They Didn't Have To

Thoughts on the helpers

Wow, I love your ring!” 

“Thanks, I do too!” I said fingering the fleur-de-lis filigree setting around a solitaire diamond that Matt gave me for our seventh anniversary. It really is the perfect ring for me, and normally I loved talking about it. But the silence already felt too long before the midwife said this. My hands were folded just above my navel as she moved the doppler over the gel covering my lower abdomen. I could barely breathe, partly afraid that if I did I would miss the sound I already knew well from my four previous pregnancies and partly… just afraid. I was thirty-six years old already, old enough for this to be considered a “geriatric pregnancy” with all the extra concern an otherwise laughable term brought. More than that, though, I knew too many stories of the silence, of what would happen next if it persisted. I thought of my friends’ tears, of how my heart had ached as I listened to them, of all that I had read. 

And just then, there it was, that steady swishing sound, my fifth baby’s heartbeat. Instantly, tears filled my eyes, and I took a deep breath. I just wanted to lie there for a good five minutes, listening to that rhythm, but all too soon, the midwife put away the doppler and wiped my belly with a paper towel. 

“Everything looks and sounds great!” she said, and I nodded. I wanted to just relax and believe her, but that long moment of quiet rang in my ears. As I sat up, I realized tears were coming down my cheeks.

“Are you okay?” she asked, and I nodded again.

“It’s just that… I guess I just wanted a little more time, you know? More time to hear or see that the baby is okay. I know it’s dumb, but I was really pretty scared just now. I had sonograms at this point with my other pregnancies, and I guess I never had to wait that long to know the baby was okay.”

“I know, but at this hospital they don’t do them at this point unless…” The midwife looked at me, thinking. We had only met for the first time about fifteen minutes earlier, and now I felt embarrassed. My baby was fine, and I was being ridiculous. “You’re not sure about your dates, right? How far along you are?” she said suddenly. I opened my mouth to tell her that while maybe I couldn’t pin down the exact time, I could probably give her a two-hour window on the exact date that this baby was conceived. But something stopped me. “Right??” she persisted. “Because I think maybe you’re measuring a little big.” She bit her lip and turned to type something into the computer. “I think we need to verify your due date with a sonogram.” 

“Um… okay,” I replied, swiping at the tears on my cheeks. And just like that, I had an appointment for a sonogram at the end of the week. By the weekend, pictures of my baby–Annalee–were hanging on the fridge. It didn’t take away all my anxiety, it didn’t guarantee a perfect outcome to the pregnancy. But somehow, it helped me breathe easier and enjoy my last pregnancy more. 

About twelve years ago, I completed the manuscript for my first book, a memoir. I immediately hated it. For a while, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but then it occurred to me: it was a MEmoir, all about me, me, me. And truth be told, I was only sort of interesting. What made my story so much better were the other people in it, the people who kept me going and showed me by example how to be a better human. 

Like the guy in a couple of my classes when I was pregnant with Jayna. I was young (so, so young), and he was older and married with two little girls of his own. Matt and I were poor (so, so poor) college/ grad students. How poor were we? Well, here’s a true story: a month before I gave birth, I bought a couple of under-the-bed storage boxes to store Jayna’s clothes and diapers creatively in our limited space. Matt asked if I really needed to spend that twenty dollars in such an extravagant way. (For what it’s worth, we laugh about this now.) 

This classmate was going to college as he worked full-time, taking classes at night, and we got to know each other over that spring semester. As the term ended, he asked if he could drop off some old baby clothes he and his wife had used. Standing there in the hand-me-down maternity shirt and shorts that were still so big I had to pin them, I nodded with wide eyes and said, “Sure!” He got our phone number and address and arranged a time to drop them off. A few days later, there he was, three big boxes of clothes for my little one. I’m pretty sure I sent him a “thank you” note, but I wonder if he knew how much that meant to us? I look back now, so many years later, at pictures of tiny Jayna in those clothes. Sure, I got new ones too from our baby shower, and I’m still grateful for those, too. But I think how easily he could have not done any of that, and I’m glad he didn’t. 

I also think about the older couple at the airport several months later when Matt left for Officer’s Candidate School in Pensacola. As I stood at the window (this was pre-9/11, when you could walk to the actual gate), Jayna’s little hand in mine as we waved to his plane, this couple asked me where he was going and for how long. When I told them, I started to cry, and without any hesitation, this man and woman I’d never met before wrapped their arms around me, telling me over and over that it was going to be alright. After a few minutes, I managed to dry my tears and walk out of the airport, believing that what they had said was true. We didn’t exchange names or phone numbers, so I was never able to thank them. But I think about them often.

Just like I think about so many others, including the woman at a Navy spouses’ meeting who, after listening to me talk about one of my concerns, said, “Well, I guess I just don’t need anyone to hold my hand!” in a tone that clearly said she thought less of me because I did. With extremely uncharacteristic calmness, I managed to answer that I didn’t usually either. But having plowed through some tough circumstances on my own, needing a little extra help was justified. Moreover, this was about a problem much bigger than me; I was genuinely trying to make things better for a lot of people. 

It’s annoying, though, how often I hear that woman’s voice in my head, even though that meeting happened almost six years ago. She gave an actual human voice to my fears that tell me I can and absolutely should do everything on my own, to only ask for help if I’m actually on fire or bleeding out with my hands tied behind my back. But the truth is, my unwillingness to accept help, to try to muddle through everything that’s not actually life-threatening alone, is grotesquely self-centered. It’s me pretending to be a lot more and better than I really am. There aren’t many times when I would actually have died without someone’s generous kindness, but my story gets so much better and more interesting when I tell about all the other people who guided me through a hard time, or committed the brave act of just standing beside me. 

I’m writing a book again, and it’s still technically a memoir. But this time, I’m making it less about me. Instead, I’m telling the stories of the people around me, how they changed and shaped my story, what they showed me about this great big beautiful world. I like it so much more. 

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I didn’t write much this summer because I had all five of my kids home for a glorious month, we took an amazing vacation, and then we had a surprise move—within Korea, about 1.5 hours from where we were living last year in Seoul. But here’s an essay I wrote that was published in July by the amazing Coffee + Crumbs. If you’re not following them yet or subscribed to their essays, I highly recommend you do! 

I also didn’t do a ton of reading over the summer, but this month I’ve been catching up now that the kids are back in school.  I read/ loved Phillip Yancey’s Where the Light Fell. I also absolutely adored Andrew Peterson’s Adorning the Dark. The only read-aloud for the kids all summer was The Vanderbeekers Lost and Found, which didn’t disappoint! Now we are reading A Place to Hang the Moon, and it’s frustrating because Annalee keeps falling asleep while I’m reading it. No fault of the book, just long happy days of play. But I have to keep stopping it instead of reading to find out more!

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Let me know your thoughts! Do you try to do everything alone, or do you allow others to come alongside you? And, what books have you loved lately?

*This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee+Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “With a Little Help.”