I will never forget my mom telling me that she never thought she wanted a daughter, mostly because my mom – like a lot of moms probably – like to tell the important stories over and over (and over and over) again. But my mom’s daughter – like a lot of daughters probably – realized that we never really know how important those stories are until we become mothers, ourselves. My mom didn’t find out that I was a girl until the moment I was born. Not wanting a girl wasn’t just one preference over another for my mom, it was a not-wanting that she always described to me as downright fear. Even though it was for different reasons, I found myself in one of those all-too-familiar scenarios that life tends to deal us daughters; a repeat of our mother’s own fears or mistakes or life lessons. In this case, as if God were playing out some kind of a sequel, I – with new reasons all my own – found myself wanting to avoid the confusion and unfamiliarity that I was sure would come with having a daughter “of my own;” a phrase that I wasn’t even sure was politically correct to use. By the time my mom was finished with her story, it always ended in happy tears, my mom telling me how instantaneously her heart just turned around, my mom telling me how much easier I was to raise compared to my brothers, my mom telling me how proud I’ve made her, and my mom telling me how happy she was to have had me. A few days ago, when I told my mom that I was having a girl, she told me for the first time that I can remember, that her biggest regret is never having one more girl.
My Matthew was an easy foot-in-the-door to parenting. Like little boys have a reputation for being, he was a pleasant baby. I took to being the mom of a son like it was a true privilege and Spencer was definitely no different. We lived and breathed everything about Little Boys. And like many first time mother’s know, after having your first child, it’s hard to imagine wanting anything more than just them. So when we did finally decide that we were ready to open our hearts to another little creation, we found it hard to imagine wanting anything too different from our first experience. We would be honored to be the proud parents of another little boy - so easy to love, so easy to clothe in hand-me-downs! Still, there was an inkling inside of me that was starting to turn. It was this little hiccup of a feeling that started to make me wonder what it would be like to have a daughter of my own. A daughter with my freckles and Spencer’s brown eyes. I wondered how I’d do her hair on special occasions and I started to imagine her running around the park with the fabric of a patchwork dress trailing in the wind behind her, getting runs in her stockings and having too much fun to care. I thought about taking her to guitar lessons at the music store while all the other girls learned to play the recorder at school. I thought about how insanely cool she would be. I thought and I thought and I thought and I thought, until the day of our ultrasound rolled around and I realized I hadn’t put one, one thousandth of the amount of thought into having a boy as I had into having a girl. In fact, we only had one name. And that name was Scarlett.
Matthew made a ruckus in the waiting room. I was too high on anticipation (and too jittery from the full bladder they instruct you to arrive with) to be worked up about his lack of volume control. Spencer and I did our best to focus his attention on the little bag of tricks that his diaper bag has turned into since he turned two. Little baggies of cereal, Hot Wheels cars, pop-up books, an old cell phone without service, and for true emergencies or public potty-training triumphs - fun sized pieces of Easter candy.
Luckily he was pretty well-behaved when we got back to the room. He was curious and fidgety, but happily stealing the heart of the ultrasound technician - which kept him from acting out too much. Instead he kept focused on antics he knew would make the grown-ups laugh, which I would take hands down over a whiny tantrum any day. When a cart wheeled by on the other side of the hospital curtain and the squealing of the wheels whined through the eerily dark-lit room that we were in, Matthew’s eyes popped and he gasped, “Mommy, Daddy - what’s that?” Spencer bent down to his level, and lovingly warned him in that way that always makes Matthew feel like his father is only trying to protect him, that it was a monster who ate baby legs for breakfast, so he’d better sit down in a hurry and try to stay quiet. Matthew scurried off to the corner of the room where he found a stool to sit on; a good place to practice singing the Scooby-Doo song while the rest of us waited to find out what the future had in store for our little boy’s family. After all, so much of what our hopes and dreams were for this baby’s gender hung on what we wanted Matthew and Mary to have.
