The Day

I wrote this last year and I’m posting it again.

It’s a self-absorbed post, my favorite kind. It is about what I remember. I mean – all I remember NOW is that it was Cashel’s birthday. But this is not what the post was about, originally. It’s about what I remembered from the day before, and the day of … 2 of the most vivid and freaky days I’ve ever had in my life.

I wanted to write it from a ground-level perspective – which is hard – because I keep wanting to put in retrospective comments, stuff I’ve learned, how it all turned out, how I realize NOW that such and such … but no. That was not the point of the post.

THE DAY

The clock was ticking. It had been ticking for months. The anticipation was tremendous, unbearable. As the day approached, it was as though the upcoming event washed away all other thoughts and concerns in my mind, and in the collective mind of my whole family. We could not talk of anything else.

The baby was coming! The baby was coming! The baby was coming! We didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl … but we knew that it was coming, and we loved it to death. It was the first grandchild to be born – on Brendan’s side, and on Maria’s side. We were al lout of our minds.

This is a post about what I remember about that day. And it involves the day before (it always does, doesn’t it?) But it’s really about that day. THE day. Certainly one of the most important days of my life, because it was the day that Cashel was born. Cashel, whose birthday is today.

I was in grad school. It was a vigorous and energetic time. I was living in Hoboken with my dear friend Jen. It was the late 1990s and my sister-in-law, the one who was carrying the most IMPORTANT BABY WHO WOULD EVER BE BORN, had gotten me a freelance gig my first year in New York, to make extra cash while I was slogging away in grad school. This was the dot com era, and there was major money to be made for doing … basically ridiculous meaningless things. What were we doing? Or selling? Nobody knew. It was the something “new”, the new thing! She got me a freelance gig, doing Rainman programming for AOL, and it paid 30 bucks an hour. I made friends doing that insane gig that I still have today.

Our dot com was affiliated with New Line Cinema so our offices were a floor below New Line corporate. You would walk up the spiral staircase into New Line proper, and there you were surrounded by cubicles, fluorescent lights, white boards, pie charts, Power Point, and perky girls in form-fitting suits and alligator pumps. You know. Civilization. But down that spiral staircase? You were full-on in wacko dot com world. There were mannequins dressed in school girl slut clothes. There were no overhead lights. There was more than one lava lamp. Dart boards were on the wall, beanbag chairs were on the floor. We were barely presentable. If “corporate” was coming down to visit, we’d really have to clean up the place, and make it look just a little bit like a real office. You know, like take the cigarette out of the mannequin’s hand.

I used to work beside a guy named Pat, who was a surfer, a writer, a music-lover, and kind of brilliant in a very chaotic way. He also was kind. He was an online personality. He was born to be an online personality. He had nutso hair that was a different color each week, and he was doing literally MEANINGLESS things online on a daily basis, hosting chats, writing articles about stuff that he found interesting, and he made shitloads of money. He was a crazy Irishman. He’s now married to a no-nonsense tough Irish chick who grew up with 8 older brothers. Her brothers were always beating guys up because they were being protective towards her. She finally had to be like, “Guys, STOP BEATING UP MY BOYFRIENDS.” She is PERFECT for Pat, because she knows how to handle men. She ought to, with 8 brothers! But she doesn’t play headgames, she’s able to be one of the boys, she’s a huge sports fan … Perfect girl for him.

When I knew him, though, during the dot com mania, he was single and he’s the kind of guy I click with, guys like that always get along with me really well.

We were friends. We sat side by side, at our respective computers, and he would reach out with his left hand and play with my ear lobe as we worked. He never asked permission. We never discussed it. It’s strangely bizarre when I look back on it … but that whole time was bizarre.

Upstairs was corporate America. Downstairs was Pat, with jet black hair standing up straight, or blonde streaked surfer dude locks, or totally bald having shaved it all off in a drunken frenzy. Downstairs was Pat touching my ear lobe as he typed with his other hand. I never said, “Uhm … what’s up with my ear lobe?” I can’t remember the first day he did it, but I didn’t slap him away, and so the ear lobe thing went on the entire time we both worked there, as darts flew towards the bullseye behind our heads, as people sat around us working at their computers with huge headphones on listening to music, as people lay in the beanbag chairs eating Krispy Kremes and having “integration meetings” … and we all were working on … what, exactly?

