Family Planning

1/g

And by that point I had been pregnant five times already, 'already had three boys. It’s crazy to think about now. When I try to remember how it felt all those times I almost draw, like, a blank, you know? Everything seemed so normal. It was just how it was back then, if you weren’t in the church you got married and had a family. And everybody was having kids all the time because birth control wasn’t allowed.

The first time? The first time I gave birth I had no idea what was going on, I just knew that something was happening to me that felt like a punishment. Being big as a house was bad enough, and now I’m tearing apart at the seams! Shit, I felt like I was going to explode and the staff were wheeling labor-stricken me down the halls talking to me about my “uterus”; I had no idea what the hell a uterus was, they could’ve been saying some German word, for all I knew! We knew nothing then! Nobody had ever told me anything about my body, except to distrust it. So the nurses are wheeling me around to who-knows-where, the doctor was smoking and the nurses were smoking too! the whole time, of course, nobody’s thinking anything of it.

I knew you’d laugh, you think I’m old as shit, don’t you? You’re probably imagining the whole scene in black and white, you think I’m so old. I am old as shit, though. And there was smoke in the damn delivery room. It was madness, but that’s just how things were then.

So I have my first baby and I’m out of it, I don’t even know what happened to me, I hardly have a memory of it. Then the doctor comes and says to me that the baby’s a boy and that he’s not doing well, and asks if I want to see it. I say yes, I mean what else am I supposed to say? That I don’t want to see it? I’d want to see a kidney stone if that’s what I’d just passed. Nothing’s hardly registering as it is.

You always see these dramatic scenes in the movies, you know, when the mother has a baby and it doesn’t survive, and then she cries, and the husband cries, and the doctor coughs and makes a masculine frown, the nurses cry, even the cleaning lady has a tear on her cheek.

It was nothing like that, no big tragedy or anything. I see the baby and he looks so bad that you’d think he would’ve rather just been born dead. He passed an hour or so later. I can’t say I felt anything. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the shock of the labor? You might be right. Maybe I just didn’t have any expectation. Maybe I just hadn’t thought much about motherhood. And people lost babies all the time in those days, anyways.

But I’m getting off track. Anyways, after I’m done my sixth pregnancy I have your mother. I was overjoyed to have her, obviously, you know how much I love her, but after having her I started saying to myself, OK, you know what? I’m sick and tired of this bullshit. Being pregnant, the endless rigamarole of gaining weight and wearing clothes sewn for windows. Terrible. So, me and Dad, we started the catholic family planning.

What a load of bullshit that was. You know what the catholic family planning is, right? They’d give you a calendar and you’re only supposed to sleep together on certain days after your period to avoid getting pregnant. The cycles or whatever. 'Load of bullshit. I get pregnant again and have Rachel.

So after that I tell my husband that we need to try birth control if he wants to keep sleeping with me. He told me that we could do whatever I wanted, so told him great, we’ll try birth control then or stop sleeping together. Easy.

But then I made a small mistake. I was nervous and when I went to confession I told the priest about it, you know, that I was going to try birth control. I knew it was against the rules but I got so scared that I told him. To be honest, there was a part of me thinking it wouldn’t be an issue since he’d been so permissive of the family planning, and I figured he would be grateful that I already tried that medieval crap and happy that I’d squeezed out another parishioner for him and just call it a day. I mean, come on, isn’t that what the Blessed Mother would want? Oh God, was I wrong!

He was livid. He doesn’t listen to a word I had to say and says to me that if I’m going to practice birth control that he will have to deny me absolution and that I’m going against God’s will and this and that. Then he kept going and really said a lot of horrible things to me that I’ve since tried to forget. Boy, was he pissed, but what the hell do you care? Anyways, I just lose it, I’m in tears in the confessional and it’s terrible. I mean, the catholic family planning was not working because it was bullshit; I already had five kids in the damn parish that my father spent his life donating to diligently. You would think I could buy a condom, for Christ’s sake. He should’ve be happy I was even telling him about it.

But it was serious back then and at the time I was inconsolable. So I come home in tears and tell your grandfather what happened and he says “Well, we’ll see about that.” He goes down to the church, finds the priest and screams at him. He was into the whole macho thing sometimes, your grandfather. Huh-hoh! I never really cared for it, not my thing I guess, but I figured you got to let them have something. Anyways, he went down to the church and asked the priest what in the hell he knew about family planning and told him that I better get absolution next week, or else!

Lo-and-behold, the next week I got a new priest for confession. And he was wonderful, delightful really, very modern and understanding. A good listener, open-minded. All the bests priests are sympathetic. I told him that I was thinking about starting birth control and he just nodded and listened for a bit and let me explain, and then after I’d finished he told me that he thinks that some things are just meant to be between us and God and that it really wasn’t any of his business in the first place. He gave me absolution and I felt so much better. I guess the macho things had its perks, sometimes. I was right to allow it.

The new priest was my confessor for a while. He really was a great priest, very with-the-times. 'Ended up being a pedophile, sadly. Funny how things always happen like that in life. Of course, the sexually liberated priest is a pedophile. I have to say, though, he really was a great confessor for me over the years.

But we didn’t know better then. Anyways, I told your grandfather the good news when he got home from work and he was happy. He said to me “Good! One of them with some common sense for once!” and I thanked him for sorting things out with the parish. But then he asks me about when making a doctor’s appointment to talk about getting me on the pill and I just say “The pill!”

“Excuse me, you think that I’m getting on some pill? I’ve been pregnant seven times because of you and you want me to start taking pills that do God-knows-what? No, sir.” I mean, really, as if I had not worked enough! He could be audacious sometimes, your grandfather.

So I says to Tony “Listen, the priest said that birth control is between me and God! I’ve already multiplied, and that if you want to have sex or anything you better not try it until you’ve gone and got yourself a vasectomy!”

Yeah, he grumbled for a bit, but he realized that I was right and then he went and got a vasectomy and that was the end of all that. He was a good husband, your grandfather. He knew how to keep me happy. It’s too bad that the good priest turned out to be a pedophile, but hey, at least he knew how to do something right.