Dear First Time Mother Having Your Baby Shower at the VFW
BY KELLY DALKE
1) If you’re pregnant during winter, go to Goodwill and buy one of those old school Irish knit sweaters. It will stretch nicely over your belly when the parka becomes too snug to zip. Don’t bother using your boyfriend’s sweatshirt, or husband’s, or whoever’s, even when they say it’s ok, they will always complain about it being misshapen when you’re done with it. Without money for maternity clothes, get creative. Wear your normal jeans but add a hair tie through the buttonhole and around the metal button to give you more room since you can’t zip them anyway. Your old sundress now fits like a long shirt, perfect to cover the gap in your jeans. Then, the sweater holds it all in place.
2) Tell him again that he is invited to the baby shower, but when he resists let it go, because why subject yourselves to it all. Plus, your family will think it’s strange for a man to be there and too progressive. Instead, tell him to light the pilot, to cover the small grill that’s still in the yard, and to take the cushions in from the porch chairs. It’s time to prepare for winter.
3) Wear good shoes because it snowed yesterday and you don’t want to slip on the walk to the VFW. The little bit of snow has mostly melted but the grass remains damp and shimmery like glass. Lowell is notorious for lazy street cleanup and sanding. Soon enough it will snow again and slowly start to stay icy and wet, where everything freezes over and remains that way until the spring thaw. The neighborhood has already taken on the silence of winter. Children are tucked inside their warm homes and apartments, no longer playing street hockey or riding bikes in the road. All you hear are sounds of cold metal doors cracking open and closed again, neighbors warming their cars before work. You noticed it earlier when you were using your belly as a shelf for folding the tiny onesies, crossing one little sleeve over the other, then in half, making little piles in the old dresser Bobby got from a Labor Day yard sale. Your baby will be here in one month’s time.
4) Don’t judge yourself too hard for breaking down and stealing one of Bobby’s Marlboros. Typically, the cover of night makes this occasional treat feel ok, but now in the daylight it feels wrong. A family get-together for the shower is stressing you out and your doctor said stress is worse on your baby than an occasional cigarette. It’s ok. You’re ok.
5) Don’t judge yourself for crying about it either. You’ve been crying about everything lately and always try to hide it. You sobbed at the chicken that went bad before you had the chance to cook it. And you sobbed at the jewelry commercial from earlier this morning. You don’t have to sit alone to cry but if the little wicker chair on your small, triple decker porch feels like the right place, then let it rain.
6) Do prenatal yoga before you go. Chair squats and lunges with one hand on your belly, letting the weight of yourself pull your body down, and the strength of your thighs to push yourself back up again, even though it feels like your pelvis will hit the floor at any moment. But, you’re trying. You’re trying to do all the things people say you should do but you don’t feel like you’ve been given proper instruction. Nothing handed down. Your mother did everything she could to escape the norms and expectations of her mother and her family. She was the first born here, the first American and nothing else was more important to her than to belong. But now, you’re young, terrified, and unsure of who you are.
7) When you leave, hold the banister as you walk down the slick carpeted stairs of your apartment building, still covered in brown and orange pile, worn in the middle from years of traffic. Bobby offered to walk you down but it’s not far, just five blocks. As you leave your building, Helga, the Polish woman from downstairs, will stop you to uninvitedly touch your belly. She sits in her nylon lawn chair, smoking, dressed in her backless slippers and a housecoat. She’ll say, “You’re getting there Mama.” So you’ll say, “Yeah, one month” and pull yourself away so her hand falls to her lap, letting the crepe paper skin settle around her brittle bones. She’ll yell, “You keep walkin, that’ll do you good” as you approach the sidewalk. Don’t turn around, or respond, just keep walking.
8) As you walk, you’ll imagine the things you’ll receive at the shower, what you hope for and what you know you will not get. Don’t worry about the bigger items you still need like a car seat and a stroller that’s good in the winter. Somehow, you’ll have everything you need when you need it.
If you forget your gloves, shove your hands into your pockets even though the air isn’t quite cold enough to see your breath yet. It smells like winter with occasional gasoline and laundry. You know most of the people on your block. They grew up here like you did, went to Lowell high, some graduated, some didn’t, most never left town. The ones your age are all second or third generation Americans from Italy, Poland, the Azores, Ireland, and migrants from Puerto Rico, most of whom were the first in their families to make it all the way through high school, especially the women.
