Episode 1: The Birth
Welcome to MOONDAY CAFE a podcast that’s posted every month on the day of the full moon.
MOONDAY CAFE is devoted to the mind-expanding, mind-bending magical power of story.
Escape into the tales and truths of author Dovey Conlee in this Equinox episode of MOONDAY CAFE. Episode 1 journeys us through the birth story of baby April. A story about how a baby girl came into the world during an unthinkable storm surrounded by mystery and magic.
Connected to nature and empowered by the nurturing of healers, April finds her way through the West Texas storm guided by the all-powerful presence of love.
Experience the truth of mother & daughter and the love and ties that bind them in this world and beyond.
Our guide is author, inspired performer, and barefoot cowgirl, Dovey Conlee.
Follow along for next month's episode: Be sure to subscribe here to the monthly emailer.
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Episode 1 : The Birth
The girl named April was born in February.
Her birth was just north of Abilene, not far from the family ranch.
She arrived at the end of the day on the second Monday of the month.
after another Texas norther had been stinging the area for 3 days non-stop, bringing with it an ice storm that made travel unthinkable.
That very morning of April’s birth, Lupe, the housekeeper arrived at the main house on the remote ranch. She knew it was the day for the baby’s arrival when she found a barn owl feather that dropped onto the snow bank by the side door of the ranch house kitchen. It stood straight, like an arrow.
As Lupe entered the house that morning, all of the gas heaters were blazing and all 4 burners on the gas stove were burning at full blue flame.
There was already an early morning fire in the fireplace.
Every effort had been made to heat the home as much as possible.
The windows on the side of the house that faced the windmills caught most of the storm’s wind, but the salt-cedar windbreak did help protect the home and the outer barns from most of the blistering wet snow.
Still, winds whistled through the windows bringing a non-stop moan that changed in pitch as gusts pelted and the falling snow blew sideways.
Lupe shook the clinging snow off her long wool jacket and placed it on the hook by the door.
From the pocket, she pulled a red thread; a piece of long red yarn she found in a drawer while cleaning.
Swiftly, she began to chant a whispered prayer as she held the owl feather in her hand, eyes closed, spinning it clockwise as she wrapped the thread around the quill.
She submitted her prayer silently and when she had finished, she hung the feather in a window that faced east, honoring the sacred arrival of this new soul. Lupe’s culture taught her many things about signs and rituals and those connecting beliefs, and she knew when she saw the feather that the baby would be coming on this very day, before nightfall, the time when owls begin nocturnal hunts.
The brown owl feather brought the powerful omen of an impending birth, but the weather was bringing real trouble.
Immediately, Lupe opened the kitchen ice box and took the glass jug full of cow’s milk and poured some of the milk into a copper pan, placing it on the front burner of the large stove. Something warm and soothing felt right for the pregnant Patrona, or woman of the house. Her name was Jane. Jane Lane. And to Lupe, she was Patrona Jane. Jane Lane was raised far from this very ranch that had been in her husband’s family for 107 years.
Coffee had been ready before sunrise when the ranch owner, or Patron to Lupe, left early to check on the ice breaking on the water troughs that spread through the pastures where cattle waited for the morning’s hay. The Patron’s name was Noah. Noah Lane and Noah Lane was born on this land. Right in this house.
Lupe reached into the tall cabinet and pulled out a small bottle, and poured a few drops of vanilla into the warm milk, then added strong coffee and poured that mix into a china cup, a blue willow patterned china cup and saucer, dusting the top the cinnamon that was already on the counter. With a linen napkin, she carried it to the bedroom of Patrona Jane.
Both Jane and Noah settled into this ranch after their marriage, which was a bit later in life than most, and although they always had been hoping for a family, until now, they had been growing older without success.
Lupe and her husband lived in a small house there on the ranch, out near the washhouse. She had worked for the Patrona Jane since her marriage to Noah and now, the Patrona was, at last, a pregnant wife.
Patrona Jane glowed more radiant as her belly grew in size, a size that started to worried Lupe, compelling her to pray constantly with rituals for the safe arrival of the baby.
Lupe understood and trusted omens and the power associated with their symbols. She had good honorable spiritual teachers and extremely wise mentors that taught her the value of paying attention to the ways in which the invisible world speaks.
