He Is A Ten
"Your next child will be your tenth and then it'll be over," the lady told Danielle with relief.
"Why should it be over?" Danielle asked.
"Didn't you say you wanted to have ten children?"
"We said it would be interesting to have ten children, but we never set down a given number. If at some time there had been a serious reason not to have another child we would have stopped then. And of there is not a serious reason to stop after our next child, we won't stop. If things continue the way they are presently going, Georges has figured we might finally have fifteen children."
"But aren't TEN children a serious reason? When will you ever take a break and rest?"
"I rest when I need to. I'm in bed at nine o'clock in the evening and I take a nap every afternoon. Few people are so well rested. And why should I take a break from the best thing I can do?"
"You're courageous," the lady concluded.
A more intimate friend would say "hopeless". Polite people said "courageous". Many persons had already admired Danielle and told her how "courageous" she was. Danielle smiled and thanked them. Then one day a neighbour got the visit from a mother with her two boys, who were two and four years old. The neighbour told Danielle how the boys had asked their mother for a drink and that she had given them her breasts to drink from. She was a non-repressive mother.
Danielle was dumfounded by the utter stupidity of such a behaviour. She was searching in her mind for a polite expression to render her feeling when the neighbour said: "That woman is courageous."
Danielle shuddered. Could it be that "courageous" was the local civil expression for lunatic? It must be. It made sense. She, herself, was undoubtedly a local loony.
The fact was that Danielle and I were still young whereas the couples of our age were getting to be old couples. On the one hand, we were still tied to the home by diapers, baby cries, and all that goes with young couples. On the other hand, the children of the couples of our age were all in school. Their mother could rest and be definitely more socially active than Danielle. Their "normal" sized family could afford a car, fit into one and move freely on trips and the like.
Anne-Marie had given birth to a third girl at the same time Jean-Paul was born, so Danielle and her were very close. But Danielle's other women friends prolonged their recuperation periods.
For a time, Danielle had been close to the women of the younger couples we knew, as they started their family life. But some of them now figured that enough was enough and too many would be too many. One of them told Danielle: "Sure, you have a lot of children. But most of them are in school. All four of mine are at home."
"But I have four at home," Danielle answered. "They are Marie, Isabelle, François and Jean-Paul."
"Well I don't know how you do it," her friend said in a tone that put an end to that subject.
We didn't had any time to feel cut off from people as our people filled the home, and as our friends were unswervingly loyal towards us, even those who were dismayed by us.
The year Jean-Paul was born, Our oldest daughter Christine was at her finest. She was brilliant and efficient in class and at home, and her mother's best friend. That year, Christine took it upon her to bake the birthday cakes. That meant one cake a week beginning in mid-January and ending in mid-March, plus the other two cakes. She also learned to sow. For the first time in many years, Danielle was able to finish mending the pile of clothes that begged for her attention thanks to Christine's help. Danielle explained to Christine the values we found in our way of life. Christine agreed.
At noon, one day, we talked about a family squabble some persons had over their parents' inheritance. Everyone agreed how such envious quarrels among brothers and sisters were repulsive. Christine then asked: "What about us? How much inheritance will you leave us."
"You don't have to be afraid about quarrelling over it," I answered. "We are spending everything we earn and receive. However, you'll have the best inheritance we could give you."
"What is it?" Christine asked.
I said nothing. I simply pointed around the table. And Danielle, beaming, explained: "You'll each have all of you."
"You will have brothers and sisters," I added, "who will love you and upon whom you will always be able to rely, whatever befalls you. That is more than money can buy."
The children were happy.
* * *
I was a television maniac as a child and Danielle had hardly seen television in her regimented life. The pleasure of living with Danielle had shorn television out of my life. It came back gradually inasmuch as Danielle went to bed earlier than me because of the ample work she had at home. But television never had priority over her.
As for the children, Danielle' disinterest in the box and interest in her children kept the television shut during my absence. On Saturday mornings, they got the permission to chose an hour of cartoons. Occasionally when a movie fitted to their taste was available at a suitable time, they were allowed to watch. — Then the video recorder gave us freedom, a few years before most people discovered it. We had the first VCR in La Pocati re: an RCA machine that could be pre-set for only one recording. Two years later we got the first Hitachi machine in the region, which could be pre-set for five recordings.
