that night I went out into the storm and swept the snow off both the truck and the Subaru, and watched the lights of the house flicker through the driving sheets of snow. I marveled at how suddenly such a joyous occasion had taken on overtones of “The Shining.”
The power went out for real later that night. We resorted to formula, and Mary became an emotional wreck. I knew that we would have to leave in the morning. At first light I drove the Subaru the half-mile up our road to make sure we could get out to the main county road, then decided to “evacuate.”
At this point there was about 18 inches of snow and the main road had been plowed one lane’s width. It took a little while for us to get packed up and it just kept snowing harder. By the time we drove back up to the main road the plowed lane had a good deal more snow over it. The visibility and depth perception was poor, and on the big curve before Bear Basin Ranch I think I must have hit a ridge of slush with the left wheel and been a little close to the right edge. I was driving really slowly but we slipped off the shoulder and into a snow bank.
I tried digging with my hands and pushing but the car would not budge. I finally decided to start jogging through the snow to Bear Basin for help. However, on the way there I ran into a neighbor in a truck; he had a tow strap and shovel and easily pulled us out and got us back on our way. Next we found Highway 96 to be virtually unplowed. I had a very real pang of fear before descending Hardscrabble Canyon at 8 mph. It seemed to take forever to drive the 19 miles and 3,000 vertical feet to Wetmore where the roads got better at about 6,000 feet, and where I chuckled when I saw some guy heading up the hill pulling a huge speedboat behind a truck. I breathed a very real sigh of relief as the first patches of black asphalt appeared through the slush.
The storm ended up dumping three feet of heavy wet snow and we camped at Mary parents’ house in Pueblo with Harrison on a photo-therapy blanket for his jaundice while friends braved the storm to feed our animals back home.
I decided to drive home Saturday morning to check on things and clean up. A few miles out from Pueblo I noticed a flock of seagulls circulating above the highway directly ahead of me, and also a minivan in the oncoming lane. I didn’t think much of it until I became aware that something was awry with one of the gulls. It was flapping oddly and tumbling toward earth.
THE GULL LANDED right on the highway between our approaching vehicles, just shy of the mini-van’s side of the double-yellow line. The omenic implications were almost incomprehensible. I have read of people who have witnessed birds dying in mid-flight, but the timing in this case was a bit uncanny. I just wanted to get my child and his mother safely home.
The next day, Sunday evening, we came back up here to settle in for real. The snow only took a couple of days to melt, and within a week winter had suddenly become summer. Mary’s milk began to flow quite freely and Harrison’s jaundice disappeared. One day, while cleaning the corrals, I heard a birdish racket from the top of the big dead pine that stands sentinel over this place we call home. I looked up to see two kestrels mating upon one of the uppermost branches. I hope they know what they are getting themselves into.
Besides a son, Hal Walter raises burros on 35 acres in the Wet Mountains.