THERE’S A LEGEND about Christopher Columbus. When his armada arrived in the new world, the native people could not see the ships. In all their lives and in the lives of their ancestors, no one had seen a ship before and so their brains did not have the experience needed to discern the shapes. A shaman came to the edge of the cliffs, looked at the ripples on the surface of the water, and noticed the current was unusual. After many days, the ships came into his view. The shaman told his people about the ships and eventually the people could see.
IS MY FIRST memory about sight? Or is my first memory actually the inability to recognize what was happening—or better stated, what wasn’t happening?
It remains, all these years later, inconceivable that my mother wasn’t the first person I saw.
If I would venture to guess at my first thought, I am sure it would have been this:
Where is she?
WHEN I AM an adult, an optometrist will say I have the strangest muscles in my eyes. “You work very hard, as if you want to see what’s not there.”
I will need glasses by the time I am ten.
As a younger child, I will develop the quirk of studying each location where I live or travel. I’ll take inventory of houses, neighborhoods, restaurants, office buildings, and churches. And I’ll stare at the people I live with until someone inevitably says, “For heaven’s sake, what are you looking at?”
By the time I am four or maybe five, I won’t remember that my eyes search for my mother. Like dirt thrown into a deep hole, primal conditioning will be buried under the minutiae of details that become my life.
IT IS NOT a stretch of the imagination to say I searched for my mother from the moment I was born. A baby, indeed, searches for its mother—frantically so when the mother cannot be found.
Sight is the most used sense and the one most aligned with thought. More than eighty percent of what happens in the brain is related to sight. Yes, looking would come first. The thought
Where is she?
would certainly be one of the initial coherent thoughts.
I would have also listened, intently, for the timbre of her voice; I would have tested the air for her scent; I would have reached out to make contact; and I would have salivated in anticipation of her milk.
Babies are sensory creatures with highly developed brains.
What is not commonly known—although it is common sense—is that within moments of separation from the mother, a newborn will experience outrage, panic, and eventually terror. Within forty-five minutes, studies show a baby will go into shock and lose consciousness. Once the baby awakens, she will use her senses to search for her mother again and if the mother isn’t there, the baby goes through the same process.
Imagine what this shock must do to the brain.
The only mercy for the baby (and the brain) is amnesia—shockbased unconsciousness.
IN 1997, I was jarred by my own amnesia. This didn’t happen gently, like the soft kiss of a prince but came on violently—in an explosive rush of life.
“PUSH. PUSH! PUSH!” came the collective scream of one doctor, three nurses, and my husband, his booming baritone firing into my left ear.
My knees were forced up to my underarms and contractions rolled thunder from my belly. The doctor pushed at my most tender place with such force her nails cut through latex and left half-moon incisions.
The whole scene was pandemonium with focus. My son wasn’t born as much as he was commanded into our midst.
Me? After four days of labor with no sleep and no food, I was eager to get him out too. I pushed!
When my son finally emerged, all became quiet—as if a pause button had been pressed. Look at him waving his arms and kicking his feet, his face scrunched in a grimace of glorious outrage.
I cradled him close to my chest and entered into that universe of mother and child.
He warbled his first sounds that were cries of indignation and I whispered how everything was going to be okay. I made note of how perfect he was, how powerful and wise for one so small. I was like every other mother throughout time, touching fingers and toes, but before I could finish my count, a nurse popped our bubble by explaining the baby needed to be assessed—standard procedure for a baby born six weeks early.
I was hesitant to give him up but I was also in a pretty compromising position. See me on the delivery table, legs spread far too wide to be considered appropriate, blood everywhere, and those overhead floodlights that left no room for imagination.
At that same moment, the doctor, eager to deliver the placenta, pressed on my belly. There was a splash and out came a rush of water that made the doctor jump back. “What in the world? ” she asked.
