Once we were home, the contractions which had bothered me earlier in the day returned. Tim fed the children at the table while I reclined on the couch with my minestrone. At first I was fairly unconcerned as I frequently have bouts of Braxton-Hicks and could always control them by lying down for a while and drinking lots of water. My nonchalance started to fade away as the contractions crept closer and closer together. When they were less than five minutes apart I knew I could ignore them no longer, and everyone knows the rest of that story.
The rest of the soup went into the freezer. The way, way back of the freezer.
I studiously ignored it for many weeks. However my responsible frugal housewife self could not in good conscience just toss it out so I finally thawed it today, a nice chilly fall day, perfect for a warm bowl of soup. (OK, OK, we are also quite low on groceries and there were few alternatives!) But when dinnertime arrived and I smelled that lovely salty aroma, I knew there was just no way I could do it. Eat it. My stomach went into knots at the thought. I don't often think of myself as someone so, sentimental I guess, but tonight just to look at the soup pulled me back to that other night. And made me wish I could go back there, and have it all turn out differently, just a false alarm, another evening spent in triage at L&D, an evening barely remembered a few weeks later with the joyous arrival of a healthy term baby. But that way danger lies, I know it, to long for a "do-over" instead of trusting the baffling truth that Thomas' difficult entrance into the world, his week spent between life and death, was in fact all by design and a design with the best for me, for Thomas, for our whole family in mind. A fact I can state but can barely comprehend.
