by S. L. Finlay
When the baby was born though, it was as if that long, painful labor was nothing again. I forgot the pain almost instantly when the doctor placed the baby on my chest. Forgetting the pain of childbirth must be why women go back and have multiple children. Nature is an asshole.
The child was a little girl. I loved her from the very moment that I saw her. Some part of me had always known she would be a girl, and looking at her, the small pink alien who had just been ejected from my womb, made me smile. She looked like she was a bit shocked to be out here, and a bit disappointed with the cold, unsheltered environment that she was now in. As I held her in my arms, I thought about how I would like to keep her safe and happy. I thought about how important it was to look after her, as if my life depended on it. I thought about how I would need to be the one to shelter her from the storm and take care of her doing this all on my own. I felt that I had to protect my little girl, right from the first.
The world is a cruel place, and for someone so small, delicate, and vulnerable, it's not an easy place at all.
If birth was difficult, the years that followed weren't any easier either. This child who you love so much it hurts does fall down, they do scrape their knees and bad things do happen to them. They struggle, as do you. For every time that your baby struggles, for every time that they fall down, it's as if you fall twice as hard.
But then there's the positives, too, when your child is flying and you're flying with them. When your child is really kicking goals in life and you get to be there, in the bleachers, cheering them on.
I was always there to cheer my little girl on. I was a mad mum, her biggest fan.
Even though I still had to work to support us, I worked less after she came along. With a lot of reading, I discovered all these ways to ramp up your output at work. So, putting those tactics in place and by asking for condensed work hours - four days a week, ten hour days, rather than five days a week with eight hour days - I managed to bring everything together.
I worked less but still managed to bring in the money so my little girl could have everything she wanted, plus plenty of time with mummy.
It was difficult to find care for her when I was at work, but I always managed to make it work. When you know you want something, the universe conspires to make it happen. Or at least that's what they say. I wanted it all, and as it turned out, after a break, I could have it all.
That little girl though, even as I worked hard for both of us, she really did take five years of my life. I was still working hard and producing all the work I had to produce to keep up at work, but I also could feel that I had much less energy after having her than I had ever had before. I also had less patience for others. I was endlessly patient with my little girl, but when it came to others, no. I didn't care what their problems were, I wasn't going to give them the time of day.
But perhaps that made me better at my job as I moved up to the role of editor. I was editing a section of my newspaper and looking after my little girl, keeping all the balls in the air. Everything was going swimmingly.
Of course, the thing I never could face was how I felt about her father. When my daughter Charlotte would ask about her father I would tell her that she didn't have one. Mostly she seemed to accept that, some people just didn't have fathers, it was more and more common as time passed. One of her friends at school was the same as her, so she never felt odd about it.
But I did.
I missed her father - my daddy dom and ex fiance - greatly. I still kept the engagement ring in my night stand where it was always close to me. I had taken a photo album with me when I had left too, and sometimes, although less these days, I would look through it remembering what we had together. It tore me apart to look at those photos, but I was happy too because I got to see him.
Part of me wanted to show my daughter her father, but then part of me couldn't deal with it. I knew it would be easier for her if she kept believing that she didn't have a father, and didn't know our story. Easier for her, not for me. It was still, even after all these years, hard for me. I wondered if it would get any easier.
Sometimes though, it did feel easier for me, and if I were honest, I never really knew if there was a difference between me wanting to do something - not talk to Daddy, or even letting him know about our daughter - because it was easier for her or because it was easier for me. Whenever I thought about it all though, it just made my head ache and I tried not to think about it too long. I would force myself to think about something else. Avoiding the problem seemed to work wonders, at least from moment to moment.
At five, my daughter was just as headstrong as I was. I could see her Daddy in her still, but mostly I could see me. I could see the way she thought and how she tried to get away with things. I could see the naughty, defiant streak in her. She was subversive, but she was also hugely creative. My daughter could do anything she wanted when she grew up, and I felt excited to see what she would do with her life, even though I was scared too.
Mostly though, I had to keep these thoughts to myself because I didn't have a partner to share the experience with. As much as I wanted a partner in theory, I think I liked the idea of a relationship much more than I actually liked having a relationship.
One of the men I worked with, for example, asked me out. He wanted to take me out to dinner and a movie (very traditional date!) and he was keen to get to know me. As much as he was definitely an eligible bachelor with his good looks, great job and being easy to get along with, I still wasn't ready to date again. Even six years after leaving my Daddy.
I turned down the date and told the man that as much as I liked him, I still wasn't ready to date. Because we had worked together, he knew my story and was shocked.
"But!" He protested, "you left your ex more than five years ago!"
As frustrated as I was by the entitlement of this man, I had to agree with him. He was right that I had left this man six years ago and by rights should be over him. I should be willing to move on without a problem in the world. I wasn't ready yet though, and didn't know if I ever would be. I still held a candle for my Daddy, and I wasn't ready to relinquish that. Not yet.