Since about the time Matthew turned one, Spencer’s been waiting for us to have a little girl. Neither of us were ready to start the whole process over again that soon, but still, every so often he’d walk up behind me, arms wrapped around my waist, and whisper into my ear that he can’t wait for me to give him a little daughter made up of as many “pretty little” pieces of me as God can manage. Anytime we talked about having another, she was a girl. But once the moment of truth arrived, it just wasn’t that easy to hope indefinitely for one sex over the other. At Matthew’s ultrasound, we were solely on the Boy’s team. The only mixed emotions we had were the ones about how to react if we didn’t get the boy that we so badly wanted. This time around, we teetered back and forth from the pros and cons of each gender. We wanted a girl in so many ways, but it tugged at our hearts to see a future for our son without brothers.
Still, it tugged at my heart more than I ever would have imagined to envision a life of motherhood without ever having a daughter of my own.
The ultrasound technician was a dream come true. First of all, she let me pee as soon as she was done getting the measurements she needed me to have a full bladder for so that I could more comfortably enjoy the part of the ultrasound she knew that we’d been patiently waiting for. She got a kick out of Matthew, no matter how much he got into, because she had a three-year-old herself. We also learned that she was twelve weeks pregnant with her second child, too. This ended up being a Godsend for us, because when my worst nightmare came true - and my normally acrobatic unborn child clamped it’s legs together like a bear trap and refused to move - the technician understood how much was hanging on her ability to just get between those legs. She dedicated herself to allowing us to leave with an answer, and that’s when she told us that she was expecting… and eagerly awaiting the chance for an answer herself. When all of the angles and verbal coaxing didn’t make any difference, she turned the ultrasound to 4D! This is a big deal because when I was pregnant with Matthew, Spencer and I had to set up an appointment with a special place called “Innerview,” drive quite a ways away and pay somewhere around $200.00 to have a 4D ultrasound of him. This lady just flipped a switch and hit a couple of buttons.
Matthew made a ruckus in the waiting room. I was too high on anticipation (and too jittery from the full bladder they instruct you to arrive with) to be worked up about his lack of volume control. Spencer and I did our best to focus his attention on the little bag of tricks that his diaper bag has turned into since he turned two. Little baggies of cereal, Hot Wheels cars, pop-up books, an old cell phone without service, and for true emergencies or public potty-training triumphs - fun sized pieces of Easter candy.
Luckily he was pretty well-behaved when we got back to the room. He was curious and fidgety, but happily stealing the heart of the ultrasound technician - which kept him from acting out too much. Instead he kept focused on antics he knew would make the grown-ups laugh, which I would take hands down over a whiny tantrum any day. When a cart wheeled by on the other side of the hospital curtain and the squealing of the wheels whined through the eerily dark-lit room that we were in, Matthew’s eyes popped and he gasped, “Mommy, Daddy - what’s that?” Spencer bent down to his level, and lovingly warned him in that way that always makes Matthew feel like his father is only trying to protect him, that it was a monster who ate baby legs for breakfast, so he’d better sit down in a hurry and try to stay quiet. Matthew scurried off to the corner of the room where he found a stool to sit on; a good place to practice singing the Scooby-Doo song while the rest of us waited to find out what the future had in store for our little boy’s family. After all, so much of what our hopes and dreams were for this baby’s gender hung on what we wanted Matthew and Mary to have.
Since about the time Matthew turned one, Spencer’s been waiting for us to have a little girl. Neither of us were ready to start the whole process over again that soon, but still, every so often he’d walk up behind me, arms wrapped around my waist, and whisper into my ear that he can’t wait for me to give him a little daughter made up of as many “pretty little” pieces of me as God can manage. Anytime we talked about having another, she was a girl. But once the moment of truth arrived, it just wasn’t that easy to hope indefinitely for one sex over the other. At Matthew’s ultrasound, we were solely on the Boy’s team. The only mixed emotions we had were the ones about how to react if we didn’t get the boy that we so badly wanted. This time around, we teetered back and forth from the pros and cons of each gender. We wanted a girl in so many ways, but it tugged at our hearts to see a future for our son without brothers.
