Up While Everyone is Down

 

My husband, Brian, and I, in the unique unfolding of our life’s events, have had several experiences when our time of celebration and new beginnings came at a time when the world around us was mourning or experiencing a very difficult time.  Brian has often had the reputation of being a contrarian, and has come from a long line of Irish contrarians.  So, I guess it fits that our family pattern has taken this path.  For me, a true “rule follower” in my childhood days, it was a whole new world.  It has actually become kind of a twisted joke between the two of us, the fact that we are always “up” while everyone is “down.”

 

It started the minute we knew we wanted to be a couple. . . him being the ex-boyfriend of a friend of mine (yes, I broke the cardinal girlfriend rule!) created some heavy drama in the beginning of our relationship.  Although in our own world we were in new couple bliss, this time was challenging for me as a young woman, whose relationships were so very important to me.  I had to ignore some hurtful words and close friends’ initial thoughts that “I was a bad friend,” and trust my inner knowing that this man was the beginning of a very passionate and fulfilling life.  I was so right, and realized for the first time that going against the grain can have huge rewards.

 

Then, when we got married in August of 2001, Brian and I were in heaven.  The excitement of our two worlds becoming one, created energy between us that was like nothing I had ever experienced. We had so many plans, dreams, and visions for what we wanted in life.  However, one month later, on September 11, 2001, a new focus took root.  We were living in Philadelphia at the time when the Twin Towers fell on that sunny Tuesday morning, and as irony would have it, we had plans to be sitting in Tower 1 that upcoming weekend to take a motivational course together with a company called Landmark Education. Suddenly, our honeymoon enthusiasm was tainted with panic, fear, and grief all around us. As fate would have it, Landmark’s timely ILP course (located now at a new site in New Jersey) provided us with amazing tools to keep the strength and foundation of our marriage at the forefront of our lives.  Although many around us were having a lot of difficulty with the circumstances going on in the world, we continued to challenge ourselves to breakdown barriers that we had in front of us in order to create new dreams for our future.

 

The fall of 2010 approached, and following a recent move to New York City, Brian hit a point in his career when he knew it would be a good time to begin his own business.  Demands for anchor bolt engineering, Brian’s expertise, were increasing in Manhattan and there weren’t many businesses that existed that addressed that niche in construction.  Our children were 2 and 5, and having grown up in an entrepreneurial household, I knew that it would be easier on all of us to begin this journey when they were very young as instead of when they were older and more aware. So, at a time of deep financial crisis around the world, we bore a new child in our lives, Clarke Engineering Services.  As if starting our own business with very little savings didn’t require a leap of faith on its own, our trust was even more necessary when our son began his school career in a private, expensive kindergarten.  Not quite knowing where the money was going to come from, we trusted that it would all work out as Brian and Brady both began their new life adventures on the same day. 

 

So there was our family… at the same time when the world around us was losing jobs and cutting family budgets to the bare bones, an artsy stay at home mom was teaching herself bookkeeping and accounting to save on startup costs, the son of a blue collar family beginning his entrepreneurial journey creating an engineering firm in one of the largest construction industries in the world, and our son introducing us to the amazing world of Waldorf Education.  We must have been nuts!  I have never felt so much paralyzing fear in my life, yet somehow in the back of my mind, I had the same knowing that this combination would eventually provide us with the life we had created when we were twenty somethings, dreaming of our ideal future.

That brings us to final, perhaps most dramatic oxymoron. It was now 2013, and our business had brought us into a more comfortable place. Our children were 7 and 4, and the question of a third child arose. We both wanted a third badly, but as usual with Brian and I, the only thing that stood in our way were unknown fears and our string of “what if” questions.  He was working constantly, and we had very little time on our hands.  How would we adjust to a new change while the stakes were so high?  However, we were pretty confident that with all of the challenges that we had already faced, a new baby wouldn’t be anything that we couldn’t handle.  So, we proceeded, and I became pregnant with a due date of October 2012.

