Computer Literacy

Back in my college years, computers were just getting to the “user friendly” point… just barely. The screens were no longer black with the little, flashing, orange or green cursor. They were in an intermediate step between being better than a type-writer but not as good as Windows 93. There were no icons, no internet, and college computer courses opened one’s eyes to the wonderful world of Cobalt. Ick!

I had quite successfully avoided Computers 101 as it was not a requirement… until my senior year. Let me just tell you, I went into Comp. 101 kicking and screaming the whole way! How dare my college suddenly tell me just nine months from graduation that I could NOT graduate without this new requirement? It was like Algebra! It was something I would never have to use after leaving school. At least I sure as heck believed I wouldn’t, back then.

On my first day of Computer class, we each sat down at a desk with one of those frightening TV screen thingies on it. Electronic devices and I had never gotten on well together. It was kind of like being up close to a tarantula. If I had been leaning back in my chair any farther, I would surely have tipped over.

The professor gave a short lecture about how computers could revolutionize the world, blah, blah, blah, whatever. He mentioned that some people had irrational fears that they would somehow damage a computer by doing the wrong thing. That particular point definitely hit home with this little technophobe. To prove his point to each student on a personal level, he followed that little tid-bit with a request that each student push any key on the keyboard. Like hell!

He went about the classroom checking to see that everybody had done as he asked. Everything was just fine until he got to me. I sat frozen, like a deer in the headlights…
“Ms. Schilling, would you please press a key on your keyboard.”
“Um, I don’t think that would be a really good idea.” I stammered.
“Ms. Schilling, I can assure you that nothing bad will happen. Please don’t make me flunk you for failure to do something as simple as this.”
I felt like my stomach was trying to explode out of my navel. “I just know I’m going to mess something up, I swear to you!” I pleaded with him.
He gave me one of those looks that so clearly said “Look, you stupid twit! I’m not asking you to give yourself a self breast exam in front of the class. Just touch the damn computer, ‘Please’.” He uttered that last word only, and reached over me to poke at miscellaneous keys on my keyboard to show me how safe it really was.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I was shaking like a leaf as I reached out to touch the space bar. I could feel the plastic under my finger, but I still had to gather my courage for another moment. Tentatively, gingerly, I pressed the space bar.

Every light on campus went out.

To say I was traumatized was an understatement! The professor excused me from the class to gather my wits, and vomit. He stood outside the darkened Ladies Room attempting to console me through a small crack in the door.
“I TOLD YOU SO!” I sobbed from the bathroom stall.

The lights were restored to campus after it was discovered that a transformer had blown across the street. Of course it had nothing to do with me, or my close encounter with an electronic device, but it left a lasting impression. For the rest of the semester I received gentle one-on-one guidance from that very understanding and patient professor. I got by with a C in the class, and vowed never to do anything that required the use of a computer for the rest of my life.

Fast forward to 1997. I had moved to Dallas, Texas and was finally getting a much needed divorce. I was about to become a single mom of a one-year-old and I needed a job, fast! Through an acquaintance of an acquaintance of an acquaintance I got an interview with a nice company. A nice COMPUTER company. When the woman giving me the interview asked me if I had any computer experience, I was not lying when I said “Yes, I certainly have!”

By some stroke of fate, I got the job and quickly set about watching what everybody else was doing on these electrified boxes of terror. I put on my best professional look when I sat myself in front of my very own computer at my very own desk for the first time. My intestines felt like they were trying to strangle my spine. Then I tentatively, gingerly, pressed the space bar.

When no lights went out, nobody screamed and I didn’t get electrocuted, I took it as a pretty good omen. I set about learning all there was to know about this much-easier-to-use version of computer thingy. I also learned all there was to know about software products and how to sell licensing for those products to large companies.

By 1999 I oversaw the large volume software needs of five of the largest accounts my employer had, including J.C. Penney and the American Heart Association. I also managed a very detailed web site for our branch of business and taught a class to sales representatives on how to use the internet. Brag, brag, brag... (place resume here...)

Later in 1999 I attracted the attention of another computer company and made the transition to that company in the position of National Manager of Software Licensing. Then a friend hired me to be the Vice President of his start-up computer company. Pretty good for someone who was never going to touch a computer again just nine years earlier, I’d say.

It wasn’t until a little while later that the computer industry crashed on me… but that’s a different chapter.

Girda the Demonic Viking Lactation Coach

The first thing you need to understand before I dive into the post-birth quagmire with Girda, is that the Lord saw fit to bless my baby sister with MY breasts. It’s that whole sibling rivalry thing revisited, “Mom, she took my belt!” “Mom, she’s making faces at me!” Mom, she has boobies and won’t give me any!” Yes, my sister is a 36 EE, and I… I am a 32 A minus. In fact, to add insult to injury, my nipples don’t even stick out! What sort of sick sense of humor does it take to give a flat-chested woman “innies?”

Prior to knowing that I was doomed with a life-sentence of flat-chestedness, I was just as thrilled as any other 11-year-old to go out with my mother and purchase my first “Training Bra.” This contraption of straps and two tiny triangles of lacy fabric would become cell keeper to my rib cage for the next 5 years. In those 5 years I learned how to french-kiss, how to dance, and how to wiggle my training bra back in to place without being noticed. Finally at age 16, I came to the realization that my breasts had been in training for quite some time, and apparently they hadn’t learned a damned thing! The “Training Bra” was discarded along with other items of childhood fantasy like my tiara and the fake ruby slippers I had kept hidden in my closet for years. I was never to be a princess, and I was never to model for Victoria’s Secret. I quit wearing a bra altogether, and quite enjoyed this freedom through college and my early 20’s.

