Shards Cast Reflections

Shards 3

In the Summer of 2004, I met a fallen angel and he was as beautiful as I always believed they should be. If I live to be one hundred, I will always remember the ride down the escalator and my very first glimpse of Mario. We had exchanged pictures and texts and been talking for quite a while at that point, but pictures did not do justice to the beauty of the man standing before me. Coal black hair, warm brown eyes that reminded me of the color of coffee with just a little cream and skin that was not pale, but not dark either. He was absolutely gorgeous. So, it should be no surprise that I ended up pregnant the first time by the end of the month.

Now, the interesting thing about Mario and I is that we had always been like oil and water. For 7 years, we spent our time fighting through Ayenee. We exchanged wit and insults, compliments and scorn all rolled into one. I fell in love with his mind long before I even considered his physical attributes. It is quite possible that had I met him before I knew him, I would have been far too intimidated for any sort of relationship with him. Since Roger, my confidence was at an all time low and now, here was this beautiful being standing before me and I felt less than worthy.

But, Mario did the best thing he could have ever done at that point. He smiled, leaned down and pecked me on the lips and told me, "Hey, Monkey." Monkey had always been my pet name from him. When I was 17, I sent him a picture where my hair was covering my ears in a strange way. I thought it looked like I had elf ears. He thought I looked like a monkey. Or, at least he said he did. But, from that first hello, we were once again old friends and I relaxed and all of my trepidation turned relief and we walked from the airport, hand in hand and into his waiting car. It was almost like something from the movies when the hero and heroine ride off into the sunset together. Admittedly, they usually do it in some fancy car, not a beat up blue station wagon that is a "project car" and some great love song is playing instead of Bulls on Parade, but, in my world, it was perfect.

We lived and we loved and we debated and I finally had found someone who understood my heart and mind. Piece by piece, I gave all that I was and each time I handed him another piece of myself, he cherished it and lovingly helped me put myself back together again until I was a whole person again, still flawed, but whole. He rebuilt my confidence in myself and gained my love and trust. No matter how badly things ended, I will always love him for who he was when I needed him most. In some dark corner of my heart where all of the hidden things lie, Mario lives on. But, it would never be enough to sustain a relationship, and so, we move on.

By the end of the first month of that first pregnancy, I had started cramping and bleeding. Mario took me to one of the hospitals in Las Vegas and the doctor there told me that the baby was trying to abort itself because I was not eating enough. And, so, I gorged myself, vomited it all back up, and then gorged myself again, hoping that I could get just enough to keep my baby. Sadly, the cramps and bleeding continued. Things finally came to a head one night when I was lying in a bathtub full of warm water, tinged pink with my own blood, and screaming for mercy. Mario took me to another hospital where we found out that the pregnancy was ectopic. The fetus had never made it out of my left fallopian tube. I had to abort the baby. And, through one of the hardest moments of my life, Mario sat beside the bed and held my hand as I cried and raged at a heartless God who had made me suffer so much already, only to curse me yet again. I lost my faith in God that day. I have never recovered it.

We waited the necessary time for my body to repair itself, and in November of 2004, we decided to marry. The ceremony was quite simple. We would have worn jeans, me in a tee shirt and Mario in a jersey, but his mom protested and we ended up business casual for our "wedding" at one of the countless chapels in Las Vegas. As we rang in 2005 surrounded by friends and family, we were content that we were on the right track, but my heart still ached for the child I had lost and we redoubled our efforts to conceive. My oldest child was born on Halloween of 2005.