Even The Tallest Buildings Fall

 

Twin Towers

You got off the plane that May, glowing with joy to see me. I met you at the gate. You could do that in 2000, without a security screen.
In retrospect, you were bursting to tell me something. Before we could even leave the gate, you handed me a card and told me to open it. It was handmade. It was obviously made by a teacher--a Swiss teacher. Neat

handwriting, stick figures, triptich in form made with fine point colored marker on thick construction paper. The first page was a stick person--a man. Under the man it said, "You." Pulling it open, the second image comes into view. Again a stick figure, with the standard girl hair that you see on them,
essentially a Bell curve with ends curling up in opposite directions and a bow. It was labeled, "Me." The third was a baby's head in a bassinet, captioned, "And baby makes three!" I was clueless. I smiled, kissed you, and thanked you for the card. The look on my face clearly showed I was baffled. You had to explain it to me, you actually had to explain to me that you had a baby in your belly. I was stunned, then ecstatic.

Seattle, 2023.

We had been trying for a while. We had sex after you told me it was our last chance as your ovulation was about to end. It wasn't particularly romantic, more like work for both of us. Afterword, we never discussed it.

It was early yet, but you'd taken more than one pregnancy test. I don't think we kept it secret--if we did it was not for long. Despite the risk, we couldn't keept it quiet.

Going back to the City in August, our lives were consumed with law school baby planning. You planned to co-sleep. I was nervous about it, but discovered soon after Leiney was born how right you were. We bought a small sofa, we ordered a bassinet on Ebay, we started a registry. It was a dream.

You went back to working at St.Hilda's as a learning specialist, when we got back to the City. I went back to Law School. On September 10, I was due to leave for Alabama. You had left for work earlier, and I knew I had to catch a cab around 10 to get to JFK. But first, at 9, I hurried to the JC Penny catalogue store, so I could retrieve the rocking chair I bought you that you wanted to rock the baby in when she came. Hailing a cab, I hauled the unassembled chair back to the dorm and quickly put it together in that tiny room, so small that anywhere I left it would be a place of prominence.

We were simpatico about so much before the baby came. We easily agreed on Madeleine Amelia if it was a girl. Neither of us wanted to know the gender of the baby, we wanted the surprise. We called the baby Snicklefritz. I built that web page for family to get updates. It was the most exciting time.

Do you remember the 25th of February? Walking four miles to see the midwife because you were having contractions and we thought walking might help speed up labor. Only Braxton-Higgs the midwife said, they were only  Braxton-Higgs. You weren't going to have the baby for a few days, according to the annoyed midwife. Your mom was staying with us at the dorm. Around 10:30 that night, you were in labor. We called the midwife, I hailed a cab, and the three of us got to NYU Downtown. The midwife greeted us, certain you weren't in labor. Certain.  

Around 6:20 a.m. and hours of pushing, you wanted a break from birthing this child. You tried bargaining with the midwife and nurse. Your negotiating tactics involved trying to explain to them rationally that you were tired, you just needed to rest. There was some debate--the baby was almost crowning--and the midwife convinced you to push one more time. With that, Leiney entered this world. When the sun came up, you could see the Brooklyn Bridge filling the windows. The hospital had to scramble when we asked for them to take a baby picture. It served almost only Chinese immigrant families who didn't practice this custom. While NYU Downtown had the special camera and bed in which the baby is placed for such a picture, no one had any idea how to use it. They figured it out. 

On day 9 you were convinced there was something wrong with the baby. You had been

Tribeca Pediatrics  Waiting Room.

worried about her breathing for the last day or so. I couldn't tell, but to ease your mind, I arranged to be seen by the pediatrician in Tribeca, who had already done the week's well baby check up. The Doc was that month in the pages of GQ, and the office, when you walked in the door, looked like you had stepped into the mind of Dr. Seuss.  Of course Dr. GQ wasn't there, but his partner, a woman, was. She poo-pooed you, after you told her your concerns about the baby's breathing. Then she grabbed her stethoscope and put it on the baby's chest. The doctor, an Israeli and naturally swarthy in that Mediterranean way, blanched. She told us we needed to get to the hospital immediately. There was nothing to worry about, but we needed to get to St. Vincent's and see Dr. Brick. 

