WRITING

Touching Childhood Advertisements

1.  Anne wore shoddy clothes.  Her hair was stringy, red and worn like old yarn.  She drank too much and her nose appeared as a little red triangle.  Her eyes bothered her, so she had pulled out all of her upper eyelashes.  It was only noticed with a deep inspection, as she kept her lower lashes thick and black with coats of mascara. 

Yet, Anne was usually in happy spirits.  She wore a white apron with a sewed on pocket.  In this pocket she kept her 'happy pills' - Morphine, Ativans, Xanax, Percocets, Valium.  Her smile was thin but dark and in the very center of her lips was a red shining mini-smile, which shone very brightly. 

She had a brother named Andy, and she got him addicted to pills and booze, as well. 

In their later years, people weren't sure if they were brother and sister, or a couple. 

They were a raggedy duo.

2.  Pillsbury was born illegitimately.  His father had created him at breakfast and deserted him by dinner.  With such an upbringing, Pillsbury was destined to be a chef.  Once he got his own 'toque,' he never took it off.  He believed that this chef's hat was his signature.  Yet other times, he believed that his overly blue eyes were what made him.  His father had always wished for blue eyes, especially growing up in Nazi Germany.  His blue eyes, his chef's hat, his pasty white flub. 

Pillsbury was an unfortunate Fattie.  His blue eyes squished out of his face rolls, and his white clothes pulled so tightly that it gave one the strange illusion that he was naked.  Only his scarf, tied in a simple knot, showed as fabric.  He was proud of himself...

Pillsbury.  He knew he was a chef, a great chef, though he only made food that came out of packages.  People pointed sharp fingers at Pillsbury's flaccid belly, and he'd giggle.  "Woo-hoo!" he'd exclaim, for he thought people were recognizing a great chef.  They called him a "Doughboy" in his obituary.

Teeth

Jack was an older man, but not as old as my father.    

His office was updated and modern.  Money flowed and it was obvious.  As a patient, I appreciated the luxury, privacy and comfort.

He had paintings up in his office.  These were not generic art pieces.  My dentist, this wonderful man, painted these works of art.  

As you left the reception area and worked your way towards the dental area, there was a dyad – two paintings that were a pair.  The first was of ‘bad teeth’ and the second could be called ‘good teeth.’  Most likely, they were replicas of textbook images.  Technically beautiful paintings of teeth - by a tooth specialist - are valuable artifacts.

My dentist was also an orthodontist, who studied Dental Cosmetics in Las Vegas.  He understood the gold-standard smile... more than me, more than many other dental professionals.

When I first opened my mouth for him, he clicked his tongue in disbelief.  The teeth on the bottom left side of my mouth lean in towards my tongue, perfectly aligned in an angled row.  My little white soldiers, slouched over in unison.  This enraged him.  “I can’t believe this!”  His French background permitted his high passion.  “This is terrible!”  He definitely felt pity for me.

I don’t think Jack knew my dental history.  I had spent years and years getting orthodontic surgery and wearing dental appliances.  I lost my first tooth when it was pulled, at 5 or 6 years old.  It was removed for cosmetic reasons or over-crowding or similar hogwashery.  From then on, until I was about 15, I had retainers and headgear and braces... the works.  The worst were extractions.  Sometimes they hurt so much that I cried.

When Jack looked into my mouth and shouted angrily, I fell in love with him.  He got me.  He got my teeth.  And I loved that he was a dentist who had the guts and big balls to paint teeth.

He wasn’t a hunk, in my opinion, but I liked how he smelled; it was a fresh smell that was new to me.  It was clean, like brand-new, rich, rain soaked earth.  I indulged his scent as he leaned over me.  This scent, coupled with his equally crisp appearance, made me weak in the knees.

He showed me a painting by the dentist chair.  It was a lovely one, with grapes spilling out of a bowl and onto a table.  He told me he had also painted one of horses, from a picture.  

