Given my seemingly endless parade of sick kids these days, I’ve been looking for baby gifts online. I stare at the itty bitty caps and the plushy blankets and the soft, pastel-colored newborn toys, and I remember the time so many years ago–seventeen, in fact–when I was preparing for my firstborn’s arrival, and I wonder what Kristin’s initiation as a mother might be like. She’s my age–we were close high school friends–and I can’t imagine having lived all these years outside the boundaries of motherhood. Not because there’s anything inferior or unworthy about such a life, but because mine has been so saturated with babies since the dawn of adulthood that any other path seems fascinatingly foreign. Who would I be today if I’d made different choices in my twenties and thirties? Both Kristin and I have forfeited some experiences in order to have others. Now, at midlife, my friend is just beginning parenthood and I’m finding other meaningful and transformational opportunities for personal growth. I know I wouldn’t change the order of things in my own life if I could; I suspect she wouldn’t either. We’ve both been extremely lucky to have the luxury of choice, as well as the chance to be parents when we wanted to be.

I think of them often, this new mother and daughter just beginning to know each other. I remember the conflicting feelings I had when Elizabeth was born–the transcendent sense of expansion as well as the heaviness of responsibility. Just minutes after her birth it dawned on me that this person would be alive until her life was over, a logically obvious fact that came as a complete surprise. Within a day I gained the uneasy understanding that there are no real breaks in the work of motherhood, that even when the baby slept or was cared for by others I was mentally and emotionally occupied. It was an overwhelming realization at age twenty-one, and I’ll bet it’s equally overwhelming for Kristin at age thirty-eight.

But that daunting knowledge has a welcome flipside. I didn’t really see it until Elizabeth was a few months old, maybe four or five months, and had outgrown her new-baby bewilderment at finding herself in a body on this earth. My mother-love had been constant and fierce from the start, although mixed with plenty of ambivalence and even resentment as I attended to my daughter’s near-constant needs. But as she approached middle babyhood, something amazing happened: she began to emerge as a person. Not merely an incarnation of Everybaby, but a unique human being. She was herself, just as I was myself. And I realized with a deep flush of gratitude that I would have the pleasure of knowing her every day of our lives. It wouldn’t be all pleasure, of course, but at the same time it would be. For somehow, the difficulty and the joy were one and the same.

“She’s always here,” a mutual friend of ours once said when her firstborn was small, and her voice carried a measure of dismay, but also ineffable delight. With four children of my own by that time, I knew exactly what she meant.

And today I’m glad, so very glad, that Kristin will, too.

As the music pumped out of the PA I flashed back to the only other dance recital Elizabeth has been part of: the performance of the “Super Star Strutters” at the Independence Day parade in Spanish Fork. She was four years old then, dressed in a hot pink t-shirt and denim shorts, jumping and wiggling in time with the Beach Boys. Now she was clad in a skin-tight brilliant turquoise camisole and black leggings, limbs moving in sharp yet graceful precision to a pumping hip-hop rhythm.  When she turned I studied her back and shoulders, fair skin and tight muscle defined in light and shadow.  There’s nothing quite like realizing your preschooler has (really and truly) become a woman.

The dancers were an intriguing bunch. Some moved with near-painful hesitation, as if they weren’t sure their arms and legs would obey neural commands. Some were languid, like bored teenagers at Grandma’s Sunday dinner. Some danced as if they really meant it. Elizabeth was one of them. I watched her in fascination, being someone who’s never been fully at ease in her own skin–not in public, at least. Certainly not on stage.

As I absorbed the contrast between the fluid dancers and the stiff ones, I remembered something wise my friend Darlene once told me: All you’ll have at the end of your life, all you’ll take with you, is eighty-something years of being Kathy Soper. That took me by surprise. I don’t know why, but it did. I guess I’ve spent so much time and effort trying to change myself that I’ve rarely relaxed and just enjoyed being myself.

Applauding loudly at the end of the number, I reminded myself that I want to live the way Elizabeth dances. From what I’ve seen, there’s nothing quite like it.

“It” is this: Once you have three children, you can have more and not really even notice.

Huh? I think whenever I hear this or a similar statement. Are you crazy? Are you stoned?

I have seven children. I am crazy. And some days, usually around 4 p.m., I wish I could get stoned.

(Okay, not really.)

(Yes, really.)

