Looking back at the memory of all the time that has passed I'm amazed. It seems but just yesterday that I set upon this adventure without a clue to the self-discovery and friendship that it would lead to my having. I can remember vividly every thing that happened the day I came to Wolf Lake. I can still see in my mind's eye how pale and scared Emily was the day I learned her secret. Time passed and I feel as if it was just a breath ago that these events that altered and changed my life, our lives forever happened.
How could it be that time had passed by so quickly so that we were not aware of the passage of time? How could it be that time had raced by so fast that a child had grown from a matter of 2 cells to the point into which it could and would be born? It was just a second ago I swear that I felt the wind knocked from me as I saw that box. But I could look at Emily and see that time had passed and a child was soon to be born. Miracles had occurred not just the miracle that grew within Emily but also the miracle of my own acceptance of my hearing. Which was the bigger miracle? I can not say.
One day less that two weeks before Emily's Christmas due date was another special day. It happened to be Emily's birthday. Though Deaf people that grow-up within the Deaf Community don't have the hang-ups that hearing do about revealing age and other things that hearing people would rather not mention unless a door was locked prior, Emily was quiet about her past and her birthday. I don't think she gave a fig if anyone knew but she was a quiet and humble person and just didn't announce to the world that Dec. 12th was the day she was born. I knew because I'm nosey. I stuck her name on a search engine and came up with her family genealogy, which lead to my knowing when her birthday was. I did the same for Jane. That was how I found out about Emily's swimming background and all the awards she'd won. She does tell her story in Deaf Community Class but I had learned about her past prior to having her as my instructor and prior to my learning about the baby.
Because it her birthday fell on a Friday Jane, Betsy, Cherry, Clarissa and I decided to throw Emily a baby shower the same day. We thought it would be nice to celebrate the upcoming birthday of Emily’s baby and Emily's birthday at the same time. Of course it might not have been the brightest of ideas since Emily was miserable, hormonal and extremely tired of being pregnant, not that we could blame her in the slightest. So that is how it came to be that we gathered at Emily home to shower her with presents and love.
There was one thing that marred the day, Emily's Aunt Nora had again fallen ill and had been hospitalized while she had been visiting with her children. Because Emily was so close to term she wasn't allowed to travel the four hours by car that she would have to drive to be with Nora. It upset Emily that she couldn't be with Nora after all that Nora had been through to help her throughout her life. That was another reason that we had planned a rather impromptu Baby Shower/Birthday Party. We wanted to cheer Emily up.
Jane had driven Emily for her 38th week check up at the Birthing Center that was only down the road from the school. Because of Nora's sickness Matt had been given a key to Emily's house for emergency purposes. Jane had talked Emily into that. We wanted someone to be able to get to her quickly if she needed someone fast. So once Emily and Jane headed for Emily's appointment the rest of hurried over from Matt's home and transformed Emily's living room into Birthday/Baby Party central. All but myself had parked their cars at the nearby Arby's and Matt and I picked them up. I knew Emily wouldn't be suspicious of my being at Matt's but she'd know something was up if everyone else's cars where there.
Jane paged Betsy as she and Emily left the clinic to let us know when to be ready. I wish I could adequately describe how surprised Emily was when she walked in the door and found us all smiling happily at her with pacifiers around our necks. To say the least, she burst into tears. The tears were not tears of joy or sadness just misery and feelings that Emily had no control over. The shock set them off and she had to cry for a bit before she could contain them once again.
"You all make me cry," she finally signed as George made her a fur collar of his little body. I think he knew she needed a hug.
"First we eat, next games, finish open gifts." Jane announced since she was actually the one in charge and had done all the arranging and planning.
"Me already fat. More food need, not," Emily responded then rubbed her abdomen and grimaced.
I understood Emily's misery better than most people who have never been pregnant would. I knew from many emails that going to the bathroom now meant doing some sort of dance to get the baby to move out of the way long enough that perhaps half her bladder would empty at a go. I knew that sitting on anything remotely hard hurt because the baby's head pressed against the same tissue from the opposite direction. I knew her hips hurt. Her back ached. Her feet and ankles looked like she was related to Fred Flintstones. She leaked colostrum if she even saw a baby on TV or thought about it. I won't say for the sake of the hearing what other things were leaked because they would be considered highly gross. :-) These are but a few joys of pregnancy that Emily experienced along with the perpetual inability to sleep more than two hours at a stretch, heartburn from her stomach was pushed so out of place and of course I can't forget Braxton-Hicks contractions that came and went at all hours of the day and night.
