Tremors
I was struggling with Aquinas at my desk when Danielle entered my office (our bedroom) to state some thought going about in her mind: possibly a guess as to "whodunit" in the latest mystery we were reading, possibly to ask me what I would have for lunch or supper. Suddenly, she felt an earthquake within her unsteadying her so much that she fell-sat down on her bed. The baby had moved with a force Danielle had never felt before even in Christine's last days in the womb.
"Wow!", she said. "Tom Thumb's really at it."
When Danielle got her monthly check-up, Dr Norman squinted thoughtfully.
"The baby has turned over," he said.
Tom Thumb was now right side up, or rather wrong side up. His head was now upwards and his feet downwards. Was that bad? Not at all, said the doctor. Only he, the doctor, would have to be there at birth. Indeed, once the expulsion began, the doctor would have to intervene rapidly so that the baby did not start breathing within the womb. Else, the baby would drown in the amniotic liquid or simply suffocate. When medicine was young, when people gave birth at home and relied on amateurism, then the life of our infant would have been gravely endangered. But not nowadays. We were reassured.
The coming of our second child was soon to bring problems unknown with the first. We could not simply put Christine in the freezer while Danielle was in the maternity ward, and later when the baby had to be fed every four hours. I would of course participate, but I could not pretend I was on holiday. I had courses to follow and a thesis to write. In Fribourg, the basic stay at the hospital maternity ward was ten days and then Danielle would have to care for the baby nearly full-time during a few weeks at least. I could not afford so long a commitment to housework away from homework. Yet, the overload of housework, in Fribourg, was such that I couldn't expect Danielle to cope with it and still make a speedy recovery.
These difficulties did not deter us from the fundamental happiness and satisfaction of begetting another treasured froglet. For someone is far more precious than any something. And do not many people in various careers face up to and overcome far greater discomforts simply to make things? Still, this was a case for family planning. Not planning family to fit things, but planning things to fit family.
Then people began moving about to make things fit into our love-project. We were confounded by such generosity. First, "Gotti" offered to take Christine over to her place during Danielle's stay at the hospital. "Gotti" was everybody's aunt, in a way. She was a Germanic Swiss married to Mrs Quéloz's cousin. Unfortunately, the couple could not have a child of their own. So they looked after everyone's children when there was need. This began during the war when the Germans sent their children across the border to save them from the bombs. "Gotti" and her husband took some in and were adopted by them as family. These returned years later to visit their foster-parents and to express their gratitude. Gotti and her husband had also cared for Danielle during a few months of her first year, when Mrs Quéloz was sick in bed. So Gotti already loved Danielle in a maternal way. Since we had arrived in Fribourg, she had visited us a few times and we had reciprocated. Her offer to care for Christine was a relief and we accepted without qualms, for a better mother for our daughter could hardly be found.
Next, we received a most unexpected 'phone call from France. Marie-Thérèse, my cousin from St. Boniface, Manitoba, was touring Europe, doing odd jobs to pay for her trip. She wanted to visit us. That would be wonderful. Suddenly I thought about our needs...
"Do you expect to be working somewhere about the end of February?", I asked.
"Not really," she answered.
"How would you like to work for us when the new baby arrives?"
Marie-Thérèse thought it would be a great idea. It would also mean that she could extend her stay in Switzerland. My father-in-law offered to pay Marie-Thérèse's as a present for Tom Thumb's birth.
Our problems were gone — vanished.
There was even a cherry for the cake. Marie-Thérèse's brother and his wife had agreed to be our child's godparents. They wrote to us having decided to be present at their godchild's baptism. This would be a good time for them to visit Europe. In addition, their trip would be organised in such a way as to give priority to being there the day the baby was baptized. Which was no small matter, as the child's parents were still of the opinion that God came first, and the sooner the child could be reborn into divine life the better. This sooner-the-better could not be fixed much beforehand as the day of the birth itself was capricious. We could not expect all our children to have the Swiss precision Christine had, even if we were in Switzerland. The godparents could organise the duration of their stay in Europe, but the details of this part of their trip stood in wait for their godchild.
