The Child Eclipsed

Abstract

We named him Raistlin after Dragonlance’s beleaguered but brilliant dark wizard—a testament, perhaps, to intellect, our most cherished attribute, the quality we most hoped he possessed. Unprepared parents-to-be that September sixteen years ago, my boyfriend and I were recent college dropouts—youthfully selfish, transiently poor, recklessly apart from family—so ill-equipped for the adulthood that a harrowing labor and a baby’s visceral cry would thrust upon us. However full my present—my three young children teeming about loudly with life, light, and laughter; the errands and worries packed end-to-end—he remains with me always, as he was that early morning, wrapped in my unsteady young arms.