volume 2
May 14th
by Judith Schulz
I should remember my 22nd birthday. It should stand out in my mind like
a red beacon, obliterating all others before or since. I should not be able
to see May the 14th approach without at the very least, recalling what happened
on that date so many years ago.
But none of this is true. My day comes and goes, and to me, it's just the marking
of another year, no more and no less. Only recently have I begun to question
if this is how it should be.
Birthdays have never meant much to me. Many people say this, but it is
really true in my case. In fact, I have always hated the ceremony; always
dreaded the moment when everyone gathered around a glowing cake and made
me their focus. Being born on my older sister's birthday made it a little
easier; it took the pressure off of me and let me share the limelight, split
it in half to where it was almost bearable.
But Kathy has not lived in Chicago for more than ten years now, and since
then, the day has belonged wholly to me again. I would gladly skip it, move
from the 13th to the 15th without a backward glance at the missed day in
between.
This is how I've always felt, long before the day I turned 22. What happened
that day has nothing to do with my aversion with birthdays, and in a way,
that seems wrong somehow. It should have had more of an impact, for that
was the day that I aborted what would have been my first child.
I don't have the luxury of a good excuse for this decision. I wasn't a teenager
who was afraid to face my parents; didn't have a boyfriend who wouldn't take
responsibility; wasn't facing an uncertain future with no means of support
in front of me. I was, in fact, married. Newly married, to be sure, but even
so, my husband had just landed a decent job and we were certain not to starve,
even with another, unexpected mouth to feed. We could have made the necessary
adjustments to our lives to accommodate a child, if we had chosen to.
But we chose not to. It didn't fit into our plans.
We had married at what I consider to be a young age because we wanted time
together; time which we couldn't have with two sets of provincial, straight-laced
parents monitoring our every move. We wanted to fall asleep in each other's
arms at night and not have to wake up at 5 in the morning so that I could
be home before my father got up at 6. We wanted to travel--to camp beside
the ocean and backpack along the Appalachian Trail. We wanted, quite simply,
to be free.
I recall the moment I knew I was pregnant. I was lying in bed, my husband
of four months snoring gently beside me. We were on the other side of what
was a rough time in our young marriage--a period of 23 days spent apart from
each other. In those two and a half weeks, we had shared a bed only one night.
And in the joy of being in each others' arms once again, we had not been
as careful as we should have been.
Steve is a paramedic. For two years, he worked for private ambulance companies
where the pay was lousy, the hours brutal, and there was no hope for a future
of any kind. He stuck with the profession, keeping his certification current,
in the hopes of getting onto the Chicago Fire Department. There was a long
waiting list for jobs at the time, however, and he had been on that list
for over two years. But we were young and in love and full of optimism; our
lives were still in front of us; we were certain that only good things lay
ahead.
We started our life together, literally, with nothing. The furniture in our
four room apartment consisted of a kitchen table and chairs, a bed and a beanbag
chair. Our friends sat on kitchen chairs or the floor when they visited us,
with only a lantern and one second-hand table lamp for light. Our family viewed
our Bohemian lifestyle with bemusement, but it didn't matter to us what anyone
else thought. We were together, and that was what counted. Starting from scratch
made the journey more exciting, for everything we acquired, everything we accomplished,
we would do together.
In January, two months after our wedding, the call came-- Steve was to report
to the Fire Academy the following week. I remember how excited he was; 'medics
had waited up to five years to get that call in the past. We didn't know
that at that moment, in some big, darkly lit hall somewhere, members of Local
2 were voting to take the Fire Department on its first strike in Chicago's
history. Steve learned about this only after the second week of his four
week stay in the Academy.
The city planned to move this newly hired class through quickly, to put
them on the street at the moment the rest of the union membership walked
off the job. We were told, essentially, that either Steve agreed to cross
the picket lines and work, or he could forget about ever working for the
city in the future. We weren't strong advocates either for or against unions
at the time—we had both barely entered the full-time working force—and
we weighed our options carefully in those two weeks. Defying a strike was
an unpleasant scenario, but then, so was a lifetime of low-paying private
ambulance jobs. We decided to go for it and let fate take us where it may.
It took us to separation. For 23 days he worked day and night, with no time
off save for that one single evening they allowed him to come home.