All these gestures surely proved the power of helpless love. A child not yet born disorganised, or rather reorganised, the actions of so many people. We were amazed and grateful.
* * *
Friday, February 20th, I was attending one of Father Paul Thomas' lectures. Danielle was at home, ironing, when she felt a slight pinch inside her tummy. Tilt! Was baby coming? When I returned home, we both wondered, smiled, hoped. In vain. The night passed with nothing like a contraction. The pinches happened with regular irregularity. We remained on standby. We alerted Gotti to be ready. Sunday came and went with nothing new, nor Monday. Tuesday, the pinching was still going on, but no contractions. Still, on Tuesday evening, we figured time must be ripe and asked Gotti to come the next day for Christine.
Wednesday, late afternoon, Christine left us for the first time in her sixteen-month life. As the door of the elevator was shutting, Christine, in Gotti's arms, suddenly realized we were abandoning her and desperately reached out for us. Then the door was shut and the elevator went down, away. Danielle and I were terribly upset. Our child had been torn away from us. We had abandoned her to a stranger. So we felt. Dejectedly, we decided to go to a restaurant. In a way, we were now free. We had wings, though weighed down by our sadness and by Danielle's vast protuberance.
We walked slowly — Danielle could do no better — up a hill a short distance from our apartment-building. There was "Le vieux chêne", the "Old Oak Tree" restaurant. Sadness walked heavily with us.
We sat down and browsed at the menu. The magic print leaped at us: "club sandwich". Was there really such a thing in Fribourg, in Switzerland, away from American hotels and from tourist lane? We remembered the club sandwiches we had with Fred and Hélène on the girls' prom night out! The clouds dispersed as we ordered this delicacy in a land of fine foods. We knew Christine would love being with Gotti; and Baby was on the way. We were in love. And happy.
Of course the club sandwiches were not exactly like those back home. But they were near enough to keep us in good spirits and to persuade us to return to the "Old Oak Tree" in the future.
Friday morning, February 27th. Danielle's pinches had begun a week ago. They were still there and Danielle felt time was certainly near for Baby's arrival. For Baby was adding weight and pressure to the pinches. That morning Danielle was due for a check-up and told Dr Nordman that she felt she should move into the maternity ward. Not yet, said the doctor. Baby's doorway was still barely opening. However, in checking, he exerted a sudden pressure that made Danielle shout in painful surprise. He then assured her that the time was nearing.
"But please wait," he added jestingly, "until after my working hours this afternoon. My patients do not like to wait an hour or two to see me."
Danielle did not wait. After lunch, it was time to head for the hospital. Danielle was quite sure, and the doctor allowed her to believe it. He had, after all, had helped Baby along with his pressure tactic that morning.
The bags had been ready for a week, and we sped to the maternity ward. This time I should be allowed to keep my wife company all through delivery, as our doctor was distinctly modern. I must admit that I did not really relish the thought. Or, rather, the thought itself was fine, but the feelings were a bit queasy. I was, in fact, scared. There would be blood and all kinds of messy stuff around. I knew this was natural, that all the liquids and flesh spurting about would simply be the baby's diving suit and survival apparatus now rendered useless. I knew it, but couldn't help feeling otherwise. This would be a novel experience. It also would be one that touched my innermost feelings towards the woman I loved and the child I cherished. And I am not good with novelties nor a master of turmoil. Still, Danielle smiled at me as her contractions began. My presence comforted her. I must not weaken. Her reassurances comforted me. As they had been for Christine, the contractions came strong and painless with Danielle breathing rhythmically and relaxing her body.
When we were settled in the delivery room, the doctor arrived, called away from his patients. I was given a damp towel to wipe Danielle's sweating brow. But I was already too far gone, numb, to do this. This task had probably been devised to keep the husband's nervousness in check. But my nervousness was of another kind.