The video-recorder, as the general public now knows, is what makes television an intelligent tool. We can get the programs we want when we want them. It became standard policy that the children could watch one hour of television both on Saturday and Sunday morning, and a movie or another program on each Saturday and Sunday afternoon. These programs were chosen from the week's TV Guide. And they were for entertainment. There is enough learning done in school. On Sundays, Danielle and half the children five and over went to one Mass while I went to another with the other half. Yet the VCR allowed all the children to see the same programs. — By being restricted, television was a pleasure and not a nuisance. When they heard "T.V.!", the children would come running from all over the house to watch their program. Each new season, I showed them samples of various programs to test their taste and choose the seasonal programs. Generally, cartoons were on weekend mornings and adventure series in the afternoons.
For the rest of the week, some school work and much personal imagination easily filled in the time.
* * *
At college, Jacques would come to my office or I would go to his in between courses. We would rejoice or wail about the way our ideas were received or battered in class, or chat about ideas and events. The teachers in our department were united in a humanistic philosophy, especially compared to philosophy departments in many other colleges. But there were also some deep and insurmountable differences of philosophical opinions. Jacques and I were of one mind on essentials, so we stuck together. This did not prevent debate. On the contrary, our closeness allowed us to discuss differences on a common canvas of reality.
As philosophers and husbands, we were preoccupied with the theory and practice of marital love. Jacques had been reading the French philosopher Jacques Maritain: "Maritain says that sexual intercourse is an inferior value of marriage," Jacques told me approvingly.
"What do you mean by an inferior value?", I asked.
"There are things of greater value in marriage. For instance, prayer, mutual aid, and all sorts of things."
"I grant you the first place of prayer in any person's life. That is why I do not think that prayer is the distinctive value of marriage. On the other hand, sexual intercourse is the act of marriage by which the spouses are united in heart, mind and body and in which flows the unique generosity of a life for eternity. Can there be an act more profound and significant than that?"
"Yes, but sex can be done in love or outside of love. It is not spiritual. It's a more material act," he argued.
"Hold it right there. You say that sex can be done without love. But when that happens, do we really have sex in the human sense of the word?"
"What do you mean?"
"Sex without love is like an eye that does not see or a mind that hallucinates or a leg that does not stand. It's not sex. It's a perversion of sex. It is not a sexual intercourse: it's a sexual corruption."
"But it's possible for a man to have sexual intercourse with a prostitute."
"He may, but then he is not having sex: he is destroying sex. If sex is a person's way to meet his partner in love, to meet someone else in exploitation is to destroy the intercourse."
"That makes sense. But then..."
"That's right! Then sexual intercourse is a top-value and not an inferior value of marriage. Sexual intercourse is the total donation of the spouses to one another. It is marriage."
"But it's not possible nor desirable to always be in intercourse."
"That's right. And it's not possible to be awake all the time, and to be present to each other all the time. But to be together is better than to be separated, and to be awake is better than to be asleep, and in a mariage to be able to have sexual union is better than to be unable to."
I think we were scaring each other a bit with this line of thinking as it terribly resembled sexual obsession and was in no way the discourse we were used to on this subject. Indeed, in the first years of our marriage, Danielle and I had even scoffed at the importance given to orgasm by a psychological approach we had heard of at that time.
However, this was not a psychological approach. It was not an approach based upon the good feelings we might expect. It was an approach based upon the living heart of marriage: personal donation of the spouses open to the arrival of a new personal life. And we now also had a biblical approach. I suggested: "If the couple in love is the image of Father and Son in the Spirit of Love, isn't human procreation the image of God's creation? Its a free act of generosity by which someone new is invited to live. Then the couple is the better image of God in intercourse than in separate beds. They are giving forth life."
"But they can't always be giving life. A wife has to recuperate sometimes."
"That's true. But they are nearer to being the image of God when they are giving life rather than when they are recuperating. God doesn't need to recuperate. We do. And when we sleep we are lesser images of God than when we are awake."
