People Building
It is a high stakes game. That is always how I think of pregnancy, having kids. The vastness fills up the space of your life and pushes out whatever is in the way.
Back in my teaching days I taught a class called Study Skills. The students were aged fourteen through nineteen. Most of them were in the correct grade, but some of them had failed enough classes to put them behind a grade or two. Or three. One young woman, I’ll call her Sheri, was fourteen-years-old, shy, giggly and silly. Sheri was always sporting the cool jeans and the tough yet sporty outfits that her urban girlfriends donned despite her awkward and plump, over-grown puppy dog physique. She was a softy among many tough chicks. She was an inherently darling girl. One day Sheri came in sporting a nervous smile. She whispered to me that she was pregnant. I can not honestly remember how I responded. The usual response was to say, “Wow! Woah. OK, well congratulations. Life is gonna change sister.” What else can you say?
Over the months her belly grew and her already tight jeans – that was and is the fashion after all – grew tighter and tighter. When the girls got pregnant, they did not buy the nerdy maternity jeans that my middle-aged peers buy with the giant elastic panel. That ugly elastic panel sets one up for much taunting – not the pregnancy mind you, but bad jeans? Please. The girls simply walked around with the button undone, and eventually the fly, with a giant sweatshirt pulled down over the belly. As the discomfort of the pregnancy increased, Sheri slept more on her desk, skipped more, and looked, well, just like a pregnant woman often looks: cranky, distracted, and wishing to be transported to a king-sized bed with a fluffy duvet and a staff of servants at her disposal. Instead Sheri was schlepping herself from class to class on a large campus, sitting on rock hard chairs, or wedging herself into ancient desks designed for sixth graders, snacking on copious quantities of Cheetos and Sunkist. Her soft and naive expression changed to that of a girl who was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.
One week a classmate announced that Sheri had given birth. A week or two later she showed up to school with her chubby and lovely baby girl. She sat down at a desk with her baby. I don’t think any of the other students were there. She looked at the sixty-five- year-old teacher with whom I shared the room and said, “Mrs. Beecher, that hurt so bad.” She shared the details of the delivery but did not have much else to say. Sheri was no longer the giggly and ebullient adolescent. I will never forget how a mere nine months had changed her face. Despite her youth she had a look in her eyes that soldiers, public school teachers, and parents have. It is a look that says, “I have seen the real world and it is serious.” I owned shoes that were older than Sheri, but she was now a mom. And she was a mom without the help of a husband or even a boyfriend. It was Sheri, her baby, her mother, and all of the other women in her family. That’s it. No job. No diploma. No carefree anything, anymore.
It is a high stakes game. That is always how I think of pregnancy, having kids. The vastness fills up the space of your life and pushes out whatever is in the way. When Sheri got pregnant she was nervous, but she was also in awe and feeling very special. She couldn’t believe that this magic thing had happened to her, had picked her, and was sweeping her up into this process of life building. Then the discomfort came. Then the lectures from every grown up she knew came. The magic, twinkles, and sparkles of it all was supplanted with the often grim physical realities of pregnancy and the looming responsibilities and questions about the future that no one, let alone an adolescent, can answer.
It is one of those great equalizers for most people, having kids. I was relieved once we had our son that it was so easy to make friends with other parents. I still find it remarkable. For some no. One woman whom we invited into our large and awesome neighborhood playgroup found the group had so many older moms she just did not feel she fit in. I thought it odd that she saw her life concerns as being so different even though her child was the same age as everyone else’s. This almost never happens in my experience. People who were once highly selective, maybe even a little snobby, tend to let their pickiness get washed away along with going to the movies and doing their nails once a week. Being pregnant, raising children, being married with real responsibilities and daunting pressures and concerns clears away the junk in your life and replaces it, hopefully, with awe and, hopefully again with a clearer view of what is really important: friends, your spouse, and your health, and for many an appreciation of the inexplicable massive life projects in which we are participating. These projects are so clearly not created by man. These children are so clearly created by something so much greater than us. And when we, God forbid, lose them to miscarriage or illness our youth goes with them. That is why smart parents kind of like their wrinkles and grey hair a little. They earned them participating in a battle to bring life into the world and to make that life thrive and go on for as long as possible, as well as possible. Battles are fought and won, and sometimes lost, with others, so there is no time for the really snobby stuff for most of us. It is not surprising that so many become at least a little bit more religious when they become parents.
As we think about trying for more kids despite our age that awe that comes with building a life is coming back. The curtain gets pulled back a little and reminds us of what we have been through, the appointments, the disappointments, the pain, the excitement that we know we need to keep in check, and the fears of a dream being dashed. It is all so high stakes, to enter into battle again, to say to the Creator, “Give us another shot. We want to create too.” It is amazing that anyone willingly goes back for more when you look backwards. Then you look at the kid sleeping in his bed that he only takes up one fourth of and he tells you a story about a drawbridge and a castle and a moat, and you can’t figure out how he even learned some of those words, the battle does not seem so scary. You won’t be in it alone. And if you are really blessed, you will get a little a prince to build into a person.
Tell us what you think!
Thank you for your comment!
It will be published after approval by the Editor.