Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word Read Free

example, says New Year’s
     Eve is her worst day of the year, because when everyone else is celebrating, she is reliving the nightmare of giving birth
     to me. If you were to go to a party on New Year’s Eve where my mother happened to be, you’d spot her straight off: She’d be
     loudly and aggressively subjecting anyone within earshot to the story of my undignified entry into the world. Later, she’d
     be the one curled up in a fetal position in the corner, swigging gin straight from the bottle, getting more maudlin by the
     minute. You can imagine why relations between me and my mother sometimes tend toward the frosty. This year, to my relief,
     she and Dad are going to South Africa for Christmas and staying for the New Year, so at least we’re spared her presence. My
     father’s presence, by contrast, is always pure pleasure. He’s the longest-suffering and cheeriest person I’ve ever met. He
     still adores her and what he chivalrously refers to as her “engaging eccentricity.” Even after fifty-five years of marriage.
     I don’t get it, but neither would I dare to question it. It’s not my business.
    • • •
    After twenty-seven hours in labor, by ten p.m. on December 31, 1952, Jenny Lyndhurst wasn’t the slightest bit interested in
     the symbolic nature of the date. She didn’t give a damn whether her offspring arrived before midnight, as the clock struck
     twelve, or never. The midwife, who’d been hoping to get off her shift at ten P.M. in order to join a group of nurses and doctors for the countdown on the hospital roof, with its panoramic views of the Thames,
     could barely loosen my mother’s viselike grip on her arm.
    “You can’t leave me, not now,” my mother wailed. “I’m going to die if this isn’t over soon.”
    Mary, the midwife, who was caring and Catholic and Irish, didn’t have the heart to abandon my belligerent, albeit distressed,
     mother. As Big Ben began to ring out for midnight, Mary exclaimed, “You’re ten centimeters dilated! We’ll soon be there, Mrs.
     Lyndhurst. It’s time to push; start pushing, Mrs. Lyndhurst. We’re nearly there.”
    An hour later, Mrs. Lyndhurst was still pushing and still wailing and still ranting between wails about how she’d never wanted
     to have a second child and how Abe, my soon-to-be father, was to blame, and how she was going to have her tubes tied the minute
     the baby was out, and how all midwives were sadists. Not that any of it mattered, she insisted, because she was about to die
     anyway.
    By this time the doctor had arrived—from the roof, presumably—wearing a silly paper hat on his head and streamers around his
     neck.
    “Get out of here,” Mrs. Lyndhurst screamed. “Mary, the alarm, get this intruder out of here.”
    “Calm down, Mrs. Lyndhurst, and let me have a look,” said the duty obstetrician. “Do we want to get this baby out now or not?”
     He bent down to look closer between my mother’s writhing, ricocheting legs, jerking his head back, then forward, then back
     again to avoid being hit in the face by a flailing limb.
    At the very moment he was thinking of forceps, Jenny Lyndhurst felt something rip her flesh apart. She let out a low, guttural
     groan that sounded nothing like the noise a human being makes. The crown broke through, and a bloody, big-headed baby slithered
     out of her, caught in time by the triumphant doctor. He beamed, as though he and he alone had been responsible for the successful
     outcome.
    “A beautiful baby girl, Mrs. Lyndhurst. My sincerest congratulations. One of the first babies of the new year, born midway
     through the twentieth century, at the dawning of a new era of peace and prosperity. What a blessing.”
    If she’d had the strength, my mother would have strangled the patronizing popinjay. Instead, she snapped breathlessly, “Cut
     the sermon, Doctor. I’d like to see my baby, if it’s all right with you.” As I was lifted and placed on her belly, a wrung-out,