Loser

Last September I entered an essay contest themed "When Did You First Realize You Are An Adult?"  And guess what...I didn't win!  That's okay.  I was expecting that, although I will admit that as January 3rd past without a congratulatory email from the editors of Real Simple, I was a teeny bit heartbroken.  I mean, I think anyone who submits anything creative and heartfelt to be judged by strangers is a little dissapointed when it doesn't win, even when one is expecting to lose.  And the pain is compounded when you know your essay is good.  But, it had been a long time since I'd written anything, and at least I tried, and it was fun and a good creative exercise for me, especially over this past summer when Eve was still so little and we didn't much.   Ut's an annual contest, so maybe this year will be the winner.  Below is my essay.  I know it looks long. but it is a short read, honestly.  It's up to you!

Eve, the Beginning

By Renée Barkume Peterson

The first time it happened was in Target, as I stood gazing in slack-jawed wonder at the shiny blue housing of a vacuum: my first “adult moment.”

Adulthood, by definition, is a biological or cultural standard shared within an individual’s community signifying maturation—a girl starts menstruating, a boy silently endures corporeal mutilation, a teenager becomes old enough to vote.  Ultimately however, the definition of adulthood is as complicated and individual as the person to which it is applied. 

It wasn’t until flipping through the pages of Real Simple that various adult moments distilled into clear focus and I realized—I am an adult!  The fact that I had to stop and contemplate the possibility sent simultaneous waves of juvenile horror and smug self-satisfaction through my brain.  As a child, adulthood was synonymous with freedom, and how I wanted to revel in that freedom! However, I had also simplified an adult into a humorless, worried, wrinkled individual—a vague future I would escape.

I married when I was twenty-one; quite young by contemporary standards.  By no means did I take my marriage as a sign of adulthood.  I considered my husband an adult—loyal, cautious, clean and three-years-older-than-me Richard.  But I was still the wild child of my teenage years, full of idealistic dreams, happy to live on our meager budget and maintain our single life social calendar.  Yes, the sudden obsession with getting a decent vacuum cleaner as a wedding gift and the unnatural desire to have a matching set of plates was “adultish,” but I was not worried.  My body still looked as young as it felt, and I had every possibility open to me. 

After graduating I took a job as a receptionist at a law firm because we needed to make money quickly before heading to Oregon for my husband’s graduate school program.  I have long dreamed of graduate school.  I wanted to earn my doctorate degree and teach college, travel, write, enjoy a comfortable level of notoriety.  But we also wanted a family, and we wanted me, the mother, at home with our children.  So I postponed my academic goals in order to support my husband as he accomplished his, working various nondescript jobs.  We moved several times before we finally settled down last year and my husband went to work, having graduated with his Master’s degree.  I began preparing to apply for graduate school when we discovered that I was pregnant with our first child.

It was raining hard when I looked at that pee-soaked plastic stick and saw the double pink lines.  We had been trying for a year to get pregnant, and I was somewhat stunned.  I was also excited, terrified, but mostly, I was conflicted: despite my desire for a child, every precious minute of my independence was going to be gone within months.  What about my life?  A discovery that was precious also enveloped me in distress.  Ironically, the moment the pregnancy test transferred from my hand to my husband’s, a bolt of lightening lit up the early morning sky and a roiling boom of thunder immediately shook the ground.  An ominous sign, for sure.

Thus began the Summer of Giving Up, despite the immense Gaining I was physically experiencing.  We bought our first house—now am I an adult?—but it just felt like a giant game of dollhouse.  It wasn’t real.  Even the baby inside of me didn’t make me feel especially grown-up, just…old. 

Our little girl was due March 17^th 2009.  At nine pm on January 26^th I began hemorrhaging from between my legs.  When I was admitted to the ER my legs and feet were so swollen they looked like grotesque sausages in socks.  My blood pressure had spiked dangerously high.  Contractions started coming every three minutes and my cervix was dilated three centimeters. I started painful back labor.  Nurses struggled to find my baby’s heartbeat on the fetal heart monitor.  Suddenly, I felt something warm and heavy pushing out of my body.  I yelled to the nurses.  My OBGYN went down and pulled out a blood clot the size of a pear.  She reached inside of me, each time coming out with fistfuls of blood clots.