In honoring these teachings, once a month, when gathering provisions in town at the county seat, Lupe and her husband Carlo, would take jack rabbit tamales to the local Mexican curandera that lived on the edge of town by the arroyo.
The arroyo was on the path of a ancient game trail that had been sacred hunting grounds for centuries; Indian petroglyphs marked the stones behind the curandera’s campo, a compound the curandera had built herself and had nourished for seven decades. She was the medicine woman to many, often delivering babies, healing spiritual diseases and always offering protection prayers and spiritual guidance. The guidance of her people.
The herbs that the curandera planted in her campo healed and spiritually shored the local Hispanic culture; the culture that served and shored the gringo ranches of the area as well. She had done her sacred work in the area for generations, always healing and helping the workers.
The curandera’s name was Dona Angelita Rosario Perez and she came to this part of Texas from the highlands around Chihuahua, Mexico.
She was a well respected Taramahara Indian, the tribe that Lupe and Carlo trusted and respected; they were legendary healers.
Great, good, honorable, grounded healers. Helpers and healers.
Their hearts were good hearts.
The rabbit tamales that Lupe and Carlo generously gifted each and every month to Dona Perez were Dona Perez’s most favorite.
A ‘canejos’ meal was a magic elixir for a magic woman and Lupe knew well that she should continue to always respect the local healer with gifts like these to honor the shamanic masters of her heritage.
Lupe and her husband Carlo had also come from an eastern Taramahara tribe of the lower Sierra Madres, having made their own long and arduous journey together through the dangerous dirt roads of Northern Mexico.
On that journey, they had crossed the Rio Grande River at a rocky, narrow low-water crossing, halfway between the small town of Presidio and an old Spanish mission on the bluff of the river that was a legendary safe-haven for travelers headed north into Texas looking for work.
They came across the border when they were young and strong and faithful. And finding Dona Perez had been vital for their survival.
The curandera’s campo was a stopping-point for connection in the area around Abilene, which is how Lupe and Carlo came to know her and how they came to find their jobs at the Lane Ranch. They both honored the curandera’s powerful spiritual connection and intuition. They honored her wisdom and sought her prophecy and on occasion, they asked for special blessings.
One July morning when the Jane happily shared with Lupe that on the very weekend of her 10th wedding anniversary in May, when she and her husband, Noah, traveled away from the ranch to a gilded hotel in Abilene, the getaway had yielded an unexpected pregnancy. A pregnancy unusual for a couple this age, but a welcomed joy, all the same. At last.
When Lupe heard the news 2 months into the Patrona’s pregnancy, she smiled graciously, congratulated her, both hands covering her mouth in joy, and then swiftly returned to her ironing with a deep penetrating prayer for the precious new soul coming into this wild part of west Texas.
From that moment of the news, Lupe prayed in gratitude for this miracle. She prayed for a strong child. She prayed for a healthy child and she prayed for, she really prayed for Jane.
Lupe felt that this child would have very light, fair skin, like Jane, and that the child would be a strong spirit because it has come through Noah and Jane at this time in their life. Dona Perez told Lupe once of a vision she had about a white curandera; a girl. Someone that could bring the healing of her ancestors into the modern world, while living so far away from it. It could be, Lupe thought. After all, the Patrona Jane, had been a healer herself. A different kind.
Jane was well educated about pregnancy and child birth; years before her marriage, she had been a nurse in the city, training at a Baptist University and practicing in a hospital there.
But, by the age of 13, Jane had delivered her own brother in the main house of her own parents ranch . Exuberant over that success, Jane knew she would become a nurse. She just had to grow into it and delivering her own brother led the way. It changed her life.
On the day that 13 year old Jane delivered her brother, Jane’s mother had already birthed a big ranch family. So far, there were 4 children, including Jane, the oldest and on that day, this 5th child came early one morning as the woman was scattering chicken scratch that she had gathered in the hem of her kitchen apron. All morning, her lower back had been telling her, but it was the fast drop of the baby while tending to her hens that told her that this birthing was on fast approach.
Jane’s mother called for her eldest daughter, the young Patrona Jane. She was close by tending to some young plants on the edge of the family garden when her mother directed her to stop what she was doing an help walk her back into the house and onto the bed.
With no phones in this part of rural Texas in the early 1930’s and with all the men and boys tending to cattle and cotton within that section of land, only the young Patrona and her mother were in the house now helping to usher a baby that was fast on the way. A gripping moment for the young Jane.
