Prudence digs deep into an ocean of insight

In 1998, if you hadn’t seen The Titanic by week two of its release, you were in danger becoming marginalized; a social misfit unable to contribute to the main topic of conversation du jour—a shipwreck from 86 years before. Sheesh.

This brings me to chair number 18 at Umberto, a Beverly Hills über-salon where—for the right price—even nobodies like me can rub foiled locks with B-list celebrities.

David, my stylist and a dog show aficionado who could have walked straight (so to speak) out of Best in Show, was trying to ignore overtures from a buff young man in a tight black t-shirt sweeping up shorn locks from Umberto’s imported Italian marble floors.

But Muscles McSixpack said the magic word, “Titanic,” and conversation between the two men ramped up as if I weren’t there. I tried to signal my displeasure with various eyebrow moves, which is a near-impossible feat when peering out from under an awning of tin-foil shingles.

David was just dropping one of those behind-the-scenes tidbits (that he no doubt read in People magazine) when Muscles pursed his lips and covered his ears, “Ooo! Don’t tell me what happens in the end; I want to be surprised!”

David’s hands fluttered to a stop in midair over my head and he shot me a look in the mirror—a look that said, “You may be cute, Muscles, but you are a dunce.”

Who knew that 14 years later, and on the hundredth anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, the Costa Concordia, an Italian luxury liner (if that’s what we can call a floating monstrosity jam-packed with tourists and low-paid help from former Iron Curtain countries), is listing; half-sunken after striking rocks just off the coast of Tuscany. What a bizarre homage.

It may be a reach to say that the Costa Concordia’s demise is in any way, shape or form connected to the Titanic disaster, but the all-too human habit of looking for patterns, especially those linked to anniversaries, is one we embrace. Stating that “today is the anniversary of…” or “150 years ago today, such-and-such happened” gives us a superficial grasp of issues and allows us to fill our Facebook pages and tabloids as well as our TV and radio talk shows with issues we don’t so much explore as exploit for their shock value.

But these snapshots of historical coincidences and frightening statistics do not serve to build an enlightened society any more than historical novels or feature films do justice to real human, legal and organic issues of former times. We must dig deeper.

If we held close the lessons of history, if we—everyday people as well as leaders—looked for patterns to help us predict—and thus avoid—disasters, couldn’t we have avoided the chain of events that has emblazoned the past 100 years with mass murder, mayhem and unprecedented environmental degradation?

What could have been a seminal century, a 100-year span that married the industrial revolution to the information age spawning enlightenment and the spread of knowledge, has instead degraded into the Bermuda Triangle Century.

The material lessons that should have abided seem to have disappeared into some mysterious ether that swallows facts and spits out feelings; feelings that can be used to manipulate the masses whose ability to access authentic reality (vs. reality TV) is an increasingly difficult task.

I don’t blame Muscles McSixpack for not knowing the Titanic sank to the bottom of a frigid sea. In 1998, he probably could have waxed eloquent on headline-grabbing Monica Lewinsky or shared juicy behind-the-scenes tidbits on the murder of comedian Phil Hartmann, both now forgotten players in the melodrama of the late ‘90s.

Meanwhile, what really mattered—the systematic dismantling of the U.S. Justice system, the purposeful disruption of the Clinton presidency by his opponents, the beginning of an unprecedented pick-pocketing of the middle- and working-classes by wealthy bankers and insurance corporations—lurked under the fog of inconsequentialities that has only thickened with players such as the Kardashians, the not-so-real reality shows, and opinion shows masquerading as news.

I’ve been alive for more than half of this past century, and I am not optimistic that we can turn this around. I hear Republican presidential hopefuls beat the war drums as they eye Iran; I listen to the belligerent crowds cheering vile, racist rhetoric at so-called Christian gatherings; I witness unparalleled hatred of the media, of the poor and the disenfranchised. What, I ask you, can come of this?

I think I’ll purse my lips and cover my ears. Don’t tell me where we’re headed. I want to be surprised.