But the purpose of this post is not to complain about the difficulties of having a large family. I have many children by choice and I will not whine about how hard it is–at least, not in public. No, the purpose of this post is to highlight a common, wildly inaccurate public perception about having a large family.

Not that it’s wholly inaccurate–if it were, people would never say it. In a limited sense, having three kids really does “break” a mom. With one child, she has to figure out how to meet her own wants and needs while never failing to provide for her child’s, and how to forgive herself when she does fail. And she will fail, because a child’s needs are great, and a child’s wants are an endless chasm. With two, she has to figure out how to divide her mother-self among two fierce competitors. With three, she has to accept that she’ll never cover all the bases–ever.

That’s the breaking point which spawns the misconception, I think. Yes, a mother of three is well-acquainted with chaos, both literal and figurative. In order to survive, she must embrace it–or at least used to it. So it makes some sense to say that adding more chaos to existing chaos is easier than making the initial jump.

But let’s think for a minute about what it means to add a fourth, or fifth, or sixth child to a family. This isn’t just addition; it’s exponential expansion. The family organism doesn’t just increase by one person, it increases by five or six or seven relationships. It’s much more than another place setting at the table (Scoot over, everyone! There’s plenty of room!) or a bedroom tacked on to the house. It’s a clearly perceptible presence in every room, a thick layer of being that widely increases the girth of the family sphere and changes everything within it.

Of course, this is true no matter how many children a family includes. Every time a baby comes along, the family is reinvented and redefined–and while the reinventions that come with the first or second or third child are indeed huge, so are those which follow. So let’s not perpetuate the myth. Let’s not discredit the enormous ongoing adjustment process that grips large families. Let’s instead acknowledge that (in a healthy family, at least) a new child, whether she’s the first or the tenth, will always be noticed.

(see? no whining!)

Reed and I were living in a student four-plex adjacent to Brigham Young University, happy to have taken the basement apartment next to our friends, Luis and Eva. Eva was nearly due with their firstborn. Pink-cheeked, with long honey-brown hair and straight white teeth and gentle curves everywhere, she exuded life and health. I had never before kept company with a pregnant woman. When the four of us gathered in the late-lit summer evenings, I studied her bulging middle with fascination, wondering how she could withstand transformation so gracefully. I doubted I ever could.

I did want children, someday. Motherhood, as a concept, held a sense of destiny for me, although vague. And the Mormon culture I belonged to revolved around family life, promising spiritual progression and social acceptance to those who married and multiplied at young age. Young adult women were assumed to desire children above all else. Baby hungry—the knowing tease echoed from my community as soon as I became engaged, making me all the more determined to choose a different path: graduate school, a college-level teaching position, a ladder of publication and promotion that led to university tenure. Children would come later—two, or three at the most; perhaps in my far-distant thirties. Maybe by that time I’d like kids. As a teenaged babysitter I had ordered my charges to bed as soon as their parents pulled out of the driveway, no matter how early the hour.

Yet as distant as I felt from my own maternity, I felt drawn to Eva’s. When she brought her daughter home one morning in the dry burn of August, I fidgeted behind the wall that separated our living rooms, waiting for the right moment to pay a visit. In mid-afternoon I finally took the small step from my doormat to hers, and raised my fist for the knock. The door opened to Eva’s face. Fatigue had bleached her cheeks and shadowed her eyes; her hair was limp, her curves sagged. But she smiled, quick and sure, as she glanced backwards, over her shoulder. Behind her, I saw a pink blanket smoothed over the worn brown carpet, and on the blanket, a child, asleep. My legs moved forward as my eyes took in the sight: flesh and blood and bone, impossibly small, impossibly alive.

Chelsey, Eva said.

I knelt at the edge of the blanket. Eva followed, gingerly, still sore from the rigors of creation. Time slowed as we watched the gentle rise and fall of Chelsey’s chest, the short jerks of her limbs as she startled in her sleep. Dressed lightly for the summer heat, her pink skin glowed with a sheen that filled the room, washing the dullness from the worn furniture and yellowed linoleum and dark-paneled doors. The light touched me and sent me spinning.

I don’t remember how long I sat on that brown carpet, transfixed, as Eva lifted her waking daughter, cradled her, brought her to breast. But as the afternoon sun slanted into evening, something gently broke open within me. I knew, more than I had known anything before, that I wanted a child. More than that—I needed one, like I needed food and water. Baby hungry. I didn’t know why I had changed, or how. All I knew was that when I returned to my apartment, I felt strangely bereft. And when Eva’s door opened the next day, and the next day, and the next, I felt like I was coming home.

