7-21-2024
“…Oh, since the day I saw you
I have been waiting for you
You know I will adore you ’til eternity
So won’t you, please (be my, be my baby)
Be my little baby? (My one and only baby)…”
“Be My Baby” – The Ronettes
For those of you watching “The Bear” on Hulu (spoiler alert), you’ll understand the importance of The Ronettes tune (“Baby I Love You”) being featured in episode 8 of the new third season. For me, it felt like an ice bath of memories and meaning. The song, the childbirth scene, and the interaction between the mother and daughter churned into a trip through untapped grief.
I had waited for my daughter for years without ever knowing her. After twelve miscarriages, two abortions, and thousands of dollars in fertility treatment; the dice of genetics were rolled and I miraculously became pregnant the old-fashioned way after stopping all interventions. The doctors were in as much disbelief as I was. She was my rainbow baby and I was full of gratitude and shock every day of that pregnancy as if I was gestating a bomb and not a baby. I would stand in the shower and sing to my belly, “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes.
The words meant more than an overture of love. To me it was a prayer to my body that this baby would be ok, this time, and that I would do everything I could to keep her safe. It was a promise to her because I felt that I didn’t deserve to be a mother after so many heartbreaks and mistakes in my life. I began to believe that I deserved to be unhappy. Before her, I had started to believe that I wasn’t meant to be a mother and I wasn’t confident that it still wasn’t true even with my body swelling before my eyes.
All of this came back to me as I watched that eighth episode of “The Bear” and the interactions between Donna and Natalie as she goes through labor. Her mother, Donna, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, does a remarkable turn as a covert narcissist in the process of trying to make amends by being present for her daughter’s birth. The combination of their dialogue, the setting, and then hearing The Ronettes was as if the tumbler on the lock fell into place and let loose a wave of grief that I hadn’t acknowledged was locked away.
It brought back the day I was in the hospital to give birth to my daughter. Like so many new parents graduating from childbirth class, I had everything squared away in my mind and house so I believed I was prepared and had no comprehension of the realities ahead.
My mother had shared fantastical tales of her five births over the years and would have me believe that she didn’t scream and that it happened so quickly that there wasn’t time to think about the amount of pain she was in. It would be an understatement to say she romanticized her memories.
I wonder even now if tv and films had warped her memory or if she thought she was doing me a favor by lying. Like so many of her idiosyncrasies, this was in direct contradiction with her actions of when I was a child. She never lied to me about the pain when I was a kid.
We were at the county health department to get free vaccinations. All four of us kids lined up in a stuffy, sweltering hallway lined with aging PSA posters about VD and drugs. I started to feel dizzy from the heat and waited through lunchtime standing on the cracked linoleum and staring at the tattered walls. I could hear my mother’s voice down the hallway at the check-in counter, a bullet-proofed cracked plexiglass-covered window with a scarred slide-through for paperwork. Laughable considering we were in Southern Oregon and no one would waste bullets on a county health department.
My mom was asking yet again about when we would be seen. A woman who looked even more frazzled than my mother threw a door open and hollered down the hallway our last name as if it was a slur more than a surname. She didn’t know how right she was.
My mother barked at us and we ambled towards her as quickly as we could with the negative amount of motivation and energy that we collectively possessed. My eldest siblings knew they were up first and that I would be last. It was the reverse order for Christmas presents. It was one of the few perks of being the youngest in our family. I knew I would be sandwiched between them in the backseat once we were done here. As horrible as the place was, I was ok with waiting here as long as possible.
The three of them stoically took their jabs, rubbed their arms, and sat back out in the hallway. I was left last and my legs hurt from sitting on the exam table so long that I had paper glued to my bare skin and had to peel it away to be able to scoot down towards her. The nurse misinterpreted my wincing as fear of the needle and good-naturedly offered,
“It’s just a quick pinch and then it won’t hurt a bit.”
“Don’t lie to her, it’s going to hurt,” my mother held my eye like a Viking warrior preparing me for battle, “but you need to do it or you could get sick and die.”
The nurse looked horrified and began to argue but my mother silently cut her off, “Don’t lie to her,” I could sense the self-righteousness of the nurse but she merely made a face and stared down busying herself with prepping my needle.
My mom reiterated in a calmer tone, “It hurts but it goes quick, ok? It’s not that big of deal, you know that. All of your siblings just did it, right?”
The nurse’s face looked murderous as she misplaced her anger on my arm so I had a sizeable bruise afterward. My mother blamed me for not massaging the shot area like I should have. I spent the rest of the day rubbing an ice cube on my arm and trying to draw with my left hand.
The scene in “The Bear” reminded me of how my mother wasn’t afraid to confront nurses, fears, or her unending ability to willfully be the cause of embarrassment much like Donna. But it also reminded me of her contrary nature. Like the shock of her being unwilling to be in the room when I had either of my children. She couldn’t face seeing me in pain she said. Just like when I told her I was pregnant with my daughter by taking her shopping and steering her towards a baby section and turning to her to smile and say, “Do you want to help pick something out?”