"Eat you need. Strength you must have," Betsy signed handing Emily a plate of goodies while Cherry pushed the foot rest close enough that Emily could kick it into place and get her feet up so she might pass as only a distant relative of Fred's.
We ate and gossiped and signed. Betsy and Jane always the teachers gave Matt a few lessons in signing so he didn't have to write notes constantly. He was catching on fast too. Colin showed up with Jane's kids and mother not long after we started eating bearing more goodies for Emily since Jane couldn't very well have brought them herself.
No one seemed to notice but I when Emily got up with some effort and went into the then finished nursery. I was concerned about her but I couldn't explain why I was. It was just a feeling that said to me that maybe Emily needed a friend. It had been a long time since Emily had talked to me about how she felt. Yeah she'd told me about her first pregnancy and how it had been for the best that she'd lost that baby. But not since Joanna's visit had Emily talked to just me about how she was feeling regarding the baby she was carrying.
I waited a few minutes before I followed her. I was surprised to find that I hadn't been the only one as I thought, Matt was with her when I entered the room. His eyes showed concern as he looked into hers and mouthed, "You okay?"
She nodded and looked away out the back window into her dying garden. Matt saw me in the doorway. "Hi, Rachel. I think maybe you'll help more than me here."
Emily turned back and smiled a weak smile at me as I answered, "Maybe," signing and then saying what I signed even though I didn't know how much of what Matt had spoken Emily understood.
Matt placed his hand on Emily's shoulder and gave it a squeeze and then left me standing with her. "Wrong, what?" I asked sitting on the edge of the day bed that now graced the room across from the Winnie the Pooh bedecked crib.
"Tired, scared."
I didn't need to know why she was tired I could imagine. "Scared why?"
"Mother me know how, not. Good mother, maybe not."
"Emily, don't question being a good mother. Your heart is too full of love. You will be a good mother."
"Scared birth." she signed this rather small as if she didn't want to admit it.
"Yes it hurts. From what I have been told it hurts a lot. It's not easy giving birth but once you see your baby and hold it in your arms, all is forgotten. You will remember but somehow looking into your child's eyes as it seeks nourishment from your body, the pain is clouded over by the love you will feel."
"You know I plan breast feed, how?"
"I assumed. Nature give you milk. You like Nature. Same."
"I don't know how I can be a mother and do my job. How do other mother's do it?"
I thought for a minute because I knew how much Emily took pride in her work. Heck she'd not missed more than a week of work in ten years when she was sick until the pregnancy. Work was Emily's safe place. "Bring baby with you. Put portable crib in office corner. If the baby needs you you'll be there. Just think you have a whole school of aunts and uncles to help you out. I know Cherry and I would love it. One-hundred thirty-five babysitters come with your job."
She chuckled with a sound. It made me smile. "Worry dumb me feel make."
"Normal, all mother's worry if good mother. Now, smile. Party time." I answered as she smiled and we left the room just in time for games.
We both immediately got suckered out of our pacifiers by Becca since we didn't know the games had started and we couldn't sign or say baby without losing our necklaces. Becca asked. "The two of you talk about what?"
We both signed, "Baby" and promptly got told to hand over ours. But Jane got even and took them both from her plus her own and ended up winning the game.
Later we played guess how big poor Emily is. How it's played is everyone writes down how many toilet paper squares it takes to go around the pregnant woman one time. Then after all the guesses are in someone measures her with a roll of toilet paper. The person to guess the closest wins. Matt guessed 8 squares. I couldn't decide if he was stupid or trying to flatter Emily. I guessed 22. Jane guessed 15. Cherry guessed 18. I don't know about other guesses. I won. Emily gave me a dirty look when she found out I was correct on my guess. I signed, "Mad me not. Me know average why my group. Future, you bigger not. Baby almost grow finish."