And so, I lay in bed a month later, my hand resting on my abdomen, feeling
a slightly bloated, feathery sensation every few minutes. And I knew. I didn't
even need to see the telltale blue ring in the bottom of the test tube the
next day; didn't need a confirmation blood test by my doctor. I was certain
that night, at that moment. And it made me smile to think of the life that
was growing inside of me.
I remember thinking about it as a wonderful, unexpected novelty. I never
truly considered it a baby per se, it was just an interesting thing that
was happening to my body. It made me feel special...different from all of
the run of the mill, ordinary people I passed on the street every day. I
was pregnant.
I felt this way even as Steve and I discussed our options over the next
few days. We ran over all the possible scenarios, complete with the romantic,
Norman Rockwell visions of the two of us being the parents we always wished
we had ourselves. But once we got past the fantasy stage, the reality of
the situation settled upon us. We were still children ourselves, still trying
to learn how to live with each other and survive in the adult world. We simply
weren't ready for the responsibility of parenthood.
Even in light of our decision, there was never a moment when I didn't feel
transformed by the knowledge of being pregnant. I felt it the afternoon I
walked into the women's clinic and filled out the paperwork; felt it through
the three days I was required to wait before I would be allowed to return
to the clinic for the "procedure" (they didn't call it what it
was back then, and I never did, either; it was merely a "procedure").
Having been pregnant, even if for only a short time, changed me, in some
subtle way, forever.
By coincidence, that third day was my birthday. As I returned my signed
release form to the receptionist, she glanced at it and said, "Well,
happy birthday!" The other six women sitting in the molded plastic chairs
looked up at me as I murmured a quiet thank you. No one smiled. It wasn't
the kind of place where a smile seemed to fit.
I moved on after that day, and rarely even thought about it. A confirmed
pro-choice advocate, it didn't seem to be something I needed to dwell on.
I was an atheist at the time, secure in my belief that life consisted of
only what I could see and touch. There was nothing else--no God, no mystical
world beyond my five senses, nothing other than the physical plane. I had
no fear of divine retribution because I believed there was no divine being
to be held accountable to.
Three years later, I felt that fluttery sensation once again. But this one
was planned; this one was welcomed. And our lives moved on.
About five years after my 22nd birthday, my cousin found herself in a similar
situation. But unlike me, she brought the crisis directly to the family.
My mother helped her find a clinic and accompanied her to her appointment.
Joanne was trying to free herself from an abusive marriage at the time, which
is the only reason my mother consented to help her in the first place. But
I vividly recall the conversation that followed, and my mom regretfully telling
me, "Your aunt has to live her whole life knowing that her first grandchild
was aborted." The words struck me with a force that I had not felt during
my own abortion. "So do you, Mom," I wanted to tell her. "So
do you."
I don't know why, seventeen years later, I have suddenly begun to think
about this; to think about the child who would be old enough to drive now,
to wonder if it was a boy or a girl. I've read a lot of pro-life literature,
with first person testimonies from women who had abortions and then were
racked with guilt years later. I always felt manipulated by those stories,
as though the message was aimed directly at me: You must feel guilty, you
must feel anguished for the choice you made.
I waited for it to hit me. But despite the fact that it seems like the politically
and morally correct feeling to have, the guilt never came. The truth is that
the only guilt I feel on occasion is because I don't feel guilty. Those women
in those stories are not me, and I suspect there are many of us out here
who share this truth. Women who, like me, made a choice at a moment in their
lives, and for that moment, at least, it was the right choice.
I'm not certain that, on a personal level, I even believe in abortion anymore.
My philosophy has changed, grown, led me to new awareness, so that perhaps,
if faced with the same situation, I would choose differently now. Perhaps I
would not. It's hard to say. But I do know that I would never take it upon
myself to decide what another woman should do with her body. That is not for
me to determine. Everyone must follow their own path, and no one can tell another
where that path should lead.
What I have been able to do is to stop judging people for the paths that
they choose, whether I personally agree with their choices or not. Navigating
my way through my own life has proven to be challenging enough; I don't believe
it is my place to try to navigate for anyone else. We make our choices, and
every one of them leads us to the next step, the next lesson.
I've stopped judging myself as well, and counting myself deficient for lacking
the emotions that many people seem to think I should feel. Today, and what
lies before me, is what matters now. The road of life, after all, only leads
forward, and the past must forever remain as it was written.
And it is only acceptance of that fact which allows us all the freedom to move on.
Back to Volume 2