Is this a coincidence?”
“Yes,” said my mother, “it is a coincidence that they are both named Bob.”
In a time not far distant from now, Bob and Bob made their triumphant return—and that was with me. I was at the age of thirteen when Bob and I first met. My sister and mother got us together. The first meeting I remember was on the playground at the park that my mother would spend summers cleaning up. I couldn’t do anything on that playground because I had never walked, and my sisters played with me because of this. We ran around and jumped over logs. At first we called each other “baby” or “dear,” but we had a more profound relationship with each other when we were two. Our parents taught us these two names because that’s what they thought I would call my sister and me—she as a baby, and me as a boy. They were wrong—and we called each other by the names we were made for.
So, at a point in our lives when we were both thirteen, we were friends. That was the start. We just became friends as we started school. My mother told me a couple of months ago the first thing my brother would say to me was “Hi, it means nice to meet you.” He had a point. He wanted to make that connection with me and my sisters.
It was as though, in that initial meeting, a huge weight had been lifted that I had never known existed.
But when I was four years old, we decided we were going to get married. That was only three years ago. I knew when I was nine, my husband would go off to Vietnam, which made all the difference in the world. I know I will always owe my marriage to my husband and the love I have for him.
My children now are my family. They are my babies from my womb.
I cannot count the number of times in our relationship that he brought up something that was something I did not have and my response was the same, “Mom, you didn’t know?” So many times when he would ask me something, “Mom what did you think?” I couldn’t think of anything. And then the answer would be the word, “Mom, that is too complicated.”
If I could have written my own son’s name and said “Bob” because I am Bob—I would feel guilty and guilty. But I can’t, because that is