I find it funny that though flat as a board, I must still suffer through the embarrassment of the yearly breast exam performed by my gynecologist. Like I wouldn’t notice some lump that had attached itself to my ribs? On one occasion the doctor was inspecting me with a look of concentration on his face and stated, “I seem to have found a small lump on your left side.”
My simple reply was “Thank-goodness! Can you find my right one too?”

I was ecstatic when I finally became pregnant! First, I was going to have a baby! Second, I was suddenly an “A” cup! A real “A” cup! Like, I could actually wear a grown-up bra without the worry of finding it nestled up under my arm pits at the end of the day! I’d been waiting 25 years for this.

Of course there was also the down-side. Suddenly as I trotted down the stairs, there were these two lumps on my chest that seemed to have developed a life of their own. They were bouncing! And they were SORE! When I lay on my side at night, they were there… pinching themselves between my arm and body. It took some getting used to (though my husband adjusted pretty quickly). Unfortunately my poor little nipples seemed to be confused and upset by the changes. They hid deeper inside, only coming out in the extreme cold, but rushing back to their hiding places as soon as the goose-pimples had subsided. It got so bad that around the 7^th month of pregnancy, they even started to cry at night!

About this time, I started to read up on breast-feeding. It was made clear through the television and the pamphlets at the doctor’s office that only mothers possessed by Satan himself did not breast-feed their babies! From the looks of it, some states might even have pressed charges in if a mother was found purchasing formula for a minor! But what I read concerning breast-feeding started to frighten me…
“Hold the baby in the crook of your arm. Gently touch his lower lip with your finger until he starts to ‘root’ or look for your nipple. Bring your breast to your baby’s face and place your nipple in his mouth.”
Are we talking about a breast or a garden hose? “Bring your breast to your baby’s face…?” The only thing I was going to be bringing anywhere was my baby to the thing that looked like a halved orange stuck to my chest because I was pretty sure it wasn’t going anywhere! Hmmmm… was this going to be a problem?

So finally my baby was lying in my arms.
“The lactation coach will be here in about 5 minutes.” The day-nurse warned me. Well, looking back I say “warned.” I suppose at the time she “told” me that the nurse would be in.

And in came Girda!

The best way to visualize Girda is that large, Viking woman in the opera, but without the horns (or, at least, you couldn’t actually see them). Vit a very tick German accent she sait, “Tak ovv your tup, pleez.”
“Hi, my name is Leigh and this is my son Jacob.”
“Tak ovv your tup, pleez.”
“What’s your name?”
“Girrrrdahhh. Tak ovv your tup, pleez.”
As I began to wonder if the next sentence would be ‘Vee haff vays ov makink you tak ovv your tup!’ I quickly began opening my gown. Before I was even fully exposed, a large mutton-like hand had shot out and adhered itself to my tiny, sore, orange-half boobie.
“Hmmmm… dis iz nut verrrry goot. Do you haff nipplez?”
“Uh, yeah… they’re just innnn-aaaaaahhhhhh! Um, I guess you found them, huh?”
“Uummmm-hmmmm.”
“Am I going to have trouble because I’m small?”
She stood back with her arms crossed over her ample chest while she scrutinized the situation. “In uull my twenty-fife yerrs ov teaching dis, noboooty walk out ov hospital not brest feetink baby!
(Did the rest of them get rolled out in body-casts? This was not a good start!)
Girda broke my panic-stricken silence with “Let me haff your niplez again.”
Like I had a choice.
“Deez are not too goot for feedink baby.”
She held Jacob against me and appeared to be attempting to stuff my entire breast into his mouth. After torturing us both to her satisfaction for the next 30 minutes, she announced, “Teachink baby to nurzz frum you like teachink him to nurse frum wall. He can nut latch on to sometink he can nut finte. Zo now I tell ladees, in uull my twenty-fife yerrs ov teaching dis, der voss only one who did nut.”
And with that, she left.

While I was sitting there in shock, my husband came in with a bottle of formula.
“What, things didn’t go so well? I was just in the sitting room with Sgt. Neilson’s wife and she said she never even needed the coach.” he said innocently.
As soon as I found my voice, I replied “If you think it’s so damn easy, why don’t you give it a try?”

In the years since that time, I have discovered that babies do fine on formula, you won’t be arrested for not breast-feeding, and a little thing called the Miracle Bra. I have a wonderful, healthy son, a nice figure in clothes, and plenty of extra room in my bra to carry my wallet, keys and makeup. I can proudly state to anyone who asks,

“Yes! These are 100% natural… cotton.”

The Story of Jacob’s Birth Day

Knowing that Jake was breech, we decided on a planned C-section at 38 weeks gestation. I was given the choice of any day from March 13th – 17th. Well, that’s a no-brainer, huh? I’ll be the mom that never forgets her son's birthday and take St. Patrick’s Day, thank-you! Though I was nervous the night before, I had no trouble sleeping anywhere, any time in my third trimester. We woke up the next morning and went in to Irwin Army Hospital, Ft. Riley, KS at 6:00 AM.

