So I'm at lunch with a friend and we are sort of newish friends, like 3 years in September, and we get to talking about our lives and even about when we were younger and she hits me up with this doozy of a tale. It's wild and funny and heartbreaking and dramatic and terrifying...okay, I'll just tell you, but like a quick version cause I've got stuff to do...or at least I should.
Picture it 1993, Terry Hatcher was Louis Lane and the Proclaimers were walking 500 miles and my friend...let's call her, Tea Cup was fresh out of high school. Her high school boy friend was serving an LDS Mission somewhere far away and somehow, quite by accident, she fell in love with his younger brother, then after a few months, and severely by accident, she found herself in the family way. So that's all fine, but before she finds out the big news she goes to the doctor and it's 1993 and things are still done with sticks and guessing, and so they send her and her mother, who's not super happy to be there, but is waiting to find out the results before she settles on a level of fury, off with the prognosis, "Not Pregnant...but we will run one more test, it's this new thing with your blood, sometimes it knows."
So, Tea Cup is off somewhere, making out with her still-in-high-school boyfriend (oh, yeah, he's just starting his senior year) and back at home...the phone rings. It's 1993, so phones were attached to walls with spirally chords.
"Hello?"
"Yes, may I speak to Tea Cup please?"
"She's not home right now. Can I help you with something?"
"Yes, this is Shasta from Dr. Picture Frame's office, would you let her know that her pregnancy test came back and it was positive."
Silence.
"I'm sorry could you say that again."
That's right, in 1993 Doctors offices could leave test results with any 'Chip Clip' that picks up a phone...in this case, Tea Cup's Father.
So the whole thing blows apart, right. Mom's crying, Dad is screaming and throwing fur covered ottomans, while over at the new Senior's house, there's also crying and holy water being splashed on the demon. Every single person's world has just flipped upside down:
The mother of that boy.
The father of Tea Cup.
Tea Cup.
The Senior.
The mother of Tea Cup.
The Father of the Senior.
Not to mention the missionary one year into his two year mission, he's got a bit of a surprise waiting for him back at home...hint...it's not his girlfriend. It's his new sister-in-law.
It really does blow everyone wide open. It's really is a defining moment for all of them, and they push and shove and dig their way through it as best they can (not one of them does it perfect but they do all try) because underneath this whole mess that two teenagers made, is two families love. Love for a daughter. Love for a father and a son. For a mother and the other mother. All of them expecting one thing and getting another. All of them going through carefully planed lives and one day, one night, one phone call changed every single thing. But you can't say it was devastating, because, eventually it all became about a different love, a little girl. And then a new mother's love, and a young (young) fathers love, and then the powerful, fierce love of a grandparent. All of them, reluctantly at first, but then effortlessly, brought back together.
And now it's 2013, and that baby is 20. And Tea Cup and the Senior are two unremarkably married suburbanites, with two other kids, with far less tremulous births. They have a Mini Van and a savings account and are funny and nice and once gave me a washing machine, cause they are the kind of people who find out you don't have a washing machine so they give you the one they have in their garage. And 1993 did not define them and also it did. Because then they were parents and husband and wife (not in that order...well, not technically in that order) and they started out a new less planed life, and only after 20 years of soccer practice and cake walks can you see that one major earth shattering moment is ever only that.
One moment.
*All the names have been changed to things on my desk.
