Waiting for the Light to Change

Twenty years old, I sat at a traffic light in a tiny yellow Datsun whose compact size barely accommodated my girth. I was eight months pregnant.

I wasn’t employed at the time, so I must have been heading home from a trip to the grocery store. I remember it was a Friday; payday. The light couldn’t have been long. I lived in a small town, but, it may have been rush hour. There were several people ahead of me, and more behind.

The tears came, unbidden; followed by an incredible rush of feeling unlike anything I had ever experienced before, or since. And, it filled me, starting in my feet, before rushing upwards. My hands, on either side of my mercilessly swollen belly, felt warm, and alive. Love, for an unborn child who kicked, ferociously, at the most inopportune times, making the sheer act of breathing difficult, overcame me, as I fought to remain cognizant of the mundane world around me. And the light changed….

“A person who loses a spouse is called a widow. A child, who has lost his parents, is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who has lost a child.”

© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll