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| 1 | A few months ago, I was driving near Ledding Library in Milwaukie. There is a pond there where ducks like to swim. Sometimes they walk across the street to the large fields that surround Milwaukie Junior High. On that afternoon, a mother duck had been walking her three ducklings across the street. The driver in front of me had ignored the big yellow sign that warned of the ducks crossing and ran over one of the ducklings. I stopped my car to allow the mother and siblings to cross safely, but she didn't want to cross anymore. She circled her crushed baby, ignoring the other two ducklings that were wandering all around the street. She nudged him with her bill. She looked up, confused. The cars behind me were honking their horns. She continued to circle her baby, nudging and quacking. I felt panic rise within me. I didn't know where I was. My throat closed and I couldn't breathe. The horns grew more insistent. Suddenly, she gathered her surviving offspring and directed them off the road. My foot found the gas and I thought I left her behind. This duck, a bird, forced me to see that I had not dealt with my own loss. Many nights, I would wake up in that same panic. I struggled for breath against horrible nightmares. This daytime event showed me how to work through these nightly revelations. |
| 2 | I found that I was pregnant with my third child on June 21 of this year. Things seemed to proceed on their normal course. My ultrasound revealed a beating heart wrapped carefully in a tiny peanut shaped body. The technician jokingly called her a little "Peanut" and that is what we called her in those weeks. |
| 3 | A month later, I found myself back on the ultrasound table with the same tech trying to see if our little "Peanut" was still alive. I didn't know whether my heart or my abdomen hurt worse. The technician couldn't find her heartbeat. Within minutes, Peanut left me. A nurse cleaned away the blood and brought her to me in a jar. I circled it, I didn't think I could see her and then leave her there. I picked up the jar and looked at her. I tried to take in as much of her as I could. She was so small, only as big as my thumb. Her features were perfect. Tiny fingers and toes on miniature arms and legs. Her skin was transparent and I could see her tiny heart. It had stopped beating while still in the supposed safe confines of my body. |
| 4 | I wailed for an hour in that room. Eventually the nurse came back to seal Peanut's jar and take her to the pathologist. That and the bottle of pain killers was my closure. I thought I left her behind at that hospital. But she came back in my dreams. |
| 5 | I had nightmares of pushing her in a baby carriage all dressed up in little pink fetus clothes. I went fishing and drew wooden babies out of the water. I even dreamt of a funeral (which she never had) where the man's body had been mutilated to prepare it for burial (which is what I feared happened to her in the pathology lab). At least twice a week she would present herself in these dreams. I lost interest in my other children. I am ashamed to admit that I ignored them for nearly a week. I stopped eating and lost 30 lbs. I wanted to fall asleep and never wake up. |
| 6 | Upon reflection, I was able to decide that the baby carriage dream represented my hopes for her. I have two sons; I wanted a daughter. I had daydreamed of braiding her hair and buying those underwear with the ruffles on the bottoms. I had started to buy her baby clothes, dresses with lace and bows. These were things that I realized I couldn't have. I was heavily disappointed. |
| 7 | I think the funeral dream represented my underlying feelings of a lack of closure. I have been pregnant twice before. I know the process. You get pregnant, you throw up a lot, you get huge, you go through the pain of delivery, and at the end, you come home with a baby. I got all of those except the reward at the end. I came home feeling empty; my uterus was empty, my arms were empty. The second part of that dream had to do with mutilation. The legs of the corpse were cut off to fit him into the coffin. I was sick with the knowledge of what happened to her little body. I knew that they would have to basically dissect her to find out why she didn't survive. My head knew that this was a normal procedure but my heart accused me of giving her over to be desecrated and tossed as medical waste. No one would know that she was wanted or that she was mourned. |
| 8 | The fishing dream is the one I have the most often. I think my mind is telling me that I need to pull the baby out of the river of my emotions. I need to do it as often as it takes to dull the pain. I need to pull the wooden image out and realize that it is not her, what she was or could have been. It is not the shell she left behind. It's me. It's what I projected onto this fetus the second I knew she existed. I need to draw up these hopes, one by one, and look at them closely. They are wooden babies, fakes. I loved her for being mine the way any mother loves the creation of her womb. But, whoever Peanut started out to be, she left me behind. I was fixed in that place, reliving the events over and over. It was difficult to resume normal life. When I tried to push the pain away, it would stab me in the night. |
| 9 | I didn't expect to find inspiration on Harrison Street. I am not the first one to realize that you are most likely to find hope when you aren't looking for it. But hope is the last thing I expected to get from watching ducks crossing the street. That mother duck showed me how I was almost willing to sacrifice myself and my other "ducklings" because Peanut died. My expectations were gone. The future I had built in my head around those expectations was gone. I was confused. With her dead, what was the next step? Where was I going? I am still working through it and I don't know the answer yet. But, Mother Duck showed me that the first step is to collect my remaining offspring and get off the road.
Nominated and Edited by Dr. Bradley Stiles, Writing Instructor
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