Release Me

     I just watched the American Masters: Pearl Jam Twenty special on PBS and it really brought the pain of the 90's roaring back to me. It forced me to look back on the trajectory of my life and the escape from that pain. In the 90's, I was a struggling adolescent trying to come to terms with my father's death. I would sing 'Alive' with the ferocity of a young man trying with every false breath to gain some footing. The words didn't match up perfectly to my situation but they were pertinent enough. I wanted to recognize that I was in fact still alive, despite the shadow of despair that I wrapped around my fragile existence, like an impermeable cloak.
     During the live concert clip of 'Release' in the film, I recalled the desperate cries, into the abyss, of my teenage separation from all that my father represented. I had lost him. Eddie's voice singing "And I wait up in the dark, for you to speak to me." would haunt my young, muddled mind. I wanted a voice, my father's voice, to guide me...to admonish the self-pity and the self-mutilation that I chose to embrace. I fought for every ounce of life I lived, good or bad, trying to clutch, in my mental malaise, the root of some truth to pull me out of the earthen ditch I had dug. In that dirt coffin I had buried my motivation, my desire to engage in reality. I called for my father , and he never showed up. I screamed his name, I screamed at God and I rebelled against all the teachings past down by both of them. Those were dark times filled with actions for which I am only now beginning to forgive myself. I justified those actions through my angst and their absence. People can be foolish when grieving and I refused to accept the responsibility of owning my mind or my morals. I wanted a "release" from my anger, from my sadness and neither my father or THE father answered me.



      In the years that followed, I drifted around never standing on my own two feet with any real strength and I often stumbled back into that dirt pit. I developed an oppressive sense of regret and shame during my twenties and early thirties. Every time I reflected on my life, I felt undeserving of any real success. I decided that I had been weak and disgraceful in the manner in which I had lived. My early teenage/early twenties violence, thievery and binging had given way to an astounding apathy. I gave up completely at times. I sabotaged every chance for happiness. The thoughts that stalk those suffering from crippling depression, found a home in my head. I often wondered what kept me going. I would lie awake at night hoping for the kind of epiphany that would shake me to the core and reshape my psyche.
      I had that epiphany two years ago, at the age of 33, while staring into the eyes of a beautiful kayaking betty named Harriet. She was telling me the story of her shattered ankles. She had broken them both in a kayak at the age of nineteen and it had taught her a smidgen of humility. I listened intently, marveling at her toughness and her perseverance during the ensuing rehab, but more importantly, I listened to my heart. It was singing, something it had not done with such vitality since the days of my idyllic youth.
    So, tonight my wife, Harriet, sat next to me breastfeeding our baby girl Martha, and I cried while watching a PBS special about a band named Pearl Jam. It has been a rather serendipitous road that has led me here. A tragic transmission failure while visiting a favored West Virginia town, led me to accept a beautiful girl's invitation for drinks at her house. I had just spent my last dollar on a PBR draft while watching her inspired inaugural appearance at open mike night in a local beer and pizza joint, Pies and Pints. We retired to her back porch and talked until the sun came up over the hills of Appalachia.
    "What is it you want most out of this life?" I asked her.
    She stammered adorably, flustered at my bluntness and replied, " I guess I want a family, to be happy and to be in love...your not supposed to say that to a guy the first time you hang out, are you?"
     We both laughed and I told her that deep down, that was what I always wanted as well. "I want to be content in love, and I want to share this life with someone who is my equal, someone who challenges me mentally and I want to have children," I lingered on her eyes, reading the pulsating blue of her brilliant irises.
     "Guys are REALLY not supposed to say that!" she laughed into her cocktail.

     Less than a year later we were married at The Confluence Resort on the exact spot we had shared during our second date, where we had watched the Leonid Meteor shower and talked about our future.  We knew we would get married and we knew we would try to have children, those dreams we expressed on her back porch were being cemented in the contentment of our instantly unconditional love.

     Less than a year after being married, we found ourselves in Raleigh General Hospital at 9am to break Harriet's water. She was 10 days over due. We decided to break her water to take advantage of the opportunity to have the doctor and midwife we wanted on hand. We had arrived with a detailed birth plan, typed up by my OCD wife and her strong desire for control, for a plan. The objective was to go as natural as possible. The baby had been breach and after trying all the tricks in the book, we had scheduled an external version. It had gone well, the baby was flipped manually by our doctor and we were excited to give childbirth a go. When they broke Harriet's water, we thought "here it is, our baby girl is on the way", but she had other plans. The next 12 hours were both amazing and frustrating. We paced the halls, talking excitedly about our new life. Harriet sat in the shower and pumped her breasts trying to bring her contractions in line. She bounced on the birth ball and rocked in the rocking chair. Little Martha stayed put.

