by Peggy
Vincent.
Fatigue made my bones ache. Why do babies always come in the
middle of the night? Only a home-birth midwife such as I would
be fool enough to be driving home at 4 a.m. along Berkeley's twisty
Skyline Boulevard in impenetrable fog. Exhausted, with five miles
still to go, I parked on the shoulder of the road, turned off
the engine and rolled down my window. Perhaps fresh air and the
California night's damp coolness on my face would help revive
me.
A movement, a thickening within the heavy fog, made me blink
and strain to focus. There was a density, some amorphous coalescence.
I held my breath while it merged, converged . . . until in a thinning
spot of fog, a doe appeared, black eyes bright in my headlights,
velvety nose shining wet with the condensation of the night's
cold air.
I turned off my lights and waited while my eyes adjusted to the
darkness.
So still she stood, not 10 feet from me, watching. Equally still,
I sat and watched her.
She stretched her neck, nose high to taste the wind, then flicked
one ear and began to graze. I heard her teeth tear at the grasses,
I heard the click and clatter of her hooves on the road-edge gravel.
They were the only sounds in my nighttime world.
The doe paused and looked behind her, then took two steps and
lowered her head to graze again. But she had seen or heard something,
I was sure.
I watched and listened, listened hard, and heard at last what
she had heard. Twigs crunching, small stones dislodged to ricochet
and tumble down the hill, leaves rustling among the branches as
well as underfoot. The sound of hooves. Hooves coming close, and
closer still. A buck appeared, and right behind him came another
doe and several fawns. And more. More deer, and more and more,
leaf-shaped ears twitching, stick legs of sinew flexing. They
climbed from the dark canyon between the eucalyptus trees like
pale ghosts emerging from the chaparral.
Perhaps 50 deer eventually surrounded me. I smelled the mossy
sweat of their hides, heard their quiet breathing and the rumble
of their bellies, saw the pearly moisture of the fog glistening
on their eyelashes. They grazed so close their bodies rubbed against
my warm car, rocking me within. I held quite still and felt very
small, then smaller yet as they absorbed me, just one within the
herd.
I whispered, "Oh," and said no more.
Maybe the grazing was extra good, the grass especially tender,
because most surely half an hour passed with me settled in their
midst, until at last the fog began to thin. Imperceptibly it broke
into ribbons, wisped across the road and rolled down into the
eastern canyon. The moon appeared above San Francisco and sent
its molten silver beams streaking across the bay straight toward
us, the deer and me.
The deer looked up of one accord, then turned and looked at
me as if to ask if I'd done that, had I turned on that light?
Perhaps the moonbeams beckoned them to come and follow, for the
herd fanned out along the roadside and began to descend the west
side of the ridge, both deer and chaparral glowing iridescent.
As their shapes melted into the redwood, fir and eucalyptus trees,
I smiled and blessed the tired mother who had birthed her firstborn
in the middle of the night, giving this one midwife a memory of
silver grace.
* * *
Peggy Vincent is the author of Baby Catcher: Chronicles
of a Modern Midwife.
(January 2004)
