x
26 December 1972
Dear Mike,
I was sitting here at the typewriter, typing applications to graduate school, and decided to try to write you a letter. How are you? How is school and Southern Calif.?
Yes, I really am applying to school in clinical psych. I’m applying to a lot of places just because the odds are so slim everywhere — my first two choices are Berkeley and BU, but the two schools only took 15 people combined last year, and so my hopes aren’t too high. Also interested in NYU, Teachers, Yale, Tufts, Wright Institute (in Berkeley), U. of Wash in Seattle, Harvard, and Adelphi, but who knows what will happen.
We had a great trip this summer. After we left LA we spent five weeks in Berkeley, San Francisco and Yosemite. I really liked Yosemite — luckily we were there before too big of crowds in the Summer. I suppose the access to the Park is one factor in my liking Berkeley so much. Berkeley seems like a good place to live; I like the program there and we had a great time staying up in the hills in a friend’s house (Marc M—’s brother’s). Then we went up to Lassen — I really liked the mud-pots and springs; then up through the Redwoods — what a gorgeous part of the world. Spent about a month with Linda in Seattle after driving up the Oregon coast, which is the first thing to surpass the Atlantic coast in my love of oceans and beaches. Linda is heavily into Scientology and I really don’t like it too much, but we got along very well and I really like Seattle — very easy-going with many friendly people and beautiful surroundings. Also spent some time on the Olympic Peninsula, though not enough, and a fantastic week in British Columbia on a farm miles away from anywhere on a beautiful glacier lake. Then we had to hurry home since I was already late; a day in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, certainly not enough. It was really exciting to drive across the northern part of the country — Wyoming, Montana, a touch of Idaho, Nebraska, then back into the Midwest. How was your trip? Did you ever get to Seattle?
I have a good new job now. I’m working for Barry Brazelton, the pediatrician I used to work with at the Center for Cognitive Studies a long time ago. I really like him, and we’re doing interesting studies; one is of drug effects on newborn babies from drugs given their moms during delivery and labor and I’m learning all about examining newborns for that. The other study is on maternal child inter-action, but it hasn’t really started yet. I’m living with eight other people this year and thus far it’s working out well; we’re half students and half working and we share meals and are fairly close together although not totally communal. Howard and I are living together and that is nice although he is having a hard time getting used to being in school again.
I was glad to see you this summer, though it is certainly very strange to see someone again after so much emotion has gone on. I feel like you’re very different now, and into different things, but I think of you often and wonder about your life. I didn’t go see Elizabeth because we were late getting to Seattle and didn’t have time for Eugene; I often think about her too, and somehow the more distant I get from my parents the two of you are my main memory-forces in Cincinnati; even though I don’t know where I’ll be next year, Cincinnati seems very far away from my plans.
How is your family — esp. your Mom. My family is well— Charlie and Arlene have two kids now, a one-year old brother for Denise, they both are so adorable; George is getting his Ph.d. in history at BU, and Linda is into Scientology. Marcia is well although none too overjoyed about med school; she lives in Cambridge this year and we get to see each other alot more. Bev and Jeanne were both here a bit this fall; both are very into being doctors and we are not so close anymore. Leslie and her boyfriend are in Santa Cruz— he’s a grad student there and I haven’t heard from her.
Anyway, I am basically well, though frazzled by graduate school applications and still working on a lot of things in therapy. I really would like it if you wrote sometimes— my address is: 27 P—— St. #6 Somerville, Mass. 02143.
Love,
Sarah
xi
“Have you started that other project with Brazelton yet?” Howard and I were eating dinner a bit later than everyone else one evening. I had come home around seven after a particularly long meeting at the CDU. Howard arrived even later, delayed by a weepy client about to lose her apartment.
“That’s why I’m late tonight,” I replied. “We spent all afternoon setting up, and then trying out the video taping system.”
Dr. Brazelton had been studying mother-baby interactions in the first few months after birth, trying to understand in minute detail the nature of their communication. A few weeks ago, at a meeting for his study into mother/baby reciprocity, he introduced the basic idea. “Babies can’t talk, but they have many ways to make themselves understood,” he explained. “Most new moms seem to be hard-wired to pay attention, and then adopt their own non-verbal responses.”
Ed added, “We are getting close to understanding the elements of this language. But we need to get down to a much finer layer of detail to fully describe it.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I’ve been talking with some guys who are A-V specialists. They say, with computers now, we could video tape the baby and the mom simultaneously, then lay the images side-by-side in sync, slow them down to 1/7th speed – super slo-mo…”
Dr. Brazelton mused, “Then someone could look at what each is doing in reaction to the other, and record it all?”
“Right, and you and I could review those transcripts, see what conclusions might jump out!”
