Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 4

by Chautona Havig

  I wonder why I find it so difficult to include Mother’s family in my life. I keep trying, but I forget. I know they feel rejected by me. Grandmother has said as much. I never know how to answer. It is never deliberate, but how can I argue with the facts? I do ignore them. I do forget them. When I do think of them, it is at the most inopportune times like in the middle of making candles or butchering chickens. It’s not like I can just stop and pick up the phone. And, I really don’t like the phone anyway. I do need to do better about it. I don’t know how but I do.

  Chad is making two cradles from kits he bought online. He says one will go on each side of the bed. I’m glad I have a big room. I think I’ll be removing the bed tables when the time comes so that the babies are in easy reach. Oh, and he’s hysterical with the diaper snaps. I bought a tool for hammering snaps onto the diapers to make them pin-less, and it is Chad’s job to “install” them. He loves pounding those things into place. Who knew? Thus far, we have two half-finished cradles and two dozen diapers. I have a feeling that might get us through one or two days of diapering maximum. I’ll be making a few dozen more. Mom says to make sure I make the next two sizes now while I have time, because I won’t once the babies arrive.

  Mom is here now. She’s been here for a week. Cheri came for a week last month, and we got the rest of the late tomatoes, the peaches and most of the berries canned. She worked hard, and as much as she grumbled at first, I think she liked it. She’s learned to spin as well as I can, but she has absolutely no interest in doing anything with the wool, no matter how much I try to teach her.

  We’ve been making clothes for me. I need them already. Mom said she didn’t show until her sixth month with Chris, but she said that he was a small baby anyway, and of course, there was just Chris growing. I love what we’ve made so far, and she found me several pairs of flannel lined maternity overalls for winter. They’re going to be great.

  Dr. Weisenberg says that everything—babies, placenta, my belly—is growing on schedule. I don’t have to have another ultrasound in November, but he does want one in December. He says we’ll be able to tell if they’re boys, girls, or one of each. I’m hoping for one of each myself, but I expect two boys. Chad wants us to find out. I am so excited that I can plan this! It’s so amazing that they can see inside!

  Willow pushed the journal away from her. Marianne was sleeping, the animals were all happy outdoors, and Chad was at work. It was a perfect night for fishing. She grabbed her phone and called Chad. “I want to go fishing.”

  “So go.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “As long as someone knows where to find you if you decide to sleepover with the fishes—not sleep with the fishes, that’s out of the question—but if you want a sleepover, I want to know about it.” Chad’s joke fell flat even as he made it.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Just have fun and bring home dinner.”

  Willow stuffed the phone in her pocket and grabbed a piece of paper. She wrote a note, grabbed her sweater and outdoor blanket, and slipped out the back door. Unlike most her previous dogs, Portia was content to lie quietly beside her as she fished. With rod and tackle box in hand, Willow whistled for her dog and took off toward her favorite fishing hole, the moon lighting her path as though shining just to make the walk pleasant for her.

  Retracing steps she’d made hundreds of times before, Willow slowly regained a natural rhythm of walking, praying, and just being with the Lord. However, by the time she arrived at her favorite tree, Willow had new thoughts swirling in her mind. Had her mother walked to the pool while carrying her? Did she fish back then? Her memory of Kari’s journals didn’t find answers to her questions, but the first year’s journals were much less prolific than subsequent years. Did her mother love the night air, the cool breezes, and the sound of water splashing over rocks a little ways downstream?

  For the next hour, Willow pounded heaven with questions about her mother that she’d never thought to ask before the news of her pregnancy. She prayed for wisdom, strength, and courage. Eventually, her prayers disappeared into daydreams until she curled up on the blanket, smiling as she pictured Chad teaching a little boy how to milk a goat or burn the trash. Her mind took her into the future with pictures of him explaining rainbows and why things are the colors they are. Small hands folded in earnest prayer for “daddy’s safety at work” tugged at blossoming maternal heartstrings, until Willow thought she’d go crazy waiting for the next thirty weeks to pass.