I simply watched in a daze. So a mid-wife took over my task. As Danielle was pushing the baby during a contraction, the doctor showed me a part of Baby just edging out. He suggested this was a telling moment. But, in my inexperience, it told me nothing. At the next contraction a leg came out. The doctor gave Danielle a shot of local anaesthetic, cut into her flesh, pulled out the other leg and then the whole baby — a boy whose male pouch had been the first part to show. The baby gurgled a wet cry. Hurriedly, two mid-wives inserted a long tube into his mouth down his lungs to suck out the liquid he had already inhaled. Then they cared for him. Crowned with beads of sweat, Danielle was all smiles.
"A boy!", she proudly said. "Michel! Are you happy, Dad? We have a baby boy."
I was numbly rapturous. I had seen my child come into the world. We now had the pair. Every parent's dream come true. His gurgle worried us a bit, but the doctor's verdict soothed us: a big healthy baby boy, weighing 3 kilos 920, and measuring 52 cm — or 8 pounds, 7 ounces, and measuring 20 inches in lenght. This was quite a strapping lad.
My father would be proud to be the grandfather of a boy and my father-in-law was given the satisfaction that Michel would also have his name: Bernard.
* * *
Danielle was in a semi-private room with another woman who had given birth to a beautiful baby boy. The two mothers shared their common happiness. Yet this brought us for the first time before the drama of abortion. Luckily an aborted abortion.
Danielle's companion had had an unexpected pregnancy out of wedlock. Her reaction had been to have the child destroyed. But her man was made of sterner stuff and refused to have his child killed. He had even given the mother a good spanking to bring her to her senses. She had given in. They were married and their child was now in her arms. She would tell Danielle: "When he looks at me, I feel he is accusing me. He knows I wanted to kill him."
And, as she loved her child, she would cry.
Danielle told me privately: "I am so happy that we have done things God's way. It must be horrible to miss the tender joys of wedding, loving and giving birth that this woman has missed."
We realised that love in suffering is certainly better than suffering the absence of love. But we treasured the sweet mercy we had received from the Lord rather than the severe mercy received by that woman. Of course, all was not tears for her. In fact, her joy vastly outdid her moments of sadness.
Though severe, she had nonetheless been blessed by mercy.
There was much laughter in their room. Too much. Because of Michel's original position, he has assured his mother of a sizeable suture. Danielle's companion had given birth to a nine-pounder which also got her a good suture. So, whenever we joked, both women would break into laughter and simultaneous squeaks of pain.
* * *
This was winter in Fribourg. The higher Alps have eternal snow. But the lower country, in which we were, has the rather mild temperatures of mid-Europe. Indeed I kept my autumn coat all winter, which would have been unthinkable in polar Manitoba or Quebec.
We mocked the French when hearing the repeated and nervous announcement on their radio: "It is snowing in Paris." Motorists were being warned of this as a catastrophe. What would they have done in our native snow storms?
There was more snow in Fribourg than in Paris. Yet it was light and nothing in comparison to home. But as the Swiss had winter clothing for their winter, they also figured that their snow was real snow. So none of Danielle's relatives — who had abundantly proven their affection by visiting us regularly in more clement weather — dared to come over in deep winter.
Michel's godparents arrived the Monday after his birth. In the maternity-ward chapel, on the evening of March 2nd, Father Paul Thomas baptised Michel in the presence of his parents and godparents. Christine had been baptised five days after birth. Michel, three days.
* * *
Danielle's suture proved too weak. As she fought against, well, er, constipation — after all, "what's in a name" — her suture ruptured. The doctor blamed it on Danielle's tender skin. Danielle jokingly blamed it on the suture. But, in effect, it had to be done over again. This meant another anaesthetic, before which the usual fast to prevent nausea. Both had the effect of drying Danielle's milk before it had a chance to get started. Michel would be bottle-fed.
