Ten Fingers and Ten Toes

One of the things I love best about Hank is that when we found out I was pregnant with a girl he smiled and said, "Good. I'm glad she'll have you to raise her as a feminist." Always the back-talkin wife I am, I countered with, "Well, if we were having a boy I would raise him to be a feminist too. Whatever gender our child is she or he will be raised as a humanist and treat all people fairly and with dignity."

Hank smiled because he knew my voice was not getting louder because I was ranting at him. He understands my sensitivities toward the issue of gender and that I was actually yelling at my dad, no matter that Dad was forty miles away.

During one of the many times my mom discussed with me whether or not she should divorce my dad, she mentioned to me that he had cried when I was born. For a split second I was touched. I had never seen my dad cry. Mom claims she saw him cry when his mom died, but I must have been staying the night with my friend Lisa or something because I never saw tears leave his eyes.

I had assumed the tears in his eyes had started to freeze when he got his first job in the slaughterhouse, froze up even more when he was shipped overseas during World War II to clean up the wreckage (and bury the bodies) when he was drafted just as the war was ending. And I thought for sure Dad's tears had frozen entirely when he was only twenty-two and discovered his father's dead body in the shower. He was only forty-eight. One year younger than Murray was when he drank himself to death. Dad says he had a heart attack from only eating pork products since he worked in the cattle section of the slaughterhouse. Of course I need to put a psychological spin on everything, so when my dad told me about finding his dad dead, I asked him if it was when his mom had left him. He said, "Yeah, it was a couple of days after that." Then I asked him if his dad had any bottles lying around. Dad said, "Of course he did. They were all over the house. When were they not all over the house?" It reminded me of the time when my dad refused to bail out Murray when he robbed a car wash. "I've done my share of picking up drunks. I learned how to drive a car when I was thirteen so the bartender could call home and tell me to come pick up my old man or else he'd end up in the gutter again." I thought about these things whenever Dad would act in a particularly asshole-ish way.

So when Mom told me Dad cried when I was born, I thought, oh how sweet. I was probably not much older than six or seven. Maybe eight, old enough to know that tears can also be joyful and not just angry or sorrowful. But then she gave me a funny look, like, "You don't get it, do you?"

My stomach sank. "Were they happy tears or sad tears?" I asked.

My mom looked down at her coffee mug I much later found out she kept her pop in so we wouldn't ask for any since we thought she just had coffee - yuck. "No, punkin. He was sad. He wanted a boy. Your Dad never got a chance to have the son he always wanted."

I was confused. "What about Walt and Murray?" Mom spaced off across the room and said in a quiet voice, "I don't think they turned out to be the kinds of sons Calvin wanted." She came too, took a drink of her pop and said, "He wants someone to carry on the family name."

I really didn't get it. "What's that mean?

"Well, when a man and a woman marry, the woman takes the man's last name," Mom started.

"Like you're a Spencer now instead of a Kessler or a McMurray?" I asked.

"Yes. Just like that."

"But I don't ever have to get married. I can stay a Spencer my whole life and then Daddy won't have to worry about the family name." I was thrilled that I had so easily come up with the best solution to this problem.

Mom laughed and said what she always said when I said something similarly brilliant, "I suppose."

Mom also told me that the day Aunt Lois, who had three sons but no daughters, came to visit me in the hospital, as soon as she picked me up she started laughing and crying at the same time, saying, "Oh, what a beautiful baby girl! I always wanted a baby girl!"

Maybe it was the no time for episiotomy stitches or the hemorrhoids or the postpartum hormones talking, but my mom told them both off, "Would you two quit it? Calvin's over there in the corner slumped over like it's the end of the world, moping because he didn't get a boy. Now you're thrilled only because she's a girl. Can't you both see she has ten fingers and ten toes and she's a perfectly health baby? Who cares if she's a boy or a girl. She's a healthy baby!"

Man, I would have done anything to see that. Mom hardly ever tells someone off, let alone her husband and her sister-in-law/best friend. I guess I was there, in Aunt Lois' arms, taking it all it. Actually in a weird way I've heard the story so many times it feels like I really do remember being there.