She became upset and said, “Oh, are you serious?”
She sighed with contempt and started pacing back and forth in front of me, “Don’t put me through that again. Don’t tempt fate again!… What if it doesn’t work out?!…”
People stared at us and I stood staring at my feet crying, while she muttered accusations and foreshadowed the loss of another pregnancy, knowing there wasn’t any point in saying anything more to argue with her. I tried to make light of the situation once I could bite back the tears by widening my eyes and blinking rapidly. After so many of these episodes and years of weathering them, I knew a joke was the only way to make it through this with her, “Aw, mom, with excitement like that I should wait to tell you about taking you to lunch at the shelter.”
It was six months later when I was in labor, on the phone with my mother, expecting her, and she admitted that she was too anxious to be in the room and couldn’t bear to watch me go through labor. She waited to come in afterward, once she knew we both were safe. She entered the room beaming, bee-lined it for the baby in my arms, and swooped in to hold her granddaughter. I lay there forgotten, watching, happy yet feeling a sinking feeling of grief and realization. Something that wouldn’t fully form for me until years later.
It’s three years since my mother passed and it dawned on me during that scene in “The Bear” that I would never let my child go through labor without me any more than I would make their own childbirth about myself. My mother had a daily battle with her mental health issues in a way that I couldn’t comprehend as a child or even now.
I could never fully understand the complicated circumstances that my mother lived through or know her as much as I tried; because you never can fully know anyone or their life through their own eyes. An obvious statement but something we take for granted with those we love.
It’s difficult when my kids are in pain but I stay calm, patch their wounds, and stay by their side. I owe it to my mom that I don’t lie to them about what to expect but I certainly try to choose my words more carefully than putting the fear of death in them or threatening to harm the medical professional performing their exam. It still makes me laugh to think back on that poor nurse’s face.
There are days when I feel like taking up cross-stitching and embroidering a pillow to say, “She did the best she could with what she had and we never doubted that she loved us.” The words are true to the best of my memory and yet false based on many of her actions so the opposite side should read, “Quite often she disliked her children.”
In an argument, a few years after having my daughter, my mother admitted that she didn’t want to be in the room with me during labor because it would bring up too many memories for her and that it annoyed her when I was in pain. She felt I exaggerated my pain. Something that doctors have noted the opposite of in my chart notes, such as: “patient doesn’t recognize pain”, “subject regained consciousness during procedure…”, “patient compliant without medication…”.
I heard these words and chortled, she became enraged and told me the truest words I think I ever heard from her about myself, “I’m so disgusted with you…you’re so lucky. You’re so ungrateful. Why can’t you just be happy? Don’t you know everyone is judging you?”
How is it that we love, still, those who have committed the ugliest acts towards us? My mother forgave time and time again yet left her own emotional scars on others. I’ll never know the answers but I know she loved me. That I’ll always miss her. That I haven’t been able to write a single word that hasn’t been about her in some way for the last three years. I’ll always miss her and I’m still waiting to make her proud of me.
Part of me will still be that kid, kicking my K-Mart canvas shoes with the holes in the toes against the plastic baseboard trim in the hallway of that county health department. Watching the ants climb out from the cracks in the walls, laughing at the anti-drugs slogans, and listening to my siblings make jokes about how a fried egg sounded better than the needle we were waiting for. I can still hear my mother’s derisive laugh at our jibes at the posters. That explosive joy from her deep belly guffaw.
https://time.com/6992207/the-bear-season-3-natalie-childbirth/
“Be My Baby” – by The Ronettes
The night we met I knew I needed you so
And if I had the chance I’d never let you go
So won’t you say you love me?
I’ll make you so proud of me
We’ll make ’em turn their heads every place we go
So won’t you, please (be my, be my baby)
Be my little baby? (My one and only baby)
Say you’ll be my darlin’ (be my, be my baby)
Be my baby now (my one and only baby)
Whoa-oh-oh-oh
I’ll make you happy, baby, just wait and see
For every kiss you give me, I’ll give you three
Oh, since the day I saw you
I have been waiting for you
You know I will adore you ’til eternity
So won’t you, please (be my, be my baby)
Be my little baby? (My one and only baby)
Say you’ll be my darlin’ (be my, be my baby)
Be my baby now (my one and only baby)
Whoa-oh-oh-oh
So come on and, please (be my, be my baby)
Be my little baby? (My one and only baby)
Say you’ll be my darlin’ (be my, be my baby)
Be my baby now (my one and only baby)
Whoa-oh-oh-oh
Be my little baby? (My one and only baby)
Oh-oh-oh (be my, be my baby)
Oh (my one and only baby)
Whoa-oh-oh-oh (be my, be my baby)
Oh-oh-oh (My one and only baby)
Oh (be my, be my baby)
Kelso Kids 