***

One year later.

I was lazing in half-sleep, my lower half cocooned in tingling warmth, when the squeezing began, deep and strong. It spread across my abdomen and wrapped around my back, then clamped hard like a tourniquet, forcing my belly upward in a tight swell of muscle and nerve and tissue. The anesthesia had sunken my pelvis into a circle of dark, blessed numbness. But now, bright pain flared around the edges, like the crown of a solar eclipse.

I rang for the nurse. “I think my epidural is wearing off,” I said.

She appeared quickly, pulled on a glove and reached in. After a few seconds, she looked at me with a knowing smile. “You’re complete,” she said. “Ten centimeters. You can start pushing now.”

The words crackled with positive charge. Positive—the word spoken on the long-ago morning of my pregnancy test. The word that ushered in nine months of changing. Nine months of swelling and stretching, of tasting bile and stomach acid. My blood flow doubled, darkening the network of veins across my chest. Sharp little elbows jabbed my bladder and ribs. Red streaks ribboned my stomach skin, like claw marks. Nine months of savage blessings. All along, the force that had shaped Eva into a mother, the grace that had formed her daughter and given her breath, ran through me like a current, carrying me to this moment.

The nurse helped me roll from my side to my back, raised the head of the bed, removed the towels from between my legs. “Hold your knees,” she said. Reed stepped close to help, looking dazed. The supercharged air must have drugged him. He cracked stupid jokes, the kind that are funny only at the very end of a long night, or a long pregnancy. As my stomach muscles shook with laughter, the pressure began to build again, gathering and rising and arching to a keen crest, splitting me in two. One of me hunched forward on the bed, straining with the push, and the hold, and the push. The other bobbed along the pockmarked ceiling tiles, ready to slip through their tiny holes like a sprite.

The nurse’s words tugged me back, grounding me again. “Look—there’s her head! Look at all that hair!”
Still pushing outward, I pushed myself upward with my elbows and peered at the wall mirror, needing to see. Flesh red and pink—mine—split by a thin oval of blackness. A scalp, slick with damp dark hair. Hers.

My muscles relaxed into smoothness, releasing me back onto the bed, releasing her back into the womb. I was weak with surprise. There was a person inside of me, pushing through my curtain-body, ready to claim the stage.

The squeezing began again. I moved with it, moved in and out of time and sanity until the parting was complete. Emptied, I stared at my daughter as she wriggled on the sterile blue sheeting, her skin bright and fresh and full of light, the same pink light that had filled Eva’s apartment, only much stronger. The naked force of a life.

This was not the soft, hearts-and-flowers love scene that I had expected. None of the birth stories I’d heard prepared me for the truth: this baby was alive. Without batteries, without wires or plugs. The shock grabbed me by the hair, slapped my face, then set me back on the bed, reeling.

In the meantime the nurse was wiping the waxy white vernix off my daughter’s chest and wrapping her in a striped flannel receiving blanket. She was ready to be held. I fit her capped head into the crook of my elbow and tucked her covering a bit tighter across her chest. I didn’t know what to do next. I had figured that when the baby came I would know how to feed and clothe and clean her; the fabled maternal instinct would take care of that. It didn’t.

But instinct did tell me this: If anyone tried to harm this child, I would, without hesitation, rip out the offender’s throat with my teeth, spit his blood, and go about my business.

And this: The light in my daughter was a compass to follow, a key to life.

I found the perfect place to roost–a flat section of the play structure that was sunlit without glare. Matt and Sam ran for the slides while Thomas perched next to me on the landing, poking his stubby fingers into the drainage holes. I breathed in and out, in and out, inhaling spring, exhaling winter.

After a few turns down the slides, Matt and Sam were ready to explore. They left me behind and headed for the barely-green field adjacent to the play structure, which stretches nearly as long as a city block. As soon as Matt hit the new grass, he began to run. Sam looked at me to see if I approved, and when I nodded and smiled, he took off in pursuit. I watched them go, almost able to feel the muscle fibers in their legs lengthening with each stride.

I wondered how far they would run before they looked back.

Sam didn’t last long. After twenty paces he glanced over his shoulder, making sure I was still there. As if I might have disappeared when he moved away from me. I waved him on. He ran another twenty paces, then stopped. He looked at Matt far ahead of him, then back at me, deliberating. Then he started running back to me.