I explained all this to Howard, finishing with, “So Lauren and I are going to be looking at these tapes. It’s three minutes of interaction, but at 1/7th speed, that might take an hour to view. Then go over it again and again, to make sure we’ve got everything that happens, second-by-second, between mom and baby.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I learned all about examining newborns for the drug study we’re in the middle of, and now I get to spend even more time with them.” I paused, wondering how Howard might react to what I said next. “This all reinforces what I’ve felt for years now, about babies, and being a mom.”
Howard munched on the deli sandwich he’d brought home, turkey, cranberry sauce and cream cheese on an onion bagel. “Mumpf?” was all I heard.
“What?”
He cleaned his lips with a napkin. “I said, ‘Mother’. That’s what I see in you when you talk about this. I thought you were all into the research, the science part of this, but what you really seem to enjoy is being around babies, and seeing how the mothers react to them.”
“It does pull at my heart somehow, I can feel it clouding my head when I should be paying attention to the study. Makes me wonder, am I hard-wired to be a mom?”
“Isn’t that part of the deal with being a woman? I mean, I don’t know, I certainly don’t feel the same instinctive draw towards babies. I don’t think that we, men and women, are exactly the same here.” Howard eyed me expectantly.
I felt challenged – and angry. I blurted, “They’re always saying, ‘You can have it all!’ Can I get a Ph.D, become a psychologist, and at the same time have a family, have a baby or babies, love them, raise them with a father?”
Howard put down the remaining quarter of his sandwich. Pensively, he said, “Me, I want to travel first. Not like that trip we took last summer. I mean really go somewhere, stay there, learn all about it. A family, that’s something I’d like, too, but I’ve got things to do before I get tied down, you know what I mean?”
I gathered up our plates – Howard barely had time to grab his sandwich – and took them to the kitchen, where I slowly filled the sink with soapy water. Washing, rinsing, drying and putting them away gave me time to think. I wondered why Lauren and I were the ones chosen to examine the newborns, review the tapes, interact with the moms, while Ed and Barry did the analysis, drew the conclusions, and presented the results at conferences. Intellectually, I understood they were older, more experienced, and, yes, they had worked to get the grant money. They had the titles, Doctor, Director. Still, was it because we were the women, because, as Howard said, that’s “part of the deal”?
Howard came up from behind, spreading both arms around my waist, giving me a squeeze as he softly murmured “I love you” in my ear. I took off my apron, folded it across a chair, clasping his hands between us as I turned around.
“And…?” he questioned.
“Howard, not now. I’m tired from all that planning today.” Then, a burst of honesty. “It doesn’t seem sincere, if I always say it back to you, just because you do. It ought to come unasked.”
Howard seemed unfazed at first, but as I pulled away, he said, “Oh, I forgot. You got a letter from your boyfriend – excuse me, ex-boyfriend…”
I sighed. Nothing for months on end from Mike, and then he shows up in the clutter spread out amongst Howard’s keys and money on the entry table, right when I’m feeling a little miffed with Howard.
Mike was uncharacteristically terse, almost whiny, as he revisited the break-up between him and Elizabeth. I could have told him that wouldn’t last; neither one of them had love for the other, just their youthful carnal need. And that only goes so far.
But the bigger news was near the end: “…My first clinical rotation convinced me, I’m not going to be a shrink. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking about Ob. LA County Hospital is unbelievably busy, four women to a room, all laboring, then going to delivery. There’s a little bit of everything in Ob-Gyn: babies, surgery, office visits, counseling. Then I did the surgery rotation, and thoracic – that’s heart surgery basically – also seems like something I could get into. Only problem is, maybe I should have paid more attention during anatomy lectures the first two years…”
xii
Dear Mike,
In my unfortunate lacksidasical way I’ve finally gotten around to writing again. Although I don’t think a letter from me in the last month would have been any treat— I’ve just finished the graduate school rat-race, with happy conclusions; I got into BU, Teachers, Univ. of North Carolina, and Tufts, and I am going to BU. Actually, for a long time I had been all set to go to BU if I got in because of it’s being in Boston and all my ties here— therapy, Howard, friends, research work— but I had really good interviews at Teachers and was very tempted to go there. In the end though, I just didn’t really want to go to NYC enough, I didn’t feel ready to spend a year getting used to a new place and uprooting myself. And finances will be easier at BU since I will get fellowship aid and be able to work part-time for Dr. Brazelton. So, in all, it worked out well and I am pleased— from time to time I just realize that I am actually going to be able to be a clinical psychologist and really get excited about it. In a way it does commit me to Boston even more as my home, but that’s OK too— it would have been nice if I had gotten into Berkeley, but otherwise, I’d just as soon stay here.
