When Skies are Grey

I recently had my 7th and hopefully final miscarriage. According to Einstein, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. But when there was such a one as Sam to be had, it’s hard not to try again and again and 5 more times. The fertility doctor had told me, given my reproductive limitations; Sam was “a miracle.”

I awoke to the signs and symptoms of miscarriage on our last day at the Adirondacks; after a long drive home, I went to the ER that night. They wheeled me up to the sonogram room to see what was what but then parked me outside. As Dave and I waited, a girl who could not have been older than 16, fully pregnant and accompanied by her hooligan baby daddy was wheeled from the room and parked in the hallway next to me. She and I waited with our wheelchairs back to back like the opposite sides of a fertility coin. She was young and fruitful while my fertility was ebbing away. She whined about getting fat and enforced bed rest; I didn't need the sonogram to tell me my pregnancy was over.

Often, I think of Sam’s life as if it were it were a biography in progress. Usually parents are given a few lines of exposition before the action of a life unfolds. I worry that my few lines will be this characterization: Lesa Marie nee Quale Ferguson was an insecure, creative, disorganized woman who allowed the disappointment of her many miscarriages to make her depressed and become an embittered shadow in Sam’s young life. He reached out to his father.

I try to banish these thoughts. After I wasted many years despairing that I would never marry or own a home or have babies, I promised myself that I wouldn't let present disappointments make me a pessimist. If I had known that my future held Dave and Sam, I would have enjoyed myself more or at least not holed away in bachelor apartments with endless movies from Rain City Video. Maybe there is a future for me in which all these damn miscarriages make sense. I'm supposed to trust that…not likely. I'm just disappointed.

I hate how cruel life can be. This time, life seemed to be foreshadowing a happy outcome. Throughout my short pregnancy, I kept bumping into this friend of the family who at age forty-four had a healthy baby. The weekend we were in the Adirondacks, Sam was fascinated with our friends’ new baby. He picked her flowers, asked to hold her, gently patted her head and gave her many kisses. He would be a loving brother.

Generally when Sam and I are together, he wants to be somewhere else—with the three girls next door or at Gramma Betty’s eating cookies or in his imaginary world where he and Conor are allowed to watch the new Transformers movie together.

Maybe he likes to be elsewhere because in our little family, I'm the bad cop—the one who enforces tooth brushing and napping and not letting him whack the neighbor girls. When Sam is overtired and hits a wall, he tells me that I'm ugly and stupid. I roll with it and continue to enforce, As Sgt. Joe Friday would say, “Just doing my job, Sir”.

As this miscarriage progressed, suddenly Sam wouldn't leave my side. He threw a tantrum when Uncle Scott came to pick him up. And, he snuck away from Jen my lovely, lovely neighbor who had so generously invited him over to play. Every night, he climbed in bed with me and Dave. He snuggled flush against me. As Groucho Marx once said, “If you were any closer, I'd be in back of you.”

Up to now, Sam has rarely been needy. But then, I've never been a shadow. I’m not sure I know how to put this miscarriage thing behind me. I am sure I can’t be a shadow in Sam’s life. I guess I could start by rewriting these few lines of exposition: Lesa Marie nee Quale Ferguson was an insecure, creative, disorganized mother, who because of her many miscarriages understood fully that she had been blessed.

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Occasions

oc⋅ca⋅sion [uh-key-zhuh] –noun a special or important time, event, ceremony, celebration, etc.: Owen’s and Max’s birthdays were quite the occasions. Sophie’s first communion was quite an occasion. Bridget’s baptism was quite an occasion. Sophie and Caeley's feis in Cleveland was quite an occasion. Camping at the Adirondacks was quite an occasion. Sam’s first dance recital was quite an occasion.

I am Sam

As most parents do, Dave and I put much thought and care in naming our child. Initially, I wanted to name him Texas because I wanted a flock of children named after states; Dave wasn’t sure what name he wanted but Texas wasn’t on his list of possibilities. He liked tried and true names, such as Gordon and Brenda. He did convince me that whatever name we chose, it should be a name that could weather all ages. Texas may be a fun name for a 2 year old and maybe an 80 year old but as a 40 year old man with a family, Ol’ Tex Ferguson might have a difficult time finding and keeping a job.

I put the name Samuel on our list of possible names for many reasons not the least of which was the vision of the 40 year old handing our resumes. Dave and I agreed if we chose this name, we would call him Sam. There are many good Sams out there—Sam I am from Green Eggs and Ham, Uncle Sam, and when I was a kid, my mom called me Sam after Samantha Stevens from Bewitched. If Sam turned out to be a Yuppie, he could introduce himself as Samuel. But it was a name among many names. At the time we crossed Texas (as well as all other state names) and Brenda off our list, we still didn’t know the baby’s gender.

Then when I was five months pregnant, Gram, Scott and I took a drive out to “The Amish” (my Gram’s name for that part of Western NY) to have a piece of furniture made. We drove up to an old bat and board barn and as I got out of the car, the door of the barn flew open and a bunch of blond boys in their black hats, suspenders and bright blue shirts ran toward us. And right behind them, dressed identically, a man walked out of the barn and said, “Hello, my name is Samuel.” I knew right then without sonogram confirmation of the baby’s gender that I would have a boy and I would name him Samuel.

The weekend Sam was born, my great Aunt Pat sent me a card telling me that in the Old Testament, Samuel was born to Hannah, an older woman who had tried unsuccessfully for years to have children, she pleaded to God for a child and when she had her son, she named him Samuel because it means, “God listened.”

My infatuation with names is not always so fun for Sam, my literal minded 3 year old. I will let people call him what they will except for the racist Sambo. The people in the neighborhood tend to call him Sammy. One day he asked me, “Mama, why does Ella call me Sammy?” I told him that is how some names work and listed names you can put a y at the end of, “Billy, Paigey, Owey, Danny, Bethy…”

He stopped me from my unending list, “But, my name is just Sam.”

Dave and I may have given him his name but at some point he came into possession of it. His name’s origin is of no concern to him. It’ll be years before he understands the connections to the Old Testament or Bewitched. I may like to riff on names but that’s all fluff to him. His identity is forming and it is forming around this name—Sam, “just Sam”. Already he has marked it as his own.