About My Mother

About my mother

My mother named me months before I was born.
Annie? Paige? Rosie? She thought out loud about each option, chewing the end of the stubby orange pencil and narrowing her grey eyes as she thought.
Each name she pondered danced around her over-active mind, forming a life, a personality, a future. Inevitably her eyes clouded over and she'd close them as if in a silent prayer.
Oh mama, did you know I heard you? Not just the words out loud, but the thoughts you didn't dare form into words.

She settled on Hope. 'What else could I choose? ' she'd smile, her slender hand fluttering over the stretched skin that held me snug.

As any pregnant woman, she planned and created and decorated. She attended birth preparation classes and talked about me, talked and sang to me. When the doctors told her I was likely to be 'incompatible with life' she shook her head bravely. 'No. She's Hope. Call her Hope.'

And for ten glorious days she held me and saw me. She spent more money than she had on a special car bed and pram that could carry the equipment to which I remained attached. I was in my home and we sat in the room she'd prepared for me. We slept in there and she was my mother.

She cried for me. Outpourings of public grief on Facebook. Soft weeping to her friends. Gut wrenching, body shaking, angry sobs when she was alone.
Throughout the pregnancy she knew what would happen. Yet she carried me and she hoped beyond any hope.