If We Make It Through December

Monday December 3, 2012

Hello my precious Shelby and Dalton,

I'm sitting here tonight, watching my Baylor boy, Robert Griffin III leading his Redskins on Monday Night Football against the New York Giants.  He is a phenomenal athlete and seems to be of good character.  His parents are still together, which probably has quite a bit to do with his maturity and composure.  He is the face of Baylor.  Sometimes, it seems so bizarre, as he wasn't even born when I started my days at Baylor, he was born during the second semester of my freshman year.  I can still remember when he won the Heisman trophy, the ceremony was on Saturday December 10, 2 days before my ultrasound.  So many of those "milestone" days are rushing at us over the coming weeks.  I couldn't believe how your images appeared on the ultrasounds, that we could see every detail of your precious and seemingly perfect bodies.  We really were blissfully ignorant, naively thinking that we made it through the 1st trimester and everything looked so good.  I must admit, neither your Daddy nor I were paying super close attention to the 4 factors that contribute to premature labor when the maternal/fetal medicine specialist detailed them.  I remember high blood pressure (which I never had), age of the mother (guilty of frittering away so much of our lives), and discord between twin weights (more than 20%, which you never measured until the day you were born), but I don't know the 4th factor.  It really didn't seem like premature labor would be something that we'd be dealing with, but how horribly wrong we were.  Thirty-one days after that ultrasound, you were both gone.

We somehow made it through Thanksgiving, and stayed sober.  We both know alcohol offers no solutions, sometimes it just numbs the pain.  We didn't even get to that point on Thanksgiving.  Daddy had 1 beer, which he left on the counter half full, and then 1 gin and tonic, again leaving half of it in the glass.  I had 2 small glasses of red wine, I poured a glass for Daddy at dinner, he didn't even take 1 sip.  That was it.  Our mothers were both pretty mellow, and there were no major issues.  Grandma Nancy said grace, and your Uncle Ryan surprised us by initiating the hand-holding during the blessing.  Your Aunt Violet is scared to death of Ike, and he senses that, so therefore whenever she holds your cousin Emily, Ike loses his mind.  However, when Grandma Kay or Ryan or I hold Emily, Ike is just fine.  He even laid quietly on the sofa while Emily scratched his head.  I wish I could tell Violet to relax, that Ike is a big cream puff.

I think you were visiting on Thanksgiving.  Emily was in her high chair between your Grandpa Joe and her Momma.  She looked up behind her Momma, up toward the ceiling.  She clenched her fist twice, as if she was waving and then she looked directly at me, as if to say "Your babies are here."

Last night, as we were falling asleep, your Daddy asked God to let us dream about you.  Well, I had a dream that featured Shelby.  It was the weirdest thing, in the dream, we were eating at one of those major breakfast chains (we rarely eat at places like this), there was a big group of us.  When I went to pay the bill, there was a black lady at the checkout stand.  She said to me, "I have a message for you from that little girl."  I asked "What little girl?"  She said "That little girl, didn't you see her?  She came in and was standing by your table for a bit.  Then she came up here and asked me to give you a message.  She said "Tell her Shelby says Hi".  Apparently in the dream, there was more to the message, something along the lines of "Everything's good", but when I woke up, I couldn't remember specifically the exact words.  Then, when I was in Albertson's later, I was waiting for the lady to bring me a new bag of romaine lettuce, and I could have sworn they paged for a Shelby.  During Daddy's flight this morning, he said there was a couple sitting in front of him with a baby boy who was about 6 months old and that baby just kept staring and staring at Daddy.  Had y'all been full-term, you would have been about 7 months old.  Maybe that baby met you when you got to heaven and played with you for a bit.  As it is, tomorrow marks your 11 month old birthday.

December has always been a hard month for some reason.  I've always loved the Merle Haggard song If We Make It Through December, and it seems more poignant than ever this year.  Although I don't much care for Merle Haggard himself (I'm still irked by that story that he swindled Waylon out of a bunch of money in a poker game was Waylon was stoned out of his mind.  I don't support such behavior, but I will always take Waylon's side, as he is my favorite musician, as y'all know).  Alas, I digress. Your Daddy has never enjoyed putting up Christmas decorations, on most years he does it simply to humor me.  This year, I agreed we don't have to put up outdoor decorations but I do want to put up the tree.  I have some ornaments for y'all and all the ornaments that I've gathered going back to the year I was born.  Daddy has some ornaments from when he was a little boy too.  Plus, Ike really likes to sit on his sofa and watch the lit Christmas tree.  The dogs also have special ornaments, so we agreed to put up the tree.  But the coming weeks are going to be just terrible.  They mark the last few days of what was a relatively uneventful pregnancy.  Everything changed between my going to bed on Christmas Eve and waking up on Christmas morning.  It was the beginning of the end.

Babies, please give us strength to make it through the next month.  Keep giving us signs that y'all are with us and loving us and are happy with our decision to try again by embarking late next month on another attempt to have living children. 

Momma loves and misses you.