THE SOUL has a desolate desert. I discovered mine after the fierce hurricane of emotion had stopped its wild churning and left in its wake a quivering quiet, a hush so tenacious it could deal dry-eyed and grim-lipped with the half-filled can of baby powder, the pair of high-topped white shoes never walked in, and the too-new crib unmarked by tiny teeth. Yet it was a hush so frail it could be shattered by the merest scrap of a lullaby, or a newborn baby’s sob.
Time passed. The season slid into each other, and then it was Christmas.
David, Bob, Diane and Steve gathered around the gaily decorated tree in the recreation room in somewhat subdued frivolity. I sensed that they were all thinking of what this family time would have been like with one-year-old Martha pulling at the packages.
Bob, not quite fifteen, looked at me and smiled a lopsided grin. He seemed ready to burst.
“Please, open my present to you-all first, OK?”
It was a twelve-by-fifteen-inch oil painting of our baby Martha. The trace of a smile on her tiny face, a faraway look in her too-blue eyes, and the dark baby hair hugging her head like a cap brought a startling reality to the canvas.
But my eyes were blurred, almost too blurred to find his cheek to say “Thank you, Bob!”
Then the details spilled out. Bob had taken one of our Polaroid snapshots to a talented friend of ours who had agreed to attempt a likeness. The sum asked was a modest amount that his babysitting income could tolerate. It had been a well-guarded secret for the past two months.
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We put down the most shallow of roots in Middletown, for Paul’s new position, that had offered such a rosy prospect, now seemed to present a dubious future.
One afternoon, about fifteen months after Martha’s death, Paul walked into the house with a flushed look on his face. He had just returned from Philadelphia and had been offered the vice-presidency of a company there. This opportunity seemed advantageously timed with his growing discontent. The children were elated at the prospect of a change.
And so we moved to the Main Line of Philadelphia and Paul joined the briefcase-burdened commuters on the Paoli Local. We purchased a charming split-level home on the side of a very steep hill near Valley Forge and tried to raise pachysandra on our backyard mountain instead of grass.
But still there was that empty hole in our family circle.
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“Paul.”
His name hung there between us as we lay sleepless in our four-poster bed.
“I’m here.”
He was obviously not too conversational.
“I want another baby!”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
I did not answer.
“Miggy, listen! You are almost forty-one! Have you thought about that?”
“Long and hard”
“Aren’t you asking God for a replacement baby?”
“I don’t think so, Paul. I’ve talked with Him about it. We have a lot of leftover love to give. Doesn’t it seem kind of a shame to waste it all?”
I guess he just didn’t feel up to arguing. He quietly reached over and gathered me in his arms.
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But the months went by, and still no baby. I busied myself taping some of my stories in rhyme with organ background and sent them off to a record producer in Texas. He was quite enthusiastic and offered me a three-year contract. I know that nobody else would ever discover me, so I signed on the dotted line with great dispatch.
Recording proved a marvelous antidote of the housewife doldrums. But just when I began to think about my next recording, a reproduction of quite another sort demanded my total attention.
How would I announce such stupendous news to my family? They would flip--every last one of them!
Some secrets are meant to whisper and tell,
For most folks can’t hide things awfully well;
But the hardest to keep ( and there are no maybes)
Is the secret of ladies---about to have babies!
And every last one of them did exactly that, including my dear husband who gave one ear-splitting war whoop that set our timid collie to howling.
The baby was due the second week in August and I knew from experience that I was in for a long, hot summer. David, a junior in college, and Steve, an eighth-grader literally took over my conditioning program those last few months. Obviously, anyone past forty was well over the hill and would have to embark on a rigorous training schedule to accomplish anything as hazardous a producing a sixth child.
Their inconsistencies were delightful. I was not permitted to stoop down in their presence or do any talk as rigorous as the dishes, but up and down Valley Forge Mountain they traipsed me over the trails, with Ladybird, our collie, panting at my side.
“Walk backwards up the hills, Mom , it strengthens the muscles in the back of your legs. “
I was totally exhausted, tremendously expanded, and thoroughly exasperated with the continued hot, humid weather. At forty-two, you simply don’t bounce around like the young ones.
Together, Diane and I went up to the attic.
“It’s still so new!” she said, stroking the smooth teething rail on Martha’s crib.
I turned away.
We handed down the things to the boys---the Little Bo Peep nursery lamp with the yellow shade, the baby scales, and then the size-one dresses, never worn, just hanging there kind of limp. It was a traumatic experience. I began to hurry.
We reassembled the crib in the small room, perfect only for a baby and right across from the master bedroom and happily, right next to Diane’s.
None of us openly admitted wanting a little girl more than a boy, but Steve came right out with it one night as “D” day had come and gone.
“Don’t you think, Mom, it would be rather considerate of God to send us a baby girl?”
Well, I did , but I said I didn’t care one speck.
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When I finally checked in at the hospital, it was at the unforgivable hour of three-thirty in the morning on a sultry humid day right after Labor Day, and three weeks late, at that.
It was as though our sixth baby had stood poised at heaven’s portals waiting for divine reassurances before she could be persuaded to be born.
“It’s now your time to leave, small one. Your family is waiting for you down there, wondering why you delay so long. They are beginning to worry! No, you must not cry! No tears are permitted up here. I know that you are frightened, but you have a special mission to perform just for Me. There, now, I have placed a tiny dimple in you left cheek, but they would have loved you anyhow. I have blessed you with a laughing heart.”
And, after a never-to-be forgotten labor of eight hours, baby Melissa was delivered and I heard the relieved pronouncement of my obstetrician: “She’s a girl-----a 100 percent healthy little baby girl.”
I floated away into a happy-happy world where my body was numb and delicious with no more pain.
Until next week................Blessings, DKH
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