     After 12 hours they recommended Pitocin, to intensify her contractions, and we relented. It was the first of many concessions. We had arranged a code word for the epidural and the nurses were instructed to never mention pain relief. Our word was " monkey-slut", something that elicited childish giggles out of us both. We never got to use it. After a couple of hours, the pain was evident on Harriet's face. The Pitocin was kicking like a mule and we both agreed, me begrudgingly, to go for the epidural. The baby was not coming anytime soon and the thought of Harriet having to push her out the next morning with no rest was inconceivable. We called her friend Cindy ,a nurse anesthetist, in to the hospital to administer the pain relief in hopes of gaining some sleep before the big moment. Husbands are supposed to leave the room when the epidural is administered ( apparently it is faint inducing among other reasons) but I could not stomach the idea of leaving my wife after the 12 hours we had just shared. Cindy kindly bent the rules and let me stay as long as I did not watch.
     At 12am Harriet and I started to fade in and out of sleep. The nurses checked on us every 30 minutes, waking us up with every visit. They were concerned about the baby's heart-rate. It had dropped a little. The five and a half hours that followed were excruciating for me. I became inconsolably anxious about baby Martha's heart-rate and placed most of the blame on the epidural. My wife had to endure the cold silence of my apprehension and got very upset. She tried to reassure me, but I refused to be placated. At some point I snapped out of my delirious attitude of judgment and realized that I was unjustly punishing my wife. I sucked it up just in time for our favorite mid-wife to come in and reveal that the baby was perfectly fine. Her resting heart-rate was always a little more "athletic"and that she was probably asleep. Harriet shot her, "see, I AM a nurse and KNOW what I'm talking about" look at me and I quietly kissed her forehead. Harriet was also 9.5cm dilated and it was time for her to push! The next three hours were the most intense I have ever spent. I watched and counted cadence as my wife pushed against the impossible, trying to have our baby vaginally. She turned, squatted, rotated, pushed, pulled and hammered through every position imaginable. Baby Martha kept banging up against Harriet's pelvic bone. My eyes welled up with tears during every staring match Harriet and I had through that pain. I could read it all over her face. It was hurting her. We discovered later that the epidural had come out during the initial repositioning and Harriet had endured the Pitocin contractions and pelvic-bone, hammering pushes for close to three hours without it!
     The hospital staff held out as long as they could before bringing up the c-section. They came in, all the nurses and doctors, and said it was time. Harriet's water had been broken 24 hours ago, she had pushed for 3 hours to no avail and it was time to get the baby out. Harriet said she needed to speak to her husband first. Nobody left the room and finally a nurse asked, surprisingly, "alone?" When they vacated the room, we hugged and whispered sweet proclamations of love. We decided to end the battle. I was relieved. I had reached the end of my mental limit. I could not watch my wife suffer any longer. We called the doctors back in. Our doctor, Dr. Lindly, came in and said he was going to stay on past his shift to ride this thing out with us, and so did our mid-wife. Both of these fine people had worked a 24 hour shift and elected to stay on to see us through, ..it meant a lot. They asked about our decision concerning the c-section. I looked at Harriet, waiting for her to find her voice. She looked at me and politely asked if I could hand her the 3 liter pitcher behind me on the table. I handed it to her and watched as she vomited bile for a solid minute. She quietly handed it back to me, wiped her mouth, and said, "let's get this baby out, let's do it." Dr. Lindly looked at us both with a smile and replied, "she even does that gracefully!" That is my wife.

     The c-section happened and baby Martha entered our lives. I cried more times during those first two days following her birth, than I had in all the previous 15 years combined. She was beautiful, my wife was beautiful and my life was beautiful. It turned out Baby Martha was sunny-side up and had the cord wrapped around her neck, so she had good reason for fighting the vaginal delivery.  I have written in some shape or form (poetry, essays, etc.) since the age of fifteen, but puting to paper the emotions I felt after my daughter was born seems impossible. People always say that kind of stuff about big events and now I get it. How do you express the depth of feeling involved in such an event? I have traveled a long road to this point and being in the presence of my wife and daughter fills me with such an abundance of good will and happiness that my throat locks up, my eyes well up and I trip over the simplest metaphors. I love them. That is it. I love them, contently.
     When I finally sat back and had a chance to reflect on the birth experience, I remembered praying..A LOT! That is no small thing. Religion, for me, is like a cold tile floor on a early winter morning. I avoid it at all costs. So what does it say that I was willing to pray? That I had unconsciously jumped right back in that boat as a result of deep concern for my wife and child? I'm not sure what it means, but I apologized to God and I apologized to my father and I asked for them to cast favor on my family. My issues with organized religion didn't matter anymore. I still refuse to assign any dogmatic ideology to it, but I have opened myself up, once again, to the possibility of God. Some folks will scoff at this and others will take it to the other extreme, don't do it. It is what it is, a possibility, some hope and a little belief. My wife and daughter made it possible for me to embrace and engage life again.

     So, Pearl Jam Twenty, a pop culture music documentary, gave me pause and brought tears to my eyes as I sat on the couch with my family. I don't know where it all leads, or how it will all transpire, but I know that I am happy to be here. I know that God is a possibility. I know that I sense a power that transcends me every time I look at little Martha's face. I feel it with every embrace my wife and I share. I know that I can do something right, because it shines in the love that I feel permeating throughout my young family. Love does that. It shakes the walls, it rattles despair and it resurrects hope. Martha, the world shaker, has made her presence felt. It is in her eyes that I see the transcendence of love, the twinkle of a higher power and it is in her smile that I see my father's face. In my youth I would call out into the dark, but my answers came with the light of my wife and child. God and my father are talking to me again, and it is at the exact moment when I need their lessons the most. It feels like a "release", it feels like I am free. I am a father to my daughter, a husband to my wife and this is the beginning of The Martha Chronicles.......