Stay, Stay, Stay

“Beatrice,” Clem spoke softly, placing a cool cloth on my forehead. “Honey it’s been well over ten hours.” She didn’t mean ten hours since the labour had started in the paint store, no that was at least a day ago, she meant ten hours that I’d been in intense active labour, sitting at six centimetres dilated. To me it felt like years. Each contraction came like a heavy hand, whipping me into a world where I was alone in the agony. “I think we need to consider medical intervention,” I heard her tell Sidney, and immediately my eyes opened and I shook my head furiously. If I could do it with Lachlan and Piper, there was no way I couldn’t deliver this baby at home. But time was running out and we all knew it, in a little under 36 hours Sidney was expected to be on a plane to New York to play a series of decision making games. As of that day they were in the playoffs, but it wouldn’t take much to knock them out over the next two weeks. I knew he wanted to be there, and that he also felt a need to be with me so after twelve hours of no progress, I finally relented and the ambulance was called. 



I was thankful the kids had gone to Serena and Andy’s house, the newlywed pair who had been trying unsuccessfully to start a family of their own and were more than willing to take their niece and nephew who were just as excited to go there. 



I sobbed when they told me I needed an epidural, because I’d been sobbing since I’d got into the ambulance, and I sobbed when it was in and I couldn’t feel my lower body. I howled with heartache when they told me her shoulder was stuck and I was going to need a cesarean. To me that felt like a failure on the part of my body. I understood the importance of birth choices and I didn’t begrudge any woman who had chosen that route, but after two perfect home births, it was a blow to my ego to hear that my body just couldn’t do it.



 “I’m so sorry,” I looked up at Sidney from my place on the operating table, he looked as tired as I felt and tears pricked my eyes again. I felt so guilty not giving this baby the same birth experience as the others.



“Don’t be,” he soothed me, hand pushing back my hair. “This won’t matter once she’s here. You did such a good job.” He knew exactly what to say an I tried to believe it was true.



 Moments later Blakely Veronique Keller-Crosby came screaming into the world, furious to have been pulled from the safety of my body but absolutely perfect. She was the first of our three to be born in a hospital, the biggest of the bunch, and the only one who I could look at and see glimmers of myself right away.

The darkness that followed was like nothing I could begin to understand. It was an insidious ache that permeated every other emotion I dared for feel. Even the joy of the playoffs was tainted by this all to familiar anxiety that seemed to have doubled itself after we’d left the hospital. My mother came to stay after the birth, but Big Bea wasn’t with her and everything felt so wrong. I worried I wasn’t giving the older kids enough attention and that I wasn’t doing right by Blake, I worried that I was stressing Sidney out and that I’d never be able to handle three kids on my own. And I swore this was our last. Blakely would forever be the youngest because I couldn’t force myself to do this again.

We were all crowded on the couch watching that final game of the playoffs. The 7th of the series and the decision maker. As the seconds ticked by in the third period I felt like it was getting harder and harder to breath. The score tied at two a piece and every shot Sid took being blocked. I could see he was getting frustrated, even from the television screen. I hadn't gotten dressed that day, and it was a miracle that the house wasn't destroyed. The would on my abdomen was still healing but I wondered if the wound in the fabric of my being could ever be mended. Nights I would lay in bed going over the details of her birth and wonder if something didn’t go horribly wrong. Did a piece of myself escape through the surgical sight as the scalpel sliced into my previously intact skin? Or was I ever really so intact to begin with. I thought by the third birth I would be able to handle this feeling of loss and confusion, this horrible dread that overtook me and weighed me down like a brick tied to my foot as I tried to swim in the ocean that was the life Sidney and I had created. But I wasn’t floating this time. Each time I went under it felt like I was below the surface longer and longer, as if one day I would bob under and fail to ever return. I wondered which was harder, the suffocating despair itself, or trying to hide it from the people around me. I didn’t want the kids to see me broken, and I couldn’t bother Sidney as they grew closer and closer to the cup. I wanted to talk to my grandmother. But every time I picked up the phone I remembered that she was gone, and I sunk a little deeper. Each day I wondered how I could be me without her. 



When the puck went into the opposing team’s net, I didn’t react with joy like those around me. Lachlan high kicking and throwing his arms into the air was delighted while Piper cheered loudly. But for me it was filled with a bittersweet tincture as we ate closer to the centre that was winning the cup. If he won he’d be gone longer. If he won there’d be media, if he won he’d work harder to do it again. As the seconds fell away and the final buzzer rang, as the crowed erupted in joyous cries and Sidney flew into the arms of a teammate I watched my hopes of a summer away from it all fade into the background and forced a smile onto my face, knowing I was disgustingly selfish.

“Congratulations,” I whispered that night when we were finally in bed, Blakely asleep between us, a literal and proverbial wedge in our intimacy.

I used to hear people say that the leap from one to two was harder than the one from two kids to three. There was some truth to that, but at no point did I find myself thinking that being a mother of three was any easier than being a mother of two. In fact, as all three of our children grew, I found myself just as exhausted as I was in Lachlan and Piper’s earliest years. 

****
 “Blakely, please stop running away from Mummy,” I pleaded, chasing my brown eyed girl down the hallway and cursing under my breath.

“No!” She screamed her favourite word and chills ran down my spine as she slammed the bathroom door. I stood in dread on the other side as I hear the lock click and immediately wanted to cry, closing my eyes and rubbing my forehead.



