A memory of another St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1990 -- Angela and I had been married less than 10 months. We were at a St Patrick's Day party at the home of the director of the Notre Dame Folk Choir, Steve Warner -- it was a Saturday afternoon. Angela was nine months pregnant, and she began to have labor pains, spaced pretty far apart. We had been through our Bradley natural childbirth training and were well-prepared -- almost over-prepared. But we were having a good time at the party and didn't want to leave. So we stayed for a while. We called Angela's mom, who had just gotten back from a trip to England, and she jumped in her car and began driving from Southwestern PA to South Bend.
We went home after dinner, and Gloria arrived around 10 p.m. She had brought some gifts from London -- a Brown Betty tea pot, large enough for a family of 7, which is what we were hoping for at the time, a tea cozy for the pot, some egg cups each with a little cloth cover representing Henry VIII and his six wives (again, 7 in all). We stayed up talking with her until about midnight and then went to bed -- the contractions were still pretty spaced apart, and not very strong. But an hour later -- now March 18, 1:00 a.m. -- Angela woke me up -- the contractions were stronger and she couldn't sleep. I drew her a bath -- I didn't think it was time to go to the hospital yet -- and began to get things ready -- we had pillows, and extra clothes, and a boom box and music, and a guitar, and tennis balls to rub her back with, and a letter explaining exactly what we wanted to have done and especially what not done -- no oxytocin, no epidural, no electronic monitoring, no episiotomy. .... We waited things out until something like 6:00 a.m. and then drove over to Memorial Hospital where they said she could not be officially admitted since she was only 6 cm dilated. They said: you can walk the halls here for a couple of hours, or you can go home -- and we chose to walk the halls -- Angela leaning on me and breathing deeply and relaxing with every contraction. After a couple of hours of this she was admitted and we made our way to a maternity room -- a young female resident was attending while we waited for the obstetrician, Dr. Houser, who arrived only just before the actual birth. A week later, a friend told us she had met a young resident at a party who couldn't stop talking about the crazy woman at whose labor she had assisted, who insisted on not having any drugs. Our birth teacher, Lois Kauffmann, and Angela's mom were both there.
I don't actually remember the time of birth, but I know that by the time Angela was officially admitted, she was fully dilated -- all that walking in the halls helped -- and the labor only took a couple of hours after that, so I think it must have been in mid-morning. I do remember playing Jean Ritchie, Carols for all Seasons, for her on the boom box -- a record we had borrowed (LP) from the St. Joseph County Public Library, and taped onto a cassette -- it was the only thing she found soothing. I remember holding up her leg with my tired arms, and I remember the baby's head crowning and how much hair she had -- and suddenly there was our first-born, Lucia Rita Gugliotta-Kremer. I remember Angela wanting to nurse her right away, but there was meconium in the amniotic fluid and they took Lucia away for a few minutes to wash her and make sure her lungs were clear -- then brought her back to Angela for her first meal. I remember how beautiful they both were. Angela nursed her until she was 3 years old -- at that point she was nursing two, Teresa and Lucia, and when she became pregnant again, she weaned them both. (I always remember hearing a reading from the book of Maccabees one day in church, and being struck by the mother telling one of her sons, who was being tortured to death for his faith in front of his family, to be strong: "Son, have pity on me, who carried you in my womb for nine months, nursed you for three years, brought you up, educated and supported you to your present age. I beg you, child, to look at the heavens and the earth and see all that is in them; then you will know that God did not make them out of existing things; and in the same way the human race came into existence. Do not be afraid of this executioner, but be worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that in the time of mercy I may receive you again with them." (2 Maccabees 7: 27-29) The whole passage is very moving but what struck me then, was that she nursed him for three years -- which is what Angela was doing with Lucia when I heard this read for what seemed the first time. I always think of this too when I think of the meaning of the Eucharist, and Julian of Norwich's comparison to nursing -- as a mother feeds her child from her own body so Christ feeds us -- Julian is not afraid to make this human analogy and call Christ our Mother, and it is very beautiful. I remember Angela's sense that in nursing she knew what her breasts were for -- yet it was her breasts that harbored the illness that eventually killed her.
And now Lucia will turn 21 tomorrow -- our little baby with the dark thick hair, our oldest with the impossibly long braid, who liked to boss her little sisters around, our reader and writer who was teased in grade school for reading too much, our wordmaster champion, organizer of plays and the first artist in the family. May God go with her in all her endeavors and may Angela always watch over her beloved daughter.
