Strolling around the children’s section of one of my favorite bookstores, the overly cheerful clerk popped up in front of me. She smiled at me and then looked at my very large belly and asked the inevitable:
“Is this your first baby?””
Now, I could be polite and just nod and move on my way, but what is the joy in being pregnant (besides the growing new life stuff) if you can’t shock the heck out of someone once in a while?
“No, it’s my sixth,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could. If I had been smart, while I was pregnant with “Number Six”, as she affectionately has become known (especially when I can’t remember her name), I would have carried around a small camera just to catalog the facial expressions of those who were shocked by this number. My poor sixth child may not get many pictures of her in the scrapbook, but can you imagine the day when I bring out the “facial reactions” scrapbook and show her the multitude of people who were shocked that I was pregnant – again…?
“Six?”” The clerk says in that usual tone of admiration and disgust. “”Wow, you’re brave. I guess you don’t need any help then.”
Actually, I could use a lot of help – the mental kind notwithstanding. I look at my dinner table sometimes and I’m shocked. Our dinner table is the type that came with leaves for the middle, you know for holidays and the like. All the leaves are in our table now – all of the time.
Why six? It’s one of the questions I get asked the most and of all of them, it’s the most difficult to answer. Really, I have no idea. I’m not a particular fan of pregnancy. The first five months for me is generally spent either on the couch or in the bathroom. And I get quite whiney toward the end when my abdomen is often mistaken for the Goodyear Blimp. But quite often, I get the feeling that someone is missing and after doing a quick head count, I realize that the missing person hasn’t been born yet.
Could it be as simple as the fact that I like kids? I do. I just like them. I like to hang out with them. I like to go places with them. I like to talk with them and I love how their minds work. When I sit in a group of parents and listen to them lament their lives of driving around to games and recitals and lessons and school functions and wish for the day when their nests will be empty, I am dumbstruck (and that is rare). I like to do those things. I have a big car (practically a bus) for a reason. I think it’s funny to watch people’s faces when we all get out and go somewhere – we look like the clown car in the circus, there is always one more coming out. I love that I can field my own basketball team.
Is life always so happy? Of course not. Sometimes I want to scream because I have to be in three places at once or it’s just too damn loud on a rainy summer day.
And while I know there are those who mock me and wonder how I could feel good about contributing to the overpopulation of the world, I also know that my kids get a lot out of being one of six. There’s a lot to be said for learning how to share. There’s a lot to be said for understanding that there is only a finite amount of hot water or granola bars and that we can’t have everything we want all of the time. In being a part of their own little community, my children have learned about over-consumption, sharing resources and being a part of a team.
My kids don’t complain about hand-me-downs and they understand that I can’t buy them “name brand” clothes (at least, not from the store – they can have all the name brands they want from yard sales!). In fact, they don’t even ask for them.
So, if you see me in the grocery store – I’m the one with the baby on my front, a toddler in the cart, two kids each pushing a cart, one running around getting the things I forgot and one grumbling like an old man behind me because I wouldn’t buy Frosted, Pop Em Ups with the prize inside. Be assured however, that yes, they are all mine…and who knows? I might begin to think another is missing.
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