Category Archives: Marriage

Baby daddy: take two

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I was scared of comparisons

This second time around.

A second baby,

With a second father,

A second husband.

A man who’s done it all before.

I would ask him questions

About the pregnancies and

Births of his two first kids.

A lot of it he said he didn’t remember.

But some things he’d describe:

He was a long-haired 21-year-old

Making big decisions,

Trying to do the right thing.

He said after his daughter was born—

The only Packers game he’d missed

Since he started watching football—

He came out in the waiting room

Where his parents were,

Tried to tell them it was a girl,

Started sobbing.

This time around,

Three months pregnant,

Touring the L&D ward at Regions Hospital

Joe started telling me about

How nice

The hospital was where his

Kids were born:

Wood floors,

Homey furniture,

Decent food.

Comfortable pillows.

Tears gathered in my eyes and

I snapped at him:

“That hospital isn’t covered by our insurance.”

He looked at me in surprise.

“You keep comparing.

I’m scared of you comparing,”

I said.

“But I’m not comparing,”

He said, mystified.

“It just feels like you are,”

I said, crying a little,

I’m sure not the first

Expectant mom to

Cry during the tour of the

L&D ward.

“Okay, I’m sorry,”

He said,

Ginger with me.

I wasn’t an emotional wreck during pregnancy,

But there were a couple topics that got me flared up,

And “comparison” was one of them.

This was a man whose

First wife heroically gave birth

Twice

With no pain killers.

With my first son,

I had asked for every pain killer they had:

Gas,

Local topical anesthetic,

Epidural.

I wanted to try for

“Natural”

This time around,

But what if I couldn’t make it without

Pain killers,

And Joe would compare

This birth

To his older kids’ births,

And I would fall short?

As it turned out,

I did have Rocky with no pain killers

In a steadily progressing,

Eight-hour labor with

Twenty minutes of pushing.

(It’s funny to think of me

Worrying that I would be

Concerned with comparisons

During labor and delivery;

I had forgotten how completely

Consuming

The process of giving birth is.)

I didn’t dream

As a little girl

Of having

Two

Baby’s daddies

And a husband with

Private memories of the

Births of his first children

That I’m not a part of.

But now that Rocky’s born

The comparisons aren’t as scary.

The story’s been amended.

The tension of pregnancy

Released.

Life is good.

Life is peaceful.

Our family has taken its shape:

Yours,

Mine and

Ours.

Why I need you in the delivery room with me

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It started with a discussion

My husband and I were having–

You could call it an argument–

About the difference between

Animal and

Human

Birth.

“Have you ever watched a cow

Give birth?”

Asked my husband.

“They just moo and

Work the calf out of their body.

It’s all a

Natural process.

There’s not all these

Medical

Interventions.”

I was a little pissed off at

His audacity–

He was including pain interventions in his argument–

Plus I was skeptical that

He had ever

Watched a cow give birth.

However, it piqued my interest:

Is live birth as

Complicated for other animals

As it is for humans?

I took to the Internet

And learned a thing or two about

Human birth.

Turns out

Four-legged mammals have a relatively large

Pelvic opening to push their young through.

Because we walk upright

Humans have relatively

Narrow pelvic bones.

Not only does a human baby’s head

Barely fit through the pelvic opening,

It even has to make a

Quarter turn

Right at the end to make it out.

“That’s why,”

The doctor on the

YouTube video explained

As she

Barely

Slid

An infant skull through a set of

Pelvic bones,

“Humans are the

Only animal that

Need

Help

To give birth.”

Wow, I thought.

So true.

Other animals go off to be alone,

To hide,

When the labor pains come.

We animals

Call for help.

The social instinct,

I thought,

Would seem to have a

Darwinian purpose.

The truth is,

I’m only starting to grasp how much I

Really

Need

People.

When I was young,

I confused an

Independent streak and a

Love for solitude with

Not needing people.

I remember once during my

Freshman year of college:

I watched a group of girls go

Down to dinner together,

And I, who hadn’t made an effort

To make friends, got ready

Alone in my dorm room.