In a flash, the nurse lifted the baby off my chest like a seasoned waitress taking away an empty plate and was gone before I could protest, “Hey, bring that back, I’m not done!” Worse, the doctor pushed up her sleeve and reached inside my body without even asking. As she screwed up her face and considered the ceiling in concentration, she also patted around inside like she had lost a ring in my uterus.
Did I mention the pain?
Yes, all this hurt like hell, most of my body—especially down there—was on fire. I wanted to beat this woman in retribution and scream at her to get her goddamned arm out of me. I was also steamed that my kid was gone.
The doctor pulled out and made an educated guess. “Looks like you were pregnant with twins,” she said. “There’s no fetus now but obviously the bag has been there all this time. No wonder your baby came early.”
There was laughter among the hospital staff.
Another baby? Did he or she die? I blinked on a moment of sadness—a lump formed in my throat. Poor baby.
The nurses called out their reports: “Good color. Strong lungs. Nice reflexes. A first-rate heartbeat.”
My son was given a score—eight and nine on a scale used to determine good health. Ten was the best.
The baby cried and I felt the surprising tug of his need in my heart. “Give him back to me,” I said.
The edge in my voice had my husband give me a look that said, “That wasn’t very polite.” The doctor even raised her eyebrows.
Was there such a thing as delivery room etiquette? Had I missed the memo?
I slapped at my husband to get off his chair and get the baby, since obviously I could not. He jumped into action and headed over to the corner, but before he could take over, one of the nurses had our child bundled like a to-go order of ribs. “We’re going to need to do more tests,” she stated. “We’ll bring him back soon.”
It was work but I shimmied myself up to my elbows, winching at the mind-bending pain. “More tests?” I asked. “Why? You just said he was great.”
The doctor pressed a firm hand at my pelvis as if to remind me to stay put. “It’s procedure,” the doctor said. “Don’t worry, you’ll get him back.”
Another round of laughter passed through the staff as if she had made the best joke, but my sense of humor was not tuned to the medical establishment and these incomprehensible rules. I was a mother now. I wanted my child.
The baby fussed and the nurse patted at his back as if he was hers.
I sent my husband my best “If you don’t get that baby, I’ll kill you” look. My eyebrows pulled together, my jaw was tight, and my eyes went narrow.
As he reached out, yet again attempting to fulfill my primal wishes, the nurse shooed him away. She said something about hospital rules and my being overly emotional.
Poor man, he lifted his empty hands and shrugged his shoulders.
On his face was an expression of utter bafflement. Among all these women, the man was out of his element.
Between us, we had already talked about the possibility of the baby being separated from me. If something was wrong once the baby was born, our back-up plan was to make sure he stayed with the baby—no matter what.
My husband bit his lip, unsure if our back-up plan was still in place, so I was the one who said it out loud:
“I want my husband to carry him.”
A feeling of hesitation filled the room, confusion too. These people weren’t used to a mother calling the shots. The doctor did her own little nod of ascent and the nurse finally handed over the baby.
My husband, a little awkward, took our son into his arms.
“Watch his neck. Support his head,” I commanded, as if I was an expert on babies.
My husband adjusted his hands and three nurses swarmed.
What if something happened? What if these doctors made a mistake?
“Stay with him!” I called out.
“I will,” my husband said.
“Don’t leave his side.”
“I won’t.”
As the door closed, I eased back into the pillows again and looked between my legs. The doctor was a woman but she behaved like a man—professional and detached.
“Do you have children? ” I asked.
She laughed like having a child would be the last thing she would ever do and shook her head.
I directed my attention to the ceiling and chastised myself for being difficult and defensive and making all this worse than it was but I couldn’t help myself. I was so scared. What was happening to my son?
And that is when it happened. I began to awaken from a lifelong slumber.
As if time had split in half, I was back in 1963. I saw my own mother—helpless on a table. I saw myself being brutally separated from her. I felt a rush of intense emotion—shame mixed with fury.
