“Why don’t we take a short drive to see Matthew’s new rental,” Dan suggested,“seems pretty quiet in there.” He leaned over and gently kissed my pregnant belly, continuing,
“Maybe it will help move things along.” Our first baby was due in a week or so. An afternoon with Dan’s best friend and a band of single guys who were largely unconcerned with the miracle of birth sounded like relief. I’d been haloed in hyper-attention for nine months and all I really wanted was to be left alone. I would savor the sanctuary of affable and carefree pals more interested in Dan than me. Being just part of the scenery would feel like a soft lullaby.
“Let me go to the bathroom first and I’ll meet you in the car.”
I squeezed myself into the passenger seat of Dan’s brown Toyota Corrolla he affectionately called, the walnut. We drove through Bergenfield, into Clifton, and past Bloomfield, eventually making our way along the Garden State Parkway to Matthew’s. It wasn’t long before we were in West Orange, a commuter suburb of New York City not known for forest landscape. Yet, Matthew and his pals managed to find a spacious, eclectic three-story surrounded by acres of foliage and teeming with wildlife. Rustic and remote, I could see someone loved this home once upon a time. There were wooden flower boxes under the front-facing windows and a neglected bird feeder in the garden by the back entry, gentle appointments invisible to the twenty-year-olds who now lived there. The scent of damp leaves pressed to the ground after the morning rainfall permeated. It was early April and the maples and oaks surrounding the house brought forth a canopy of new leaves bowing low over the steeply pitched roof, ushering in new life along its branches. New life. I was all about new life. Being in that place felt like an escape from all the pressures of pregnancy until it was time to search for a bathroom. I was always searching for a bathroom.
“It’s just upstairs, down the hall, and to your left,” Matthew said, pointing with his chin while chopping red peppers on a circular knotted cutting board. I gave Matthew a quick hug hello then dutifully followed his directions, curious to explore the rest of the house. Lifting my precious, pregnant self one step at a time up the creaky staircase, gripping the handrail, I looked like a toddler resting both feet on each tread before taking the next. After a considerable amount of time, I reached the landing and searched the hallway for the bathroom. There it was, on the left, light streaming through the doorway, just as Matthew said it would be. It had a door but that was where privacy ended. The toilet sat beside a clear glass picture window, nearly floor to ceiling, three feet across and five feet high, with no curtain or blinds or drapes to offer modesty. One with nature, I guess. I’d be completely exposed, my pregnant self astride the forest for all passersby to see. I would be like a giant panda in a zoo. But I had no other choice than to lower myself onto the puffy, powder blue vinyl toilet seat and try mightily to ignore the crack on the left side that pinched my skin a little as I landed, wincing and wondering how long it had been since my last tetanus shot.
I closed my eyes, hoping nobody would walk below and look up. Then, I heard bagpipes. First one, then a few, and still more, sounding like a funeral march or maybe a parade through the forest. The wailing grew louder, like a flock of snow geese descending on a pond, bellowing in rhythm, announcing their arrival. I hurried to pull up my maternity pants tugging the weary elastic up to my popped-out navel. As I washed my hands I could still hear the drone, the constant reservoir of air pulsing through the bags of many pipers, moving ever closer. Birds flew from the trees, horrified. I laughed out loud, this was funny and I knew it right away.
“Oh, that’s just the Sons of Scotland,” Matthew explained, nonchalantly. “They practice over there every Saturday.”
Our baby girl arrived a few days later, pink and new, with hair like the fuzz of a peach, ten perfect and delicate fingers, and petite, pink lips pursed as if to play the flute she would later take up in the fifth grade. Woodwind instruments have always been a favorite of mine and thanks to the Sons of Scotland, bagpipes are on my woodwind love list. To this day, the blast of the bagpipe makes me smile, played with intention, taking years to master, like parenting, eliciting long, rhythmic notes as we breathe in and out, offering up an unrequited gift from our bodies, creating and giving rise to miracles like music or the delivery of babies with the promise of continuity and hope.
Copyright (2021) Suzanne Bayer. All Rights Reserved