In a spasm of loneliness, I thought,

“I don’t need people.”

And I knew immediately:

It wasn’t true.

I do need people.

It’s an instinct as strong as the

Need to eat,

Or sleep.

It makes sense:

As a species, we literally

Wouldn’t survive birth

Without help from others.

And here’s how that

Played out for me in the delivery room on

April 28, 2012

As I labored and delivered my son.

Four people in the room with me:

Midwife, nurse, doula, husband.

The midwife and the nurse were

Guiding my little son’s

Bobble head into the world.

My husband and the doula were at my head,

Holding my hands.

As the contractions

Built into their gripping pitch, and

All I knew was the

Black, vacuous void of

The pushing,

I had to

Touch

My husband.

I had to grip his hand,

I had to hear his voice saying,

“You’re doing it, Jen.

Good job.

You’re almost there.”

The sound I remember most from

Rocky’s birth six weeks ago

Wasn’t his first cry.

It was the gasping sob

My husband let out when I had finally

Done

The impossible,

And he yelled,

“Babe, you did it!”

And everyone in the room was

Laughing and smiling.

Do it alone?

Good god, no.

Grip bed rails with my hands, or

Dig my fingernails into my palms?

That would’ve been hell.

I needed my husband’s hands to grasp

As much as I needed the midwife to

Guide my son’s relatively huge head

Through my relatively narrow hips

(Who knew?).

And that’s,

I guess,

Part of what makes me

Human.

My big childbirth fear

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Our doula perches on the edge of the

Chair in our living room.

She has short sandy hair,

No make-up.

I am cuter than she is,

Which I hadn’t realized was important

But is.

You don’t want a cute doula.

“I think I’m going to sit on the floor,”

She says, and slides off the chair into

Lotus position.

She pulls papers and notebooks out of her

Whole Foods bag and

Fans them in a semi-circle around her.

The rug she is sitting on

Needs a good vacuum,

And some spot remover.

She folds her freckled, braceleted hands in her lap and

Smiles up at us.

“So,” she says.

“Let’s talk about your

Fears.”

Ah yes.

My fears.

The whole point of this meeting.

I’m lucky. My fears don’t consist of

Fistula,

Rupture,

Hemorrhage,

Obstruction.

I’m not afraid of dying,

Or of days in agony,

Or crippling lifelong injury.

But I do have fears.

“Okay, so,

Remember I told you my

Mother died in January?

Of Alzheimer’s?

Well,

I haven’t really been that

Upset

About it.

I haven’t been crying.”

I look at Joe for confirmation of my stoicism,

And he nods.

“I don’t know why.

I feel weird about it.

Like, have I been too busy to grieve?

Or was it that she was sick for so long

I’ve done a lot of the grieving already?

I don’t know.

But here’s my fear:

That in the rush of emotion after the baby’s born,

In those first seconds,

The grief will

Suddenly

Surface,

Or be unleashed.”

Our doula is nodding,

Jotting in a notebook

Labeled with my name.

I fall silent,

Imagining it:

A surge of bitter,

Unacknowledged emotion,

Having its moment

Then and there

In the delivery room.

Ruining it.

Ruining the birth.

I hate this shit.

Grief.

“That makes so much sense,”

Our doula says, writing something,

Then looking up at me.

“And I’m so sorry about your mom.”

We talk for awhile,

And as she’s leaving,

Our doula hugs me and

Thanks me for telling her about my mother.

“I think your mom will come up during the birth,”

She says.

“I think it will happen.”

A few days later,

Something happens:

At my mom’s funeral in January,

I had asked my dad for her wedding ring.

I wanted to wear it for a while.

That was three months ago,

And he just remembered to give it to me

That week

After our meeting with the doula.

We were having lunch,

And he pulled the small cardboard box out of his pocket.

Presented it to me.

My mom’s ring.

“I have it now,”

I tell our doula on the phone.

“I’m going to wear it in the delivery room.

She’ll be

There,

Sort of.”

I am talking excitedly

Because the fear-dread is gone.

If there’s grief,

There’s grief.

