The Shortest: A Lump of Clay

Estin came popping right along when called from the womb--we was young, and things was working. After we recovered from the initial shock of parenthood, Mary, being the planner that she is, figured that 3 years spacing was perfect between the 2 kids we wanted to have. Smaller gap would mean more sibling rivalry, and bigger gap might mean that the siblings would grow up separately. So when it came time for #2, we assumed that pregnancy and childbirth would come easily again. Nope. The bodies produced acts of resistance. Acts of cervical disobediance, seminal insubordination, who knows. Things was just not working. What transpired was 2-3 years of anguish. An anguish that only Mary can speak to. I tried and failed to understand it. Having a sore back or losing my pace on the sporting fields--nope, not in the same zip code. Being broken to the point of inability to provide, maybe that would come closer.

In the end, after all the disobediance, we decided to adopt a child. We felt we would rather spend $ and effort on adoption rather than IVF. We still had to work through whether that would be from another country or from home. There are some complex issues involved, to be sure. Not least, for me, was a frank preference for raising children of our own making rather than someone else's. How would I react to, bond with, a brand new tiny person from another bloodline? I think it would have worked out great. I think I would have/could have given an adoped child as much as I can give. But there was a seed of doubt. What would the child's past hide? Would the pregnant mother be free of harmful drugs and alcohol? Would an orphanage baby get the touch and love that it needs before we could reach it?

When we had sorted it out, Mary and I, we started off down the road to adoption. With that, we stopped the calendar-watching, the tests, the temperature-taking, the cycle-monitoring, the doctors visits. The struggling and striving ended. Suddenly, the Shortest himself came calling.

X has that gap from his brother that Mary wanted so much to avoid, but that is nothing to us now. Mary is making sure these guys have fun-filled bright childhoods. In naming the baby, I liked Xavier, his eventual middle name (the X-man). But we kept coming back to one name. Neither said it aloud for a long time, but realization of why that name seemed right was dawning on each us: we were recalling a poem read at our wedding ceremony:

Take a lump of clay, wet it, pat it,
And make an image of me, and an image of you.
Then smash them, crash them, and add a little water.
Break them and remake them into an image of you
And an image of me.
Then in my clay, there's a little of you.
And in your clay, there's a little of me.
And nothing ever shall us sever;
Living, we'll sleep in the same quilt,
And dead, we'll be buried together.

-Kuan Tao-Sheng (1262-1319)

Together, Mary and I are less like lumps of wet clay and more like little, brittle, kiln-dried bits of artistic offal. More generously, like two stones rubbing each other smooth. But nevermind, the idea of smashing and crashing and remolding captures the imagination. It's one of the things this NZ walkabout is for, to do some grinding, some mixing and reforming, melding and welding our family together by virtue of adventure.

As for the Shortest, well, I'm not sure Clay could be better named.