I got into the little gown with my butt hanging out and stuck out my arm to have the IV put in. Because they can never get a vein in my hand, they stuck me 5 or 6 times in the arm before getting a good one. Because I’m legally blind, we had made special arrangements for me to wear my coke-bottle lens glasses throughout the procedure so I could see my baby and test to see if the OR lights were capable of starting a fire through the two magnifying glasses on my face.

Around 7:30 AM, my butterflies and I were wheeled into the OR for the spinal. I had taken childbirth classes at a local hospital, and the breathing techniques (controlled hyperventilation/panic) came in quite handy! I’m terrified of needles, so I was careful not to look at the one they were about to stick in my spine. (If I’d seen it, they might not have needed any anesthetic as I would have passed out.) I sat on the gurney and leaned forward against a nurse as the anesthesiologist gave me a shot of Novocain and then inserted the needle and tube for the spinal. Slow inhale 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… exhale… … 3… 4… (fight panic attack) 5… 6… (don’t wiggle) 7… (Yeah, right!) 8…

I warned the staff prior to the procedure that I have a history of resistance to anesthetics of every kind. I don’t think they believed me. I was lying on my back and I could feel my legs going numb. What a strange, tingly feeling! I was pretty well numbed (I thought) and couldn’t move my legs so they strapped me down spread eagle, stripe-ass naked on a wide gurney. They put a screen up in front of my face and my husband stood to my left. The surgeon prepared to make the first incision and…
“Um… I can feel your hand on me – is that normal?” I asked nervously.
The doctor responded, “You may feel some pressure or believe you’re feeling something, but our minds play tricks on us when we’ve been anesthetized.”
“Ok” I said, “but it feels like your fingers are just below my belly button, and your thumb is near my pubic hair-line.”
Silence…
“And now you’re making little circles with your finger…” I told him.
“Can we give her more?” The doctor asked the anesthesiologist.
The anesthesiologist replied, “It’s a Spinal, not an Epidural. Maybe it just needs another minute.”
“And how about now?” The doctor asked me a minute later.
“Feels like the palm of …” I started.
“We’re going to have to knock her out…”
“…Jesus… um, yeah… the palm of Jesus… has just taken all the feeling away” I gasped.
“Are you sure…” the doctor asked in a dubious voice.
“Can’t feel a thing!” I grinned innocently. Gulp!
Luckily the spinal worked well enough to cut out the sharp pain, though I could still feel every move they made. I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to meet my baby for the first time in the next few minutes! I think the nurse to my right who was monitoring my pulse was on to me, but simply whispered “Just let me know if it gets too bad.”
I was so excited that it wasn’t bad at all. I just used the breathing techniques I had learned, and I was fine.

After a few minutes, the doctor yelled, “We’ve got a science experiment in here! Get the camera and invite the gang to look at this one!”
“What’s…?”
“Don’t worry about it.” The doctor snapped in my direction.
(Yeah, right! The gang? Here I am strapped down like a beached whale, Nekid, with most of my innards lying on the outside of my body and you want to bring the Gang in? And what science experiment…?)
The doctor continued, “Now I’m going to make the incision… and break your water… towels! We’ve got a turtle-neck! Umbilical is wrapped three times around the neck!”
(Um, yeah – Panic Attack!)
And then I heard the most beautiful sound of my son crying and gasping for air. My euphoria was broken short by the doctor’s shout of “We’ve got a PREEMIE here! Get the cart STAT!”
“What…” (Am I on an emotional roller-coaster or something? I think I just wet myself… oh yeah, my catheterized bladder is in a spoon-clamp-thingy and sitting on my right hip.)
Suddenly the room was full of people rushing around with strange-looking equipment and yelling stuff to each other. Of course I was trying at this point to sit up to see where my baby was and find out what was going on. The OR team had to hold me down to prevent the rest of my innards from rolling out onto the table.
The pediatrician called out, “First APGAR is a 9... Second APGAR is a 10! It’s just a runt.”
“A runt???” (Did I have a baby or puppies?)
The nurse by my side whispered, “You just have a very little baby. We’re going to run some tests, but he seems to be fine. That pediatrician NEVER gives 10’s! That’s a really good sign.”
Finally, my 4lb 12oz squalling baby was brought over and placed on my chest. His crying stopped completely, and his little brown eyes opened up and looked directly into mine! I started crying, whispered “hi” to him and told him how much I loved him. My right hand had been released and I was able to hold him for just a minute.

He was taken from me to let his daddy hold him, and then whisked him off for tests. The doctor had started working to put me back together, and at this point I looked at the nurse and said, “Um, excuse me, but could you tell the doctor that that clamp on the left side is pinching a bit, and his hands are kind of cold?”

That was the last thing I remember before waking up about 2 hours later in recovery. Evidently they gave me enough of something to knock out a small elephant. I rather looked and felt like a small elephant too, but I slept well knowing my tiny little baby was just fine.

I later found out that the “science experiment” within me was a uterine anomaly where only half my uterus had developed. Cute, huh? The deformity is called a Unicornuate Uterus and it may explain in part my trouble conceiving that time and in the years to come. God forbid I could just be normal for once. Honestly, I knew even before they told me that my beautiful son was nothing less than the most wonderful miracle in my world.