Matt made it most of the way to the far side of the field before he noticed. He paused for a moment, calling to Sam to come back, to finish the journey. But when he realized he was the lone traveler he ran again, quickly covering the remaining yards between him and the stone wall which marked the edge of the field. He touched the wall, turned, and began to run back.

I watched them come, two little boys returning to mother. The sight of them bobbing across the field was as delicious as the sun on my cheeks, the breeze lifting my hair.

And I thought about my own mother. How my life is a series of circles that begin and end with her. How, no matter how wide my orbits become, how far my universe expands, I always return to earth, needing to touch stone.

At one point she flipped the disc over and showed me a tiny button lodged deep into the plastic casing–the kind you’d need a very thin screwdriver to push. “If my pet dies, we can push this reset button,” she explained.

Reset??

I was about to launch into a tirade about how we’ve been ruined as a society if we think that life, even digital life, can be revived so easily. (Thank you, Tom and Jerry. And Roadrunner. And… oh, never mind, the list is too long.) What about responsibility? And accountability? And grief?

But then a tear-stained Elizabeth approached me. She had just discovered her hamster, Rocket, curled into a cold, furry ball in the corner of his cage. I went downstairs to see the evidence. Oh dear.
“Why did he have to die on Christmas?” she sobbed. I hugged her and murmered sympathetic words for a while. Then my wise-counselor streak took over.

“You know, in a way it was good timing,” I said.

She asked why.

“Because today we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus. And that reminds us that Rocket is still alive–his spirit is scampering around somewhere up there. And his little furry body will come alive again, someday.”

She sniffed and nodded, and sniffed some more. I thought for a while about Christ’s power to throw tragedy into reverse. Errors, sins, even death. All we harm, all that harms us, all that perishes in any of a hundred different ways, will be repaired and revived through love.

Thank God the universe has a reset button.

On Saturday night Thomas woke up in deep distress–couldn’t breathe. As I held him on my chest I could feel his muscles heaving in and out, trying to force his diaphragm into action. I was proud of myself: I calmly called the pediatrician, then woke Reed up to tell him I was leaving for the hospital. “Have fun,” he said.

I didn’t get weird until we were halfway there. It was snowing like mad, and the van was slipping, and from his carseat a few feet behind me, Thomas was trying to cry. I suddenly thought of the scene in A Civil Action where the kid with cancer dies in the backseat of his parents’ car, en route to the ER, during a terrible rainstorm. “Please don’t die. Please don’t die,” I said, although the more likely scenario was that we would both die under the cast-iron bumper of a skidding semi.

When we arrived intact, I wrapped him up in quilts and carried him into the ER. First thing I saw was a blood-covered guy covering his left eye with his mangled-looking hand. “Wine glass to the eye,” I heard the triage nurse explain to an orderly. “Wine glass in the eye.”

Eeeew. And that goes for the injury, the all-too-imaginable scenario that caused it, and the guy’s girlfriend, who was wearing a cheap cocktail dress and flip-flops. For a minute, I almost forgot why we had come.

Thomas had a fun few hours of being suctioned out, x-rayed, poked and prodded, and sprayed with nebulized steroids. Every time they whipped out a new drug or monitor or tube, I couldn’t help but think about how glad I was that I could bring him here, as awful as it was for him. I lay on the hospital bed for hours after the nebulizer treatment. Thomas eventually fell asleep on my chest, and his breathing had eased beautifully. I was so grateful I didn’t have to suffer through this terrible night alone, at home. There’s nothing worse than feeling helpless. And while the omnipotence of modern medicine is a complete farce, in this case at least there were things that could be done, things that helped. All for a measly $75 copay.

My feelings are too complex for me to wrestle cleanly into words right now. All I can say is I can’t believe how lucky I am. I walked that edge where you face a verdict–will it get better, or won’t it?–and got a quick and easy yes. Once upon a time, I thought yes was a given, but these days I know better.

We drove home at 3 a.m. The snow had gathered in the perfect image of Wenceslas’s vision: deep and crisp and even. The whole surface of the world glittered.

It’s a given that childbirth is painful. Even with the pain relief measures I’ve accepted each time, it has still hurt. A lot. But Thomas’s birth was in a whole different category of pain.