  Memories of little Ian nestled in her arms, his little fist curled around her finger, assaulted her emotions until it seemed nearly unbearable to wait. She chuckled at her own foolishness. Clearly, the hormonal excesses she’d been warned about were real. She felt like a crazed woman. The babies would come sooner than she’d be ready for them.

  Somewhere between her plans for a double crib and her last sip of water, Willow fell asleep. She dreamed of walking to town in a thunderstorm to give birth to two babies the size of toddlers. Chad drove as fast as he could behind her but never caught up to her, until she reached the doors of the hospital. Babies with teeth grinned at her from their bassinettes, while everyone commented on how tiny they were but reassuring her, it was “to be expected with twins.”

  Chad saw the note on the kitchen table and climbed the stairs to see if Willow was home yet or not. Seeing their empty bed, he made a quick sandwich and started off for the pool. He’d spent many nights out under the stars with Willow, fishing, talking, and sometimes sleeping. He’d find her under her favorite tree, curled on the blanket, and if experience taught him anything, with Portia standing—well most likely laying—guard over her.

  “She called Lord. She remembered. Maybe our little Mrs. Independence has finally gotten a handle on life with responsibilities toward other people.” He paused, hating how his words sounded aloud. “And I need to remember that someone who has spent most of her life alone needs that freedom from time to time. I’ll squash who she is if I keep expecting her to fit into the mold of my experience.”

  At the top of the hill before the descent to the stream, Chad paused. There, nestled beneath trees that had protected her for most of her life, Willow slept, Portia lying beside her as expected. The dog’s head rose at the sound of his movement and his scent on the breeze. She glanced in Chad’s direction and then laid her head back on her paws as though to say, “Well, you didn’t think I’d let anything happen to her, did you?”

  Chad nudged his wife. “Willow. Hey, lass, it’s time to wake up. You’ll sleep better in your bed.”

  She sat up blinking. “I guess I fell asleep.”

  “Catch anything?”

  Willow pointed to the bucket in the stream. “Half a dozen.” She glanced around. “Is it two already?”

  “Two-thirty.” He pulled her to her feet. “This is becoming a habit with us.”

  “What?” Willow grabbed her tackle box.

  “Finding you sleeping under a tree. It feels like it should be some kind of fairy tale.”

  “Sleeping Mommy.”

  Chapter 13 5

  December—

  Christmas is coming but we aren’t fattening any geese around Walden Farm. I think I’m doing all the fattening that is necessary. I’m huge. Seriously, I am amazingly rotund. Ok, I’m immensely rotund. At five months pregnant, my doctor says I am approximately the size of a woman who is around thirty-three weeks pregnant, even though I am only twenty-two weeks along.

  We saw the babies. They have fingers and toes, and you can see them on the screen. Oh was I relieved to have an ultrasound without that awful thing inside me. It was nice for Chad too. The doctor is certain that one of the babies is a boy. The other he thinks is a girl, but he isn’t sure. We were going to stay with Dr. Weisenberg, but he suggested we go to Dr. Kline in Brunswick. He didn’t feel comfortable with handling a twin birth with his current workload. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I assume he knows his business.

  Until I hear
d “a boy and a girl,” I hadn’t even imagined having one. Yes, I thought it might be nice, but I assumed that I’d have the two boys I’d always pictured and just brushed off the idea of a girl. Now… I picture a miniature version of my mother and Mom—Marianne—and I want her. I’ve made a few little feminine day gowns. Mom brought patterns for them, and I’ve been sewing and embroidering... Chad says I can’t put his son in a gown. I can’t imagine why (that was sarcasm for my captive audience of one). So, for little guy, I’ve been making “onesies” and using appliqués and such to feed my need to sew for my son as well. So far, Chad hasn’t been affronted by my creations. I’m working on baby quilts next. I think I’ll do a pink, a blue, and a green. If baby two isn’t a girl, I’ll have a quilt for him and a pink baby gift. If it is a she, then I’ll have green for either boy or girl—gift speaking again. Perfect.

