Kevin Michael Connolly - Double Take: A Memoir

double take

A rapid or surprised second look, either literal or figurative, at a person or situation whose significance has not been completely grasped at first.

Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen. The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Birth Day

Adaptations

What If?

Playground

Standard Issue

Dirtbags

Blind Support

Wounded Vigilante

Skateboard

Forced Blessings

Snapshot

Going for Broke

Money Motivations

The Dog Show

Tokyo Story

Slow Dancing

Sarajevo Roses

Parting

Home

Old Hands

A ll but one of the images in this book were part of The Rolling Exhibition, a collection of photographs taken during my travels around the world.

Mlnk, Czech Republic

Y ou were an exclamation point on a really tough couple of years is what my mom says about my birth.

I am calling my mother from my apartment in Bozeman, to ask her about something Ive always wanted to know but have been a little reluctant to delve into. Up until now, Id always avoided asking too much about the time directly following my birth for fear that it might bring back feelings neither of us wanted to deal with again.

But first we must have the obligatory talk about Montanas mercurial spring weather. After a week of blizzards and deliriously frigid temperatures, the cold had let up long enough for the snow to turn into a brown goulash of dirt and ice. Its the time of year when most people become homebodies, seeking anything that is warm and dry.

Except, as Mom quickly tells me, a good portion of our home is now submerged in water. Earlier in the day, a pipe had sprung a leak and had emptied gallons into the kitchen, soaking through the floorboards and down into the basement.

The kitchen is totally flooded. The whole floor is going to have to be replaced.

She sighs, then laughs.

Oh well. Been through worse.

I imagine the kitchen, swollen and bloated, weeping out the old mold and dust of our familys history. I know that Mom and Dad will patch it back together themselves, and Dad confirms my speculation by yelling over Mom that hes going to the hardware store later. Hes already had a couple of beers, by the sound of his laugh.

My parents dont have much money; they never did. There is a picture in the entryway that shows our house in the state that my parents first purchased it. Weeds that came up to my head (three feet, one inch, incidentally) made up the front yard and lined a dirt ditch, driveway, and road. The down payment for the ranch house five miles outside Helena cost $2,000; in 1984, it was what they could afford.

They purchased the house a year before I was born, in the midst of a run of family disasters. Moms sister, Mickey, had been diagnosed with brain cancer; by the time of my moms pregnancy, she had become terminally ill. A single mother with four kids, she asked my mom to take custody of her children. She died in March when Mom was four months pregnant with me.

Even before Mickey passed away, Mom had started attending court hearings to decide who was to get custody of Mickeys children: my parents or Mickeys ex-husband. As my moms stomach grew, so did the question of whether she would be caring for one child or five.

As Mom split her time between court and visits to her sister in the nursing home, her father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Shortly thereafter, her mother was diagnosed with skin cancer. It seemed impossible to have this much bad luck all at once.

Recalling all this, Mom pauses for a moment. I imagine her sitting in the living room with blue carpet under her feet. The smell of water and rotting wood emanating from the kitchen. The sound of Dads television upstairs. Our golden retriever, Tuck, in the entryway. Frost on the windows and the dim light of sixty-watt bulbs filling the interior. Lining up her thoughts before letting them all out in one rushed breath. I finally hear her exhale, slowly.

There were two sides to this stretch of time. My personality is pretty resilient, but there was so much going on: my mom and dad getting cancer, Mickey dying, fighting for her kidsit was hard not to get down. The one positive in all of this was my pregnancy. Wed been married for three years, and your dad and I really wanted a baby. So we were leaning pretty heavily on the excitement of having our first kid.

I listen on the other end of the line, knowing how the story ends, thinking about the crisis my birth must have been.

The final surprise began on August 17 around six in the morning. Sleeping in their old waterbed, my mom woke up in a puddle, her nightgown drenched.

Brian, I think the bed broke! she cried, shaking him awake.

Marie, I dont think its the bed.

Two weeks before I was due, Moms water had broken. An hour later, they were at the local hospital. Their doctor was on vacation, and Moms parents were in Utah for cancer treatment.

After twelve hours, Mom was still waiting for her first contractions, so the doctors decided to try to induce the birth. Loaded up on Pitocin, a drug that jump-started a series of painful contractions, Mom went into hard labor around seven that night. Three hours later, I still hadnt come out, and Dad began to get excited.

Hold on! A couple more hours and you can have him on your birthday!

Indeed, the hours inched along, and Moms labor continued past the midnight mark. On August 18, I was born. She turned twenty-eight; I turned zero.

I dont really like this bit. Its awkward asking my mom what those first few moments of having a legless kid were like. She must have wondered what kind of life her child would have. I can hear the tension in her voice as she tiptoes around the answer.

Kevin, you were an exclamation point on a really tough couple of years.

The rest of the phone conversation comes between pauses, white noise between the sighed-out details.

I could tell from the look on the nurses faces that something was wrong. I hadnt heard you cry. So I started asking, Is he crying? Is everything okay?

The doctor looked over at me and said, He doesnt have any legs. I told him, Thats not very funny. He said, Im not joking.

Silence, as she collects her thoughts.

The doctors handed you over after that. You were pretty tightly swaddled up in these white hospital blankets. The first thing I did was pull the end of the blanket out so that you looked long enough.

It was a long process of us becoming comfortable with who you were.

I dont think that I would know what to do if I were to become the father of someone with a disability. At the very least, Id probably be ashamed and disappointed. Knowing that Id react this way makes me feel guilty for what my parents had to go through.

Im not as strong as my parents , I think to myself.

Mom pulls me out of the spiral.

I remember asking if stress couldve causedthis. The doctor smiled at me. If stress caused it, thered be babies without legs all over the place.