When he wasn’t working my mouth, I told him about my own creative pursuits.  He listened in the same manner as a counsellor or a priest would.  He looked at me with love and adoration as I spoke; a dentist with a heart of gold.  Our exchanges were definitely rare and cozy.  After all, Jack specialized in sedation.  His regular exposure to reluctance and fear made him a patient saint.

Jack took my wisdom teeth.  I went in really early in the morning.  He was fresh faced and chipper.  He asked me if I was hungry from abstaining, and brought me juice.  I drank it as he set up some stuff.  I told him that I had suffered painful injections and extractions before, and I told him to be gentle with me.  He gave me his word.

At a previous appointment, when I complimented him on his artwork, he did not accept it readily.  “I can only paint from photographs... you are different, you can come up with things in your mind...”  

The first shot of anaesthetic went straight to my heart.  I felt amazingly electrified, the rush was incredible.  “Woah!” I exclaimed.  “My heart is pounding.”  “Sorry,” he apologized.  “I must have hit a vein.”       

There was no pain.  He was so considerate and careful.  I couldn’t even feel him removing my teeth, and their creepily long roots, from my gums.  He worked so delicately, with the grace and technique of any skilled artist.  I remembered all the horrible dental experiences I had prior to this moment: the root crunching, tears that couldn’t be held back, piles of blood and gauze moments.  Jack was an angel: an angel of orthodontics.  

He was the one that I relinquished my wisdom teeth to.  I have no regrets.    

Bonus Joke:

Question:  Why did I really like my Dentist?

Answer:     Because he was tooth-ful.

Zine Covers

More Zine Covers

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How to Take Your Life Back in Ten Easy Steps

Step One: Breathe in different air.

Step Two: Breed yourself a dozen heirs.

Step Three: Paint yourself a different hue.

Step Four: Get sick and invite the Flu.

Step Five: Let your tears fall in the rain.

Step Six: Don't let others rent your brain.

Step Seven: Get yourself a loving pet.

Step Eight: Love someone you've never met.

Step Nine: Let a clock keep the time.

Step Ten: Don't forget to talk in rhyme.

I wrote the account below for my son, Knovah.  I wrote it not long after he was born.  I have not edited it since I wrote it way back when.

I thought I would share this extremely personal moment with the world. 

ENJOY!

I found out I was pregnant on January 15^th 2010.  Hamish and I both had hunches all along, but neither of us were ‘enthusiastic’ about the news.  

After a lot of deliberation, and against the ‘advise’ I had been given by many, we decided to commit to this baby.  We would bear it, keep it and raise it together.  Baby was due on September 23^rd.  

With Hamish and I becoming a new, tightly-bound partnership, we began to look forward for things to come.  We changed ourselves slightly, enough to cause some obvious improvement.

I had the easiest pregnancy for about six months.  

Well, I was emotional, I’m guessing due to hormones.  I was very weepy, crying very hard from movies, people, thoughts, and basically everything.  I would get angry at Hamish about sort-of absurd things, usually how the house wasn’t clean enough or something along those lines.

But in the last trimester, things began to grow awry, for my body.

I developed: pregnancy-related hypertension, gestational diabetes and shingles.

It was insane, three things I would never dream of experiencing!  I had always had low blood pressure, but now I ended up in hospital with a reading of 170/110.   I had always had low blood sugar, when I had tested myself, but now I had readings of 12 mmol/L!  The shingles was out of nowhere, it was ugly and the most pain I have ever experienced.  I had a negative blood test for ‘herpes’ when I had first got pregnant, which even included cold sores!

I was also positive for Group B Strep.  It would be required that I receive anti-biotics during delivery to prevent passing the bacteria to the baby.

In addition to these ailments, I had also developed edema in my extremities, especially my ankles and feet.  The thirty-degree temperatures didn’t help.  I felt like, and probably resembled, an elephant.

After I turned forty-weeks pregnant, my doctor said that I should have the baby, especially because of my high blood pressure.  She attempted to ‘sweep my membranes,’ which entailed her putting a finger through the new, small opening in my cervix and ‘rimming’ it.  This would slightly disengage the amniotic sac from pressing down on my cervix, which would stimulate my body to start labor.  This didn’t work because she felt some scar tissue (from a LEEP procedure I had endured a few years back) that prevented her from giving the ‘sweep’ correctly.

