Mother's Day

Mother’s Day will be a little strange this year. Strange because my youngest sister, the one to whom I had to play mother for most of her childhood, has just found out that she is about to be a mother herself.

My little Joyce is going to have her own little one.

I wonder if I would be in such disbelief if I or one of my other siblings had achieved parental status first. It seems so unnatural that the youngest of five should be the first to get to this point. The oldest was married first and has a lovely baby bunny. The rest of us assumed that we would progress in the established familial order from there. Jason, Heather, Nora, Audrey, Joyce. Love, marriage, baby carriage, college funds, and so on.

We have been slowly accepting that there would be some exceptions to this. As I am nearly 30 and not in a relationship, I accepted that Audrey was dating seriously and that there was the prospect of her getting married before me, but no sooner than 1 or 2 years from now. So when Joyce announced her engagement, I was pretty much in shock.

Joyce has been dropping pregnancy hints for awhile now. Gathering these clues felt like a little game. When she finally admitted her state, it became an even funnier game. We made fun of her belly, we made fetus jokes. But when she sent me the text message from the clinic, “I heard its heartbeat”, it all became very real. A little too real. Joyce is still a baby about to have a baby of her own and I feel left behind.