Preterm Farm Labor

The January day was gloomy, yet unseasonably warm for Kansas. Our next door neighbor (who lived about three miles to our East) had promised my husband and me that he would open our eyes to the wonderful world of farm auctions that day. By 6:00 in the morning the three of us were settled on the bench seat of my pick-up truck and on our way to the farm auction in a town about an hour away. We found the seating a bit snug, not because any of us were over-weight, but because I was 31 weeks pregnant at the time.

By the time we got there, the rain had stopped and a light mist had settled over the rolling landscape. Climbing out of the truck, we found ourselves in a veritable farming wonderland. As we walked about, large tractors, stock trailers, water troughs and feeders loomed out of the mist. We could hear the auctioneer, on a mobile microphone set-up that trailed him from object to object, rattling off semi-recognizable numbers to an excited crowd. Had one chanced to see an aerial view of the process, I’m sure it would have closely resembled a swarm of locusts, consuming large farm equipment as it wound a path over the mist covered field.

We were there to find and purchase a hog feeder. That’s right. My city-raised Jewish husband who had a full-time job with the US Army thought raising hogs would be a great idea for supplemental income. Like a kid with a puppy, I had known prior to the venture who would end up taking care of the smelly, rooting beasts. I knew who would end up chasing escapees, which I had already had the pleasure of doing twice the month before. I’m sure it would have paid for my son’s college education if we had thought to capture “Pregnant Woman Chasing The Three Little Pigs” on a video camera and sent it to America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Though I was one of the lucky few who did not experience morning-sickness during my first pregnancy, being greeted by those creatures first thing each morning simulated what I’m sure other not so lucky pregnant women feel. Pig-stench tends to hit right in the stomach like a good left hook. The hope was that the hog feeder would reduce my number of necessary visits to the pig pen.

By 12:30 that afternoon our hog-feeder mission had been accomplished, but my husband was fully caught up in the excitement of the auction and wanted to stay a little longer. I started to feel a little funny and decided to go sit down in the café area that had been set up in an old shed on the property. I purchased some hot chocolate and sat down. Just sitting felt good as I had developed a bit of a back ache from standing for so long.

After a wile I began to notice what I thought were Braxton-Hicks contractions. After the third one, I decided to peek at my watch. Hmmm – odd. They were coming every ten minutes. I tried relaxing a bit more, and purchased some bottled water to sip on. Hmmm – every seven minutes. When the contractions began growing a bit stronger and coming every six minutes with no sign of stopping, I figured perhaps I should let my husband know.

I wandered out into the throng and finally located my husband after two more contractions. He was gazing lovingly at a large, green and yellow John Deere with a hay-bailing attachment.
I tugged his sleeve, saying, “Um, honey?”
Not breaking his gaze, he responded, “Six cycle 466 CID engine with 181 PTO horsepower…”
“David, I think we should think about leaving pretty soon.”
“Three hydraulic valves, air-conditioned and heated cab, eight forward and four reverse shift transmission…”
“David!”
“Two Snyder 250 gallon side tanks…”
Thwhack! “David!”
“Hey! What do you want?”
“We need to leave!”
“What’s your problem?”
“I’m having contractions.”
At this our neighbor Brian, who happened to be a father of three, perked his ears up and asked, “How far apart?”
“I don’t know. I guess about 5 or six minutes.”
Taking matters, and my annoyed husband, into his own hands, Brian marched us over to the truck.
“You wanna see something that runs better than a Deere?” Brian asked David. “I suggest we run this here Dodge truck towards a hospital, and fast!”
“But the hog feeder…”
“Let me show you something. This here move is called throw and go. You get that end.”
The two men tossed the large hog feeder into the back of the truck, laid it on its’ side and quickly took their places on either side of me on the bench seat. With that, we were on our way… or so we thought.

After keeping the truck at a reasonable rate of speed over the two-mile gravel road up to the black-top, David hit the gas as the tires hit the black-top.
“THUNK! Creek, creek, creek”
The bottom-heavy hog feeder suddenly stood itself up in the bed of the truck and was rocking wildly like one of those weighted blow-up punching toys after a good slug from a toddler.
We pulled over to the side of the road, and in a variation of a Chinese-fire-drill, the men sped out and laid the thing back over and jumped back into the truck.
“How far apart are they?” Brian gasped as soon as he’d caught his breath.
Puff, puff, “Four minutes.” I responded, recovering from another vice-like contraction. “But no pain – it just feels like a gorilla is giving me a bear hug from behind, right around my belly.”
David sped the truck back onto the road.
“THUNK!! Creek, creek, creek, creek.”
“Damn it!”
Again the truck was pulled onto the side of the road and the hog feeder put back in place.
“We shoulda got some rope.” One grumbled.
“Well, if SHE coulda just waited…” The other grumbled back.
“Just keep’er slow.”
“How’m I supposed to do that?”
“The truck, stupid.”
“Who’re you calling stupid?”
“Could we just get towards the house, please?” I interrupted. “They’re getting stronger.”
We found by trial and error that the magic speed was 45 miles per hour. What was a one-hour trip at 70 miles per hour in the morning turned into a two hour journey homeward.

