Click here for the enthralling first part of the story.
After sleeping not at all for the past several very pleasant days, I’ve realized that either I write this damn thing out now or later, but that I’ll never be ‘well rested’ enough to feel like doing it, so I might as well do it.
Capiche?
Good, Uncle Jessie.
Now where was I?
Ah yes, Ling’s Hairstyles. Mere minutes after my dear mother-in-law’s plane touched down, I’d flung Joey in her general direction and fled to the enticing massage cave in search of salvation in hte form of contraction-coaxing acupressure.
I was not to be disappointed.
First, however, because this is, after all, my birth story and therefore bound to include at least one or two details so fundamentally ridiculous and/or outlandish as to barely merit belief, let me disclose that this 75 minute session of heaven on earth was tainted with the horrific details of forced government abortion, a casual description of abortion-as-birth-control, and a semi-lively discourse on the merits of living in a communist regime vs. the good ‘ol US of A.
I shite you not.
You see Leena, my master massuese, is also a Chinese immigrant who is 20 months fresh to the US and very, very happy to be here. For many reasons, not least of which the grim reality that when she got pregnant for a second time the doctor had to ‘take baby out,’ since to defy China’s One Child Policy meant fines, imprisonment or worse. (Worse particularly for the child in question, who is nearly always forcibly aborted.)
So there I was, 10 flipping months pregnant, desperate to get labor started and at the mercy of a very strong and teeny Asian lady who at one point mounted the back of my recliner to gain access to my shoulder blades and upper back. And who found it opportune to casually engage me in conversation about her personal experiences with abortion.
Horrifying? Yes.
Fascinating? Well, yes, in a way…because while she expressed a certain degree of disappointment with her government’s policy and its effects on her own second pregnancy, she was strangely detached from the grim reality of the policy. She readily praised the freedom which we are accorded in this great nation, but she also chided me when it was revealed that I was perhaps going to continue reproducing beyond the current occupant.
“You have one baby, now two…no more, no more. Two enough.”
Grim smile.
“We’ll see…we’re open to more.”
“You want more?! How many?”
Shrug. “5 or 6? Who knows…we’ll see if this one ever comes out.”
“Too many! Too much work! Babies hard work!”
Indeed.
Back and forth we went, her sharing snippets of her reproductive horror story from the Far East and me nodding and sighing in relief as she hit on areas of tension, all the while perfectly aware how.flipping.bizarre. this all was.
In retrospect, having named our son after two great missionary saints – perhaps two of the greatest in the history of Christendom – it makes sense that he would engage in a little evangelization right from the get go. I just kind of expected he would be, you know, born first before he started preaching the Gospel.
God’s plans are mysterious though.
TBC…because for the love of all that is good and holy, he is asleep and might remain so for 30 minutes or more…and maybe I can do the same!
Probably not.
But a girl can dream.
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