Just the other day...at least six years ago

Just the other day, I was at a friend's house on a Saturday evening when I posed the question, "What's behind that door?"   Sitting on the couch, I suppose I'd never noticed the door in the living room and where exactly it led. 

By the way, "just the other day," can mean last week, last month, or five years ago.  I'm guessing this experience was closer to six years ago.  This is what happens when you get a little older and seasoned.  Months turn into years, which turn into decades.  Ask me what happened in the 90s or early 2000s, and it is sort of a blur of memories.  Once your kids start walking and talking, go off to kindergarten, get their drivers' licenses, and graduate high school, those milestones are further and farther in between, and it's hard to remember if it was 1998 or 2008.  Hell, it might have been 1989. 

But, I digress, which happens a lot, too, once you are over 30something. 

"Oh, it's a closet full of crap.  Mainly stuff that we moved here seven years ago or so."  She opened the door, and sure enough, there was still stuff packed in boxes.  She reached for the top shelf to show me an old Barbie lunchbox and a few other cool things. 

I was hardly fazed by the fact she had unpacked boxes in the closet.  My grandma was a hoarder extraordinaire.  I personally have a tendency to hold onto crap that goes untouched for long stretches of time.  It's sort of like having mini-time capsules all over the house.  I go looking for a turkey platter and find the first pair of Mickey Mouse shoes my kids wore, a dried up corsage from prom, and a cancelled check from 1995.  

"I wonder what's in this box," she said pulling it out of the depths of the closet. 

She began digging through it, and it was almost like Christmas morning to me.  Other people's boxes of junk are nearly as exciting as unearthing my own.  Strangely enough, she found a letter written by me dated Oct. 4, 1991 when I was living in AZ when my husband was in the Army.  She was clueless how it ended up in the box considering she'd moved at least three times since the letter had been written. 

She read the letter aloud, and I was waiting to cringe over my young thoughts and ramblings.  I was only 22 at the time.  I didn't cringe, though.  I did giggle a few times to realize that my sense of humor was very much intact back then.  Proof of it was a discussion of when I'd be visiting my in-laws, and when we thought a trip there might be more enjoyable.  The latter was followed with the line, "If a trip there can be enjoyable." 

The letter recounted the fact that my oldest son, then about ten months old, was suddenly waking up in the middle of the night.  I called the pediatric clinic at the Army post hospital, and was told by the nurse that it wasn't normal, and that he should see his pediatrician because he could have psychological problems causing him to wake in the night.

At least I was smart enough to call the same Dr.'s office off-post, and pose the same question.  The nurse there told me that yes, it was quite normal, and no, it didn't mean I was raising a child with mental problems, and to not worry.  As long as it didn't appear he was sick with a cold or flu, he should be fine. 

It also strikes me as funny because with my second child, I wouldn't have even picked up the phone to inquire about his new sleeping habits, or lack thereof.  I probably would have figured if he wasn't sprouting vampire fangs, it was a phase he was going through, and not morphing into a creature of the night, with or without psychological problems. 

It did make me recall what seemed at the time some really horribly scary things I endured at the mercy of a military hospital and its doctors.  The first time I went in pregnant, they wouldn't take my word for it.  "I need to make an appointment because I'm pregnant," I told the nurse at the desk.  She essentially told me that I wasn't pregnant until they took a urine or blood test to confirm it.  I succumbed to a pregnancy test, and then and only then, was I pregnant.  I wasn't pregnant until the Army told me I was.  It didn't matter that I'd taken my own test, twice just to be sure, or that I was so nauseous that certain smells sent my stomach churning.  Obviously, projectile vomiting down a hallway in a house trailer proved little in my argument that I had no doubt I was with child. 

They scheduled me for blood work after I returned to the same desk to get the test results.  "Congratulations, Mrs. Potter, you are indeed pregnant." 

I had to curtail the urge to respond with a, "No freaking kidding?" 

I took my seat in the little white room, and told the Lieutenant dude also dressed entirely in white  that I'd never had it done before.  I was a little scared, and didn't really know what to expect.  He said, "That's okay.  I've never done this before, either." 

He had jokes. 