At that time John Paul II began explaining, in his Wednesday speeches, how we must understand Saint Paul's teaching to the Galatians (5, 16-17): "I tell you this: let yourselves be guided by the Spirit and you will not risk satisfying the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh wants is opposed to what the spirit wants." Saint Paul also wrote to the Romans (8, 5): "Indeed, those who live according to the flesh desire what is of the flesh and those who live according to the Spirit want what is spiritual."
The opposition, John Paul II said, is not between matter and mind but between corruption and love. The Spirit is Love. The opposite of the Spirit is the opposite of love, inherited from the Fall. That is why it comes through "the flesh". But it remains the spirit of evil.
In this sense we should understand that a man or a woman who refuses sexual intercourse with his or her spouse for egotistical reasons, is actually following what Saint Paul calls the "desires of the flesh", whereas a person doing marital intercourse in love is answering the call of the Spirit of God.
For us, this was undoubtedly a novel religious approach to intercourse. Yet it fitted exactly with the Church's permanent commitment to the defence of human love. Indeed, it could best come from a Church who taught that God was made flesh in the true spiritual sense: a flesh of Love.
* * *
Danielle and I were now approaching the fourteenth anniversary of our marriage. Richard (the Lion-hearted) or Hél ne (of Troy) had just beem made in our work-shop. Once again we missed the present fiscal year: Baby was expected for January 12. But he fitted nicely with the "family planning" I bragged about. He was scheduled to arrive exactly two years (less three days) after the birth of Jean-Paul.
When we received the confirmation that Baby was there, we told the children, and a loud cheer rose from all sides of the dining table. His welcome was never in doubt. We were all proud of Baby's presence. The fact that he would be the tenth pleased us, but ten was now just the family joke. We had broken into the habit of loving a new arrival for himself. There was not a trace left of our concerns about jealousy among the children. On the contrary, a new baby simply meant for the elders that there would be one more child to cuddle, and for the younger that they would have one more playmate. The wide choice of playmates or companions abated the inevitable frictions among the children, as there was always someone to fall back upon when things got tough with others.
The family spirit far outdid the criticism our children met at school. Children have the knack of saying publicly what their parents say privately. And each of our children would come back from kindergarten or from grade school one day with the question: "Why is it some kids tell me my parents are kinky?", or, "I've been teased today because my mother is pregnant again."
"Kinky is in the mind of the beholder", as the saying goes. That is why such attitudes — which were however exceptional — were totally incomprehensible for our children. Their brothers and sisters were so far from being an erotic obsession and the new baby was so far from being a statistic, that they could only gather that there was something wrong with the beholders rather than with themselves.
Now Richard or Hél ne was on the way.
* * *
At her girl guide summer camp, Christine met an all-out sports-girl, full of energy, imagination and fun. They became best friends during camp. Parents were invited to partake in the last supper before the camp broke up, and Christine presented me her new friend. I suggested she could come for a week at our home during that summer. The friend accepted the invitation.
Danielle was delighted with her first impression of this girl, who was polite and cheerful. We told her that the rules of the house were quite strict in order to insure a pattern by which everyone could profit from everyone rather than be a bother for the others. Thus, because of the regular presence of a baby in the family, rising was maintained at six thirty and we began putting the younger children to bed at seven thirty. Christine could not stay outside after eight thirty or nine, which was much the same as going to bed at one in the morning and rising late. Christine's friend was most understanding.
Than the hunt began. All that girl wanted to do was to go out with the boys. During the whole week, she used Christine to stick around with a young neighbour. When he wasn't there, the girls would trot to see the gang on a side-street. — Getting Christine to fit our pattern had never been a problem. It suddenly became an acute one. I had to go out and insist the girls come home, which was humiliating for our daughter as her new companions teased her and as — we found out later — her girl-friend told her how ridiculous our life-style was.
Christine took this revelation as coming from a star, in the light of her new sensitivity. She was now a teenager and her family was definitely out of style.
The girl-friend left. She hadn't been the cause but the occasion. Christine had heard teasing often before, but this was the first time it became a truth by which to judge her parents and brothers and sisters.