* * *
Marie-Thérèse arrived at our apartment two days before Danielle came home with Michel. As Marie-Thérèse was a beautitul woman and one who also dressed beautifully. Her presence while the lady of the house was away must have started some tongue-wagging. But, as she was still there when Michel and Danielle came home, it was all in vain.
Michel proved to be an altogether different baby from Christine. A part of the problem, for beginners, was probably that the milk suggested by the doctor proved to be inadequate for him. He disliked it, burped it out, had difficulties in digesting the part that stayed in, and went on regular drinking strikes. Thus he would be exhausted before the end of his drink and fall asleep on a half-empty stomach. Which meant that he would wake up after a short sleep and begin crying for more. To give him more right away solved nothing, as he rapidly went again on strike, as soon as his hunger pangs were appeased. And it would also mean irregular periods of sleep making him all the more nervous and reluctant to drink. Instead, we tried to keep him awake when it was time to drink, rubbing his temple when he fell asleep. Then we would make it an exercise in patience when he woke up and began crying at the wrong time. We gradually got him to eat and sleep with more regularity. But the strain on our will power, resistance and patience made us wholeheartedly appreciate Marie-Thér se's presence and unselfish commitment. In fact, as soon as she was committed, unselfishness was not a virtue. It was simply a fact of life. There was no time to think about one's self. In addition to Michel, the house work was still there: all of it. And Christine came back from her blissful stay with Gotti.
The inadequate milk Danielle used for Michel, because of her inexperience and her trust in the doctor's prescription, had, fortunately, no ill effect on the baby's health. Only on his weight. Our big boy soon became a skinny boy. This — to the horror of relatives and Swiss friends. In Switzerland, we soon found out, the practice was to nourish the new-born child exclusively with milk till he was six months old. In Manitoba, we had learnt that a child can start taking more and more solid foods after three weeks. Thus the child may eat less frequently, space his meals sooner, and be better rested. On the contrary, the Swiss way meant the child needed more frequent meals and the effect of the abundance of milk was an extremely fat baby that we called "Swiss babies". To our eyes, such a baby was unhealthy (far overweight) and ugly, which of course we never said to his mother. To Swiss eyes, our skinny Michel must have looled sickly, and was certainly ugly — though this part was never said to us. As Michel's doctor assured us that Michel was perfectly healthy, we brushed aside the alarmed remarks the Swiss made concerning his health.
As for the inadequacy of the milk itself, this was only a "probability", because Michel's temperament was very different from Christine's. We cannot know if he would have acted differently if he has started off with any other milk. He was a far more nervous baby than his sister. Though the milk itself may have aggravated his nervousness, there is no doubt that much of his reaction to that milk was due to his nervousness.
Marie-Thérèse stayed four weeks with us and got us on our feet again. We were winning our fight to get Michel to respect a reasonable schedule, which would allow us to take care of Christine, house and lectures. However, we couldn't make him sociable. Our pedagogy, our accumulated experience, our satisfaction as successful parents, were put to shame by our failure to get Michel into a regular schedule.
The stronger he became, the longer he could stay awake and the more unpredictable he became. Nothing we had learned in raising Christine seemed to work with him. He would suddenly begin to cry, while a moment before he had been playing silently in his chair or play-pen or, later, on the floor. Either we took him in our arms to console him, or scolded him or ignored his screams. Whichever way we chose, the result was exactly the same: he kept on screaming. We figured that we should go to him while he was in good humour and sort of tame him this way. Instead, as soon as we joined his fun, or picked him up with tender loving words, he would start screaming. Better, then, to let him be; he would still suddenly turn on the screams. He did have many good moments which is evidenced in many photographs, but his tantrums were unpredictable and we simply had no control over them. We didn't know how to help him master himself.
On one wash-day (one of those rare half-days when we could use the building's washing machine), Michel began one of his fits. As all attempts to calm him failed, Danielle was forced to leave him and go put her wash on the clothesline outside nine stories below. Suddenly, a compassionate painter, working two stories below ours, came to tell Danielle — in a faltering language, as he was a Germanic Swiss: "Your baby, he cry."
