Thank You, Ms. Thomas -- Creator and Writer of Call the Midwife

Heidi Thomas 

Ms. Thomas created and writes Call the Midwife, now in its 6th season airing on PBS.

I have no scientific studies to back me up nor am I credentialed in any form of psychology, but I believe that the most effective way to change a culture is through arts and entertainment. And within the arts and entertainment world, TV is the most likely to reach the most people.

I know you're thinking not PBS, you won't. And that's probably true. BUT Downton Abbey certainly did reach a huge audience. The first five seasons of Call the Midwife are available on Netflix with the sixth season most likely to be available on Netflix early next year, so it is easily available to a vast audience. By-the-bye, if you're interested in watching now but have missed the first five seasons, you could catch up on Netflix then watch the sixth on PBS online.

Call the Midwife is set in Poplar, a fictional district in London's East End. My first knowledge of the East End was from The People of the Abyss, Jack London's nonfiction account of the year he lived there -- 1902. The conditions then were like those in the worst of America's ghettos. Poverty, disease, violence, alcoholism, drugs, lack of education, substandard housing and/or homelessness.

By the late 1950's when Call the Midwife starts, poverty and all its attendant ills still thrived there and the people were dependent on charitable organizations for many services, including medical care. The first season recounts the experiences of Jenny Lee, a newly trained midwife based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, a real midwife who worked with an Anglican nursing order of nuns.

The characters are about evenly split between the sisters of Nonnatus House convent and the trained midwives who work for them. Most of the deliveries are made in the local women's homes, but over the years Nonnatus did open a small maternity hospital in Poplar.

Okay, with all this history of the mythical Nonnatus House, this is what I wanted to talk about.

We are buffeted and pummeled and generally knocked about by strident would-be tyrants who think they can convert us to their point of view with angry voices and defamatory pronouncements against their critics.

Someone once told me "the louder the voice, the weaker the argument."

In Season 6, Episode 3, Ms. Thomas has written what is, in my opinion the perfect example of this truth. There are no car chase scenes. No explosions. No gun, knife, or profane verbal fights. But the tension is palpable. And all the conflict any writing instructor asks for -- internal, interpersonal, and external.

Spoiler Alert!

Sister Ursula, the new autocratic Sister in Charge of Nonnatus House, continues to make changes in the way things are done there including plans to send Sister Monica Joan to the Mother House because she has dementia and, after all everyone must earn their position at Nonnatus House. Sister Julienne who has always effectively run Nonnatus House with understanding and tolerance is hobbled by her vow of obedience and will not question Sister Ursula's tyranny. Humanity vs. efficiency.

A young, part-Chinese, first time mother has to deal with her overbearing Chinese mother-in-law. Cultural traditions clash.

And the Maternity Home is being inspected by a government bureaucrat working with the Health Ministry to close neighborhood maternity homes in favor of larger hospitals. Better care vs. cost effectiveness.

Sister Ursula has mandated that each midwife is to take no more than 20 minutes with each patient so they can see more patients. Mrs. Chen wants her daughter-in-law kept in a stifling, closed room both before and after the baby is born without regard for the young woman's comfort. The bureaucrat is courteous but unimpressed with the maternity home's clean, professional, accessible facilities noting "all this for only four beds." The District Doctor explains that the people in the neighborhood have no transportation other than the bus to get to a hospital or doctor's visits, so maternity care in their own home or a local maternity home are their only reasonable options.

Sister Ursula's enforced time limitation causes one of the midwives to fail to pursue the new mother's and baby's discomfort and fairly mild symptoms. Mrs. Chen's insistence on keeping the room closed tight and the heater on, causes the baby to lose consciousness due to carbon monoxide poisoning. At which point she grabs up the baby and runs to the maternity home for help.

Where the government inspection is interrupted by the emergency and observes the prompt, effective solution of sending the baby and mother-in-law by ambulance to a regular hospital and the doctor and a midwife decamp to the substandard home to care for the new mother.

-- My down and dirty description of the action doesn't begin to convey the tension that I felt while all this was going on. Ms. Thomas' writing in no way spoonfed the audience or belabored explanations. She trusted us to recognize what was going on. To understand. --

The rest of the inspection is done with the bureaucrat accompanied by our beloved, but no-nonsense, plainspoken Nurse Phyllis. He's convinced that the maternity home should not be shut down yet, but, not unsympathetically notes that the shut down is inevitable sometime within the next several years. Times are changing.

Then Nurse Phyllis explains to Sister Ursula that her time limitation was unrealistic and led to the midwife not recognizing the dangerous situation of the Chen family.

The baby and new mother survive and Mrs. Chen explains that she was pregnant when she and the rest of her family had to flee during the Japanese invasion of their city. She had her baby on the road and had no way to keep it dry and warm. It died. She had only been trying to protect her grandchild.

