“Not even a postcard,” Grandma Althea said.
“Emily always wanted to believe the worst in people,” Aunt Linda explained.
The DNA kit also helped me finally find the other tree this splinter came from. My father, unsurprisingly, is the lead singer in a Grateful Dead tribute band.
He still tours the States despite being in his late seventies, and we see each other whenever he’s in the area, but he isn’t ready to stop being a rolling stone yet. If I’m being honest, I’m pretty sure that, at some point, I’ll find out I have a few more paternal siblings out there.
Nowadays, until our new house is completed, birthday parties and special events in the Hawkins household have to be held at the clubhouse, because our backyard can’t accommodate all of our friends and relatives, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. I'm especially thrilled that Susan is now able to come stay with us from time to time.
I feel a pang of discomfort in my lower back, so I lean against the door.
“Do you need to sit down?” Dylan asks with genuine concern.
“I’m okay. Standing is becoming increasingly difficult these days, and I still have about a month to go,” I tell him with what I like to believe is a reassuring smile.
“Do you think you’ll have more after this one?”
I take a moment to think about it. “I don’t know. Three seems like the perfect number, and they’re spaced out so nicely. But who knows, maybe once this one’s feet start stinking, I’m going to start craving another little one,” I laugh.
This is my third pregnancy, but it never stops being special, not even if I had ten more. Which isn’t out of the realm of possibility for my husband and me.
My husband, I think, swoonily.
Exactly three months after The Accident (as it has come to be known in our family), Hawk asked me to marry him. Three months after that, we said I do in front of our friends and club members.
The first two years of our relationship haven’t always been easy for Hawk, and I feel deep shame whenever I remember my mistrust or the many emotional outbursts I subjected him to, especially during our first pregnancy and postpartum.
Therapy helped, but the main factor in my healing was Hawk's infinite patience and his ability to always reassure and comfort me. There is no limit to what he would do for me and our children.
“You’re the woman for me, the one I’d choose always and over everything. If two out of our twenty, thirty years together are hard, I don’t mind,” he told me once.
As if conjured, my handsome husband opens the front door to bring DJ’s bags out, all the while dispensing sage parental advice.
“Even if they’re delicious, I still wouldn’t eat them.”
DJ looks dejected. “Daddy, do you agree with Pop that we shouldn’t eat boogers?”
Dylan widens his eyes in horror, and I bury my face in Hawk’s chest to hide my laughter. “Yeah, buddy… No booger sandwiches, please.”
“Where’s Mandy?” I ask.
“Napping,” Hawk says, rubbing my lower back.
Having our little girl has been another piece in the puzzle of healing. Loving all the parts that make her who she is has made me love myself more. It has made me see that I was never the problem; it was the limited emotional capacity of those around me that was.
Yoda told me I had to model good and healthy behaviors for her. “If you want her to believe that she deserves everything, you have to believe it for yourself, too,” she said.
“Your brother has the hiccups,” I tell DJ as soon as I notice, and he rushes over to feel it, since it’s his favorite thing.
I’m so proud of the big brother he is. I hug him tightly, and I want to cry. He looks so big in his new cut, all ready for his camping trip with Dad.
“Call me every night, okay?”
“Gee, Riss, it’s a week, he’s not going off to war,” Dylan says good-naturedly.
Hawk laughs. “I think she’ll break her own record of how many patches she can make in a week.”
He’s beaming with pride as he says it.
