Murfreesboro
By Hart Christopher Vetter
July 15, 2023
July 15, 2023
The most inconceivable moment of my life was being in that delivery room.
Hearing the sudden, vibrant, shrill blare of my baby son makes it real. A new life bursting on the scene of the world, like a cosmic event, Here I am, deal with it!
How totally unimaginable, me, a father. Then, soon, holding this freshly minted, mopped-up, delicate little human. Seeing his mother’s exhausted, accomplished, sweetest smile. Seeing the tears on the baby’s other dad as mine begin flowing as well. And all I can do is hold and gingerly hug this precious, bundled joy named Marcus until the nurse gently takes over.
Coming over from Europe as a young man, I was still in the closet. There was a convenience in being far re-moved. It made for a clean escape from extended family get-togethers and tired questions as to when I’d settle down and start a family. On visits once or twice a year, mostly there, sometimes here, I found it easy to neutralize persistent nosiness with ambiguity.
Following, finally, in my late twenties, was the slowest, tedious coming out, to my mother first, with whom I always felt closest. No matter the distance. There were hurtful moments of agony, infuriating, misguided attempts to pinpoint a cause, but soon some liberating relief was allowed to sprout.
Then, a handful of years later, I found my proverbial one and only, David. I wasn’t worried in the least if my folks would like him when we flew over to visit. They saw he could cook and fix things. He spoke the language some and loved German food and even more the beer. Of course he was willkommen with open arms.
Before long, David and I decided to pursue the path of surrogacy. It took detective work, patience with pitfalls and plenty of hurry-up-and-wait. Finally, in Tennessee, of all places, I came across the perfect mom for the purpose and beyond, Ramona. It was like finding a jewel in a haystack: smart and special, giver of a most wondrous, life-sustaining gift.
Murfreesboro Medical Center, Baptist Women’s Pavilion: two dads, elated, quietly tolerated — who’d have ever thought?
Suddenly, we’re called in from the waiting room. There’s complications, we’re told. Respiratory distress, a collapsed lung. A quick decision needed, piercing a tube into the tiny chest cavity to ensure oxygen supply. Done. Options are few. A ventilator aiding the air intake. It is sheer agony to witness as his upper body writhes for air in the ICU.
There won’t be news for hours. They feel he’s stabilizing.
We’re at the motel, David and I — feeling distraught is a shockingly small step from elated. He phones his mom who’ll fly in from Florida the next morning.
I’m one of those who has to work hard at staying composed when there’s disconcerting health news to share. My voice turns unreliable, tends to break, as I try to bring a disturbing message across, in a phone call or in person. As if I’m begging for a hug, and I’m not too much the hugging kind.
I stand outside our motel room, second floor, in a walkway with a railing under an overhang overlooking a smallish parking lot. I dial the long access code on my cellular phone, enter the pass code, that’s how we used to do it in 1999, and then the long distance number, calling my parents in Germany.
I reach my mom, barely holding up as I tell her about the new baby and his valiant struggle. I hear her breathing, as if she needs to collect her strength.
This is God’s punishment, she says and it hits me like some crazed, spewing oracle.
I struggle to catch my breath, replaying what I've just heard. She’s never ever been overt about things religious.
I hear myself yelling, If that’s how you feel… Should just hang up? I scrounge for ways to temper my anger that’s coming to an instant boil. I need your help, I plead in a strangled whisper, repeating, If that’s how you feel… There’s a threat dangling like an axe, mid-swing. …then we’ve got nothing anymore to talk about, I say.
She says something like, I’m sorry. For what exactly I can’t decipher.
Talk to you tomorrow, I say with the harshness of a slap, as in, last call.
I disconnect. I cling to the banister. I am shaking. I feel like screaming out loud. Yet I don’t.
I won’t even tell David, not quite sure why. Is it ashamed I feel or wounded or just not wanting to add to this enormous worry that occupies our hearts?
Incidentally, inexplicably, I’ve always been able to locate my inner foundation, unafraid of appealing to a higher authority. A comforting practice, at this moment in time even to my agnostic other half.
Later we meet with the doctor and staff in his office. He lays out the medical landscape. Will our baby live, neither of us dares to ask. Chances are very good, the doctor says without us prodding. What about all the scans and X-rays he’s meanwhile undergone, such burden on a tiny body? The resilience of a little life, I assure you, he says, it’s astonishing, amazing really, trust me: your son will be fine with no lingering effects whatsoever from these moments. I’ve seen it many times, he says, but first we need to work diligently to get him over the hump. Don’t let all the tests and machinery scare you. They just tell us what’s going on and assist in the recovery. You’ll see, he’ll be fine in no time.
He offers us a room in his house to stay for free, since we’re all the way from New Jersey and had planned on a quick in-and-out. Quite a gesture of compassion and grace. We’ve already extended at the motel.