I’ll let it in the room

And give it a symbol–

The ring–

And some

Words,

Tell my husband and our doula

I’m thinking about my mom.

Acknowledge the grief.

“What a fabulous idea,”

Our doula says.

“I love it.”

I don’t love it,

But I’m peaceful with it.

And that’s more important.

Step parenting is hard

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I broke my own rule the other night:

When Joe is disciplining my son,

And I don’t agree with what he’s saying

Or how he’s saying it,

I support him at the moment in order to provide a

Unified front,

And bring it up with him later,

In private,

In our bedroom,

After the kids are tucked into bed.

That’s the ideal.

But it didn’t work quite that way on Friday.

Me, Joe and my six-year-old Victor

Went to a circus-like burger and malt shop for dinner,

Magenta and azure murals of dancing cartoon figures on the walls,

Us glaze-eyed from a long week of school and work.

My boy wasn’t listening:

“Don’t run,”

And he’d run.

“Don’t put your burger on the table,”

And he’d put his burger on the table.

The more he didn’t listen,

The more Joe fixated on him not listening:

“If I have to talk to you

One more time,

You won’t get a root beer.”

Victor tried to climb into my lap.

“Mom, I get a root beer, right?”

“Not if Joe says you don’t,”

I said wearily.

It went on like this for a few minutes:

My boy lapped at his water like a dog,

And Joe told him not to.

My boy blew bubbles in his milk,

And Joe said, “Stop.”

I tried to restrain myself,

But I finally couldn’t.

My mouth just opened and

Brightly, I said to Joe,

“Let’s talk about what Victor’s done right today.”

Joe’s gaze swung across the formica table top

To me,

And then he and I started going at it:

“You need to lay off.”

“But he needs to listen.

It’s a safety issue.”

“But this isn’t working.”

“He’s doing it on purpose.”

“No he’s not. He’s six.”

“Well, something needs to change.”

“Does it? Is something wrong?”

And on and on.

So here’s the underpinning of this

Conflict:

Joe doesn’t love Victor like he’s his own son.

Victor has a dad,

And Joe has children.

Those roles are filled.

Same with me.

Joe’s kids have a mom;

They don’t need another one.

We both love our step kids;

But not in that

Blindly unconditional way we do our own.

When Victor doesn’t listen,

I assume he’s just a distracted six-year-old

Developmentally incapable of following

Every

Single

Direction

He’s given.

Joe sees some insolence,

Some intention in the behavior,

That would

Never

Occur to me.

The thing is,

We’re both right.

And sometimes,

We can both admit that.

Step parents can offer a lot:

They aren’t befogged by unqualified love–

Their objectivity can clarify the most

Confounding parental delusion.

Joe and I can do that for each other–

Not every time,

But enough to be hopeful.

Somehow,

On Friday,

It happened:

We had a productive conversation about

Step parenting

At the moment of disagreement,

In front of one of the kids.

I truly witnessed Joe’s face

Soften

With hurt feelings as he described how

Victor ignores his attempts to

Ask what happened at school

Or at wrestling practice.

And he listened

Non-defensively

To my points about

Developmentally normal behaviors

That don’t always need to be

Disciplined.

Afterwards,

It was Joe who was the lightest of all

Walking out of the restaurant,

Jokey with Victor, and flashing

Grateful looks in my direction.

So it worked

This time,

And for today.

Maybe it was the malts.

That’s not my name: Mrs. Joe Brzycki

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It’s started

Just as I knew it would:

With Christmas cards the first holiday season

After the wedding

Addressed to

Mr. and Mrs. Joe Brzycki.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful,

Because I truly enjoy Christmas cards,

Even the drugstore ones with the dashed-off signature and nothing else.

But it makes me chuckle:

Mrs. Joe Brzycki?

There’s no such person.

I get it:

People assume that I changed my name,

Because that’s what most women do.

Or they don’t know my last name,

Or they know it but are unsure of the spelling.

Actually,

Of the three last names in our house,

Mine is probably the easiest to spell:

Brzycki (Joe and his kids),

Hietalahti (my son),

Niemela, (me).