It crossed our minds to stop at a local hospital on the way, but unfortunately there weren’t any. We even considered a veterinary hospital alongside the road, but it appeared to be closed. (I was not overly upset as I was currently entertaining images of some manure-covered man with a plastic glove up to his shoulder approaching me to “Hep out a bit.”) Five miles from the house, my contractions were two minutes apart, but still not causing me any real pain.
“I just want to get up and walk.” I whined.
“You want that baby to drop out of you like groceries out of a torn Wal-Mart bag?” Brian warned me. “You best stay off your feet!”
“I think it would make it better.” I quipped back.
“Wetter.” Brian corrected me.

Once home, I lowered myself out of the truck gingerly. I was instructed to go lay down while they put the hog feeder in the pig-pen. As I started towards the house, I heard David yell, “Pigs are loose!”
I yelled back, “Well I’m not chasing them this time! You can do it yourself!” And turned and began walking again. As I had suspected, the walking seemed to ease my contractions. After a few minutes (and a slow waddle around the house) they were down to five minutes apart. By the time David came back in, smelling strongly of pig-poop, they were down to seven minutes apart.

I called the army hospital and was told that a nurse would call me back in about an hour. I laughed and said I would start heading that way. The receptionist explained there was no guarantee I would be seen without talking to a nurse first. I figured I’d take my chances, and heaved myself back into the truck for the hour drive to the hospital.

When we arrived, they were kind enough to allow us to go up to Labor & Delivery. There, a nurse sat us down and lectured us on the procedures of the army hospital and teach us about Braxton-Hicks contractions.
“Braxton-Hicks contractions are the body’s way of rehearsing for actual labor. Everyone has them and I get so many first-time mothers in here, all afraid that they’re really in labor. It’s a waste of your time and ours.” She explained sternly.
To make her point, she showed us a chart that compared “real” contractions to Braxton-Hicks. She explained that if mine were real, I would know it and so would everybody around me.

She then hooked my belly up to a nearby monitor and asked us to watch what my contractions read. As the next one hit and crested, she quietly got up and left the room. Shortly thereafter a doctor appeared and checked the paper record of my contractions coming out of the monitor.
“We’re going to do a pelvic, and if you’re even a tiny bit dilated, we’ll be doing a C-section tonight.” He told us.
“But I thought this was just a rehearsal…” I stammered. “Maybe a dress rehearsal, but not the actual show!”
Suddenly it was like a spotlight had been turned on, and was aimed at me. Well, come to think of it, it had, but a little further south than the spotlights I’d been in during other productions.

Finally the doctor stood up, and removing his gloves, said, “No baby tonight, but we need to stop those contractions!”
I was given some kind of medication through an IV that made me very drowsy. The contractions lessened but did not disappear all the way. True to army form, I was released two hours after arriving and instructed to go home and go to bed.
“For how long?” I asked through my drowsy stupor.
“Until you wake up.” I was told.
“But shouldn’t I do some bed-rest or something?” I queried.
The doctor looked at me like I was an imbecile and said “What for?”
I was far to drugged to pursue the matter and ended it with, “Never mind.”

Later I learned that the primary reason I did not end up having Jake that night was because his fanny was firmly planted over my cervix like a big plug, and there was no way he was going to fall out “like groceries out of a torn Wal-Mart bag.” I was also lucky the contractions stopped completely by morning and I did not have any repeat episode of pre-term labor… even after chasing those stupid pigs one more time before giving them to Brian. I even threw the hog-feeder in the deal for free!

Four-Legged Guardian Angel

Warning: Kleenex Alert! Do NOT read this story if you are experiencing PMS or have recently lost your bottle of Zoloft!

If you were to ask my mother, I believe she would say that my first word was “horse.” If it wasn’t my first word, it was probably no less than my third. Considering that neither my mother nor father could be considered “animal people,” I believe this word may have taken my poor mother by surprise. I’m sure at the time she believed this to be a result of a popular 60’s children’s T.V. show called Mr. Ed about a talking horse, but little did she know...

Over the years, my interest for horses did not fade, but grew stronger and stronger. Every Christmas and every birthday, my first and often only request was for a horse, or if that was simply not possible, a pony. Of course as we lived in strictly suburban surroundings, an equine in the back yard was not possible, nor was it legal.

At age 6 I was finally old enough to take riding lessons at our local stables. For one hour every week, I was in heaven! I rode fat little ponies and skinny old nags, but it did not matter to me. They all had that wonderful horse smell, and if they were willing to move, I was willing to ride them.

As the years past, I found ways to keep riding, though money was sometimes tight. I worked at local barns, cleaning horses, stalls and tack in return for a lesson or two. When I was 13 years old I finally got that first pony! I spent every extra hour of every day with him, and learned all sorts of invaluable lessons, like how not to get kicked when brushing the “tickle spot” and that clean, wet ponies like to roll in the mud at the first possible chance.

At age 20 I decided to try a young, inexperienced horse. As money was tight, a critter without a lot of training was better suited for my tight budget. It was not long before a friend told me about a 2-year-old Thoroughbred who had just recently come off the race-track. He had been won in a poker bet by a truck driver named Butch who, until then, had been no closer to a horse than the picture on his “Polo” cologne. As racing and polo were the only horse related sports Butch knew of, he had the horse taken to a local polo club where he hoped the horse would earn his keep on the polo fields.

Needless to say, a young Thoroughbred with no training is about as suitable to polo as a Cadillac is to mowing lawns. The polo club demanded remuneration for the time the horse was kept on its property, and the food he was consuming. Butch could afford no such thing, so the horse was locked up with little food until the fees could be paid. At that point Butch made a call to a local slaughter house and found that the dog-food folks paid a pretty penny for healthy horses.

