September 3 was on a Friday. Labor Day weekend. My daughter started her junior year of high school on the following Tuesday. We had talked all summer about her junior year. She was a three sport athlete, who had decided that all 5 foot 3 of her was going to put her basketball away in order to really work on her true passions...swimming and fast pitch. She was on the verge of showing the fruits of all of her labors. She worked on her swimming all summer and played many hours of fast pitch. She talked about working so hard to finally be a leader....
She started the swim season in mid-August, and in hind-sight, I should have known that something was wrong.
For the very first time since seventh grade, she did not want to go to practice. She acted almost afraid to go to practice. She was mad at me for pushing her. She was acting out emotionally - and behaving like she had never done before. She was so angry and so defiant. SHE WAS MAD.
But she wasn't mad.....really....she was just scared. Very scared. So scared that she did not even know how to deal with it, or how to act. She had never been this scared before. She was so scared that she did not even know she was scared.
The plan - that I made - was for us to keep her pregnancy a secret for as long as we could. She would not tell anyone that did not know already - the baby daddy, her best friend, and our small family. This was going to be a secret for as long as it could possibly be a secret. She was instructed for "forget" that she was pregnant for awhile...after all, she was only six weeks along and lots could happen...
I walked into my workplace on Tuesday morning, walked into the HR department to ask some pretty pointed questions about health insurance coverage, and started crying. I cried for three days solid without stopping. I cried until I hyperventilated. I had never cried so much in my entire life...I tried so hard to put the pregnancy into perspective. I tried to justify it. I tried to understand why. I could not understand why. I could not understand how I was possibly going to be able to accommodate all of this, when I was hanging by a thread before any of this happened.
I had tried so hard to do the right things for her from the very first time I laid hands on the picture of her in that little wool dress sitting in the arms of that orphanage worker. I had a life goal to give her a perfect life. We were living modestly, but honestly, she wanted for little. I was put on this earth to protect and guide her to a successful adulthood.....and I had failed. And, I am ashamed to say this, but I was embarrassed. Really embarrassed.
The mad went away. Now, I was sad....
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