As if Danielle did not know...
* * *
Parents naturally tend to fear that their first child will be jealous when a second baby shows up. This is especially true of the "Me generation", which has been taught to find satisfaction in self rather than in selflessness. Danielle and I lived in such a fear. But it so happened that, because Danielle was overburdened with baby and housework, I logically took care of Christine. I got her up, put her on the potty, changed her diapers, dressed her, and helped her feed herself. Thus Michel did not challenge Christine's rights. Instead, he was the occasion for her to enjoy dad's nearly exclusive company. Mama was okay for the baby. But Dad was a sign of maturity. This policy was thoroughly successful. But it had its setbacks for the parents.
Danielle and I had been distracted from one another by Christine's birth, but we had been reunited firmly by our common task of caring for her. We cuddled her, adored her, discussed each and every decision pertaining to her, and boasted of her feats. Now, Danielle put the greater part of her time and energy at Michel's service, while I was taken up by Christine. In a way, we lived separate lives within the same apartment: not as a matter of wish but as a matter of necessity. Though we did some things together and shared in the same preoccupations, we went our ways a good part of the time, in addition to our already diverging main commitments to home and to studies.
That is what strongly pressured us into the Swiss system of baby-sitting. Damn the North American prejudice! We had to be able to meet freely, intimately, alone together outside our four walls. So we learnt to put the kids to bed, to ask their guardian angels to look after them, and to break loose into the night. We went for walks, for meals, for movies. Not every evening, of course. But regularly enough to reawaken the pleasure of young lovers walking hand in hand and to bring happy young parents back to the home of their sleeping angels.
* * *
During this time, I was working on my thesis. By spring, my references had been readied, my plan had been accepted in its general outline and I had begun handing over to Father Paul Thomas chapter after chapter of the first part of the thesis. Getting no reaction, I expected all was well. I was ready to make inevitable minor changes and rewritings once that part was written. After 87 pages containing an analysis of the idea of government, the general structure of the universe and the consequent definition of its "divine" government, I figured part one was ready for revision.
The winter term was ending. I went to my director's office eagerly awaiting instructions on how to carry on. I waited in the corridor for another student to leave. After which, I was greeted by Father Thomas with his usual joviality. He asked me to have a seat.
"Well," said I, "are you satisfied with the part I have given you?"
He looked at me and simply replied: "You do not expect to put that in your thesis, do you?"
That meant my eighty seven pages. I was dumfounded. What could I say? He hadn't challenged a single point of my work all the time I had done it. And now, without any suggestion as to correction here or there or revisions as to particulars, he was writing off everything. The tone of his short sentence left no place for justification on his part or need of more precise indication towards what I had to do.
I guess he was as much at a loss as I concerning the image of philosophy we could build out of the same pieces of puzzle. These two universes were simply too familiar to be opposed yet too different to be compared. It was not a matter of scholarship, though his was evidently vastly superior to mine. His could serve to help me on. It was the shattering experience of incommunicability.
When I showed my discarded work to one of my Laval professors, later on, he considered it to be an acceptable — though perfectible — piece of work. Not so for Father Paul Thomas. To him, there was simply nothing there. And I was left with nothing.
I came back to our apartment in a daze. There was nothing left of the self-assured philosopher who had come from Manitoba one year before. I still understood little of Father Paul Thomas' courses. I had failed in writing a synthesis of what I thought I understood. Danielle was as shocked as I. What were we to do? I had one more year ahead of me to bring light into this darkness.
I chose to must be better read in our common Master, Thomas Aquinas. Instead of searching those parts of his works that fitted into a given subject, I would read Aquinas himself — according to Aquinas. I would read all of Aquinas' natural theology as expounded in the first three books of his Summa Contra Gentiles. I did this all summer. Added to all I had read and studied the year that had just ended and in my Laval years, I was bound to be sufficiently read in Aquinas to make a final try at getting the elusive Ph. D. before leaving Fribourg.
