Coming Home

by Julie Sellers

  Lillie looked at her feet and felt ashamed of her self-indulgent behavior of the last few months. Without meeting Donna’s eyes she said, “I’m sorry, Donna. I should have called. I should have known how difficult this must be for you. When can I look after Molly and give you a break?”

  “Lillian! Don’t worry about us,” she said squeezing Lillie’s hand. “We’re fine.”

  When Lillie’s eyes finally met Donna’s, she didn’t bother to attempt to hide the desolation resonating from them. She half whispered, half sobbed, “Please?”

  Donna just smiled and said, “You know, I’ve wanted to try out that new garden tub. How about coming over to look after Mol and staying for supper?” she added, glancing at the bag of ice cream.

  “That would be great.” Lillie smiled in return. Holding her bag aloft, she asked, “Do you have room in your freezer for some temporary storage?”

  “Sure. What we don’t have room for, we’ll have for dessert.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  * * *

  As time went by, the women fell into a routine. Lillie appeared without fail at Donna’s new home on Monday and Thursday nights allowing Donna some time to herself to get groceries or a haircut. Lillie had always been one of the few people Donna felt comfortable leaving her granddaughter with. An ordinary sitter couldn’t watch Molly. Her feeding tube alone was more than most were interested in learning about. In fact, Molly became agitated if left for more than a very short period with anyone other than her loving grandma or Aunt Lillie.

  For Lillie, caring for her niece/goddaughter was therapeutic. It gave her a meaningful focus outside herself and for that, Lillie was grateful. On nights Lillie wasn’t caring for Molly, she began researching on the Internet for information regarding new treatments and therapies that would potentially help Rett’s Syndrome patients. The heartbreaking part of Rett’s, beyond the severe disability it brought, was that the baby girls were born and appeared to be normal for a time. Some even walked and spoke single words for up to the first two years of their lives. Then these seemingly normal little girls digressed to a point, when in some cases, they were not capable of controlled movement. No doctor or scientific researcher had ever been able to halt the process, only watch it happen.

  Treatment was limited to physical and occupational therapies. The only hope for these girls was to adapt and learn ways to cope with their disorder. There was no cure, but it was easy to consume her free time surfing the Internet and reading—just in case there was something new they had not heard of or some new treatment they had not tried.

  She almost always turned to her computer in the evenings instead of concentrating on the emptiness around her. Her tiny bungalow seemed huge to her without the larger-than-life personality of her husband to fill the vacant space.

  One by one, she read stories of families touched by Rett’s. They were heartbreaking stories of baby girls who one day were walking and calling out “mama” and giggling. Swiftly and without warning these mothers watched their daughters digress to the point they were unable to communicate or even smile. Most became wheelchair bound and were moderately to severely mentally impaired.

  Story after story Lillie read was heartbreaking and nearly always the same. There were small triumphs, to be sure, but the stories more often reflected gaining an understanding of the limitations of their daughters and finding acceptance and even peace.

  One such story touched her even more than the others. It was the story of a single mother whose daughter had Rett’s. This mom advocated for her daughter in amazing ways and the little girl had made some remarkable progress. More interesting though, was the fact that this mother went on to adopt two more little girls with Rett’s and raised all three of them on her own.

  What Lillie admired most about this woman, beyond her accomplishments and her strength, was her attitude. She could have sat in a corner and felt sorry for herself for the way her life had turned out or mourned everything her daughter would never be. Instead, she embraced her life, loved her daughter and added two other children to her family who needed her.

  In the moment it took her to read the story of this courageous woman, Lillie became ashamed. She had spent the months since Jon left her doing nothing but feeling sorry for herself. She had spent more than a year that way if she were completely honest. Since she had lost the first baby, she had been needy and turned to Jon to solve her problems. He couldn’t do that. No one could have, and she’d refused to accept it.

  Lillie was slowly coming to terms with the part she played in the dissolution of her marriage. She doubted she would ever be completely immune to the sting of betrayal she felt at Jon’s unexpected departure, but she was coming to understand it wasn’t about not feeling the pain. It was about learning to live with it, growing stronger from it and not allowing it to consume her as she had been guilty of doing.

  What always pierced her heart, in addition to her failure to give them a family, was the gas receipt she had found in Jon’s car. He had been hours from where he said he was. He had looked her in the eye and lied to her and she had not noticed. It made her wonder how many other things he’d lied to her about in the course of their marriage.

  Her head knew that there still could be a plausible explanation as to where he’d been that day. But he had left her so shortly after, she could only assume he was with another woman—one who could give him a child or maybe one who already had. Maybe it was just someone who was willing to listen to what he needed or just put him first once in a while. That was the crux of it and why, while Lillie could hate him for the execution, she could only blame herself for the cause. She knew she had failed him but what injured her even more was that he never gave her a chance to make it up to him.

  A million times she wanted to ask Donna where he was or what he was doing, but she couldn’t bring herself to utter the words. Lillie’s eyes began to fill thinking of it all, and she blinked the tears away. It was time that she accepted what her life was now. The time for tears was over.