Hollywood’s loss is Vermont’s gain, as Prudence celebrates her fourth anniversary and lessons learned in the Green Mountain State

For those of you who think that sparsely populated, Yankee-pure Vermont is the antidote to the ills of urban life, here is a quick set-up guide that will acquaint you with “how to Vermont.”

1. You kahnt get thay-yer from hee-yaw.
You can live full-time, own property and pay taxes in the Green Mountain State, but becoming a bona fide, card-carrying Vermonter is earned the old-fashioned way—you must be born here. Furthermore, your parents must have been born here; your grand-parents (both sides) must have been born here—and so on back for four generations. Seriously. Otherwise, you are considered a “flatlander,” even if you come from Machu Pichu or Boulder, Colorado.

2. “Massholes” are from Massachusetts.
Although Massholes come from the eponymous state to our south, you can also use this label whenever encountering an attitudinous anyone who is making an ostentatious show of wealth and power. Example: “That tailgater must be a Masshole.” (See “flatlander” above.)

3. Why the cold shoulder (and blank stare).
There is a waiting period of up to four years before a local shopkeeper, waitress or merchant will acknowledge that s/he has ever seen you before—even if you stop in every day to pick up your New York Times and latté. (See “don’t order a latté” below.)

4. Don’t order a latté, a “grandé” or a “skinny” anything.
In Vermont, you kahnt find a national caffeine-dispensing chain. So don’t use Starbucks-style language unless you want to identify yourself as a flatlander (or worse, a Masshole) worthy of an automatic five-minute delay for your order at any of our homegrown joints.

5. They’re called highways, routes and roads, not freeways and streets.
Using the term “freeway” will earn you ten flatlander points. There are only two major arteries in Vermont: 91, which goes north and south on the “east coast” of Vermont, and 89, which crosses over from New Hampshire and leads all the way to Canada, via our largest city, Burlington, population 43,000. With no more than four or five cars seen in a ten mile stretch, no in-your-face billboards (they’re against the law) and no annoying toll booths, the two lanes each way are undisputedly “free ways;” just don’t call them that.

6. No, this is not a statewide convention of Lesbians.
Eighty percent of all cars in Vermont are Subaru Outbacks, with a few Foresters thrown in for good measure. Never mind that the NY Times-owned “Top 10 Gay Cars” list regularly names the so-called “Lesbaru” as the number one car for Lesbians; about half of Outbacks in Vermont are driven by men. The other half are driven by women, some of whom may or may not be Lesbians. We are, after all, the first state to recognize same-sex marriage, so why wouldn’t you come here if you are LGBT? Just sayin’.

7. Throw out your gaydar.
Welcome to Vermont, where almost every woman over 25 will trigger a false alarm on your gaydar. For one, most women here look like a librarians, gym teachers, storybook witches (you know the type I’m talking about—with long, grey hair) or ski instructors. Chances are, if the woman is employed, she IS a librarian, a gym teacher or a ski instructor. There aren’t that many jobs in Vermont. There’s also a goodly chance she’s a witch, but more like the Wiccan type, not the Broomhilda type. But if you thought all physically fit women who walk and talk with confidence, who run Big Important Organizations, who farm, drive tractors, compete in marathons and don’t indulge in tortures like Botox, make-up, Spanx and stilettos—and, most importantly, appear as the great goddess intended them to—are Lesbians, you’re wrong. To paraphrase Gloria Steinem, this is what women look like. Which is why I’m staying here.

The popsicle stick-thin figure in rumpled pajamas who is my 16-year-old son stands in the darkened corridor in a fighter’s stance, small white hands clenched into fists. His face, lit by a shaft of light from the laundry room, is contorted with rage at being roused from his slumber—probably by me shutting the dryer door.

Casey’s eyes dart from the lit laundry room to the clothes in my arms; then to the crack of light under his brother’s bedroom door.

This could go any direction, including ones I cannot imagine, so I float a storyline: “I’m going downstairs with these clean clothes; time to go back to bed.”

“Mom? Who are you talking to?” comes from behind my oldest son’s door.

I dart a warning glance at Casey, whose free-floating anxiety wicks towards the sound of his brother’s voice. He erupts, “Shut-up! I’m trying to sleep!”

