Greetings, gentle readers. I hope you will indulge me as I share a different kind of mother’s day writing. Though its words are not flowery and its subject difficult, I believe a lot of mothers—and fathers—will relate to it, because our identity as parents is sometimes defined as much by loss as by abundance. I have only shared it once before in a reading at Vermont College, but then my tale was hidden behind a fictional character. I am sharing it today in the form it should take: the truth.

I hope it touches you, whether you relate to it or not. I hope you all have a happy Mother’s Day.

The Empty Sweater

I see it out of the corner of my eye as I dig beneath skeins of wool in the cedar chest, the red, yellow and green flecks in its deep blue deceivingly festive like confetti. I pull it out from beneath a stack of vintage knitting patterns, and for a moment pretend to not know what it is, though I’ve never really forgotten its presence beneath the rarely opened hinged top. But as I unfold the tiny sweater in my hand an invisible band around my chest tightens and my breathing comes in shallow and fast. As I hold it, there is no denying its story.

I had bought the yarn on the way to the doctor for my monthly check-up. Doing so meant letting go of my superstitions—I wouldn’t buy anything for my first child until I was seven months pregnant and a co-worker said, “Ann, you better at least buy a bassinette, or that baby won’t have a thing to sleep in!”—but I needed to feel I was doing something for him, for my second son. I hadn’t been able to feel at ease during this pregnancy; I felt like everything was just beyond my grasp, just beyond my control, and every day I was surprised and relieved when nothing went wrong. But I smiled as I held the marbled cotton yarn in my hands; I would begin the project while waiting for my appointment that afternoon.

The back of the sweater was half done when the nurse finally called me in. I eyed it peeking from my tote bag as Dr. Sampson ran the Doppler over my taut white belly, his face a neutral mask of concentration, and I wished I could hold it, be comforted by the touch of the soft yarn.

“Ann, I’m just going to ask one of the other physicians to have a listen. I’m having some trouble getting a read on the baby. It’s probably just the equipment.” But his strained smile said he didn’t think it was. The minute he was out the door I grabbed for the sweater.

As I waited, the silver needles clicked and clicked, echoing in the empty examination room, their rhythmic sway the only movement. The front left side was done by the time Dr. Sampson returned with a false-smiling physician. He didn’t seem to have any luck with the Doppler either, and as I watched him leave, I fantasized about following him out, just walking out the front door and to my car in the bright Vermont autumn sun.

“Ann, we would like to order a sonogram at the hospital, tonight,” Dr. Sampson said. “Now don’t worry, it’s probably nothing, but we just want to make sure all is well.” He patted my hand, and for a moment, just a moment, I considered slapping it away.

That evening I perched on the end of an orange Naugahyde chair in the hospital waiting room, my hands and their needle extensions moving faster, as if trying to outrun my heartbeat. Alone, surrounded by quiet floral wallpaper, I finished the right front and started on a sleeve.

Later, in radiology the night physician stood in front of me, his serious face lit only by a lamp in the corner and the blue light from the sonogram machine. I could feel his pity coming off him like heat. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Cardinal. There’s no movement at all. It looks like he’s been gone a few days. Dr. Sampson will be here shortly, and we’re calling your husband now.”

I sat on the hard vinyl examining table, my rounded belly mockingly pushing through the opening in the faded blue gown. I expected tears. I was surprised by the numbness spreading through me, beginning at my sepulchered womb and moving outwards. I picked up my needles and finished the sleeve, the yarn trailing over my swollen breasts, my hands moving slowly, as if underwater. I continued to knit as Mike Sampson told me they would have to get the D&C scheduled, that I should go home and he would give me a sedative to help me sleep, to help me forget. I took the drugs; after all there was only my bloodstream to worry about now. I swallowed the blue pill dry as my husband drove, his grief-stricken face lit by the green glow of the dash and the flashes of light from the passing cars.

That night, at home, my eyes hazed with the Valium, I squeezed between my two-year-old son and my husband on the couch. For moments, comforted by the warmth of their skin, of their familiar company, I could almost forget. As images of blue animated Disney ants flashed across the television screen, I finished the last sleeve and placed the pieces on the coffee table just slightly apart from each other. In silence, all three of us looked at the dismembered sweater. Then Carlos asked, “You gonna put that together, Mommy?” I pulled him close and kissed his forehead, the sweet powdery smell of him filling my nostrils.