Although I was dilated to about one centimeter, there had been little advancement for over a week.  She sent me to see a OB/GYN at the hospital.  He performed the sweep and it hurt a lot.  He told me that if I wasn’t in labor soon, they would induce me (with synthetic hormones) around the 20^th.  That was on September 15^th.  On September 16^th, I began to feel ‘contractions.’  I was at Hamish’s workplace, eating breakfast, when they started.  I looked around at the people I knew from the restaurant and thought it would be a good day to have a baby.  I felt secure and ready.

The contractions were ‘weak’ and I was getting them every 15 or 20 minutes.  They weren’t really bothering me, but I was very aware of them.  

By that evening, I was getting them every 5-7 minutes, so we went to the hospital.  My doctor was on-call, so it was a happy moment.  They checked me and said that I hadn’t dilated past 1-2 centimeters.  They began giving me antibiotics.  They sent us home for four hours, and the contractions were growing stronger.  When we returned to the hospital, they said that I hadn’t dilated yet but gave me a shot of morphine to ease my pain.

I was against taking any more drugs than I had previously taken for all the third trimester ailments.  But the opiate was great, it helped me sleep between my contractions, which I was getting every five to seven minutes.  I had requested that they give me the smallest amount as they could.

They next day, at around Eleven in the afternoon, they sent us home.  I hadn’t dilated and my contractions were all over the place, about every 7 to 10 minutes and not consistent.  Hamish and I thought the morphine might have had something to do with it.

Today, the 17^th, was a difficult one.  My contractions were very strong by the afternoon.  But I was not going to go back until I was going to have the baby.  We had rented the whole Star Wars trilogy the night before and watched some of that to pass the time.  At about 8:15 in the evening, Hamish and I were going to scout out something to eat, but on the way to the car, the pain from the contractions began to over-whelm me.  I started to cry and could barely walk to the car. 

Hamish was very supportive but was drained from having to take care of me for over 48 hours straight.  He acted the part, doing whatever I asked of him and catering to my every whim. 

As we drove away from our place I told him that we had to go to the hospital now.  But I insisted that we stop for food.  I got him to drive to a semi-far “Wendy’s.”  I was hungry, but I knew he was hungrier and could get something for his vegetarian diet.

Then we went to the hospital.  I was contracting every two minutes.  They were very, very painful and I had to moan in these weird tones to make myself get through them.  

Contractions are the weirdest pain.  They are barely similar to ‘period cramps.’  The pain is shocking and all encompassing and practically lifts you right out of your seat.  But when the contraction is over, so is the pain.  It truly is like a roller-coaster ride.

We drove into the hospital parking lot.  While walking towards the hospital the pain overtook me again and I started crying.  Hamish had been letting me lean onto him in these instances and I clearly remember contracting heavily, leaning into Hamish, while he propped up my whole existence and feeling the light rain floating through in the dark night air all around me.

I greeted the night nurses with tears.  I was in so much pain during contractions and I had been having them for so long.  I cried in a tired way, with little energy.  I had been trying to get through the past day and a half in a normal way, but now it had begun to take its toll.

They put me in a room and I lay there, yelling, buzzing and moaning through my contractions.  The night nurse, who I had come to know from the night before came into my room and told me that I needed something for the pain and there was no way around it.  I hadn’t dilated yet, I was still 1-2 centimeters.  

I got another shot of morphine in my butt.  This time I couldn’t handle the drug as well.  I became insanely itchy as it wore off.  I thought that the detergent in the sheets was making it worse, so I stripped my bed and covered everything with these blue hospital cloths.  I took all my clothes off and alternated lying down and moving around the room.  Hamish was awake the whole time and was probably stumped at what to do with me.  

