laura hough smith

The smallest member of our little family has a birthday this week. Mary Finley will turn 5 on Tuesday, and we celebrated Saturday with a tea party with her birthday “sister,” Evelyn, who will turn 5 on the same day. The two girls have been friends since they were in daycare and their teachers called them Cagney and Lacy as they gathered all the baby dolls and purses in the classroom for themselves.

I was reminded this week of the nine months I carried this little person. Mary Fin took us by surprise. With Lollie, we tried for months to get pregnant; with Mary Fin, we merely said we were ready for another child and I was pregnant the next month.

My pregnancy with Lollie was a breeze compared to this one. I gained 20 pounds with Lollie, and with Mary Fin I gained that in the first two months. By the time I was five months along I had heartburn just from drinking water. We went to the beach that summer and instead of relaxing in the sand and cool waves, I was stuck inside miserable with a sinus infection.

The season of her pregnancy also brought change and, with that, fear. I’d decided to leave newspapers for education about the time I became pregnant with her. I started teaching high school English in August, and the newness of it all left me a little crazed.

Underlying all that was another nagging fear: I had had two blood clots in the past eight years at that time, and pregnancy increases the risk for those. I gave myself daily shots of blood thinners during Lollie’s pregnancy, too, and had come out fine, but I was still unnerved, and that fear proved founded. Three weeks after she was born I developed what I knew was a second clot in my lungs. I was admitted to the hospital and was devastated that my biggest fear had come true. I hated being separated even for two nights from my newborn. But, as they always do, my aunts showed up for me and loved Mary Fin and Lollie while the Delta’s best oncologist oversaw my recovery.

It was a scary time but as I write this all that turmoil seems a world away and also worthwhile. I’m watching a little girl in pink pajamas play Barbies with a light in her eyes that could power the sun. 

Mary Fin, or Fee as we call her, adores her big sister almost as much as she loves cats: I caught her recently trying to put the kitten’s soft ear in her mouth. She loves anything soft but especially kittens; her voice travels up three octaves when she sees an animal she thinks she has to touch.

Lollie though is definitely her favorite human. She’s hurt deeply whenever Lollie spurns her affection and she’s gleeful when Lollie does want to play. She is Lollie’s ready companion for any game or performance. 

She’s also independent. Her favorite thing to do now is hunt for treasure. She delights in finding anything on the ground: acorns, leaves, beads and anything that shines even if it’s just a paper clip. She fills old pickle jars in her room with her random finds. 

Naturally my sister, Morgan, who my girls call Ba, is another VIP in her book. Lollie remembers a time when she didn’t have to share Morgan with Morgan’s husband, Jake, but Mary Fin doesn’t remember a time without him. If I tell her she’s going to see Ba, her automatic reply is “And Jake?” She adores him and of course their pets. I know their animals rejoice when her visits are over. She’s just incapable of leaving a cat alone.

Her eyes belong to my mother’s side of the family: big brown round eyes that disappear into half moons when she smiles or laughs. She’s also like my mom in that she’s the caretaker of our little nucleus. She’s happy to please and eager to share. She worries about others, making sure Lollie gets a snack when she does. 

Mary Fin lives for baby dolls and Barbies. She loves to push a stroller and hopes Santa will bring her a Barbie dream house. She loves organization and neatness and lines up her shoes. She began making her own bed when was four and sometimes cleans her room without being asked to do so. 

She is my dutiful helper in the kitchen, always at my side to help pour or stir, and her favorite eats are straw-be-bulls (strawberries), marshas (marshmallows) and sips of my defac (decaf coffee).

These days she is more often upside down than right side up. As I walk through the den, her legs are on the coffee table, while her body is draped down to her little chair. She watches TV upside down. She is most agile on the bars at any playground and at gymnastics. 

As my youngest daughter, there’s still time to delight in some of the fun, first things. She stays up “reading” when I leave her room at night, and recently she fell asleep with her head in a book. This fall has been fun with field trips, visits to pumpkin patches and Halloween, but I definitely see some of the baby giving way to girl as she develops independent ideas and opinions and longer conversations. 

This morning as I passed through the den, she said, “Mom. If I catch a butterfly I’m going to name it Lilly.” Taken off guard, I laughed a little because we had seen several butterflies on our walk to the library last weekend but I hadn’t known she was still thinking about them. We talked a little about her strategy for catching several; she proposed buying nets, the smart girl. 

So, I suppose as she turns five that’s my wish for this little light God made so wonderfully. I hope she catches all the butterflies life puts in her path.