The weaving of life, p.5
The Weaving of Life, page 5
“It’s Kate. The midwife is on her way. I want you to take the children over to your parents’ place. Now.”
Befuddled, Susan took a moment to remember where she was, then was spurred into action. She fumbled for the light, dressed in a flash, and was out the door, swinging the battery lantern. Throwing the harness across the horse’s back, she felt irritation ripple through her, but there was too much at stake to dwell on it. She hitched up the horse, backing him expertly between the shafts, before yelling for Dan to bring out the kids. When there was no answer, she turned the horse, tied him to the post by the barn door, and hurried into the house, where Kate was rousing the children, getting the backpacks ready. Emily started to cry, and Kate told her everything would be alright at Doddy and Mommy’s. When she disappeared, Susan knew it was time to go, so she carried one-year-old Micah while the bewildered children trotted along, a hand on her skirt to stay safe in the dark. By this time, Emily was being very brave, holding Micah tightly while Susan unhooked the snap from the horse’s bridle.
Now where was Dan? Probably sticking his ankle in cold water. Whatever.
Susan helped the children in and then climbed in herself. She held the reins and chirped, with Duster pulling the buggy smoothly out the drive and down the road.
“Are you cold, Emily?”
“No.”
“Here, let me take Micah.”
She held the small child easily, driving with one hand. She felt Nathan lay his head against her arm, and a great tenderness welled up for him. For all of them. Would Kate’s love be enough to raise them responsibly? Would Dan step up to the plate? Get help to address his issues, whatever they were? She knew she was supposed to have pity on him, but so far, she had found none. What a loser.
She felt mean and offered a quick prayer, but felt just as mean afterward. To love a sister the way Susan loved Kate, to rejoice with her on her wedding day, and then to see this steady decline from the sparkling young woman she had been to this. She hated the way Kate just accepted her fate and accepted Dan, and the way Dan refused to get help for his depression. The whole situation was intensified by her mother and Rose believing Kate was the one who needed help, offering the books, putting an additional load on her already heavily burdened shoulders.
THE CHILDREN WERE happy at their grandparents’ place and Susan’s parents were glad to have the children. They made a big Sunday morning breakfast, big smiles on their faces. Though Susan sensed the tension in her mother. It had been a while since there were any small children in the house, so it was a bit stressful.
Like most Amish families, they kept their phone out in the shed, so they had to keep running out to check the caller ID. All morning, there were no calls. Her mother grew steadily more nervous. By afternoon, she was fit to be tied, pacing the floor, quick to reprimand the children.
“This is very unusual, for Kate,” she muttered to Susan.
When they finally saw there had been a call, it was from Ephrata Hospital. Dan had left a message, his voice calm and smooth, saying they’d had another girl. No weight, no name, no information. Susan seethed, but her mother took up for Dan, saying ach, that was men. She knew everything was alright, that was all that mattered. She would have plenty of time to find out the details later.
Emily skipped around the kitchen, waving her arms and announcing that she wanted to go now to see her sister.
“Emma. We’ll call her Emma. Emma and Emily,” she chortled, which had them all laughing with her. Nathan looked up from his Legos and said nothing, while Micah clapped his little pudgy hands along with his sister’s excitement.
So now there would be a hospital bill, Susan thought. There must have been some complication that prevented the birth from happening at home with the midwife. Well, the bill wouldn’t bother Dan, thought Susan. He’d just hand it over to the deacon to be paid in full.
It was a blessing for the young couple to have the church to provide for them, but Susan couldn’t help feeling like sometimes that safety net was taken advantage of by people like Dan.
Sobering news came soon, though, and Susan felt guilty for even thinking about Dan and the hospital bills. Their sweet baby girl had been born with Down syndrome, Trisomy 21. There would be learning difficulties, delayed motor development. She would need special help, likely even through her adult years.
Susan’s mother cried discreet tears at the news, her smile wobbly as she wiped her eyes. Her father went to the barn to deal with the news alone. And Susan was incredulous, questioning why God would do such a thing. With all the trouble dear Kate already had in her life, why send this child who would take extra time and care and expense?
