August always seems portentous to me

On two different August firsts, my mom had two different baby girls who each died after very short lives. I had four brothers by then. I was unhappy. I totally believed having a sister would make my life with four brothers and a wacked out mother more beareable.

Mary Ann was born when I was five. She lived two months.  I remember a poignant scene a few months after her death. I went into the living room with a bed pillow cradled in my arms, holding it as if it contained my baby sister Mary Ann. I said "Look everyone, Mary Ann did not die. She was just asleep and now I have found her."  I remember how I felt: warm, loving and happy. I knew I was pretending. I knew my baby sister was dead. But I wanted her to be alive. Those few moments pretending she was alive were wonderful. Then I saw my dad, who seemed quit far away but he was only across the living room. He was smiling but also he was crying. Even at age seven I could see that dad didn't know what to do.  He didn't want to stop me, didn't want his rebuke to hurt me. I think he saw I was acting in grief. I was also triggered, lost in grief.  But at age seven, I was sensitive to dad's sadness and I dropped my game of pretending Mary Ann was in my arms.  I remember what motivated me. I had never held my baby sister. I longed to hold her in love. Now, as an adult, I know I can hold her in love in my heart but at age 7, with poor parents unable to parent me in their grief, I was on my own.  Dad saying nothing and I ended up putting the pillow back on my bed. I still remember the pain that crossed his face though as I said "Look, Mary Ann is alive, here she is" as I pretended to cradle her in my arms and pillow.  We never spoke of my pretend baby sister again. I understood I had done something wrong. But had I?  No one, absolutely no one, had ever talked to me about my loss, as if no one, not either of my parents, had ever considered that I grieved.

Mary Ann lived two months. She actually came home for a week or two. Her tiny lungs were so underdeveloped that she had been kept in an incubator. After a couple weeks at home, when I had been afraid to ever ask to hold her so I never had, we were all afraid her fragile lungs would take her. And they did. She returned to the hospital and diet a day or two later. If we had not brought her home, might she have lived?  I heard my parents whisper such questions late at night when they thought no one listened.

Our family did not own a car when Mary Ann was born. Mom pumped breastmilk all day and once a day, after a full day of work, dad would take the milk to the hospital, see the baby and then come home and give us cheerful stories of the good color he thought he saw in her. I love the idea of my dad taking several buses, trekking across Chicago, carrying the special cargo of expressed breast milk to his baby. It seems so valiant and so loving. He did it every day she lived and was in the hospital.

The night Mary Ann died, we all knew she was dying and the whole family knelt together in prayer that time, too.

Eight or nine years later, my baby sister Katherine Ann was born. Mom had given all her girls the name Mary, or Marie (I am Therese Marie), to invoke the power of the Virgin Mary in her daughter's names. In my childish superstition and grief, I wondered if that middle name Ann had cursed Katherine. If mom had given her Mary's name, as she did all her other daughters, would Mary have saved her. Ann? Where did that come from? Katherine only lived 8 days. She never came home. I never met her alive. I only met her at the funeral home. We had a private funeral, only my parents, brothers, me and our paternal grandfather. No aunts and uncles. Was such a small group honoring that tiny baby supposed to help our grief? I would have loved to see my many cousins. I remembered that at Mary Anne's funeral, I had had fun playing hide and seek in her funeral home. We used forbidden rooms for our games. Lots of rooms in a fancy funeral home. Since we were the only funeral in progress, we cousins ran into empty wake rooms and played like normal, happy kids. Then some adult, an aunt or uncle, would come along and yell at us for our disrespect but we were not disrepsectful. We were copiong with big, painful events.

Katherine had weight 3 pounds when she was born. She was much tinier than Mary Ann had been, who had been bigger at birth and who had lived a couple months so she had grown. All babies, jsut about, lose a bit of weight at the beginning. When a 3 pound baby loses a few ounces, it shows big.  Katherine was small than most of my dolls. It was hard to believe she had been a real human baby.  Her feet were the size of my fourteen year old, not fully grown, thumbs Her head was smaller than my fit. We dressed her in a doll dress, for newborn dresses were way too big.

I was glad I got to see her and sad I got to see her. It was scary and sad to see such a tiny human. I have heard some preemies nowadays are born even smaller and live, although very few such tiny preemies lead normal lives.

It must have been hard on my parents. It was hard on me, although no one, absolutely no one in my whole life, showed a moment of concern for my loss. It felt like my loss didn't count. Maybe no one in my world had been aware hof desparately I had prayed for a sister.

Then, just one year after Katherine, mom had another baby. Mom stayed in bed her whole pregnancy, requiring me to wait on her hand and foot. This was not boys' work so I had to do it. And I did it gladly because I wanted the baby to live. Mom told no one she was pregnant that time, because, she said, she did not want to have to tell her parents about any more infant deaths.

Happily, my sister Margaret was a full term, regular weight baby. Healthy from the start.  Mom brought her home in a few days. I was given the great honor of choosing her coming home from the hospital outfit. I chose a yellow checkered jumpsuit. I had wanted to buy something pink and frilly but my mom always scorned at girly clothes so I had tried to please mom with that yellow check. I didn't really like it. I look back and wonder if I ever let myself do anything I really wanted to do.

I was mortified when my mom pointed out that the yellow jumper had been intended for a boy:  the flap where a penis opening would go for an older boy had been stiched shut. I had seen that stitching, for I had combed over all the choices in the clothing shop. I thought it signaled that the outfit was gender neutral. Mom shamed me over that crotch stitching, giggling that I had bought my baby sister a boy's outfit. I stung with that shame for a long time.

But my baby sister mad up for that shame and all others. At last, at age fourteen, I had a sister. She was a let down. I had never really considered that a newborn infant was not going to become the confident and playmate I had longed for. But a new baby is a very fine thing for a longly teenager. I could love her as much as I wanted and, love being magic, she loved me back.

I was in heaven every minute I spent with Margaret. And I always had my baby brother Dave, who I had been the primary caregiver of since he had been born when I was eleven. Those two babies were my cocoon of love.  Nothing they needed was a burden to me. Caring for them was pure joy. I was in a cocoon of bliss The sadness of losing Mary Ann and then Catherine washed away in that joy.

Every August 1st, which was both Mary Ann's birthday and baby Catherine's birthday,  reminds me of the losses but also the joy I later found with Margaret. Catherine only lived one week. August 6th if my brother's Tom's birthday. Mom was still in the hospital with her sick preemie. Dad had all the children at home praying together, on our knees. We did not pray that Catherine would live, for I guess it was known she would not. We prayed that she would live past midnight and die on the 7th, not on Tom's birthday.  Catherine's death hit me less hard than Mary Anne's. Catherine had the good grace to die on August 7th. On the night of that August 6th, with our mother still in the hospital with her baby, dad had my four brothers and me knee with him and pray for for Catherine. We prayed for horus. I might be remembering wrongly but I think we prayed that she would live until midnight so she did not die on Tom's birthday. She did live until the 7th, did not soil Tom's day.

Once while Catherine was still alive, dad took us all to the hospital. He begged the hospital folks tolet us in to see our sister, who was going to die but the hospital did not relent. So we settled for waving to mom, who came to her hospital room window. She held Catherine in her arms but it was too high up to see the very tiny baby. That was the saddest moment for me:  seeing that tiny baby, too far to really see her, knowing I never would know her.

August always kicks off slow and sad, which is partly why I make a fuss about my August 16th birthday.

love

Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you. This turning toward what you deeply love saves you. 

~Rumi♥