 “Mum!” I heard Lachlan call from the living room, and I groaned and slowly opened my eyes. “Mum!” he called again and I gave him a quick yes, one ear still on the bathroom door hoping to hear if she made any radical moves. “Dad’s on the phone,” he continued to holler and I rolled my eyes. 



“Can you bring it to me please?” I instructed, because to an adult, that was logical, but to a nine year old it needed to be clarified.



 No sooner had I spoke, than my blonde haired first born came skidding down the hall, my cellphone pressed against his ear. “Okay,” he sighed at his father. “Yeah, alright dad,” the look was too familiar, it was the same one I’d seen Sidney give his own parents on more than one occasion. “Okay, love you too,” he said before thrusting the phone in my direction.



 Taking the phone, I let out a breath before answering. “Hi honey,” I sang, as if everything was in perfect order and I wasn’t worried about our youngest drowning herself in the toilet.



 “Hey, how’s everything going at home base?” Somehow, his voice still made me melt, and instantly I wanted to close my eyes and pretend I was in L.A or Anaheim or wherever he was calling from. All that time together and I could confidently say I was madly in love with him.



 “Oh y’know,” I tried to smile. “Just like herding cats,” I sighed, and slumped against the wall. 

 “How long has she been in there?” he knew the drill, she’d done this a few too many times before. 

 “About five minutes.” 



 “We’ll get a new lock on it when I get home,” he tried to comfort me, but there was little reassuring about when I get home.



 Squeezing my eyes shit again I pushed away tears. “When is that again?” I asked him weakly. It wasn’t that I hadn’t done this a thousand times before, been alone with the kids while he travelled, it was that I had done it a thousand times before and I desperately missed him with every bone in my body.



 “Three days,” he said almost apologetically. “But them I’m home for two weeks.” It was a small consolation, but I tried to think of any other career that allowed one parent to think being home for two weeks was a long stretch.



 “Okay,” I croaked and shifted to listen closer to the door, giving the knob another hopeful jiggle. “Well Piper has her dance show on Saturday, and she really wants you there, but I know better than to make promises.” There was a sadness in the statement that I tried to hide, but he was smarter than to miss it.



 “I’ll be there,” he said more certainly than I’d heard in months. “No game Saturday and I can skip practice. I’ll be there,” he was reiterating it for himself more than anything.



 “Please do,” I pleaded. “I can’t handle her disappointment again. You know she acts like it’s not a big deal but…”



 “I’ll be there,” he cut me off. “Hey, tell Bake I want to talk to her.” 

 All it took was the mention of Sidney on the phone for the door knob to click and my wild child to appear, face smeared with a lipstick I’d forgotten on the counter and the toilet paper unravelled behind her.



*** 


We swore three was enough. We swore up and down that three was a good number and we couldn’t handle a fourth. But somehow, nearly thirteen years after Lachlan’s life changing birth, I held our fourth, beautiful baby in my arms, our second son, and what I knew would this time, for certain, be the last. Baby Ellie was born John Ellery Keller-Crosby, on a snowy morning in November. He was our last baby, in Sidney’s last season and he brought with him a kind of peace that I’d been searching for. Although maybe it wasn't Ellie who provoked peace, but the announcement of Sidney’s retirement, because finally, for the first time in our thirteen years together, I would have my husband to myself. 

 Geno had retired a year earlier and I could tell Sid didn't feel the same without him. They spoke as often as two people on different continents could, but on the ice something was missing for him. His body was getting tired, and a twenty year career was more than most could hope for. So I held his hand tightly as he told the world he had one last year in him, and we both went to the truck and cried. We didn’t know our relationship without the interruptions of hockey



“Maybe I made a mistake?” he said softly, as I lay Ellie in his crib, the other three already fast asleep thanks to Auntie Serena who had baby sat while we spent the rest of the evening after the press conference driving around. 



“You’re not,” I whispered, smoothing Ellery’s hair back then tip toeing away. 



“What if I have a few more rounds in me?” his eyes were red again and I couldn’t imagine how hard it was. My career had ended thirteen years ago. “Most players announce in the summertime so they can savour their final season,” he shook his head. 



“But you knew in the summer, so you were still savouring it,” I closed the door behind us. It was unorthodox, but he’d decided to announce the end of his career the day after the New Year. Some thought it was some kind of marketing move to sell more tickets for the second half of the season, but the truth was that it had taken him that long to be absolutely certain, yet here he was, questioning himself again.



 Tears dripped down his cheeks and I frowned, leading him to the bedroom. We’d already had the hard conversations, the debate of where we’d live — we’d decided to move home— and how we’d tell the kids, but now it was time to deal with the emotional reality. “I don’t remember my life before hockey,” he sniffled and sat on the edge of the bed. Squatting gingerly between his knees, I took his face in both off my hands.



 “Hockey isn’t going anywhere,” I assure him, wiping away a stray tear. 



“What if they forget about me? Who am I without people following my every move?” 



“You’re still you. You’re Sidney Keller-Crosby and you’ll never be anything less than a great.” Moving to sit beside him, I took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. 



“I can’t believe it’s over,” he sighed finally.


“There is no real ending” I smiled up at him, then rest my head on his shoulder. “Just a place where they stop telling our story, but that doesn't mean we stop living it.”


The End

Notes

So there it is.

I didn't expect to finish this tonight at all.

I don't know what to say other than thank you.
Thank you for reading this, for waiting for it, for giving me something to look forward to. From every part of my heart I am grateful to have an audience as loving and involved as each of you. It hurts my heart to be done this, but I hope it brings with it peace for all of you.

Please keep in contact.

Love,
Theodora