We will gather in the desert this year for Thanksgiving. Mom, sisters, niece and nephew, and my own brood that outnumbers everyone else. My sister once thanked me for having enough children so we could always have "a party."
Those four daughters married well--fun, social, kind men, who indeed add to the party. Six precious grandchildren have also joined the family that loves to party. We can fill a dance floor and triple the food budget.
This year's gathering, I suspect will have a unique surprise, and since I suspect, it's a temptation not to ruin the surprise for everyone else. Since I can't divulge my suspicions to anyone else, I'll write it.
I suspect my sole niece, has news for the family. I suspect, she will announce her pregnancy.
For some of us, having children was and is an easy decision; it's part of our life plan, and we couldn't and can't imagine life without children. Some of us have been around long enough to not only have gone through the trials and long suffering of childbearing and childrearing, but to have also experienced the joy of these children. Way past my childbearing years, I am thankful for the sacrifices we made to have children. I can't imagine life without each one.
My niece has been in a decade long battle whether to have children or not. One year, she is; the next year she isn't. She got dogs, which became her children. Her husband vacillated with her. They watched friends and cousins have children; they saw the sleep, the privacy, the lazy afternoons, the vacations disappear.
But they also saw the crazy love connections. The natural home birth of a friend that made my niece say, "I've never experienced anything like it; it was amazing." They felt their own love for their friends' and cousins' babies; they designed the pinatas, rented the ponies for the family gathering. They saw how much they could give, and slowly, ten years slowly, my niece changed her mind.
Then the aunties and grandma started to speculate and worry. "What if she has twins? Triplets?" "Well have to move in with her! Wouldn't that be fun. Then the worry: "She's waiting so long, what if it doesn't happen right away?" or "What if it doesn't happen at all?" When my own childless children talk of children in the distant future, I sometimes add out loud or to myself, "If you're lucky."
It's a gift we take for granted, until it isn't granted.
Why do I presume the expected news? I'm an old auntie, an old mom who picks up on this stuff. Besides telling us a few months ago that she was ready for a family, my niece has been sick and when I ask my mom, my sister if it's because she's pregnant, they give me the most amusing answers, which I accept with a straight face.
It was only when the suspected-mother-to-be secretly added to the big Thanksgiving shopping list, a box of saltines, that I sat back and said to myself: case closed.
It doesn't need to be a surprise for my throat to swell and for my eyes to fill with tears when my niece finally announces, "There's going to be a little one next spring."
Let the party begin; it is what Thanksgiving is about; it is the core of what life really is~~the people who come into our lives, who bless our lives: by friendship, by marriage, by birth. All three, heaven sent.
Those four daughters married well--fun, social, kind men, who indeed add to the party. Six precious grandchildren have also joined the family that loves to party. We can fill a dance floor and triple the food budget.
This year's gathering, I suspect will have a unique surprise, and since I suspect, it's a temptation not to ruin the surprise for everyone else. Since I can't divulge my suspicions to anyone else, I'll write it.
I suspect my sole niece, has news for the family. I suspect, she will announce her pregnancy.
For some of us, having children was and is an easy decision; it's part of our life plan, and we couldn't and can't imagine life without children. Some of us have been around long enough to not only have gone through the trials and long suffering of childbearing and childrearing, but to have also experienced the joy of these children. Way past my childbearing years, I am thankful for the sacrifices we made to have children. I can't imagine life without each one.
My niece has been in a decade long battle whether to have children or not. One year, she is; the next year she isn't. She got dogs, which became her children. Her husband vacillated with her. They watched friends and cousins have children; they saw the sleep, the privacy, the lazy afternoons, the vacations disappear.
But they also saw the crazy love connections. The natural home birth of a friend that made my niece say, "I've never experienced anything like it; it was amazing." They felt their own love for their friends' and cousins' babies; they designed the pinatas, rented the ponies for the family gathering. They saw how much they could give, and slowly, ten years slowly, my niece changed her mind.
Then the aunties and grandma started to speculate and worry. "What if she has twins? Triplets?" "Well have to move in with her! Wouldn't that be fun. Then the worry: "She's waiting so long, what if it doesn't happen right away?" or "What if it doesn't happen at all?" When my own childless children talk of children in the distant future, I sometimes add out loud or to myself, "If you're lucky."
It's a gift we take for granted, until it isn't granted.
Why do I presume the expected news? I'm an old auntie, an old mom who picks up on this stuff. Besides telling us a few months ago that she was ready for a family, my niece has been sick and when I ask my mom, my sister if it's because she's pregnant, they give me the most amusing answers, which I accept with a straight face.
It was only when the suspected-mother-to-be secretly added to the big Thanksgiving shopping list, a box of saltines, that I sat back and said to myself: case closed.
It doesn't need to be a surprise for my throat to swell and for my eyes to fill with tears when my niece finally announces, "There's going to be a little one next spring."
Let the party begin; it is what Thanksgiving is about; it is the core of what life really is~~the people who come into our lives, who bless our lives: by friendship, by marriage, by birth. All three, heaven sent.
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