The Owls, Part Two

If you haven't read The Owls, Part One, go back and read it right now.

I don't know if you've ever experienced being a woman in the first few weeks post-giving-birth or if you've ever spent much time around that early-post-partum woman, but my brother had no idea what he had just blithely joked his way into. Either his wife was different post-partum than I was or he'd forgotten just how emotional that time can be.

So here's what happened after I read his email. I lost it. I was angry and hurt. And the only way post-partum anger and hurt can fully come out is with massive amounts of sobbing, body-wracking tears. I don't know about anybody else's brothers, but not one of mine would be prepared for that kind of emoting from his baby sister.

I don't know exactly how it was all orchestrated--sister called mom, mom called him, whatever--but somehow he got clued into the fact that this was something he was going to have to apologize for.

Now, he didn't mean any harm. And the normal pre-post-partum roller-coaster baby sister probably would have been a bit miffed about the whole thing and then promptly laughed it off. But as I was not the person I had been and as he had no way of knowing this, the whole thing turned into a much bigger deal than anyone expected.

Also, in my experience, my brother is someone who 1. isn't really prone to apologizing and 2. isn't really prone to calling people on the phone. So, keeping all this in mind, we have to admire the courage of the guy to pick up the phone and call me. In fact he'd probably never dialed my California number in the three years I had lived there. The mistakes went down in email, so maybe he'd just email an apology. But no, on that day, he called. Even though someone had tipped him off that I was already upset.

Poor guy. (She chuckles and shakes her head.)

I can't imagine that he even understood very many of the words I was choking out between massive squeaky gulps for air and angry sobs. The gist of his position was that he now realized how tasteless his joke had been and felt bad that I was so upset by it. He certainly didn't want me to be mad at him or hurt by the whole thing. I think a small part of him--part that he was trying hard to repress--wanted some props for such a clever joke. It was almost impossible to ignore a joke like that just handed to him.

I don't know how long we talked. I tried to explain to him how sacred this birth experience had been for us, how much his joke trivialized that. How (in my hormonal brain) he had reduced the momentous occasion to a dirty nudity one-liner. And really, I just felt so foolish about it all. I felt ashamed about moments that I wanted to be able to cherish. At the bottom of it, I was embarrassed. It wasn't his fault, really, but boy did I lay it all on him. Whether he could understand my sob-language, he took it all, extreme and overdone as it all was. He listened, he acknowledged, he restated his position. He said he would take it back if he could.

But as my mom knows only too well, you can't take back emails.

I forgave them both, long ago. So I don't post this story to reopen long-healed wounds.
Mostly I just think it's funny.

And I'm preparing to do back to that place--that scary what ARE my hormones going to do to me? place. So I've been thinking about this story. And worrying a bit about who might get the emotions unleashed on them. And hoping it's someone as able to deal with it as my brother was. I'm also hoping that hormonal roller-coaster is as short-lived this time around as it has been these last two times.

Now, here a couple of other notes about this story that I like to remember.
1. At least one of my brothers (to my knowledge) heard of the nudity involved in the photos my mom sent before he had opened the email. So terrified of seeing a naked part of his little sister, he simply deleted the email and all replies to it without opening them. Part of me laughs at this response. A larger part of me blesses him for it.

2. My other sister had perhaps my favorite response of the whole episode. As she and I chatted about it on the phone later (I believe I was calmer by this point) she said, with some seriousness, "I don't get it. Why were you naked to have a baby?" Thank you for that question because it brings a smile to my face every time I remember it. I know what she was getting at. She had been present at the birth of one of our nephews and hadn't seen my other sister's nude breast the way it was displayed in those photos. But still, funny question.

3. Less than two years later, John was born in a birth center right here in Boise, Idaho. My brother, the "nice hooters" brother, was one of the first of my siblings to know about John's arrival because (if I remember right) he had happened to call my mom right after we'd called to inform her. He had some flexibility in his work day, so he got directions to the birth center and came to see us there. I remember him holding his new nephew and looking very happy. I felt loved. I wouldn't have expected him to come see us in the middle of the day on his own, just as I wouldn't have expected him to call me to try to apologize two years previously. See how good I am at misjudging my brother?

You should also know that in the 4 1/2 years since The Owls story took place, my brother and I have never ever spoken again about it. Just not something he and I would really want to bring up and rehash. Sounds like the perfect thing to blog about, huh?