“You shut-up. You’re the one who’s yelling,” comes big brother’s voice.

“Honey, you’re half asleep; go back to bed.” A light touch Casey’s shoulder. Mistake. A tiny fist flies—I duck; a torrent of abuse follows.

“Just shut-up!” yells older brother wrenching open his bedroom door. Then, “Mah-ahm, you don’t ever punish him; he thinks he can get away with this.”

Casey tries to scramble past me, “Fucker! I’ll kill you!” I seize a second jab in mid-air, gently guiding the wrist to Casey’s side as I hold him firmly by the elastic of his P.J. pants.

“It’s late,” I soothe, drawing closed my older son’s bedroom door. “Let’s get you a cup of warm milk.”

But there will be no soothing tonight. The door to Casey’s room slams, and for emphasis, opens and slams harder. I count with eyes closed. Finally, his bed creaks.

I pivot, open the bedroom door of my eldest son who is sprawling on his bed wearing drawstring shorts and Borat T-shirt. His laptop is open to what I hope is homework. He glances at me from under brows stitched together with almost two decades of frustration; a look too jaded for his 18 years.

My heart constricts—again. “This is autism,” I whisper. “Please. Punishing isn’t the answer.” No response. Then, “I know what I’m talking about.”

And, finally, I really do.

Autism can be a labyrinth of unspeakable horrors, where one comes face-to-face with the worst possible traits of humanity—indifference, cruelty, greed, discrimination, hopelessness and resignation. Autism is where marriages and parenting partnerships come to die on the rocks of exhaustion, despair and blind self-interest. Autism wears down families, severs familial bonds with sharp and bitter recriminations, blame and guilt. Institutions designed to help don’t. Safety nets fail, their frail ropes of good intentions frayed by bureaucratic apathy and over-extended, un-kept promises. Men often leave, unable to fix or to sustain that which sprung unexpectedly from their own loins. Mothers give all or give nothing; either way they are reviled by those outside the dark bubble which the family calls home but feels like anything but.

Autism makes no sense; there are no navigational tools or comfortable rest stops along the path families must traverse on their way towards the inevitable—when they must blindly entrust their disabled loved ones to the care of others when they themselves are spent, the marrow of their bones turned to dust, and all their loving ministrations poured out onto the dry sand of life’s injustice. In the final analysis, the only real measure of the energy expended is the significant shortening of the mother’s lifespan and the distance the other family members put between themselves and the pain that just won’t go away.

So it was for Kristen LaBrie, 38, a single, unemployed mother of a non-verbal, severely autistic and cognitively delayed son, Jeremy, who suffered from a relapse of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when he was seven. The mother and her son, who had survived an earlier bout of cancer therapy, made it together through four of the five phases of the second go-round of chemo before Kristen stopped administering the medicine because she felt it was making Jeremy sicker.

In Kansas City last month, Kristen was paraded through the halls of justice in handcuffs (“let that be a warning to all you bad mommies out there”), after being sentenced eight to ten years for attempted murder of her son Jeremy. The prosecution painted Kristen as an embittered woman who let her son die to get back at the world, and especially Jeremy’s father who left the destitute mother and son to fend for themselves when Jeremy was three.

In court documents, Kristen’s crime was failure to give her son life-saving medicine that an oncologist claims could have given Jeremy as much as a 90 percent chance to survive at least another five years. The thinking is that if Kristen had been a good mommy, she would have followed a complex two-year protocol that included hospital stays, regular visits to a hospital clinic to receive chemotherapy and at-home administration of several cancer medications. Never mind that the medical protocol did not include systematic support for Kristen, her son’s only caregiver for most of his life, and herself suffering from clinical depression.

Jurors justified their harsh verdict—guilty of attempted murder, guilty of child endangerment; guilty of assault and battery; guilty, guilty—by citing the devotion of motherhood in lofty tones. Editorial writers and pundits weighed in with headlines such as “Life Unfair, but Mother Dead Wrong”. Anyone with a toe in the vast sea of commerce that world of autism has become proffered themselves to the media as autism experts, hoping to use the tragedy of Kristen and Jeremy to sell their books, programs or gain market share points with a population that increases annually by more than 40,000 souls in the United States alone.

