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 15^th, 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.