So, the whole anxiety about getting into school is slowly wearing down and things are settling down. Little else has changed— I still like my work and am getting better at working with newborns. It’s still cold here and we only get glimpses of Spring interrupted with days and days of rain or more cold weather.
Certainly, the other reason it took me so long to reply is that I was a bit overwhelmed by your choice of OB-GYN. Of course, it’s a gold mine for fantasy material, the very idea of one’s first true love becoming a gynecologist, as you probably understand from seeing women’s reactions and feelings about gynecologists. A gynecologist is certainly the least value— and fantasy-free doctor relationship for women, with pediatricians running a distant second. Added to this is the fact that I work somewhat with obstetricians in this job, since we have to clear research on their “patients” with them. Certainly the most troublesome thing to me is how callous and distant most of them are to their patients— there is all this concern about “patient cooperation” under different anesthesia conditions, but much less concern with what is the effect of the drug on the baby and alerting the mother to different effects with different drugs. I suppose that’s the common maternity hospital scene, with too many doctors too busy and not a lot of concern for non-private patients and all the other ills of the American medical scene. And because I have all these feelings about you, they get mixed up with the things I feel about gynecologists that are pretty emotional. Like how awful it is to go to the gynecologist for the first time if no one has told you about what happens during the internal; or how degraded I felt at the Beth Israel clinic when two gynecologists sat there discussing me, but refusing to tell me the name of the vaginal infection I had, insisting I go off pills, and then misdiagnosing me and giving me a brutal internal. Those kind of feelings are certainly the worst of it; luckily I have had good experiences, like finding good gynecologists who explain what they are doing and let you feel the ovaries and cervix as they are checking them and just being able to find books like OUR BODIES OUR SELVES that give so much important information. It’s amazing how many women I see in the hospital who have been told so little of what to expect when they have a baby— not knowing about delivery drugs and PKU tests and silver nitrate swelling up the baby’s eyes. Anyway, your going into gynecology set off a whole string of emotions in me. Neither you nor I was very comfortable with my body when we knew each other, but now we both know a lot more, and I apologize if I seem to be preaching. What I’m trying to say is a good gynecologist can do so much good for a woman and her self-knowledge, and a bad one can do so much harm, that I really feel strongly about your choice. And be sure to warm your specula.
Is Shelly married yet? I couldn’t tell how you feel about it from your last letter, though your parents are probably glad. Good heavens, I just realized it was your birthday yesterday— that must have been part of the vibrations motivating me to write. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I hope you celebrated well, though I must admit I have no strong feelings either way about 24. What are your plans for the summer? Are you going to work through? I hope to take August off before I go back to school in early September; we’d like to go out to the farm we visited in British Columbia again, though plans are totally unformed as yet.
I hope this letter hasn’t been too preachy, I didn’t want to be oppressive. Again Happy birthday.
[I set the letter aside for a day, then re-read his, and added a handwritten ending to this typed missive]
In you last letter you seemed so cut off & distant with your emotions—this is not an accusation, but it made me sad & concerned about you. Surely you know I don’t want you to be unhappy. I hope things are better or that I just caught you in a temporary “down” mood.
Love,
Sarah
11 APRIL 1973
xiii
That spring and summer, I worked furiously on the final draft of our study examining the effect of epidurals on newborn behavior. Since I’d done at least half the exams, as well as the initial draft and liaison with the doctors involved at Brigham and Women’s, Ed let me pull it all together all. I’d read a number of scientific papers by then, but adopting the dry, detached, almost cryptic style proved a challenge. And when it came to the statistics, I simply trusted Heidi when she placed the asterisks next to significant differences in the tables.
Then there were the results. It seemed simple at first. “Motor organization—Infants whose mothers received epidural anesthesia had poorer motor organization than either the analgesic groups or the minimal medication groups.” And, “Responsiveness to External Events—There were no significant differences among these groups on measures of their responsiveness to external events.” I felt quite pleased with that summary, until my first meeting with Ed and Dr. Brazelton.
“Sarah, I think we should include results for each of the 26 assessments on the behavioral scale.” Ed asked.
Barry added, “It should be pretty simple. You did those exams, right? Remind me, how old were the babies?”
Either Lauren or I had examined each newborn at 12 hours of age, not knowing which regimen they had been exposed to. Then again 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 10 days after birth, dutifully recording how the babies moved and how they responded to all that poking and prodding, the pinpricks, rattle, light flashes, and foot tickling. I’d left the data with Heidi, who produced a beautifully succinct table summarizing it all.
“Isn’t that enough, what Heidi did?” I asked.
“No,” Ed chuckled. “The reviewers, they’ll expect each of those results to be written out in English, as well as listing the numbers in the table.”
