Emily Mayfield, part 9: Surprise Pregnancy

At four years of age, Emily learns the fragility and preciousness of life. She realizes that people in hospitals can do magic things to save other people and body parts. She is allowed to be part of the family team that endures this time. Her job as part of the team is to dress Alex’s wound. Suzanna does not want Emily doing this, but George mediates and convinces his mother to let Emily do this. “We all want to help, Mother. Let Emily.”

Suzanna worked her way from cook to dietician for the school system during her nine-year tenure at the school. She likes the life she’s made with this job and her family. Her “baby,” Emily is in middle school, George is in college at the University of Florida studying philosophy/pre-law, Alex is a big man and athlete in high school, and Emily is a studious junior high student. Everyone is pretty independent and happy.

Suzanna isn’t sure whether or not she is pleased with the news of a surprise pregnancy, especially since she went to the doctor to verify that she had entered menopause. She leaves the doctor’s office and goes to a movie, all by herself in the dark, so she can cry and cry with no one to see or know. She sees Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in “Roman Holiday.” By the end of the movie, when she sees Audrey Hepburn say her silent and dutiful farewell to the dashing reporter Gregory Peck, she’s a sobbing mess. But all this weepy stuff clears Suzanna’s brain. When she walks out of the theater into the bright light of afternoon, she knows that she wants this baby in her life. She drives straight home, turns on the oven, and makes bread.

Robert is more surprised by coming home to homemade bread in the middle of an afternoon than he is by Suzanna’s announcement that they are going to have another child. After supper, they retire to their room for the evening, to have time to talk, away from the kids.

Time for serious decisions. Budget. Because Robert is a professor at the university, the kids get to go tuition-free, so college expenses aren’t such a big factor. Also, the boys work during the summers and earn their own spending money. Robert and Suzanna figure that they can make expenses with only Robert’s salary.

(continued)