The Hallmark of Dreams

Abortion is in the news again. When is it not? I realize this is a red hot, fiery subject, but I do have some experience here. Most women do. Not with abortion, mind you, but I have been pregnant. I have also been the elusive, oft romanticized college mom. Not a lot of people know my story, even fewer, I suspect, care to hear it, but as the kids say, here we are.

I became pregnant at the age of 17. Antibiotics, it seems, don’t care much about birth control. My staunchly pro-life Mother insisted that I get an abortion, or else she would throw me out of the house. She made good on that promise. I got the baby and she got the “Save our Children” vanity tag. So I was out on my own with my daughter’s father when I was three months pregnant. We were the same age. We both dropped out of high school and we both got jobs in the small Georgia town we called home.

I remember that Christmas, I was showered with things that would soon be relegated to a box under the bed. Small, dainty underwear. My favorite size zero jeans. I received one gift, along with all the trappings of an overdone Christmas, that acknowledged my soon-to-be transition into motherhood (a stage of life that I realize, looking back, my own mom never felt comfortable with).  The gift was small. It was a Hallmark ornament that read “Baby’s First Christmas,” or something to that effect. I don’t really remember because I spent most of the evening outside crying in the pecan orchard where, for all my life, I had contemplated my dreams.

There were evenings spent fiddling with the telescope on the cool grass. Time spent playing catch with my Dad after dinner. There was sneaking off to grab a bushel of peanuts in the field, and the long walks, just as the sun was setting through row after row of cotton. Everything smelled of cool earth. A chilled undercurrent ran beneath the thick plants like the tide of history clashing with the warm air above.  There was such mystery to that smell, haunting almost. I felt as if it would lift me up and take me to a different place, even though there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

I heard magical sounds, rich with the drum beat of the ugly history beneath my feet. The ribbon-like flow would gently bounce and course me over the simple, comfortable life of my parents. I wanted more than stability. I wanted greatness. I had no intention of changing my plans for the future. It simply never occurred to me. Call me stubborn, or naïve. But I decided that night, in the field that will always be home, that life would continue: I would grow to learn the things I needed to know, and learn from the things I didn’t.

I know it’s impossible to tell my story in this space. The words would spill like a rush of water, rolling through the rocky passages of time until, at some point, the surface would wear smooth. My story would crest home, floating through uncertain spaces, until you would see that I am okay now. I did not accomplish everything I dreamed. But when I look at the adult daughter I birthed when I was just a child, I see more clearly the intricacies of what makes and sustains a life. Somewhere in the spaces between the breaths of contemplation and the rockiest of bends, we decide. From happiness to heartbreak; from success to failure, we take a breath. When we find the hope and the courage to exhale, we step forward. We repeat. We breathe.