Inwardly, I moaned. That afternoon, I sought out Lauren, who had supervised my work, and understood the nuances better than anyone.
“I don’t know how to do this! All those exams, and the stats…” I complained to her.
“I know, it was a lot of work. Remember what that was like?”
That question took me back to those frantic days. Over 250 exams in all, some in the middle of the night. Every time I got a call on my beeper that another subject had delivered, I’d drive in to the hospital, head for the nurses’ locker room, change into scrubs, put on a gown, gloves, and a mask, and locate the mother’s room. There, I would re-introduce myself, remind her that I needed to examine her baby, and get to work. Those were some of the happiest moments of my life up to that point.
I had thought newborn babies were little blobs of protoplasm, all waiting to be molded into whatever human they would become. What I quickly learned was that each of us is unique at birth – and probably long before that. Some were chatty, some were quiet. A few were layabouts, waiting for the next feeding, while others constantly moved, kicking, punching, eyes darting to every sound or light. My love for those kids grew with every passing day, and I envied their mothers who got to hold them whenever they wanted. Once they left the hospital I got to see them at home, and felt even more warmth and longing.
“Yes, wouldn’t it be great to include all of that emotive work we did,” Lauren said when I shared, almost crying, the dissonance I felt between the actual exams, and the numbers which came out of them. Ignoring those feelings, I felt, was almost a crime.
“People need to know!” I agreed.
“Mothers, women, we already know. Men, the scientists, they’ll tell you it doesn’t matter. I call it the ‘Joe Friday Phenomenon’ – ‘Just the facts, ma’am’.” She laughed, recalling the iconic ‘50s detective show, Dragnet. “You’d better get used to it, Sarah. For the next 5, 6, 7 years, and who know how long after you get that Ph.D., you’re going to be in that world. ‘Mind thy affect’ is my advice.”
Several weeks into my first month at BU, Howard and I sat down to an early dinner, the last food we’d have for the 24 hours of Yom Kippur. I was still working at the CDU, as well as struggling to make sense of the rigorous classwork.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I complained. “Ed and Barry want to get the paper into Pediatrics. They say the writing is tight enough, and the conclusions are ‘all over the map’”
“Do you have to re-write the whole thing?”
“Only the results section. It’s got to be both shorter and longer, somehow. Shorter, meaning tighter descriptions of the observations. Longer, because they want to include more of the individual data for each day of life,” I explained.
“Come on, you could do that in your sleep,” he said.
“It’s got to be perfect, Howard. I’m already in BU, so I don’t have to impress them. But I still have to satisfy myself, as well as Dr. Brazelton.”
“Yes, you always have been your own harshest critic.”
I wondered what we was driving at. “What do you mean?”
“Look at us. You’re never satisfied with how you feel, or how I act towards you. Always looking for perfection. It’s…sorry, but it drives me crazy sometimes.”
I glared at him. With controlled fury, I said, “I expected so much more from you.”
Now his turn to glower, he retorted, “And what do you mean by that?”
Without hesitation, I started in. “Back in the sixties, back when I first met you, in Chicago, you were going to change the world. Angry, but driven. Now, it’s enough for you to show up at that clinic every day, helping in a small way, but you seem to be just getting by, letting the world happen to you.”
I thought he might defend himself. Instead, he simply said, “Maybe we couldn’t change the world, Sarah. Maybe the world changed us.”
My dismay with the article revision, my anxiety about finally starting school, and my frustration with Howard’s direction came to a head. “I thought we were making something together,” I announced, raising my voice. “But we do things separately, apart, even though we’re supposed to be together.”
Howard seemed puzzled. “Like what?” he asked.
“Like … well, you go to therapy, I go to therapy, don’t you think it might help if we both went together?”
“What! Why? What do we need to talk about? I thought…”
I interrupted, “For starters, we might talk about who ‘we’ are.”
“I thought…”
I didn’t let him finish. “Howard. I’ve said this to you before, you are great to live with. So solicitous, so accommodating, such a good partner, companion. And, right now, you are my best friend. Something’s missing, though, something’s not there, I don’t feel…”
Now it was his turn to interject. “You’re right, you don’t feel. You always try to analyze everything, even when you talk about feeling all mushy seeing those babies. You might start by talking about what you feel with, feel for me.”
I couldn’t, I wouldn’t let him see me tearful, so I left the table, walking outside until sunset. We spent the Day of Atonement as much apart as we could. I worked in anger, re-writing by hand the results section. He immersed himself in conversation at the Temple, then sat sullenly on the porch.
We woke up next morning to the headlines, “ARABS INVADE ISRAEL AGAIN – Defense posts empty during Yom Kippur”.