I think it was a combination of factors–the physical and emotional stress that had built up for two weeks beforehand, the uncertainty and fear that likely accompanies every premature delivery, and the out-of-my-element feeling that resulted from having this round be so unlike my other childbirth experiences. I didn’t know my own body, I didn’t know what would happen, I didn’t know anything. Every expectation I had about what my labor and delivery would be like was turned on its head. The baby, while appropriately turned on his head, must have been facing the wrong way, which meant that he wasn’t moving along the way he should have been. The anesthesia failed. And the Pitocin-fueled contractions were enough to push me right over the edge of composure.

Now logically, everything was just fine in that birthing room. The atmosphere was a bit tense because of the increased risk of problems with the baby’s health, and while all possible preparations were in place to temper a full-blown medical emergency, we never had one.

But I had a little emergency of my own.

It came right at that apex when the pain is intense enough to make me wish for a hasty exit from earth, or at least the freedom to curl up into a tight ball and preserve all my strength for weathering the pain. That’s the exact moment when I’m expected to assume a very un-curled-up position and somehow channel all my strength elsewhere. Of course it’s hard. But what I felt went way beyond hard. Suddenly and unexpectedly, I was walloped with a feeling of hopelessness I’ve never felt before during childbirth.
This was new and unthinkable territory. The determination that had kept me engaged thus far–I have to get through this, for the baby’s sake–began to slip. My concern for self was eclipsing concern for other–and not just any “other,” but the most innocent and vulnerable and dependent and deserving “other” imaginable.

Despair, for a mother, may be defined as thus: being in so much pain and desperation that you’d consider abandoning your child in order to bring yourself relief.

***

When I was first awakening to Christianity I found it difficult to fully sympathize with Jesus. I didn’t doubt that what he endured was awful, much more awful than anything that man has endured. But after all, he wasn’t a regular guy. Didn’t being a demi-god give him just a wee bit of an edge?
It took me years to realize that, in fact, Jesus’ supercapacity did not work in his favor, so to speak. Actually, the opposite was true. Yes, he was stronger–much stronger–than any of us. But that just meant he was able to bear far more. It didn’t make it easier. It just made the depths much, much deeper. And that’s just the beginning. Not only did the depths exceed any place within our ability to grasp, but he also had the capacity to free himself from those depths at any given time.

This is the stunning truth of Christianity: that a being not only voluntarily suffered beyond our puny mortal comprehension, to free us puny mortals, but also sustained his suffering through his own power. His body did not manufacture its own misery, as a woman’s does during labor. He was not just a willing participant in an act beyond his control. The circuit of pain could remain open only through his own unflagging will.

I still cry every time I think about Thomas’s delivery. I’m frightened by the memory of pain so keen and commanding. And I’m ashamed of my weakness, ashamed that I had, even for a fleeting time, looked for an out.

But God is wise enough to not offer us outs in times of creative extremity. No, that’s a torment he reserved only for himself.

Given the fact that we have no money for new flooring, I abstained. But I still kept looking around, imagining shiny hardwood, new paint, and clean couches. I decided to focus my fanatical fantasizing elsewhere.

The first victim: toys. It’s taken me close to ten years, but I’m finally finished with the tyranny of too many toys. It takes me two entire days each week to put everything where it belongs, and it takes the kids about two minutes to dump it all out again. They play happily for an hour or two, and then we spend the rest of the week stepping on or over things until it’s time to clean again. I’m a slow learner. I just don’t have the self-discipline to take care of lots of things–let alone teach my kids to do the same.

So…. Out! Out! Ninety percent of the stuff got boxed up and stacked in the garage. I know, I know, but we have no money for child therapy either. At least they know their piles of stuff are tucked safely away (yet safely out of their reach) on the dusty shelves, somewhere out there. Of course, they still manage to spread that last ten percent into every corner of the house, but my sense of control has increased 900 percent. At least.

Aaaaah.

Next victim: clothes. I ripped through my closet with no mercy. Every time I grabbed something off its hanger, I felt like I lost 2 pounds. If only actual weight loss were this simple, and enjoyable.

Next, Reed hauled 30 boxes of kids’ clothes into our living room for me to sort through. Had it not been for my manic mindset, this task would have reduced me to stubble. Visual overload! Decision overload! But the timing was perfect. I regarded the stacks with a conquering eye, and dug in with relish.
The first box was a pile of girl baby clothes.

