Paperwork

So Since last November 20th I've been meaning to correct a mistake I made on Anna's birth certificate. I vaguely remember some papers shoved into my hands an hour or so after giving birth. Where it said "Mother's name," I wrote my name. Where it said "Mother's maiden name," I wrote MY mother's maiden name. I mean. I had just given birth. I was a little distracted. I'd only ever written my own mother's name in response to a question like that.

A month later when the birth certificate came in the mail, we entered into a several-month-long storm of fruitless paperwork. You need a court order to change your name, they kept saying.

I said, I don't need to change my name.I just wrote the wrong one. They said, then you need to change that name. And you need to come to court. And you need to do it before she turns one.

So a couple of days ago, I decided it was time, and I called to find out where exactly to go. The sweet genius of a woman on the line told me all I had to do was go back to the hospital where she was born and they'd do it for me, no court order, no problem.

SO I packed Anna into the carrier in her bunny hat and walked off through the rain to the mother and baby unit on the 5th floor to see Brenda, who'd told me when I called, Now honey what in hell did you want to write your mama's name for? Why do you girls always do that? You march on down here right now and Brenda will sort you out.

And so I marched down 8th avenue in the mist and I remembered almost a year ago now the crisp dark in the backseat of Beth and Kenny's station wagon as they drove us down the same street. Contractions at the streetlights and breath fogging the windows.

Anna and I turned left and pushed through the main doors, up in the elevator to the 5th floor. Last year: contraction in the elevator. Another contraction in the elevator. Another contraction on the way to the desk. Another contraction in the waiting room chair.

Doors opened at the 5th floor, and we pushed open the swinging doors to the mother and baby unit and asked for Brenda. Waiting at the desk as they paged her, clutching the defunct birth certificate as my big girl's long legs hung halfway down my thighs, something about the orange gleam of the floor tile and the crisp walk of the busy nurse and the woman pushing the impossibly tiny pink burrito in the plastic bassinet around the corner so, so slowly. . . all of a sudden my head rang with memory. The buttons on the bed, and the lactation consultant with the Irish brogue, and the way we sat up watching her, watching Anna breathe. Which she kept miraculously doing. Along with making her mouth into the tiniest possible o. And suddenly staring up at us like she was as thirsty for our faces as we were for hers.

As we waited for Brenda, Anna pointed to the lights, the exit sign, the pink burrito in the plastic bassinet, coming around the corner again, so, so slowly. Baby, she said. Baby, baby, baby. Yep, baby, I said. Anna kicked her legs in her big girl shoes.

We handed over the bum birth certificate and various bits of paperwork to Brenda's emissary, she disappeared back through the swinging doors, and that was that. I stared for a moment through the glass of the nurses' station into the nursery where the newborns were lined up under the grow-lights, and then Anna thumped me on the chest and said Home. Home, home, home.

And so we went. Almost a whole year later.
Home again, home again, jiggety jog.