No One’s Day

By Deadly Chakram <dwelf82@yahoo.com>

Rated: PG

Submitted: May, 2018

Summary: For some, Mother’s Day brings sorrow, not joy.

Story Size: 6,140 words (33Kb as text)

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I make nothing. All Superman characters, plot points, and recognizable dialogue belong to DC Comics, Warner Bros., December 3rd Productions and anyone else with a stake in the Superman franchise. All Batman characters, plot points, and otherwise belong to DC Comics, Warner Bros., and anyone else with a stake in the Batman franchise. I’m just borrowing their toys for a little while.

***

No one.

That’s who I get to celebrate this year.

No one.

Mom’s gone.

Six months ago, Mom was killed in a head on collision when a drunk driver veered across the center line and into oncoming traffic. She died instantly, and for that, at least, I can be thankful for. She didn’t linger on in pain for hours or days on end. There was no wasting away hooked up to a dozen or so machines doing all of the “living” for her. Ellen Lane had been stubborn in life, and I knew without a doubt that my mother would have hated being stuck on life support. So, odd as it felt to admit it, it was better that her life had come to a sudden, instantaneous end. Lucy hadn’t thought so. When I mistakenly mentioned that our mother would have preferred not to have lingered on in pain, Lucy had stormed out, calling me “a monster” for thinking that way. I haven’t heard from her since, and that argument was nearly six months ago, just after Mom had been laid to rest.

Now I’m a motherless child and it hurts in ways I never expected it to.

It wasn’t like Mom and I had ever been exceptionally close. As far as mothers and daughter went, we didn’t share the kind of bond that most people seemed to have. Mushy cards that waxed poetic about how “Mom, you’ve taught me so much and I appreciate all the little things you did to make my childhood magical” just didn’t ring true for me. We didn’t have fun mother/daughter lunch date or shopping trips or pampering days where we went out and got pedicures together. Instead, lunch dates with my mother were…trying, at best, for a long time. We just didn’t see eye-to-eye. Part of that, I know, was born out of my own resentment toward her. Growing up, she wasn’t the PTA mom, or the soccer mom, or the mom who ran the bake sales. She worked long and often grueling hours at the hospital – which I never begrudged her, even if I had wished that she had been around more often. I longed for someone to look over my homework and tell me that I’d done a good job. I wanted home-cooked meals. I hated being a ‘latch-key kid’ for as far back as I could remember. But I understood how much it meant to Mom to be able to work as a nurse. I knew she loved her career with a blazing passion. And, in time, I grew to enjoy the time to myself. Well…mostly to myself. I had to care for my younger sister after all.

No, my resentment didn’t stem from Mom being a working mother. It came from the glass bottles she always brought home with her – whiskey, vodka, tequila, beer, wine, bourbon, rum, gin, it didn’t matter. She drank it all – straight up or in a mixed drink, neat or on the rocks, she didn’t discriminate. It came from the reeking fumes that would surround her when she consumed those bottles. It came from how downright mean the drinking made her. It came from every pinprick each new criticism she made caused. It came from the way she would argue with my father – even if I didn’t quite blame her for hating him. I’ve been cheated on too – not by a husband, but by men who I only thought loved me, and it hurts beyond words.

I tried to look past her faults. But as time went on, it got harder and harder to do, until her drinking got so bad that she was never sober. She nearly lost her job at the hospital. She lost her marriage. She alienated Lucy and me. For a time, I didn’t talk to Mom at all. All I could see was all the ways in which she was broken or faulty or had failed as a mother.

All of that combined forced Mom to shape up. She finally pulled her head out of her perpetual drunken stupor and started trying to sober up. I kept my distance still, choosing to protect my own heart when she had her expected slip ups. But, finally, she went to rehab, dried up, and started attending AA meetings. Mom is nothing if not stubborn. She fought tooth and nail to stay sober, leaving alcohol firmly in the past. But still, I couldn’t go running back to her. I was too afraid of being disappointed if she slipped back into her old habits. But she didn’t. She stayed on the wagon and slowly, bit by bit, I allowed myself to open up to her again and resumed having a relationship with her.

It took a long time before I felt like I could fully trust her again. But the damage was already done, and no amount of time could make me forget all the hurts she’d caused. I forever kept my guard up around her, even if, as the years went by, my protective walls grew smaller and smaller until they were all but ankle-high. Clark…Clark was just so instrumental in that. It was because of him that I learned to trust fully in someone again. And that spilled over into all areas of my life. If I could trust my heart to someone…if I could believe that Superman, who could easily have anyone in the entire world if he so desired it, would never hurt my heart, surely I could believe that my family could change and be people I could have faith in again.