One of us at a time is allowed in the ICU at crib side through the night, masked and in sanitized hospital scrubs. We take turns. The nurses are sweet and professional showing us how to best bottle-feed him, fully mindful of the tubes and instrument wiring. It’s a slow process. We report back how much the baby ate, if the baby ate. It becomes a quiet competition as to which dad is succeeding the most.
By mid afternoon the next day I call Europe. The anguish has made me rigid. Confronting condemnation, when all I need is honest concern, has hardened my resolve. This may be the end of the road, the cutting of the one crucial, umbilical lifeline I’ve ever known. I’m again, oddly, outside our motel room, nervous like hell, on the second floor walkway, the small parking lot below. My voice is firm, my mother’s emotional, halting, genuinely concerned. How is your son? You will be such a great dad.
Your grandson, I say, he’s a fighter. He’s beautiful. It’s a pain to make him eat.
I wish I lived closer to be with you guys, she says, to help, to be there. You know, I’m sometimes slow to grapple with a new situation, she says, but I come around, I always have. I’m sorry. All will be good, it’s my wish from the heart.
And I sense that there won’t have to be a temporary or permanent freeze that I was dead-set-ready to endure if that’s what it took. The old world, my one home country, my birth family will remain a welcoming, open-armed presence.
The doctor’s assessment is proved right. The baby improves rather quickly. No more tubes or excessive monitoring.
The two dads and one grandma spend time with Ramona, the birth mom, and her three daughters. There’s forever-gratefulness and laughter, now, amid retreating concerns.
Each dad is given time to bond with the new life in a private room on a bed, baby face and unclothed upper body on naked chest. It’ll help establish a lifelong link. The nurses are all smiles and delighted in the picture of health that they helped achieve.
And soon there’s the all-clear. After a week, I’m driving us north, on snowy Virginia roads. The buckled spouse holds onto the travel crib that sits wedged firmly on the floor of the backseat, our treasure safely tugged. David admonishes me whenever my speed comes close to the posted limit.
Our first night in charge as parents finds us in a kingsize bed at a nice hotel in Roanoke, starting out with baby Marcus in the middle. But we’re too concerned to smother, so we lay him in the pristine crib that gets rolled in and placed at the foot of our bed. We’re all exhausted and sleep as deeply as we can. Just one feeding during the night.
Visiting the old country two years later, the toddler delights in pushing his stroller, in particular over the bumps of a cobbled road. Marcus is rarely a passenger, but prefers to captain his carriage with aplomb and curiosity.
And his Omi, considerably slowed by Parkinson’s by then, sways her grandson in her lap in the kitchen of my youth. Familie, she says, smiling a knowing smile at him and at me and my man, nodding, as if realizing that we’re well equipped to carry on, carry on...
Hearing the sudden, vibrant, shrill blare of my baby son makes it real. A new life bursting on the scene of the world, like a cosmic event, Here I am, deal with it!
How totally unimaginable, me, a father. Then, soon, holding this freshly minted, mopped-up, delicate little human. Seeing his mother’s exhausted, accomplished, sweetest smile. Seeing the tears on the baby’s other dad as mine begin flowing as well. And all I can do is hold and gingerly hug this precious, bundled joy named Marcus until the nurse gently takes over.
Coming over from Europe as a young man, I was still in the closet. There was a convenience in being far re-moved. It made for a clean escape from extended family get-togethers and tired questions as to when I’d settle down and start a family. On visits once or twice a year, mostly there, sometimes here, I found it easy to neutralize persistent nosiness with ambiguity.
Following, finally, in my late twenties, was the slowest, tedious coming out, to my mother first, with whom I always felt closest. No matter the distance. There were hurtful moments of agony, infuriating, misguided attempts to pinpoint a cause, but soon some liberating relief was allowed to sprout.
Then, a handful of years later, I found my proverbial one and only, David. I wasn’t worried in the least if my folks would like him when we flew over to visit. They saw he could cook and fix things. He spoke the language some and loved German food and even more the beer. Of course he was willkommen with open arms.
Before long, David and I decided to pursue the path of surrogacy. It took detective work, patience with pitfalls and plenty of hurry-up-and-wait. Finally, in Tennessee, of all places, I came across the perfect mom for the purpose and beyond, Ramona. It was like finding a jewel in a haystack: smart and special, giver of a most wondrous, life-sustaining gift.
Murfreesboro Medical Center, Baptist Women’s Pavilion: two dads, elated, quietly tolerated — who’d have ever thought?
Suddenly, we’re called in from the waiting room. There’s complications, we’re told. Respiratory distress, a collapsed lung. A quick decision needed, piercing a tube into the tiny chest cavity to ensure oxygen supply. Done. Options are few. A ventilator aiding the air intake. It is sheer agony to witness as his upper body writhes for air in the ICU.
There won’t be news for hours. They feel he’s stabilizing.
We’re at the motel, David and I — feeling distraught is a shockingly small step from elated. He phones his mom who’ll fly in from Florida the next morning.
I’m one of those who has to work hard at staying composed when there’s disconcerting health news to share. My voice turns unreliable, tends to break, as I try to bring a disturbing message across, in a phone call or in person. As if I’m begging for a hug, and I’m not too much the hugging kind.