Our son Casey is one of the lucky ones, born into a comparatively stable family that is able to get him the services and enrichment he needs to thrive and grow. Sure, our Thanksgivings feel more like Picasso’s Guernica than Norman Rockwell’s Freedom from Need, but, as I put away the laundry that started the confrontation in the darkened hallway, I wonder how many children with autism will be born as Jeremy was, to unsteady circumstances and single mothers struggling to survive?

Tonight, as the mercury hovers above 50 degrees; outside the open windows the peeper frogs celebrate spring in vernal pools, their high-pitched squeals sing in new beginnings.

Tomorrow, Casey will process his midnight meltdown; he will be full of remorse, doling out hugs and asking forgiveness. He will see the world with new eyes and help those who support him have some measure of satisfaction that they had something to do with his turnaround.

But for other mothers and fathers, there are no reconciliations—only more suffering lies ahead. Who among us would willingly exchange places with them?

Autism by itself is a burden almost impossible to bear. Autism, poverty and a lingering, prolonged cancer treatment that causes both emotional and physical pain make for an exercise in despair so profound that our legal system cannot address this tragedy. Kristen should go free; her life so far has been punishment enough.

She waves her ink-filled wand and…poof! From frumpy to fabulous! Marvel at Prudence’s dedication to the magic of the makeover.

Like an annoying jingle that—with the right prompt—goes viral in a neural nanosecond, there’s a bit of pop culture ephemera skulking near the surface of my gray matter, ready to be triggered any time a certain visual cue crosses my line of sight.

And what, you might ask, is that cue? I’ll give you a hint: Drab to fab.

Yes, I’m talking about the legendary “Mademoiselle Makeover,” a regular installment of the now defunct Mademoiselle magazine, that glossy monthly that competed with Glamour and Seventeen magazines for smart young ladies’ attention for 66 years before it finally folded in 2001.

Maybe you can relate if you, like me, were a devotee of the column that featured normal-looking (okay, somewhat dowdy) young women, who, with the help of the Mademoiselle fashion and beauty editors (and products from the magazine’s advertisers) morphed into beauties from their former beastly selves. This monthly step-by-step narrative implied that behind every lumpy Plain Jane lurked a paint-by-numbers Anne Hathaway-like princess yearning to emerge from her cocoon and fly off to a new-and-improved life on gossamer wings.

The message: Magic can happen; all you need is the right makeover!

I once yearned to be among the chosen—the one lucky girl a month who was singled out to be made-over for the entire world (or at least the readership of Mademoiselle) to admire. But the magazine’s New York-based editorial staff simply wasn’t looking for a ragamuffin in frayed jeans, vintage Hawaiian shirts and huarache sandals, smoking in the student parking lot of a large public high school in Pasadena, California.

But that didn’t stop me from perseverating on the makeover ideal; the concept that changed looks could change lives.

Author Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. He found that individuals who have changed human history with their achievements, enriching both themselves and mankind, have been subject to what he dubs “the 10,000 hour rule” meaning they have invested at least 10,000 hours becoming experts in whatever field of endeavor in which they’ve made history.

Bill Gates, Robert Oppenheimer, even the Beatles, all put in their dues practicing their art, their science, their passion for the equivalent of 417 days. Nonstop.

Instead of programming computers, perfecting my performance of a musical instrument or developing the atomic bomb, I somewhat sheepishly admit that I have devoted at least 10,000 hours making over friends, relatives, classmates and the occasional complete stranger. Old yearbooks bear witness to my passion, with faces transformed with eyeliner, plunging necklines, upswept hair and lipstick, dutifully drawn in Bic pen blue.

This is a talent I cannot turn off.

Everywhere I go—and I mean everywhere— my makeover machinery grinds into gear with the sight of a woman who could use a little this and a little that.

Yesterday, for instance, at my son’s high school, I saw another mother, a 50ish woman in man-tailored pin-striped pants and high heels, long stringy hair and Sarah Palin’s old glasses. She reeled down the hall, the white buttons on her two rear pockets tracing invisible infinity symbols as her 42-inch wide hips swayed from side-to-side.