Gradually, she made life harder for herself and for the others. She often became the wrench thrown into the machinery of daily living. She couldn't do her bed anymore. Her chores became an unbearable weight for her. Patterns of life were jail-walls around her. Permissions were matter of fact and refusals were persecution. Though she tried to put sedition in the minds and actions of her younger brothers and sisters, this action was hampered by the fact that she treated them as just so many bothers and slaves.
Christine's behaviour was that of her age? Maybe. But it was unexpected. It gave us a shock. The year before, she had been Miss Perfect. Now she was Miss Monstress. We got consolation and strength from the other children who were "normal", helpful and happy. And we held our own again the devil tormenting our daughter. She got no pleasure, satisfaction or fulfilment out of any victory. Her dissatisfaction was permanent. It seemed that she had to test her will against ours. The absence of our will would not have helped. It would simply have left her in disarray. We seemed to be a mold against which she pushed with all her might in order to become someone. Recognising this fact and need did not make it much easier. The mold often felt cracking up under the pressure. And the molded didn't express any gratitude.
There were times of relapse when her devil seemed exhausted and our child came to the surface again. There were times when she did her bed and her chores without being pressured into doing them. But these grew lesser as time went.
There was truth in my colleague's gloating that the day would come when our darling daughter would be uncontrollable. But should he have gloated? This was more a case of needed encouragement.
* * *
Our tenth child, even if we down played the numeral aspect of his birth, was still a matter to rejoice. It would be nearly fifteen years since we had been on our friends' balcony, talking of the unforeseeable future, and I had told Danielle: "What if we got married... some day?"
Then I had added: "Wouldn't it be something if one day, you and I, we should have ten children?"
Well, we had done it. Richard or Hélène would be born shortly after the New Year. This was a time for something special. We asked Brother Gilbert (Brother Mouse, our Manitoban Musketeer), who had been ordained as a priest-monk of S. Benedict, whether he would ask his Superior for permission to come and baptise our baby. This would of course be highly irregular, as Brother Gilbert was supposed to remain in his monastery. But wasn't our a tenth child also something quite irregular?
At first, Brother Gilbert answered that he couldn't get the permission. But then he wrote again and said that he hadn't asked for the permission, as he thought it was asking for too great a privilege. But he had a change of mind, and his Superior proved to be of one mind with us. He would come.
* * *
Teaching was my most important chore. The God-students had left. The approach I had thought to be a great discovery in pedagogy proved to be a simpler fact of psychology: once again, after a ten year interval, I had been given a love encounter with a group of young minds and hearts. After they had gone, I tried to give the same course on God to other students. We managed to survive the term together, but the magic tingle wasn't there. I did my job; they went through the motions of necessity.
I was now experienced in the divisions of philosophy. I should have noticed from the beginning that, in history, the Wisdom of philosophy is divided into the different philosophers. Granted, historians group them together in various schools of common thinking, but it would be intellectual heresy to identify any member of a school with another member. In other words, the grand project of unifying people through Reason is contradicted by the simple enumeration of philosophers/philosophies. I had suffered that unexpected experience when I went through the diverging philosophies of Laval and Father Paul Thomas (Fribourg). I now had to admit that the differences of philosophical opinions I met in our department of philosophy at college were not a matter of general stupidity or moral corruption. Finally, Gerry and I began having major differences in philosophical judgement. Yet he was brilliant, and I considered myself right on the points where I contradicted him. With this, I recalled that the Lavalian professors who had put so much emphasis on human salvation through philosophy regularly squabbled among themselves.
Philosophy was at best a tool. I had to admit that the unity of mind, heart and body among men which I had been taught to seek in philosophy could only be a fact of religion, a miracle of unity made by God among the men who accepted to grasp his given hand. Granted, theologians have the same faults as philosophers, when they are reason wielders. Nor did I put my faith in them. I put it in the living God, who helps us to make a good use of our failing faculties of love and creativity, of knowledge through personal acquaintanceship and abstract reflection. I found that Popes often write treatises on the wisdom at work within man, nature and divinity, but that their works are not divided according to these authors. Incredibly, they give forth the same wisdom. That is why they are individually forgotten, while their God's presence remains.