I’m glad I had those years with my mom. I’m glad I was able to mend my relationship with her. Time is precious. We don’t get to have “do-overs” or turn back time because we squandered our moments or didn’t fully appreciate what we had. We get just one shot at life. We have to remember to look at all we have and be thankful for it, even in the worst of situations. We have to learn to look past what we can and give second chances when they are deserved. I’m just glad that I figured that out before it was too late.

But now I sit here on Mother’s Day. And I’m lost.

I can’t pick up the phone and hear my mother’s husky voice. I can’t ask for her advice on things. I can’t roll my eyes over some nitpicky little thing she’s chosen to complain about. I didn’t get to go to the store and pore over the cards, looking for just the right saying to get my feelings across. There’s not going to be a Mother’s Day dinner where Mom complains about the Metropolis traffic. I didn’t have a reason to go and pick out just the right token of my appreciation to her for giving me life. The only flowers I chose didn’t go in a vase on her kitchen table. They went on a cold patch of dirt on the first green blades of spring grass out in the cemetery where we buried her.

There’s still Martha, but, it’s different. I love Clark’s mother to death. I really do. She’s the kind of mother I always wished I had. But…she’s not my mother. I’ll call her later, of course, or Clark will fly us out to Kansas for the night. Or I might just send him alone. I’m not in a celebrating mood. Losing Mom has only made this day feel pointless.

***

Once again, it’s No One’s Day.

Five years.

For five long years, Clark and I have been trying to conceive a child.

For five long years, every test I’ve taken has come back a mocking, stock white negative. Or impersonally blaring two digital words – “Not Pregnant.”

For five long years, I’ve cried myself to sleep.

It’s odd. I never thought of myself as a mother. Oh, part of me always figured that I’d win my Pulitzer, meet a guy, get married, and maybe consider having a child. But I never truly considered myself as mother material. After all, I didn’t exactly have the greatest role model to look to as an example. If I had a maternal bone in my body, I feared it would be as damaged as my mother’s had always seemed to be. How could it not be?

And then, Clark waltzed into my life and turned my world upside down and inside out in the best way. Suddenly, I had a reason to want to get married. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t yet won my Pulitzer, though Clark and I are still chasing that dream. Love and a family became a larger than life goal for me. But children? I still wasn’t so sure that I was ever meant to be a mother, until I learned to fully trust my heart to Clark. If Clark could see that I’d make a good mother, how could I be anything but that? After all, I’ve never once doubted that he’d be the greatest father in the world.

But we still wanted to wait a little and enjoy some time together as a couple before we even thought about expanding our family. That is, until we realized one day that we hadn’t been as cautious as we usually were. Suddenly, there was this potential in the air that maybe, in our passion, we’d created another little life. Instead of the fear I’d always imagined would come, I felt…excitement. Anticipation. Hope. Peace. Even if we hadn’t planned to get pregnant right then, I was more than okay with it if it happened. So I let myself dream, even if some of my anxieties turn them into absurd nightmares. I let myself hope, even though I still harbored some lingering doubts about how good a mother I might be.

And we waited. Two grueling long weeks passed before I could take what would become the first of countless home pregnancy tests. Two grueling weeks before my heart was broken for the first time. And while we counted down each day before we could test, Clark saw Dr. Klein for the most awkward conversation and battery of tests he’s ever had to undergo. The news that Dr. Klein gave him shattered Clark and punched a hole in my gut.

Incompatible for reproduction.

So coldly worded, even if the good doctor was trying his best to let Clark down easily. So sterile. So utterly devoid of hope.

I didn’t want to believe him, so I tested anyway. Tested and had my fears confirmed. And it hurt more than I ever would have believed it would have. Because, strange as it seems, hearing that we couldn’t have kids made what few doubts I had left vanish. Suddenly, I knew, without any hesitation, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I wanted children. I felt it with such conviction that I had to wonder how I’d ever once second guessed my ability to want and love a child. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was a knee-jerk reaction – like when you’re told you can’t have ice cream and suddenly develop a craving for it simply because it’s being denied to you. But it wasn’t. This was real. It didn’t go away as time passed, it only got stronger. This need to have a child was something that felt written into my very DNA. It became as necessary as breathing. It became a desire so strong that I gladly would have traded never winning any journalistic awards ever again if I could only give Clark a son or daughter to love.

