The Legend of the Momos

This week in class, students wrote poems about specific moments in time that were meaningful to them. This assignment is a proven winner with kids, and this year's crop of poems didn't disappoint. One young man wrote a poem about beating a Mario game, and I guess that got me thinking about how this monoamniotic pregnancy is beginning to remind me more and more of playing The Legend of Zelda.

Please allow me to digress for a minute, and take you back to the days of "William," the studious, fun-loving, worrying, baseball-obsessed 10 year old in 1987. I remember this summer too well... the smell of salty peanut shells wafting from beneath my seat at County Stadium, the scorching July heat pounding down on the tar driveway as we lit "snake" fireworks and smoke bombs with my uncles, the dusty Water Tower Park Little League diamond, and, the gold-plated rectangular video game, known as "The Legend of Zelda."

That was the summer that I practically lived with the Zieglers. It seemed like just about every day I would get together with Chad (who was a year older), Ryan (a year younger) and Erin (who was my age... and incidentally my first crush), and play. We'd go swimming, ride bikes, play “home run derby,” cranking tennis balls over the backyard neighbor's fence, and then, when it got dark, play Zelda. The Zieglers’ step-dad, a man who I called "Uncle Jack" worked at Miller 2nd shift and would come home later at night to see the four of us camped around their living room tv with hand drawn maps, half-eaten bags of chips and Pepsi cans, cheering each other on as we looked for special bows and arrows and did battle with ogres, monsters and other fanciful creatures who were part of the game. This became almost a daily ritual that summer, with "Uncle Jack" joining in the action, contributing to our quest after we were fast asleep.

As the summer came to a close, I remember a sweltering, humid day that Chad, who was by far the best at the game, ended up finally beating Ganon, the evil wizard, and rescuing the princess, only for the game to default into “The Second Quest” (where we would have to replay the game with different secrets and harder bosses). Would this game ever end??? Instead of some sort of virtual trophy popping out of the mouth of the 8 bit Nintendo Entertainment System, we instead were faced with having to replay the whole game. Ahhhh! We finally ended up beating that quest too, although it spanned into the start of the school year.

Now, you may ask, how does all this relate to our pregnancy? As we enter our third ultra sound with those oh, so lovely words, “high risk” stamped onto our file, I can’t help but compare our own journey to that of Link, the protagonist in the Legend of Zelda games. Once we overcome one obstacle, another three await. Once we beat those, we have to find another secret weapon, confront another boss, etc., etc., etc.

I can’t deny that this whole process is becoming increasingly taxing as the days turn into weeks, but, on the same token it is becoming increasingly exciting- as we are about a month out from when Jeni would go in-patient. From there, we have the NICU, and finally, when this whole thing is over, the best case scenario is that we bring home two lovely babies who we can worry about some more.

I mentioned to a close friend recently, “If only we can bring these babies home, then everything would be fine.” The friend commented, “No, Will. As soon as you bring the babies home, you will have something new to worry about. Welcome to being a parent.”

Nowadays, “Will,” the hard-working, good-humored, worrying, still baseball-obsessed 30 year old in 2008, can only hope and pray that we continue to beat the little bosses along the way and “beat” this game. I guess the quest never really ends, does it?