None of the companies I originally worked for are in existence today.

I told you this would be a post about what I remember.

When I think about “that day” – all of this stuff surrounds it. Dim lights, crazy offices, free-spirited funky dot com people, and Pat playing with my earlobe as he ran online chats. I worked 20 hours a week, I think … taking the subway to 59th Street from my school in the Village. And I had a full course load.

I would spend my weekends out in Park Slope with my brother and Maria … and her belly was growing … and we would feel the baby kicking … and the baby was so REAL to us … I had a relationship with the baby from the moment they told us she was pregnant, of course. I didn’t know who it was in there, but I couldn’t WAIT to find out. But meanwhile … during the pregnancy … I had a huge huge love for the creature in there. I loved it so much.

The C-section was scheduled, finally, for October 31. Calendars were marked throughout the O’Malley and Sullivan family. That was THE day.

Maybe 4 or 5 days before Halloween, I was at my freelance job, getting my earlobe stroked by Pat the surfer, doing my work. I called my voice mail service to get my messages.

And – like a bolt from the blue – I heard an all-too-familiar voice. A voice that made my heart burst out of my chest. A man I once loved. I still loved him, I guess – But it was over, so, you know, life goes on. You slog on. You do the best you can. You MOVE. I had moved. It wrenched us apart geographically. He had my number, but never called it. It was over. It was over in the biggest way possible. But there was his voice … there was his voice … telling me that he would be in New York for one day only to do a show … and want to get together? I could barely understand the message because I went out of my mind at the sound of his voice. I lurched forward in my seat, clutching the phone. The earlobe-stroking stopped as Pat looked over at me, curious as to my response. I was saying into the phone as I listened, “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Surfer Pat mouthing at me, “What? Who is it?” All I heard was that HE would be in town for one day. And he was calling me to let me know that and to let me know the hotel he would be staying in. I was instantly a wreck. I had to listen to the message again because I had barely understood a word. I wrote down the address of the hotel. He also gave me his itinerary, he had to be here at this time, and there at that time, he would be checking in at that time … and his voice was so jaunty and cheerful (Like always, I knew exactly what he was going through. He knew I would flip out when I heard his voice, so he wanted to sound unthreatening, unemotional, and … happy. Like this would be no big deal. No big deal, right? We’re friends, right? Happy happy joy joy!)

His jaunty cheerful voice: “So … I know you’re … like, a really busy ACTRESS and everything …but … if you’re around … well … that’s where I’ll be …”

I made Pat the surfer-dude listen to the message so I could hear what he thought. I hadn’t told Pat about him or anything – but I just gave him a quick bullet-point list of the situation and then said, “LISTEN TO THE MESSAGE.” As though he were my best girlfriend or something. Why I loved Pat was that he – a rough-round-the-edges straight Irish boy – listened to the message seriously, no expression on his face, hung up the phone, said in a flat tone, “The dude’s in love with you,” and turned back to his computer screen, reaching out for my earlobe.

So.

October 30. He would be in town on October 30.

It was so bewildering to me, so intense … and not altogether welcome. My main focus of that autumn had been the upcoming birth. It was beautiful, hopeful, so exciting. And … to have … him come to New York … which he never did … and to have it be on the day before this momentous event … I guess you could say some of the ol’ circuitry got a little botched up in my nervous system. I was wound tight as a top, man. I mean, I’m always wound tight as a top – but this was even more nuts than usual. My heart constricted into a tiny fluttering laser-beam of movement. Okay. Okay. You’re gonna see him. Get ready. Ya ready?

I had class the morning of October 30. Classics. My outfit had been painstakingly chosen, with much help from my roommate. I wore a tight houndstooth skirt, and high brown heels – very retro – a fitted brown sweater. The outfit was very 1940s leading lady. Womanly.

I had a great class, I remember. And then I walked out into the blinding autumn morning, the flaming leaves in the trees, and headed uptown to go meet him at his hotel. I was completely consumed with keeping myself together, and not flying off into a million bits into the universe. Breathe … breathe … one foot … in front of the other … stay calm. Stay calm.