I’ve thought about those smooth gray stones

You can order at the State Fair:

“Welcome to the Smiths!”

The neat and tidy family surname:

Everyone in the house with the same last name!

We’d need a boulder for all the names in our family.

But I love all our last names.

There’s a lot of history,

In the grand sense:

Polish and Scandinavian immigration to America–

And the modern dramatics of a blended family–

Marriage, kids, divorce, remarriage.

(And now another kid on the way who,

Incidentally,

Will have my last name

Because,

Why not?)

Here’s the deal,

Ladies:

I don’t care what you do.

Change it,

Keep it,

Hyphenate it,

Tack it on at the end,

Slip it into the middle,

Make up a whole new name so

Everyone has to get a new drivers license!

For me,

Ever since the age of eight or nine,

When I realized that

Most women take their husband’s names,

I knew I would keep mine.

I haven’t wavered in that.

Ever.

There are so many reasons I’ve kept my last name

Through one marriage and into another.

(Never had to change my passport

Once.)

Yes, it’s about

Gender politics,

Symbols, and–

Dare I say the F-word–

I’m gonna say it–

Feminism.

To me,

The idea of being Mrs. Joe Brzycki

Subsumes me into Joe

In a way that anyone who knows us

Would find absurd.

But I also kept my last name

Because I just like it.

I know what it means:

Peninsula, in Finnish.

I imagine a point wooded with pine and birch

Jutting into a clear,

Boulder-bottomed lake.

Like a Boundary Waters campsite.

I’m a writer.

Words–

Names are words–

Are important to me.

Not just the aesthetics of how a word looks

Or sounds.

But what words mean.

Why choose one word over another?

Loneliness,

Or solitude?

Brzycki,

Or Niemela?

Does it matter?

It does,

To me.

Professionally,

Personally,

Even as part of a family unit,

It’s my policy to keep a part of myself

Just for me.

And my own name,

From beginning to end,

Is a manifestation of that part of myself.

It’s like the

Silent,

Black

Space

Just before I fall asleep at night,

When no children,

No husband,

No job,

Need me.

The divine chemicals of sleep

Bathe my tired brain.

It’s just me: Jennifer Niemela

At rest.

After 10 years without, a television

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We got a TV.

It’s the shape of a movie screen.

It teeters on a circular stand–

It looks precarious, like one bump

Could send it over onto its face.

I haven’t owned a TV for ten years.

It all happened very fast:

Football season

Combined with an unexpected chunk of bonus cash,

And now we own an HD plasma smart TV.

Those who know me well

Know

How conflicted I am over the

Introduction of the

Black screen into our home,

Yawning at me from across the living room.

As a kid I loved TV like everyone else,

After school watching Little House on the Prairie in the

Cool dark basement,

And when it was over at 5:00,

Supper time.

My brother and I got 1.5 hours of TV per day,

And we had to page through the TV guide that came in the Sunday paper

And highlight the shows we wanted to watch for the week.

As a teenager, I had a small black-and-white TV in my room.

All I watched was the 10:00 news on KARE-11,

And a M*A*S*H rerun if I could stay awake for it.

I think it was in college.

That I developed my squeamishness for

TV.

Dorm rooms,

Dorm lounges,

Apartments with roommates:

It seemed like there was

Always

A TV on.

Laugh tracks,

Guns shooting and tires squealing.

And always someone on the

Couch scooping food into their mouth while

Completely transfixed by whatever was on the screen.

Yep, I judged.

Here we were,

At college,

Supposedly developing our minds into

Critical,

Creative

Vessels.

And everyone seemed to

Mindlessly

Lap up

Whatever the screen disgorged.

“It’s relaxing,” people would say.

It didn’t relax me.

TV made me anxious.

The chunky stop-and-start sound of

Channels being flipped through,

The blinking and flashing of the

Lights from the screen on the

Walls of a dark room.

When I left school and started living on my own,

I ditched the TV

Who has time to watch TV anyway?

Even before I had kids,

I was busy enough without it.

And then when I was around a TV,

Like in a hotel room,

Or at my parents’ house,

It felt like a treat to turn it on.

