Thirty three years ago
today I was presented with the most precious Christmas gift I’ve ever received…a
healthy, dark-eyed little package called Alison Noel, who is now herself a
mother of a Christmas baby. At the time
her mom and I were living in a one-room apartment above the old Olema Store
near Pt Reyes National Seashore, about 30 miles from the hospital in Santa Rosa. Jeanne went into labor right around rush hour
and I drove like a madman around the curves and hills of Pt Reyes-Petaluma Road
to get us to the delivery room on time. That
part turned out quite well. But about
two weeks later we became concerned when Ali got into a multi-day crying
jag. On New Year’s Day we drove back
over the hills to see the doctor and I penned the following little essay:
This is a quintessential Northern California
New Year’s Day, shimmering under a cold sun through thin layers of haze, and
wrapped in a palpable calm. We are
driving the open road along the edges of swollen Nicasio Reservoir whose still,
sepia waters like a rambling Rorschach ink blot, mirror every detail of its
banks. From the evergreen forest of Point
Reyes we have come, sliding through billowy treeless hills already decked in
spring green amid serpentine crags whose gray walls stir my mind’s memory pool.
Of younger times along coastal cliffs. Of
day tripping over slickrock.
Beside me in the car is Alison Noel, tiny
daughter of just two weeks whose hat-covered head bobs gingerly against her
padded infant seat. Lulled by the
engine’s hum and winding roadway, she is finally sleeping after a long evening
of crying and colic. If she were awake,
she would have little awareness of the pastoral scenes beyond the
windshield. And she is too young to have
memories or longings for other places, except perhaps that warm dark world of
the womb she has so recently emerged from.
In the back seat is Jeanne who reaches
forward with motherly concern to shield the baby’s eyes from occasional bursts
of sunlight. She is exhausted from the
previous night’s ministrations to Alison.
But even in fatigue, she bears the calm radiance of new motherhood. We comment on the newborn calf by the roadway
and the frozen stance of a great blue heron.
A white-tailed kite hovers at the road junction where we turn away from
bucolic vistas and begin the curvy course through redwoods and ranch-style
homes in Lucas Valley.
At the doctor’s office in Terra Linda, we are
reassured by the prognosis that Alison’s troubles are nothing more than normal
infant behavior…a little stomach adjusting to a big world. And anyway, it appears as if the ride has
calmed her down somewhat. I cannot speak
for Jeanne, but I feel that perhaps the strands of memory weaving through my
mind have infiltrated all of us, pulling us into that timeless web of familial
unity. Today marks our first minor
crisis as a family and my first strong awareness of us as a trio.
As we drive homeward through the long soft
shadows of West Marin, I am at once protector, provider, parent and child,
weaving through the primordial mist, confronting myself at every turn, and
dividing by three into the light. Down the
last hill we drive toward the muted sun, toward the dark spine of Inverness
Ridge….toward home.
