Our Stories of Motherhood - My Story, Part 2
Sweat trickled down my back, as Tim and I made our fifth loop around our small neighborhood of townhouses. As soon as the weather warmed enough, he and I would step outside and walk together every evening after work, and after whatever God-awful dinner I had cooked. I was determined not to gain too much weight. My cooking was presenting no obstacle to that goal, but the honeymoon pregnancy turned out to be a deal-breaker. I was a newlywed, for crying out loud. I was not even 21 years old, for pity’s sake. I’d had had about three days to enjoy showing off my figure to a man before bloat and strange symptoms set in. I blamed them all on “the pill”.
That was before I knew that the pill’s effects had bowed to the sovereignty of a God who gives good gifts.
It was June, 1987, and early summer in the south was, as we were fond of saying, “air you can wear”. Despite the humidity, I rarely missed that evening walk. By this time, I was seven months along, so to be completely honest, I should say that I rarely missed that evening waddle around Belle Terra Drive.
I ignored the sweat trickling down my back, in favor of wiping the tears trickling down my face. I came home starving from work, with the plan of cooking my first meatloaf. Immediately, that job began to feel intense. I knew that every meatloaf had some sort of binder. I searched our kitchen cabinets for crackers to crush into crumbs, stale bread, anything.
Nothing. I literally couldn’t find anything starchy to bind the ground beef into the ubiquitous loaf. Suddenly, I remembered I had rice. Just raw, white, uncooked rice. I imagined that the rice would soften up, somehow, and create just enough starch to make something at least related to meatloaf. In went a cup of rice, alongside the cracked egg, diced onion, salt, pepper, a smattering of chopped green pepper, and lots of ketchup.
When I cut into that meatloaf, and plated it for my new husband, the rice fell out of the ground beef, sounding like I had thrown a pair of game dice onto his plate. He cracked up laughing, and I dissolved into tears. Determined to help make everything right again, Tim ate that meatloaf. Every. crunchy. bite. Finally, when I had sufficiently calmed down, he took my hand and said, “C’mon. Let’s walk.”
Ten steps from our front porch, he began to snicker. Again. I tried to be a good sport for at least the first lap around. But it didn’t take long for fatigue and hormones to claim my soul.
“I’m fat.”
“You are not. Stop saying that.”
I was always see-sawing back and forth between being proud that I’d only gained 20 pounds (so far), and feeling horrified that, “…deargod…I weigh twenty pounds more than I did last fall!” I knew logically that a pregnant mother must put on some weight for her child to be healthy. I wanted our baby to be healthy. But we hadn’t gone about things the typical way. We had not gotten married, and after that, started a family five years later. Noooooo. Not us.
We had gotten married and started a family what felt like five minutes later…sort of. I had had no time to get used to being seen without my clothes on, much less being seen looking like I had swallowed a beachball. For the love of all that was holy - my stomach would move around on its own! As in, I would be standing there, deciding what to wear, minding my own business, when the whole thing would wildly shift to one side, like an alien was trying to force its way out! What was a young newlywed girl supposed to feel about that?
I mourned the fact that I had always been too modest to wear a bikini before I got married. Somehow, I sensed that I would never know what it felt like to look hot in a two piece swimsuit. Looking back, I have to confess that that mattered to me. It mattered a lot. Much like the old country song, “Did I Shave My Legs For This”, I was subconsciously writing my own lyrics:
“Did- I-put-on-that-promise-ring-and-save-myself-for-marriage….for this…?”
It wasn’t the baby that bothered me. I was excited about us becoming parents. It was my new post-nuptial figure that felt like a major letdown. Yes, that was vain. What can I say? I was barely out of high school myself.
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a woman, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” 1 Corinthians 13:11
How interesting that those Holy Spirit breathed words are tucked into what we know as “the love chapter” in the Bible.
Love didn’t come softly, not for me. Love came in (and you can’t know how bad I hate to use these words, but for lack of better ones) “like a wrecking ball”. In a matter of mere days and weeks, I had married, and quickly found myself looking back at everything I had known, and even a large part of everything I had dreamed of, and making the choice to joyfully leave it all behind.
Instant motherhood had not been my plan. But it had been God’s plan. I knew that, for sure.
Later, we lay in the dark listening to doves calling to one another in a nest outside our townhouse window. He tenderly rubbed cocoa butter on my big ol’ belly, as the last tears of the day slid down my cheeks. I never had seen this part coming. I never imagined our nights as newlyweds looking quite like this. Suddenly, Tim remembered that doves mate for life, with a bond so strong it can go beyond death. He held me in his arms and told me how, if they find one another in the night, and if they snuggle down in the same nest, they will softly coo to their lifelong lover. Back and forth, back and forth.
A sweet calm washed over my heart. As we fell asleep, he whispered, “Hey, babe. I’m going to take the first half of the day off tomorrow and go with you to your doctor’s appointment.”
“You don’t have to do that, “ I mumbled.
“I want to. I really do,” he said.
…to be continued….