I got there about an hour before the slaughter house truck did. Though skinny and unkempt, there was just something about that horse that was… special. There was a certain honesty in his expression and trust in his actions that compelled me immediately. Something about his eyes spoke to my heart. I offered Butch $700 for the horse right then and there. Butch informed me that the slaughter house would pay $800 for the horse. At that time I happened to notice that Butch’s 3-year-old daughter had marched right up to the large animal, grabbed his lead rope and was taking him for a walk around the busy parking area. Butch seemed fully unaware of the danger this situation presented for his daughter, though he followed my glance and explained the horse was like a “pet” to his daughter.
I saw the weak spot and went for it like a vulture.
“Then what are you going to tell her when she asks where her horsy went? Are you going to tell her the truth, or just lie to her?”

Over the next five years, that $700 horse proved to be highly talented in the show ring, always gentle with children and small animals, and the best friend I’d ever had. We spent hours together, and could practically read each other’s minds. I felt I could almost see his soul when I looked into those eyes which were a shade of brown I had not seen before. I was offered large sums of money for him on more than one occasion, and thought nothing of turning it down. I would no sooner sell my mother, though the thought had crossed my mind.

In late September of 1995 I was near the end of my second month of my troubled pregnancy. I continued to bleed, and my body was simply not doing what it was supposed to. The army doctors told me not to get my hopes up that the pregnancy would last. It had taken me over two years to get pregnant, and this news was devastating.

As I was leaving for work as a veterinary assistant on the morning of September 30^th 1994, I saw that Mario had gotten one of his beautiful forelegs hung in the barbed wire fence. Where other horses would have struggled to free themselves, he was standing patiently, waiting for me to come help him. I threw the truck into park while it was still moving and jumped out to help him. Seeing that the wire had cut deep into the leg, I told him to stand still and I ran to the barn to grab some wire cutters. He stood patiently while I ran back and gingerly cut the wire on either side of the gaping wound, leaving a six inch piece embedded in his leg. I knew pulling it out could do far more damage than leaving it where it was, at that point.

I tied him to a nearby tree and ran to the phone to call my neighbor to bring a horse trailer as quickly as possible. I then called the veterinary hospital at Kansas State University to ask them to prepare for our arrival. I bandaged Mario’s leg around the wire to prevent the wire moving further, and led him slowly on to the trailer.

The veterinary team at Kansas State University took radiographs, and had him in surgery within the hour. It took them three hours to remove the wire and close the gaping wound. I had already been warned that the damage could be too extensive to repair, but I had to try everything I could to save my friend.

For the next three days Mario lay with his head in my lap. Of course I was warned by each shift of veterinarians that sitting with a horses’ head in my lap could end my pregnancy should he get startled or decide to move quickly. I told them all that I knew my horse well enough to know that he would never do any such thing. He was always so gentle, he was incredibly careful with me, even when he was lying in unfamiliar surroundings, poked full of IV needles and had a huge, metal brace on his leg. He barely even wiggled until I was ready to get up or move.

On the third day, the vets came to me with bad news. The damage was so extensive that the chance of recovery was almost zero. The only way to keep him alive would be amputation, which would mean my beautiful horse would never leave his stall again. He would never run with his neck stretched out and his mane whipping around my face. He would never walk with me through the sunset, back towards the barn at the end of a long ride. His freedom would be taken away completely, and he would be in pain for the rest of his life.

I made the hardest decision I had ever made in my life that day. It was up to me to decide my best friend’s fate, to kill him or condemn him. The best choice was by far the most painful. I could make no other choice but to say goodbye to Super Mario that day.

Mario followed me willingly down the corridor on his three good legs to a room with padded walls and floors. I held his lead-rope in my hand as the doctor injected a clear liquid into his neck. I watched as his eye clouded with confusion, and as his knees gave way under his beautiful, athletic body. I was with him until his heart stopped, and his spirit was set free from the bonds of his injured shell. I wept on the neck of his beautiful, lifeless body, taking in his smell so I would never forget it. I said goodbye to the best friend I had ever had.

As Mario’s heart stopped beating, another tiny heart grew stronger. The next day I went in for a prenatal check up to see if the tiny life inside of me had made it through the stress of the last few days. The bleeding had stopped only that morning and the cramping had gone away. For the first time, the heartbeat could be heard clearly on the monitor. My own heavy heart skipped with the joy of hearing my baby’s heartbeat for the first time.

The following March, my son was born. In those first few moments of life, they set him on my chest, and he opened his eyes and looked right into mine. I noticed immediately that his eyes were the most amazing, deep shade of brown… a color I think I’d only seen once before.

In memory of all angels.
Super Mario: 5/15/87 – 10/3/94

An “F” In Conception

I’ve never understood the whole “Birds and Bees” thing. Perhaps I missed a story somewhere about some strange intra-species love affair, but if not, I fail to see the comparison of a bird or bee to anything having to do with human conception.

To my understanding, first a bird finds a partner, makes a nest, has a little fun and lays some eggs. After sitting on the eggs for a few weeks, mom and dad bird spend their time flying about looking for food. In a few months it’s time to fly south, and they all part ways to go on vacation. The following year, mom bird finds a nice new bird partner and the process starts over.

