Читать книгу Unravelled: Life as a Mother - Maria Housden - Страница 11

Claude and I, giddy with happiness, were bringing our little boy home. As we wound through the quiet streets of our neighbourhood, I stared out the window and could not believe how much had changed in the two days since Will’s birth. Everything familiar looked different and somehow more beautiful, as if the light falling on it had passed through a special filter, allowing it to be seen more perfectly and precisely than before.

Glancing at Claude’s profile, I was filled with a sense that everything we had done together since we had married five years before had been in preparation for this. Each decision we had made, from finishing college to sending Claude to graduate school and saving enough money to buy our first home in a town with excellent schools, 45 minutes from Claude’s parents, had been part of a carefully orchestrated plan. Although we had married young – I was 20 and Claude was 25 – each of us was sure that, like our parents, we would be married forever, and the two of us shared a sober determination to make an even better life for our children than the lives we had lived so far.

Feeling my eyes on him, Claude turned. ‘I love you,’ I said, blowing him a kiss. He smiled as we turned and pulled into the drive. Climbing out of the car, I gathered the diaper bag and small suitcase. Claude opened the door behind me, unhooked the safety latch and lifted Will in his infant carrier from the back seat. I followed the two of them as they passed through the gate of the white picket fence. The stone path led us past the rose garden. In early December, the bushes were mostly a tumble of bare branches, but the manicured lawn of the back yard was still a deep green. As we approached the back door of our little Cape Cod, Claude suddenly stopped and turned. Tipping Will’s infant seat slightly forward, he said, solemnly but with a sparkle in his eye, ‘Someday son, this will all be yours.’

The two of us had grinned at each other, drunk in our shared love for our son. Neither of us knew then, how far from reality our shared dreams were.