Choosing our next steps was easy. We would continue to actively try to conceive, using any and all methods that could possibly give us an advantage – ovulation kits, temperature charting, cycle charting, anything. In the meantime, we would throw our hat into the adoption ring as well. Both of us were hyper-aware of how long and complex a process it could be. But we both also knew that our records were spotless and that we should be perfect candidates as adoptive parents. What neither of us expected was how quickly that dream would die. Before we could even so much as let our hopes take wing, we were denied because of me and my stupid impulsiveness which, yes, has gotten me into a scrape or two with criminals. But it’s not like I want to have my life threatened every now and again!

So began our nightmare down the path of infertility.

Month after month, I’d dutifully bide my time, waiting to test. Month after month, I’d get up before Clark and sneak into the bathroom to take one of the tests I had squirreled away where I knew he’d never look. I knew he would never be angry that I had so many tests lying in wait. But I didn’t want that constant reminder for him of what we were being denied. He felt guilty enough and he blamed himself for our struggle. But I never blamed him. I still don’t. It’s not his fault that he was born on a different planet. It’s not his fault that our genetics aren’t meant to create new life.

After a year, I let it slip to my doctor that we had been trying, obviously without any luck. She referred me to a reproductive specialist, and in my stubbornness to believe that it was just bad luck rather than incompatible genetics that had prevented us from having a child, I agreed to go. Months of needles and ultrasounds and invasive testing and appointments later, and the doctor could find nothing wrong. “Unexplained infertility” became our official diagnosis, though Clark and I both knew what was amiss. We were offered a list of options – intrauterine insemination, in vitro, donor eggs, donor sperm, donor embryos, and even surrogacy.

Arguments started between Clark and me. I wanted to try whatever we could. I wanted a child. I wanted to make him a father. And he kept circling back to Dr. Klein’s diagnosis – that Kryptonian DNA was incapable of merging with that of an Earthling. Why waste our time and money, for something that would never be able to help us? But I could see that it took a great effort for him to reject the treatments. He was ready to do whatever was necessary for us to bring a child into the world, but he didn’t want me to offer up my body to such grueling treatments only to have our hopes crushed.

Finally, we negotiated a plan to move forward. We didn’t have the heart to use a donor embryos, eggs, or sperm. It would hurt too much to carry a child that wasn’t both of ours. In a very real way, carrying a child born from someone else’s DNA felt like we’d be cheating on each other. If we were to have a child that wasn’t genetically linked to both of us, we would much rather open our hearts and our home to a child through adoption, if only we could find an agency that was willing to consider us. Surrogacy was just too dangerous – what if we did make a child but the baby’s Kryptonian genetics somehow manifested in the womb? The risk was far too great to even consider the option.

So we settled on trying two rounds of in vitro – the maximum covered by our health insurance. It was our hope that the medical intervention would somehow force our DNA to combine, even if it was not what nature would otherwise allow for. We should have known better. I should have known better. Months of punishing hormone injections, what felt like scores of monitoring ultrasounds, a harried schedule that was the epitome of “hurry up and wait” and we had nothing to show for it. Not a single embryo was created. We had nothing to transfer to my womb. We’d been through an emotional, spiritual, physical, and yes, even financial hell, all for naught.

No hopes. No dreams. No prayers.

I’ve never felt so broken before in all my life.

I’ve never been so depressed.

I’ve never questioned my own self-worth so hard, ever.

Shattered.

Broken.

Heartsick.

Useless.

The list of words to describe how I felt seemed endless, and not a single one of them was, in any way, positive.

In the meantime, we pushed ahead with our pursuit of adoption, finding other agencies who we hoped would be more lenient toward our somewhat risky profession. And we found a few who seemed willing to work with us. We chose the one who made us feel the most comfortable and tried to prepare ourselves for what was to come. But nothing could have fully prepared us for what was in store for us. The home inspections. The prying, personal questions we were asked about just about every aspect of our lives. The waiting. The way our hearts leapt into our throats every time the phone rang, hoping it was the call, letting us know there was a baby waiting for us.

Three years into our wait, and we finally got the call. A newly pregnant woman had been matched with us. Clark immediately flew us down to Virginia to meet with her. My nerves were frayed throughout that entire first meeting. I wanted nothing more than to impress her, and for her to say yes, she wanted us to be the parents of her son. To my eternal amazement, before that first meeting was through, she chose us. For the first time in years, I slept soundly that night.

