Living-Deliberately.com

I think about it when I consider birth order. I’ve never read any books on the subject; just had conversations with other moms. How much does Nature versus nurture come into play? Is my fourth baby really more like a third? Is my fifth baby more like a fourth? Is it as if she never was?

It think about it when the sky changes hue and the ground gets wet and the trees start to bud. I remember days upon days spent in bed hooked up to a contraction monitor, wondering if she would die in birth like Britton did. Phone calls and letters from those were concerned; people I didn’t know cleaning my toilet and making my babies a sandwich and telling me how to shop for caskets. March became more than just waiting for spring. It became something that seemed it would never end and yet chokingly obvious that it would.

I think about it when the sun shines bright but the wind is piercing, like yesterday, like the day she was born. So fast and taken away. A poloriod from a  nurse showing me spikey red hair and a fat little body. And then that doctor, white coat, teal scrubs, balding hair, softly and tenderly giving me the “list” of defects. The heart we knew about the ones we didn’t; I broke down crying when they told me her thumbs had too many creases and I knew then we’d started a process where many other people would know much more about my little baby than I as her mother would. Counting fingers and toes was no longer my job.

I think about it when I’m busy and feel like I have too many things in a day to do anything well. I remember the days of nothingness, of helplessness. Of feeling like I was living in a void, a secret hospital world where no one outside knew where we were. Watching her open chest for days, her tiny heart beating and fighting. Measuring swelling, stroking the one place on her that wasn’t marred by tubes: the top of her head. Finding a routine built around doing nothing but watching. That lonley feeling in the rocking chair, knowing my empty eyes reflected the sky outside, wondering where my life had gone…the busy mommy having 3 in 4 years, and where were my children, and the worst fear I used to have was how to diaper all three of them. My naivete was torn away, my soul irrevoccably changed.

I think about it when I hear My Jesus I Love Thee, or see it on the piano at a friend’s like I did last night. I think about it all spring long, when her coming, her being, and her leaving is everywhere. I wonder why she came and what effect she’ll have as each year passes on anyone but David and I. People move on, we have too. It’s more intense this year as I’m miles from her grave. I’m dreaming of her every night and it’s always the same: she WAS here, she was real.I can still smell her in my dream. And then she was gone and there is no way ever to bring her back. Someone I wasn’t sure I wanted when she was conceived turned out to be the most influential human being in my life and what twisted irony is it that I’ll spend the rest of my life longing for, and being thankful for, a chance to have her.

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