Finally, in mid-September, Felix wired that he would arrive in San Francisco after another week. By the end of the month he was back, but he was broke and not able to be supportive or understanding of what I'd been through. By this time, I had stopped working to wait for the birth. I decided to spend the last few weeks alone and sent him away. My mother arrived from Oregon and the two of them met and were barely civil to each other. But on October 27th after a taxi ride with my mother to the hospital and 13 hours of labor mitigated by breathing lessons from an intern and morphine, Jane was born at 9 lbs. 11 oz. and she was perfect. Felix was tracked down and summoned and he came to visit. For the next few days in the hospital, I learned all those things a new mother learns for the first time - how to diaper, how to nurse, how to sit in a sitz bath, how to walk without a watermelon in the belly. I felt as though I'd been forgiven for anything I had ever done wrong. And maybe I had.

(A little added detail: Felix was just short of 21 that fall when we lay in wait of our first child in the world. You would have thought I was the stronger for the five plus years I had on him, but you'd be wrong. Deeper maybe, but not so likely to leap tall buildings. In fact, you just couldn't keep him on the ground for long. Still, my mother was his match. She could charm the hairs out of your nose one minute and breathe fire through her own the next. She was smaller and older and grayer than he was for sure, but she could more than meet a challenge. Hell, she'd been a communist in her youth and pretty much hadn't slowed down since then when it came to fighting the Good Fights. And it was her territory really, her one child was having a child and it was only going to happen the first time once. She'd been knocked off the dock for sure when I left my promising marriage to a husband she approved of and ran off to the other side of the planet with a boy-man she'd never even met yet and a foreigner to boot. Interestingly, as my daughter (who was about to be born then) recently pointed out, they were both Aquarians, a sign noted for its big-picture take on things. But this was a very small picture at that moment, contained inside an apartment that didn't really classify as more than a place to eat and sleep. It had two rooms - the windows from each looked out on rooftops and stairwells. Actually, I've always liked cubbyhole kind of places I can wrap around myself. I like to be able to reach out and touch a wall no matter where I'm sitting. Makes me feel more solid and on balance. But that October when the two most formidable people in my life took up breathing room inside my tiny shelter with me, it was almost more than I could do not to gasp for air. Considering all the dynamics of the plot, they actually surprised me. In some kind of dance, they stepped out, turned, found an awkward rhythm, and performed a minor alchemy of accommodation. It was hot and water was dripping in the sink and we ate from paper plates and I tried to remember that the reason we all three were there was love.)