The short-termed pregnancy. Love, compassion, and kindness. My mother has always expected nothing less. One time when I was younger my brother and I had got into a fight. My mother got mad because that wasn’t the way she had taught us to treat one another. Our punishment was to hug each other until she wanted us to stop.

She sneaks in a kiss almost every day. I tell her she’s weird: I duck and dodge, she loves it. When I was younger I accepted all the love she had to offer. Sometimes I would even beg for her attention. As I got older I either grew out of it, or just wanted her to see that I wasn’t a little girl anymore, but love doesn’t have an age limit. Now I show her love indirectly, but probably not as much.

It seems like the word love is in every one of my sentences, but it’s almost the only word I can think of when I think of her.

All while growing up I had always wanted my mom to be pregnant. From being the youngest I had never got to experience having a younger sibling, and since I love to be the boss, I figured this would be a great opportunity. I would always tell her how much I wanted her to be, and how much I would help if she was, but she had to be ready for it too. My dad hated when I talked about it, because it only meant more bills to him. My faith was always that one day it would happen.

One day they finally told me the words I wanted to hear. I waited for them to pick me up, late as usual, and she told me that she tested positive on a home test. Unfortunately you can’t always trust those things. The following day my aunt took her to some kind of clinic I believe, and they told her she was definitely pregnant. I had texted her that morning to see if she received the news, but she didn’t receive it until I was nearly out of school.

I was so excited. I could feel the infants’ hands gripping mine, but couldn’t see his face. I had a feeling it would be a boy. Things that the mother should be thinking about were racing through my mind; names, color of the room, etc. She was excited too, but it had only been two weeks. Every word that came out of my mouth was baby-related. We had a unique name; Greyson Chance Wilson is what we wanted it to be. My mom said she liked it, but she was still going to keep her options open.

Everything from now on would have an effect on the baby. It had only been two weeks, I know, but I’ve always thought futuristically. I’m sure she liked the support, but I was just happy to help. I continued to stay by her side: emotionally, and physically. She would ask me to massage her head at times, because she told me that it gave her a sense of relief.

One day I came up with this idea to make a scrapbook of her pregnancy, so each month I had her take a picture with each one of our immediate family members. It was so fun, and the pictures were so cute. By the second month she was already showing, which I thought was normal, but not so much now. Every time she would tell someone about it they would say she’s probably having twins. I would always rub her stomach and talk to the baby, one day I even seen her doing the same. I didn’t want to get too excited, because I knew what had happened before; only my brother knew at first, but then he told us.

Everyone was happy, but my dad, might have been a little worried. One Sunday we were all getting ready to go to church, and when I came out of my room I seen her hunched over. I quickly ran over to her.
“Mom, are you okay?” I asked.
“It’s my… my…chest” she mumbled back to me. I figured that was pain from being pregnant. I slightly smiled, because I thought it was a part of the experience, but I was still concerned. “Help me to the couch”, she requested.
“Ouch! Ouch! Not that side.” She silently yelled as I grabbed the area of pain.
“Sorry”, I replied in worry, it had made me nervous because I didn’t want to put her to hurt any longer.

A couple of weeks later I saw her leaning against the hallway closet talking on the phone, I believe my grandmother was on the other end. She had tears coming down her face, and now I was really worried. She wasn’t able to carry it any longer, she had lost the baby. I was disappointed, but life happens. Days went by, and soon tears of sorrow became tears of joy. We had lost an unknown being, but we kept the life that we knew and loved. We were happy.