Molasses in January

My mother took a drag on a Pall Mall, exhaled, and told the story of my birth. These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ was playing on WJOY, and it was my fourth birthday. She proclaimed, “You were like molasses in January.”

We were idling at a red light in a green station wagon on Main Street in Burlington, Vermont. I wasn’t yet familiar with the properties of molasses, but I knew it to be an important ingredient in ginger snaps; it seemed exotic, unlike maple syrup. The youngest, I was always beside her in the kitchen, watching, standing on a chair or peering over the counter, sticking my fingers in what I didn’t understand.

Now that I am a mother, I know that she didn’t say this to me because I was born in January. She used this phrase because, unlike my siblings, my birth took forever. But my mother never belabored a point. She worked crosswords, knit sweaters, read paperbacks — even played the piano — without delay. She saw no harm in letting a child parse meaning independently. I now understand how she would have done anything to avoid creating a fuss. The night of my birth she checked herself in to that gothic hospital on Prospect Street, and the nurses were probably busy with other patients. But she knew the routine. This was to be her fifth, and the others had come fast. I see her passing the bustle of gurneys and orderlies to hang her camel’s hair coat and find the clean linen. Before Sister Beryl had a chance to greet her she’d removed her wedding band and placed it safely inside one of her sensible black boots. And as the family story goes, there was a snowstorm, and my father had to walk back and forth from the hospital because the roads weren’t plowed and so many hours passed. Also, when a group of medical students peered in, they were shocked to see her smoking in the labor room.

But when I was four, back when I still warmed my bottom on the heater grate, waiting for her to give me bowls of oatmeal that stuck to my ribs, my mother began my story with, “The day you were born, I slipped and fell onto my belly,” followed immediately by, “It happened over there, by the school. You were late.” And I knew that she was done telling the story when she rolled down the car window slightly to flick ashes from her cigarette.

So, from the backseat that cold January evening, I began to fill in the blanks of the story, my story. I saw my mother waiting for me in the hospital while smoke rings danced above her big belly. Tambourines rattled and bass guitar strings twanged from the radio, punctuating the thick atmosphere between us in the station wagon. The sun dropped into the Adirondacks, and this might have been the first time life existed before me. Her boots were made for walking, but my mother slipped and fell, perhaps blinded by a gust off Lake Champlain, dark eyes watering, and hair wild. She might have blushed over appearing clumsy, but I’d not be surprised if she held the gaze of anyone who dared gawk. I’m sure she would have recovered quickly to continue downtown to shop for supper at the A&P. The Nancy Sinatra song stopped, and the traffic light turned green. My mother may have been thinking about how she fixed pork chops and canned peas before giving birth at the Bishop DeGoesbriand Memorial Hospital for the last time. She didn’t like to create a fuss, and never intended to linger.