Seventeendipity

Seventeen years later,
I am wide awake.
I couldn't sleep that night, either.
I watched my husband sleep, restlessly, on the sofa, while I dutifully kept a meticulously accurate, if barely legible, record of frequency and duration of contractions, gentle squeezings that I would be aware of, but able to sleep through, with future births.

Young, so very young,
I woke him and we hurried
to the hospital...to wait.
The sun rose, and so began
essential, (land line)
phone calls, one at a time,
announcing that today,
January 13, 1996,
would be THE day.

Shortly after noon,
we found ourselves
forever changed-
Our One True Love
had become our
One True Family.

Seventeen years a mother,
a seventeen year adventure
filled with more laughter, pride,
love, and successes,
but also more failures,
than I had anticipated.

Learning, learning,
always learning,
believing that the job of
parents is to train
and prepare children
to become upstanding citizens,
competent, independent adults,
but not knowing how to prepare myself
For that inevitability.