Instantly, I had her out of those pants, and into a tiered, earth-toned peasant skirt, cowboy boots and shoulder-length, blunt-cut, lightly waved hair. Squarish glasses were replaced with Annie Hall retros, a tapestry vest with brass buttons added polish to a dolman-sleeved blouse, and a warm Pashima was casually thrown over her shoulders against the 45-degree night air. Her Cruella D’Ville blood-red lipstick was switched out for a soft, pinky buff, and dangly brass earrings completed her Vermont mom ensemble; perfect for the woman with few wrinkles and a wide bottom.

Am I right or am I right?

When I studied for my master’s degree, I often sat in round-table seminars facing the other, mostly female students. While my classmates dutifully checked their Facebook accounts, pretending to attend to the lecture, I systematically—and in my mind’s eye, of course—made over each and every one of my fellow students, down to the last detail.

One day, a bushy haired woman in her mid-50s plopped down next to me and blurted out, “I wish I knew what to do with my hair.”

Kismet! I whipped out the class roster that featured horrid little black & white mug shots of each of us next to our names.

“Check this out,” I said, my pencil moving at lightning speed, taming the mass of wiry brown and grey locks into a neat bob, short in the back and with tapered long bangs that covered her crows feet. She stared at the photo as if seeing herself for the first time.

“Wow,” she marveled. “Can I take this to my salon?” she asked, laying a tentative hand on the page.

“Of course,” I chuckled indulgently. After all, with 10,000 hours under my belt, I qualify as a Mademoiselle Makeover Outlier, keeping a rich, albeit somewhat shallow, tradition alive. I can afford to be generous.

I wonder, what have you spent 10,000 hours doing?

A telephone survey has Prudence coming to grips with middle age and beyond

Recently, a marketing firm contacted me looking for a Baby Boomer willing to talk candidly about a variety of subjects ranging from plastic surgery to (ahem) performance-enhancing supplements.

Never shy about broadcasting my opinions, I agreed. I am, after all, a member of the me generation that was promised 15 minutes of fame. Each. Never mind that the infant terrible who made this promise is long dead, so can’t be held accountable. And talking to a telemarketer isn’t exactly fame, per se.

The thirtysomething professional on the other end of the phone reminded me of myself—albeit a two-decade-earlier self, when I, too, thought of age 50 as an impossibly faraway place that would somehow recede into the distance the closer I got to it. Her tone was all Law & Order; clinically pleasant with a dash of disbelief, as if she were interviewing a member of a soon-to-be-extinct species, which technically she was. After all, a Baby Boomer dies every 34 seconds, roughly 2,500 every 24 hours, a rate that is expected to increase with each passing year.

The interview, mostly about my purchases aimed at enhancing my health and longevity, goes well until, “So what do old people think about….”

Say what?

My stunned silence forces the interviewer to rephrase her question.

“What do older people think about…”

What the fuck difference is there between old and older?

Besides, isn’t the point of the interview that we Boomers—my peers and I—are a vital, and influential group of consumers; not young, but certainly not old?

In truth, “middle age” is a misnomer. Looking at the issue from Chandler Bing’s point of view (sorry, he’s the only actuary I know), at 55, I’m past middle age by about 15 years. If I die smack dab in the middle of the actuary tables, my middle age—middle as in median—was 40.5 years old; a time when I was still nursing baby #2. Every year after that is a walk down Banana Peel Hill in slippery bottomed shoes.

When she turned 50, Dorothy Parker observed that “People ought to be one of two things—young or old.” She quickly recanted, “No, people ought to be one of two things—young or dead.”

Apparently, Mrs. Parker isn’t the only one who thinks poorly of the transitional period between true middle age and, well, death.

I remembered standing curbside in Los Angeles a few years ago with a 20something friend as a flotilla of fat geezers roared by on Harleys, strands of frizzy silver hair flying out from under helmets, leather vests festooned with studs and fringe; sun-burned upper arms jiggling from the strain of controlling 100 horsepower machines. The noise from half-a-dozen dual exhaust valves was deafening. When we removed our hands from our ears, my companion snarled, “Boomers! Can’t wait ‘til they’re all dead.”

