Thirteen

I now have teenagers. Somehow this is not as scary as I thought it would be.

That may be because I’ve worked in mental health, helping kids, so I’ve seen teens in heart-wrenching situations. I knew a girl who got pregnant at twelve and had a baby at thirteen. That baby is nearly grown now—I hope she had a better childhood than her mom did. I knew a kid who was hooked on meth by the time he was a teen, and another who tried to kill herself with a shotgun blast to the stomach when she was in middle school. So…yeah. The bar for shocking me has been set pretty high.

I’m not a perfect parent, but so far, my twin boys have turned out to be amazing people. They are smart and funny and kind. They are sweet to animals and loving to their parents. They are loyal to their friends and brave enough to speak up if they see someone being bullied. They set goals for themselves and do well in school. I can’t complain at all (even if they remind me I’m not as cool as I used to be because the latest slang is a mystery to me or I’m clueless about dance moves).

I’m thankful to have good kids. Really, I’m thrilled to have kids at all. Back in my twenties, it looked like that was never going to happen. I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, which is a nightmare if you want to have a biological child. It’s a horror show for other areas of your life too, wreaking havoc on your endocrine system, but the disease is cruelest when it comes to fertility. This doesn’t say much for my character, but I’ll be honest: working in social services with people who didn’t want to be pregnant was tough when I wanted a kid and couldn’t have one. Still, the hardest part of having PCOS was the shame. Talking about infertility was taboo, and yet, I was at an age where everyone wanted to know why I hadn’t had kids yet. Didn’t I want children? I felt like I was under a microscope with all the intrusive questions and comments I received from people who likely meant well. I felt broken.

Then came the day I found out I was pregnant. Staring at the little blue lines that finally appeared on the pregnancy test felt miraculous. Finding out I was having twins felt too good to be true. I was terrified something bad would happen, that I’d have a miscarriage. We didn’t tell anyone but our family for a long time because I was scared we’d jinx our good fortune.

Confined to bedrest the week before my boys were born, I remember watching fireworks outside my hospital window. That July there was a forest fire, and the mountains around Tucson flickered with orange light, a show to rival Independence Day festivities. Then I had two new people in my life. I remember how miraculous it felt to finally see their tiny faces, how surreal it was to know life would never be the same.

There was more fear when we learned that one baby had been born healthy but the other would have to stay in newborn intensive care. We didn’t get a serene, post-birth moment of bonding. We got a machine, pumping air into my son’s fluid-filled lungs, keeping him alive. We bonded with him as best we could in the hospital, knowing he might not make it, while feeling grateful to be able to take at least one of our children home to live with us. We did a lot of praying. Over the following month, we drove back and forth to the hospital to see our sick baby, while taking care of our other newborn.

This was not an ideal way to start out as a new parent. Between our daily trips to the hospital, I had a lot of guilt about not being able to give either of my children the time or attention I wanted to give them. Things turned out better than they could have though, and for that, I’m thankful. My son did live, and now he’s a healthy, broad-shouldered kid who towers over me. My other son is almost as tall as I am, and often reminds me that he too will soon outgrow me.

The other day I found a bunch of videos of my sons as toddlers, much to their embarrassment. We filmed everything because we were so happy to have children.

One of my favorite videos is of them at age two, playing board games. Operation was a big hit, sending them into fits of giggling every time the buzzer went off. I know I’m biased, but it’s adorable. We also played Jumanji—after watching the movie—which pretty much scarred one of my sons for life. There’s video of him hiding under a chair as his dad reads a card about a hailstorm. (Bad parenting, but darn cute.) The other son (the one who had such a rough start to his life) loved the game. He thought the idea of a rhino crashing through our house was marvelous. He wouldn’t have objected to a rampaging elephant either.

So now my boys are thirteen. Time has gone by too fast, but I’m so thankful we’ve had this time together. We’ve got a few more years before they’re off to college, and I’m grateful that we’re close, that we still take walks together on the beach and talk about our favorite books. I know there are a lot of changes coming, and with those changes, new challenges. I hope, no matter what happens next, they always know how much they are loved.

© Melissa Eskue Ousley 2016