I walked into the hotel lobby. It was a fancy hotel, but intimate, small, lovely – with deathly slippery marble floors … and I remember this part perfectly. It’s going to be hard to describe – because it depends on the visual, it was such a cinematic moment. But this is just how it happened:

Slippery marble floors. I could barely breathe, I was so freakin’ TENSE about seeing this man again. I was having cardiac arrest … we had no meeting place or time … I didn’t know where he would be, he didn’t know if I would show up, I hadn’t responded to his phone call because he hadn’t given me a phone number (and I didn’t have his number) … so it was either going to happen or it wasn’t … He had told me where he would be, and when … and if I was free … I could show up at that time. Right on schedule, I walked into the lobby, palpitating, he could have been ANYWHERE … but I had to keep my exterior calm and cool, in case he saw me before I saw him … so I tried to look around, casually, for his face. And I remember these workmen walked by, carrying an enormous decoration of some kind, perhaps on their way to a private party room, for a wedding reception or something. The decoration was so big that it was almost like a stage set, it took 3 guys to carry it … and it was all silvery and covered in pearls, and there were long streaming silver ribbons, and sparkley gems covering it … All silver and white. It took up the whole lobby, and I stopped, watching it pass by, it seemed so odd … it wasn’t a Halloween decoration, and I was so hyped up that pretty much everything in the world was coming at me in vivid 3-D technicolor … and then – once the decoration had passed by … there he was. It was as though the silver-glitter thingamabob was a curtain or something – going up – signifying the start of the theatrical event that would obviously be our day together.

He saw me. I saw him. The whole thing was wordlessly dramatic, and rather awkward. We were always bad at greetings and goodbyes, we never hugged, or gave casual kisses, or anything. We had a hard time just saying, “Hey, what’s up” or “How have you been?” to each other. We just couldn’t do it. We were like hot stoves to each other. You can’t really cuddle up to a hot stove … it’s too dangerous. But seeing each other after all that time … seeing each other in the strange unfamiliar lobby … with a silver floating stage set going by like some Busby Berkeley fantasy dream-sequence … He and I had a full greeting. Even with no hug. Even with no words. We needed neither.

Within 10 minutes it was as though we had never been apart. We were just in sync. Always. However, everything was different now. We knew that. We didn’t speak of it, we didn’t have to. It was there at all times.

He had hours free until he had to do his show. He said, “I kinda wanna see your school. I want to see where you spend all your time. Show me the coffee shops where you go. So I can picture it.”

And so that’s what we did.

I took him downtown and I “showed him my school”. I took him into my classrooms, I introduced him to my acting teacher. I took him to my coffee shop. He walked into the joint (which was completely generic – you would find such a coffee shop in any town anywhere) … and he walked into it, stared around him, taking it in, and then nodded, to himself. Like: “Okay. Got it.” Like he had memorized it for safe keeping.

I knew I would cry about such moments later.

We walked and walked and walked. We talked. He made me laugh so hard I cried. He went off on the “lack of enthusiasm” in “kids today”. He went off on it for a good 20 minutes. I egged him on, I completely agree with him, and suddenly he heard himself and said, “Oh man. I sound like such an old fogey. These kids today!” The sun was shining, it was Indian summer, everyone was out, the NYU students, the locals … it was a day when you suddenly were happy to be alive. It was also as though New York City put on its best outfit … just for my guest.

I remember we went to Washington Square Park. We watched the street performers. We sat on a stone bench, and soaked up the atmosphere. Time stood still with him. It stretched out. It couldn’t have only been 5 hours that I was with him. That CANNOT be right.

We had no deep conversations. We never really did. We didn’t have to. We talked about books and music and told funny stories.

A drug dealer wearing a Rasta hat came up to us. His eyes were marbly-glazed and red, but he had a really friendly reggae-drenched smile. “Smokes, smokes?” he offered.

The two of us smiled at him regretfully. “No thanks,” we said together.

He shrugged, sadly, and then took another look at us. He took us in. Then he stated, “You two are in love.”

We froze. Neither of us knew what to say or do. We didn’t respond. We sat there, consumed with awkwardness. Seriously. It wasn’t delicious awkwardness, or flirty awkwardness … It was this unspeakable thing that had been spoken by A DRUG DEALER. A freakin’ stoned drug dealer saw the love. We had been fine until that moment.

We both kind of awkwardly said, “Oh … well … you know ….” He had plunged us into this psychodrama which we couldn’t even reference ourselves, not if we wanted to get through this day without a huge scene.

