Kate Haas: The Lab Man
The Lab Man The day after the earthquake in China, I stood in the kitchen making dinner for my family. The public radio reporter’s voice, usually smooth and controlled, shook with emotion as she related the story of a couple searching for their missing son. As I listened to the mother’s anguished cries for her toddler, tears came to my own eyes, as well. And I thought, as I often have, about the Lab Man. I’d been a mother for two weeks when I brought my infant son to the lab for a routine PKU test. The last fourteen days had been a shock. Unlike many women, I hadn’t experienced much of a connection to the baby during pregnancy; so I was taken aback by the intensity of my feelings now: the fierce sense of protectiveness, the physical compulsion to have him in my sight–better yet, in my arms–at all times. Handing my tiny, unsuspecting son to a man with a needle went against every new mother instinct I possessed. My hands shook as I lay him on the table and I looked anxiously to the lab man for reassurance. He avoided my gaze. A forty-ish, pudgy, pale man with dank hair, he looked as if he should be holed up in a cubicle somewhere, instead of dealing with people at their most vulnerable. Impassively, the man pierced my son’s heel. I clenched my fists against the baby’s despairing wails and my voice shook as I tried to comfort him. Still silent, the lab man stolidly squeezed the requisite drops of blood from the puncture. ‘You have no idea how this affects a parent!’ I thought, indignantly. ‘You probably think I’m just some overwrought new mother who needs to get a grip.’ Without looking up, the man spoke, “My daughter had heart surgery at sixteen weeks,” he said, quietly. “Seemed like there wasn’t a day they weren’t drawing blood from her for one reason or another. She’s fine now, though. Thirteen and a real fireball.” I looked at him. With a few words, this unprepossessing stranger had made me understand something about parenthood that even childbirth hadn’t taught me. Rationally, I knew that having a child made me no more unique than the millions of parents around me. But I’d been too overwhelmed by new motherhood to think about that. It was as if an invisible wall had surrounded my son and me. Now that wall had cracked open. These raw emotions – the love, the fear, the instinct to protect – linked me to the man sticking a needle in my baby and to every parent on the planet. Eight years later, as yet another tragedy reinforces that realization, I still consider this the moment I truly became a mother. Kate Haas is a Portland-based writer and freelance editor. She publishes Miranda, a zine about motherhood and other adventures, and is co-editor of Creative Nonfiction at Literary Mama. Read more about her work at www.mirandazine.com and www.clarityeditingservices.com. |
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