Just Us

When my second son, Asher, came howling into the world, I’m pretty sure the midwives were already talking about who he looked like before his body had even finished exiting my own. Every health professional, family member, and elderly lady in the supermarket comments on who he’s like. They study mine and my husband’s faces and gush “oh, he’s his daddy’s double.” And I have to confess, as I reached out to hold him for the first time, somewhere in between total euphoria and feeling like someone had set the bottom half of my body on fire, my very first thought was: that is a Smyth nose right there.

But no one ever discussed who my firstborn looked like. I was 18 years old when Reuben was born. They'd heard ‘the dad’ wasn’t in the picture, and they could see he didn’t look like me, and so the conversation was over before it had begun. He resembles my brother as a baby, I wanted to tell them. But no one asked. He’s got my sense of humor, I opted for instead, knowing full well babies laugh at everything. Ironically, these days he is looking more and more like me as his face becomes slender and his chubby cheeks diminish into the same oval shape I see in the mirror.  

Reuben, now 8 years old, regularly thanks God for bringing a daddy into his life when he was four. His memory of Just Us is foggy, and he mostly reminisces about sleeping in my bed (these days there is much less room and he is much more leggy). He is wholeheartedly and relentlessly convinced that my husband, Paddy, is his daddy. He knows he didn’t have a dad before that, and he knows Paddy is about to begin the process of adopting him. He knows mums can raise babies alone, but he doesn’t know mums can’t make babies alone. He doesn’t realize there was a dad before Just Us. He simply thinks families come in different shapes and sizes and for a while, that was enough.

But before my husband can adopt him, I have to tell him why there was Just Us.

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Click here to read the rest of this essay, which I was honoured to have published on Coffee and Crumbs. MAJOR fan-girl moment!