“I don’t know,” I said.

In the long pause that followed, I understood how inadequate the reply.  Knowing what I know now includes so much:  how extreme prematurity affects a family, what a strain it can put on relationships, that marriages fail and parents go broke.  The never-ending care and involvement of doctors, therapists, and social services.  Standing before the bookstore crowd, how could I begin to address that history and those complications?

“I still believe, fundamentally, that if a baby is going to be resuscitated at this gestational age, it is the parents who ought to be making that decision.  The parents will be the ones caring for this child, not the doctors, and it is the parents whose lives will be affected.  Knowing what I know now, that is still my position.”

“But would you still ask for the same?”

I thought of my life these past ten years, my son and all I have learned.  The bookstore was not the place to tell all this, and thirty seconds at a podium hardly afforded me the chance to speak of those lessons, the nuances:  what it was like to hear my son’s laugh in the morning and how I never thought of his birth and my demands in those moments.  Protecting him from the judgment of others because of his disabilities, and that the doctors or the delivery were gone to me, so far gone, because they were not at all relevant to what I did every day.  The question was far too simple for such a complex set of meditations.  How could I address fear, and grief, and compassion and love?  Impossible.

So instead I said, “It’s complicated.  There’s no easy answer.  A person can’t put herself into a past moment in time and not be a different person, based on all she has learned.  The decision wouldn’t be the same, because the events wouldn’t be the same.”

Knowing what I know now, the answer remains, “I don’t know.”

A day after our panel,  Lantos addressed the society at large in the Inaugural March of Dimes Distinguished Lecture.  In his lecture, Lantos spoke on the topic, “Doctors Are All Alike, Parents Are All Different.”  While it would be impossible to summarize Lantos’ words, but the power of his ideas lay in his overall theory that while doctors need and demand statistics to help understand and make their cases for interventions (or lack of interventions) with extremely premature infants, parents, in fact, have a nearly unpredictable set of responses to being in the situation of having given birth to those same infants.  Lantos so effectively problematized the matter, we can only hope that he publishes his remarks eventually so that others can benefit.

Despite the rainy weekend, there was much to learn, and even more to be gained.  Thank you, John, Annie and Barbara.

Go on over to read Kate Hopper reporting on the Mother Words Reading, with some photos of the event, including this one in which my mouth is open and my hands are excessively gesturing, for reasons I cannot fathom.

Sorry for the tiny, distant quality.

The Loft, and Kate, and Kate St. Vincent Vogl were everything I could have imagined, and more.  The space is ideal for reading:  hearing one’s voice, seeing the audience, getting a sense of one’s  reception.  The walls are warm and the vibe utterly welcoming.  Later in the weekend my sister asked me if I was ever nervous when I read, and I told her, “Only twice.  First, at Bread Loaf, and then, at the Loft.”  Because ideal reading spaces actually do make you nervous, even as they reassure you that everything will be fine.

From the Loft and the Kates and a morning with fantastic NICU nurses at St. Paul Children’s Hospital, it was off Chicago to  a reading at Women and Children First.  Thanks again to my hosts there, and everyone who turned out.

Next up:   DC, and the East Coast in mid-October.  After that, there are some local readings here in Southern California, including the University of California, Irvine bookstore in November, and a University of Redlands reading in December.  As always, check the appearances page for more details.