Unexpected Realities

This past weekend my niece gave birth.  She produced a tiny creature of six pounds nine ounces that gurgled and scowled like all babies do when they greet the cold reality of the world.  When I looked at the wrinkled face I couldn't help but remember my theory that we go out of life the same way we come in.  Her face looked like the wrinkled scowling face of an old person.  She wore diapers and a nurse had to wash her.  She won't eat solid foods.  Someone will carry her around and pay for her needs.  Why is the expected for an infant yet indignity for the old?

Welcome to the world of parenthood I thought as I stood on one side of the hospital room looking at my niece laying in her bed.  Around her sat friends and relatives excited about the new arrival.  One girl her age held the baby for a few moments before squirming away confused on what to do.  As joyous as it all seemed there is a dark side to this story.  You see, my niece is sixteen years old.  With a person so young numbers fly through my mind.  The child will be five years old before she can legally drink.  She will graduate from high school and be considered an adult when my niece reaches the tender age of 34.  I didn't even have sex for the first time until I was 19.  My mother, a former public health nurse, had me so frightened I immediately went with my girlfriend to a family planning clinic and paid for half her birth control.  For my niece, the father is missing in action.  Raised by his grandparents he is out of state and in college.  The grand parents have visited to at least see the fruit of their grandson's passion and bid her well but there will be no support forthcoming.  My niece now faces a dramatically different life.  She left school in the fall and has been trying to study at home.  She is barely old enough to work and can't legally drive.

As I stood in a corner of her room I watched her texting her friends and waiting for her sister to fetch Bojangles Chicken.  She seemed oblivious to the reality that surrounded her.  Sixteen.  Could I have been a parent at sixteen?  I recalled being in high school debate.  A sweet girl from Diamond High School on their debate team wanted desperately to date me.  She tried and tried.  I was interested until she referred to Kookie.  "Kookie?"  Who was that I asked.  She replied it was her son.  I moved away faster than a red neck from logic.  There was no way I was getting involved with a sixteen year old girl that had a son when I was sixteen years old.  That was a reality I could not deal with.  Hell I was still trying to figure out how I was going to pass Algebra.

The mother of my niece became pregnant herself as a young girl.  Is this the legacy?  Her mother must have shuddered at the coincidence.  For her part my niece has a new boyfriend.  I am still trying to figure that one out. In school she was a social butterfly always with her friends, hardly ever spending a weekend at home.   As a nurse cradled and washed her I wondered when reality would finally hit this sixteen year old girl.  Life as she knew it was over.  A simple moment of passion had changed the course of her life.  She had gone in an instant from a teenager seeking independence to a teenager more dependent on those around her than any time since her own birth.  She was now dependent on her parents to help her pay for and raise her child.  Dependent on them to care for her.  Dependent on a social system to fill the void of income she would most certainly have.  Absent a husband to share the joys and the struggles of parenthood. 


Years ago when I was living in Bolivia I would come across pregnant teenage girls.  Yet in their case, it was often different.  There it seemed like pregnancy was almost a right of passion.  A way of saying, "I am a woman now."  In truth the outcome was equally depressing as they carried their infants around dark shacks with dirt floors.  Yet in their world, they had essentially accomplished what was expected of a woman.  In our world we look at our youth and hope for so much more.  We hope that they will succeed in life.  That they will become independent and perhaps surpass our own lives on this planet.

My niece has a beautiful young daughter.  A gorgeous young girl herself I am sure the child will be equally as lovely.  From my little corner of the hospital room I couldn't help but look in the child's eyes and pray that her mother will teach her not to follow her path.  All the while I looked at the mother sitting texting her former high school friends and prayed she would suddenly open her eyes and realize she now has a daughter.