Francesca

As I drove home from dropping elder off at one of his jobs, a half remembered dream from decades ago popped into my head and brought tears to my eyes.

In it was a little girl in a red velvet dress and her dad's big serious sad eyes. She was beautiful.

She was also deformed.

And when I awoke from that dream, I knew her name.

Francesca.

The child I lost.

Lifetimes ago, her dad and I lived on Long Island. He was a grad student, and I was working a dead-end job for the salary and the paltry benefits (but it didn't matter because eventually I was going to stay home and raise a family anyway--ha. I did eventually raise a family, but that's not how it played out. But I get ahead of this story.) One evening at dinner, I abruptly pushed away my plate.

He looked askance at me across the table. I said that the salad suddenly turned my stomach. Shrugged.  He asked if I could be pregnant. I laughed.  I was on the pill, I said.  We cleaned up dinner, and that was the end of that conversation.

Sometime later, weeks, sitting in my dead end chair at the dead end job, I doubled over in pain. Menstrual cramps times a hundred or so.  I didn't keep track of my periods in those days, as they were more or less regular and I didn't think much about anything healthwise, other than I could use to lose a few pounds (I laugh to think that now). I headed for the ladies, and hunkered down in a stall, waiting for something.

I waited. Daydreamed through the cramps. Listened to others come and go in the restroom. Eventually figured that I might be missed.  The pain eventually subsided. I casually glanced into the bowl.  Froze.  Stole another glance.  Then got down on my knees and peered into the bowl.

In it, was something pink and vaguely shrimp-like.  I stared, the reality of what I was seeing pummeling me. But I couldn't feel anything in that moment outside of shock--for the moment.

I'm not sure how long I knelt there. People coming and going, maybe remarking at the knees and heels out at the back of the stall.  I had a phone call to make, and looking back, I don't even think I had the wherewithal to find a quiet space to do it, this being before portable cell phones.

I don't remember the conversation, only sitting at the desk, the cubicle wall providing negligible privacy, and tucking all this away in a box in the back of my mind after.  As if she never existed.

The dream came later.

And the grieving came only after the birth of elder, when the magnitude of her loss really made itself clear. We'd already moved twice since then, but she came with us.

And after our third move, I heard elder laughing and chatting in the bright sunlight of the office on a winter's day.  He spoke, almost 100% of the time, in perfectly articulated yet completely scripted sentences.

But he was alone.  I was in another room. His brother was not yet born. And the conversation went on, audible, but not articulate to my ears a few rooms over.

Hey, N-, who are you talking to?

Raised voice:  My sister!  (and the quiet conversation continued)

It took me a couple beats to figure it out.

We have quite a few angels and household saints looking after us.  St. Francesca of Hauppauge is one of them.