It was a short labor. By lunchtime, the Patrona’s mother extended her hand, gesturing for help to sit up on the side of the bed. As Jane’s mother sat up, she hiked her dress, still wearing her apron, then eased off the edge of the mattress and squatted above a white enameled dishpan that Jane was instructed to put into place.
As her mother started to pant breathlessly, she paused, then held her breath to push, kneeling down slowly to allow the edges of the pan to act as support for her weary frame.
Suddenly, there was a pause in her contractions and at that moment, as Jane’s mother coughed to clear her throat, the combination of the cough and the squatting pushed the baby right through the birth canal and into the pan. The young Jane caught the child with both of her small, strong hands and marveled at the miracle. Both women wept; the baby’s arms flailing at the feeling of this new expansive space. Still covered in it’s white waxy coating, the child struggled to breathe.
As instructed, the young Jane helped her mother back into the bed and handed her the child that was still attached through the umbilical chord. Her mother took a cloth and wiped the face of the struggling child. It was a boy. Jane watched as her mother watched the baby gag, then she placed her mouth onto the nose of the infant, sucking the mucus from both nostrils and allowed the airway to be opened fully. She wiped her brow with the same cloth, then her mouth and instructed Jane on how to help her by cutting the umbilical chord. Her mother guided her to first tear strips of cloth from a clean sheet and to tie 2 strips in 2 places along the thick chord, tying them the knots as tight as her small hands possibly could.
Before Jane’s mother had entered into active labor that morning, on her way to scatter the feed for the chickens, her intuition guided her to place a kitchen knife into boiling water on the back burner of the kitchen stove in order to sterilize it thoroughly. Jane took the sterilized knife and cut the rubbery chord right between the 2 knots, freeing the baby boy and stopping the bleeding of both the mother and the baby. In 30 minutes the placenta was easily expelled. And Jane was elated. Her mother made birthing look so easy.
By then, her brothers and the young Patrona Jane’s father had arrived for a lunch break, only to find the birth complete and the enamel tub full of the crimson afterbirth. Dutifully, they disposed of it on the far, far edge of the house pasture, burying it beneath a white crepe myrtle tree there in the corner by an old shed.
For lunch that day, there was already a pan of fresh cornbread, some milk and soft butter, a few onions and a pot of cream peas. It was a fitting meal to celebrate the arrival of the new child…..another boy to go along with Jane’s 3 other brothers. She fixed a plate for her mother and carried it to the room, helping her diaper the child and wiping her mothers face.
Jane asked her mother if she could name the baby Buddy, because she felt that this was her very own little buddy, since she was the first ever to touch him.
To Jane’s great delight, this baby was officially named Buddy. And at that moment in time, she declared to the family that she knew she was going to become a nurse, she wanted to become a nurse. After that, she felt like she just had the right stuff.
It was a beautiful memory for Jane, and now Jane Lane herself was a rancher’s wife, in a newer world, with a hospital nearby, but nothing could ever measure up to delivering her own mother’s baby.
Jane had returned from the city hospital to marry Noah, and although she had helped as a nurse at the rural hospital in town, as needed, now, Jane Lane was focused solely on becoming a mother. Her days at the ranch, were happily filled with humming along to her favorite tunes on the radio, writing love letters to her unborn child and painting with oils and pastels on canvases that were ordered from an art supply store in San Antonio.
After the news of her pregnancy, Jane also spent time sewing curtains and bedding for a crib that had been in Noah’s family for generations. She wore her maternity dresses proudly and she wished her own mother had lived long enough to see this new chapter in her life.
Months went by before the doctors felt there might have been a miscalculation about the Jane’s due date, there was little dismay, at first, then when the due date passed beyond 3 weeks and her belly continued to grow and grow, jokes about twins disappeared, and as every day passed, both mother and doctor gradually became more silent and concerned.
As the unwelcome storm moved in that February from the northern mountains of New Mexico, it sent sheets of ice first, then a thick base of wet snow, followed by a powdered snow that covered even the highest welcoming steps to every tall church in town.
When Lupe had tapped on the bedroom door to greet Jane on that Monday morning when she found the owl’s feather, Jane greeted her by asking for a bucket. The nausea had started and the baby was clearly on the way.
