Francine Elizabeth - A-Z Blogging Challenge

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2015
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge”

What is it?

I will be Blogging everyday beginning on April First with a topic themed on something with the letterA, then on April second another topic with the letter B as the theme, and so on until I finish on April thirtieth with the theme based on the letter Z.   The theme of the day is the letter scheduled for that day.

My theme will be short fictional (well mostly fictional) stories about women.  Each woman’s name will begin with the appropriate letter of the alphabet for that day.
All of the women will have the common life experience of a loss of some type.
I invite you, Dear reader, to comment on how you interpret the loss.

Francine Elizabeth

August 28, 1965

Today was the hardest day of my life.  Even though I am only 17, I imagine that it will always be one of the hardest days of my life.    It’s hours later and the warmth of her soft skin on my bare chest lingers.

Funny, I was so afraid of the pain.  For the whole of the last three months I worried.  I listened to the others as they told stories of hours and hours of agony.   I would lay awake at night in fear until I cried myself to sleep, thinking how much I wanted it to be over. 

Before it happened I was thin, emaciated almost.  I wished I could put on some weight, actually.  People would always comment on how they couldn’t believe I was 17.  “You look like a twelve year old,” they would say.   

Actually, that’s why I was able to hide it for so long.  Six months had gone by before I told mom and daddy.  

J and I talked about it constantly before than.  He was scared.  

He said he loved me and all, but his mother and especially his father, well they wanted him to go college.  At first I was mad at him.  I guess I thought he would just say that of course we were going to get married.  

It’s what I  wanted.  I didn’t get it.  He said he loved me.  I just didn’t get it. 

I told mom first, of course.  She wasn’t as shocked as I thought she might have been.  She looked kind of sad actually.  I don’t know what she was thinking, she didn’t say much, but it looked like she was trying to figure things out.  

Daddy was so mad!  “How could you?”  “What’s wrong with you?”  “Is this how we raised you?”

“And what does J have to say about all of this?” he shouted. 

I stood there crying.  I kept saying “I’m sorry, daddy, I’m sorry.”

In the end, daddy decided that I was going to have to give it up. 

 “It’s best,” he said.  

“You’ll see, he said  it’s what’s best.”

I graduated with the rest of my class.  June 11, 1965.  No one knew.  I was barely showing.   I was terribly shy and didn’t have a lot of close friends.  Truthfully, not too many kids paid much attention to me.   I never even told my best friend Mary, though.

Mary and I, we usually hung out in the summertime.  Went for walks or bike rides.  But this summer she already had gotten a part time job.  She was going to go to Secretarial school in the fall.  That was a relief.  I wouldn’t have to make excuses about why I couldn’t hang out.  I was pretty vague, too, about what my plans were.   She kept asking and I kept saying that I wasn’t sure. 

J flew the coop.  He just stopped calling.  Good riddance. What a jerk!  I hate him! 

No one was in there with me when she came.   Just the nurse and doctor.  They kept giving me orders.  Sometimes they would shout “Don’t push, try not to push.”  Then after a while it was 

“Push, push.” “Come on now, you can do it, push, push!” 

“It’s a girl!" the doctor yelled.

Oh my god!  When it was over, I can’t explain the feeling. I felt a rush of desire.  I wanted to hold her, hold on to her forever.   They put her up on my chest for the briefest of moments and she wriggled and cried. Then they took her away.   I watched while they cleaned her up, and weighed and measured her.  “6 lbs 14 ounces,”  the nurse said.  “20” long,” she said.

They wrapped her in a flannel blanket and put the cap on her head.  The  one I had brought. 

“I brought two,” I said to the nurse.   “A pink one and a blue one”.    

“The hats,” I said.  “I made them myself.   Blue if it was a boy… a pink one if it was a girl.”
The nurse smiled at me kindly.

They were right. They were all right.  The pain is unbearable.  I don’t think it will ever go away.