Sunday, March 17, 2024

Car talk

 While she packs the car, I check the weather. Though it won't change our path any, my heart is lighter knowing we won’t have to contend with snow or rain. 

Spring break seemed to sneak up on us this year, and now it’s over. 

At least it is over for our college student.

The days off from her school never align with the days her brother receives from her old alma mater, still, we manage to make the most of her time.

We binged on her presence. From family meals to family marathons in front of the television, watching all of the one-hour shows that she’s denied herself until we could all sit side-by-side on the same couch. 

Her life, she notes not unhappily, resembles the outward contours of adulthood. 

She has done all the dutiful things time doesn’t permit during her regular semester. She’s scheduled appointments with doctors and dentists. She’s managed to squeeze in a shift or two of waiting tables to free up some extra income. She meets up with a friend, and takes her brother to school, just like in the old days when she was a kid. 

This time is such a gift. Each minute is precious for its rarity, though I must admit I have not conferred the mantle of adulthood to my firstborn, most likely because our first moments together feel more like recent memory than ancient history. 

I pull out of the driveway and turn right. I follow instructions the map reader calls out, though I think I have driven the route enough times to remember. But I may never put trust in myself when technology so freely offers the comfort of assurity.

No one likes getting lost except in thought or conversation. Neither of which I would expect as we make this commute.

Especially once she asks if she can play music. 

I imagine our conversation will ebb now. I will ask “Who’s singing,” and she will answer a name I do not recognize nor can retain long enough in my memory to retrieve if the song shuffles back within the hour. 

Soon, I was surprised to be wrong. The volume stays low while she directs lines of thought my way. 

Each thought intersects another, knitting the strands of news, secrets, and ideas into a nubbly cloth. Overall, I feel the warmth of her trust. 

I’d like to tell her, but she starts another ride down memory lane. We are back in the car, me driving while she and two friends in the back seat dish about about their lives.

They speak as if we are not merely divided by a generation or two but by an invisible soundproof partition.

Oh, how I love the commute. How a car can’t seem to contain or corral any particular audience. 

Hours pass like minutes. 

By the time we arrive at our destination, we are quiet. I circle the block and cross my fingers, hoping the parking gods will smile down on me so that time can stand still long enough for me to help her ferry bags of books and clean laundry up five flights to her dorm room.

Alas, I must double park and wait for her to complete the circuit twice so as not to risk the inconvenience of a tow.

Finally, she is back and ready for hugs and “see ya next time.”

She knows how much I hate goodbyes. 

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Keeping women in the picture



In the big picture, we want to take maternal health seriously. We want to minimize harm to our nation’s pregnant and postpartum patients. And through laws like Paid Family and Medical Leave, we have helped to ensure parents can afford to welcome and care for the new lives they labor into the world.


But what happens when that picture never develops? 


For women like Cassidy Perrone, who delivered her daughter, Olivia, stillborn in 2022, the tragedy is compounded by flaws in the system designed to support them as they recover and try to care for themselves and their families. 


Perrone, the primary breadwinner, learned after the birth that she was ineligible for Paid Family Leave. 


In New York pregnant people who experience stillbirth are currently excluded from receiving Paid Family Leave (PFL), despite their partners being eligible. In some instances having their approved cases revoked after they suffer a fetal loss.


This is why PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy (PUSH), a group of parents and medical providers advocating for those who have experienced stillbirth, is convening in Albany this coming week to call for legislation that would bring awareness to the need for more equity in how paid family and medical leave benefits are determined.


Since PFL is intended for bonding with new babies, caring for ill family members, or managing issues arising from military deployments, a postpartum patient who suffers stillbirth becomes ineligible to obtain PFL because they are no longer categorized as caregivers. Instead, postpartum patients must rely on Temporary Medical Disability Insurance, which pays considerably less as they recover. 


In New York state, temporary disability offers roughly 50 percent of workers’ wages but caps the benefit at a legal maximum of $170. In comparison, PFL offers as much as 67 percent of the claimant’s usual wages.


The disparity, like all disparities in maternal health, disproportionately affects under-resourced families of color, who are more likely to be forced back to work during the most dangerous postpartum weeks.


Women who experience stillbirth are also almost five times as likely to suffer severe maternal complications compared to those who deliver living infants. And experts indicate that using best practices, at least  25% of US stillbirths may be preventable


Since the 1940s, improvements in maternity care have resulted in a dramatic reduction in the occurrence of stillbirth; however, more recently, the decline has slowed or halted. In 2020, the latest year statistics are available, the CDC reported about 21,000 stillbirths in the United States. According to the National Institutes of Health, there are approximately 1,400 stillbirths in New York State each year. 