But somehow we made it through the night…

At 7-thirty in the morning the night nurse came to check on me and also to say goodbye.  She checked my cervix and she said that I had dilated a little, and was now about 3 centimeters.  She talked about how I might have to be induced.  I told her that I would need some help with the pain because now I couldn’t handle it.  I was contemplating an epidural, even.

The next nurse on came to see me around eight.  Hamish looked really tired and kinda crazy.  When I was telling the new nurse that I needed pain medication but I couldn’t use morphine, Hamish told her that I wanted an epidural.  He was looking at me when he said it.  I said that I would like to use the nitrous oxide first before deciding on anything else.  

The Nitrous was a wonderful relief.  It didn’t make me high and it wasn’t really that enjoyable, because of the high level of pain in my body.  But it made the contractions easier to bear.  As I inhaled the gas through the contraction, the pain would peak then plateau and by the end it felt pretty numbed.

Hamish had some too.  He started laughing uncontrollably, which annoyed me because I couldn’t laugh if my life depended on it.  He giggled and told me that he couldn’t stop laughing.  I told him that I didn’t want him to have anymore.  When I was in the bathroom, I heard him taking some more.  I called out to him and told him that he should ‘respect my wishes.’  He replied that it was making him feel so much better.

Soon, at around 830, my water broke.  The nurse came in and put a cloth between my legs.  She would periodically look at the fluid and change the cloth.  At first she thought she saw ‘merconium’ in the fluid, but I insisted that it was just blood giving it the faint tint.  As time passed the fluid got crystal clear and she finally admitted that I was right.  The contractions felt a little better after my water broke, and I had always heard it the other way around!

At about 930, another contraction started.  I was lying on the bed and Hamish was beside me, by my head on the left.  I began inhaling the gas deeply and then I felt something huge.  I felt the baby ‘slip’ into my vagina and the gas was not doing anything for the massive pain.  I began yelling to Hamish “The baby’s coming, get the nurse, I have to push.”  I was probably yelling “oh my God” or something else of that nature, as well.  I felt the urge to grab at Hamish, I remember it clearly.  I grabbed in the direction of his face and neck and I then I began sliding a little off the edge of the bed.  I closed my eyes and swore quite a few times, very loudly.  I could tell some people had entered the room.  They told me to get onto the bed, but I couldn’t!  The contractions had rendered me paralyzed and all I wanted to do was push!  They were long and so engaging that I couldn’t do anything but contract.

I screamed that I had to push right now.  Voices told me that I had to wait until the doctor arrived.  

I had my eyes closed and this partially contributed to the rest of the delivery being a piecey blur.   

Hamish told me that the doctor walked in, really nonchalant.  She said hi to everyone and casually put her fingers inside of me.  He said that her eyes popped out of her head and it became obvious that the baby was really far down.

“Can I push?!” I asked, I’m sure quite forcefully.

“You can do anything you feel,” the doctor told me.

“I can push?” I asked one more time.

“Yes.” She answered.

I screamed because all the while I was contracting.  It was a definite ‘girl-scream.’

“Vahini!” a nurse exclaimed.  “You can’t scream, you have to save all your energy for pushing.”  I shut up and realized that I was finally going to push the baby out, which is what I desperately needed to do.

People were talking when the next contraction came ‘on.’  I began to push.

The buzz of commotion was heard in the room.  I was commended on my good push.  

Hamish held my hand on my left and the nurse held my hand on my right side.  The balance of both of them felt good.  I didn’t want the nurse to leave, but I felt that she was going to.

I said “Hold me, don’t leave” to the nurse and she told me that she wasn’t going anywhere, but she did have to leave and do something and Hamish took both of my hands, which felt equally as good.  

People were talking when the next contraction started.  I announced that I was having another contraction.  Two people had my legs and were pressing them up into the ‘delivering woman’ pose.  I began to push the baby out, It felt good to do it.  I could only sort of feel him moving down but all my energy was in the push.  Somebody asked me if I wanted to see the baby coming out of me and I replied “No!”