Lupe rang the large bell on the back porch, signaling for Noah and Carlo to return to the ranch house. She acted fast when they returned, dispatching Carlo to tell the neighbors to the north side.
With no snow plows, the roads were quite treacherous, causing any daunting drive into town to become just one long slippery, white knuckled prayer, so the neighbors to the north waited at the sharp turn at the county road-crossing with a large Massey-Ferguson tractor sputtering in the frosty air; simply neighborly aid standing by in case a tow was needed, but Noah safely drove the ranch truck into town, moving at a supremely slow crawling pace, snow and ice crunching beneath the large tires.
On that eternally long drive, Patrona Jane tried to lighten the mood by laughing through some of the contractions, beads of sweat breaking through her forehead. Her body heating up with each gripping quake. They listened to the radio; the farm report had already played, but the voice of Dean Martin was singing VOLARE and she tried to hum along, reflecting on just how easy it had been for her to have helped with her brother’s birth. We’ll get through this delivery, she kept telling herself. I know how easy this can be.
It was freezing in the truck, but at that moment they were bundled and layered and happy, Lupe having tucked blankets in both their laps.
The labor was not that long and the baby was large, too large, too large for a normal birth. The country doctor knew what he had to do and he had Jane prepped for surgery.
During the cesarian procedure, the surgeon made an incision from just under the sternum to just above the pubic bone in order to immediately extract the child, which saved the baby quickly, but seriously weakened Jane, requiring that she have continued help and care for the weeks that followed.
Friends and family braved the snow the next day, on Tuesday, to come into town to see the biggest baby ever birthed in that county. April, a fair skinned girl, weighed in at 10 lbs. and 11 ozs. Lupe said to her own friends, that the baby was the size of two, 5 lb. sacks of sugar AND the sugar bowl. Her head was the size of a small sandy-soil cantelope.
The visiting guest register inside an illustrated baby book was filled with signatures from each of the visitors that came to the hospital and every one of them signed with a stout Parker fountain pen. There were so many names written in that dainty registry, that a young hospital orderly was dispatched to the town square in order to fetch another bottle of dark India ink.
This big blonde baby made her glorious and unforgettable splash into BEING with dozens of curious eyes watching as they visited the nursery bundled in their thick winter coats and hats. For a while, it was like a parade.
Although weak and groggy, Jane couldn’t have been happier and Noah joked about the ‘ranchers luck’ of having a girl, when having a son meant having an extra pair of ranch hands. It was a good, playful tease.
In a pair of days, after April’s arrival, the sun returned and the ice melted, giving way to clear, cold skies and the remnants of an evening’s platinum moon. It was peace on earth. For a while.
When Jane and Noah left the tiny hospital and returned to the ranch house with the big happy cantaloupe-head baby named April, Lupe helped the delighted, but weary, Patrona Jane out of their comfortable car and into a warm bed made with fresh, ironed linens. Lupe had also added heavy colored quilts topped with deep down comforters to ward off the chill in the room. It was toasty nest for a new mom. All the heaters were crackling; the fireplace was blazing.
Immediately, Lupe changed the baby and then swaddled her tightly in baby-sized blankets, she fed her and tucked her into the arms of the Patrona. A sweeter tableau Lupe had never seen.
So much love.
Naturally, Jane was in pain; still so much pain from the incision. She wept with a bewildering grief, wondering why this birth had been so difficult and at the same time, she felt so grateful to have this child in her arms. She searched relief in knowing that her recovery was on the way and that the baby was finally here. And she was healthy. Really healthy.
For Lupe, there were bandages to change, pain relief to administer and broths to serve, thermometers to sterilize and bottles to warm. That night, Lupe wrapped herself in a pattered Indian blanket, then slept in a bedroom chair for 3 days, never leaving Patrona Jane’s side.
On the 4th day after surgery, Lupe returned from warming a bottle in the kitchen to find that the lips of the Patrona had turned blue-grey and when placing her hand on her forehead, no thermometer was needed; infection had set into the deep and long caesarian incision
Calling into the other room, Lupe alerted Noah and together, they waisted no time in tenderly helping the feverish Patrona Jane into a warming car; Lupe carried the frightened baby as they sped quickly, this time, the roads were clear and the north Texas weather did not hold them back.
When they arrived at the hospital, the doctor of record made some assessments and readmitted Jane, but the baby could not stay with her or near her in the nursery, since the baby had been exposed to the outside world.
