Isis Carter-Xavier
November 09, 2020 5:12 PM
Third time's the charm. by Isis Carter-Xavier
It was fair to say that Isis had always had complicated feelings about motherhood. As a child, she never thought she wanted kids, mostly because of the instability in her own upbringing. A poverty-stricken home in a bad neighborhood, with too many kids they couldn’t afford, and often a single parent - it was hardly inspiring. But then before she knew how not to have one, Isis found herself with one on the way.There had never been any questions as to whether giving up her daughter had been the right choice or not. She knew immediately that she couldn’t raise her. Their family could not afford another mouth, and Isis wanted a better life for her. Still, she had never gotten to really be a mother to Nevaeh. They had something of a relationship now, but Nevaeh seemed to hold onto some anger about it. Perhaps somewhat ironically, the thing that helped the most was how much Nevaeh liked Nathan. Having her favorite professor become her step-father was an interesting twist for her, and Isis was pretty sure Nevaeh had even forgiven him for his terrible taste in women. The Reeds had been great parents to her all these years, but sentimentally, it was nice for Isis to get to watch Nathan father her. It sort of made up for the horrible biological one Isis had given her.
Still, after having to give up a child and finding constant struggle to form a relationship with her, Isis had spent the better part of two decades unsure about her abilities as a parent. And also about her worthiness. Did she even deserve other children? Was that fair to Nevaeh? Isis had a lot of doubts, for certain, although Nathan made them a little easier to chew.
But then when Theodora was born, something happened to Isis, and it all fell apart. She knew now that what she had gone through was postpartum depression, but how long had it taken before she could even mother Dora? How much time had she lost? Far, far too much. And even now, there were lingering traces of it. Isis loved Dora, but sometimes she saw her and thought, who is that little girl and what is she doing here? There was something disconnected, something disjointed. Isis saw a therapist now, and they talked about it often; despite how normal it apparently was, something just felt like failure.
Isis had done her best not to be nervous about Otto, and to her surprise, it was an entirely different reality. With the girls, she had no means of coping, due either to age or illness, but with her son, she could hardly stand being separated. She loved every inch of his chubby little cheeks, every single bit of him. Somehow, it was easy to love him. She worked hard to love her daughters, but with Otto, it was natural.
She got a bit more time with him, just the two of them, that was not flavored by crushing mental destruction, so that definitely helped. Dora was big enough to have a bit of freedom in the school, plus she had Zeus to scamper off with now, so it left Isis and Otto when Nathan was teaching or tending his greenhouses, as they were now. However, she thought maybe some additional company would be nice, so she propped Otto up with his sit-up pillow and placed him beside her on the couch in the staff lounge to do some Defense Against the Dark Arts assignment grading. She could sip her tea and feed Otto his bottle without even moving her eyes from the essay before her now, and in a silly way, it felt like success.
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Isis Carter-Xavier
Third time's the charm.
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