I don’t blame Generations X & Y for feeling that way. They’ve been tossed about in our wake for decades. And, while we’re still here, cutting a wide, possession-strewn path across the planet, we American Boomers tie-up $28 trillion in assets—everything from beachfront second homes to 401(k) accounts groaning with cash. Who can blame those in our shadow and Madison Avenue for circling us like buzzards?

But back to the phone call. After it is over, I glance outside. A leaden gray winter’s sky struggles to snow, and the earth, barren of green, awaits a mantle of white.

For all intents and purposes, many of us are in the winter of our lives. But winter isn’t the end; winter isn’t something that needs to be “fixed” with products and procedures. Winter is not a punishment for summer’s excess, nor should we pretend it away.

Winter has its own majesty as do spring, summer and fall. And while marketing types scramble for new ways to cure winter and milk the Baby Boomer cash cow at least one more time, I’m going to settle in with a nice hot mug of green tea and appreciate however many winters I have left, one snowflake at a time.

Prudence shares an easy way to help millions of dogs and cats

Some days I get nothing done. Oh, I cook & clean up, chauffeur & scrub, fluff & fold, but I am not part of the solution to the manifold challenges our world, our society, our country faces.

This changed when my friend Marsha insisted I daily log onto Freekibble.com to help one of the six- to eight-million* dogs and cats languishing in shelters get their daily dose of kibble. I mean, if you are on death row, you still gotta eat, right?

And until we figure out how to stop the pooch & puss overpopulation problem that has as many as four million beasties euthanized annually*, the good folks at Freekibble donate ten kibble chunks per game for every person who plays the website’s super-fun and challenging Bow-Wow Trivia Quiz and Meow Trivia Quiz. The angelic sponsor of Freekibble appropriately named Halo, Purely for Pets®, that markets natural & nutritious pet food and is co-owned by none other than Ellen Degeneres.

So until these homeless shelter animals find “their forever homes,” Freekibble.com helps me get my daily good karma points, no matter how trifling the other parts of my life are.

*Humane Society of the United States statistics

Prudence’s personal story provides a morality tale for America today

This is a story about a baby I call Jesus. No, not that Jesus—the other one, pronounced “Hey, Zeus.”

I admit this may not be his name and he may not be a he; I don’t know. All I know is that somewhere out there in the world is a teenager I call Jesus and his birth certificate is almost identical to my son’s. And what better time to have a Jesus story than now—on the eve of the holiday season that culminates with the birthday celebration of a man so many Americans claim to know personally, the other Jesus, Jesus Christ.

Jesus (the Hey Zeus one) was born April 6, 1995, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles—the same hospital, the same day, the same hour as my second and last child, Casey. The reason I know about Jesus is that my labor and delivery nurse helped bring him into this world.

Jesus’ Spanish-speaking mother (let’s just call her Maria for the sake of simplicity) arrived at Good Samaritan a few hours after I did, but instead of proceeding directly to the 6th floor maternity ward, she came into the hospital’s emergency room entrance seven floors below.

Maria arrived in what is termed “full fetal distress,” her baby’s cord wrapped around its neck. The E.R. appealed to the maternity ward to send a nurse stat to assist. My nurse entered the room, gave me a critical once over and announced, “You’re not having this baby anytime soon, so I think I’ll go help.” It wasn’t a question. And besides, my husband was there—albeit asleep in the corner—and my oldest sister, but never mind her as she soon chose to leave as well. My nurse then disappeared for 45 minutes to the E.R. to help Maria.

A lot can happen in three quarters of an hour. A life can change, irrevocably and unspeakably, pulling every other life, however tenuously connected, in the same uncharted direction.

My child’s birth date was planned long in advance. Because of complications following my first birthing experience, I was under close supervision. My OB decided, and I agreed, to squeeze Casey’s birth into a Thursday morning slot so she could depart L.A. the next morning for a long weekend away. “We’ll crank up the pitocin,” she smiled, reassuring me that, because Thursday was the baby’s hypothetical due date, he should—according to medical science—come barreling down the vaginal canal just moments afterwards.