But then I’d flip

And flip

And flip,

And finally just settle for HGTV because there was

Nothing

Else

On.

I made Joe promise we would set parameters

For the kids.

The idea of a child

Staring for hours at the screen

While the sunlight of a lovely day outside

Tracks across the walls,

Is anguish to me.

So we set some rules.

Joe has promised a minimum of flipping and a

Reasonable volume level.

And Netflix has Glee episodes,

Which this former show choir nerd has been wanting to check out

For years.

Actually,

The house is empty right now, and quiet…

Maybe I could figure out this remote control and

Watch a quick episode of Glee before anyone comes home.

My parents’ 43rd anniversary

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Aug. 3 is my parents’ anniversary.

43 years of marriage.

My father cues my mother to stand up from her chair:

He takes her hands and says,

“One, two, three, up!”

She looks up at him expectantly,

Wanting to do a good job.

A good Girl Scout, she used to call herself.

Sometimes it takes a few tries

For her to get it.

Finally, she bears down on his hands

And pulls herself to standing.

“Good up,” Dad says, pulling up the waistband of her pants,

Which had slid down.

In their wedding picture,

My father’s tux pants were a couple inches too short.

My mother is wearing the sleeveless straight white dress

That she let me use as a

Halloween costume when I was the

Bride of Frankenstein’s monster in high school.

It’s a color picture

But it’s faded into yellows and greens and grays.

43 years.

Last year we were at a wedding.

My younger cousin and her new husband

Came out of the reception hall

Into the hotel lobby to say good night to

Aunt Marti and

Uncle Bob.

My cousin hadn’t seen my mother in years,

And I watched her wedding smile

Freeze up

As she tried to greet my mother

Who stared unblinking at her for a moment,

And then started fidgeting with her dress.

This is marriage.

A white-haired main leading his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife by the elbow

Into the parking lot of the hotel,

Into the dark spring night.

The script my brother and I wrote

Was that

Mom

Would take care of

Dad

In their old age.

If you’d known them then,

You would’ve thought the same.

She was the one feeding us vegetables at every meal.

She was the one balancing the checkbook at the dining room table.

She was the one deep-cleaning the oven at night.

God chuckles at scripts like that,

And shores up my father for his

New life.

She did take care of him for many years.

And now he’s taking care of her.

Not always with perfect patience or skill.

But with a

Willingness and a

Devotion that’s a

Small miracle.

Divorced parenting with benefits

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Before I say anything,
A disclaimer:
Of course
I would always prefer to have my son
Here
With me,
Playing with toy cars on the
Rainbow-striped pile rug
In his bedroom.
But,
I have to say,
My husband and I have had a couple of
Very nice kid-free weekends this summer.
Between two co-parenting schedules
For three adolescent kids,
We get five to seven kid-free weekends
Per year,
Mostly in the summer when my boy
Is with his dad.
On the Friday of a kid-free weekend
We look at each other across the
Weirdly tidy living room and say,
“What should we do?”
Mostly,
We can’t think of
Anything.
It’s my fault.
Joe comes up with ideas–a movie, a late concert–
And nothing feels momentous enough for me.
(Or else I’m too tired.)
The other night,
I was so determined to think of something
Amazingly adventurous and fun,
And I was so completely unable to do so,
That I spun suddenly into the
Sadness death spiral
Where I miss my son so much
That I want to crash to the rug
And lie there unmoving,
Not even crying,
Just blinking and staring at the dust heaps
Under the couch.
(I did rally that night,
And we played cribbage and listened to music,
The death spiral averted.)
The best kid-free weekends are ones that are either
Planned far in advance:
Tickets bought and
Time booked (concerts, camping),
Or the spontaneously inspired ones:
Yoga classes together,
Playing cribbage and listening to music,
Even grocery shopping,
Just the two of us,
Feels like a date.
But the best parts
Are the moments when,
Undistracted by other people’s needs,
I’m fully attentive to my husband
As he’s talking.
And I realize
I haven’t seen him clearly
For weeks or even months;
Seen who he is,
Not what I need him to do next.
Is being away from
Our children
Worth those rarefied moments?
I don’t know.
It’s our life
And I’ll take it.

