Page 34 of Beside the Rolling Waves
“I’d clap, but my hands are full.”
“Thank you. I was wondering where my appreciative audience was. I feel like I deserve a standing ovation.”
“I’m standing anyway,” Rodney joked.
She grinned at him, and he smiled back, and part of her resented the fact that the past had just left, and he hadn’t paid for it at all, but that was what forgiveness was. Her saying she would take the check this time. She had it. She paid for it.
And that’s what she’d done. She paid, and then she was supposed to forget about it. Wasn’t that what Jesus had done for her? He paid, and then it was finished. No one had to pay again, and he didn’t keep rubbing it into her face, making her feel bad that she didn’t pay.
It was over. And that’s what she had to do. Otherwise, the forgiveness that she granted was worthless.
By that time, she’d gone over by the rocking chair that was on the other side of the bassinet and grabbed a hold of the back of it, carefully holding the baby in her left arm.
She slid the rocking chair around the bassinet and got it in position beside hers.
“Wow. That was pretty impressive,” Rodney said.
“I was scared the whole time.”
It was true. She had been, although she’d been lecturing herself too. And now, grateful that was over, she went back to her chair, positioned herself in front of it, and then sat down carefully, realizing as she did so that she needed to move the baby a bit so she didn’t bump her head on the arm of the chair.
“Watch when you sit down that you don’t bump his head. It’s easy to do. I almost did that time.”
“Thanks for the warning,” he said, getting ready to settle down, putting his left hand underneath the baby’s head. She realized he was holding Kevin in his right arm.
The way they had the chairs positioned, the babies would be “looking” at each other as they sat there.
She was pretty sure that the babies couldn’t recognize each other, since it would have been dark in the womb, and she wasn’t sure the babies’ brains were developed enough for them to actually see anything and know what it was.
“How old are they before they can look at something and recognize it?” she asked.
“You mean they can’t do that right now?” Rodney asked.
“I don’t think so.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “I’d like to Google it right now. I should have been doing this before. But I didn’t realize I was going to want to know all these things. Need to know them.”
“Me either. I guess I knew that we were getting babies, but it didn’t dawn on me how much information I was going to want to know.”
“‘You don’t know what you don’t know,’ right?” she said. It was something that they had said to each other over their teenage years as they found out new things that surprised them.
“That’s right, Beckpet.”
The nickname that he had for her rolled off his tongue almost like it was a habit. Although she knew he hadn’t used it for at least five years.
Her back started to bristle at it. She didn’t want him to use a nickname. He didn’t have permission to be that familiar with her.
But forgiveness.
She forgave. She had to let it go. She couldn’t hold on to the resentment and the ill will.
That didn’t mean she had to use his nickname.
She kept her eyes on the baby in her arms. Praying for her sister. She just wanted to continuously pray for Rita, that things would go well, that they would get all the cancer, that these babies would know their mom all their lives, that Rita would have a long and healthy life.
“Rodney and Becky?” a low, soft female voice said.
They looked up to see a doctor in scrubs with a hairnet on and the face mask pulled down from in front of her mouth.
“That’s us,” Rodney said, moving as though he were going to stand up.