Philosophy is a tool, but only a tool. I began thinking that there is no more nobility in a life made up of philosophical speculation than in one of garbage-picking or of playing golf. These are all different ways to make and spend a living. The nobility of human life comes from the use we make of this living: either to love and assist someone or to exploit others for oneself. And there can be sense in sacrificing advantages in favour of persons only if persons are eternal. This must be the meaning of S. Augustine's two cities: "There exist two cities built upon two contrary loves: the love of self leading to a contempt of God, that builds the City of the world; the love of God leading to the contempt of self, that builds the City of God."
To recognise the limits of my trade helped to lessen the pressure of its practice. There was no longer the urgency to convert young minds for their personal salvation through the comprehension of philosophical wisdom. Philosophy became more an ordinary subject matter and teaching it had all the challenge and the humdrum that could be expected of classes.
* * *
Ah, "the best laid plans of mice and men..." We did not expect the baby to hit the bull's eye on January 12, but we were sure he would arrive somewhere around that time. This seemed especially corroborated by the fact that Danielle was ample beyond anything she had experienced except at the time she carried twins. And there were no twins this time. Echography had made this evident. Even if the image was blur, Danielle had, with her own eyes, seen that the baby was alone in her womb. As the twelfth of the month approached, Danielle was finding it painful simply to go downstairs in our house. It wasn't something she couldn't endure, but it was an experience whose only equivalent was the twins' pregnancy. The day began at six thirty. At ten thirty in the morning, Danielle would willingly have called it a day. Needless to add that on Sundays, she went to Mass in a taxi. So we expected the baby would come soon. On the twelfth, Baby had not yet arrived.
As the new term began that week, I gave my students some work to do in order to be free for the impending birth. Yet the week ended without Baby coming. In a little more than a week, I had to go to Québec City for a two day session on a governmental grant comity for scientific journals. Danielle and I were getting fidgety.
The week was ending. It was Friday, the 22nd and I should leave on Tuesday. Still no news from Baby. My students' papers were coming in. I would be dearly at a loss for time.
Danielle woke up. It was only 10:20 in the evening. In her state of physical exhaustion, she felt this was the middle of the night. — I was watching television in the living room. — Her bed was wet. The amniotic sac had ruptured.
She came out of our room. She smiled and announced that Baby was coming.
Danielle phoned Mrs Pelletier, who arrived a half hour later. She was briefed on the needs of the family, then mother and father were off by taxi to the hospital.
Ever since the birth of our twins, we had chosen a private room for Danielle. Public medicare paid the basic service; the difference for a semi-private room was covered by the teachers' union medical insurance plan, and we foot there rest of the bill. For five days, we could offer our Queen Bee a perfect rest with a chance to breast-feed Baby in peace.
Danielle was admitted, prepared for bed, shaved, and we waited. And waited. Nothing happened. Not a single contraction. She finally fell asleep in her bed while I droused uncomfortably in an arm-chair. At about two in the morning, as there was still no sign of contractions, a nurse took pity on the father and led him to a sofa in another room, where sleep became a restful experience.
Six in the morning: no news. I left for home to wake the children, explain their mother's absence and give them breakfast. Everyone was excited.
I was back at Danielle's side by 9:30. Baby had really managed to disrupt our best laid plans. Our family doctor had warned us that he would be out of town from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening. Therefore a colleague of his was now speaking with Danielle. He told me that there were still no contractions. If Baby didn't show any signs of coming by himself there would be need of a caesarean. Because the amniotic liquid had gone, the uterus would now press upon the baby's placenta and umbilical cord and his oxygen could be endangered. Since Danielle was in her eleventh pregnancy and ninth child birth (two miscarriages, eight singles and one twins), the doctor did not dare use a drug that provoked artificial contractions for fear that her uterus was threadbare and might rupture. He prescribed an enema and walking in the hope that her natural contractions might still come. She had till four in the afternoon. After that, it would be surgery.
"But, why aren't there any contractions?"
"Maybe the baby is so big that he is extending the uterus beyond its possibility of contracting. It needs a bit of free muscle in order to pull itself together."
