March 10

DRACONIA KEEP where Magic and Dreams Become Reality

March 10, 2007

A Different Measure

I was burning scrambled eggs when I told Doug I was pregnant. How ironic because cooking breakfast is his job. He enjoys it, the rhythms and the busyness, so it’s a routine we’ve settled into over the years. But I felt domesticated —the magic stick showed two lines that morning, and I knew the baby would be our last.

Doug looked at me blankly, slightly scared, but bemused and kissed me perfunctorily and raced to the barn to clean stalls. Those rhythms too would settle him. I knew it would take him a few days to get used to it. After all, he didn’t speak to me for two weeks when I told him about our first. He’d looked at me like I had grown another head, and he jumped when I moved too fast. Then he’d been frightened of the responsibilities, the changes of having a child. But this time, we both knew also the joys and trials, and we both were looking forward to it.

But the next eight months wore on all of us—Doug and our daughters and me. Morning sickness meant nothing. “All Day Sickness” consumed us all. It didn’t ease up at four months, but it lingered on until shortly before I gave birth. As the days wore on, my pace faltered and stumbled. The girls and Doug tried their best to ease me back into a familiar tempo, but my body kept me unbalanced. The winter wore on long, cold and icy, and I couldn’t see the horses for two months. Doug wouldn’t let me take the chance of falling.

I think he found solace there in the barn. Quiet and peace with the mindless chores away from the girls’ giggles and my constant pallor. A different world with different characters and needs, the horses needed him, but he needed them as well.

How I missed the horses too---the knickers, the sweet, warming smells of hay and horse and the soft hair through my fingers. During those long cold days, I longed for a warm summer’s day with a thinner body flying along in cadence on the back of my Morgan down the fields away from the dry, empty warmth of the house. Just to feel good again.

But then I’d feel the beat of the hiccups and kicks of the tiny warrior in my womb, and I could hold on for just a little while longer.

When the cold, blue-sunny day finally came, and in his liquid eyes, the hours I’d spent lying in bed, only racing with the horses in the recesses of my mind, drowned away. The tempo of our family completed, the summer and the horses beckoned.

Soon our son would meet the horses, and he would feel their magical rhythm too.

Happy Birthday, our little Wee Man. We love you!

Daddy, Mommy, Mikyla and Aleyna