Once I was stabilized my doctor put me under observation.  Up until this point, I thought that somehow, something could be done to stop my labor, fix things up, and we would wait out the rest of my pregnancy—seven weeks—just as I had planned.  But as my doctor left the room, she informed me that if my contractions didn’t stop, she would deliver the baby by cesarean.  It took me several minutes to process this statement.  Panic and fear set in.  By 11:30 pm my contractions were stronger than ever and I had lost two liters of blood.  My baby was coming, regardless that neither of us was ready.  I was whisked into the operating room.

I usually find medical procedures and the intricacies of the body fascinating, but that night I didn’t want to see or hear or know anything.  Nurses scurried, doctors shouted orders.  I laid on the operating table, focusing only on the reflection of my body on the unlit lamp above me.  I was spread out naked, arms outstretched like I was being crucified.  I watched the distorted image of a nurse slopping iodine over my belly and thighs.  A mask covered my face, and without even knowing if my baby was still alive, I lost conscienousness. 

When I awoke an hour later, I was remarkably clear-minded.  The nurse by my side asked me my baby’s name. 

“Eve.  Eve Belén Barkume Peterson.”  My husband would not tell anyone her name until I was awake and able to name her first.  Richard came in and showed me pictures of Eve on our pediatrician’s iphone.  She was breathtakingly beautiful, a truly perfect little human being.  She was born seven minutes after midnight, weighing 3 pounds, 14 ounces and measuring 17 ½ inches.

I didn’t meet Eve until that afternoon.  After pumping breast milk, vomiting, and listening anxiously to my husband’s heart-swelling descriptions of Eve, Richard finally wheeled me down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  When that incredibly tiny person—my daughter—settled into my arms, my swollen body shook and I cried.  With a tentative finger I stroked her cheek…

There is something about becoming a parent that can instantly vault a person into adulthood.  I do not think it is an instant qualification, nor is it a requirement.  But for me it was.  It took a fragile, four pound human being to escalate me into adulthood. It is not by mere virtue of the fact that Eve was born and that I am her mother, however.  I now realize that an adult is someone who not only accepts responsibility, but welcomes it, and as such, chooses to live for someone else.

My husband looked at the announcement for this essay contest and asked me if I was going to write about Eve. 

“Of course,” I said.  Then I thought about why. 

In Eve, I see every possibility for a glorious, happy life.  In Eve, I see the indescribable joy of being a family.  In Eve, I experience a love so unfathomable I cannot begin to describe its genesis and cannot contemplate an end.  She expands the love I feel for other people, for other children yet to be born.  Six months ago, I was in a hospital fighting for my life and the life of my child. I suffered blood clots, painful medications and other health issues to give my child life. And yet most days, I forget all that.  Even the seven inch scar below my belly is still surprising.

These are the days ahead of me: trips to the zoo, afternoons spent searching for bugs.  Countertops splashed with finger-paints, jam stained clothing, cloud gazing, oatmeal-covered kisses, temper tantrums, bedtime stories.  For me, enjoying the simple and innocent pursuits of a child is the core of a fulfilling adult life.  As a mother I will be able to re-experience childhood and actually appreciate the freedom that comes with youth, that same freedom that seemed so out of reach as a child. And I will enjoy it hand in hand with Eve. 

I still have dreams, ambitions, a certain kind of life I want to live.  Only now, along with the travel, the education, and the notoriety, I have someone who takes me places I’ve never dreamed of, who teaches me things I’ve never understood, and with whom I will experience not notoriety, but something far more substantial: motherhood, the opportunity to raise, teach and love the better part of myself.  I think of the absolute wonder of my own childhood and recall it warmly, thankfully, sentimentally.  But if every adult is required to give a secret password to gain entrance into the “Adults Only” clubhouse, there are many I can choose: “Stretch marks.”  “Elastic waistbands.”  “Hoover Wind Tunnel Technology.” 

Or better yet: “Mama