The doctor left. Danielle and I looked helplessly at each other. Menacing dark clouds had cut off the sunlight in which we had bathed. Caesareans were for others, not for us. It had seemed matter-of-fact, for the doctor. It was no doubt matter of fact. But a caesarean is more than just a simple operation. It is the beginning of the end. The beginning of the end of casual and free inloveness. A caesarean is a weakening of the uterus, for life, for dear life. — Danielle and I were near one another and yet pulled apart by a dramatic event we couldn't control.
* * *
The surgeon came by that morning and expressed the hope that Danielle would not be needing his services.
Early afternoon, he came back. It was becoming evident that his services would be required. He spoke softly to Danielle, in a heartfelt manner, with admiration and concern for her. He explained to Danielle how precious she was for her family. She was now becoming the mother of ten children. She owed it to herself, she owed it to the children, she owed to her husband, to contracept.
"It'll be simple matter for me, once I have taken the baby out, to tie your fallopian tubes."
He admitted that otherwise she could still have another child or two, or more. But each pregnancy would be risky, he warned. As the new baby grew, he would stretch the uterus and risk tearing it where it had previously been cut, which could be fatal for her and for her baby, and distressing for her loved ones.
Granted, he had once delivered a baby from a mother who had a seventh caesarean. The uterus was so thin that some of the baby's hair stuck out of the sac. Granted, in another case, an expected caesarean had turned out to be a natural birth as the baby was faster than the doctors. Granted, there were possibilities. But could Danielle run the risk? Think of the price, if not for herself, at least for those she loved and who dearly needed her.
Danielle heard all this. But, inside her mind, she saw our love and knew what the doctor was saying was far beneath it. She couldn't, she wouldn't let us go that low.
"There are natural ways to avoid a pregnancy," she answered.
"But they are terribly difficult to practice," the doctor objected.
"If others have learned them, we shall be able to do the same."
For a brief instant the doctor's expression changed from concern to a scornful disbelief. Then he resumed a professional countenance and suggested Danielle talk it over with her husband before making a decision.
"It's not necessary," she assured him. "The answer is no."
He recognised that Danielle was the boss and departed with comforting words.
Her determination was never in doubt but Danielle felt a sinking feeling. She felt that a lesser availability for her husband would make her lose his daily warmth and affection, which were her lifeline.
* * *
I conceded that Danielle had given the only acceptable answer, yet I also felt the sinking feeling. How can a man desire his beloved at the risk of being her murderer? And how can a man forgo desiring his beloved? Even as I was saying "yes" to our "no", I felt as if Danielle was slipping away from me. And I couldn't say my turmoil. I refused to torture her feelings at a time when a correct decision was so hard to express. The surgeon had tried to play me against my beloved. I wouldn't betray her.
As the clock ticked, it became evident that Baby would soon be there. This distraction raised our spirits towards the pleasurable expectation. — If there was the possibility, would I accept to be present at a caesarean done with local anaesthesia?
"Never," I shuddered. "I do not want to watch a doctor cut open my wife. Make it a full anaesthesia."
Danielle regretfully acquiesced.
* * *
At four in the afternoon, we told the doctor we were ready for the caesarean. At 4:45, Danielle was taken to the operating room, and I went out to sup at a Chinese restaurant with a celibate colleague from our department of philosophy. This was the best way to distract myself from the operation.
It was strange and pleasant to have Baby arrive according to our time-table rather than his. I could eat my meal calmly and then come back to see whether we had succeeded in our "family planning" and if Hél ne brought the children up to an equal count of five boys and five girls. Fretting for Danielle was useless. We faced necessity and we made the best we could out of it though, in fact, I suppose all my emotions were merely anaesthetised inside me.
I arrived at the hospital at 6:20, and met the doctor, who had assisted the surgeon. He was leaving. Danielle was still in the capable hands of the surgeon. The doctor congratulated me for being the father of the biggest baby he had ever seen: "It's a boy. He weighs ten pounds ten ounces!"
I couldn't readily believe him. I wondered whether he was joking about the weight. After all, Richard was the tenth child and the brother of a ninth child who had weighed nine pound nine ounces. The coincidence was too much. Yet the joke was a fact. And Richard was twenty three inches long, a well proportioned big baby boy.