 

“New York’s current Paid Family Leave law forces parents of stillborn babies to make the awful choice between a paycheck and taking time to safely recover during the early postpartum period – a critical time in maternal health when moms are at significantly higher risk of life-threatening medical complications,” says PUSH Executive Director, Samantha Durante Banerjee. 


“This puts these families in an even more precarious situation, literally being forced to choose between their physical and financial health. And it's only exacerbated by the fact that it is totally unexpected, happening in the immediate wake of an immense trauma, and at a time when this family is grappling not only with the loss of a child but also significant financial impacts (funeral and burial expenses, autopsy and testing which often is not covered by insurance after stillbirths, mental health support, etc.) that come along with this devastation,” she said.


“Mothers need at least six weeks to recover physically from pregnancy loss, not to mention to recover emotionally. There have already been too many close calls where mothers with no choice return to work too soon and risk their health. We need a solution now – before a New York mother loses her life,” urges PUSH Policy Director Allie Felker.


PUSH is asking Gov. Kathy Hochul to fast-track legislation that would grant the birthing parent 12 weeks of paid time off regardless of whether labor resulted in a live birth.


Honestly, I don’t know whether PFL is the best vehicle by which to do this or if medical disability should rise to meet the realities of our times since the consequences of lost wages can wreak havoc on all patients and their families. A part of me worries that in either scenario, anti-abortion politicians will always try to weaponize good-faith legislation in their continuing efforts to diminish reproductive rights or dictate to families how they should be configured.   


But I don’t see how we can claim to hold family values in high esteem if we carelessly erase the value of a woman’s financial contribution to her family or the realities of her continued caregiving role even as she convalesces. 


Twelve weeks is a small price to pay if it keeps women in the bigger picture. It’s simply what’s fair. 

——-


 PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy (PUSH) will gather outside the Governor’s Executive Mansion (138 Eagle Street) on Thursday, March 14, 2024, at 2 p.m. 


Sunday, March 03, 2024

Divine spine

The conversation was heading in an awkward direction, as conversations about religion and politics often do. 


My mouth was ready to cast off a sentence, which might have amounted to “I’d rather see a church burn than spill a single drop of this-here coffee,” when I managed to reel it back inside. 


A brief chortle, however, propelled me toward ephemeral damnation.


“Do you go to church?”


“No,” I had to admit. “And because I am a lapsed Catholic, I feel the need to verify just how much thought I’ve put into disbelieving.”


He waved me away, not wanting to waste his time with any of my religious meanderings. 


It’s just that he KNEW and I didn’t.


And from here until the end of the session, he would bestow upon me the healing miracles that God bestows … if you are saved.


As he tells me his story … a short one that starts with sitting on a bench in church, praying for nothing in particular, and receiving the shock of feeling a dodgy vertebrae in his lower back shift a whole quarter inch to the right, falling back into place like a puzzle piece, smoothing out the pain he had hardly acknowledged.


The way he described it, was as if the whole congregation felt the godly adjustment. 


He paused long enough for me to pay respects to the power of prayer.


It was in earnest that I replied: I’m so glad for you.


No one could have been more surprised than I was that the spirit had, in fact, moved me.


Even amidst the suspension of disbelief, I couldn’t suspend the feeling that however someone finds true peace, it’s personal.


Not my place to throw a wrench in the works.


Which is where another “holy lecture” found me a few years ago as I stood with a sign in a sea of protesters unmoored by a Supreme Court decision that had overturned the civil right of women’s body autonomy bestowed by Roe Vs. Wade. 

This voice at the lectern, a woman, had called upon her Christian faith and waited a minute as the gathered crowd exhaled a collective groan.


“Now I know what you are thinking. You’ve heard a lot of people of the faith tell you they believe in the right to life, but they do not. If they believed people should have the right to life they’d make sure people also had the right to live it.” 


She preached about how the righteous would be against the taking of lives through judicial and extrajudicial means. They would be against guns, and wars, and hatred. They would be interested in feeding the poor, and housing the homeless. If they wanted healthy, happy babies they would make policies to ensure those babies’ parents were cared for, too. There would be real benefits, not just bootstraps. It takes backbones, too.


I noticed then how the crowd had hushed. And I felt a calm come over me.


I felt my spine tingle.


Like a puzzle piece slipping effortlessly into place.


Sunday, February 25, 2024

A year and change

His room doesn’t have a thermostat, but it feels like a balmy 78 degrees each time I knock on his door, tentatively cracking it open a sliver to inquire about the state of his awakening.

Sometimes he’s still sleeping. A starfish splayed out over the mattress; tangled in bed linens.

Often, he is already wide awake.