Still, it tugged at my heart more than I ever would have imagined to envision a life of motherhood without ever having a daughter of my own.
The ultrasound technician was a dream come true. First of all, she let me pee as soon as she was done getting the measurements she needed me to have a full bladder for so that I could more comfortably enjoy the part of the ultrasound she knew that we’d been patiently waiting for. She got a kick out of Matthew, no matter how much he got into, because she had a three-year-old herself. We also learned that she was twelve weeks pregnant with her second child, too. This ended up being a Godsend for us, because when my worst nightmare came true - and my normally acrobatic unborn child clamped it’s legs together like a bear trap and refused to move - the technician understood how much was hanging on her ability to just get between those legs. She dedicated herself to allowing us to leave with an answer, and that’s when she told us that she was expecting… and eagerly awaiting the chance for an answer herself. When all of the angles and verbal coaxing didn’t make any difference, she turned the ultrasound to 4D! This is a big deal because when I was pregnant with Matthew, Spencer and I had to set up an appointment with a special place called “Innerview,” drive quite a ways away and pay somewhere around $200.00 to have a 4D ultrasound of him. This lady just flipped a switch and hit a couple of buttons.
And there she was.
She was a girl. Our daughter.
My jaw dropped as much as my smile would allow it to. I turned to Spencer, excited to see his immediate reaction. That perfect smile. He looked down at me lying on the hospital bed and I think I punched his arm a little in all the excitement. I looked back at the screen with an unreal emotion, fully aware of just how much I didn’t know about having a daughter of my own. I didn’t have to dwell on it, but it dawned on me that everything I knew about raising Mary - the books that I read, the sleepless nights that I spent agonizing over decisions for her, the hours upon hours of long talks that I had with her; everything from the way that we cut her hair to the principals we instill in her, and every iota of everything in between - is entangled in the truth that she is only so partially mine to mold, to love, to raise into a woman. I have the privilege of being much more to Mary than any step mom I’ve ever known or heard of. Still, I live in the forever shadow of a “real” mom who is such a far stretch from anything I’d ever hope to have my daughter idolize… but she does, if only for two weekends of the month. And I let her, because that’s what it is to be a step mom - more than anything else, it is to respect the almost holy bond between real mother, real daughter. Period. Mary may get from me all of the guidance, all of the encouragement, all of the discipline, all of the witnessing of my own mistakes, all of the stories and structure and virtues, and all of the everything else that a daughter needs from a mom - but at the end of the day, a girl just needs her mom if for no other reason than to just be a part of her; to feel like she still belongs in the one place she should. And I learned a long time ago that no overdosage of step mom can fill that shoe.
So as I watched that little girl, in an upward fetal position, her eyes closed, head down and her knees bent in front of her, as if she could have been sitting in the grass somewhere just pondering on life, picking dandelions and daydreaming, my heart turned over and I saw a side of myself I never knew was there. She wasn’t sitting in the grass somewhere, she was sitting right under my own beating heart. I, even if only for right now, am her world in it’s complete entirety. I thought of Matthew, I thought of Mary, and there was nothing to compare her to. As we left with my heart flying off somewhere into my throat, like a helium balloon turned loose in all of the excitement, I ran off at the mouth to Spencer all the way down the hospital corridors, down the sidewalk outside of the building, through the grassy areas, over the concrete parking lot bumps, and as I lifted Matthew into his booster seat about just how exciting and different and new it will be to have a little girl. A whole new experience for us. A novel adventure for our beautiful family. He let me talk, and talk, and talk until I had to take a breath.
He smiled at me, and he looked down at my belly-button. “That’s our little girl in there,” he said. I thought about him, and I loved her even more.