We strapped Leiney into the de rigueur Maclaran stroller all middle-class people had in Manhattan, and ran from deep in Tribeca to Chelsea and the hospital, nonstop. 

Dr. Brick examined Leiney, took x-rays and an MRI, and diagnosed her with having a ventricular septum defect--a hole in her heart. It was a shit hospital--it went out of business shortly after we moved home. The crib Leiney was placed in was more like a jail cell in design, with high metal bars. The nursing staff put adult adhesive patches for the leads on a 9 day old baby. When the doctor saw this the following day, I am pretty sure he killed a couple of health care workers. Almost as bad, they had a rule that only one parent could stay with the baby. You, who was breastfeeding, were stuck there. Remember when the doctor prescribed belladonna and told us that no other baby could use her binky, because if the drug was even residually present it could prove fatal to any child without a hole in its heart? We managed to give her that drug everyday for a year without killing any other kids. I'm proud of that feat.

So many times I came home from law school class to find the two of you snuggled up and sleeping on that love seat we bought and shipped to the dorm. The small room seeped in the love pouring out of your heart for Madeleine.

I am laughing remembering when you stepped on the mouse glue trap they put in our room. It stuck to your Costco tube sock, and not thinking it through, you stepped on the trap with your other foot to get the trap off your first sock, thereby trapping yourself and making it impossible to walk. We almost peed our pants. 

Every night for three years we had a view of the Empire State Building and the ever changing colors of its lights at night. Our wall of 8 feet high windows looking across 3rd, up Mercer, and over to Broadway made us feel like millionaires. Well, it was less than 400 square feet, the stove had two burners and an oven almost too small to cook a Cornish game hen, so not quite millionaires.

Zabar's delivered for Thanksgiving that year, why can't we do that every year?

Twin Towers, Sept 10, 2001.

I started writing to you tonight because I have the strongest memory of your existence in the aftermath of 9/11. All the things you went through, like walking 113 blocks home from work, down the middle of Broadway because everyone was afraid of additional terrorist attacks. The subways were closed. There were no cars running anywhere. It must have been hell. Getting through a military cordon at 14th Street to get to West 3rd and home. The smoke rising from the pit, so close by, and the electrical smell that we lived with for months.

All the things you did and the amazing way you responded to the tragedy. You stood apart from others. You. Stood. Apart. The image I have in my mind of you at the pit helping the first responders on Sept 14, when there was no organized volunteer effort, is indelible. You 3.5 months pregnant pushing a wheelbarrow full of water bottles around the pit for 12 hours every day until school reopened and then every weekend until I came home in December. You didn't talk about it when we spoke. You didn't seek praise. You needed to do it to feed your soul. I want to have one day of living my life like that. I want one day of that. One minute.

Scary times, but we made it through. We saw all the cops and firefighters at the Morgue on 31st and 1st, just milling about waiting to find out if their colleagues had been identified by the coroner, as we went to get your first MRI. They gave us a picture of Snicklefritz from the MRI on that shiny fax like paper.  Stepping out of the building we were both awestruck and transfixed, unable to pull our eyes away from the life we were making. As the doors closed at the Imaging Center, we looked up, and on the walls in front of us were hundreds of flyers of people who had gone missing on Sept 11. It was a terrible admixture, this juxtaposition of hope and possibility versus indescribable loss and despair. We walked the 30 blocks home in silence. That night we decided we would not stay in New York, as planned, but instead return home after I had graduated and finished the Bell fellowship.

Someday I will write to you of the birthing center at St. Vincents and the kegel muscle exercises, and the Bali trustifarians, and the serendipity of meeting Doug and Magda.

We had adventures in NYC, all the time. For three years we explored the City and it never got old. They were the best years of our lives together, before kids. 

I remember everything.