  Chad laughs at how much white I’m sewing. He says that it’ll all be stained and ugly immediately, but I reminded him that bleach is the righter of all stained wrongs. I love white little baby things. I have white blankets, diapers, gowns, sleepers, and even “nursing gowns,” courtesy of Mom who seems to bring me a new gift every time she comes. The babies have toys, clothes, and books to please a dozen children. I have maternity clothes, nursing clothes, patterns, fabric, snacks, and things to pamper myself with like lotions, creams, and such. She visits me once a week for an afternoon, and we work on making baby scrapbooks, ready to insert pictures at will. It makes her happy, and all of the stress that had tried to root into our relationship has been ripped out. We’re back to who we were, and I love it. Mom is a wonderful woman and it feels like I have her back again.

  The babies move constantly—or so it seems. Honestly, I sit sometimes and stare at the way my stomach rolls one way or another. I eat and drink constantly. I can’t put much in me at one time so instead, I “graze,” as Chad puts it. Dr. Kline says that my weight gain is phenomenal. I thought that meant a lot, but apparently it means that I’m gaining exactly what is necessary to give these little tykes a good start and nothing more. He is optimistic about my ability to return to close to pre-pregnancy weight. I think I’m supposed to care a lot about that, but frankly, I’m too busy to worry if my backside is wider or my chest needs another increase in support. And it does. If I wasn’t unbalanced with the babies sitting in front, I would be by their bottles above. Oh, my word it’s amazing. Chad laughs. I can’t wait until I have some milk flowing and can squirt him in the eye. That’ll teach him.

  We did have a bit of an upset over the whole milk thing. He’d forgotten that Mother had supply problems, and I didn’t thrive at first. When I mentioned getting another goat around the time of the birth just in case, he came unhinged. Unglued. Flipped out. Freaked out. Lost it. Ummm, I know Cheri used more phrases but I’ve forgotten them. He brought home a can of formula and explained why we’d be using that instead. I opened it, poured it into a cup, took a sip, and spat it out across the room. Oh boy did we have a lovely argument that time…

  Chad, reading the journal, laughed at the recollection of Willow’s disgusted and indignant face. “I will not feed my child this nasty stuff until you are willing to drink it too. I can’t believe you’d even suggest it. Smell it!” she’d demanded thrusting the glass under his nose. He knew he’d lost the argument the moment he gagged at the smell.

  “I can’t feed my babies goat’s milk. I just can’t do it. It’s not—”

  “It’s good enough for me… and it was for me as a baby… it’s good enough for you… but it is bad for the babies?” Her voice had been full of surprise at that moment.

  “It’s just,” Chad remembered saying, as though he watched the scene all over again, “that we don’t boil the milk, we don’t—”

  “It doesn’t need to have all the vitamins and minerals boiled out of it. Why would we do that?”

  “But they’re just little babies, Willow! What if—”

  “I thrived on that stuff, Chad. Thrived. Do you think I want to risk my babies? Do you think I’d do anything to hurt them? Do you think Mother didn’t study everything she could to make the very best decision? Do we not live daily with the wisdom of those decisions?”

  He hadn’t liked to admit the strength and validity of her argument. After all, he was constantly telling people how wise Kari was, how knowledgeable, and how their success was largely dependent upon all the research she’d done for them over the years she’d lived on the farm. However, the idea of feeding his babies raw goat’s milk just seemed irresponsible. He chalked it up to a lifetime of indoctrination regarding things of that nature and promised to discuss it with the pediatrician.

  This sent them off into a whole new discussion that they’d never considered. Doctor visits, well baby check-ups, and vaccinations became hotly debated topics until they both exhausted. Finally, Willow made an appointment with a pediatrician that both Dr. Kline and Dr. Weisenberg recommended, and the resulting consultation left both Willow and Chad confused, uncertain, and a bit chagrined. Dr. Wesley, a tiny woman with bright red hair and the greenest eyes either of them had ever seen, assured Chad that many pediatricians recognized goat’s milk as an excellent food for babies over six weeks old, and discussed what she considered to be the biggest flaws in formula. Happy to hear Willow planned to nurse her babies as long as humanly possible, she assured both parents that whether they supplemented with nothing, with goat’s milk, or with formula, as long as the babies could digest what was fed, developed no sensitivities to it, and thrived, she would approve any of the three choices.

