Raina

Raina 

That afternoon a fog set in. I stepped out warily down the front steps and felt the light drizzle on my face and arms, steady, silent, and soft. The air was heavy with moisture—like me, I thought, heavy with child. I was home these days, feeling the calmness and quiet of waiting.

It was only two days after due date when I realized labor had started. With excitement, I added the last things to a suitcase I had prepared weeks before. Girl or boy? We had wanted to be surprised. Not knowing, I had packed two perfect sets of baby clothes, one blue, one pink.

Only a mother knows that happy anticipation that quashes all fear and dreadful knowledge of an ordeal that is about to be undertaken. At age twenty-three, this was my second, and my husband and I were on our way to the clinic.

Adrenaline coursed through me that night as I paced the halls. The rain that started that afternoon, turned to snow by midnight. Then as the contractions tore me to shreds, thunder roared; snowflakes and sleet pellets collided. Lightning zapped through the unstable atmosphere, and the rare January thunder-snow exploded.

Hours passed like a marathon. I focused intently on the breathing: in through the nose, out through the mouth, blow the pain out and let it go. I heard the nurse filling the inflatable pool with warm, deep water for me. I loved the water, surrounding, holding, uplifting, comforting in pain. I felt the stethoscope resting on my skin beneath the water and heard the quiet, quick ticking, “Lub-dub, lub-dub," the heartbeat of new life, rhythmic as rain.

Suddenly, pressure-- a rip, a torrent of blood and water, a scramble for towels, and she was here! We named her Raina, queen in Spanish, and yes, Raina, like the rain.

The portly nurse, chuckled as she handed me my precious bundle the next morning. Sun dazzled on the fresh, clean snow. Light rays slanted in above the sheer curtains, white and warm. My heart overflowed as I held her cheek against my own, soft as softest silk, skin so smooth, golden in golden sunlight in an aura of wonder. This child was not just pretty or sweet; she was drop-dead gorgeous-- perfect tiny nostrils, eyelashes, puckered lips, silky black hair, ten petite toes. Was there anything closer to heaven? Eyes opened, so dark, and looked into mine.

The birth of a child in the rain. Rain. I chuckled thinking of my last social studies unit I had squeezed in before maternity leave. I was teaching third graders the water cycle. What comes around goes around. Water, the elixir of life, falling, rising, falling, rising, the sky and earth in perfect sync.

“Water’s just like love,” a student had said.

“Out of the mouths of babes…” I smiled--how true! Water flowed like a cyclical song of grace. Like my child—Raina. Born in the rain.

I brought her home when she was forty-eight hours old, home to her brother and dad, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, students, friends, and neighbors. Cards and gifts bedecked the house, a sure sign that Raina would always be loved. But one card after all these years I will never forget. An older grandmother wrote a card with the Chinese pictogram for the word “happiness”: a boy and a girl painted in the  delicate strokes of Chinese calligraphy. In her old age, this wise grandmother shared our joy of having first a son and now a daughter.

Both happiness and minor woes marked the next years of Raina’s life. Bouts of childhood sicknesses made my young heart twist in worry, then a small surgery. But Raina was quick of mind and body—her first words were, “Me do it!” She would scale the bars of her baby crib to use the toilet in the early hours of morning, and by four, she had taught herself to read.

As three more siblings came along, she broke the mold for the oldest, responsible daughter. Within moments of entering the house from a long day in kindergarten, she picked fights. She dared and double dared her older brother, no matter what the topic. After all, she was a hair taller than him, and if he could do something, she certainly could do it better. Her dark eyes would flash, her foot stamp, and her lower lip pout.

Once when she was six, I said to her in exasperation, “Raina if you go on being like this, you will grow up to be a witch!”

“Oh mom,” she said without a moment’s hesitation and a gleam in her eye, “I will be a mommy witch with lots and lots of baby witches!”

Great Grandmother Ruby, a fixture in our home, would crochet and observe the kids while rocking in her favorite rocking chair. “That whip-crack of a girl is the spitting image of Scout.” She loved Harper Lee’s novel and had watched the black and white movie repeatedly.