They decided not to tell the children, but instead to allow Dan and Kate to show them the baby and then explain as best they could. Susan called her boss at market to say she needed to take the next two weeks off, knowing Kate would need all the support she could get. Steve was not happy, asking if only one week was possible, but Susan gave him a firm no. This was a family crisis. Kate needed her.
ON MONDAY MORNING, Susan drove to Dan and Kate’s house to get things in order before they arrived home from the hospital. She put the horse away and herded the children inside, then took a deep breath to steady herself before beginning to clean, giving the children the new coloring books her mother had purchased for them. It was a small home—three children were crowded into one small bedroom, and in the other bedroom a bassinette sat beside the parents’ bed, made up with clean blankets and a tiny white sheet. There was one lone teddy bear, a pink one from Emily’s babyhood, and a white crocheted blanket that Susan also remembered from those early years of Kate’s motherhood. Susan thought wryly of her friends’ nurseries—the ample space, new furniture, decorated walls.
Ach, Kate.
Laundry on the line, the house clean, Micah and Nathan down for their naps, Susan sat on the lawn chair on the back porch waiting for Dan and Kate’s arrival. Emily chattered away, her excitement palpable.
“She’ll be so cute.”
“Yes. I bet she’ll look a lot like you.”
“Why did they go to the hospital?”
“Oh, sometimes a baby needs a doctor to look at her to make sure she’s okay.”
Emily nodded soberly. She was a perceptive child and seemed to sense something was wrong, but she didn’t ask any more questions.
The crunch of tires on gravel announced their arrival, and Emily tore away from the porch and to the car. Dan paid the driver, then went around to lift the baby from the car seat as Kate opened the opposite door and got out, bending to hug Emily, then Susan.
Susan searched her sister’s face, but there was no emotion, no tears, only a tired stillness, and a sort of dark heaviness that frightened Susan. Oh, please let her be alright, she prayed, without realizing she was actually praying.
Settled on her old, sagging recliner with the broken footrest, Kate reached for the newborn, drew the light blanket away from her face, and motioned Susan over.
“This is our baby, Susan,” was all she said.
Susan bent to view her new niece. She had the same thick black hair that all of their babies had, but her small eyes and rounded face gave away her disability.
“She’s perfect,” Susan whispered, struggling to control her emotions. And she meant it.
“I know,” Kate said, her voice level, quiet.
“Does she nurse okay?”
“No. We can’t get her started, so I decided to lessen the stress and anxiety and bottle-feed.”
“Mam will have a fit.”
“She’ll just have to, Susan. Dan thought it was best.”
Susan nodded, gritted her teeth. Here we go again.
Emily ran to the couch and held out her arms, so Susan carefully settled the baby into them, seated close to make sure she would hold her securely.
“We’ll name her Emma,” Emily announced.
Kate laughed, a tired gasping laugh, but a genuine one.
Dan smiled, too. He sat beside Emily on the opposite side and asked if she didn’t think Emma was too close to Emily. She looked up at her father, pursed her lips in thought, and said “Well, maybe.”
“Do you like Marie?” he asked softly.
“Marie?” Emily nodded her head very solemnly. “Yes, I do like Marie.”
Dan smiled and put his arm around his daughter. “Then Marie it is.”
Emily and Dan smiled at each other, the picture of a beautiful father-daughter relationship. Nathan climbed into his father’s lap and Dan explained to the two children in simple terms that Marie had Down syndrome. “God made her a little differently,” he said without a trace of anger or sadness in his voice. “But I think she’s perfect.”
Susan was taken aback. She had never seen Dan so calm and tender.
Baby Marie began to squirm and then cry, the wails slight, a bit raspy. Dan set Nathan aside gently and reached for Marie. He held her over his shoulder and started to bounce her slightly.
Kate leaned forward, rising from the couch, but Dan told her to stay where she was, he’d get her bottle.
