Chapter 85: A Growing Family

Monday, July 23, 1984

Marilyn seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds herself. She seemed to be getting bigger every time I looked at her, but she disagreed, and it wasn’t a subject to dwell on. She’d get very upset with me if I mentioned it, alternating crying and yelling at me. I made sure she was working out with me every morning, and she swore that she wasn’t gaining any more weight than she had with Charlie. How she could tell, I wasn’t sure, since there was no way in hell she could see down past her belly to the scale on the floor!

I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. On our first trip through, we had three children, and Marilyn gained weight with each one. With Alison she put on about five pounds that she never really lost, and the same happened with Parker. When Maggie came along, her weight just went to hell! She ballooned by over sixty pounds during the pregnancy and didn’t lose very much at all afterwards. For the next twenty years, Marilyn was heavier than I was. It had been a killer for her health, too. For years she was heavy enough to be a borderline diabetic, and all the weight messed up her joints, screwed up her blood pressure, and generally had her taking a half dozen pills or more a day.

On the other hand, this time around, Marilyn was working out with me three or four times a week and was generally in a lot better shape than she had been before. It wasn’t like she was fat the other time, but she simply relied on her twenty-something metabolism. Now she was toned and fit. Maybe, if I kept her working out with me now, she wouldn’t let herself go. I wasn’t blaming her for this, though. Back then, I hadn’t been any better, and had eventually grown fatter than she was.

Every father should go through the experience of having twins. It’s an excellent penance for your earlier sins. Not only was Marilyn peeing for three but she was also grumpy for three. I began to debate the merits of visiting Honduras and Nicaragua again.

As soon as the weather was favorable, I had the pool contractor in and digging up the back yard. This was a fair-sized project. I wasn’t going crazy and putting in an Olympic pool; I would be happy with a 20’x40’ swimming pool, 3’ deep at one end and 8’ deep at the other. Still, a pool is more than just a pool. We had to extend the deck over to the pool edge area, run power for lighting, pumps, and filters, and put up some fencing so the insurance company wouldn’t go totally bat-shit. The contractor wanted to do a pool house as well, but by the time that idea was raised, Marilyn was running out of patience, and I tabled it for a year or two. On the plus side, the sound of the excavator revving up drowned out her complaints to me.

Part of Marilyn’s problem centered on the fact that she was pregnant during a hot and humid summer, blamed entirely on me. She seemed to think that if we were living in upstate New York, the summers would be delightfully balmy and blissful. I seemed to recall they could be just as miserable as Maryland summers, just not as long. When I commented that she would have complained about having twins during a Maryland winter, she threw a wet dishcloth at me.

I escaped the worst of this thanks to Carter Henry Tusk. Marilyn was heavily involved in the baby shower and after the birth would frequently head over to the Tusks’ to gossip with Tessa and some other friends. Tusker called me once to complain that they were sitting around damning all men and warned me to take Charlie and head for cover. I offered to turn the swimming pool excavation into a bunker, but he was caught before he and Bucky could escape.

The pool wasn’t completed until the beginning of July, just a few weeks before our daughters were due. It was looking like daughters. A follow-up ultrasound had failed to detect any sort of dingle-dangle on either fetus. Regardless, the pool was usable just in time for a small heat wave, and Marilyn spent several days floating weightless in the water wearing granny panties and an oversized t-shirt of mine. We were delaying the summer barbecue until August, since our regular time of June or July was simply too much for her to help with. Tessa brought Carter over several times, to commiserate with Marilyn and show us the baby.

Bucky approved of his new baby brother. He was a boy, which was a lot better than a girl! I was almost to the point of agreeing with him.

The plan was that Marilyn have a C-section instead of doing it the normal way. That made sense, since I knew that with multiple births, most doctors refuse to do it any other way. I did tell Marilyn to ask her doctor what type of C-section she was getting, the traditional vertical cut, or the ‘bikini’ cut, which is lower down and runs the other direction. Recovery times are supposed to be better that way, and scarring is supposed to be a lot less, as well. She promised to ask.

Doing it this way seemed to promise to be a way we could schedule things a lot better. She would be able to schedule something nine to five, as opposed to the middle of the night, like Maggie did. When we headed to the hospital, I was to first call her parents, and then pack Charlie up and take him over to visit Tessa and Bucky and Carter. Charlie loved hanging out with Bucky. At six years old, Bucky was like a god to my son. I wasn’t quite sure what Bucky thought about this, but he seemed to handle it well.

The big day happened to be Monday, July 23. Marilyn started having contractions about 8:00 AM, and I could tell by the look on her face that this wasn’t a false alarm. She had never had that sort of thing with any of our kids the first go through, and I hadn’t heard of it with Charlie. She just grabbed the kitchen counter and looked over at me with a worried face. “Carl...”

“Is it time?” I asked.

She nodded, and then panted briefly while it passed. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Time to make some calls?”

