I went to a birthing with
Kiki last Friday night. Instead of
going out to the bars and the show, we went to a birthday party.
It wasn't at
all like when my sister-in-law Debbie had my nephew Aaron. Then,
when the pains got to 10 minutes apart, David packed Debbie and
an overnight
bag in his BMW and whisked them to Mercy Hospital. Mercy wasn't
the closest
hospital, but the one David had decided had the best delivery rooms,
the best
obstetrical nurses and also, if it became necessary, the best neonatal
specialist in the county on call. David is like that.
Aaron appeared
without any visible fuss and I saw him for the first time after
his bris. He looked okay, for a baby. Debbie looked okay and David
looked
serious as befits a father already thinking about getting the kid
into a good
school.
Debbie's mother
cooked a big meal and the new heir to the Funk fortunes was
toasted in a moderately good California champagne. I went home from
this get
together still wincing from my mothers parting thrust: "He
should have been
yours. The eldest should give us the first grandchild, for God's
sake!"
So when Kiki
said we were going to help a baby get born I thought maybe she
meant we were going to sit in the waiting room at the Garberville
Hospital and
drink coffee with Stonypath Warrior while Cloud Princess, his old
lady, popped
out the fourth little Warrior. Stonypath and Cloud Princess are
not
Amer-Indians. Back in the late sixties they got "grooved"
on things Indian. Now
they live in a giant teepee out on the Mattole watershed, grind
their own corn
and smoke dope in a genuine peace pipe.
They've been
together for "many moons," as they put it. Their oldest,
Sweet
Bird, is in high school. Well, sort of in high school. Sweet Bird
really wants
to get a diploma and go on to study "the Earth", so she
says...but in the
meantime she lives a hell of a long way from the high school. She
isn't alone
in this predicament. There are enough like her for the county to
have an
"independent study" program. This means that she goes
into Garberville once a
week and gets some assignments in sewing, American History and Business
Math
that she can do at home.
She moved out
of the family teepee this year, her fourteenth, to move in with
a
guy who has a 12 volt TV and a tape deck. Two things Stony and Cloud
consider
decadent. She also wears lipstick and has announced she wants to
change her
name to Pamela. Well, maybe the parents will have better luck with
this new
papoose.
Considering
all the above information, why did I think I would be going to the
Garberville Hospital for this arrival? Kiki said I was slow, but
she smiled
when she said it. I think that smile may indicate a change in our
relationship.
So at about
8 o'clock in the evening when we should have been checking out
which band was playing where in Garberville, we were pulling into
the clearing
around the "Warriors" teepee. There was a good size fire
built off to the right
in a cleared space of beaten earth, where Stony and other like-minded
friends
have rain dances in season and barbeques out of. Stony has a way
of barbequing
salmon that would make a French chef weep for shame. Tonight, however,
the fire
seemed to be for boiling water and making a warm spot where "us
men" could
gather. One of "us men", to my mild surprise, was Pete
the Meat. He had brought
his drum, and was beating a soft rhythm that reminded me of some
of my folks
old bossa nova records. It was kind of neat, hunkering around the
fire with a
bunch of the guys, smoking the weed passed around in a real Indian
peace pipe,
and swaying slightly to the beat of "The Girl From Ipanema."
As matters quickened
in the teepee, Stony Path went inside to do whatever
fathers do at that time. Not too long after that, with Pete's drum
still
thum-thumming away, we heard the cry of a newborn human, just like
in the
movies. Then Stony appeared with his newest addition to the tribe.
I think it
was a boy...or maybe it was a girl. I was too stoned by then to
recall what he
said. Anyway, all babies look alike to me.
Afterward, I
napped for a while. The next I knew Kiki shook my shoulder and
said it was time to take off for home. I will say this: it was better
than the
hospital waiting room, which is not yet into drums and peacepipes.
But I still
don't know how babies are born. And what is all that hot water for?