Rasta guy said, seriously, not looking at me, but looking at my companion, “She’s the only woman for you, my friend.”

We both laughed (oh, they were the fakest laughs in the world) and my friend kind of awkwardly put his arm around me. It was an act. Maybe if we validated Rasta’s observation, and said, “Yes, that’s true” then drug dealer would go away and stop TORMENTING US WITH MIGHT-HAVE-BEENS. His arm around me was like a stiff robot arm.

It worked. Rasta guy walked away, and then called back at us, “Today is a day for lovers, you know!”

And he was gone. Leaving us silent, and totally awkward with each other.

Suddenly, after hours of nonstop talk … silence. We didn’t know where to look (certainly not at each other), we drank our sodas, looking around us, pretending to be people-watching, trying to pretend that that didn’t just happen, nibbling on pretzels … We might as well have started whistling, staring up at the sky “nonchalantly”. It was that cliche.

We went on like this for a good 5 minutes until …

“Wanna go see The Bottom Line?” I asked. I was desperate. I had to do somehing to save us.

He leapt up, all excited and not awkward anymore. “Yes!!”

We walked around the city for a couple more hours. I showed him stuff. We staggered around laughing. He asked questions. I answered. I asked questions. He answered.

I didn’t realize until that gold and blue October day how much I really missed him.

We said goodbye on a corner near his hotel. We were suddenly very formal with each other. We had a stiff hug (like I said, we’re not huggers. We can’t touch casually, AT ALL. Still can’t. Even now when we see each other, we can’t just have a friendly normal hug. Nope. No way. Not because of animosity but … well, you’ll just have to figure it out yourselves, people.) – “Good to see you!” “Oh, it was so great to see you in your element!” “Have a great show!” blah blah blah.

Casual! Happy! We’re old friends visiting! Yay!! Fun fun!

And he was off. And I was off.

As I walked back to school, it was as though I had an anchor, suddenly pulling me down into the cold blue deep. Literally, the second I turned away from him I could feel myself fall. And it was a far fall, man. It just kept going down. And down. And down.

I came back to Hoboken that night … the day before THE DAY … and cried myself to sleep. Pressing down on my heavy heart, with my own hands, trying to soothe the hurt there, which was searing. I was proud of myself, though, that I had kept it together during our time that day. There were no meltdowns. I hadn’t “gone there”. We kept it together. We had a nice time. We enjoyed each other’s company. We kept it light. We made jokes. We laughed, we didn’t ruin it. I was proud of both of us for that.

I woke up the next morning.

It was THE DAY. The day we had all been looking forward to for so long.

But God. How differently I suddenly felt. My whole hopeful autumn had been knocked out of me, leaving a puffy-eyed pale-faced girl with an anchor round her foot.

I made my way to the crazy New Line office, with its mannequins wearing kilts and biker boots, and its low lights, the glimmering screens of the monitors … I sat at my computer, wearing my sunglasses inside because my eyes were so messed up from crying and I was embarrassed. I had a couple of hours there before I headed down to the hospital where I would be there for the birth.

The birth! Is the day really here? Is it really happening? What the hell? Did yesterday even happen?

Weird what you remember. I remember going to work that morning and I remember looking forward to Pat playing with my earlobe. The earlobe thing had become a normal part of my everyday life, and I took it for granted. But suddenly, on Halloween, on THE DAY, I needed it. I needed a nice tender friendly touch that day. And I needed not to ask for it. I needed a touch that demanded nothing of me in return. A touch that was gentle, but with gentleness that did not hurt me. And there he was. Now that I’m actually thinking about “the earlobe thing”, I think that why it was so cool is that it wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t a come-on. It started as an affectionate joke thing, or like he was my little brother trying to bug me as I tried to work, and he just kept doing it, until it morphed into … almost a trance-like thing, where we weren’t even aware we were doing it.

So I sat there, on THE DAY, with my heart down in the cold blue deep, thudding painfully against my chest, doing my Rainman programming for 30 bucks an hour, drinking up the touch of Pat’s hand on my earlobe, with tears rolling down my face. A constant flow of tears. Pat never mentioned the tears. He was too much of a gentleman for that.

Then.

It was time.

The moment we all had been waiting for. For nine months.