His whole life is in there … somewhere. The first thing I see when I tip my head inside is a grammar school diorama balanced at an awkward angle on top of a myriad of other possessions …. collecting dust on the dresser. 

I can only step inside but not walk around. Everywhere I look his childhood looks back: A wall of Nerf, shelves of Lego; drawers stuffed to overflowing with clothes that he has long outgrown. He lives out of laundry baskets.

One of these days, (I tell myself daily), I will get in there and take control of the clutter.

The clock is ticking. 

The warm air is pungent with spent socks and the remnants of midnight snacks, but I can also make out the smells of various tinctures and tonics he uses to make his shaves more smooth and his hair more rugged.

I try to be careful. Speak softly, try not to startle him. The moods of teenagers are appropriately fickle whether we parents approve or not. But still … I am his second wake-up call if you count the sunrise clock that makes no sound.

It can be a delicate job that his father often drill-sergeants through to his own detriment. I endeavor to handle him with kid gloves.

Not that we don’t get the same response - I’m awake! - it’s just that he sounds much less annoyed as he relays his assurances that he will be ready to leave on time.

I find trusting his word builds equity. He knows I’ll be the one owing late fees as I wait for a second cup of coffee to brew as he’s warming the car. He doesn’t beep the horn, instead, he pings my phone with a string of “MOM”s in rapid fire. 

We are not going to be late. But time is dwindling. Soon enough - if he follows his sister’s lead - we will be packing a car with all his dorm room essentials. 

Recently, he attended his third college tour. The first that was meant solely for him. As a younger brother, he had trailed along silently but with his eyes fully focused on the work at hand. I could tell he was looking forward to taking his turn one day even if he wasn’t ready to map it all out by himself.

So I made an appointment and sent him off with his father to explore his first choice. A university with two campuses to choose from just outside of his ability to commute. 

“He really opened up,” his father told me on one of many calls to keep me apprised. The boy had navigated maps, asked questions, and chatted with other prospective students with an air of confidence that my husband admitted had come as a surprise.

“He really seems like he’s coming out of his shell.”

Funny how we still see our children as we get closer to ushering them into adulthood.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Ma bell

Her face comes up on the screen and everything around me stops. My breath catches and the room goes silent if only in my consciousness, which has muted what had previously been an entertaining noise.


A cold sweat comes over me; not unlike the sudden panic of a doorbell; perhaps welcome sounds back in the olden days of neighborly caretaking. Perhaps not.


Even back then, the doorbell would send me into a panic. Stranger danger isn’t a new development; mothers everywhere warned their children away from answering doors when they were home alone, or at least from telling the door ringer, or even the phone caller that we were, in fact, home alone. 


But when the house was full, we would trip over ourselves to get to a rigging phone. I’d stretched out the coiled cords, worrying them through closet doors, to get some privacy,  


I can’t say as I miss the days when we used to wall ourselves off in our rooms, listening to music and engaging in marathon-length phone conversations where nothing truly memorable was ever discussed despite how important it all seemed. 


My mother would rattle the door an hour before she needed me to hang up, and again, more fervently at the half-hour mark, so she could place her nightly welfare checks on the elderly aunties before they retired to sleep. 


Things haven’t changed as much as we think. Since we all have our own separate phones, I am at liberty to call (or text) the elderly aunties whenever I like, though still trying for reasonable hours. But I rattle to door to my son’s room every so often just to see his face.


This is what I tell my daughter when I look at the phone tracking app to locate her from afar. I’m not so much checking up as checking in, though I can’t pretend either definition isn’t a first cousin of stalking. 


Unlike her friends’ parents, who track down their kids and quiz them as to why they may be in a sketchy neighborhood after dark, or in a questionable establishment geared toward debauchery, inebriation, and the potential for sophomoric pranks, when I see her icon photo somewhere other than her dorm room, I sigh in gratitude that she’s not just holed up in her cubicle being all alone in her aloneness. 


I walk a fine line, I know. It’s easily crossed. So easy that I don't tell what I know from checking the maps. I don’t let on that I know she was at an arena, or in the shopping district, or at a frat house. What she does is her business. 


I don't expect the good news to travel as fast as the bad. 


Which is why every nerve in my body stands at attention when the phone rings with her face looking to spend time with mine. I do everything in my power not to answer the phone the way my mom used to answer: What do you want … or what’s wrong? 


Often I fail.


“Why can’t your daughter just call you to say hi?”


“Oh, she most certainly can! How’s everything going?”


“Well, everything was going fine but Trader Joe's just stopped stocking cornichons… how am I supposed to live without my gherkins?”

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Out of pocket

I thought about the bills I had tucked in my pocket. It was money I had considered saving ... or spending on pizza. I hadn't yet decided. 