“Please.” She sat down on a bar stool at the kitchen island, and I grabbed the phone off the wall. The first call was to Doctor Harrington’s emergency number, and she told us to head down to GBMC. The next call was to Big Bob and Harriet, and they said they would drive down and arrive by that afternoon. I told them that I would leave a key over the back door in case I wasn’t home yet. Then I called the Tusks and told them Charlie and I were on the way.

Marilyn had two more contractions during this time, so I didn’t think it was going to be a long labor. I had enough time to let Dum-Dum pee in the back yard before I locked her in the utility room, then we hustled Charlie out to the minivan and put him in his car seat. I grabbed our bags and helped my wife waddle outside. We dropped Charlie off, and then made it to the hospital by about 9:15.

At 9:16 Marilyn’s water broke. She got loaded onto a wheelchair and hurried off to the maternity ward, with me following. Doctor Harrington found us a few minutes later helping Marilyn onto a bed, and after looking up Marilyn’s dress, she smiled and said, “It’s show time!” I turned green and Marilyn looked panicked. “You’ll be fine. We’re going to get you wheeled into the delivery room, I’m going to go change and scrub up, and then we are going to meet your new daughters.”

The nurse piped up, “We’re going to have a multiple?”

Doctor Harrington nodded. “Twins.”

“Ooh, goodie! I’ll make sure we’re all set.”

I doubt it was twenty minutes later, but it sure seemed like hours, before the nurse came in with an orderly and Marilyn was wheeled out of the room. I followed along but didn’t get very far. This was surgery and they weren’t going to let me in to watch. That really didn’t bug me all that much; while I don’t get squeamish at the sight of blood, I don’t feel all that compelled to join in, either. Marilyn was getting a general, so she would be out of it anyway. I found a seat in the hallway and waited to find out what was happening. I suppose it was the same way back when my dad was waiting for my mom to deliver us, although I didn’t smoke two packs a day like he did then. I even paced up and down the hallway for a while. An hour and a half later, Doctor Harrington came out into the hallway and found me.

“Your wife and daughters are fine, Mr. Buckman. Everything went as smooth as silk,” she announced.

I think I exhaled for the first time in three hours at that. “Daughters. Huh.”

She smiled. “You don’t approve?”

I gave her a wry smile. “I’m still getting used to the idea of twins. It’s not like I can send them off for a refund, right? Ten fingers and ten toes?” Were my babies healthy?

I got a grin in return. “Twenty fingers and twenty toes!”

“Oh, well, yeah, right.” I just smiled and shook my head. Twins! “Can I see my wife?”

“You can see her, but she’s still out of it. She probably won’t wake up for a few more hours. Your girls are in the nursery.”

“Can I see them? Can I hold them?”

“You can see them, but that’s about it. You can come back in a few hours and maybe Marilyn will be awake then. You should call your families,” I was told.

That brought me up short. “I don’t have a family,” I said. “Marilyn’s parents are coming down, but they live in New York, and probably won’t get here for a few more hours.”

“Well, she’s in the recovery room right now, but you can wait back in her hospital room. Or go home; there’s really nothing for you to do now.”

“Thanks, Doctor.” She pointed me towards the nursery, and I did the squinting-through-the-glass routine. Even with my glasses on, I couldn’t read the labels on the bassinets, and I couldn’t tell one baby from another anyway.

Then I went to her room to wait for her to come back from recovery. I had made a big mistake when Parker was born. He had come into the world in the late afternoon, and Marilyn looked like she had been dragged through a knothole. She was in and out of it. After seeing our son and visiting with her, she had sent me away. So, I went away! I came back bright and early the next morning to find her fuming at me for doing what she wanted me to do! She wanted me to use my Jedi mind reading abilities to know that I wasn’t supposed to do what she told me to do. (This ranks up there with ‘ You don’t need a Christmas list. If you really loved me, you’d know what I want!’)

Marilyn was back in the room by the early afternoon, by which time I had managed to grab lunch in the cafeteria and call Tessa with the good news. Marilyn slept until about four, at which time she woke up groggy. I held her hand while she came to, and then a nurse came in to check her out. She wanted to see the girls, but then fell asleep again.

I just rolled my eyes. I turned to the nurse and said, “Listen, I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I’m going to go home, find her parents and our son, and bring them back. Just tell her I haven’t abandoned her, okay?”

She laughed and shooed me out.

I found Harriet and Big Bob at the house, with Dum-Dum running around being a nuisance. She was put outside, and I had a chance to talk to my in-laws. “Welcome! When did you get here?” I asked.

“Half an hour ago,” answered Big Bob.

I glanced at my wristwatch; they must have gotten here by half past three. “You made good time.”

“How’s Marilyn?” asked Harriet.

I smiled. “Good. Asleep, when I left her. They had to do a C-section with the twins, so they gave her a general. Give me a few minutes to shower and change, and then we’ll go. Alright?”