Childhood was sunshine and summer, swimming, biking, and skinned knees. Raina helped her dad at lambing time. One morning early, she found a half dead lamb which had fallen into the water trough. Raina brought it home, cradled in her arms, stiff and cold. “It’ll never make it,” I tried to tell her as she laid a bath towel and hot water bottle in the bottom of an old banana box. Her dark little face was fixed and silent. She placed the lifeless body down and covered it lovingly. She watched over it all day, waiting for her dad to come home that evening. Raina had a child’s absolute faith in her dad, the man who could right all wrongs and fix any problem. Together, they warmed milk in a pot, coaxed a rubber tube down its throat, and syphoned a few ounces directly into its tiny stomach. It was difficult to get Raina to bed that evening. I was sure morning would bring a funeral and a flood of tears.

In the middle of the night, we all awoke to a thumping and clicking of tiny, hard hoofs on the living room tile. The lamb was alive! It had revived jumped right out of the box! Raina and her lamb were inseparable friends for months. She even brought it to school once, and the teacher had all the kids write descriptive paragraphs as it tripped between desks.

When not frolicking with her lamb, Raina played fast pitch as well as any of the boys; a picnic table, up-turned, served as back stop though most of the time was spent searching for lost baseballs in the weeds. But the golden years don’t last.

Storms brewed, storms broke, wintry mixes, and fun-loving sunshine, all through the teen years. A storm cracked violently the day her favorite cousin and confidant crashed violently to his death while rock climbing. He was only nineteen, and so full of life, and fun, and promise. He lived several weeks on life support, but his body and brain were so broken….

Why? Why? Why? Raina wouldn’t talk for days.

She left home and got her first job. It seemed to be going well, but one day Raina’s friend called and said that Raina had gone missing.  Panic wound its fingers around my heart and paralyzed it with anxiety. I paced the house, and wrung my hands; I cried and despaired; I beat my fists on the bed mattress. My husband drove the four hundred miles to where she was living. I was traumatized.

But Raina showed up not long after. She had been hanging out with cousins and was a poor communicator. We were all learning and growing deeper roots in storm, roots that reached for bedrock and stability. Raina struggled with anxiety. Should she come back home or figure it out alone?

Kids’ love-lives are often a parental mystery, and Raina’s was no different. She dated a boy we were not, at first, in agreement with. My husband told him emphatically that our daughter was not for him. But true love persists, and five years later they were married. One month later, our daughter crashed with a serious bout of depression.

“Stop worrying. You’re driving yourself nuts.” My husband told me over and over when I couldn’t sleep at night. My husband has always been a strong, calm contrast to my storminess. I started dating him at nineteen. How many rainy rendezvous? A fire tower in the Catskills, wind and rain whipping our faces. Mountain climbing early one morning in dark and rain, just to be together one more time before we separated to continue school. Rain watered our romance and turned sweetness into adventure.  

“Is this doing anything?” he asked as I tossed and turned, weighed down with worry. I left the bed, tip-toed downstairs, sat on the couch, and watched the glowing logs in the woodstove as the night ticked by.

“Men are so factual, practical, and reasonable,” I thought.  I was three thousand miles from my grown daughter, but seemed to feel her every pain. Sadness seemed so much worse in the dark. So many whys. Then I thought of rain: Even the sky cries. Tears water the soul and let it grow strong and deep. Storms come, but they also pass.

The sun is shining again. Raina has conquered her challenges-- for now. Her new husband has proven his faithful love and loyalty by standing by her through difficult times. Rain, sun, rain. Perfect. Like breathing: in, out, in, out, like air. The cycle of life is always moving. When it rains, let it rain. The sun is not far behind.

Although thousands of miles apart, Raina and I are still close. Mother-love runs through the whole cycle. Once a mother always a mother. Let them go and fight their storms, and they’ll come back to you, strong, like rain.