home again home a...uh oh

we had been home from the birthing for about 3 weeks when our landlady who lived in the house in front of our garage apt. came to tell me that her 'nephew' was moving back into town - and guess where he was gonna live!
i had no clue in those days that renters had rights - maybe they didn't. i did know that she had seen David for the first time as we were coming into the apt after leaving the hospital.
this cute little house was located in the ryan place neighborhood which i liked and which was almost entirely white. so i am guessing white landlady was quite shocked when she saw us together.
anyway we had to be out she said by the following month. great. we are just settling in as a brand new little family and now we have to move.
the more i thought about it the angrier i became. at that time i did not have the energy to begin to fight it. we had plenty of help when it came time to actually pick up and get out. my Mom even came along and was almost as pissed off as i was. she brought eggs and threw them in the back of the woman's truck as we left.
NOTE: i do not recommend acts like this but i cannot deny i felt an immediate gratification.
Hal and Cherry and their new baby, 2 weeks older than Leif, let us move in with them. they had a lovely house and lots of room but it was hurtful that we had to do that...our little baby had to start his life being evicted. what a world.
we stayed with them about a month and i pounded the streets looking for another place that would be even better and bigger than the little apt. and of course Spirit led me there.
to the house on Wabash. 2 whole bedrooms; interestingly painted - like where there had been pictures hanging they just went around them leaving white squares on several black and blue walls.
it was while we lived there that David went to the dog pound to find his baby boy a pet...no chickens. a dog who needed somewhere to crash. and he thought it was a free service so when the worker told him it was $5 for the pup, David was sad and told him he did not have it. the good man at the shelter gave him the dog for free.
and so Leif's first pet was a black, part lab, named "FREE".

heeeeeeeeeeeere's Leif!

i wake up in the recovery room and there is my mom on one side and my hubby on the other. what? these 2 have been in the same room only once before and it was heated and icey! both.

so i went back to sleep. must be a dream. altered state. i re-awake and they are still there! my David says we have a boy. Mom says you had a boy. i am soooo out of it i have no idea i have been through childbirth and i blurt out "a boy what?"

they both say a baby!!!! oh. ok...now i am getting it. i think.

i do recall being in the delivery room. and there are bright lights and noises and the people are talking and one says "it's a boy" and the baby says "HI!" so i guess that was our baby.

looking up at David and my mom now i am suddenly flooded with memories of my childhood - the happy ones. and i see me at 15 months sitting in the chicken yard with a hen on my lap. and i hear the clucking and smell the coop-od'ors. i remember the way i felt when playing with those chickens and i say "oh then we need to get him some chickens".

David and Mom look at each other and David says "well it's really late and i think KFC is closed..."

'Ewwwwwwwwwww. those are dead ones!!!!!!" i say, appalled.

then i go back to sleep. best to just step out of the picture sometimes when things get really weird.

much later that night - midnight or so - i call David and tell him what i meant and it is so noisey at our house i can barely hear him....seems there is a baby party going on and here i am lying in a stupid hospital and they haven't even let me see my boy. but D is ecstatic. he can't wait to get to work to tell everyone the next day.

so Friday morning i get to hold and feed my beautiful boy. he looks just like i told people he would.

and the woman comes by to get the official info such as name. we had talked through the whole pregnancy about just the right one, and gone through so many names i said the last one i could remember: Leif Eric.

David calls from work to check on us and he says he has told everyone about Leif Sebastian!!! OMG! that was the last one we settled on. ohnoohno uh oh. my Mama comes in about the time i am freaking out about it and she, jokingly, forgetting who she is talking to i guess, says well just add it in there. So i did. called them and said i had left out a name and could they add it and they did.

Leif Eric Sebastian Crear, most special human being, had his very own special name.

he did not get his chickens - he has not mentioned them.

enter Leif ~ 1

so today my sister reminded me that i have not written in a while and i decided to fix that.

we lived in the duplex with the big oak storm tree until just before the baby was due. it was March of 1971 and my mama was hoping that i would domino on our anniversary, the 23rd.

we realized that, while we could not afford a 2 bedroom house, we needed a different layout than the little 'shotgun' style place where we lived. so i set out again with a visualized goal - a place with baby room.

i found a sweet garage cottage. it had small rooms but was layed out so that a tiny 'study' type nook was adjacent to our bedroom. it was perfect for the crib, changing table, and the built-in book shelves doubled as baby supply hideaways. and the price was just what i had asked in my prayers. it was only after we moved in that i realized how short the shower was - David had to scrunch down to shower (no tub, just a stall) and his head touched the ceiling :-(. but he was cool with it. the screened-in porch was the piece de resistance. such a cute house.

meanwhile the tummy grew. we had friends who were also due in the spring. the 6 of us hung out closely awaiting the arrival of our 3 babies.

there were the usual guesses about the gender of our kiddos, from us and our other friends.

everyone had a way to determine it. CB carried her little one out front and up high so it was a girl. SW was low and had back pain so it was a boy. or something like that. i barely showed so folks had a hard time guessing ours.
i knew that it was a boy. he would be caramel in color, with very curly black hair and soulful brown eyes. he would also be brilliant. i knew this because i am told, shown things. by spirit.

it was amusing when we delivered our children...C & HB in late Feb. S & RW, 2 weeks later in March. Me and David, 2 weeks after that.

and we all had boys!! :-) i have always had a secret little laugh each time i think of it.

on March 25, 2 days after our 1st wedding anniversary, i went in for a doctor visit and found that the pains i had been experiencing were not 'false' labor after all. the doc said go to the hospital and check in; he would meet us there later. we were so inexperienced that we went to the reception area and David said (he is very conservative with words) "Linda Crear". the volunteer looked at her list and said "no". i think we both had momentary flashbacks of being ignored at the desk when we went for our marriage license.

but this was not the case as the woman's expression indicated. David said it again and as he was repeating my name it came to me that she needed a full sentence and i said "i am Linda and i am having a baby so we need to check in!" ohhhhh. ok then. everything speeded up.

it was bizarro world in the hospital room. i was not given the option of natural childbirth. and i had not prepared for anything like that so it was heavy drugs in store. i held my tongue when the pain was so strong...i knew that if i complained they would start the circus. and i was not ready for David to be kicked out. it was really cool that they allowed our friends to come in one at a time and they brought me flowers from their vendor basket and they joked and laughed and David watched batman, the series - zap, pop, boom! until i asked for a tylenol - kapow!

the contractions were sooooo heavy by then that i just had to have something to help. and i was right - they made D leave me and i hated that. i am so glad that those times have changed.

it really was a circus after that point. they put me in the 'active labor' room with other women who were in different stages and who all seemed very angry with the babies' daddies. there was a lot of cursing and threats going on ... i was a little frightened of them. and i was very careful not to say anything mean about David :-).

the drugs caused weird in and out sensations. i would be lucid one minute and then go under again and then pain would pull me back. straaange. like i said "bizarro world".

stay tuned for part 2 and the really smart baby who was born with the gift of gab.