Taylor

Taylor is eleven years old today, and it’s a celebration for many reasons, but mainly because we’ve all survived and have relatively few scars. Connie and I have joked before that if Taylor had been born first, she would be an only child, but I am never sure if it is her strong personality or our relative exhaustion by the time she came along that created the intense tug of war and contest of wills that has been our life this last decade.

Although we didn’t have a plan, our general consensus was to have two children and stop at that. Four seemed like a nice round number and it fit well at most restaurant tables. By fall 1997 we had dealt with two years of “hyper-Ashlyn” who did not so much learn to walk, but swing from the rafters and run through the house at the speed of a manic monkey. We were tired, and as we sat helplessly on the couch night after night while a tiny blonde whirlwind ripped through our home, we began to discuss the need to hinder further childbearing.

The obvious choice was for me to have a “procedure” done, since it is much less intrusive than what Connie would have gone through. Still, I was not convinced. Connie made excellent points, winning every discussion with logic and accredited medical data. I agreed, but cowered, and eventually delayed long enough that the decision was rendered pointless. In early October, around the time we were celebrating our 11th anniversary and Shelby’s 7th birthday, we learned that we were expecting again.

We were stunned at first, but the phases from denial to blame to acceptance and then excitement passed quickly, and soon Connie had that beautiful pregnant glow again, and we began planning for the changes a fifth member of our family would bring. We had no idea.

Sometime in the second trimester one of the blood tests came back bad, and there was a long week’s wait until we could get into the Neonatal Unit at Fort Sanders Hospital to have a complete work up and intensive ultrasound. Suddenly the unexpected pregnancy took on a whole new meaning as we realized how desperately we wanted this baby, and prayed for her to be healthy. As we waited for the doctor to bring us the results, minutes seemed like days, and that brightly lit, sterile waiting room became a courtroom which would hand down a verdict affecting the rest of our lives.

The verdict was good, and we were shown images of a healthy baby, with normal fetal movements and features. The blood test had been a “false-positive,” but it was really a reminder to us that we should not take this third pregnancy for granted. Since we were fairly positive that this would be our last child, we tried to enjoy the pregnancy and birth experience as much as we had with our first.

Taylor was born Tuesday, June 9, 1998, three days before Connie’s birthday. The birth was the smoothest of the three, which is easy for me to say, since all I had to do was stand by the bed and chant once in a while. Connie was radiant and felt great soon after the birth, laughing, talking, and showing off the newborn to visitors. It was all good until the next morning when they took Connie down to have her tubes tied.

My logic at the time, which must have been how Custer felt right before the Little Big Horn, was that since she was already in the hospital, she should just get it done. She agreed to that, mainly because she knew I was probably too big a coward to ever do anything on my own, but I also think she knew she could hold it over me for the rest of our lives. And she has.

I don’t blame her one bit though. The glowing, beautiful, happy mother who had just given birth the day before returned to the room a sore, weakened, slightly bitter woman. While she had been able to lovingly cradle Taylor in her arms the night before, now she could hardly move and nothing could rest against her tender stomach. It took weeks for her to fully recover, but there seems to be no expiration date on the shame I feel for putting her through that. I have been stupid many times in my life, but rarely have I been so thoughtless.

At home, Taylor was entertained and fawned over by two big sisters who loved a captive audience. Once she developed the ability to smile and laugh, it was SHOWTIME at the Warford home. Each older girl tried to outperform the other; singing, dancing, making silly faces, even pratfalls. Bruises were common, but fortunately there were no broken bones in the frantic attempts to amuse the baby.

Learning from and improving on the vaudevillian skills of her siblings, Taylor started showing off as soon as she could waddle around the house and utter a few syllables of song. Wearing just a diaper and a variety of comedic and dramatic expressions, she would leave us all in tears from laughing at her antics. Like her sisters, her face was angelic and her smile could melt your heart.

She enjoyed being center of attention, and that has continued as she has gotten older. She may have been youngest, but her personality left her better suited in battles for home supremacy than her sisters. Shelby, calmer and less interested in such things, usually sidestepped these battles completely, having better things to do. Ashlyn, who had so recently been youngest and also center of attention, was completely blindsided by this unexpected turn of events. Her natural sweetness was no match for Taylor’s single-minded thirst for power, and they soon became our own version of the Hatfield and McCoy’s.

I hear that this kind of thing is common; sibling rivalry and the bitter push-pull of “she said-she said.” Connie nor I did not and still do not know how to deal with it. Shelby and Ashlyn rarely butted heads and when they did, there was definitely not blood or concussions. The battles waged between Ashlyn and Taylor have been epic and ongoing, alternating between tragic and sometimes comic. The ridiculousness of some of their arguments verge on the psychotic.

Yet, there is never a question that there is a substantial amount of love between them. I have no doubt that Ashlyn would step in front of a speeding bus to save Taylor’s life, nor that Taylor would do the same for her, but only after a brief moment of analytical dissection of the situation.

The problem that we have (and I used to say it was “Taylor’s problem,” but I now realize that that is not true) is that Taylor is smarter than the rest of us. She has my questioning mind and desperate need to find logic, but it has been magnified by 1000. She needs to know why things are the way they are, and she refuses to accept “it is the way it is” as an answer. She gets easily frustrated when we can’t (or in her mind “won’t”) explain something to her, but she has yet to figure out that it’s not because we are trying to keep her in the dark, it’s because we simply don’t know ourselves. I’m hoping she reaches that stage soon, like Shelby did a few years back and Ashlyn has recently, that I’m not as bright as I look and that still waters don’t necessarily run that deep. She’ll be disappointed for a while, but she has the ability to reason it out and come to terms with it. That’s what she does.

I’m glad that God saw fit to have Connie and I procrastinate during that summer of 1997. He knew we needed a third child even when we did not. He knew we needed Taylor to challenge us, and knew that we would love her despite those challenges. She is a beautiful, talented and often brilliant girl; quick to give a hug or hold your hand. As a Dad who’s seeing his oldest graduate and prepare to leave home, and whose middle daughter is venturing out with friends and activities that don’t require a father’s assistance, it’s so wonderful to still have a “baby” at home. She may be eleven years old, but she’ll always be Daddy’s little girl.

Happy Birthday Taylor! I love you…