A Most Significant Sign

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"Must have been a bit of a slip, don't you reckon?" Usually said with a sly wink and a lop-sided grin by some likely looking fellow with a smoke hanging out the other side of his mouth.

"Yair. No way they'd have another when the first three are all growing up now." This one would scratch his head and rub his chin a bit. "The youngest of them'd be 10 by now, wouldn't she?" And they say women gossip! Only those unaware of our family circumstances assumed I was an accident - only those who didn't know there'd been a little brother in between - the one who never reached his second birthday.

"Get her pregnant as quick as you can, Wal. That's my advice," our wise old family doctor told my Dad. He knew what the family were beginning to suspect - Mum could easily lose her mind with the grief she was holding tightly to herself.

"Another baby," my Dad repeated. His eyes drifted to the window as his thoughts turned inwards and he let himself remember the joy each of his children had brought as they began their life journey in the bosom of this loving family. "Yes... YES." And when he shared the thought with his beloved, he hardly dared believe the light that came back into her pained and dulled eyes. It was no hardship for either of these two to go to work on making another baby. They had never loved another since they first met, when she was 15 and he was 17.

Many years later my Mum would tell me they "did it twice on the day of their wedding anniversary - to be sure!" Certainly too much information for me at that stage of my life, but it was amusing. My Mum was such a 'proper' lady, and her little secret was told to me in a hushed voice, glancing back over her shoulder to ensure no-one else heard. True to plan, I was born exactly nine months later.

"It has to be twins," our old Doc said, shaking his head. "I can only pick up one heartbeat, but sometime one is laying directly behind the other. It's not unusual." He peered over his heavy glasses as he said, "Must be two. There's far too much movement for only one."

Mum was in a state of ultimate bliss, often sharing with Dad her firm belief that one of those two would be another blue-eyed blonde boy... surely! Now she knitted even faster, almost in time with her suddenly racing pulse.The likelihood of twins made her forgive and all but forget those sleepless nights when the rolling and stretching, punching and kicking seemed not to stop for hours on end - and when she had such severe facial neuralgia there was no choice but to have all her teeth removed.

My Dad felt little pain, he told me. "That kicking could be promising," he'd said, with a great grin on his face. And he spoke of sudden visions of booking twins into his beloved West Torrens Football Club crowding his imagination. What a tribute to the man who had been the Club President for many, many years in the past - his own highly respected and emulated Father. The man who was also one of the leaders in the local Masonic Lodge; a stalwart of the West Torrens Cricket Club; a leading light in the Master Butchers' Association - one of those original 'movers and shakers' we so admire.

I'm unable to tell you anything about the puffing and blowing, heaving and straining that took place to guide me into this world, but I do know something nobody else knew at that time. My Mum's life was on the line once again, and this fifth time was as close as she would get to losing it. It would be decades before it was discovered she had only half of one kidney operating all of her life. With today's knowledge and means of testing, she would never have been allowed to have even one child, let alone five. Small wonder she had increasingly difficult pregnancies and births.

Heavily drugged, as part of the plan to slow me down from making the fast, dramatic entrance I had planned and rehearsed for months, my Mum's initial reaction to the news of a single female birth was quite dramatic – "Throw her out the window", she cried. I magnanimously forgave her and have never allowed it to aff-aff-affect me hardly at all.

On the brink of kidney failure, as she surely was, it was not her fault. It's that old family doctor who remains unforgiven. He who couldn't tell the difference between one baby and two; the one who was running late and almost missed delivering me; and worst of all, nearly did throw me out the window - he was so embarrassed by the error of his ways. Luckily, being an Aries, I was able to dig my toes into his Adam's apple, give him a decent head butt and bellow my disapproval, whilst going as red as a killer tomato! Word has it that he hastily handed me over to the Sister – a fortunate choice, as I had a few more defensive tactics in my arsenal at the time!

Blissfully, on this, the first day of my 'outside' life, I was unaware of just how 'Hippocratic" (or similar) his oath was. In short order, I was snug in my Mum's arms, as she recovered her equilibrium and decided I was the greatest thing since the Coolgardie Safe. (Just as well, or I could have ended up as just another tiny rosebud in the Adelaide Memorial Hospital's garden-bed).

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