Lost

Wednesday morning, on his way to school, a seventeen-year-old local boy was killed in a collision with a school bus.

When I was seventeen, I met and then moved in with the man that would, eight years later, become my husband. I remember feeling at the time that I was such an adult.

Of course, it is clear to me now that I was just a child, but it wasn’t until I looked at the face of that lost boy staring back at me from our local newspaper that I realized just what babies our children still are at seventeen.

Obviously, a big difference between the “me at seventeen” and the “me now” is that I have children of my own: two girls, who are running around me as I write this, and a boy that I am still carrying, but that will one day be driving himself to school, probably in this very same town. Looking at the picture I understand just what has been lost and how thin the thread that tethers our children to the Earth and to us is.

I didn’t know this family very well, in fact it is only through bumping into them around town with Eric, who had business with the family, that I knew them at all. But there is something about being so close to something so awful that has made it hard to even breathe for the last five days. In this small town the sirens of rescue vehicles are rarely heard at all, and when they are the sound carries from one end of the streets to the other. Everyone here knows immediately when something awful has happened.

All day Wednesday, after the cries of the sirens had died down, I looked at the clear blue sky and thought, “This is the day that someone lost their child. I am at the library with my children just like any other day and the world has stopped for someone else in this very town.”

While the loss of even one child is too many, this town has seen more and the losses of those children pile up in my head and in my heart. They change how I move through the world.

Every time I drive down Highway 69, just south of our little town, I feel compelled to look at the marker on the side of the road where a teenage girl lost her life this spring in a car accident.

I do the same when ever I pass the spot on I-35 where, not even two years ago, Megan and I happened by the burned out wreckage of what had been the car of a local 21-year-old and her 4-month-old baby, the empty infant car seat resting on the side of the road. Both were killed in the accident as well as the driver of the other car.

These spots are like talismans to me, like wood I am compelled to knock on to feel some psychic control over my own children’s safety. I look at the spots, I imagine the horror the families felt, and I pray that it doesn’t happen to us.

For better or worse the world will go on, like it always does. As awful as this all is, the human mind continues forward. This Wednesday the town will dress our children up and celebrate Halloween with just a week between this loss and us. Eric and I will continue to plan excitedly for the boy that will soon join our family and hold the girls close.

But today is Sunday, and two hours ago Marty Davis’ family buried their only child and these blessings of ours seem almost too much to hold.

To read a newspaper account of the accident go to:
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18952393&BRD=1907&PAG=461&dept_id=133418&rfi=6

You can be happy and vomiting at the same time, who knew?

I feel a little like I have fallen off of the face of the earth these last few months. Here’s our update.

Eric and I are thrilled to be expecting out third little bundle of joy in January (a boy, they tell us) but it has been a hard road for me this time. With Emily I had no morning sickness, with Claudia just about 12 weeks worth, and with this one it had been a virtual 27-week, non-stop vomit fest!

So much so, in fact, that I lost enough weight from the beginning that even now that the problem has subsided a little I am still not back to my starting weight, let alone carrying any “pregnancy pounds.” Not that I am complaining about that! I haven’t ever been six weeks pregnant and still in my regular jeans, let alone at 27 weeks.

I did however get a prescription for anti-nausea medication and a stern warning from my doctor that if I didn’t knock off all the vomiting, he would have no choice but to put me in the hospital. You’d think if I could stop because of a stern warning I would have stopped weeks ago just form the sheer lack of fun I was having.

So, for those of you that didn’t know anything about this… and that would be most of you, I’m sorry to have taken so much time to announce it. We are thrilled beyond words and can’t wait for the arrival of our newest little baby no name!

Feel free to e-mail name ideas to us at katesimonson@yahoo.com or add them to the comments here on this page. Eric and I are notoriously bad at coming up with baby names in a timely manner and this baby is no exception.