Funny, this is my entry #401. And here it is ...
About 10 years ago, a math teacher with a sense of humor gave her classes this homework assignment on March 31: write an essay about the great and famous mathematician Loof Lirpa. Frantic kids came to the library with the assignment, and neither the SCM nor I got it. L-O-O-F .. L-I-R-P-A. We went crazy looking; of course there was nothing to find. The kids who got the joke made something up, the funnier the better. They got extra credit. The kids who didn't get the joke weren't punished or penalized, just embarassed when it was explained to them the next day. As were we.
It was a day of note in my house growing up. My mother's first pregnancy had ended with a full term stillborn on April 1, 1947. This was never a secret, or even something that just wasn't talked about. My sister and I always knew. We always knew it had been a boy, too. It was just a fluke, the stillbirth; without explanation, the umbilical cord delivered before the baby. Today there would be a quick c-section and all's well. They didn't do c-sections so fast 57 years ago.
Most interesting about it was my mother's reaction. She was always prone to depression, and had a good one after she lost the baby, no more than anyone in that situation deserves to. But my sister was born 13 months later, and I came along four and half years after that. And what she said about it all was that, as horrible as losing the baby was, if he had lived, she wouldn't have had another baby a year later, and she wouldn't have waited five and half years after the first to have her second. So, if that baby had lived, she wouldn't have had the two daughters she did have -- she would have had other children, but not us. And she was so happy that she had us. So it was okay. Once that awful year was over, and my sister was born, it was okay.
It was a good lesson, I think. For one, that we have the children we were meant to have. For another, that things turned out right for her, as terrible as her pain was when it happened. For another, that she, even she, survived a terrible time in her life.
It was ironic, of course, that the baby died on April Fool's Day. And cruel. But she was okay.
And very strange, too, that after I wrote this entry this morning before school, planning to upload it tonight, I got to work and learned that my Colleague's daughter-in-law unexpectedly gave birth last night, an amazing eleven weeks early. And though the baby is very small, she is so far doing well. But if you're praying folk out there, any good thoughts you'd like to direct towards North Carolina couldn't hurt. It looks very much like this is the baby they were meant to have. I've never met the new mother, but she's got a whole lot of courage and I'm pulling for her. The new daddy, well, I've known him since he was 14 and I've seen him grow up from a goofy kid into a wonderful man.
A difficult entry to tie up neatly, now. I'm still trying to figure out what people who don't pray, like me, actually do when ... something like this happens. I've never resolved it before; I know I won't know. It's like a no-atheists-in-foxholes thing. I don't know if I buy that either. I guess I'm calling upon all the forces and spirits I cn think of. It's all the same anyhow, isn't it?
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I'm watching Dr. Phil
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
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