Mr. O’Connell will holler out “Gettin big!” from his driveway while standing next to his truck with the hood open. You used to get high with his daughter behind the dumpster of Dunkin Donuts until he found out and told you to just smoke in his basement instead. Continue to walk by the Sousa family next door, a young couple with three kids playing outside in their driveway, sliding over the patches of snow on their scooters and bikes that still hadn’t been put away. You’ll picture your little girl and wonder how to teach a kid to ride a bike. Maybe Bobby will teach her, if you and Bobby make it that far. It’s hard not to worry about those things.
9) When you get to the VFW, you’ll see your aunts’ cars and your mother’s old Thunderbird, but before you head in, try not to worry over all the things you know your family will say to you, like the day you got home from the doctors with your first sonogram photo. You were so proud! You ran right to your Auntie’s where your mother was having coffee to show them. The sonogram picture showed your baby’s hand waving, like she was saying hello from inside you.
“They said it’s a girl? Belly’s low, it’s a boy.”
“Don’t forget you are eating for two now.”
“No more salt though, you’ll swell right up.”
“Don’t exercise anymore, you need to rest.”
Don’t eat fish, keep eating fish, lay down, get up, go for a walk, lay upside down. Now, every time you look at that 3D sonogram image of your baby girl you’re reminded of the advice, the what to do’s and what not to do’s. So, you’ll do it all.
That was the same day you went to the seaside with your grandmother to dig for snails. You both walked around with your faces to the ground, bent over, looking on rocks for the small creatures. Later, she would cook them in butter, garlic, and oregano. You asked her how she knew what to do, how she knew how to mother.
“It’s in your blood. You already know more than you think,” she said.
“Auntie Julia keeps saying we should get married,” you said, and leaned down to pick up a small cluster of snails. Your grandmother extended her arm with the bucket in hand and you tossed them in. She side-eyed you and you knew it was because you weren’t gentle enough and should have placed them in softly.
“Do you want to get married?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you think I should?”
Your grandmother stood. “Yes,” she said. She told you about getting pregnant, marrying your grandfather and coming to Boston. She spoke Portuguese and he spoke Italian but somehow they fell in love and figured it out. You told your grandmother she was lucky and she looked at you like you didn’t understand. “See these,” she said, holding three small snails in her hands. “We called these caracois, but after I married I called them babbaluccis.”
“Why?”
“Because I was married and that’s what my new family called them.”
“Why didn’t he call them caracois then?”
“Because what do I care what they are called? They are still caracois, they are still delicious snails, the same recipe my mother made. It’s just a different name. It’s how we survive. We adapt, but you’ll never change what’s already in your blood.”
You walked away from that day wondering what else was in your blood and how you were supposed to know it was there.
10) When you walk into the VFW everyone will turn and look at you. Breathe. It’s decorated for the coming baby making its home inside of you. The VFW is where your family holds every event, the largest and cheapest place to fit everyone, aside from the church hall, the bonus here is the bar; at the VFW you get use of the full bar. It’s the same VFW your family used for your cousin’s birthday, your father’s promotion to supervisor, your uncles funeral, and your auntie’s wedding reception.
Your relatives and friends will be seated at long banquet tables that your mother covered in thin plastic tablecloths with pictures of diapers and clothespins on them. Pink cocktail napkins will be spread about and coolers full of soda will be lined up next to the buffet table. There will be a table full of gifts. You’ll try to smile but to your super human senses, the smells of mini tuna sandwiches and old beer will be heavy and make you nauseous. Breathe through your mouth.
11) After making it once around the room, saying hello, and letting everyone touch you and pat your belly, take a break and post up at the corner of the bar. Your mother will come over and hand you a Shirley Temple and say, “You look tired.” Try not to get upset, you hate it when she says you look tired. You’ll deny it and she’ll say, “Well you look tired.” You’ll pull one of the dyed red cherries off the stem with your teeth and add it to the pile on your cocktail napkin.
“So you’re saying I look like shit?” you’ll say, not being able to hold it in.
“Jesus, I was just saying you looked tired.”
“Yeah but that means someone looks like shit. Saying you look tired to a person means they don’t look as good as they usually do.”
“Everyone came out for you today, for the baby, so be sure you talk to them all.” The layers of gold and silver bangles will make noises as your mother’s hands move around while she talks. You’ll think about what your doctor said, “a happy mommy has a happy baby.” Take another breath.
12) Sit at the table in the back of the room with a few of your aunties and cousins. Try to find comfort in all the women who are all older, married, mothers, or all three.
13) Eat something.
14) Grab a piece of pizza from the tray and when your cousin says, “don’t eat that, it has basil” while bouncing a baby on her knee, disregard her and take a big bite. Auntie Julia will ask why and your cousin will say, “You don’t know? It’s bad for the baby?”