And then I felt myself being dragged from her by unforgiving strangers. I felt sensations of movement that were swift and certain.
A series of jagged flashbacks took over then and flooded my senses: white light in my field of vision, laughing murmuring voices in my ears, and in my stomach there was a turn of nausea.
While being stitched up, I began to shake. My arms and legs were out of my control.
The doctor called out for the nurse and soon I was covered with warm blankets. I heard someone say I was in shock from giving birth and then I lost consciousness.
THREE
THE GIFT FROM GOD
AFTER BEING TAKEN FROM CATHERINE, I was deposited in the nursery at St. Mary’s Hospital.
Bud and Janet got a call from their doctor, a man named Smernoff, not long after he had washed his hands of my mother.
Although Dr. Smernoff is dead now, he is on record as saying he delivered 6,200 babies between 1929 and 1974. How many infants were taken in the way I was taken from my own mother? How many of us were given away on his advice?
“SHE’S WAITING,” SMERNOFF told Bud on the phone, as if I was at the hospital and tapping my foot.
According to family lore, Bud was Smernoff’s accountant. Smernoff’s daughter went to school with Bud’s younger sister and the two families were longtime friends. They went to the same cocktail parties, danced with each other’s wives, and shared stories over plates of barbeque.
Dr. Smernoff pulled strings to get Bud and Janet off a three-year adoption waiting list. He told the Catholic agency that in his opinion, the Laucks were special people and he recommended them with no hesitation. He didn’t mention Janet’s medical problems, which included a recent surgery to remove an eleven-inch tumor from her spine, a history of hallucinations, lacerated ulcers in her stomach, and kidney failure. He didn’t talk about Bud’s financial ruin, due to Janet’s medical bills.
The adoption was approved.
BUD AND JANET couldn’t get to me right away. I’m not sure why the time lapsed but there is a story of how they had a bowling match to attend that had been scheduled months in advance (Bud was an accomplished bowler with trophies on the mantel of their home). I also remember hearing there was childcare to arrange for their older child—a boy named Bryan—and that there was shopping to do in order to pick up diapers, a crib, and bottles.
Two days after I was born, they arrived at St. Mary’s and I was passed into Janet’s arms. “This one is a real handful,” the nurse warned, as if my incessant crying had gotten on her nerves.
Janet asked after the purple welts that were spread over the top of my head. “Forceps delivery,” the nurse said. “Very stubborn baby.”
This brief conversation became Lauck legend. I was defined as a “handful” and “stubborn” throughout childhood. My Auntie Carol used to say, “You are the most willful child I have ever met.” When I was small, I’d stay at Auntie Carol’s house and in no time, she’d
position me in a corner between the living room and the front room. I’d spend hours with my nose against plaster studying the intersection of two right angles. Auntie Carol told me to think hard about my stubborn nature. She suggested I change my ways.
BUD’S FULL NAME was Joseph Everett Lauck. He was a tall, clean-cut man with brown eyes and hair. His shoulders were sloped and he stooped from the waist, as if to apologize for his height.
Janet was Janet Lee Ferrel and stood about five foot three. Her hair and eyes were almost black. Her complexion was quite fair.
Bud was an accountant who started his own firm in Carson City. As a young man in university, he did not attend lectures and still aced his exams. He was called a genius.
Janet was a homemaker whose ambition centered on family. She went to college, majored in art and modeled clothing for department stores. She was called elegant and glamorous.
Bud was the eldest son in a family of five children. He was raised Catholic. He had a reckless side—he drove too fast and liked to gamble. He also dreamed of being a millionaire by the time he was forty years old. His hero was Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner.
Janet was the oldest in her family of three kids. Her people were Methodists. Since childhood, Janet had been frail and sickly but she didn’t admit her condition to anyone. When she was “out of sorts,” as she called it, she kept any residual discomfort to herself and took handfuls of aspirin to manage her pain. “A lady doesn’t complain,” she used to say.