I still remember the evening of Cole's birth like it was yesterday...following the hoopla of having an emergency C-section after a half-day of pushing and all the commotion of the previous hours, I lay there in recovery in the middle of the night letting the reality of his arrival sink in. The nurses had left us alone, Dave had crashed out hard on the pull out chair and was breathing deeply and Cole lay in my arms sleeping off his delivery hangover. Adrenaline still coursed through my mind and body and yet I was calm, completely content with Cole's sweet smell drifting around me. I had tried my darnedest to have a productive labor but my wee one was a week beyond his due date and hence wasn't so wee plus he had decided to turn sideways in the birth canal before becoming wedged. He was battered and bruised as a result and looked as if he had decided to fight his eviction notice. As I gazed down at his sleeping form, I began talking to him, telling him all about how we had waited for this day, how I felt from day one that he was a boy and that he had such a future of adventure ahead of him. His face was all scrunched up and prune-like so typical of a newborn. To me, he looked like a pickle. That very night, his nickname was also born.
Three and half years later, I still call him PICKLES...even his classmates at school have heard me use it. It comes out unconsciously most times. It is just our thing. As a toddler he used to actually eat pickles and make the laugh-out-loud pucker face but as he grew more picky with foods, he stopped eating them. So he will forever be my PICKLES and I will continue to use it here and there until one day when I say it and embarrass him. Then, I will have my moment and grieve over the loss of a once intimate communication and realize it is one of many things I will have to let go of over the course of his lifetime.
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