It felt like I was shitting out the baby.  Almost like a shit, it didn’t feel like an ordinary bowel movement, coming out.  Yet the pushing was all the same.  I was sure I had pooped while I pushed out the baby.  I thought I smelled something weird when I first started pushing, like someone had farted.  But then I didn’t smell it anymore.  Hamish said that he hadn’t seen or smelled poop but then he said that if I had at the end, nobody would have seen it, for it the whole procedure had resulted in a great mass of ‘goo.’

I could hear Hamish saying “He’s almost here!”  He sounded very excited and happy.  Later, he had told me that watching the baby being born was the strangest thing.  He said it was so natural seeming, like that’s what vaginas were made for.  But at the same time, it also looked alien.  He likened it to ‘Aliens’ the movie and said it looked like when the “Mother” Alien was laying her eggs.  He also noted that my ‘lips were quivering.’

The doctor told me that I could push for my next contraction but she was going to tell me to stop when she needed to and I’d have to comply.  I don’t really remember this part and I am almost positive I did as I was told.  Hamish said that the doctor had to pull the baby out with a little force, by the shoulders, or something like that.  

Then the baby was outside of my body.  I felt a lot of fluid whoosh out of me, almost like it had helped to push him out.

They put him on my chest.  He hadn’t been wiped off but he looked pretty clean, I had been worried that they’d have to put a bloody baby onto me.  In all actuality, the baby was so adorable, he looked so perfect and very, very pretty.

“He’s cute!” I announced to Hamish.  

And he was.  He looked perfect, way cuter than I imagined.  He didn’t cry at first, he just wriggled around.  He wasn’t bloody or gooey or anything, just super-cute and squirmy.  Someone started to wipe him off and he began to cry.  They took him away and Hamish snapped a couple of photos and inspected the placenta.  

I got stitched up, less than an inch and not very many stitches.  I found this to be more uncomfortable.  I remember asking if I could still use the nitrous oxide, which I had really come to love, it being my savior, and all.  I told the doctor that I could feel her stitching me a little, and she said that it was because of my hair.

The doctors and nurses commended me on how fast I pushed him out.  Someone said “Imagine how fast you’ll deliver your second!” and I replied “I’m only having one.”

The nurse asked me if I had to pee.  I said that I had no idea.  She told me that I was going to have a shower and I should pee in there.  The shower was great, I had a really long one, like I usually do.  The nurse even stuck her head in the bathroom to check on me, because I was in there for ages.

I was up walking around and feeling great.  I assumed I was going to walk over to the ‘mother-babe’ ward until someone said “You can’t walk there!  You just gave birth, you are going to go in a wheelchair, we are waiting for the orderly.”

I felt sort of embarrassed getting into a wheelchair, especially in front of Hamish, for some reason.  They let me hold my baby as they pushed me over there.  

We stayed in the hospital for three nights.  The third night was un-necessary, but it made us much happier to leave, in the end.  The hospital was stuffy and claustrophobic.  We had a private room, which appears to have been paid for by my ‘work benefits.’  It would have cost almost $200 a night.  Baby stayed with us the whole time.

It was strange to adjust to taking care of a baby.  I didn’t realize how often I would have to feed him, nor how little he slept.  We were like zombies because we hadn’t slept for days.  But we loved Knovah, he was a sweet, tiny baby, swaddled in blankets, healthy and beautiful.

People, mainly nurses, marveled over how incredibly cute he was.  Someone said he looked like a calendar baby.  Someone said that he had the greatest head, with no ‘moulding’ due to his incredibly fast birth.  Everyone talked about his full head of hair, as well.

The resident doctor who delivered the baby, along with the main doc, came over to check on us.  She reinforced the ‘amazing job’ I had done, delivering the baby.  I felt pretty good about pushing him out in ten minutes.  It seemed like an achievement that I felt proud about… my competitive nature.  Well… most women take about two hours of pushing to get a baby out, especially for their first baby.

Most of the doctors were really great.  One was not.

Going home with Knovah was the best feeling.  It was like a reward after a challenging trial.  

I love Knovah Selinger!   Having a baby was a good thing.