Our joy wasn’t meant to last. I’ve heard it said that “Men plan and God laughs.” Clark and I planned and planned. We had the nursery all set up. We stocked the closet with diapers and wipes. We bought cases of formula and sterilized all of the bottles. We picked out outfits and set aside the one our son would wear on his way home. We had his name picked out. We were ready and the silence of the phone mocked us as we waited for the call that Jenna’s labor had begun.

At 40 weeks and 3 days, Clark’s cell phone finally rang while we were coming home from shopping for a few last baby items. But it wasn’t joyful news. The somber voice of our lawyer greeted us. We knew, just from the way he said “hello” that something was devastatingly wrong. Jenna had gone into labor and had required an emergency C-section overnight. At first, we thought that was why he sounded so apologetic. We’d hoped to be there for the birth. But he wasn’t finished. Jenna had taken one look at her child and called the adoption off. She couldn’t bear the thought of giving up her sweet son, Eric – as she’d come to name him, a far cry from Jonathan Samuel, as we had planned to call him.

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. The world started to spin violently and I felt lightheaded and sick. I crashed to the sidewalk, tearing up my knees in the process, but I felt no pain and really wasn’t even aware that I was no longer standing. I was aware, on the other hand, of how I screamed as my heart was destroyed, just before I threw up. Clark ended the call on the spot; later I would feel bad for our lawyer when I realized that Clark had terminated the call as the man was speaking. Then Clark was at my side, helping me to stand on legs that no longer wished to work, carrying me to the steps outside of our home, asking me over and over if I was okay as he held me close and I sobbed into his broad, strong chest. His big hand stroked the back of my head as he tried to impart some comfort, but all I could do was cry out my grief as hope finally fully died in my heart.

It’s been almost a year now and I still can’t think about it without crying. I thought it would get easier with time, and maybe it will, in the distant future. I still keep his ultrasound photos on the corner of my dresser, tucked carefully away in a keepsake box my mom once bought for me. So his pictures are out of sight, but never far from my mind. But as much as my heart is broken, I don’t hate Jenna for choosing to keep him. I’ve always believed that a child belongs with their biological parents so long as it’s safe for them to be there. But I still mourn his loss all the same. He was never placed in my arms. I’ve never seen his perfect face in person or in pictures. I never got to kiss his tiny hands or sing him a lullaby. I never will.

And it hurts.

Oh, God, does it hurt!

I sit here on this supposedly happy day; a special day to recognize mothers, with empty arms and an even emptier heart.

There’s no day for those who have lost a parent.

There’s no recognition for those who want a child more than anything in the world, but who aren’t able to for circumstances beyond their control.

No one remembers the motherless children.

No one thinks about the mothers without children.

And I wonder if this day will ever be pain free for me again.

***

No one.

That’s what I feel like today.

No one.

Another Mother’s Day is here.

Eight years have blown by like so much sand in the wind.

Eight years of failure.

I’m no closer to being a mother than I was when Clark and I first got married.

I’ve almost become numb to the pain and heartache that stems from that. Almost. Maybe I would be…except for the cruelty of the universe. Because, you see, I know what it’s like to be pregnant.

Four months ago, while on an uneventful stakeout, Clark and I managed to create new life. We weren’t even trying – we’d long ago stopped keeping track of when I had a chance of ovulating. It was simply too emotionally draining to get our hopes up anymore. We’d both lost all hope of ever conceiving a baby and after what happened with the adoption, we shied away from even that path to parenthood. We were done with the toll trying to have a baby had taken on our lives, making intimacy more of a chore than something we enjoyed. So we gave up, freeing ourselves from the pressure we’d always felt. And still, nothing came of it. I’m not sure what changed, that last time. Maybe God or fate or the universe finally decided to give us a break…or one last inhumane joke.

Clark casually noticed that I was fairly late for my cycle. The next day was Jimmy’s wedding, and I felt obligated to take a test, just in case, before I spent the evening in a place where the alcohol would be flowing freely. So I took the test into the bathroom, did what I needed, then set it aside to give it time to work. I’d nearly forgotten about it as I got ready for the day, until Clark went into the bathroom, only to come running back out, shaking like a leaf.

“Lois,” he said, his eyes unblinking and a look of wonderment on his face that I’d never seen before. “You’re…you’re,” he stuttered. He held up the test and I was ready to dismiss it until I saw something I’d never seen outside of movies and television shows. A plus sign.