Noah paced the hallway, hat in hand. Lupe offered to care for the baby back at the ranch, but separating the mother and child was too critical.
The nurses hatched a plan of how to keep baby April near the nurses station where they worked around a wide desk where charts were annotated and records were kept.
The head nurse took a drawer from a chest in the nearby hospital linen closet. She fashioned it into a make-shift bed for the newborn.
And daily, each time the baby had been fed and changed, then swaddled again, the drawer was pushed onto a shelf in that linen closet where the child could sleep in peace and without disruption.
After Jane began to stabilize, the doctors advised Noah that she would be staying in the hospital for several more days. The infection was not good.
When Lupe got the news, she had Carlo drive her straight to the arroyo where Dona Perez, the curandera, lived in nature.
When they arrived at the curandera’s campo, Lupe’s trembling hands exposed a great, instinctual fear.
Superstitious cultures believe that there are ways to change the course of action when someone is in danger by prayerfully beseeching for help and then conjuring that help from the invisible world of creation.
Lupe wanted the curandera to help change the course of this event, helping Patrona Jane to heal quickly and to return to her wholeness. Lupe asked for a sacred prayer and Lupe begged for help.
The curandera lowered her eyes and continued wiping a plate she had just washed, setting it down slowly on the counter. She took a deep breath, dried her hands and pulled a yellow candle from her altar, then lit the candle with a kitchen match, the sulphur hanging low in the room.
From her herb collection, she pull sage and cedar with dried mesquite resin, taking a clay saucer to hold the pile of herbs, she took the yellow candle to start a small, smoldering fire in the stack of leaves and mesquite incense.
As the mixture started to smolder, the curandera changed her demeanor . She moved more slowly now, more softly, taking turkey feathers from a vase and waving the smoke across her chest, eyes still closed. She chanted her prayers softly.
After a moment, she threw a dash of cinnamon into the smoking bowl, only to watch it spark like fireworks, startling Lupe with both the sight and the scent. It was a smell like no other.
After some silence, the curandera looked up and said that this baby has come as a white curandera, a white healer, but she will have to learn from the invisible world; this child will be abandoned. She will be wounded and she will wander.
The curandera Dona Perez declared that Jane would not live long enough to teach her child the ways of her modern medicine or the ways of the folk medicine of her grandmother.
Lupe and Carlo departed in devastating silence.
When the news came to the ranch from the hospital, it was not good.
Patrona Jane’s fever suddenly spiked, her breathing had become shallow, her color had paled and there was nothing that the entire hospital could do to save her life.
When Jane died, the baby grieved wildly. There was no consolation. The child felt and knew that she was now alone and there was no comfort this giant, wailing baby left in the lonely, linen closet.
The next day as Carlos sadly draped the ranch gates in black bunting,
Lupe stood silent before the picture of Patrona Jane on the mantle of the large fireplace. She lit a candle by the picture and remembered what the curandera had told her; that this child would forever feel abandoned.
Overwhelmed with pain, Lupe felt that her heart had cracked open from all her grief. She wailed at first, then stood stoically still as her vision started to soften, she paused in silence as she focused on the hypnotic candle flame and, at that moment, she fell into a lucid, yet supernatural vision of the future. Lupe saw that from the aching crack in her heart, out of that crack flew a beautiful dove.
She pulled the owl’s feather from the east window of the ranch house and hung the owl feather over the child’s crib, the red thread dangling just above reach.
When the expressionless Noah solemnly brought the terrified baby home to the ranch, Lupe took the restless baby into her arms and held her as tight as she could to her chest, weeping softly from the depths of her soul.
She began making a thousand promises to care for her, to teach her, to love her and to tell her the beautiful things about her amazing mother.
She boldly promised the heavens that she would nurture the curandera’s prophecy of the abandoned child’s healing purpose. Lupe pledged openly in a loving whisper to honor this baby’s life path and with that spoken promise, the child physically softened some. There was a shifting into peace; the infant could feel this energy of love. She could feel the promise.
Minutes after that moment of sparkling devotion, Lupe decided that she would now call this child DOVEY. My little paloma; the bird that flew out of her own broken heart.
And, from that day forward, the baby born as April, in the month of February, was only known in the region as Dovey.
The little white dove.
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