Auntie Alice will say, “What? That’s ridiculous, we all ate basil.”
“You all drank and smoked too,” cousin Rose will say. “Should she do that?”
Your auntie will shrug, “everyone came out fine.”
“It’s the seafood that’s causing autism,” says Auntie Julia.
Your cousin will roll her eyes because you all know that one has been debunked and who would ever stop eating seafood anyway.
Now here is a tough one. When Auntie Alice asks, “When is the baptism?” really try to refrain. It’s no use arguing. There is nothing you can say that would convince the Catholics in that room that it is ever, EVER, a good idea to forgo a baptism. It doesn’t matter what you believe, you are wrong. But, you just can’t stop, and something inside you––maybe it’s the will of your daughter pushing her way through your skin and out onto the surface––you’ll answer, “Oh, we probably aren’t going to.” And you’ll instantly feel the severity of this statement and wish you had lied.
“No baptism?” Your aunts and some cousins will say, looking at each other wide eyed, appalled, worried. Mostly worried.
Eventually, your grandmother, who you didn’t even know had joined the table, will say, “Who’s going to keep the devil away?”
Say the only thing you can now, “I will.” Say, “That’s my job.”
15) Team up with your cousin, Isabella. She’s the only one in your family to go to college so far and has dealt with her fair share of questioning and advice. Nobody understands when she talks about rhetoric, final papers, and the research she’s doing. You don’t really understand either but it’s easy to nod and listen. It’s much easier than the constant struggle of defending your lifestyle, one that was set up for you and yet criticized. How to be American? Azorean? Sicilian? Neither of you talk about your personal lives to the others anymore, but to each other you can. You discuss not going to church, she discusses her thesis, and without understanding it all exactly, you both know that you are of a new generation and there is comfort in knowing you are not alone.
16) Load up another plate of food. There will be lasagna, sweet bread, anchovy crispellis, grilled fish, fried green beans, pizza, pork, rice, and a three foot Italian sub that has been cut up into tiny sandwiches. Stay away from the lasagna, crispellies, and anything else fried. Your heartburn will be horrible and your aunties will say I told you so no matter what.
17) Feel relief when people start to grab their coats and purses. You’re going to make it.
18) To your surprise, your mother will pull her Thunderbird over and everyone will help load the gifts. Your family, including your mother, are not known for their thoughtfulness, but when it happens you notice. You’ll say goodbye to the younger cousins quickly. They hug, say bye, and leave. Normal. But the older they get the longer they linger, and the last half hour will turn into another hour, and by the time the last auntie leaves it will be dusk and your feet will hurt, so when your mother offers to bring you home you should accept the ride.
19) It’s like you went your whole life being indifferent to identity and now that you are about to create one of your own the thoughts and questions about what you should know, and who you are, are coming to the surface. You want to ask your mother for help but don’t know how––you never had that kind of relationship. Your family wasn’t the kind where you gave heartfelt compliments or asked for advice. Nobody checked in on one another on a whim, not without a catastrophe to prompt it, not like that.
Once you and your mother are sitting inside her warmed up car, the closeness of the cab will feel comforting, ironically like a confessional where it’s dark and familiar at the same time. She’ll pull out of the parking lot and turn right toward your apartment. It will be quiet in the car and your ears will feel like they do when the power goes out, when all the buzzing stops and you didn’t realize how loud it was and how it was piling up on you. Both of you are comfortable in silence but this time, you’re anxious. The party made it feel more real than ever and as much as you can’t wait to have your body back to yourself, you want to hold the baby in, let her stay there for a while longer, just until you are ready. Whenever you’ll be ready.
When you pull into your driveway your mother will wait, look at you and smile. She’ll tell you to go get Bobby to get all the stuff and bring it up for you. You’ll ask her the same question you asked your grandmother.
“How did you know what to do?”
And she’ll say, “Know what to do? Who knows what to do? I didn’t know anything.”
“Grammy said it’s our blood.”
She won’t answer right away. You’ll both sit there for a minute, all of a sudden contemplating everything, all of it, everything down to your very human existence, and it will feel so incredibly unfair that that lands on womens’ shoulders. You’re also not entirely sure what you are looking for. Instructions. Affirmations. Something that will say you are doing what you are meant to be doing, becoming a mother, and that you will be good at it, great even, because this is what we do, women make babies, teach them, raise them, feed them.
Then, your mother will break the silence and say, “If the human race was that fragile none of us would be here.”
You feel your body, your belly, your baby’s home, and something in you believes it, the primal cry to envelope your baby girl as she kicks again and again. You feel her energy, her power, you feel her––for the first time–– blood flowing like a river through you both.