“But the water . . .” Kate began.
“I know how to do it,” he said kindly, still holding the crying baby as he headed to the kitchen.
Susan could hardly believe what she was witnessing. Was this the same Dan?
The feeding was a test of everyone’s patience and understanding. Susan watched as milk dripped from the sides of the baby’s mouth. She felt helpless as the baby grew more frustrated. Later Kate would explain that the doctor had told them the baby’s tongue was wide and thick and weaker than most, due to the Down syndrome. Dan tried different angles with the bottle and shifted Marie this way and that, to no avail. After several minutes he placed her in Kate’s arms to let her try and knelt by her chair as she attempted the difficult task of getting her started drawing the milk from the bottle.
Susan sat down with a sigh, watching the two dark heads bent so close, the baby anxiously turning her head from side to side, crying intermittently. Emily went to stand by them, her face puckered with worry.
“You think we should try a different bottle nipple?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know. You think it would help?” Dan asked.
By day’s end, everyone was exhausted. Nathan and Micah were an unruly mess, getting into forbidden things, crying furiously when Susan reprimanded them. Kate cried when the new bottles made no difference, and baby Marie cried most of the evening, her poor stomach growling with hunger.
It was Dan who sterilized a dropper from the children’s Tylenol bottle and inserted it into her mouth, allowing her to taste the formula on her tongue, before letting more trickle down her throat. They all held their breath as the baby swallowed, the crying ceased, and she took one dropperful after another.
Supper, bathing the children and putting them to bed, constantly feeding the baby . . . how in the world did mothers cope without help? Susan couldn’t allow herself to think of two weeks of this, it was too depressing. But she tried not to let her feelings show. The old couch she slept on was lumpy and sagged in the middle, and her lower back ached as she searched for a comfortable position. She heard whispers, footsteps, the baby crying, a shadowy Dan passing through the living room time after time.
Would he actually become a responsible parent?
Tired and already uncomfortably warm at five-thirty in the morning, Susan got up and packed Dan’s lunch, made his breakfast, and was glad to see him head off to work at six-fifteen. They would need every hour of his paycheck, what with having to pay for the formula and diapers, not to mention the hospital bills. Susan knew that with his low wages they would easily qualify for state aid, but to accept it would be ungehorsam (disobedient) to the Amish way. Each husband was responsible for providing for his family. When hard times fell on someone, they could ask the deacon for help, though if a man did that too often the trustees would make a visit to the home to go over finances and try to get the family back on track.
There were hummingbirds at the feeder and the sun was shining cheerily through the windows by the time the children awoke. Susan lingered at the breakfast table with Kate, cups of coffee between them. Baby Marie slept soundly after her seven o’clock feeding with the dropper, so they talked at length, the children eating their scrambled eggs and toast with jelly. Nathan and Micah were adorable with their sleepy dark eyes, their hair all frizzy in the back. Micah climbed onto Susan’s lap and leaned against her chest. He smelled of shampoo and little boy warmth, awakening genuine affection in Susan.
“So, what was it like?” Susan asked. “I mean, did you know right away that something was wrong?”
“It took a few minutes, I guess. At first there’s just the relief, you know? Of having labor over and being able to hold her in my arms. But I could tell the midwife was concerned about something, and I did notice that Marie’s face looked a little different. It was when she tried to nurse and couldn’t that the midwife said we needed to go to the hospital to have her checked out.”
Susan shook her head sympathetically. “Sometimes I just don’t understand God’s ways.”
Kate nodded, toyed with her coffee cup, her eyes focused on some unseen point in the distance. Finally, she got up, placed her cup in the sink, poured herself a glass of old water, added a few ice cubes, and sat back down.
“You know, Susan, I thought the same thing. But I’m beginning to wonder.” She paused, took a few swallows of water. “I can hardly believe how Dan was in the hospital. Honestly, I’m afraid to even say this, I’ve been disappointed so often before. But I’ve never seen him like this. He will hold her for hours, watching her face. He wouldn’t put her down when she slept. It’s like she touches a soft spot in his heart or something.”
