"It's a boy," the physician announced. "Eight pounds, nine ounces. Monica's fine. You can go back and see her as soon as she's in her room."
"Well, congratulations, Grandpa!" Abigail, Joanie, and Chachi told Fonzie.
"I can still hardly believe it," he muttered.
Monica was holding her new son when her friends and family entered her room. "His name is Brett Arthur, for his grandfather," she told them.
"Thank you," said Fonzie. "I'm deeply honored."
Everyone held and admired little Brett in turn. With the warm little bundle in her arms, Abigail's mind went back to the first time she'd held Jackson seven years before. As she'd gazed down into his sweet little face, marveling at how much he'd looked like his father, she'd been filled with awe that she and Jack had created this perfect little creature together. She wondered whether Monica felt the same way.
Later, she related the incident to Jack. "It just seems so hard to believe that Jackson and Julie were once that tiny," she remarked.
Jack chuckled. "They do grow fast, don't they?"
Suddenly she retrieved the photograph album she'd started keeping not long after she'd awakened from the coma. She flipped through the first few pages, which were comprised of mostly photographs of her family and friends and her and Jack in the earliest days of their courtship, to the page containing the first photograph ever taken of Jackson as an infant. As she did so, she felt Jack's arm encircle her waist and pull her close.
"Remember this?" She pointed to a photograph of their son on his first birthday, his face smeared with cake icing and a huge grin on his face.
"How could I ever forget?" Jack murmured, leaving a trail of wet kisses along her neck.
"Aw...here's when he met Julie for the first time after we brought her home from the hospital."
"Mm hm." He continued his amorous advances until she laughed and closed the album and lay back on the bed with him.
Julie started kindergarten in August. Abigail kissed Jack good-bye as he left for the high school, then walked Jackson and Julie to the bus stop, took Sharon to the nursery, and then drove to the college for the first time in seven years. As she parked the car and began to walk to her first class, she felt her heart flutter in anticipation.
Once inside the building, she saw that it looked much the same as it had the last time she'd seen it. Walking to her first class, she reflected upon how much her life had changed in the past seven years. She'd carried and delivered two children, endured a traumatic medical scare, befriended Monica, and taken Sharon in. Though it had been only seven years, she felt like a completely different person, a more mature and confident person.
She found her first class and sat down and looked around to find a sea of unfamiliar faces, as she'd known she would. When the professor arrived and the class started, she felt her confidence begin to ebb just a bit. Could she really do this? At her age and with her sometimes overwhelming responsibilities, could she really absorb all this new information?
The class ended, and Abigail was on her way to her next one when she became aware that someone was speaking to her. "Kind of a lot of reading for the first day, huh?"
She turned to see that, to her surprise, it was a woman who looked to be about her age. The woman smiled. "Hi, I'm Rhoda."
"Abigail." She returned the smile and shook Rhoda's hand. "And yes, it looks like I'll probably be spending the majority of the evening reading, but it looks quite interesting. My kids started school today as well, so I'm sure there will be enough paperwork to keep me busy."
"My daughter started college today too," Rhoda replied. "I was a housewife and Mom for eighteen years, and then when Heather started getting ready for college herself, I thought, why not?"
"You have a daughter in college? You must be about my age, then."
"I'm forty-six."
"So am I!"
"So you graduated high school in sixty-five too?"
"Yes...well, I was supposed to, anyway."
Rhoda frowned. "What happened?"
"I contracted a rare form of encephalitis right after my senior year started, and it put me in a coma for twenty years. After I woke up, I went back to school and graduated and then went to college for a year, and then my son was born, and what can I say? All I wanted was to be a Mommy."
"I know the feeling," Rhoda agreed. "I was a real estate agent until I was twenty-eight, and then Heather was born and I just wanted to be with her. A year later, my best friend gave birth to a daughter with Down's syndrome. As I watched Michelle grow up, I got interested in working with special needs people, and here I am!"
"My sister-in-law has Down's syndrome too," Abigail replied. "After my father-in-law died, Sharon got to be too much for my mother-in-law to handle, so Jack and I took her in. Jack couldn't stand the idea of her going into an institution."
"Good for you! Say, we'll have to have coffee together sometime."
"Definitely!"
As she drove home that day, Abigail wondered what Jack would say when she told him about Rhoda.