"I am sorry." I told him, "I am not ready to date again, and, besides, I am not interested in anything but a professional relationship with you."
My words were the truth. I didn't want any more than a professional relationship with this man. As attractive as he was, and as successful, and as much as I realized that with this man I would not have to work as hard as I did, it didn't matter. I wasn't ready, I didn't want this.
Sometimes we don't want what is best for us, sometimes we don't want what is staring us in the face, and that's fine. That is the human condition. Sometimes what we want and what we need are not in alignment.
But I was about to get what I needed very shortly after I had rejected the advances of my work colleague.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Charlotte was a very active child. She had been running for almost as long as she had been walking, and as a result of that desire to never slow down, she was an avid runner and gymnast in childhood. Her after-school activities were luckily run by her school. So the school would ferry the girls to their gymnastics meets so they could practice all the tumbling and rolling to their hearts desire, then, after they had done that, they would be taken back to their school where I would pick Charlotte up in the evening after we had both had very long days at school and work.
Then, of course, I would go home and cook and do the one hundred things that I had to do before it was time to retire to my own bed and sleep like the dead before waking up and doing it all over again the very next day.
My days were busy, as were hers. I was sure she had gotten that tireless work ethic from me.
Not everyone is like us though. Some people do not follow their passions. They do not chase their dreams until they catch them then dream a little bigger so they have something else to chase, catch, grab and own.
These people who refuse to chase their
dreams, and who refuse to do much with their lives, have always frustrated me.
When I was a journalist, I would encounter them when I was working, I would interview them. When I did my interviews, I would find them to be disengaged, disinterested and frustrating. Not only were they not always the best sources for information but those people wouldn't do a good job at whatever their jobs were, which was frustrating to see. They also were not good to their friends, to their family members. If they were parents, they were never fully engaged in their children's lives. They didn't push for change or for things to be better, they were happy to coast along through life. A life half lived.
I didn't want that for myself or my daughter, I didn't want to coast through life and neither did my daughter. Because of our personality types and because we both had a strong drive to succeed, we were both hugely frustrated by these types of people, but I had to learn to be patient just as much as she did.
Until one of those people made a big mistake.
It was a cool evening and I was waiting for my daughter's bus to arrive at her school. Sometimes when I saw the other parents waiting, I would get out of my car and chat to them. Most of the parents at my daughters school were easy to get along with and had plenty of great stories from their lives. Being a journalist, I loved a good story.
Because of the town we lived in, too, there was plenty of farmers and people with property. Sometimes I would meet someone when we were both waiting for our children and strike up a conversation, only to realize that when I was a journalist I had met them. This always made conversations more interesting, and made me more memorable.
That evening, I had been tempted to stay in my warm car because of the cool air, but I had forced myself to go out and chat to the other parents. It was cold, and they were all congregated at the bus stop where the children were normally dropped off by the busses charted by the school.
When the bus arrived, the first person to climb off the huge coach was a little boy who ran at his mother and gave her a big hug. Or rather, gave her leg a big hug as that was all he could reach. Following him was a little girl whose mother walked her to the car. There were another twenty or so children and each parent would quickly whisk their child away and out of the cold. I waited impatiently for my daughter. I had had a difficult day at work and didn't want to be standing here any longer than I had to, but could see that she wasn't coming off the bus quickly. She must be asleep I thought, or taking longer to get her things together.
The last child to get off the bus was a little boy who often did gymnastics with my daughter. They were good friends and his solemn face told me something was wrong. I had been dismissing my daughter not coming off the bus until he appeared, looking sad, and moments later the bus pulled away.
That was when I knew something was wrong. But I couldn't help it. I chased after the bus as it pulled out and knocked on the glass door.
The driver, looking shocked, but opened the door instantly, "Yes?" He asked, surprised and a little taken aback by my appearance on his bus. I ran right onto the bus and started checking the seats. Where was my little girl? This man was going to take off without letting her off. I had visions of her waking up from a post-gymnastics nap in a cold bus, several hours after she had left.
As I searched the bus, the driver stood up and asked me, "miss, what are you doing?"
I had run past him and didn't have time to address him now, so shouted over my shoulder, "I am looking for my daughter!"
There was silence behind me as I kept searching. The driver let me search then when I got to the final seats at the back of the bus and looked, I couldn't find my daughter anywhere.
"Where is she?" I demanded of the bus driver, who was standing at the front of the bus looking bewildered.
"I don't know." He answered slowly. "All the children got off my bus. Your daughter wasn't with them?"
I had frozen at the back of the bus and started to walk forward. I could hear a small voice, but wasn't really aware enough to realize it was my daughters gymnastics friend, one of only two boys to do gymnastics with her. He was calling out to the driver.
