{"id":10220,"date":"2012-05-11T01:46:10","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T05:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/midwifery-blog\/2012\/05\/the-moment-i-knew-i-was-a-grown-up.html"},"modified":"2017-11-08T11:53:33","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T16:53:33","slug":"the-moment-i-knew-i-was-a-grown-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/midwifery-blog\/2012\/05\/the-moment-i-knew-i-was-a-grown-up\/","title":{"rendered":"The moment I knew I was a grown-up"},"content":{"rendered":"
The first time I knew that I was a grown-up -that moment and the events leading up to it are imprinted on my memory. It remains embossed, a soft puckering created by hard pressing.<\/div>\n
As I write this, my husband sleeps sweetly beside me, stirs softly, his chest rises and falls, rises again, his cheek flushed pink from where it pressed against the pillow. I write. He sleeps. I remember….<\/div>\n
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September 15, 2004<\/div>\n
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My cell phone had a few missed calls as I finished a client’s office visit. Answering the next ring, caller ID’d as my husband, a female voice spoke. She told me that my husband is being taken to the Medical Center, that he is in the ambulance, that they think he has had a heart attack. Hearing every word, realizing that she has not said “he is alive”, knowing that I have to get to him, afraid that if I hear that he is dead I won’t be able to drive. I ask, “Is he responsive?” Her perfect reply, “Yes.” <\/div>\n
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Driving into the city at rush hour, the traffic flowed slow and steady on my side. In the opposite direction it as was thick like molasses. Driving and praying. A new mantra repeatedly pressing it’s staccato rhythm into my head: The Widow’s Club, I don’t want to join the Widow’s Club. The Widow’s Club, I don’t want to join the Widow’s Club….<\/div>\n
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Quickly depositing my car in the darkened parking garage, jogging across darker street, light from headlamps slashing past.<\/div>\n
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Entering the bright ER, first my pupils constrict, then my heart. My sweet man! He lays on a gurney, clammy, scared and in and pain. Ashen really is a color. In this blazing white room, my beloved is the color of damp ashes.<\/div>\n
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Softly squeezing his hand- too hard. He winces, pulls away, immediately reaches back. He needs me even if it hurts.<\/div>\n
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Standing sentry, my hands pressed soft and steady right where he placed them, I hear the overhead call for the cardiac cath team to gather as the impeccable PA tells us the cardiac surgeon is arriving, that they think (what we know) this is a MI, a heart attack. In her pressed white lab coat and expensive (but sensible) heels, she then turns and taps away.<\/div>\n
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Pacing outside the cardiac catheterization room, now it is my shoes tapping. Being firmly escorted to a dime sized waiting room stuffed with one phone, two chairs and a humming Pepsi machine. Pacing again, tap, tap, tap. Back and forth past the off limits Cath room, this time glaring when anyone begins to speak. They leave. I pace, lioness protecting her injured mate.<\/div>\n
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Making calls alone -our children, some friends, his family, my father. (Oh, how are the kids? Are they ok? They are scared. I should be with them. -Stop!) A new mantra presses into me: Be here now. He needs you, here, now.<\/div>\n
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Calling my husband’s parents. Quickly and gently telling them that their 59 year old son, their baby, is having a heart attack. Knowing that my beloved is their beloved son. Knowing that I was giving this news to a mother. Knowing that no matter what age our children are, they are still our babies. Knowing that I needed to speak calmly so that my in-laws could hear hope, even as their hearts shattered. Knowing that my words, my cellular presence were being pressed permanently into them. <\/div>\n
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This moment, when I stood alone, simultaneously holding all these thoughts and telling my in-laws about their son’s heart, this moment is when I knew I was a grown-up.<\/div>\n
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~Michelle<\/div>\n
May all babies be born into loving hands<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time I knew that I was a grown-up -that moment and the events leading up to it are imprinted on my memory. 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