Several months ago while making dinner and Ethan sitting joyfully at our kitchen island coloring to his little heart's content he turned to me and said, "hey mommy?"
"Yes Muppet?" I replied without even thinking of might come from his mouth neither less his head.
"Can I have a brother? I want a brother." bounced quickly from his mouth and a second later I dropped whatever it was that I had in my hand. My mind raced with "how in hell am I suppose to answer this" and "how do I explain to a child who is barely three that his chances for a little brother or sister were slim and none."
Don't get me wrong, one of the things that I hold in my heart and hope for is to have more children of my own. However, several factors are not on my side. Age being one of them. So to be honest I recently let the hold I had on that hope loosen after a talk with my own mum. It was hard to let go of this hope because it meant that the life that I had always planed and dreamed of wasn't the plan that God, The Universe (whatever it is you believe in) had in store for me. And that was heart breaking. It made me wish that I could go back in time and remember what it was like to feel Ethan move around in belly, to remember that joy that came with knowing that I was carrying around a wonderful little gift.
But that's life; you can't go backwards, and sometimes my memories seem so far away from me that it's hard to pull them forward in my mind to swim around and revel in. So I sat there thinking about all of this, I was brought back to reality with a simple, "Mommy can we go to the store and get a brother?"
"Huh? What?" If only it was that easy to run to the local Target, Walmart or Kroger and go to the sibling aisle and just pick one off the shelf. I tried my best that night to explain that life wasn't that easy and not everything we want comes from Costco or the store.
I stared into those big brown eyes of my muppet and tried to see if I was getting my point across and what I saw were tears that filled up both our eyes. Ethan's understanding that he can't have a brother or sister and mine in aspect that the one part of my life that I had always hoped for from when I was young would become the one dream I will never get to have. The thoughts that there are people in the world that with the drop of a hat are blessed with 3, 4 sometimes even more children and those small lives where never in their plans and dreams and yet they had them.
I tried to explain that there are people in our lives who are not family by relations, but over time become our family due to the relationship we have with them. But to have someone so small understand this was something that I should have known he wouldn't understand. It broke my heart as if a spade was thrust into my heart and tip broken off. Later that night I cried and prayed that Ethan be given the understanding of everything I had explained to him.
Those prayers have not yet been answered and Ethan's question for a sibling came to me daily for almost a month after that. Then he went down to once a week and up until two weeks ago he hadn't brought it up for almost two months. Then while driving in the car I got the, "Hey Mommy?..."
And on the way to school this morning he explained to me in great detail how this friend had a brother and then there was this other friend of his that has a brother; so "mommy, you just not looking in the right place." I felt as if someone reached in, grabbed my heart and while pulling it out; yanked a little bit of my soul out with it. The idea of explaining to someone so tiny that his wish that he dreams about might not come true and he just has to understand that the life we were given doesn't even start out in his favor is gut wrenching.
I have to say I'm getting better about explaining it. But it just doesn't make it any easier....
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