Thursday, June 11, 2020

                                    
                                   Gosling

     Late night, June 3rd., 2020, my wife and I and four other people were gifted the birth of a grandchild in Minneapolis, at a hospital we were not allowed to enter, during a time when protestors and looters stormed the streets setting fire to businesses; during the time the governor called in the Minnesota National Guard and more state-wide  law enforcement agencies than had ever been called to service at one time since World war II; I-35 and major routes were closed off surrounding the hospital; and a pandemic of mythical proportion stalked the most vulnerable people of the world.

     My story could be exaggeration, as I’ve been known to do on occasion, but as Mark Twain is to have said,  “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

     Our grandchild was born during a time when grandparents couldn’t be present in a hospital on the birthing day at the invitation of its parents; couldn’t crowd the nursery window to see their progeny among the other newborns (not quite as beautiful); couldn’t congratulate each other in person with hugs, pats on the back, fist-bumps, nor share tears and sniffles that accompany such emotional extension.

     ‘Back in the day,’ we could lean in close and coo at the swaddled child in its proud, but tired, mother’s arms, nod and smile knowingly as the exuberant father distributed cigars of tobacco, or milk chocolate, foiled-wrapped in pink or blue, and then all gathered around the proud parents and child for an impromptu family photo in the sterility of the hospital room.

     But that didn’t happen. Apart from one another, we all shared the anticipation of the announcement of its birth from an excited new father who had experienced his or her baby’s emergence from the womb, but we weren’t there. We were no more part of its birth than if it was born a gosling on Mikinaak Creek..

     One grandmother started a group text messaging number, so we could share our anxieties, unknown by the expectant parents, unseen from one another, across cyberspace. Apart, in our own little familiar worlds, we all waited through the anxious hours leading up to its birth, thinking of the arduous labor of the mother and if she was getting any rest; the fears of the father, the grandmothers recalling their own birthing experiences, each of us in our own homes, hour upon hour, texting our group chat conversation to add some thought or worry, apart city and country; blissfully apart from all the societal drama playing out below on the streets of Minneapolis; quarantined for now against the spread of Covid-19.

     After midnight, with still no news from dad, we decided to go to bed in our part of the world. While we were sound asleep, we got a group text message sent by the father at 2:40 am announcing their daughter’s birth after 25 hours of labor, and an eagerness by them to get some sleep afterward. But I didn’t discover the message until 4:00 in the morning when I had to get out of bed ‘on an errand.’ It was hard to go back to sleep after that.

     Yet, we had no name, no weight, no ‘height’, no photo; no news except a text that said mama and baby were doing fine, and included assurances from the new father that when the time was right they would let us know more. But meant more waiting, for several hours more.

     The parents eventually video-chatted with us from the hospital, the baby asleep against her father’s chest in a chair as her very tired mother rested comfortably in an adjoining bed, stroking the baby’s forehead and hair. Closely watching my reaction, my daughter said the baby was named after my middle sister. and the baby’s father’s sister, formally, but would be called a nickname that slips easier off the tongue that I cannot divulge. Of course, I became teary-eyed as I know my late sister would’ve been greatly honored and wildly excited; she was just that way.

     The parents and the child left the hospital when the time was right, arriving home from there within a few short minutes, and entering immediately into a self-imposed 14 day quarantine apart from the world at large -- and their families, once again. Tick, tick, tick.

Thanks to interactive technology, the young family is keeping us abreast of baby's development.

     It may be a month or more before any of us can but look at the child through the window, reminiscent of such news received by families thousands of impossible miles away in unfortunate locations due to military deployment or career choices, but here we are, near, just downstream.