You Shall Know the Truth
On New Year's Eve my husband and I took Henry to the home of some friends who were hosting a gathering, which consisted mostly of people we didn't know and their kids. Henry was one of three babies there.
Someone at the party asked, if we live in such-and-such part of town, did we deliver at the hospital there? We told them I had Henry at home and these people just could NOT believe it.
One of the women said, "On purpose?" Yes, on purpose.
"Did Claudia (the hostess, and a family practitioner) know about this? And she LET you?" Umm, she wasn't my doctor, first of all. And second of all, LET ME?
"Did you have ANY pain medication AT ALL?" No, no medication.
And then from one of the men, "My wife would have yelled at me more if we'd been at home than she did in the hospital!"
We tried to emphasize how amazing our experience was, how it was the best thing we'd ever done, how the three of us got to take a nice long nap together in our own bed after everything was cleaned up, etc., but one of the women especially just kept looking at me like I had two heads.
Later in the evening the guy whose wife would have yelled at him more noticed the hosts' 19-inch television and asked, "Is it a European thing (Claudia is from Germany) to have such a small TV?" Then he commented, "And they don't even have cable!"
I couldn't resist; I had to mention that we were considering getting rid of our TV's altogether (more on that in a future blog entry). He actually called us communists. He was joking (I think), but still, who uses that as an insult anymore? Maybe his wife yelling at him had nothing to do with her being in labor.
That evening reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, usually attributed to Flannery O'Connor: "You shall know the truth and it shall make you odd."
Indeed.
Someone at the party asked, if we live in such-and-such part of town, did we deliver at the hospital there? We told them I had Henry at home and these people just could NOT believe it.
One of the women said, "On purpose?" Yes, on purpose.
"Did Claudia (the hostess, and a family practitioner) know about this? And she LET you?" Umm, she wasn't my doctor, first of all. And second of all, LET ME?
"Did you have ANY pain medication AT ALL?" No, no medication.
And then from one of the men, "My wife would have yelled at me more if we'd been at home than she did in the hospital!"
We tried to emphasize how amazing our experience was, how it was the best thing we'd ever done, how the three of us got to take a nice long nap together in our own bed after everything was cleaned up, etc., but one of the women especially just kept looking at me like I had two heads.
Later in the evening the guy whose wife would have yelled at him more noticed the hosts' 19-inch television and asked, "Is it a European thing (Claudia is from Germany) to have such a small TV?" Then he commented, "And they don't even have cable!"
I couldn't resist; I had to mention that we were considering getting rid of our TV's altogether (more on that in a future blog entry). He actually called us communists. He was joking (I think), but still, who uses that as an insult anymore? Maybe his wife yelling at him had nothing to do with her being in labor.
That evening reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, usually attributed to Flannery O'Connor: "You shall know the truth and it shall make you odd."
Indeed.
posted by True Mama at
1:56 PM
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