  Lillie sighed as she pulled up a blank email message on the desktop of her computer. It had been several months since Jonathan left, and she’d still to tell her Aunt Catherine.

  Catherine and Rand were living in Tibet for six months while Rand completed a book featuring the sparse landscape and several monasteries. They were even to be guests of the Dalai Lama for a time.

  It had been easy to dodge Cat for the most part because her access to telephones had been so limited since she’d been overseas. Eventually, her aunt would figure out something was wrong. Cat’s senses were keen when it came to Lillie, and she was surprised Catherine hadn’t figured it out already, telephone access or not.

  Putting her one personal tragedy in an email was certainly a daunting task, but it was time. She only hoped her aunt would not be hurt by being kept in the dark for so long. No matter where in the world they were, Catherine checked her email religiously. She knew it would not be long until she received a reply, a phone call or even a visit. She had better get the guest room ready, she mused, just in case. Lillie took a deep breath and began to type.

  Dear Catherine…

  * * *

  Lillie blew her red swollen nose for what had to have been the hundredth time that day, as she battled a ferocious spring cold. The world and her garden were a riot of color, but all Lillie wanted to do was pull the covers over her head and hibernate.

  She knew she had to get out of bed. Not because she felt she was in danger of returning to the shadow of a person she’d been in the fall, but because after her midnight confessional letter to her aunt, Catherine was not yet sure she was completely recovered. The only thing keeping her Aunt in Tibet with her husband and focused on her deadline for the new book was Lillie’s promise of daily progress reports. She knew Cat was serious when she told her she would be on the next plane should she skip a day.

  Lillie still had difficult days, but she no longer felt consumed by her grief. All things considered, in terms
of the rest of the world, she was actually pretty lucky. She had family who loved her and good friends to support her when she needed them. Looking back over the last year she was ashamed by her behavior both before and after the divorce.

  Her daily letters to Catherine were helping her work through all of her contradictory feelings and file her memories away so she could get past this period in her life. The emails were much like journal entries that gave an opinion and moral support in return. They shared everything these days, their pasts and their hopes for the future, and grew closer each time one of them hit “send.”

  Lillie shared with her aunt how lost she still felt and how adrift. She felt stronger every day, but she knew that this was her opportunity to change her life and she was cautious not to misstep.

  In essence, she understood she had two choices. She could live in the past and risk becoming a person she did not recognize, or she could throw caution to the wind and have the life she could create for herself. Her only constraints were her imagination and what she herself had the courage and audacity to envision.

  Lillie completed her daily diatribe to her aunt and returned to bed bringing her cup of green tea, a fresh box of tissues and her laptop. Cat had suggested a trip, and Lillie felt that idea showed promise. Jonathan had been deathly afraid to fly so her travel had been curtailed for over a decade.

  She paged through exotic destinations and historical locals while tucked back under her quilts with her laptop on the breakfast-n-bed tray her husband bought her for their fourth anniversary. Nothing caught her fancy. Her mind couldn’t wrap itself around something so decadent. At this point in her life she should be planning family vacations to Disney World, not choosing between Paris, Istanbul or Fuji.

  Lillie smiled at the thought of Disney World. It had always been her father’s favorite place for vacationing, and they visited nearly every year. It was the happiest place on earth. Remembering their many trips, she smiled. Cat had scolded her father and reminded him that he should be broadening Lillie’s horizons. Much to Lillie’s delight, he never heeded his sister’s dire warnings that too much pixie dust would rot her brain.

  She was now thirty-five years old, and she would give up all of the grand trips around the world for the chance to introduce her child to Mickey Mouse. Her birthday was rapidly approaching. If she were being honest with herself, she would admit the chances of meeting someone, getting married, getting pregnant and delivering a healthy baby after all of her difficulties was slim. The odds of completing all of that before her biological clock wound down completely were basically nil.

  Her arms literally ached to hold her child, but it was time to face reality. It was simply not to be. She was proving to herself on a daily basis she could live without Jon, but the truth was, she did not want to live the rest of her life without a child. She could give up everything, she had come to realize, but she was not willing to forgo motherhood.

  At one time the dream of a child produced from her body had been all she could think of. Now she reconsidered what that was about and decided part of her dream was not about loving a child or helping them grow. If she were honest with herself, she would admit it was a selfish wish to bring back the family that had been torn from her.

  Those she loved were gone and even though it was not fair, it simply was. No child, no matter what DNA their tiny cells contained, had the power to bring back the past. It certainly was not a good reason to want to bring a child into the world, especially when there were so many children here already in need of a family. If she had been able to see that before today, it might have saved her marriage. But on the other hand, she would never know, and she had learned there was no use second-guessing.

  “You can’t un-ring a bell,” she said aloud to herself.

  With one click of her mouse she flipped to her favorite search engine and typed, “Single Parent Adoption.”

  "God promises every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest."

