How it Ended - Melody Cryns

It all began on that hot Friday morning at the Frankfurt Zoo in Frankfurt, West Germany on May 21, 1981. It was difficult for me to walk and the mild heat seemed way too hot as I held my large stomach and waddled behind my husband Stephen. As we looked at the lions and then the tigers, the pains began – like a wave, a tightness of the stomach. I had to stop for a moment because it ached, not that horrible aching pain, just a little.

“Umm, I think I’m in labor now – I just had a contraction!” I said to my husband who just cheerfully smiled and said. “Okay, good. There’s still plenty of time!”

Easy for him to say, I thought, as I trudged onwards. I had found Guinea Pig fields and it was so cool to watch all the guinea pigs running around. I just loved guinea pigs, those furry little creatures of all different colors, some with long hair, some with short, looking so happy running around and inside their colorful little houses. They delighted me for a while until I felt another pain – this time I gripped the side of the railing of Guinea Pig fields because it hurt.

“I’m having another pain!” I shouted to my husband who was busy looking at a bunch of monkeys jumping around.

“Okay, we’ll go to the hospital soon.”

I was supposed to have my baby at Frankfurt 97th General Hospital, which was far from Gelnhausen, where we lived.

As I watched the guinea pigs, another pain gripped me, that tightness, like a cramp but worse.

“Stephen, I think it’s time. Shouldn’t we go now?”

“Okay, but first I’ve gotta get a shot glass from the Frankfurt Zoo!” As I waddled over to a bench to sit down, I watched as Stephen got in what looked like a long line in front of a wooden shack where they sold trinkets, shot glasses and zoo-related stuff. I couldn’t see exactly what they had and at the moment, I didn’t even care to look. Even the idea of soft raspberry ice cream which had sounded so good to me earlier didn’t appeal to me anymore.

I just wanted to get out of the heat and get this thing done with, and my husband was standing in line to get a shot glass.

It seemed like ages before we got to the hospital, and then they told me I was only dilated 2 centimeters and it would be a while. Groan….

So they put me in a bed and prepped me which meant giving me a horrible enema and inserting an IV into my hand which hurt really bad, not as much as the pains I was getting though.

Seventeen hours of hard labor later, after my close friend Heidi made several futile attempts to join me in the labor room and my husband announced that many people had their babies and moved on to delivery, I had my first baby, my Stephen Michael Vasquez with a “ph” of course.

That was almost twenty-nine years ago. How would I know at the moment I held my baby boy for the very first time that my life would never be the same again, that I’d learn unconditional love for this baby boy totally dependent on me – and for the other three children that I’d have – that I’d love them more than anything else on this earth, more than life itself? That I’d gladly die for these kids.

Today as I look out the window at the few leaves clinging to the tree branches outside my kitchen window and the cat jumps on the counter, I realize that this phase of my life is ending…my youngest, my baby girl Megan turns 18 in September. She’ll be with me for a while I’m sure, but already I feel the pull of independence…our road trip was a reminder of that – she’s looking to the future, and where she wants to live, what she wants to do…

It’s the end of an era filled with babies, toddlers, loads of hugs and kisses, chaos and craziness, small children, big children, cub scouts, soccer, cheerleading, drama club, and endless trips to friends’ houses…Now it’s difficult to get a hold of those older kids because they’re living their own lives…and Megan will do the same even though I begged her to never turn into a teenager when she was ten…she had smiled wistfully at me then, pushing back her long bright red hair…”Mom, I can’t promise that!” she’d said, getting out of the car as my last child headed for her last year of elementary school.

Stevie, Melissa, Jeremy and Megan will always remain closest to my heart, always and forever…no matter where they go or what they do.