It had been years since I’d last cried over our chances of becoming parents.

I bawled the hardest in my life when Jenna had chosen to keep her son.

To say we celebrated would be an understatement. Clark is almost always in a jovial mood but this? There isn’t a word to describe how blissful he looked. He was the very embodiment of hope and love. And so was I. I wanted to scream from the rooftops that we finally had a baby on the way, that no one could yank away from us at the last moment. I wanted the whole world to know my ecstasy and to celebrate with me. I wanted to run to the stores and pick out things for the baby and start poring over baby name books once again. With shaking hands, I called and made my first prenatal appointment for the following week.

We took the morning off that day and nearly floated our way through Metropolis to the doctor’s office. Clark would have been floating, save for his superhuman restraint and the occasional reminder from me. I held my breath as my doctor got the ultrasound wand into position. A moment later, the most divine sound in all the world filled the room, matching the beautiful flickering we saw on the screen.

Our baby’s heartbeat.

It was to be the first and last time we ever got to see or hear it.

A month later, I awoke in the middle of the night to the worst pain I’ve ever felt and in a pool of my own blood.

I screamed, waking Clark so suddenly and violently that he fell out of bed. He took one look and rushed me to the ER, flying me there in his plainclothes in his panic. But we both knew it was too late. Our baby was gone.

I didn’t cope well with our loss. For two weeks I was barely more than a zombie. I barely ate; I had no appetite. I slept too little; each time I dozed I would be transported back to that same nightmare night. I got out of bed only to use the bathroom and shower, and even that was a struggle.

But mostly, I beat myself up for what had happened. I blamed myself. I questioned everything I’d done since the moment that test came back positive. Had I done something wrong, that made my body reject my unborn son or daughter? Was there anything different I could have done? Had I missed some kind of warning sign that should have prompted me to get to the doctor earlier? Could I have saved my baby?

Of course, the answer was no. The doctors in the hospital, and my regular OB/GYN both told me the same thing; “Sometimes, these things happen.” There was nothing that I could have done differently. I was in no way responsible for what had happened. In fact, it was fairly common for miscarriages to occur in the early stages of pregnancy, and that they typically stemmed from something no one could control, like a genetic condition within the developing baby that was incompatible with life.

Incompatible.

There was that ugly word again.

I’d doomed my baby the moment I’d gotten pregnant. Dr. Klein had warned us that Kryptonian and Earthling DNA could never mesh and create a child.

The doctor’s assurances went in one ear and out the other. I hated myself. And I felt so incredibly isolated. I’d been part of the sobering statistic of 1 in 8 who deals with some kind of infertility. Now I was part of the 1 in 4 who lost a baby before they could be born. Both of those percentages meant that I was part of a large group of people who’d travelled a similar road. But I still felt like no one could possibly understand the pain in my heart, the pain in Clark’s heart.

Empty.

I still feel empty inside, like a piece of my soul departed from me when my baby died.

I’m still dealing with the fact that going through an experience like this doesn’t brand me with an outward symbol showing the world what I lost. It’s hard not to lash out with a sharp tongue at those who have innocently wished me a “Happy Mother’s Day!” over the last few days. It’s harder still not to break down in tears over those same well wishes. And it takes all the restraint that I have not to show how much it hurts when “well-meaning” people pry into my life and ask if I have children or “remind” me that the “old biological clock is ticking for a woman in her late thirties.” I have to bite my tongue when older women tsk tsk at my childless status and asked in a somewhat horrified tone “don’t you want to give your husband children?” And I just want to rage against God and the universe and scream that I’ve done my damnedest to fight the biology that has made it impossible for us to have a baby.

Two grainy ultrasound photos are all I have to remember my baby by. Two snapshots of a little white blob nestled into the corner of a black sea of amniotic fluid is the only evidence I have to prove that this child once existed. No one can see the scars I bear on my heart. No one knows that I’ve lost two babies, or that I have nowhere to go to visit with them. I don’t have visitations with the son I never got to know. There is no gravestone to sit by when I want to feel close to the child I once carried, because there was nothing left to bury.

And I wonder when I’ll ever have a dry-eyed Mother’s Day again.

***

Mother’s Day.

Can it really be?

Is this just a dream?

If it is, I don’t want to wake up. Because this dream has been ten years in the making.

Ten years.

It all seems like such a blur now, gone with the speed of Superman as he tears apart the sound barrier.

