itsawonderfilledlife

 This is another post in a series, about a woman named Amara. Every Friday I will post another segment in this story.

Joy was startled out of her childhood memories by the ringing of her phone.

“Three rings and she has not picked up yet” Amara questioned no one but the air around her.

“Hello,” was the voice of her daughter. Oh, how soothing that voice of confidence was to Amara’s ears. It helped to erase the frustration and anxiety she was feeling due to her forgetfulness. There was no voice on the face of this earth that could communicate so much to Amara, with only one word … hello. It could communicate annoyance, sadness, happiness, weariness or fear. Although Amara was feeling a soothing relief from hearing Joy’s voice, she was also concerned, because what the tone of Joy’s voice was communicating was a level of weariness that Amara had never heard come from Joy.

She was named Joy because that is what she brought to my life, Amara reminisced. Amara’s firstborn was a boy, David. Although Amara loved him at first sight, she had secretly wanted to have a baby girl. Jacob was a most healthy newborn, who was never ill once as an infant or toddler, or even as a preschooler. He was easy in every way.

For over six years Amara had hoped that she would have a daughter. She had become pregnant six times in as many years, but never a baby in her arms. Finally, on Jacob’s first birthday she discovered she was pregnant … again. But this time, nine months late, she gave birth to the joy of her life, wrapped in pink … and whaling like a banshee. She whaled that way, every day (and seemed like every hour) for almost two years straight. Amara was convinced that God had gotten so tired of the constant begging she had done  and he had thought that if she really wanted a baby girl, she would have one, but she would have to earn this blessing.

And Amara did just that. She earned the right to say that she had a daughter. And as loud as Joy would cry, Amara would relax. There was not one time when Amara lost her patience with her wee whaler. There was not one time when Amara did not attend to Joy’s demanding cries. There was not one time that Amara did not look on her daughter with love and delight. Joy was born with the full attention of her mother … until Jacob got sick …

After he started to get ill, Amara was forced to remember that she had a son as well. There were doctors appointments, and blood tests, and treatments, and prescriptions, and hospital stays, and bills. Amara had been so thankful for the help of her nearby parents. They filled in with Joy, while Amara was tending her son.

Her parents had taken Joy on adventures and vacations. They had taught her how to bake a pie and grow vegetables. They played games with her, and even took her to school on her first day of kindergarten, when Joy had to take Jacob to a specialist appointment in another city on that same day. It nearly broke Amara’s heart that she and Joy were apart so much, but she knew that Joy would be loved and cared for and doted on, by her parents, just as she would have done (and just as she had so wanted to do).

Unfortunately, the years of Amara caring for Jacob, and of Joy being cared for by her grandparents, left a gulf in the relationship that Amara had once had with her daughter, and Joy was never again in her life, in want of her mother. Amara was left wondering why God had forced her to choose between her dying son, and her beautiful daughter. In the end she gained the life of her son, but lost her relationship with Joy. And nothing she tried could ever get it back.

“Hello? Mother is that you? Are you okay?” Amara was startled to awaken from her memories, with her phone receiver in her hand, and Joy’s concerned voice coming through it.

“Uh, yes dear, it is me. I am just fine, sorry to worry you.” Amara responded, still whirling from the thoughts of the past. Some days that is the only place she really wanted to be, in the dreams of the past. It was safe there, it was comforting there, and she always knew what would happen next. She always knew that there, in her memories of the past, she was who she really was, with no strange occurrences of being in places that she didn’t know, or forgetting chunks of time, or sad looks from her family, as though they too did not know her anymore.

Unfading – Part 6

Unfading – Part 1