No, I told myself. Don’t waffle. It’s time to move on, time to give this to someone who can use it. This daughter who has lived in my mind for years will likely never materialize–and if she ever does, it will be an occasion that calls for brand new baby clothes. Take a deep breath, and put it all in the “give” pile. Out! Out!

So, after a brief pause, I steamrolled ahead. The give pile grew, and grew. A dozen boxes of girl clothes, a half dozen of boy clothes. Thomas couldn’t possibly need all this stuff. There are half-naked children who do need it. Today.

But my eyes kept straying back to those damn little dresses and pink sleepers. I kept picking them up, then putting them back down, again and again.

Finally, I started another pile.

In went all the handmade things from my mother-in-law. In went the dresses my girls have worn in their childhood photographs. In went the “Daddy’s Little Girl” sleeper. I stowed this relatively small pile in a plastic tub under Thomas’s crib.

Aaaah.

Whether Mystery Girl ever shows up or not, I have my most prized mementos tucked safely away. And even better–I have years and years of little-girl memories tucked away too, somewhere in that cavernous internal garage of mine. True, I can’t always reach them, but someday, I trust I will be privileged to take every box off those dusty shelves, open them, and savor the contents, again and again.

That’s part of heaven’s allure for me: power over time. The merging of past, present, and future into one eternal now. Finally, the ability to grasp and hold “the fugitive moment which refuses to stay.”

All while sitting on a clean couch, in a room with fresh paint and shiny hardwood floors.

Of course, there’s no shortage of things to be scared of when you’re pregnant. Miscarriage/stillbirth, complications, birth defects–I started enumerating some examples but I quickly gave up and erased them, because there’s too many to even take a stab at.

But what haunts me most is a twofold question that, when it surfaces, stops me cold:

Will life be a good thing for this baby? And will this baby’s life be a good thing for me?

How can I doubt the goodness of bringing a soul to earth? Because it’s messy, and hard, and dangerous–both for the child, and for me. Not just the birth part, but everything afterward.

Can I really adequately care for another child? I don’t know–define “adequate.” My good friend has a philosophy of life that I admire: she doesn’t take on any more than she knows she can well care for. If she only has the resources to care for 6 tomato plants in her garden, she only plants six, and gives them meticulous care. She takes the same approach with her interior homemaking, her family life, and her other responsibilities.

My approach is a lot more haphazard. I get sloppy, even with things that are very important.
Every time a new baby is on the way, I wonder what the heck I’m doing. It’s not like I’m doing such a stellar job with the children I already have, that I clearly should invite another. The postpartum period is so draining and demanding–I feel as if I’m on the bare edge of survival for months. Things go to pot. Family life gets permanently and exponentially more complex each time we add another member.

Contemplating these inevitable outcomes can feel a lot like falling off a cliff in slow motion. At first the view is lovely and the bottom seems too far away to be threatening. But as I get closer and closer, I know I’m going to crash, and that it’s going to take a long time to climb out of chaos and into comfortable, routine, manageable life again. Not that it ever stays comfortable, routine, and manageable for long.

And that’s just part I of the issue.

The other side of it is the child’s experience. I get scared about how my shortcomings will affect this person’s life. I worry about the crazy family dynamic he or she will be tossed into. And overall I worry about life itself. What sufferings will this soul be required to endure? On a rational level I know that pain is essential to progression, and that this mortal life is the gateway to a potentially glorious future. But it hurts, really bad, to think about the innocence and vulnerability of a new baby, and the darkness of this world, some of which dwells within my own mortal self.

So–I get scared. But before I lapse into deep melancholy, allow me to report the series of experiences and memories that allowed me to transcend my latest bout of mid-pregnancy fear.

1. On agency

In our old neighborhood we lived across the street from a very depressing family. The deplorable physical condition of the yard and home was a good match for the mess of abuse and other problems that plagued the family’s relationships. I was a visiting teacher to one of the daughters in that home, a young adult who had suffered horribly over the years. One night when I made a visit, she was babysitting one of her sister’s children (it was a family tradition of sorts to bear children out of wedlock–there were a half-dozen or so living there at the time). This baby was lying on a filthy, crusty couch. He only had a diaper on. His mother was prone to disappearing for days at a time, leaving him in the care of her younger siblings, who were none too pleased to have the responsibility thrust upon them. Needless to say, the baby and the other “cousins” were not well-treated.

