Three Makes Five

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Something I didn't even know I needed.

That's what Esther is.

My pregnancy with her was totally unplanned, and initially really unwanted. I had just moved to Hawaii. I wanted to enjoy the tropics and work off the rest of my weight and get a crochet business started and a hundred other things that didn't include a third child. More to the point, Linda was nowhere near mature enough to become a big sister. I wanted to let her be the baby for a while longer.

So I was upset when I got pregnant. I had been fairly careful, but what I'd forgotten is that sometimes you ovulate the day afteryour "fertile" cervical mucous disappears. And sex was happening so rarely by then that I wasn't about to turn it down! It was bad sex too. She's not just the Navy Lodge Baby, she's the Navy Lodge Air Mattress Set up in the Bathroom Baby. Feh.

Oh, but I needed her. I remember watching "Roseanne" once as a kid, the TV show not just the comedienne, and she was talking with DJ. One of his sisters had told him he was an accident, and his mother said he wasn't an accident, he was a surprise. He asked her what the difference was. "A surprise," she said, "is something you don't know you want until you get it."

Esther is a surprise. I didn't know how much I wanted, no needed her until I had her. There is something so special about her, something I cannot even explain. Some calmness that she exudes, that I absorb through my pores when I hold her.

I am not sure how I ever lived my life without her. And that is really true of all my girls. I was really missing out before they were born, but I never knew it. I thought I was happy. I didn't know what happiness really was. Now I do.

There is something about having children that awakens anew a sense of your own mortality. Death terrifies me. The idea that I will some day no longer be here, no longer be taking part of this wonderful, wonderful world we live in is even now as I type causing a hitch of panic in my chest. I haven't exactly lead an idyllic life, but I enjoy living nonetheless. I truly do.

And it scares me in a new way now. I now get scared that I one day won't be there for my girls. I enjoy them like nothing else on this planet. Their scents are even more right, if that is possible, than Robert's. At the same time, however, I am aware that I will live on in some small way, because I have children and God willing so will they. I will love them, and with His blessing I will be allowed as well to love my grandchildren and perhaps even great-grandchildren, and if nothing else so long as someone I loved is still alive, in a way so too will I be. They are God's wonderful blessing to me. I am certain I've done nothing to deserve them, but I thank Him for them every day.

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