The pain in my heart has vanished, though the memory of it lingers in the shadows. Now my heart, like my arms, is full to bursting. I have joy like I never once dared to hope for. I cry tears of fulfillment and happiness, instead of the heartbroken tears of dead dreams and non-existent hope.

A sleeping bundle in my left arm, with perfectly even breathing and the occasional brow furrowed as she dreams. A wakeful bundle in my right arm, with a yawn as big as the full moon outside the nursery window.

My girls.

How is that possible?

After ten years of trying every way under the sun to have a child, how did one weekend away in Vermont result in a very unplanned-for twin pregnancy?

I almost don’t want to ask that question. I’m just too overjoyed that it happened. I don’t need to know the why or the how or the reasoning behind God’s decision to end the despair in our hearts. I’m too busy being thankful. I’m too busy enjoying every second with these two perfect miracles. And that’s exactly what they are – miracles. There’s no other word I can use to describe them – the half Kryptonian, half Earthling children that were never supposed to exist.

As soon as I knew that I was pregnant – for the second time in my life – I was plagued with terror. I was robbed of my happiness and hopefulness because I couldn’t bear the thought that I might lose these children too. I lived in a state of absolute panic until I could finally feel them wiggling and squirming within my womb. I made Clark check for their heartbeats every chance we had. I felt like I was walking on a tightrope covered in shards of glass, stretched out over a bottomless crevice, and I couldn’t see even the barest hint of the other side. And even once I could feel their acrobatics myself, I still worried. It wasn’t until they were safely in my arms that I finally felt free of the constant fear that something would go wrong.

And now they are here, safe and snug in my arms as I rock them to sleep. I know they should be laying in their cribs, sleeping as much as they can before they wake for their next meal. I know that I should be sleeping as much as possible before I begin to nurse them again. And part of me does want to sleep; I get precious little as it is these days. But I can’t put them down. I can’t stop staring at their tiny, perfect faces. I can’t stop marveling at every little breath they take. I can’t stop being in complete awe of their itty-bitty hands and the sparse, wispy hair on their heads. I’m intoxicated by the sight of them, by the sounds they make, by the way they smell after a warm bath and a fresh diaper.

I wish my mother had lived to meet her granddaughters. As harsh as she could sometimes be, she would have melted in their presence. I can imagine the love she would have felt for these two little girls. Even the mighty Ellen Lane could not have found any fault with these two bundles of Heaven-sent perfection.

I’m still new to this motherhood thing. Sure, I read all the books. I watched all the videos. But twins are a bit of a different ballpark then the glowing images everyone paints of parenting one baby at a time. And I’m still very new to all of this; I never had the benefit of learning to care for one child before being placed in the twin parenting arena. Even at five months old, I’m still getting the hang of being a mommy. I still call Martha every day – sometimes more than once – to ask for advice or her opinion on something. I still feel like a burden when I do, but having her reassurances is something I need right now. I know she’s happy to impart what child-rearing wisdom she has. But I still wish I could call up my own mother and ask for her take on things too. For the first time in a long time, I feel lost without her. Until my daughters were born, I’d learned to live with Mom’s absence. Oh, I still had moments where I’d go to pick up the phone to wish her a Merry Christmas or tell her about some exciting investigation Clark and I were working on. But I never quite felt lost, not having her around. I guess motherhood has made me more sentimental than I thought I could be.

So I sit here alone in the late hours of my very first Mother’s Day, while Clark makes his nightly patrol over the city, and I silently miss my mother, despite how absolutely magical Clark made today be for me. But my babies offset that sadness with the absolute bliss and joy I feel at being their mommy. And I smile a secret smile as I wonder if I can pull off the surprise gift I want to give Clark next month for Father’s Day – that he’s no longer a daddy just to two little girls, but to the baby – or babies! Because if lightning struck once, who is to say that it didn’t again – who will be joining our family in another eight months or so.

“When it rains, it pours,” as the old saying goes.

But this time, the storm is healing and full of promise. I won’t seek shelter from it. Instead, I will happily dance in the deluge and enjoy every moment of it. I won’t forget the difficult journey to get to this point in our lives. I couldn’t forget, even if I wanted to, and I never want to. I want to hold onto those humbling memories of when life had me at my lowest points, and I want to use them to inspire me. I want to find ways to spread optimism to other women who have walked my path, so that they can hold on to the hope that one day Mother’s Day will be theirs to celebrate too.

But for today, I’m just enjoying the fact that it’s no longer “no one’s day” in my mind. I’m enjoying Mother’s Day at long last.

THE END