I’ve never been a woman who was obsessed with having a baby. Don’t get me wrong. I adore kids and have always wanted to have one someday, but that was about as far as it went.
I rarely felt jealous as my friends got pregnant through the years.
I wasn’t the girl who would swing through the kids’ department at the mall to look wistfully at the darling little clothes.
I didn’t read up on the latest Consumer Reports articles on car seats and strollers, just in case.
I could happily hold a baby without my stomach getting fluttery.
Well, as Bob Dylan wrote years ago, the times – they are a changin’! Baby thoughts are now running rampant through my head and seem to find me at the strangest moments.
For several days, our local meteorologists were forecasting a bit of snow and ice for our part of the state last night and this morning. You really have to have lived in the South to understand the frenzied excitement this possibility creates in us. We immediately make plans to close our businesses and our schools, and race to the grocery store for whole milk and white bread. It’s as if we are preparing for the coming of the second Ice Age. I don’t know why. We’re Southerners. It’s just what we do.
Anyway, I thought back to when I was a kid and there was the possibility of snow. I’d keep one ear on the radio and the other on the TV, just WILLING them to announce that our City Schools would not be open the next day. I remember getting increasingly wound up as each and every city and county school system surrounding ours posted their closings. Even as a little kid, patience was NOT my forte.
So as talk of winter precipitation began earlier in the week, I couldn’t help but wonder, will we ever have a child sitting transfixed in front of our TV, monitoring the weather reports out of Memphis (as O did when he was a little boy – generally Memphis’ weather heads right for us) and waiting for a snow day of his/her own?
This morning we awoke to a “dusting” of white. I stood looking out our kitchen window for a while and happened to glance at the old swing set in our backyard. It’s been here since my husband was little. We built our home on what was once his grandparents’ farm, so there are reminders of them, and of O’s childhood everywhere. I used to think that the swing set was just an eyesore. It’s a rusty green color and has clearly seen better days. I don’t even know if it’s safe anymore. Anyway, I’ve lived here with O for over three years now, and the swing is just one of those things that, over time, I don’t ever SEE anymore. It just blends into the background. But today I noticed – really noticed it, and the snow-covered blue seat barely moving back and forth in the breeze. My stomach just clenched. I wondered if I’d ever look out that window and see our child on that swing set, yelling for O to “Push me higher Daddy!”
I could fill pages with moments like that – the woman at the RE’s office floating on a happy little cloud through the waiting room with her ultrasound picture tightly clutched in her hand and a secret smile on her face, the pregnant tummy-rubber buying gingham fabric and bunny rabbits for her baby’s nursery, the harried but happy new mom who sat next to us at our favorite restaurant last weekend with her newborn nearby, all bundled up for his first family outing.
Those daydreams are always bittersweet - sweet for the possibility that they might just come true one day; bitter in remembering that for all the medical technology in the world, the odds are stacked against us.
And I can’t help but wonder, if this doesn’t work out for us, will I ever think of snow days and swing sets in quite the same way again?
I’m thinking no.
I rarely felt jealous as my friends got pregnant through the years.
I wasn’t the girl who would swing through the kids’ department at the mall to look wistfully at the darling little clothes.
I didn’t read up on the latest Consumer Reports articles on car seats and strollers, just in case.
I could happily hold a baby without my stomach getting fluttery.
Well, as Bob Dylan wrote years ago, the times – they are a changin’! Baby thoughts are now running rampant through my head and seem to find me at the strangest moments.
For several days, our local meteorologists were forecasting a bit of snow and ice for our part of the state last night and this morning. You really have to have lived in the South to understand the frenzied excitement this possibility creates in us. We immediately make plans to close our businesses and our schools, and race to the grocery store for whole milk and white bread. It’s as if we are preparing for the coming of the second Ice Age. I don’t know why. We’re Southerners. It’s just what we do.
Anyway, I thought back to when I was a kid and there was the possibility of snow. I’d keep one ear on the radio and the other on the TV, just WILLING them to announce that our City Schools would not be open the next day. I remember getting increasingly wound up as each and every city and county school system surrounding ours posted their closings. Even as a little kid, patience was NOT my forte.
So as talk of winter precipitation began earlier in the week, I couldn’t help but wonder, will we ever have a child sitting transfixed in front of our TV, monitoring the weather reports out of Memphis (as O did when he was a little boy – generally Memphis’ weather heads right for us) and waiting for a snow day of his/her own?
This morning we awoke to a “dusting” of white. I stood looking out our kitchen window for a while and happened to glance at the old swing set in our backyard. It’s been here since my husband was little. We built our home on what was once his grandparents’ farm, so there are reminders of them, and of O’s childhood everywhere. I used to think that the swing set was just an eyesore. It’s a rusty green color and has clearly seen better days. I don’t even know if it’s safe anymore. Anyway, I’ve lived here with O for over three years now, and the swing is just one of those things that, over time, I don’t ever SEE anymore. It just blends into the background. But today I noticed – really noticed it, and the snow-covered blue seat barely moving back and forth in the breeze. My stomach just clenched. I wondered if I’d ever look out that window and see our child on that swing set, yelling for O to “Push me higher Daddy!”
I could fill pages with moments like that – the woman at the RE’s office floating on a happy little cloud through the waiting room with her ultrasound picture tightly clutched in her hand and a secret smile on her face, the pregnant tummy-rubber buying gingham fabric and bunny rabbits for her baby’s nursery, the harried but happy new mom who sat next to us at our favorite restaurant last weekend with her newborn nearby, all bundled up for his first family outing.
Those daydreams are always bittersweet - sweet for the possibility that they might just come true one day; bitter in remembering that for all the medical technology in the world, the odds are stacked against us.
And I can’t help but wonder, if this doesn’t work out for us, will I ever think of snow days and swing sets in quite the same way again?
I’m thinking no.