I stand outside our motel room, second floor, in a walkway with a railing under an overhang overlooking a smallish parking lot. I dial the long access code on my cellular phone, enter the pass code, that’s how we used to do it in 1999, and then the long distance number, calling my parents in Germany.
I reach my mom, barely holding up as I tell her about the new baby and his valiant struggle. I hear her breathing, as if she needs to collect her strength.
This is God’s punishment, she says and it hits me like some crazed, spewing oracle.
I struggle to catch my breath, replaying what I've just heard. She’s never ever been overt about things religious.
I hear myself yelling, If that’s how you feel… Should just hang up? I scrounge for ways to temper my anger that’s coming to an instant boil. I need your help, I plead in a strangled whisper, repeating, If that’s how you feel… There’s a threat dangling like an axe, mid-swing. …then we’ve got nothing anymore to talk about, I say.
She says something like, I’m sorry. For what exactly I can’t decipher.
Talk to you tomorrow, I say with the harshness of a slap, as in, last call.
I disconnect. I cling to the banister. I am shaking. I feel like screaming out loud. Yet I don’t.
I won’t even tell David, not quite sure why. Is it ashamed I feel or wounded or just not wanting to add to this enormous worry that occupies our hearts?
Incidentally, inexplicably, I’ve always been able to locate my inner foundation, unafraid of appealing to a higher authority. A comforting practice, at this moment in time even to my agnostic other half.
Later we meet with the doctor and staff in his office. He lays out the medical landscape. Will our baby live, neither of us dares to ask. Chances are very good, the doctor says without us prodding. What about all the scans and X-rays he’s meanwhile undergone, such burden on a tiny body? The resilience of a little life, I assure you, he says, it’s astonishing, amazing really, trust me: your son will be fine with no lingering effects whatsoever from these moments. I’ve seen it many times, he says, but first we need to work diligently to get him over the hump. Don’t let all the tests and machinery scare you. They just tell us what’s going on and assist in the recovery. You’ll see, he’ll be fine in no time.
He offers us a room in his house to stay for free, since we’re all the way from New Jersey and had planned on a quick in-and-out. Quite a gesture of compassion and grace. We’ve already extended at the motel.
One of us at a time is allowed in the ICU at crib side through the night, masked and in sanitized hospital scrubs. We take turns. The nurses are sweet and professional showing us how to best bottle-feed him, fully mindful of the tubes and instrument wiring. It’s a slow process. We report back how much the baby ate, if the baby ate. It becomes a quiet competition as to which dad is succeeding the most.
By mid afternoon the next day I call Europe. The anguish has made me rigid. Confronting condemnation, when all I need is honest concern, has hardened my resolve. This may be the end of the road, the cutting of the one crucial, umbilical lifeline I’ve ever known. I’m again, oddly, outside our motel room, nervous like hell, on the second floor walkway, the small parking lot below. My voice is firm, my mother’s emotional, halting, genuinely concerned. How is your son? You will be such a great dad.
Your grandson, I say, he’s a fighter. He’s beautiful. It’s a pain to make him eat.
I wish I lived closer to be with you guys, she says, to help, to be there. You know, I’m sometimes slow to grapple with a new situation, she says, but I come around, I always have. I’m sorry. All will be good, it’s my wish from the heart.
And I sense that there won’t have to be a temporary or permanent freeze that I was dead-set-ready to endure if that’s what it took. The old world, my one home country, my birth family will remain a welcoming, open-armed presence.
The doctor’s assessment is proved right. The baby improves rather quickly. No more tubes or excessive monitoring.
The two dads and one grandma spend time with Ramona, the birth mom, and her three daughters. There’s forever-gratefulness and laughter, now, amid retreating concerns.
Each dad is given time to bond with the new life in a private room on a bed, baby face and unclothed upper body on naked chest. It’ll help establish a lifelong link. The nurses are all smiles and delighted in the picture of health that they helped achieve.
And soon there’s the all-clear. After a week, I’m driving us north, on snowy Virginia roads. The buckled spouse holds onto the travel crib that sits wedged firmly on the floor of the backseat, our treasure safely tugged. David admonishes me whenever my speed comes close to the posted limit.
Our first night in charge as parents finds us in a kingsize bed at a nice hotel in Roanoke, starting out with baby Marcus in the middle. But we’re too concerned to smother, so we lay him in the pristine crib that gets rolled in and placed at the foot of our bed. We’re all exhausted and sleep as deeply as we can. Just one feeding during the night.
Visiting the old country two years later, the toddler delights in pushing his stroller, in particular over the bumps of a cobbled road. Marcus is rarely a passenger, but prefers to captain his carriage with aplomb and curiosity.
And his Omi, considerably slowed by Parkinson’s by then, sways her grandson in her lap in the kitchen of my youth. Familie, she says, smiling a knowing smile at him and at me and my man, nodding, as if realizing that we’re well equipped to carry on, carry on...