Bees on the other hand are a completely different story. There is but one queen. The queen does nothing but lies in the hive and pops out thousands of eggs. She has a husband or two, but all the rest of the bees are drones. For those who are not heavily into insect social structures, drones are mundane little workers with no other purpose than feeding and maintaining the hive. If you are born (or hatched) as a bee, there is very little chance you will have the luck to be a queen or one of her trysting partners. You will probably be a boring little drone, running about with pollen on your feet gossiping about the bees down in Honey Production not keeping up with demand.

Humans are different. Not to say some of them don’t find a new mate every year like birds, but it’s not the generally approved method for creating a family. And of course like the bee, some people are so focused on work they forget to have a family. But other than a few freak similarities, our mating habits are completely different.

Through our younger years we do what we can to prevent a family. We won’t even hug our own parents in public… we wouldn’t want anyone to think we actually liked those people! Then as young adults, we court, but try not to conceive or marry. If we are intelligent young adults, we utilize good birth control methods and leave nothing to chance. We eventually find the person we hope will be Mr. or Mrs. Right, settle down and wait until everything is perfect before conceiving.

Once we realize that nothing is ever perfect enough to have a child and that our biological clocks are ticking so loudly they’re keeping us up at night, we decide to stop preventing a family. For those that did not conceive by accident prior to this time, most will conceive within a few months of “not preventing.”

And then there are the rest of us - a small group who, after not preventing for a year or so, actually start trying. And trying. And trying. And when that doesn’t work, we seek medical attention. And thus begins the baby obsession.

The hardest part about belonging to the group of those “trying to conceive” or TTC, is that while we’ve finally made up our minds that we want a baby (bad!), all our friends seem to just pop them out like toast. In fact it frequently happens that a fertility-challenged woman will be surrounded by co-workers who get pregnant by accident, and complain about it incessantly. Fertility challenged women just love hearing about how pissed off a co-worker is about not being able to sit in the hot tub at a friend’s party last week! Love it.

Eventually we start to see the irony in the fact that we were so careful in preventing a family for so long before we were “ready.” We did the right thing, right? We were the smart ones, right? Oh, what we wouldn’t give to have the “luck” of those unsuspecting high-school girls who, whoops, get pregnant seemingly from just looking at someone of the opposite sex. How do they make it seem so easy? It is simply not fair!

And why does it always seem to be that the people who want babies the least seem to have the most? We have to watch the news with stories of little Joey and his 23 brothers and sisters being put in foster care when it is found that their 34-year-old mother has gone on vacation without them… for a year.

Perhaps from these experiences we become better parent material. We spend years wanting what we can’t seem to produce for ourselves, and dreaming about what we’d do if we had just one baby. When we’re lucky enough to have our own or adopt one, no-one in the world could make us treat that bundle of hopes and dreams in a less than wonderful way – ever! Our children will always know how much we wanted them and needed them.

Then, after experiencing the sheer joy of parenthood, we simply must have another. And the whole process starts over again. It doesn’t matter what they look like. It doesn’t matter if their skin is the same color or their eyes the same shape. What matters is that incredible bond between parent and child – that pure and overwhelming love that comes over us like an ocean wave.

I admit it. I value the lessons I’ve learned through the years I yearned to be a parent. Perhaps I don’t react so harshly when little shoes show up caked in mud. Perhaps I’ve made less silly rules than I would have had this gift from God come easily to me. In my house, “Don’t touch!” was replaced with “Let’s hold that together so you can see it better.” “No!” was replaced with “I’m worried you might get hurt if you do that. I want you safe because you are so important to me. Mommy would cry if you got hurt.”

I don’t know how birds handle infertility. Do they count their eggs before they’ve hatched? I don’t know if queen bees long for just one more larvae in the hive. Either way, we as humans are cursed with the knowledge of and longing for what we don’t have, and sometimes without the understanding of how much we’ve already got.

Such was the case for my husband and me. It had been almost two years since we had “stopped preventing.” It had been at least a year and a half since we started making charts, graphs and taking temperatures... sexy! On a number of occasions my husband had left work early, telling his commanding officer that his wife might be about to get pregnant, and he wanted to be there when it happened.

I had read all the books and knew enough to realize that I was somehow not quite “normal.” Instead of the neat little twenty-eight day cycle women were supposed to have, mine seemed to be all over the chart. Sometimes it was as short as thirty-four days and sometimes as long as fifty-six days. I knew I was supposed to ovulate fourteen days prior to having my period, but as these were the days before ovulation detection kits, I had no earthly clue when that might be on any given month.

As the months came and went, I almost always felt sure that “this was the month.” My breasts felt sore, I felt grumpy and tired and my period was late. After two years I finally had to understand that those symptoms were just the normal PMS symptoms I got, every stinking month! Like taking a bite of food in a restaurant will signal the wait staff to come ask you a question, for me taking a pregnancy test always brought on “Aunt Flo.”

In August of 1994 I was feeling particularly bad. I was considering getting my hopes up, but then made that regularly depressing discovery in the restroom. Of course I did what any other warm-blooded depressed, monetarily challenged woman would do. I went shopping. How else could I keep my mind off my failure? On the way home I stopped and picked up a home pregnancy test out of habit.