He was a gorgeous child–half Latino, with olive skin and huge, deep-deep brown eyes and long lashes. He stood out like a sparkling jewel amidst the squalor of his surroundings.

When I was home again I thought about the future that awaited him. My heart hurt so much I didn’t think I could bear it. I just couldn’t reconcile his perfect, holy little self with the circumstances he had been placed within. How could this be okay?

The answer came, clearly and firmly: He chose to come.

2. Beauty all around

During my fifth pregnancy, my regular pregnancy freak-out came back for a second round when I was in the hospital. With the drama of childbirth over, real life came rushing in as I realized I’d be bringing Matthew home the next day. As I sat on the hospital bed with my delicious little blanket-wrapped guy on my lap, I was overwhelmed by the whole prospect. How could I ever pull this off? And what had ever made me think this was a good idea?

The door opened, and in walked an elderly hospital volunteer bearing a floral arrangment from my mother. As she crossed the room I stared at the flowers. I had a distinct impression that my son was something truly wonderful and lovely–a gift that had just entered my life, like the flowers that had just been carried into the room.

When the woman noticed my baby she stopped in her tracks. “Oh!” she exclaimed with a deep sigh. She looked at me kindly, yet intently. “Oh, I envy you.”

Matthew. The name means “gift of god.”

3. Bread and fish

I was way tired and grumpy as Relief Society began a few weeks ago. I was sitting in the front row with my legs sprawled out in front of me. Even with the help of the padding on the folding chair, I was still really uncomfortable after sitting there for the Sunday School hour. As the RS President bustled around, adjusting the tablecloth and all that, she came upon my legs. They were a kind of roadblock. She paused politely, waiting for me to assume a more ladylike position.

I suddenly felt so big, so cumbersome. Instead of getting depressed, I got huffy. I actually got up and moved to a seat in the back row.

The RS Pres, who really is a lovely woman, came back and apologized. I assured her that my relocation had nothing to do with the leg incident (which was a big fat lie). I was just more comfortable back there, I explained. And that was true. I just wanted to be left alone so I could wallow in the misery of very-largeness.

The local missionaries were guest teachers for the day. Their lesson was about member missionary work. They turned on the Church’s DVD about the restoration of the gospel in the latter days. I had already seen it a few times; in fact we had watched it as a family recently. So as soon as the lights went down, I zoned out into an almost-nap.

I snapped into alertness for some reason a few minutes before the program ended. Checking the monitor, I saw Joseph Smith Sr. handing his little son a hand-carved wooden horse, homemade–just like the one the boy had admired in the general store at the start of the story. The words of the voiceover sunk deep into me:

If ye then know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

4. While the sun shines

Not long ago we sang “Today, While The Sun Shines” for our pre-scripture-reading hymn. I’m not a huge fan of the sunshine-y hymns–I’m all for good cheer, but they remind me of that stereotypical overly perky RS pres. or something. They do, however, help the atmosphere at a 6:30 a.m. gathering. Anyway, as we sang, this line lodged brightly in my mind:

Today, while the birds sing, harbor no care: Call life a good gift, call the world fair.

I’ve been thinking about all this a lot lately. Preterm labor has landed me in the hospital for an extended stay. The first day I was here it seemed highly likely that our son would be born very soon. At 28 weeks’ gestation, he weighed about 3 lbs. They put me in a delivery room which had a drive-thru-type window that opened into the NICU. They warned me that as soon as the baby arrived, he’d be whisked through that window and likely put on a ventilator. It would be a few hours before I’d be able to see him, and who knows how long before I’d be able to hold him.

Miraculously my labor stalled, and my condition stabilized. I was moved out of the labor/delivery unit. Since then I’ve had plenty of time to think about that close call, about the tiny preemies I saw during the NICU tour, about this time-bomb uterus of mine, about the possible outcomes of this little drama.
Here’s what’s assuaging all (okay, most) of my current freak-out tendencies:

Knowing–and not just in my head–that this new, impatient life within me is a good gift. It’s a good gift for me, even though that goodness necessarily emerges amidst the fog, stress, and even trauma of mortal life. And it’s a good gift for this son of mine. Even if he only lives a few minutes, or must endure long-term complications, or simply has to weather childhood in my household, life is a good gift.

And while the world hardly seems fair, especially for the children born into pain and squalor, someday our understanding will expand, divine compensation will kick in, and we’ll realize that things are fair after all.

Imagine that. I might even learn to love those sunshine-y hymns.