I wouldn’t sew it together until the following day in the hospital, after the bleeding started as Carlos and I walked through the brightly lit aisles of the video store, cramps doubling me over, my contracting stomach pressed against the steering wheel during the rushed drive to the hospital as I murmured comforting words over my shoulder to the child seat in the back. At the hospital my womb began to empty on its own, as Carlos was tugged away, his small face a mirror of my frightened heart.

That night, after my family went home, tired and saddened, I sat on the gurney, the hushed sounds of the night-shift nurses floating up and down the hallway, and carefully sewed shoulder to shoulder, sleeve to back. The next day when I arrived home with my small family, I snuck away from their concerned hovering to the bedroom, folded the sweater up and placed it in the chest—not on top where I would see it all the time, nor at the bottom where I might forget it entirely.

Now, as I hold it up in the light, I admire the tight stitches, noticing the beauty of the yarn and the brightness of the flecks of color against the deep blue. There had been several times when I considered giving it to a friend for their baby—it seemed so silly for it to sit empty, buried among rarely used yarn—but I never could bring myself to give it away. I wonder if I feared it was cursed, or if I simply couldn't bear to see another baby wearing it.

I fold it up carefully, and decide. I’ll save it for when my son has children of his own. I have to imagine its edges will be rounded with chubby baby flesh, its stitches stretched with movement and growth. I have to believe that one day it will be full.

If people won’t read, give them books on CD. Bits & pieces.

Michael Sedano

Back in October 2005, I reported on a valuable parenting resource, How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children and its Spanish-language translation, Como Criar Niños Emocialmente Sanos. In 1999, the company where I was working, gave a copy to every employee in the company’s 15 US and 4 Canadian cities, and to hundreds of trade show attenders. The NY Times’ November 19, 1999 business section carried a story about corporate support for family health, quoting me about my employer’s support for “family values.” As Human Resources Director, I made it a point to give a copy to new employees as I conducted their new hire orientation.

Recently, I had lunch with the author, Gerald Newmark, and his wife Deborah. They were excited about a documentary film in process, and the growing use of the book—now in its second edition--in social service, health, and educational agencies and schools. I asked Jerry what kind of feedback he’s getting from people once they’ve read the book. And ahí está el detalle, as Mario Moreno might quip. Newmark’s agency, The Children’s Project, was selling the book at a deep discount to the adopting agencies, but few people were taking the book home and actually reading it.

What a pity. The book is packed with valuable ideas and solutions to issues and problems revolving around child-rearing, family communication, and parental time-management. I asked the Newmarks if they’d considered offering the book in recorded form. It seems people in our cultures, neither the English-speaking nor Spanish-speaking U.S. cultures, can, do, or enjoy reading. Yet, given that many cars nowadays have CD players, kitchens and bedrooms have clock radio-CD players, CD technology might be a workable alternative to the labor and work of reading printed words.

The Newmarks were intrigued by the notion but lacked any concept of how to create a book on CD. That’s where I stepped in. I'm a long-time multimedia producer, dating back to the days of multiple carousel projectors synchronized by pulse-tones on audiotape soundtracks. Now technology makes quick work of what used to require six months or more. Hence, for the past three weeks, I have been working with three talented voice actors, Carolyn Zeller, Christopher Youngblood, and Reynaldo A. Pacheco, to create the aural version of Newmark’s book, in English and Español. We used an Azden wireless microphone received into a Macintosh PowerBook G4, recorded and edited using Bias, Inc.’s Peak Pro 5.2 software. This is fantastic technology. Back in the mid 70s, large studio equipment was the sine qua non of this type project. Audio editing required blank tape, a tape recorder, white china markers, razor blades, splicing tape, and infinite patience, not to mention long, uninterrupted hours of scrubbing marking cutting splice-taping trimming. Today, I follow along in the book. When the actor makes a flub, I mark the text, the actor retakes from the previous comma or period. Later, I open the file in the Peak Pro software, follow the wavy lines until the flub. I insert electronic place markers at the beginning of the flub and the beginning of the retake. Two keystrokes later, instant edit! Still a time-burner, but nowhere near the exhaustion of making hundreds of physical splices.

And the payoff! I visualize gente driving here and there listening to the good sense advice and sound analysis written by Dr. Newmark, read beautifully by the talented speakers, learning to, as Newmark writes in his Preface, use their abilities to help raise children who feel respected, important, accepted, included and secure, "who knows, we might just change the world."