I realize that sounds totally and completely idiotic. It was, yet it was also a compulsion at this point in my TTC career. I cried as I took the test, just knowing I was about to get another “F” in conception. As with every other month, I immediately tossed the soggy stick into the garbage and then grabbed it out again and sat staring at it while the wetness slowly soaked it’s way up the material inside the plastic. I closed my eyes, prayed, cried and lost all hope. I opened my eyes and witnessed the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.

There were two perfectly clear lines created by my very own pee-pee on the test stick. Two of them! I cried even harder, prayed even harder and had two years of hope overcome my entire existence in that moment.

Throughout the rest of the day I planned how I would spring the big news to my husband for this was going to be one of the most important days of our lives. I didn’t have a pretty watch box and a gift would only raise his suspicions when I wasn’t supposed to be spending any money. I’d just have to hold it behind my back.

As he entered the house, I held both my hands behind my back and begged him to “pick a hand!”
“I’ve had a long day and I’m not up for games right now!” he said, pushing past me.
I positioned myself in front of him again and asked as sweetly as I could, “Please just pick a hand. Any hand!”
“You don’t even have dinner on yet?” he snapped at me. “I am hungry and tired and I am not up for games!”

I was so used to accepting this kind of treatment that it bounced right over my happy little head. I brought my arm around to my front and proffered the stick to him.
“What the hell is this?” he grumbled, taking the stick from my hand and then in horror he asked “Did you PEE on this?”
“I sure did!” I exclaimed proudly.
The slow realization of what he was holding finally worked its way up to the stony expression on his face.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” he stammered.
I then received one of the nicest and happiest hugs from him in the history of our marriage.

Later on that evening on our way back from a dull army function, my husband stopped in at the local pharmacy.
“What are we doing here?” I wondered aloud.
“I’m getting two more tests to make sure you didn’t mess the first one up and get my hopes up for no reason.” He said as he closed the car door.
Both of those tests showed positive results too, much to his consternation and my glee.

Though all the tests showed I was pregnant, as I mentioned before, I had also gotten my period. The bleeding came and went, as did my concern over the tiny life nestled deep inside of me. The doctors were a bit befuddled and told me simply not to get my hopes up. Like hell! After over two years of wanting a child with all my heart, I wasn’t losing this one! I truly believed that nothing in the world could have brought me down from my wondrous cloud.

How Victoria’s Secret Got Out

It was a beautiful spring day in early 1994. I had 3 horses at that time, and often enjoyed the beautiful, empty country-side from horse-back. It was perfectly safe to ride along the gravel roads because few vehicles ventured that far out into the boonies. A car could be heard for miles before it got close to the house so there was always plenty of time to get off the road if necessary. The house was so far removed, in fact, that I rarely thought anything of wearing a bathrobe out to the barn for morning feeding, or less than that out to look at the stars at night.

One Saturday morning in the summer while my husband was off doing some army thing, I was awakened by the sound of mooing. It took me less than a minute to shake off my dazed sleep-stupor and come to the conclusion that this sound was not being made by any one of my three equines. On top of that, the great noise seemed to be coming from at least 300 animals of a bovine nature. The nearest cattle ranch was about 4 miles down the road, and I was pretty sure the sound was not carrying quite that far.

I jumped out of bed, still wearing the cute little Victoria’s Secret string-bikini undies and spaghetti-strap midi tank top I had slept in, and trotted down the stairs to be affronted by a horrific view out the large picture window in the front of the house. A large heard of cattle had found the lush patch of grass over my septic system, and were slowly and methodically crushing my lateral lines into oblivion.

With thoughts of the backed up sewage seeping into my basement, I quickly headed out my front door to chase the offending cattle away from that area before all hopes of flushing went completely down the drain.

The grass was thick and green, and the cattle had little interest in my requests that they move on to less-green pastures.
“Haaaww Cow! Haaaawww Cow! Git! Giiiiiiiiiiiiittt!” I yelled at them in vane.
Soon I found myself standing in the middle of the herd, and some of the bovines finally started to move off a bit towards the grass around my driveway.

About this time, I started to realize that cows en mass are prolific producers of natural fertilizer, and that they are also quite loud! Not only was I covered in manure up to my bare knees, but I was half-deaf as well. I kept right on chasing, and finally had the majority of the creatures away from the danger zone.

As I emerged from the midst of the wayward herd, I bumped right into…
“Milt!”
“Hey there. I see you come accrost my cattle. I wanna thank you for… for taking care of ‘em for me.” (Cough, chuckle.) “Was they on your… lines?”
“Um, yeah.” I stammered as I made the dark realization that I had just exposed Victoria’s Secret to my 75-year-old cattle rancher neighbor. “I’ll let you take it from here.”
With that I quickly slunk back into my house, knowing that the manure foot-prints might not be the only thing that would follow me around for a while.

My fears were realized later in the day when I went into town to buy gas for my truck. As I walked in to pay the clerk, the crowd in the little café area grew deathly silent. The clerk flashed her smile at me, took my money and said sweetly, “I hope you didn’t get your cow-pokin’ duds too dirty this mornin’. In fact, a couple of the guys was wonderin’ if you’d just call ‘em up nex time so they could get dirty doin’ some pokin’ with you.”
With that the crowd erupted, and I made for the door, all the while looking for a large rock to crawl under. Over the next few months, I made the trek up to Topeka to do my shopping. Now, years later, I wonder what stories they tell in that little town about the strange lady from back East who got caught chasing cattle in Victoria’s not-so-secret attire.