When mother got sick a couple months after I became their daughter, she was often too tired to play with me. Some days, she barely found energy to change my diapers and feed me. Father spent as much time with me as he could, but I could tell his thoughts dwelled on mother. The gifts completely stopped. They barely held onto the desire to read to me and get to know me. I didn’t feel completely cut off from their love, but I definitely felt a shift that became a chasm as answers changed all of our lives.
~~
As mother laid me gently in my crib, holding her breath and moving with exaggerated caution to keep from waking me, father paused outside the doorway to gaze worriedly at her. She glanced up at him as he opened his mouth to speak. She placed one finger to her lips and hurried silently to join him throwing one last anxious glance over her shoulder at that wrapped bundle of love that was me.
“She’s getting so big. I feel almost too weak to hold her sometimes.”
“I’ve noticed. You’re so pale…” the rest of what he wanted to say hung in the air between them.
“I know. I know,” her slow steps brought her to him and she placed an arm reassuringly on his forearm. “I’m going to see the doctor in the morning. Hopefully, she will have answers.”
He nodded as he pulled her into his arms and supported her as they shuffled off to bed together like a much older couple.
~~
Father hurriedly flung off his coat and rushed into the living room. Mother still sat where she had dropped to the couch after her appointment with the doctor. Noticing the intensity in the room, my new nanny scooped me up and carried me off to my room, cooing softly in my ear to distract me from the tension permeating the air. I cooed back, watching my parents over her shoulder until they disappeared.
“What did the doctor say?” anxiety clung to father’s every word.
Mother couldn’t reply. Tears streamed down her face, despite her upturned lips. She reached into her purse and pulled out a square of paper. She turned it to face him, revealing a black and white photo—the Rorschach test of parents-in-waiting.
“I thought the IVF treatments didn’t work?” Father whispered wonderingly as he gently took the ultrasound photo from her trembling hand.
“Something did,” mother’s voice shook.
“Our very own baby.”
“Yes, our very own.”
As if those echoed words triggered a memory, they both glanced toward the nursery. Within those walls, my status changed in that instant. Without photos I found in the attic before I moved out, I never would have known that they once loved me.
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