* * *
Danielle and I were soon put before a crucial choice. Would we allow Christine and Michel to have a brother or sister in the near future?
We had no doubt that this would be the case in due time. Practically, we were finding out that there are only twenty-four hours in the day, no matter how many persons we were. The impression that two children would mean a forty-eight hour day was proven false. Michel's presence had of course been habit-wrecking. But that was not a drama. It was even an inducement towards selflessness and consequent fulfilment, though there was no time to reason this out in the first months after his birth. We simply grew into the fact that — contrary to what we feared — Michel's arrival did not divide our love into two halves. It merely multiplied it into two full loves and added the two more that appeared of their own: Christine's for her brother, and his for her. As for time-consuming activities, the full-time attention we had given Christine could be supplemented by Christine's attention towards Michel and his towards her.
A new brother or sister, for them both, would simply multiply affection and change the habit-patterns — each person in our growing family would have four companions instead of three. Also, another child would help us out of the inevitable temptation to compare Michel to Christine and vice-versa and would ease what could easily become an unhealthy spirit of competition.
But, was the time ripe for a new leap into life? We would leave Fribourg in slightly more than a year. A pregnancy lasts nine months. Christine and Michel's brother or sister would be very young for the return trip. Danielle and I could easily be swamped by the gruelling task of caring for a newborn at the same time as we were submerged by moving a whole family from one continent to another.
Finally, this decision had to be taken at a time we felt we were drowning under the needs of Michel's first months, added to those of surviving with Christine, housework and thesis.
The reasonable thing seemed to be to postpone the next pregnancy so that it would, at most, only slightly overlap our moving. This meant acquiring proficiency in natural birth control. We believed that loving intimacy could be expressed in moments of infertility, but never against the generosity of life. To destroy our life-giving capacity would transform our intimacy into mutual egotism, denying the mutual selflessness which is inloveness. The passions of love were meant to carry us evermore into the realm of ecstasy and not into that of insensitivity.
Dr Nordman willingly filled us in on the "thermometer method" which allowed us to ascertain Danielle's period of infertility. We were not, though, of the kind that simply goes each his way till the time comes to fulfil a total embrace. As we later coined it, we wished to live the continence of betrothed and not of divorced.
Continence was not new to us. Since our first year of marriage, we had become used to what we called our "week of continence", which did not always last a whole week. It was supposed to happen once a month, which was not always the case. But whenever we lived this experience, we found it to be a tonic for our mutual appreciation which could otherwise fall into routine and insensitivity. After all, if there is one point about passion inasmuch as it involves sensation, it is that it is a physical activity. As such, it finally falters, falls asleep, after practice. Thus a certain amount of continence within intimacy would offer a great invigoration. I would be awakened to a desirable, lovely Danielle and, as passion mounted, the language of love would soar anew, awakening Danielle's tenderness towards me. We could fall in love again and, in the happiness of companionship, tell each other the little things of life that are the language of intertwined souls. We should become silly and giddy once more, as people in first love, inattentive to reason and ready to challenge the universe.
Thus our decision to be reasonable and postpone the entry of a new lover into the world put us into a situation where we didn't give a damn about reason. We simply wished to be total lovers till the image of our love lived anew between us. And till we finally united our one flesh.
After which, we renewed our determination to become reasonable. And we slid once more into inloveness, unreasonableness, totality.
After a while, Danielle and I laughingly realised that this presumed reason was but a silly attempt to make love reasonable, as if it ever could be. In fact, we had no serious reason to withhold the floods of love. Only love itself can offer a reason to dam its passions: if, for example, some danger lurked about one of us or one of the children. But love cannot be expected to cater to the practicality of comfort. So what if there were tasks coming? Would the hustle and bustle of moving be enough reason to forgo the mystery of receiving a child in our home? There was such a disproportion between the arrival of a person for eternity and the counting our ounces of energy that we broke the dike and called forth Jean or Johanne.
