I think tonight I will talk about Clara.
Sweet Clara, who came earth-side on April 9, 2002 after a mere 7.5 hours of labor...born on a birth stool, into her daddy's hands...entered to a mama screaming in a strange combination of pain and relief, as her body slid out quickly/slowly, violently/peacefully, all at once. She came with a scream that announced "I AM CLARA." Her gender was unknown, as we had never pried into the secret womb where she grew, and spontaneously vacated...her identity was as secret to us as to strangers on the street...yet her arrival forced Dan and me to look each other in the eye, and simultaneously announce, "Clara."
There were four hours after her birth at the Bearing in Mind Birth Center that she took in every detail...first her mother, her father, the dim light of her new earthly existence. Hours with her maternal grandmother and grandfather, reveling in the too-quick-for-witnessing birth of the first grandchild. Hours of latching and experiencing her first taste of her mother's sweet milk. Hours of love, calm, peace. Her eyes were open, her mind reeling in obvious interest. When it came time to head home at 2:00 in the morning, 3.5 hours after that noisy announcement of worldly existence, Clara closed her eyes and succumbed temporarily to the Alaskan darkness.
Sweet Clara, our red-headed, fiery, inquisitive, loving, generous, selfish, sloppy, brilliant, concerned helper. Trying to walk at two months;
standing with help at three months;
Moved at four months to a new state, at a year to another new house, and at four to a third new state...always asking questions, balancing fairness, and reading. Always reading.
Before a year, she would nurse, read Good Night Moon, nurse again, snuggle into her mother...or father...or mother again...or father again...never a "good sleeper," always busy...would greet her daddy with "kicky legs" and huge grins when he came home after work.
Clara, introduced to solid foods via organic squash, organic produce, locally procured at the Farmer's Market every Wednesday and Sunday. Mostly gathered from the Kalona farmers (Mennonites who did not drive, lived like you think of the Amish); specifically Anne-Marie and her family - nine children if I remember correctly.
Clara, who by the whims of fate, celebrated her great-grandmother's 90th birthday naked, by the pool of the house where just four years later, she would learn to swim, and spend months of summers splashing...(we bought my sister-in-law's house in AZ).
Her first birthday celebrated with a carrot cake and cream cheese frosting...colored with beet and spirulina powders, to avoid dyes and excess sugars.
A birthday that coincided with steps, a pregnancy, and a mother starting full-time graduate school...
Tandem-nursing, sister-adoring, ever-the-little-mother Clara, who slept through her sister's birth, not 10 feet away, on the Christmas Eve before her second birthday. Twenty-month old who awoke from her nap to greet a new baby and nurse with her. Twenty-month old who protected, read to, kissed this stranger, this usurper of breast...without blinking.
Considerate, loving...oldest child...bearer of pressure, expectations, demands...and bearer still of responsibility, compassion...and love...