I left the office. It was 5 o’clock at night. I was kind of hysterical, truth be told. I hadn’t fully segued yet. I was still trying to get back up to the surface. Believe it or not, I had completely forgotten it was Halloween. The really important event of that day was the birth. So I emerged onto the street, and I remember watching a witch walk by me, with a tall pointed hat, and then I remember watching a guy come towards me, fully dressed as an Oompa Loompa, with a bright orange face. I was so out of it, so absorbed with my own pain, that I didn’t know what was going on for a second. Why is there a witch on the sidewalk … oh my God, why is there an Oompa Loompa? I remember, too, that it was sunset, and the sky was a bright PINK. A crayola pink. With no other colors blended in, no soft wash of lavenders or lilacs … no. Just a flat Pepto Bismol pink sky. With witches and Oompa Loompas coming at me.

Of course I remembered in the next second second that it was Halloween, but for those few moments when I had forgotten the world seemed like a completely insane place. With no rules I recognized. I had never seen a sky that garishly pink before. The streets were full of ghosts and ghouls and people with masks. Reality had shifted.

Oh, but no. It was just Halloween. I started walking down one of the Avenues – I had time to walk – I didn’t feel fit to get onto the subway. I was too hysterical. And the sky was a glaring pink, and goblins and ghouls filled the streets. Everything was so WEIRD. NOTHING was normal. People in masks, ghosts, wizards, warlocks, vampires, Medusas … strolling up 6th Avenue under the pink sky.

Truth be told, I kind of felt like I was losing my mind for about 20 minutes.

But it was good that I walked, because by the time I reached Beth Israel Hospital, the segue was finished. It’s a long walk. I left the hysteria behind on the walk, I remember the breathing, the letting go … and I came out of tragic mode and went into celebration mode. The goblins and ghouls had helped, turns out. Nothing was normal. And so it was COMPLETLEY fine that I was crying as I walked down the street. I cried as I walked. I didn’t have to hold the tears back, which always makes things worse. I could just cry. And the goblins passed me by, not noticing. What did they care? They were goblins.

It wasn’t ALL out by the time I reached the hospital, but let’s just say the first wave was out. I had no idea how much feeling I would eventually have when that child arrived. I mean, I was excited, and I had SOME idea, but until it happened … I just couldn’t know what was coming.

I made my way to the maternity ward, and … slowly … as I took the elevator up … I shed the day before like an old snake skin … I let it go … and I accepted the day I was actually in. It was the day. The day of our dreams.

The substance of things hoped for.

My heart was no longer an anchor sitting at the bottom of the ocean. It pounded against my rib cage … the adrenaline rushing back in …

It was time … it was time …

My parents were there in the waiting room. Maria’s parents and brother were there in the waiting room. I joined them. There were other families waiting there, too. We got very involved in their stories. We shared our stories. We waited. We paced. We talked about nothing. We made chit-chat. We were completely in the moment. ALL we were doing was WAITING.

We loved our baby so much. We couldn’t wait to meet … him? Her?

The other family, whose daughter had had a labor of 24 hours or something and then had to have an emergency C-section, was anxious and exhausted … and I think it rubbed off on us. I held onto my dad’s hand as we waited. The anticipation was unbelievable.

And then …

The moment came.

Brendan, in his doctor’s scrubs, came out of the delivery room wheeling a little tub … We all LEAPT to our feet. The moment was indescribable. I can’t do it justice.

In the tub … was a small cocoon. A white cocoon of a human being. With HUGE eyeballs staring out of it. HUGE STARING EYEBALLS.

Brendan whispered at us, excitedly, “It’s a boy!”

Oh, we had never heard such miraculous words. Never! The burst of emotion that followed … was operatic. I saw Maria’s mother turn to Maria’s father and throw her arms around him in a total abandonment of joy. My parents hugged each other, hugged my brother, hugged Maria’s parents, I was hugging Brendan, with tears streaming down my face … different tears now … glad tears … The joy I felt was ferocious, a stabbing knife of life-affirming joy. The anxious family, waiting for word of their daughter, got caught up in our celebration, and hugged each other, hugged us. And we all just kept peeking at the small white cocoon … this PERSON … this person we had all been waiting for, and loving so hard for 9 months …

this wee white-swaddled being with HUGE STARING EYEBALLS …

who was now … undeniably …

HERE.