that big.” Arianna winced. “I had a hard enough time when Harp—” She stopped mid-sentence and shook her head like she was suddenly flustered and had lost her train of thought. “I, um…” And her face was washed over with a look of grief I’d never seen on her before she turned her back to me.
I frowned, so confused at the sudden change in her demeanor.
Was it the talk of babies that did it to her? Because she’d caught herself talking about what it would be like to have a big baby even when she didn’t plan to ever have kids?
Or was it something else?
When she lifted a hand to her face as if wiping away a tear, I said, “Is something wrong?”
She just shook her head. After taking in a big breath, she turned back to face me with her expression smoothed out and said, “Sorry, um, just ignore that.” Then she went back to dishing the leftover cake into the storage container. “Anyway, you should probably warn your future wife that big babies run in your genetics so she can be prepared.”
“I don’t know.” I decided not to question her about her unusual reaction since she seemed to want to ignore it. “My brother was only eight pounds, so I think it’s more that I was almost a week late and I was my mom’s first full-term pregnancy so she really thought she had to eat for two.”
Arianna’s brow furrowed. “Your mom was pregnant before you?”
“Yeah. She had a baby that was stillborn.”
“Oh, that’s sad.” And from the look of pain in her eyes, it seemed like she actually felt the pain my mom must have felt.
“She doesn’t like to talk about it very much.” I swallowed, feeling sad for my mom and the brother I’d never met. “Brings back too many sad memories. But I guess going through that made her extra nervous when she was pregnant with me, and so she ended up thinking that every little hunger pang meant she was starving the baby. She gained, like, sixty pounds during her pregnancy with me.”
She’d also said that all the chocolate chip cookies she baked back then and chocolate milk didn’t help with that either…but I understood the sentiment.
“I’m sure I’d be a nervous wreck if I was her,” Arianna said. “But it sounds like she was just trying to do her best. She was perhaps a little misguided, but she was doing her best to take care of you and make sure you got here safe.”
“Yep. No one can ever say my mom didn’t care about her kids.” I mean, she and my dad had cared so much about me and my future that they’d moved from the paradise of Hawaii to Denver because they wanted me to have a shot at playing football professionally.
“That’s why people like her make such good moms.” Arianna set another slice of cake in the container. “I am definitely not cut out to be a mom.”
I frowned and studied Arianna, trying to understand why she would say that.
This was not the first time she’d said something like this, either. In fact, every time I ever even so much as mentioned something that I wanted to do when I had my own kids, she always seemed to think my spoken desire for a family required her to say something about how she didn’t have the patience or some other random trait that a person needed in order to be a parent.
Which was so confusing, because I had never met anyone who would be a better mom than Arianna. Sure, she wasn’t going to sacrifice all her goals and dreams to raise a family like some people expected women to do—but I didn’t believe that was what a mother should be required to do anyway. Moms could have goals, too.
In fact, it was healthy to have a life outside of just being “a wife” or “a mom.” Otherwise they might end up resenting their families or send a signal to their own daughters that girls were just basically born to be the wind beneath someone else’s wings—a supporting character in someone else’s life.
But I’d never met anyone who was more caring and compassionate than my friend. She was the opposite of selfish, and if someone she knew had something they needed, she always went out of her way to help them out.
Just throwing this secret surprise birthday party for me and inviting my closest friends and family was evidence enough of