"She didn't get on the bus!" The little boy was yelling to the driver who turned away from me and towards the little boy who now stood at the bottom of the bus steps, his head in the door shouting up at the driver. "She hurt her leg, and she didn't come back!"
"She - she what?" I asked, hurrying towards the front of the bus. I couldn't see him, but I knew the little boy was there.
The bus driver moved out of my way so I could stand in his place where I could see my daughters friend. I looked down at him, shocked. The little boy wanted to do the right thing and wanted to tell me what had happened, but I could tell that it was bad news when he hesitated before telling me more.
"She hurt her leg." He told me, "an ambulance came and got her."
"An ambulance?" I cried, feeling my chest tighten at the word 'ambulance'.
The little boy gave a small nod and was whisked away by his mother who took his place. "Do you want a lift?" She asked me, with all the empathy of a fellow mother who knew how hard this news must be coming from a child.
My jaw had dropped as I stared down at her.
The driver cleared his throat beside me and told me, "I am going past a hospital on my way back to the depot, too. If you want a lift there, I can drop you off."
I looked from the other mother to the driver and back again before shaking my head. I didn't know this man and didn't want to make his life harder than it needed to be.
"No. It's okay." I told him, "I can get myself there, thank you."
The driver let me climb off his bus before driving away. I turned to the other mother and told her, "your son shouldn't have to tell me this. A teacher or coach should. Why didn't they give me a teacher or coach to talk to?"
The other woman simply shook her head with a sad look on her face, she didn't have an answer for me of course. That familiar annoyance with others for not doing their job - especially when it was as important as this - began to sting me. I was frustrated. Frustrated and angry. I had a lot of things that I wanted to say, but not enough time to say them.
"I can drive myself." I told the other mother whose phone number I had programmed into my phone for those play dates she and I had organized, "I will go to the hospital. If I need anything, I will call."
The other mother nodded her head and let me go. As I climbed into my car, I could hear her asking her son about what had happened.
Even if you know that your child is not going to die from something as vague as 'hurting their leg' you don't want them to spend a single second alone when they are in pain or frightened. For that reason, I drove there like a bat out of hell. Speeding down streets and running red lights, I arrived at the hospital in record time. I parked my car at the ER and walked straight in. The nurse in triage was available and I walked right up to her little window. I was on a mission.
"Hello." I said, "I am here for my daughter, Charlotte. She hurt herself at gymnastics. Her leg, I believe." My voice was harried, but nowhere near as harried as I felt in that moment.
The nurse was deliberate as she typed into the keys of her computer, "what time did she come in?" She asked.
"I am not sure. She would have come here from gymnastics." I said, my voice raising a little higher than I meant it to.
My raised voice drew the attention of a nurse in the office behind the triage nurse. That nurse overheard me and said, "you're here for Charlotte?"
I nodded, "yes." I said, moving closer to the glass so she could hear me, "is she okay? I am her mother."
The other nurse smiled, "she's fine, go around to your left and I'll buzz you in."
Even as the nurse smiled, it didn't do much to take the anxiety away from me. I felt it keenly in my body. I was anxious as all hell to know that my daughter was okay.
I walked around to the left of the nurses station to where a blue door with a glass panel stood. I could tell by the red light abov
e the door that the door wasn't open. The red light turned to green as I approached though and the nurse opened the door from the other side, holding it open for me.
The nurses smile was empathetic as she walked me through. the calming presence didn't have much of an impact on me as I followed behind her.
The corridor had many doors leading off it up the hallway, but we turned down the second entrance to the left and kept walking.
"Your daughter came in here around two hours ago." The nurse was telling me, updating me on what was happening. I gritted my teeth at the thought of how long it had been though. Two hours ago she had come in here and no-one had bothered to tell me. I had to hear the news off another child.
"Who was with her?" I asked.
The nurse, who had been walking in front of me stopped beside a pulled curtain to tell me, "no-one was with her."
This must be the curtain behind which my daughter is sitting I thought to myself before the nurse had a chance to say anything, I pulled up the curtain and ducked under it.
There was my daughter, laying in a hospital bed and looking sore and sad.
"Are you okay honey?" I asked as I rushed to cup her face in my hands. Impatient, my daughter squirmed a little before reaching up to remove my hands.
"I'm fine mommy! Don't do that!" She cried, frustrated.
I could tell now I could see her, that she was okay. She would be fine. My anxious feelings left me a little bit, to be replaced by my own frustration and anger.
The nurse had let herself into the little curtained enclave then and drew my attention to herself. "Yes, hello." She said as I looked at her.
"I'm sorry." I told her, "I was just worried. No-one told me she was here. I had to find out from another five year old. I was anxious."
Nodding, the nurse must have decided to let my annoying behavior slide as she told me, "okay. I understand that." Before taking a deep breath and going on, "we think your daughter broke her leg, we're still waiting for the x-ray to confirm it. She will just need a plaster cast and be on crutches for a while." The nurse told me.