I knew I should have taken the time to slide the notes into the wallet. But I didn't want to find my purse. I could be careful I told myself as I walked the dog. They would stay put in my jacket with my phone, a car key, and my hand ... keeping everything sufficiently warm.


It was predictable. I had shuffled all these things several times during the stroll: taking care of Fido's business; pulling out my phone to take a picture of the sun setting; lathering, rinsing repeating. Eventually, I remembered the cash and decided to check. The smaller denomination was clinging to my phone but the larger bill was gone.


It wasn’t a lot but decided to trace our steps backward to see if it had somehow stayed on the road and not taken a ride on the wind.


I didn't find it. Not along the way or at any of the places we stopped. 


I think it is a premonition of hardship to come. I’d rather not say my mind works that way because I know it’s the way I unravel. 


The fear of knowing some loss more than money is always lying in wait.


I tamp down the feelings with something, anything, positive. 


“At least lost money would benefit a finder,” I think.


Which was not the comfort I took from the disappearance of a pocket knife my father had given me as a college graduation present. The one I wanted when I was seven, but he didn’t think I was mature enough to own as a second grader. 


Somehow, I lost it to the ocean the first summer holiday I’d taken as a newly minted adult. I comforted myself then that at least I’d always know about where it was if not exactly. 


Over the years I lost so many things I adored: 


Books I had lent, jewelry that had slipped off fingers, even a beaded cuff my daughter had just given were there and then gone, Like an “Irish Goodbye.”


I wish I could be anywhere else than on a gurney waiting for a needle to take its core samples. Squeezing my eyes shut hoping life after this is more about the finding than the losing. 


Still, I do what I always do. Which is letting my repetitive thoughts bargain with superstition. I will count the steps in each flight of stairs; each second between songs. I will play games of solitaire until my cards align.


I add a year to my age on purpose, wishing I’d never shredded the ARRP welcome letter (with its fantabulous offer of automobile trunk organizers) just for reaching the crest of old age.


Eventually, I know time and inevitability will tarnish its protective effects, which, I can be honest, had never ever been protective. Youth weights probabilities differently. 


But not now. I am not ready to put my affairs in order. But perhaps I am ready to sort through the junk in my trunk. Maybe I’ll find some of the treasures I’ve lost. 



Sunday, February 04, 2024

Comfort me, Elmo

When Sesame Street’s Elmo took to social media last week to touch base with followers in his trademark third-person style – “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” – the response, an outpouring of angst and unhappiness, was immediate and at times intense.

People told him of their struggles with loss; their marriages, loved ones, pets, jobs, possessions.

They told him of their anguish over the state of the world and their inability to change its seeming trajectory into war and destruction.

And they told him of their general malaise: “Elmo, I’m feeling pretty sad right now. I think I need a hug."

Even celebrities and political figures added to the conversation, including President Biden:

“I know how hard it is some days to sweep the clouds away and get to sunnier days.

Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it.

Even though it's hard, you're never alone.”

And while it may seem silly – a moment of cathartic exchange set off by a fuzzy member of the Children’s Television Workshop – it is certainly a testament to the lasting impact children's programming has had on our lives.

It's understood from studies dating back to the 1970s, when Sesame Street was still in its toddler years, that children's educational television has had a significant impact on our kids’ school readiness. We all practiced our colors, letters, and shapes from comforting monsters, some of whom lived in trash cans and were benignly grumpy. It made our parents happy.

These colorful, matted muppets perfectly demonstrated the wondrous nature children embody. They may have seemed like children, adults, or imaginary creatures, but these puppets were always safe and accessible.

Elmo was my daughter’s favorite. And for a good long while during her pre-verbal days, I wished he wasn’t.

I didn’t grow up with him. He didn't make me comfortable. At all. I didn’t like the high-pitched voice that confused tenses and referred to himself by name alone. I thought he was whiny. I scoffed at the idea that he was getting grammar wrong on purpose. “He’s using fishes as a noun! How can that be ok?”

But I had grown up. I had lost some of that wonder of childhood.

Elmo didn't speak my language. But he did speak my daughter's -- literally – he spoke the onset of speech for a person new to its practice. He forgot articles and repeated words, but he laughed a laugh of sheer joy that told my daughter getting it wrong isn't scary. He was gentle and sweet and he was learning just like his biggest fans.

It was during a week-long hospital stay when my daughter was 18 months old that I learned to love the sound of his voice as he kept my daughter not only calm but in good spirits.

That experience stayed with me as an adult in much the same way a fondness for wooly mastodons that seem a little sad, and vampires who love counting, had imprinted on my experiences of childhood.

I never said another unkind word about that marvelous monster again.

It's reassuring to know that he's still a creature in whom we can all take just a little bit of comfort.