I guess he realized I didn't see much humor in his attempt to be funny, and told me he was only kidding.  Well, duh.  He finally hit a vein during his third attempt.  "Seriously, if you don't get it this time, I'm going to have to go home and come back another time.  I'm not feeling so good."  I knew from the eye doctor incident when I was fitted for contacts and slumped over the edge of the chair after my ears started ringing what was going to happen next. 

I left bruised and dizzy with the knowledge that I had really deep veins. 

I was 1,863 miles away from home.  Operation Desert Shield would soon become Operation Desert Storm.  I knew my husband could be deployed at any time.  I knew next to no one in the depths of hell that was the desert.  I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it was one of the scariest times of my life. 

The fun and games wouldn't end there, though.  The topic of Rh factor came up with my doctor, "Duck Kwan Oh."  I kid you not.  My doctor's name was Duck.  He told me around the 26th week of pregnancy that I needed to go have more blood drawn because of the Rh factor because I have a negative blood type. 

Now, it wasn't like I could just pull up the information on the Internet at the time.  And, I'd read everything I could get my hands on about pregnancy.  The library was one of the few places I'd venture alone, and I'd checked out everything I could find.  There was very little mentioned about the Rh factor, though.  I'm sure if Google existed and was readily available then I could have had a million search results about the subject.  Instead, I asked around.  One well-meaning, and yet very ill-informed friend told me that she thought they had to give you the shot through your belly button if you had the Rh issue.  Seriously, a shot in the belly button.  Oh, hell no.  Count me out. 

When I asked my doctor Duck about it, he said, "Yes, you get shot so the baby no die."  Okay, so maybe his English wasn't that broken, but it was darn close. 

I came home in tears, and remained in tears until my husband got home.  He promptly called the office and got to the bottom of it, and finally, I had an explanation beyond "shot means no dead baby."  It was terrifying. 

Another experience I remember is being told that my baby around the age of six months was obese, and that he would have problems crawling and walking.  This was because he was off the charts for percentiles in his height, weight, and head circumference.  But, he showed them wrong.  He did everything he was supposed to do, all right on time.  I did fret many a night that I had a fat baby, though, and of course, it was all my fault because I was a bad, bad mommy. 

While I reminisced about those days in the desert, my friend continued to dig around.  In the same box that she'd scrounged the letter, she found some stuff she'd brought home from the hospital when her son was born.  "See, I told you it was all crap that we moved here and never unpacked." 

"Let me see that stuff," I said.  I dug through the bag, finding samples of baby detergent, dish soap, and some cream for lactating moms. 

"What's this?" I asked, never having seen anything like it before.  I learned it was something new after I had babies who latched onto my mommy parts, and that it worked really well.  Who knew some ingenious sort would invent an ointment to soothe nipples.  Well, besides what you can buy at farm or rural stores called Udder Ointment meant for the bovine and swine population. 

We also found her discharge papers.  "You got Darvocet?  What the hell?  Man, I got an extra-strength Tylenol and no cream for my nipples.  Sheesh.  I'm surprised they didn't have me squat in a corner and go back to the fields the next day." 

Ahh, the memories of having a baby.  I did enjoy being pregnant, but it seems like a lifetime ago when I worried about my pregnancies and the babies.  At that time, I'd come to terms with the fact I was too old to have another go at it, and I knew there was some reason that I was content with having two kids who would be off and on their own before too many more years passed.  (Those years did pass, and they are both out on their own in U.S. Navy.  One is married with a four-year-old step-daughter.  It's all good.)

However, as we continued to go through her stuff,  I found something that almost made me change my mind and want another baby.  Some gift bags that had been folded carefully, and stowed away.  I opened one up, to be sure there wasn't anything tucked inside.  There wasn't, but this smell of baby wafted to my nostrils. 

"What in the hell are you doing?" my other friend who was there, mainly sitting back watching the two of us, asked. 

"This bag smells like baby," I said and deeply inhaled again. 

"No way," she doubted.

"I'm telling you.  It smells like newborn baby.  The powder, the lotion, that new baby scent." 

Like a druggie, I took another toke, and passed the bag around like we were sharing a bong. 

Had anyone seen us, they'd seriously wonder if we were the ones with psychological problems and not my son who had stopped sleeping through the night.