This one is for Middleborn.
Look I knew you were in there, almost from week three of that pregnancy. Disagreeable, delightful you.
You were the one I took out running, through the puddles as I pushed your older brother (Firstborn) in a jogging stroller.
I was quieter then. I felt you could hear my every thought.
Then I plumed into a hot air balloon, drank all the grapefruit juice and ate all the cinnamon bears. How dare you have such cravings?
I taught myself so many songs on piano; so you could hear them. I read “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” aloud to you.
Even in the womb, you brought discord into my life. You woke, wrestled, clamored and churned.
It’s not a bad thing, I promise.
Tension and disagreement drive us onward, so we don’t ooze into complacency. They carve away the frills from our purpose; the personalities from principle.
I’d prefer, sometimes, to be complacent. To be alone. To read my books. To hide my thoughts from this cruel world.
But you, a living debate from the womb onward, won’t let me do that.
You’re a waltz. The rambling triple-beat rhythm always tumbles into the next measure, like a triangular object on a slope.
Onward, onward, onward.
Your endless questions, your fiery logic, your furious reckonings at anything irrational, remind me that under the many distractions of our world, there’s some tangible truth. There must be, if you keep hacking away at everything between you and it.
You were born six days late by the doctor’s count. And I was grumpy about it.
“Good heavens,” sighed a nurse in the doctor’s office. “You’ll get to spend the next 18 years with him – what’s six days?”
An eternity.
Full-term pregnant and wobbling like a wheelbarrow on a shredded tire, I walked six miles; hoping that would force you out so I could see your eyes.
I finally went into labor. Your grandma (my mom) came over to watch your brother. She harvested wild onions with him.
I drank two lemonades on the drive up to the hospital.
They tried settling me on that ridiculous recliner hospital bed so I could give birth like a science project under observation. But no: I climbed the back of the recliner and bellowed a war cry.
Your dad’s mom, “Grummy,” was an empath and could feel my pain from where she sat in the waiting room. She cried.
Eight pounds, 13 ounces. Ginger-colored hair. Those rainy eyes that would turn green seven months later.
I was so in love – and I still am. Even on the days when it’s difficult.
Even when you’re driving my car, talking about Randy Rhoades and refusing to slow down. Even when nothing I say crystallizes in your head.
There in the delivery room the bleeding started. Exhausted, I didn’t notice it.
Your grandma brought Firstborn in to see us, and he could tell I was fading. In his toddler-borne broken English he begged me to go home.
The nurse noticed it then. She said I should call your dad back to the hospital – “just in case.”
In the end, one surgery and I-don’t-know-how-many blood transfusions later, I was fine.
It’s weird, but all the subtle warnings about anemia and "possibly death" just didn’t matter that much. You were here, and that was plenty. I was "dying" joyfully.
Hard to believe that was 14 years ago today. I wouldn't trade it. Not for anything.
You’re here, and that’s plenty.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