The doctor told us later that he doubted whether such a big baby could have been born without a caesarean even if Danielle had contractions. Danielle and I concluded that the absence of contractions had been a tenderness of the Lord towards us. The operation would have been physically and psychologically far harder on us if it had had to be decided on the spur of the moment and after a long session of exhausting labour.
When I arrived at her room, I found that Danielle was not yet back from the recovery room. So I went to the infants' nursery to see our big boy. He resembled baby Jean-Paul a lot. I returned to find Danielle being delicately transferred from stretcher to bed. She was pale but happy. She was so pale, we were told later, because of an unexpected loss of blood when Richard's foot had ruptured one of her arteries. But the surgeon had been quick and all was now fine. Danielle had not seen Richard yet, so I went back to the nursery with our Polaroid camera and shot him three times. Danielle swooned feebly as she looked upon her son's photographs. I left one with her and took the other two home for the children to relish.
* * *
A caesarean meant that Danielle, wife and mother, must stay seven or eight days in hospital rather than five. Everyone in the family groaned, but we had to live with it. Mrs Pelletier agreed to stay with us on weekdays till Danielle could come home and had recovered.
From Monday evening to Wednesday evening, I had the grants' committee meetings in Québec City. On returning, Thursday morning, I entered Danielle's hospital room to find her bed was slightly raised in order to allow her legs to be elevated. She was suffering from phlebitis in her left leg. As she was not allowed to walk, her stomach could heal with lesser pain. But she wouldn't be coming home this week.
Danielle was breast-feeding Richard with success. If she breast-feed him for eight or nine months as she had done with our last babies, she would be infertile during that time, which would allow us to resume conjugal intimacy and lessen our stress during the following months when it was out of question to risk having another child. This would push further away the time of risk arising from the uncertainties of learning Danielle's natural rhythm. We were easing into our role of prudent spouses.
We now had six boys and four girls. Richard had unbalanced our family, we joked. If it were true that we might risk two more caesareans in the future, maybe we could slip in two more girls and make it an even dozen.
But our family doctor had returned. He was firm: absolutely no child before one year. The uterus needed time to heal. It wasn't simply a matter of Danielle's life (as if such a matter could be simple) but also that of our child. As for breast-feeding infertility, it was unsafe and mustn't be tried. Intrauterine devices (I.U.D.s) were unsafe because of Danielle's uterine scar. The pill was unsafe because of Danielle's health: didn't she have a blood clot? It was better to use condoms.
"We do not want any contraceptives," Danielle insisted.
"Then you must not have any intercourse," the doctor answered.
And we were both frozen by the same chill we had felt on the day the caesarean had been announced.
Danielle and I kept our inner feelings each to himself till we had mastered them.
During the following days, I searched in the Church's teachings for the smallest loop-hole that I could plunge through. There was none. Pope Paul VI was explicit in his encyclical Humanae Vitae. He had spoken "in virtue of the mandate entrusted unto him by Christ". He said abortion evidently "must absolutely be excluded as legitimate means of birth regulation", but included with it also "direct sterilisation, momentary or permanent, of man as well as woman" and "all action that, either in view of the conjugal act, in its unfolding, or in the development of its natural consequences, that would intend to render procreation impossible, be it as a goal or as a means." It was a mouthful, but especially significant. Paul VI added that this prohibition was still mandatory even if one felt that bypassing it would allow "to save individual, family or social goods".
There was no way around. I did concoct objections, none original, and I felt unfortunate to be able to answer them.
Thus, sex life pursues many goals. Some are more important than others. No one could accuse us of being egotistic and refusing to give life. We now had ten children to prove the contrary. Hadn't we done our share? Couldn't we keep the warmth of intercourse and forgo fertility? — Yet, this wasn't a matter of our commitment to the children. It was a matter of commitment to ourselves. We could not accept loving each other outside of God's commandments.
