Chapter 1, The ONLY Child

Sibling Rivalry
Written by Elizabeth Kay

Chapter 1
The ONLY child.

Sarah had been an only child.

Had been.

She had been the apple of her Daddy's eye until he had disappeared when she was six. She KNEW he still loved her and could think of a myriad of reasons that he had been unable to come back. Reasons such as he had been kidnapped by Pirates, Stranded on a dessert island or lost in a peruvian jungle. Never did she ever think that it was because he didn't WANT to be with her. The word "divorce" was meaningless in her mind.

She had been her mothers "baby girl" for her entire life. She was special, Mommy's little girl. She shared secrets with Mom, went on weekend vacations with Mom and went out for ice cream on the first and last days of school every year with Mom. She didn't have to share her life with anyone. Sarah liked it that way.

Then her mom did it, she got pregnant again. Sarah was 10 when it happened.

Suddenly, Sarah was going shopping with mom, not for trendy new clothes for her, but for tiny outfits, baby items and decorations in pastels with nursery rhymes on them. This sucked! Sarah didn't want to share anything or anyone in her life with anyone else.

The worst part was that Sarah was moving into the smaller bedroom downstairs. This small new life that she wanted NOTHING to do with, was removing her from HER world, her space, her ROOM just because it was across the hall from where her mom slept. It wasn't fair, it was rude and she hated this new creature, who wasn't even born yet.

Mom did her best to explain the situation, even Aunt Belle tried to show Sarah what a gift a new baby was by bringing her new cousin to visit for a few days. All Sarah could see was a loud, smelly, annoying bundle that everyone wanted to see but her. It didn't DO anything good. It looked like someone had taken one of her dolls and spray painted it blotchy red then smushed it into a baby seat because it wouldn't conform. It either slept or needed something ALL THE TIME. It was horrid and it did not help to ease Sarah into sisterhood. Quite the opposite in fact.

Aunt Belle left when Mom was huge. It seems the slim shape that mom had been before this whole fiasco started had simply vanished. Mom had trouble standing, sitting, sleeping. Sarah had even become the go-getter when ever mom dropped something because she couldn't reach the floor anymore. Sarah wondered just how much bigger her mother would get? Would she simply explode? is that what happened to get the baby out? She had caught glimpses of some pretty gross things on TV while mom was flipping through channels at times. It didn't really matter though because Sarah just wanted her Mom back, she KNEW that as soon as this "baby" thing was done that everything would return to normal and she could be happy again.


Little did she know, this was no where NEAR the end. The "normal" that Sarah was thinking of was gone forever. It was still to be determined if this would be a good thing or a bad thing in the long run. Sarah was blissfully ignorant of the future, Mom had to have thought of this as a blessing for the moment.