  --J.G. Holland

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lillie frowned over the top of her hymnal at her son who was lying on his side in the pew trying to reach a contraband Transformer that had slipped beneath his seat. She had to be careful not to laugh at his contrite expression. He knew he’d been caught red handed and he was hoping against hope that she hadn’t noticed. As the final hymn concluded, and her son bowed his head to pray with the rest of the congregation, Lillie knew he was praying for leniency.

  Hope, on her other side, had her eyes closed tightly and was fervently bending God’s ear. When the silent portion of the prayer neared its end, Lillie thanked God quickly for her blessings just before Pastor Tom asked for prayers of thanksgiving and concern.

  Hope nudged her mother, but Lillie’s mind had drifted off, and she didn’t respond. Her daughter nudged her again, and grabbed her hand in an effort to finally claim her attention. “Miss Donna,” Hope whispered.

  “What pumpkin? Momma didn’t hear,” Lillie replied.

  “We have to pray for Miss Donna.”

  Lillie nodded in agreement, but a hand shot up to the right and added Donna’s name to the list before Lillie had a chance. The pastor lifted their prayers to the Lord, and they all stood for the benediction before the music swelled, signaling the conclusion of the service.

  Lillie took each of her children by the hand and moved into the aisle leading toward the rear of the church and out into the bright sunshine. They greeted friends and neighbors as they made their way to Lillie’s blue wagon.

  “What are we going to do now, Momma?” Alex asked.

  “Well, I suppose we need to get some lunch. Then we need to hurry over to Miss Donna’s house to say goodbye.”

  “Where is she going?”

  “Miss Donna is going to a doctor far away for a big check-up. It takes a week!” Lillie said dramatically and with much more enthusiasm than she felt.

  “Wow! A week. I don’t wanna go to her ‘pointment.”

  The trio reached the car, and Lillie opened the doors with her key chain remote. She collected the children’s Bibles and placed them on the front seat with her own Bible and purse.

  Lillie slid into her seat and buckled her seat belt. She toggled her rear view mirror to make sure her children were properly restrained. Lillie started the car with a flick of her wrist then centered her mirror in a way that allowed her to meet both of her children’s eyes.

  “Now, we don’t have enough time to go home and make lunch like we usually do”

  As she knew would happen, her son began shouting, “McDonald’s! McDonald’s! Can we go, huh? Please?”

  “Whose turn is it to choose?”

  “It’s Alex’s turn, Momma,” Hope said. Her daughter possessed a large sense of fairness and unlike most big sisters, would never attempt to usurp her brother’s position.

  “Yeah! McDonald’s! Whoo Hoo!” shouted her exuberant son.

  “But,” Lillie used a dramatic pause to garner her children’s attention. “Alex, what did you bring to church that you were not supposed to have?”

  “I had my Transformer in my pocket,” Alex confessed in a small voice.

  “Yes, you did. Is that against any of our rules?”

  “Yes, Momma, but—“

  “Alexander, you will be losing your lunch pick today.”

  “But, Mom, that’s not fair! I—’’Alex met his mother’s eyes in the mirror and stopped his argument. He knew arguing with his mother was seldom a good idea.

  Her children were generally well mannered and behaved. She rarely had cause to discipline her daughter, but her son was a different matter entirely.

  It was difficult in today’s society to raise children to be solid adults in the best of circumstances. The responsibility weighed heavily on her shoulders. Parenting was never easy, but raising her little boy into a solid, upstanding young man, she knew, would be her biggest challenge. Channeling his energy without stifling his natural enthusiasm and joie de vivre was important to h
er. Meshing that into day-to-day life sometimes seemed nearly impossible.

  “Hope, what’s your pick?”

  “Happy Chopsticks?”

  “Yeeessss!” her son said exuberantly as he made a fist and elbowed his car seat.

  Seeing the pleasure of her son’s reaction, Lillie was not sure this had been exactly a learning experience, but she smiled in spite of herself and said, “Happy Chopsticks it is,” as she eased the car into drive.

  * * *

  Thankfully, her children, their stomachs full, were subdued as she drove towards Donna’s condominium complex. They were frequent visitors, and the children felt comfortable in Donna’s home. Hope arrived at the front door first and rang the bell clutching the gift bag she and Alex decorated the evening before and filled with books, candies and chewing gum for Donna’s trip, along with get well cards and pictures they’d drawn for her.

  Hope took several steps back when Jonathan opened the door. She eased herself behind her mother and peered at the stranger questioningly. She tugged on her mother’s skirt and whispered, her eyes were wide, “Is that Miss Donna’s doctor?”

  “No, sweetheart,” Lillie put her arm around her daughter and crouched to her level. “This is Miss Donna’s son, Mr. Oleson.”

  Jonathan’s eyes darted as he took in her children. Alex yawned and covered his mouth with the back of his hand, after a nudge from his mother. Jon stood aside and ushered them into the house before lowering himself to one knee.

  “Call me Jonathan, okay?” and he held his hand to Alex to shake. “You must be Alex.”

  Alex wagged his hand heartily. “Yep, and that’s my sister, Hope, hiding behind my mom.” He held his hand up to his mouth as if to hide his words from his sister and whispered loudly, “She’s shy.”