U.S. Postage Stamp Honors Journalist Ruben Salazar Tuesday, April 22, the US Postal Service issues a 41 cent postage stamp honoring Salazar. Against a brown field and the outline of a water jug the designer has assembled like a ransom note torn from a newspaper pages the words, "during Chicano protest rally in East Los Angeles".

It was a police riot. And he was killed miles from the park rally.

It was August 29, 1970. The Chicano Moratorium had assembled massive numbers to march along Whittier Boulevard to a neighborhood park, where they would be entertained by poets, musicians, and speakers. But as the march reached its destination and gente had begun the rally, the cops, on a pretext (can you say agent provocateur?), went crazy, attacking people mindlessly, chasing mothers with babies in arms into private homes. By day's end, law enfarcement would notch three dead Chicanos: Lyn Ward, a 14-year old boy; Angel Diaz; Ruben Salazar.

Several Chicano novels cite the police riot in East Los Angeles. The earliest is Guy Garcia’s Skin Deep, where the riot marked a turning point in the character's life. Lucha Corpi’s Death of a Brown Angel, opens with her character fleeing the crazed cops. She turns into an alley where she discovers a murdered infant, whose dreadfully abused corpse will lead the woman to solve the mystery. More recently, Stella Pope Duarte's Vietnam war/movimiento novel, Let Their Spirits Dance, recalls the event as a focal point illuminating the contradictions of Chicano activism on one hand, military dedication on another. And I wish I remember the poet who wrote a heart-rending poem about a baby's shoe in the gutter littered with the detritus left in the wake of the panicked crowd fleeing the gas and batons of Laguna Park.

The deaths of those three Chicanos on August 29 was the third time law enforcement killed war protestors in 1970. Three anglo kids were shot by national guardsmen on the Kent State University campus. Ten days later, two black kids were shot by police at Jackson State University. Then came August 29. At Kent State, an iconic image of an anguished girl kneeling over the body of a fallen protestor, hit the cover of Newsweek magazine. The black kids were shot at night in or near their dorm rooms, with no “live” media, so their deaths largely went unmemorialized. The East LA event memorialized the Silver Dollar bar. The Coroner’s Inquest was broadcast live, for all the good that did. (See this satirical piece depicting Nixon’s Tape 231 discussing the Salazar, Diaz, and Ward killings). No police officer or Sheriff’s Deputy was ever brought to account in the shootings of Lyn Ward, a 14-year old Chicano, Angel Diaz, nor La Opinion and LA Times journalist Ruben Salazar. Salazar's murder included a mysterious phone call alerting Sheriff's to a "man with a gun" inside the Silver Dollar. The Deputy fired blind, through a curtain, decapitating Salazar, who was enjoying una chelada miles from the heat of the riot at Laguna Park.

None of this, of course, is in that stamp. Only the ongoing coverup, "during a Chicano protest rally".

There's something more, yet less, in the stamp story. It's "good" only for the next twenty days. The USPS issued the stamp at the current first class standard, 41 cents. On May 12, you’ll have to add a one cent mark-up if you want to honor Salazar with his stamp, since the first class rate goes up to 42 cents.

For a 300 dpi image of the Salazar stamp, click the image above. From the USPS site: Note: When reproducing the Salazar image, please include the following: Ruben Salazar, from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429), Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA


Author Alicia Gaspar de Alba fighting women’s cancers

La Bloga is happy to pass along word that the author of Sor Juana’s Second Dream, Desert Blood, and Calligraphy of the Witch, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, has set a goal of raising $2000 in the 5 kilometer event Revlon RunWalk for Women. The event raises money to fight women’s cancers. If you’d like to contribute a few dollars for an important cause, click here. If the link is broken, just go to Revlon’s find participant site and search for firstname Alicia lastname Gaspar de Alba. The resulting page will guide your commitment.

Here’s another way to lend a hand to combating breast cancer and other worthwhile projects. Make it a daily habit to click at the free mammograms website. In addition, you can click to support children’s health, combat hunger, give free books for kids, save rainforest land, and help animals in shelters.

I do not know how much help the above provide, but I suspect it’s as productive, if not more, than giving six grains of rice for every word you get correct, in that vocabulary game that fascinates a number of people. Maybe readers of Denise Chavez’ Loving Pedro Infante will click, remembering Tere’s hope that her annual check to help a Latin American child isn't a foolish act of kindness.

There we have it, the penultimate April Tuesday. La Bloga welcomes your comments on anything you read here. If you have something of your own to present as a guest columnist, La Bloga welcomes guests. Just click here, or leave a comment indicating your interest in being our guest.

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