An open letter to my husband about why I like it when he and the kids go out of town

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You get it, Joe,

Don’t you?

What I mean when I say,

Go.

Yes, please.

Go to your mother’s in California.

Fly standby with the kids,

Gamble that you’ll get on the next flight.

Don’t come home.

Not yet.

The quiet it this city and state

Is delicious.

You and my step-kids in California,

My son with his dad in Finland.

My parents on vacation in Alabama.

Even my brother is in Wisconsin this weekend.

My own little family diaspora,

Leaving me here in Minnesota,

Alone.

No

One

Needs

Me.

What will you do with yourself,

People ask in wonderment.

Oh, I’ll meet friends for coffee,

Go to yoga,

Take a nap on the porch.

It’s supposed to be a secret from you, Babe,

But what I really like to do when you’re gone

Is clean.

I’ve got two small cleaning projects:

My mom cave, which became

The dump spot for wedding detritus,

And my son’s room.

Time to finally get rid of this five-year-old’s size 2T clothes.

But it doesn’t matter what I do.

The deliciousness is in the

Range of my thoughts
When I’m alone.
Books I might write,
Characters,
Like cats that hide under the bed
Until the house is empty
And then slink out to play.
Or just nothing.
An empty mind
Filling up the unclaimed space.
The vastness of human existence,
I can see it
Alone.
Like pulling back on a wide-angled lens.
It’s hard to explain without hurting your feelings.
You miss me when I’m gone
One night on business.
Without my civilizing influence
You stay up too late,
Zombied out on the Internet,
And sleep listlessly,
Staying on your side of the bed.
When I come home,
And am walking past you in our small kitchen,
You pull me by the waist toward you
And hold onto me until I fidget to be let go.
And it’s true.
I wouldn’t enjoy this solitude
Unless I knew you and our family and friends
Were aware of me,
Were maybe even thinking about me,
Were available if I needed them.
That’s the difference between
Solitude and
Loneliness.
Solitude is supported by a
Foundation of
People
Who are not physically present
At that moment.
Loneliness has no such foundation,
Or has the perception of no such foundation,
So that you feel that you’re
Falling through space with
Nothing to catch you.
I’ve experienced both,
And you, Babe,
You’re a part of why this is
Precious solitude.
So thank you,
Joe.
Thank you for leaving me
Alone
This weekend.

A wedding day poem for my husband

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May 7, 2011

You.
You are hard to shop for on my budget.
The things you want:
A shimmering brass saxophone with tender keys,
A sterling Macbook with an i7 processor,
A smartphone with a face so smooth it slides into your blazer pocket like a sheen of ice.

Someday,
Maybe,
Baby.

For now, though,
This little love poem will have to do.
I know you don’t mind,
Not really.
Half a foot beneath that smirk is a
Heart as delicate
As a Sunday morning egg
Wobbling toward the edge
Of the counter top.
(I am good at catching up
Eggs with my
Long fingers
And warming them in my palm.)

Remember when you and I
Were at that restaurant on Valentine’s Day
Talking over tealights,
And you said something about
Pets
And I couldn’t stop laughing?
You do that all the time.
You say things—
You’re not trying to be funny.

You look at me with wide eyes as I laugh,
And then you start to chuckle along.
Pets.
I’m chuckling just thinking of it.

And remember when we were watching a funny movie
On the laptop in bed one night,
And I was laughing,
And you were watching me and smiling,
And I said, “What?”
And you said,
“I just like to listen to you laugh.”

And how you buried your face in my neck when I told you
I fell in love with you

Watching you
Across the room
Talking to friends,
And your face unfurled into a smile.

And babe,
It’s so innocent.
We’re childlike when
We say these things to one another.
We,
Who have lived enough to
Crawl before walking,
To decide,
And to march forward,
On and on,
Past exhaustion
Before lying down
In surrender.
We’re here today in a
Precious,
Delicate state.
It must be a miracle.
I could go on for pages,
But I want to marry you.