You won the bet, hands down. From early morning we'd known this was the day our granddaughter would be born. The word had gone out the night before, and girlfriends who'd promised to assist had arisen in the wee hours to drive and arrive in time to take our daughter to the hospital. Miss O was coming.
News bulletins: departure for the hospital, dilation, administration of anaesthetic, water broken, clearly an exit strategy in place for the internal resident planet, then...blackout, hour after hour going by. News? None.
So, you asked me, do you want to wager when she will come, within a half-hour. I shrugged and guessed five-thirty or six o'clock. No, three--thirty, you said with confidence, everything will go quickly.
I was just thinking of stories I'd heard, but you, I realized, had an altogether deeper kind of knowledge, gathered from other women as you had waited for your (our) children, lore annotated by your own experience actually having babies, and all augmented by what you know of our daughter and second births generally. You were not plucking random guesses out of the air as I was, but making a shrewd estimate based on your acquaintance with the signs and the odds.
Delight at the new of the smooth delivery of a healthy Miss O, big and beautiful, was supplemented by respect for your powers of prediction. I was reminded of how much an insider you are, and how much an outsider I, to the circle of initiates in the mystery of producing people.
News bulletins: departure for the hospital, dilation, administration of anaesthetic, water broken, clearly an exit strategy in place for the internal resident planet, then...blackout, hour after hour going by. News? None.
So, you asked me, do you want to wager when she will come, within a half-hour. I shrugged and guessed five-thirty or six o'clock. No, three--thirty, you said with confidence, everything will go quickly.
I was just thinking of stories I'd heard, but you, I realized, had an altogether deeper kind of knowledge, gathered from other women as you had waited for your (our) children, lore annotated by your own experience actually having babies, and all augmented by what you know of our daughter and second births generally. You were not plucking random guesses out of the air as I was, but making a shrewd estimate based on your acquaintance with the signs and the odds.
Delight at the new of the smooth delivery of a healthy Miss O, big and beautiful, was supplemented by respect for your powers of prediction. I was reminded of how much an insider you are, and how much an outsider I, to the circle of initiates in the mystery of producing people.
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