 

I had decided pretty early on that I wanted to have a natural birth, even though I had two c-sections for my prior children.  I realized the journey may be difficult being that few doctors would allow such a choice, but I persevered and was on my way.  After having found the perfect doctor and hospital combination for this delivery, I was ready for this experience.  However, what I wasn’t quite prepared for were the rumors of Hurricane Sandy that were beginning to swarm around me when I was experiencing the first of my labor pains.

 

 As it turned out, the day that Sandy hit, I was 3 cm dilated.  Being that we lived on the west side of the Hudson River, and my doctor and hospital were on the east side of the river, we were told not go home because the storm was expected that evening and everyone was pretty sure that the Tappan Zee bridge would close.  So yet again, we were preparing for the most exciting experience of our lives while everything around us was laced with fear, and our city was preparing for an unprecedented storm. 

 

We toured around Westchester County waiting for the contractions to get closer and more regular, watching businesses close and prepare for the days ahead.  We walked around a mom and pop bookstore, a CVS, and finally ended up at O’Conner’s Public House, an Irish bar of all places.  I guess this is where we began our dating life, in lots of Irish bars, so we certainly had come full circle. Maggie’s name came to us at this bar, while we were relaxing and laughing about these crazy circumstances.  Being that up to this point we had only been frustrated with each other about what her name would be, this was a moment I will never forget.  She had a name, and she was ready to come.

 

I continued to labor in a nearby Holiday Inn that was being powered by generator, thinking we might possibly need a place to sleep.  There were lots of stranded travelers occupying the hotel that night.  The storm was in full swing at this point, and Brian and I were keeping all of the media at bay in an effort to bring Maggie into a relaxed environment.  Although we knew that the storm surge had occurred, mostly we were experiencing the storm naturally between contractions, hearing the crazy winds and rain outside our hotel window.  At the point when it was time to go to the hospital around 11:30pm, we were bundled and hooded in our rain gear, facing whipping winds and heavy rains as we searched all of the hospital entrances to finally find the only one that was open. 

 

After being admitted, this is where the true magic began.  I was at 5 cm dilated at this point and cool as a cucumber.  From inside the hospital, aside from having to use a flashlight when inside the bathroom, it seemed like an ordinary middle of the night labor.  The nurses were informing me of the direct effect of the storm’s pressure systems on laboring moms.  It was fascinating to feel one with my body in such a powerful way, while at the same time being so connected with what was happening in nature.  It was literally all happening at the same time.  The contractions progressed, and soon I was ready for the finale.  At that point, I was using all of my mental energy to help ease the pain of the intense contractions, so I lost total awareness that there was even a hurricane at all!  I began pushing at 4:00am and Miss Maggie Melina Clarke came surging into this world at 6:17am on this extraordinary Tuesday morning.  Another Tuesday morning New York City would never forget. 

 

So there we were, happily bonding with our new baby girl, in pure amazement of what we had just experienced.  We felt so grateful for the health, safety, and happiness of our growing family.  While at the same time, New Yorkers around us were evacuating their flooded homes, grieving this devastating interruption in their lives, losing their ability to go to work every day, and fearing what would come in the difficult days ahead, all too familiar with the feeling of destruction to their beloved city.

 

This experience, along with all of the others, while difficult when they were happening, have all taught me so much about my strength.  Every single one, particularly Maggie’s birth, have shown me that I am much more capable and more independent that I usually give myself credit for on a day to day basis.  Each struggle has pushed me to the limits of my being physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and shown me how well God’s work within me truly guides the path of my life.  These events have shown me that we are all worthy and deserving of receiving light and goodness, and that when we are aligned with God, they are strongly present within us.  I have learned how quitting and doubting yourself is just not an option when you are in the middle of making your highest dreams become a reality.  I am so grateful that in all of these adventures, faith has shown me that with trust and perseverance, anything is truly possible.  

 

~ Amy