But God wants us to be in love. He can't want us to be separated. It's not proper to sacrifice our warmth and affection because of a harsh prohibition. — Yet, aren't all of God's prohibitions felt to be harsh in moments of trial? This is what Christ experienced during his Passion when he asked his Father, if it was possible for him to forgo his torture and death. Then he added: "Not my will but yours." Also, the Apostle Paul begged God three times to be freed of a "thorn" in his flesh, an act of Satan keeping him from pride, and God's answer was: "My grace is all you need; it is in weakness that my power is the greatest." After all, doesn't faith mean trust, and trust is expressed in times of trial not in times of ease.
But, if God has fathered Nature and Nature usually makes a woman infertile during breast-feeding, wouldn't it be following the laws of Nature to use contraceptives in order to make sure Nature's possible imperfections are prevented? — I knew the answer to that one. Intercourse is a free act. There can be no fear of Nature going wrong if we do not go wrong, if we do not take the risk of intercourse.
But some say that making love is a psychological necessity in the same way fertility or infertility are biological necessities. — We knew this was stupid and mean. Should we accept that our freely given selves in our conjugal fusion simply meant that we couldn't help doing it? There is no freedom, therefore no love, in that "dirty" idea.
During this time, Danielle was finding solace and enlightenment in John Paul II's Apostolic Exhortation "On the Family" which was hot off the presses. As pertained to our difficulty, he wrote: "When the spouses, having recourse to contraception, separate these two meanings [union and procreation] that God the creator has inscribed in the being of man and woman as the dynamism of their sexual communion, they act as ‘arbitrators’ of God’s intention; they ‘manipulate’ and debase human sexuality––and with it themselves and their married partner–– by altering its value of ‘total’ self-giving. Thus, the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraceptuion, by an objectively contradictory language, namely that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life, but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.
When instead, by means of recourse to periods of infertility, the couple respect the inseperable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings of human sexuality, they are acting as ‘ministers’ of God’s plan and they benefit from their sexuality according to the original dynamism of ‘total’ self-giving, without manipulation or alteration.
[…] The choice of natural rhythms involves accepting the cycle of the person, that is the woman, and thereby accepting dialogue, reciprocal respect, shared responsibility, and self control. To accept the cycle and to enter into dialogue means to recognize both the spiritual and corporal character of conjugal communion, and to live personal love with its requirement of fidelity. In this context the couple comes to experience how conjugal communion is enriched with those values of tenderness and affection which constitute the profound nature of human sexuality down to its physical dimension...."
Needless to add, that in our feelings of estrangement and distress, these words were largely beyond our perception. But they were the words God was giving us at that moment, and we were thankful for what we understood and believed what we did not understand.
Both the surgeon and the family doctor came by again to care for mother, children and spouse, that is to suggest contraception. They were polite, respectful, well-intentioned. Their concern for Danielle was genuine. They were filling the place deserted by so many priests of God. Thank God for John Paul II.
The surgeon and the family doctor failed.
* * *
On February 10th I wrote to a friend in Virginia:
Dear Van,
[...] Danielle is finally home. She arrived Monday afternoon. Though everyone was forewarned, the first day was hard for everyone. Our psychological restraints gave way. We all wanted to have Mom for each of us, etc. There were tantrums, crying, acting out of sorts, etc. But, this morning, things seem to be getting back on track.
"Saturday afternoon, a wonderful Benedictine monk, a former student of mine, ordained priest two years ago, will come to see us (with the permission of his Superior). Sunday, he will baptise Richard Benedict. We added Benedict so that our friend's Benedictine community, who has been praying for us through the present ordeal, will be obliged to keep interceding for our dear Richard...
What will the future of our family be? Will Danielle bear other children? We will first wait for the results of the test of her uterus in three months, to see how it has healed. We will then have to find out what are the risk statistics and what we think of them. We will pray God to enlighten us. We may be content to work within the natural rhythm method and remain open to an accidental pregnancy, however much we dislike the thought that a child could be an accident rather than a deliberate expression of love. For the moment, Danielle and I will be impassioned betrothed, affectionate to the limit...
And we are proud that Richard is, as the modern saying goes, a Ten. He was born three times ten. He now weighs eleven pounds. He is for life the Ten of the family.
Yours in His Mercy,
Georges-
