I Wonder

There are times lately when I look at Georgia and I wonder what Calvin would look like by now. She is growing so fast I can't believe it some days, already seventeen pounds at four months old. All of my children had in common certain parts of me. All had the shape of my eyes. They all had my dad's hands, long slender fingers on tiny hands with tiny feet to match. They all had my ears and I have a feeling all would have had my curly hair. Lorelei's hair has become incredibly curly as she gets older and one of the first things I noticed about Georgia as I held her in the recovery room after her birth was that under her hat, her hair had tiny curls. Calvin had the most hair out of any of my children at birth, and it was a beautiful strawberry blonde like his dad's sideburns. He was also the prettiest of all my babies at birth, I remember looking at him thinking that he was exquisitely beautiful. Calvin was the only one of our children that had Shane's nose instead of mine and although his eyes were shaped like mine, they were an intense colour of blue that I'm sure would have stayed that way. When I picture him as a toddler, I imagine him with blonde curls, big blue eyes with long lashes like both of his sisters and a cute smile with the gap between his front teeth like Shane and Lorelei. I'm sure he would have been a rough and tumble little boy, rowdy like his dad, a natural athlete.

I wonder if Calvin watches over his sister, sometimes when I'm feeding Georgia, she is fixated on something over my shoulder up towards the ceiling that makes her smile and laugh. I wonder if he knows how much I miss him, how I dreamt of being a mother to a messy little boy who loved to play in the sun and get dirty. My dream of motherhood was never about princess pink or dolls or dresses, it was about frogs and tree forts and a basketball hoop in our driveway. I pictured rough-housing with overall clad boys, burying them in piles of leaves, teaching them to catch a baseball. My dream has changed now, I love my girls more than anything and take delight in the girly things I get to do with my daughters but I wish more than anything my boy was here. If I close my eyes and think back to holding him, I can almost feel the softness of his hair as I brushed my lips over his head, smell the sweetness of his new baby skin. I love the intoxicating smell of babies, that sweet pure smell of softness you don't find anywhere else. I wonder if I would have kissed and smelled him as much as I do with Georgia. Sometimes when I hold her, I can't get enough of her, and because she needs alot of close physical contact, she doesn't complain when I repeatedly kiss her or run my lips over the soft parts of her little head.

I wonder if there really is a heaven (oh God I hope so), and if Calvin is with all the people I've loved in my life that have died. I thought about that today, while I was driving to the grocery store, wondering if Calvin was with my dad, my two grandpas and one grandma, my good friend John. I wonder if he's a baby in heaven or whether he'll be grown up when I get there, whether he has found all his brothers and sisters that we've lost over the years, or if he's here hovering over us, watching us mourn him. I wonder if he would have had as many rolls on his thighs as Georgia does, as Lorelei did. I wonder if he knew how much I loved him before he died, how much I love him still. I miss you baby boy.

I wonder if God knows how pissed I am at Him...