Georgia
Grace
It was in November
when my mother looked at me, waiting for a response from across a cracker
barrel table. It was a chilly afternoon,
and we sat by a foggy window, that was only half opened, creating a struggle
between the cold of the outdoors and the industrial heater of the restaurant.
“We want to try for another baby,” was the announcement she’d just made through
condensing words that blended with the steam rising from her plate of chicken
and dumplings. I was stunned – not because of the idea of a new child, but
because of the timing. I was twenty years old, getting ready to finish out my
fall semester of my Junior year in college. I looked at my brother to my right;
he was twenty-three years old. We exchanged a glance that can only best be
described as the look you give your friend, searching for a hint of a joke,
when they drop something serious on you. Our mom had just told us that she was
planning to try for a third child, over two decades after her second.
“What?”
was all my brother and I could manage. It wasn’t anger, or excitement, but
instead just pure confusion and disbelief. Our mom was the ripe age of
forty-two, and had only recently finished raising two children. Why she would
want to start the whole ride over again was a mystery. She went on to explain
some of the reasoning, and Jim was a big part of it all.
You
see, my parents, like fifty percent of those of my generation, are divorced. My
mother had been the golden child in high school, graduating at sixteen with
honors. She spent four nice semesters in college before having to call home and
have the conversation with her mom that every mother dreads – the “I got
knocked up” call. In the midst of my Southern-Baptist north Georgian family,
this was a shock. Enter my dad. He responded in the best way he could, and
immediately enlisted in the navy. The two married and shortly after that my
brother was born. I soon followed so that my brother would have a friend. When
I was four, they divorced, as most young marriages end. Luckily, I don’t
remember any custody fights, or childcare payment disputes. My memory kicks
in right about when they were each settling in with their new spouses and were
separate families.
Jim was the man to
whom my mom remarried. He never had kids, but helped raise me and my brother as
if we were his own. We were buddies in a sense, and as I aged he would be my
cinema pal, my videogame second player, and when necessary, a father. There was
never the strife, that comes with many divorced families, where there’s a
persistent struggle about who the “real” parents are. Instead, I just grew up
with two sets of parents, whom I loved and from whom I received love. In that,
I was, and am, fortunate.
And now here they both were, Mom and
Jim, talking about starting a new family. It just didn’t make sense as to why
they wouldn’t want to relax and have some time for themselves. My mother told
us, then, the story of the idea’s birth.
A year before, Mom’s older sister,
Kellie, had had another child, a daughter, at the age of forty-four. After her
birth, the baby frenzy went on and on, and in the age of social media, everyone
was able to follow little baby Hannah’s progress. Apparently, one day, Mom and
Jim were sitting in the living room, watching Jeopardy, and Jim snapped at my
mother, telling her to stop showing him pictures of Hannah (this one had been a
Halloween costume). He followed with his reasoning: “Because I’ll never know
what that feels like.”
A cute conception
story, sure, but I still didn’t quite get why go through all of the pain – and
even the potentially dangerous. However, as the weeks turned to months and my
mother began ballooning outward, I grew excited at the prospect of a new baby
sister. Because of my age, I’d be more of an uncle – a fun one that visits on
holidays and spoils the hell out of that baby – than a brother in any practical
sense.
It became a fun new thing, a quirk.
My fun fact in classes became, “I am twenty years old and my mom is pregnant.”
During breaks, I would hang out with my mom and when she felt kicking she would
place my hand on the spot, where I’d feel the slightest thud from a baby limb.
After months, the
time came for the baby to be born. We went to the hospital on January 15th,
2015. Something to note is that this day is the actual birthday of Dr. Martin
Luther King. The doctor who would be delivering my little sister that afternoon
introduced himself – honestly – as Dr. King. When I laughed, and pointed out
the coincidence, he made a face that told me I wasn’t the first to point that
out, and probably wouldn’t be the last. I didn’t want to be inside the room for
the actual birth, but I did wait around for the few hours before the labor
itself began.
My sister’s birth
was like the Kentucky Derby. You go there hours early, stand around and talk to
loved ones and friends, and everyone’s in this strangely excited state. It’s a
time for celebration and tradition, and the air is electric. Then, almost out
of nowhere, there’s a flurry of activity, before ending almost as abruptly as
it began. In the hospital, we spent hours in the – in my opinion – rather large
delivery room. I sat on the couch and made awkward small-talk with extended
family that trickled in as the day went on. Eventually, Dr. King came in and
forced my mother’s water to break, as it was apparently taking too long. He
then left, as if nothing had happened, and we continued on as we were. Five
minutes after that, something beeped, and the chaos went down. A couple of
nurses rushed in, and Dr. King quickly followed them. He read a few things on a
machine, and then my mother ushered those who weren’t to be in the room during
the birth out into the lobby.