“Oh, he’ll fall back after the dust settles,” Susan said, and then immediately felt badly for being so harsh. But it was the truth, she was sure of it.
“And you may be right.”
Dishes washed, house put to order, the washing machine chugging away with a load of towels, Susan stepped outside with a basket of clean bedding to hang on the line. There were weeds in the garden, plenty of them, but it was nearly the end of September, which meant there were only a few rows of lima beans to harvest. The lawn needed mowing and the flower beds needed attention. There would be plenty for her to do, that was for sure.
They made some progress with the bottle, but most of the formula was given with the dropper, which provided enough nourishment to allow Marie to take long naps. Kate slept on the recliner while the children were outside with Susan, chattering as they helped carry weeds to the wheelbarrow. When the heat became unbearable, Susan turned on the sprinkler, got the children into their bathing suits, and allowed them to run through it, shrieking.
Her parents arrived before lunch, followed by Dan’s mother and father. They all seemed subdued but congratulatory, bringing bags of diapers, groceries, new blankets and pacifiers, fabric for sewing clothes. Susan did not know Dan’s parents well but recognized them both, his mother short, slight, and kind, his father sturdy and soft-spoken.
Kate seemed nervous and was looking pale and exhausted. Mam shooed the men to the back porch and told them to stay there, offering them some molasses cookies she had brought. The two mothers got into a polite discussion about the use of the dropper, seesawing back and forth until they finally admitted they were on opposite sides, before laughing it off, albeit a bit self-consciously.
“I do try the bottle first,” Kate assured them. “I’m thinking eventually she’ll take it better. It seems as if she has a weak sucking reflex.”
“Oh yes. Yes. These babies do,” Dan’s mother said.
“Not all babies with Down syndrome do, Lydia.”
“Oh, I think so. Remember Hausa Sammie’s Elam’s Jay’s wife? She had a baby with Down’s, and they said he never learned to suck from a bottle properly.”
“Well, how did they feed him? Or was it a girl?” Mam asked.
“I couldn’t tell you. But I know they had a hesslich (nasty) time of it.”
“Is that the one who had heart surgery twice?
“I think it is.”
Kate sad wide-eyed, taking in the news of other families with children like her sweet Marie. She smiled as she listened to the two mothers’ exchange. There was no mention of how Dan would provide for the family. Yes, the house was small, the children dressed in hand-medowns, the food less than ample, but both mothers had lived frugally when they were young. So many newlyweds were downright spoiled these days, they reasoned, never learning to do without. But Mam’s lips tightened when she opened the refrigerator door for a drink and found next to nothing in there. What in the world had Dan taken in his lunch? But she said nothing.
Liz and Rose, children in tow, arrived before the parents left. Susan turned into a traffic director, hustling children out of the house and to the sandbox, pouring cold drinks, bringing folding chairs. Her sisters fussed over the sleeping baby, saying she hardly looked like she had Down syndrome.
“She does,” Kate assured them sadly. “They’re doing tests on her blood, but when she wakes and opens her mouth, you’ll see.”
And they did see. Both Liz and Rose subtly wiped away tears from their eyes.
After the parents left, the conversation shifted. Liz asked how things had gone at the hospital.
“Dan was amazing,” Kate said with an eagerness that made Susan uncomfortable.
“Really?” Liz raised her eyebrows. “I thought surely this would send him into a downward spiral.”
“He was so sweet with her, and with me. And he’s been such a help since we got home.”
Rose nodded confidently. “I knew that book I gave you would help. It takes patience sometimes, but once you really learn how to respect your husband the way God intended it’s like everything just shifts and falls into place.”
Susan glared at her. So typical. Oh, it upset her, giving Kate all that righteous false hope. Dan was going to sink right back into his old ways whether Kate “respected” him or not, and it was just plain wrong to make Kate feel like it was her fault when it happened.
