Monday's Memoir: An Enchanted April...

On our fourth anniversary I was a living, footslogging caricature of a pregnant woman.   Every pregnant woman feels carnival conspicuous by their eighth month, I know, but in my case I think it was true.  I saw enough gaping expressions and heard more than one gasp  from strangers during that hyper-gestational period of my life to know, that I was indeed, a spectacle. 

My mom gifted Sam and me with a night out and babysitting for our (then) two year old.  We went to a restaurant we liked and while we waited for our food we began doodling on the table cloths.  They were paper table cloths and the waitress provided us with crayons (so fancy!).  Our doodling evolved into mind mapping out our near future as we anticipated our change from having one child, straight to three.   I expected that having twins would mean an inevitable brain shut-down (a somewhat accurate foresight, to my credit) and so I was determined to pre-arrange every possible detail, including names.  We scribbled out some name ideas for those babies who would surprise us by coming in only a few days and 5 weeks early.

That was an enjoyable evening.  The whole night was magical and sweet and I may have forgotten about it had I not found that paper table cloth in a box while cleaning out the storage room recently.  I forgot that we had saved it.  When I pulled it out of the box, my mind flashed back to a warm spring evening.  We were standing behind our periwinkle Eagle Summit, Sam placing the folded table cloth and our leftovers into the trunk.  I remember we were smiling.  And sweating profusely.  And breathing laboriously.

Okay, maybe that was just me.