I plopped down on
a chair that must have been designed to appear comfortable, while actually
being as far away from anything of the sort as possible. In my very limited
understanding of what happens in child birth, I was pretty sure it was going to
take a while. I decided to cozy up as much as possible, and get ahead on some
economics homework – this was harder than it seems, because the semester had
only begun two days before. On my knees, I balanced my laptop and my folded
Econ workbook, all prepped for the work, only to finish it in fifteen minutes.
I sighed, and looked down in defeat after finishing. I had hoped that it would
take me longer, as the idea of sitting around and twiddling my thumbs in a
medical waiting room was not very appealing. I tried to lean my head back and
sleep, but I had already napped during the day. The lobby’s television was
playing a muted Wheel of Fortune episode,
which earned my attention for a few minutes. Mostly, I just tried to read the
lips and see if I could correctly guess the subtitles that lagged behind – I
wasn’t very good at it. After about forty minutes, I debated if it would be
worth it to quickly run to the house – it was only about five minutes away –
and grab a book and a snack. I was on the verge of calling Jim to ask for the
keys when a vibration rumbled in my pocket. When I opened it, there was a text
from Jim: “You can come back now.” My stomach dropped in fear. Something must
have gone wrong – or perhaps it had been a false alarm. Surely it wasn’t
already over.
I should say: I’ve never wanted
kids, or to even get married. The running joke in my family is that to convince
me to get married at all, you’d have to convince a girl to propose to me in Key
West. A story that stems from a trip there during my Senior year of high
school, in which we visited the Hemingway house, and I said to my Mom, “Oh,
they do weddings here. That’s pretty cool,” after seeing it on a pamphlet. That
had been, up to that point, my only sentence I’d say in the last few years that
indicated any intention of mine to get married, and naturally my mom latched to
it. But still, even if I were to get married, I still hated the idea of having
kids. My brother would take care of that – he’d been in a rush to be a family
man since he turned seventeen. No, I was to be the cool uncle – only actually
an uncle this time. The thing with kids is – as I’ve put it for years – they
essentially signal the end of your personal life. Having a child and raising
it, effectively at least, is saying to the world: “My life is no longer about
me.” Call me selfish, or maybe just call me young, but I cannot picture that
for myself. That is a degree of selflessness that, while admirable, made me
question if it is ever really worth it.
This was my mindset
as I stepped back into the delivery room on the fifteenth of January during my
twenty-second year of life. This had been a long standing viewpoint, one which
had been systematically engrained into my belief system, after watching my
family, both immediate and extended, fall into the enshrouding pit of
dysfunction, threatening to envelop all whom I love until they are beyond
repair. One which I was sure would be permanent. One which evaporated within
fifteen seconds of laying eyes on life’s latest participant, Georgia Grace
Osgood. I was floored with more emotions at once than I previously thought
possible. I watched in silence as the doctors laid her on the examination
table, taking all the samples and poking and prodding as they went. All the
while I stared, at that tiny ball of flesh, and was filled with terror,
excitement, and elation. My chest welled, and my breaths were heavy. With tears
in my eyes, I turned to my Mom, looking tired but happier than I’ve ever seen
her, and said in the most stupendously dumbfounded manner, “You guys made a
person!” My mother just laughed, and gave me a strangely knowing look.
As the procedure
went on, a small thought snuck up on me. It started on the back burner, but
grew into a creeping realization the longer I stared. This feeling, this
incredibly impossible to describe sentiment that was taking over me, blurring
the world to any harsh reality that might await me outside that hospital room
door, was a mere fraction. It was only a hint of a real thing. This child, the
source of all of this madness, was my sister. At that moment, I understood the
reasoning behind Jim’s initial statement – the small sentence that began this
odd adventure within my family. “I’ll never know what that feels like.” If I
was merely a brother, then the feeling of it actually being your own child
would be exponentially more powerful. It was a sentiment, that for the first
time in my life, I questioned whether I wanted to live without it. As the time
has passed since then, and my rationality having slowly returned, I am less
sure of it. But I am also less sure of my previous sentiment as well. It has
landed me in a place where, were I to have a child in the future, I think that
maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. That there would be the tantrums, the messes, and
the difficult teenage years, yes. But there would also be the tiny,
indescribable moments that would make it worth it. If it were to come to it
though, I would have to potentially inflate the ego of my already
sure-to-be-spoiled sister, and let her know that her existence would be the
catalyst for it. But I guess that would be okay, too.
