Kristen Is Born

In ‘72, Lynn became pregnant. She was totally absorbed in the ‘Way’ by then. The local leader and his wife were into natural, home delivery child birth. Lynn claimed that it would bond her and me together like nothing else and was determined that I should deliver the baby. I was skeptical, but at her insistence, I read the Emergency Childbirth Manual that police, firefighters, and other emergency workers had to read. We had a friend, Joe W., who worked in the hospital as an orderly. He brought us gauze, sutures, surgical gloves, and a few other items that Lynn thought we might need.

My mother was furious, said she’d never speak to me again if the baby was anything less than perfect… every time she saw me during the pregnancy. Dad held his opinion and made no comment.

Late on January 11, 1973 Lynn went into labor. I don’t remember exactly, but it seemed like many hours before Kristen was born on January 12, still dark out early morning. All I really did was catch her as she came out. I tied off the umbilical and waited for the placenta which followed in a few minutes. I cut the cord just above where I’d tied it off. Lynn insisted on keeping the placenta. I don’t remember why or for how long she kept it. We reported the birth to the health department and a county nurse came by to check on the baby’s health. She was fine and I was issued a birth certificate. Lynn let me name the baby. I chose Kristen and Beth after a couple of old acquaintances of mine. Lynn never knew where the name came from. I certainly wasn’t going to name her after my mother, whom I was still a little annoyed with for her threats over the birth. And no name in Lynn’s family tree (that I had seen so far) appealed to me either.

We were still living on West 12th Street. I had been trying to remodel the bedroom. It was OK, but not great… a disappointment to me personally (after all I had been a carpenter, hadn’t I?), but even more so for Lynn, I think. We also had a big dog at the time, Nanook, an Alaskan Malamute, who tore up the floor in the hallway of the house. It wasn’t long before she found a place on West 10th Street that she liked and we moved in as Kristen was starting to crawl around and get into things. She would take a step or two now and then. She was such an energetic little ‘rugrat’, with her carrot-top fuzz, and later, red curls, a little lighter than her mother’s. She was a happy child, always into cabinets. We didn’t have any child-proofing there. So we had to try and get everything up and out of her reach. Kristen was resourceful and could always get on a chair and to the sugar bowl if it was anywhere within reach. When we’d go shopping, she frequently rode on my shoulders from the car to the store and back, or just for walks in the neighborhood. Lynn used to dress her in a colorful t-shirt and blue jean bib overalls, and depending on the weather, a sweater over it…a real cutie.

To be Continued

–LE