Maria lived with her husband, John, on a farm in an area of eastern Wisconsin
populated by Bavarian immigrant families.
In the dozen years of her marriage, Maria had borne five children,
including the little boy, Emil, who had died soon after his first birthday.
The four children who remained ranged in age from ten to three,
and the oldest girl, eight-year-old Estella, was my great-grandmother.
Another child was expected in March 1900.
It would be Maria’s sixth baby.
John had worked the farm for almost two decades,
growing corn and alfalfa in the fields and raising hogs and a small dairy herd.
By the year 1900, the farm had become profitable.
The local farming community was close-knit,
comprised of German-speaking families which had intermarried,
creating a support network of farm hands to help in the fields and women,
old and young, to help care for families in times of need.
After having given birth five times, Maria was expecting an easy delivery.
That’s how it went for most women who had borne many children.
So, when Maria’s time came, she got into her bed
and John sent for the wife on the neighboring farm
who had helped many women with their birthings;
and her teenage daughter came along to tend to the little ones.
And Maria’s labor began, as it always had, with pains
commingled with happy anticipation.
Another boy who could one day help his father would be a special blessing.
But then something went wrong.
The contractions came faster, as they always do,
but the pain was different this time; and Maria began to bleed.
The neighbor lady pressed on Maria’s abdomen
and could feel the baby laying upright,
with its feet emerging from her body,
instead of laying head-down, in the normal birthing position.
Alarmed, the neighbor lady sent John in his carriage
to the home of the local doctor.
By the time they returned to the farm, Maria’s bed was soaked in blood.
The doctor pushed on Maria’s abdomen
using a medical technique called ‘external version,’
manually turning the baby into a head-down position
to enable it to pass through the birth canal.
And it worked.
But when the baby came, at last,
he was covered in Maria’s blood and barely alive.
And her bleeding continued.
The doctor called for spider webs to be compressed
and packed inside Maria’s body to staunch the bleeding.
So, the neighbor lady sent Estella, the eight-year-old, to the barn
to quickly gather them.
Spider webs had been used to stop bleeding since ancient times
and were believed to have antiseptic properties,
provided the webs were clean and freshly spun.
And Estella, ever the dutiful ‘oldest girl,’ obliged,
returning to the barn again and again to collect spider webs
which could save her mother’s life.
But Maria’s bleeding persisted for hours more
and she drifted in and out of consciousness.
The next day, a fever set in, and John sent for the doctor again,
but there was nothing that he could do.
An infection had taken hold
and there was no medicine then that could counteract the deadly bacteria
rampaging through Maria’s abdomen.
She lingered for another day and then died.
And a week later, the little baby boy died, too.
They were laid to rest together,
in the German cemetery behind the Lutheran church.
And forever more, little Estella blamed herself for their deaths.
“My spider webs must have been dirty,” she would tell me seven decades later.
“I rushed to collect them to save my mother’s life
and forgot to look for dirt or insects in them,” she’d say.
“They had all screamed, ‘run to the barn and get more!’”
“And I did, but my spider webs were dirty and they killed my mother.”
“It was my fault.”
“No one ever said so out loud, but I knew it from looking at Father’s face.”
Were the spider webs the cause of Maria’s infection?
We’ll never know.
After a year, John married a spinster from town.
She moved into the farmhouse
and set about the task of being a stepmother to four young children.
They didn’t like her.
Estella married young and moved far away,
never doubting for a moment that, had she been a better daughter,
her mother would have lived.
And this perceived failure
overshadowed everything in Estella’s life that came after.
So, what do we learn from this sad story?
Perhaps nothing.
Life is exceptionally cruel at times, and we all know this.
But I think of Estella, who lived a long life marred by sadness and guilt,
when I read about others who suffer childhood trauma.
….. The Ukrainian boy from Donetsk who was forced from his home, given a new name, and sent to Russia to live with a new family.
….. The Guatemalan girl who was wrested from her father’s arms at the American southern border and sent to a DeVos care facility in Michigan.
….. The daughter of an elementary school teacher killed in her classroom in Uvalde.
….. The little kids in Los Angeles who can’t find their dogs.
It all leaves scars that never fade.
Just ask Estella.
In the words of Franz Kafka, “I am a cage, in search of a bird.”
I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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