I’m just like Matthew McConaughey
In addition to watching a lot of television, I do read too. It just so happens that what I’m reading right now is an actor’s memoir, so, yeah, I know.
I’m reading Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey and discovered that we have one specific thing very much in common. Isn’t that why we read memoirs in the first place? Isn’t that especially why we read famous people’s memoirs? So, that we can see the ways in which we are just like them? Or, at least be able to say, “Oh, they are just like real people.”
McConaughey begins his book by saying it isn’t a memoir, so if you are reading this, Mr. McConaughey, my apologies. Don’t think I overlooked that part. And, I do think you are a real person. But, the truth is that it is a memoir — a book in which he tells fabulous stories from his life while sharing some “bumpersticker” knowledge with us as he does. When I came across the details of his birth, I knew this had to be the story I shared today.
If you are a “regular reader,” you will have noticed that I’ve already mentioned that I was a “later in life” baby, a “surprise baby,” an “accident.”
(Okay, let’s just stop for a moment to acknowledge that I have now written AS IF Matthew McConaughey is reading my blog AND AS IF I have regular readers! When you finish laughing, I will go on . . .)
I am the baby of four children. The sibling closest in age to me is six years older. It wasn’t a great pregnancy for my mother, from what I’m told. And, the doctors told her that it was the last pregnancy she would ever have because her body just couldn’t do it any longer.
Fast forward six years . . . Mom is not feeling well. As you read this, you have to remember that I am in Year 49, so this was a long time ago. She went to the doctor. The doctor said, “May be a virus. Go home.”
She waited a while. She still just didn’t feel quite right, didn’t feel like herself. Maybe she was feeling more exhausted than usual keeping up with the three children who were 6, 10, and 12. She went back to the doctor. Doctor said, “You are fine.” Mom says, “You know, Doctor, I kind of feel like I may be pregnant.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous! You CAN’T be pregnant.”
Time passes. I haven’t been told how much time, but Mom continues to go to the doctor. The doctor continues to dismiss her until finally the doctor decides maybe she is right, maybe there IS something wrong. He orders some tests. (I don’t know which tests.)
And then this doctor informs my mother than she has a BRAIN TUMOR! My mother continued to say, “I’ve had three children. I think I’m pregnant.” And, this doctor was so certain that she could not possibly know what was going on with her own body that he diagnosed her with a brain tumor.
Now, my mother has always respected authority, doctors especially. So, she accepted this as truth. And, of course, lived in fear for a bit. Until one day, the doctor comes in after running some other tests (maybe one that killed the rabbit?) and says, “Well, you are pregnant.”
Relieved to not have a brain tumor, my mom said, “I’ve been trying to tell you that!”
In Greenlights, McConaughey says that for the first five months of his mother’s pregnancy with him, she thought he was a tumor. I felt kinship. I have something in common with “Alright. Alright. Alright.” himself! Where we differ is how our families told us the story.
Like many of us from our generation, we were “accidents.” His parents had been trying for a long time to have another child and had not had any luck. They assumed they were done with child-bearing, then years later their baby came along surprisingly. And, like many of us who have this origin story, he was told his whole life that he was “an accident.”
This is where we differ. And, one may think that being the baby of four, Preacher’s Kid and all, that my family would not only NOT call me “an accident,” but come up with a better title. Oh, they did.
So, my mother had been thinking she had a brain tumor. I can only imagine that my father was wondering how he was going to raise three children while his wife suffered and died with such an illness. I can only imagine that it was an extremely stressful time. When the doctor informed my parents that there was no tumor at all; that, in fact, she had been right all along, she was indeed pregnant with a baby the professionals believed was impossible, one would think this would lead the family to refer to the baby by any number of titles:
“Miracle baby.”
“A Surprise.”
“Oopsie-daisy baby.”
“Gift from God.”
I am almost fifty years old and to this day when this story is told at family gatherings, I am referred to as
“The Tumor Baby.”
And, it still makes me laugh to think about it. Pretty or funny? Funny every. single. time. That’s the way it goes in the whole family. Of course, they call me “tumor baby.” It is the funniest way to tell the story!
I know that when they brought me home from the hospital, my three siblings and two parents gathered around the bassinette in which I was sleeping, held hands, and thanked God for the blessing that I was to their family — even though I was such a surprise. Maybe because I was such a surprise. Mom always told us that Dad wanted a “houseful of kids.” She has made a point to make sure that when I think about this, I can see that circle of faces standing over me as an infant. These are memories of memories and they are mine. Gifts from those who have loved me from the beginning. I am grateful for that image and I can almost hear my father’s voice leading the family in prayer. It might even make me feel nostalgic for just a minute, then I remember that they call me . . .
Tumor Baby.
And, I laugh.