  Chad was relieved. Somehow, a doctor’s validation of Kari’s research made him more willing to endure what he knew would be a cry of protest if the necessity ever arose. His family simply wouldn’t understand. However, his concerns about well-baby checks were also validated. Willow considered them unnecessary and asking for trouble. She was concerned about constant exposure to germs in a doctor’s office where sick children waited in the same room as well children, were seen in the same rooms as well children, and for what? Measurements? Weight gain? Willow was certain she could handle any of those things at home.

  Dr. Wesley disagreed. She discussed the tendency of one twin to be smaller, of slightly increased speech and motor skill delays and assured Willow that she’d be happy to take the twins as the first children of the day on their visits if germs were a concern. Chad had sighed in relief when Willow nodded and said, “As long as we can leave through the back door, I guess.”

  They were still at an impasse in regards to vaccinations. Chad insisted on none at birth. When he heard of the Hepatitis B vaccine at birth, he was adamantly opposed to it giving Willow the false impression that he’d be opposed to most of the shots suggested. She’d endured the Rubella shot when the titer came back negative for antibodies for the sake of the babies, but she saw no reason for them to have the shots while their immune systems were still developing. Chad disagreed. He was, however, adamant that there be no shots before age four months. When asked why, he couldn’t give a coherent answer, but to Willow’s way of thinking, it just gave her that many more months to convince him to avoid them all together.

  They filled evenings with debates on car seats, scheduled feeding, and diapers. Often one of them took the role of devil’s advocate for the sheer joy of the discussion finally admitting that they were in full agreement with the other. Chad was waiting for Willow to return from her fourth trip to the bathroom since supper before he brought up the next topic of debate. He was sure she wasn’t expecting it and she wouldn’t like it but on this one, Chad was determined. There wasn’t an option in his mind.

  Willow waddled down the stairs, her favorite top stretched taught across her immense, in his opinion anyway, belly. Already she had to put her foot up on a chair to tie her shoes, but the babies had hardly slowed her down at all. She worked from sun up till sundown, slept like a log, and rose the next morning fresh and eager for more. Dr. Kline had warned him that by the end of February, she’d be
slowing down much more than she thought she would.

  “Beating up the bladder tonight are they?”

  “Yep. If I didn’t need the water so badly, I’d quit drinking it and save myself the trouble.” She sank into the couch awkwardly and then put her feet up on the arm leaning into his chest with her back. “Ahhh that feels good. Hey, I had an idea about names.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think we should choose boy and girl names with the same initials. That way, I can monogram their clothing and if they look a lot alike, we won’t mix them up.”

  “You want to monogram their clothing?” Only Willow would think of it. “Isn’t that a bit- um… formal?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t make it look like those towels we got for the wedding… I was thinking about cute little letters that looks babyish or fits the style of the outfit. Just a little monogram on the pocket or the bottom of the feet.”

  “Well, it would help,” Chad teased, “in reducing the options of names anyway. Did you have any idea of initials you wanted to use?”

  “I was thinking one could be CWT and the other WCT. Chad and Willow. Cute?”

  “I like, it but I wanted to name a girl after our mothers and you.”

  “Since when?” For the past six weeks, he’d been throwing out every name under the planet and not one was a family name.

  “I thought of it yesterday. We could name her Karianne Olivia after you, Mother, Mom, and Aunt Libby—I just thought of the Aunt Libby part.”

  “I like that…”

  “What were you thinking boy wise? There could be two boys in there you know…”

  “But Dr. Kline said he thought the other one was a girl.” Willow was confused.

  “Well, ultrasounds are more accurate than they used to be, but they’re only as accurate as they can see. He’s certain one is a boy, but he’s guessing on the girl because he didn’t see um—” Chad winked at her flushing face, “evidence of a boy.”