-- By now I was in tears. Not just because Mrs. Chen had had her baby and lost it because she was driven from her home by war, but because women all over the world are still having babies and losing them because of war. --

Sister Julienne listens nonjudgmentally to Sister Ursula and joins her in prayer. Sister Ursula sees the error of her ways, apologizes to Sister Julienne, and leaves to return to the Mother House. Sister Monica Joan gives her a sweet and advises that too much penitence is prideful and even a penitent must eat. And Nurse Phyllis offers to drive her to the station. All to show that Sister Ursula is completely forgiven by those at Nonnatus House.

Humanity vs. efficiency. Cultural traditions clash. Better care vs. cost effectiveness.

All is not well no matter how well this particular episode ended. Times do need to change. Without car chases, explosions, and fights.

And this is a heartfelt thank you to Ms. Thomas for her showing us how.

To Be or Not to Be Sad -- an essay

image from en.people.cn

   This morning my dad slept late. As he took his morning pill, I commented that the snow that had been forecast for today was running late and wouldn’t be here until tomorrow. He grumped that he’d just as soon not have any. I asked him what he’d like for breakfast – egg and toast or oatmeal. I know he likes both. He said it didn’t matter. He just wanted to get it over.

   That’s it. I’ve had enough and, like the line from Network, I’m not going to take it anymore.

   My father lives with my husband and me. He’ll be 90 years old in May. As with any almost nonagenarian, he has some physical and mental limitations. He can’t walk as far as he used to, though he still walks around the block – with his cane. He’s forgotten many things, but because he knew more than most people to begin with, he still knows more than the majority of people who live in this block that he walks around.

   He listens to conservative radio talk shows practically twenty-four hours a day. Where they argue the world is going to hell in a hand basket and it’s all because of Obama Care and illegal aliens. Not that TV is any better with its Judge this or that and Maury Povich. Even Dr. Phil. None of which Daddy watches. (Let me give him credit. He does like reruns of the old Andy Griffith show. If you haven’t watched it in a while, you might check it out. Its humor is gentle and Andy is thoughtful and kind.)

   Okay. So maybe Daddy’s depressed. Not unusual for people his age and we have had some dreary days weather-wise. It is winter. Maybe sadness is like mercury or lead poisoning, it can build up in you over the years. Daddy was a child during The Depression and The Dust Bowl. He came of age when the whole world was going to war and participated in that war as a very young adult. As bad as the world was then, he seems to think the world is worse now.

   Maybe it’s because so many people he’s known and loved are gone. Like all of us, he has hopes and dreams that fade or have become memories that fade.

   Everything changes. Most beyond understanding. Simple things like communications. You can walk around the world while talking on your cell phone without being tethered to a telephone line. You can cook without a flame. You can travel from Denver to Oklahoma City in an hour and 35 minutes, maybe faster if the jet stream is going your way. To the Moon from Earth in 8 hours and 35 minutes like the New Horizons probe on its way to Pluto. Many of these changes may be unfathomable, but they’re also amazing and wonderful.

   It’s easy to find ourselves surrounded by negativity. Negativity is what defines news. Sunday is the Super Bowl. The winners won’t get nearly as much air time as whatever riots break out in their home city in honor of celebration. (Though with Seattle and Foxborough, MA, maybe that won’t be the case.) We may have to content ourselves with ‘Deflate Gate’ for our Super Bowl negativity.

   And there’s war. This war or that war. Deaths from war are always awful, a blight on the human condition. 
   A little history here: In the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression if you’re from Mississippi) 214,938 Americans died in combat. 400,000 to 500,000 died from other causes, like accidents and disease. World War I took 53,402 American lives in combat and 63,114 from other causes. (Of course some say we were a little late getting into that one.) WWII had 291,557 combat deaths and 113,842 from other causes. The War on Terror (Afghanistan and Iraq) has had 5,281 American combat deaths and 1,432 from other causes. (Information from Wikipedia)

   Any death by combat is too many. But look at these figures. There is something striking besides the horrifying numbers and the significant reduction in the numbers between the Civil War and The War on Terror. The war deaths caused by ‘other.’ Deaths due to accidents and disease attest to the remarkable achievements humanity has made in medicine. This is positive. Not that I’m advocating going to war to advance medicine.

   Arguably I (and by default my dad) live in the most beautiful place in the world with its snow-capped Rocky Mountains and unlimited skies. But, of course, Southeast Arkansas must be the most beautiful place in the Spring with its azaleas and wisteria and the deep green light of the piney woods. And Logan County, Oklahoma, in the Fall with a brilliant yellow cottonwood in the valley spreading sunshine even on rainy days.

   The point is: if we are sad we have an antidote right at hand. No matter where we live or what kind of work we do, who we live with or what kind of movies we watch, or who our parents or children are there is always something good we can choose to see or hear or touch or smell or taste or remember or think about.

   So for Daddy, I’m assigning him a daily task. He is to find at least three things in his life for which he can be grateful. I’m going to do it, too. And today the first thing on my list is my Daddy.

My Daddy

Portrait by Bob O'Daniel