It was then that I realized that the statement was true. I hadn't noticed earlier but Emily had very definitely dropped. The baby was so low I half expected to see a hand reach out and wave at us. She still looked like she swallowed a beach ball but instead of her uterus being high and round it was lower and more forward. Her breathing was easier because her lungs had room to expand. The birth of her baby was not a matter of weeks but days. I smiled with my secret knowledge.
We played more games and ate more food and then we piled gifts around Emily as she sat like a queen in her chair with her feet propped up and her babies lounging every which way they could to be near her. She opened them all slowly. Some were just for her and some for the baby. I laughed aloud at Matt's gift of a miniature baseball, bat and a mitt with a sleeper that looked like a Chicago Cubs uniform. "Carrie helped you, right?" I asked Matt sitting next to him across the room from Emily.
"She said I had to give the baby something besides sports toys. I tried to tell her Emily would like the toys more."
"Carrie doesn't know Emily is a sports nut like you. The whole idea is cute. I'm sure Emily likes it. See she's smiling."
"Yeah, I guess your right. Is she okay? She seemed I don't know. I don't know pregnant women."
"She's nervous. She's about to become a mother. It's a scary thing to be responsible not only for your own life but that of your child.”
“How old is she? She's never told me her age. I haven't had the courage to ask."
"She'd tell you if you asked. Deaf don't have the social stigmas like age that hearing do. Today is her 49th birthday."
"This is her first baby?" Matt asked a bit flabbergasted.
"Yes and her last too if you ask her that. She's probably correct. It's very unusual for a woman her age to become pregnant without help."
"Did she have help?"
"Nope, just God. He's a pretty decent miracle worker it seems."
"I'll say. She told me the father died. That is sad. I didn't want to upset her and ask her how."
"The tale of Jack Cooper is a long one. She met him in Colorado and fell hard for him. It was very strange given how reserved she is. To know her you would know she just doesn't do anything without giving it a great amount of thought first. But if you ask her she doesn't think. She's a paradox. He followed her home and for 3 weeks or so they were inseparable at least here at her house away from her work, away from the public judging eye. She loved him and wanted him to love her the same. But when she asked him he wouldn't answer her. Instead that night while she slept he left. Seven weeks later she found out she was pregnant. When she was about eleven weeks along he came back and wanted her to go to Colorado with him. She refused. Teaching is her life. She couldn't just leave it even if she wanted to. When she refused he punched her in the face. She fell hard. That night she lost the twin. No one can say for sure until this baby is born if the fall caused the miscarriage, if genetics did or if there is a reason at all. Since one baby survived, it was probably coincidence. She didn't tell Jack that she was pregnant but I think when she was about 15 weeks he found out because he was spying on her and saw her tell someone else. He got mad and returned 3 weeks later with a gun and blasted 8 holes through her office door. Needless to say she wanted nothing to do with him. She'd rather have forgot he was the father. After that he went on the run. You might have seen the news story on TV about him. He came to my apartment and I slammed his hand in the door. It was a fiasco. Then he simply vanished. No one knew where he was, not even his sister. Joanna drove Emily nuts with calls about him for weeks. Emily was 28 weeks pregnant when they found his body in Wyoming. He'd crashed his truck and burned in it."
"Some men need to have a license and mental competency tests to even be allowed to date let alone marry and be fathers. Poor Emily! Jack sounds like a real asshole."
"Yes, he was and it didn't help with her pregnancy. She was hospitalized three times, twice with pre-term labor. Most of it was stress induced."
"Carrie would smack me up side my head with a skillet for saying this but I'm surprised given the circumstances that Emily didn't have an abortion. I mean... well, she's sort of old to be having a baby. And her boyfriend was a nut case."
"She considered an abortion. But realized that she'd been given a miracle. She should never have been able to become pregnant. The chances are so astronomical against it yet here she was. And she also knew in her heart that she'd never be able to forgive herself if she aborted. This baby was her only chance to fulfill a dream that was shelved and forgotten long ago."
"I guess if I knew that I only had one chance to be a father I'd take that chance too."
"I thought you said you never wanted to have kids after seeing that film with Emily last month?" I laughed, teasing him.
"I'll adopted some other guys kids that he doesn't want. Surely there is a nice woman with kids that needs a husband."
I looked at Emily who had the baseball sleeper laying on her abdomen as if to say 'think it will fit?'. "Yeah, there are." I answered as he followed my gaze and smiled.