My husband, bedraggled after a night of editing his first feature film, slumbered peacefully in a green vinyl armchair; his head tilted back with his mouth closed in a tight line. Nearby, his glasses perched on top of It’s a Mad, Mad World, the video I had brought as a distraction, but that now lay on the table, still shiny in shrink-wrap. Feeling no pain thanks to Fentanyl and numb from the waist down, I was content to listen to the fetal heart monitor’s hypnotic ker-thump, ker-thump, ker-thump and watch dangling tubes and wires quiver gently overhead. The tracking devices that delivered information about my baby and me to the nurses’ station whirred and beeped. Feeling at peace, I lapsed into a trancelike state.

Only when the ker-thump stuttered did I startle from my torpor. All moisture evaporated from my mouth and throat as I realized the green line that had gone up with every ker and down with every thump was now flat.

“Honey,” I croaked in a whisper composed of only hot breath. My husband slumbered on. “Tim! Tim!” I shrieked in a cracked voice I didn’t recognize as mine. He awoke in a panic, knocking his glasses to the floor. While he scrambled frantically around trying to locate them, my eyes lighted on a big red button marked “Emergency” on the far side of my bed.

“Hit the button!” I gestured so frantically that the embedded IV needle tore the flesh of my forearm.

“What button?” he shouted back, putting on his glasses, unable to grasp what had transpired.

The baby’s heart monitor was silent yet my ears filled with the rushing roar of water. The room slipped into a timeless place where Tim, my bed and all the objects nearby seemed suspended in some kind of thick ether that muffled all emotion and softened edges so that one three-dimensional object blended into the next; a shadowy continuum devoid of emotion but filled with acute, aching awareness. Moments became hours if not lifetimes. Angels danced on the heads of pins, a thousand lotus petals opened, empires rose and fell as Tim—in slow motion—fought his way through the tangle of wires and the tubes, trying to reach that button, which seemed forever unreachable.

This is the story of a baby I call Jesus, who was born in a hospital fifteen and a half years ago. And another baby who struggled to be born, but was instead revived. My baby is the second one, pulled back from that light-filled tunnel by a roaring vacuum that sucked his still little body from mine; the little body that had grown weary from pushing and waiting for his mother’s body to respond by pushing back.

This is also the story of two mothers, one who had access to healthcare and another who didn’t. One who took home a healthy child and never knew about the woman seven floors up, the woman whose life was forever altered, as were the lives of all around her, by the birth of a child with disabilities, disabilities caused by lack of access to appropriate healthcare for Maria, who for lack of proper neo-natal care, wound up in the emergency room of the aptly named Good Samaritan Hospital at the exact same time my baby was slated to be born.

As painful as it is to relive this incident, I share it as a morality tale for those Americans who are Christian in name only. For all those high-minded moralists who are salivating at the possible repeal of the new federal law they sneeringly call Obamacare, I ask them if they would want this heartache in their family. Would they want to spend the first five years of their child or grandchild’s life frantically searching for the right therapy that will fix what cannot be fixed; scrambling for the cash to cover what insurance companies refuse to cover; and trying to keep a family together that is torn asunder by worry, pain, regrets and recriminations?

In October, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced grants of $727 million for 143 low-cost community health centers across the nation, funded by the Affordable Care Act. This will increase access to care for the working poor, for communities of immigrants and others who crowd our emergency rooms for no other reason other than there is no place else for them to go.

My child’s future and my family’s peace of mind were sacrificed for lack of healthcare in a community of people whose presence is tolerated as long as they clean our homes, mow our lawns, diaper our children, spread blacktop and wash our cars. But the true cost of having them here is our nation’s unspoken shame.

On the eve of what should be a time of gratitude, forgiveness and remembrance of a man who spent his life dispensing care to the poor, of counseling and giving hope to the wretched and the unwanted, do we want our legislators to take aim at a law that clearly and for all intents and purposes, would have the endorsement of Jesus?

(I leave it up to you to figure out which Jesus I’m talking about.)