"Doc" (1/2)

We had three, did we really want to have four? I'm speaking about children... girls, to be more specific. This had been an ongoing discussion between the wife and I as the calendar turned into the decade of the 1990s. Do we want a fourth child? Do we want to try one more time for that elusive child with the XY chromosomes? 

Ready or not, we received our answer in February of 1990. I don't recall exactly how she delivered it... but Jeana had given me a card in an envelope. It wasn't my birthday; it wasn't Father's Day; maybe it was for Valentine's Day? I don't recall but I do remember something bulging inside the envelope, which utterly confused me.

I tore open the envelope and before I could actually read the card... out dropped a baby pacifier. My initial confusion immediately gave way to the wonderful realization that Munson baby #4 was in the oven and would arrive on the scene that fall.

Alaina Jae Munson was born on October 2nd, 1990 in Los Alamitos, California. No... we didn't get our boy but I wasn't disappointed in the slightest. God had given us a beautiful, healthy baby girl... our fourth daughter... and I was over the moon in love.

We had decided that four children was more than enough and that we were done adding to Team Munson. Spoiler Alert: Nope! But that's a story for another time.

Although Alaina has no memory of it, her few years of existence outside the womb were spent in Southern California where her three older sisters became loving, surrogate mothers to this precious, beautiful little doll. 

As with most children, Alaina's vocabulary was constantly growing as she cruised through the toddler phase but exact pronunciations sometimes eluded her. One such word... one that most children don't struggle with... was "Dad." When she tried to say "Dad," it would come out as "Doc." Eventually, and I'm not sure why... I reversed the tables on her and started calling her, "Doc." I know... weird. But it stuck and I have called her "Doc" ever since.

We moved to Grinnell, Iowa in December of 1993, a couple months after Alaina's 3rd birthday and this became her "home town" where she made friends, played sports and figured out many new ways to confuse and challenge her parents. Alaina was not a Munson cookie cutter kid. She had her own way of thinking and processing the events and circumstances that presented themselves in her young life.

Alaina cared deeply about friends and the relationships that she developed with them. As with all kids, on occasion, conflicts would arise and Alaina struggled to navigate through and move past the fracture in her friendship. Numerous times, in her early elementary school years, we would get a call from the school nurse telling us that Alaina wasn't feeling well and asking us to pick her up. More times than not, the catalyst for her "not feeling well" was her perception that a friend was upset with her. She didn't yet have the tools to work through the emotions and her default mode was worry, anxiety and solitude.

As with her three older sisters, Alaina fell in love with sports at an early age and I was thrilled to be able to coach her in softball and basketball up through her junior high years. Also in keeping with the Munson tradition, softball was her absolute passion. She was a pitcher and that meant two things, 1) I spent many, many hours sitting on a bucket while my shins took a beating from her errant practice pitches, and 2) my credit card also "took a beating" as I paid dearly for pitching lessons in an effort to afford Alaina the opportunity to be the best that she could be.

Alaina was one of only 4 8th graders that made the high school softball team during the summer season, prior to her freshman year of high school where she gained valuable experience playing on the freshmen and junior varsity teams.

One of my favorite memories was her freshman softball season, when she made her first varsity start on the mound. I watched the game from the press box where I provided the color commentary for the local radio softball broadcast. Alaina pitched a complete game win for the Grinnell Tigers.

Grinnell made it to the state softball tournament that season, thus marking that accomplishment for each of my four girls. Wonderful memories!

In the fall of 2006, just after the start of Alaina's sophomore year, I took a job in Des Moines, which was an hours drive from Grinnell. After a few months of spending a couple hours on the road a day, I began to think about a move that would put us closer to my job. Des Moines was surrounded by several, rapidly growing suburbs with new housing developments going up, attempting to meet the thriving demand.

A couple factors had me thinking and rethinking about the decision to relocate. 1) I absolutely loved the community of Grinnell, and 2) the larger issue would be pulling Alaina out of the only town and school she had ever known, in the middle of her high school experience. 

We decided we could live with the decision to move away from Grinnell but we couldn't, in good conscience, transfer Alaina to a new school at this point in her life. However, it was worth a family discussion. As we had anticipated, Alaina objected to the proposal and we were fine with it. I would continue the long commute and we would broach the subject again after she graduated. And that was that... except... it wasn't.

The Sunday following the family discussion about moving, as we were sitting in church, it was obvious that Alaina was emotional and deep in thought. I had learned to let her process in privacy whenever she was in this particular frame of mind. On occasion, I would glance at her until our eyes met. This was my way of letting her know that "I am here," without outwardly prying.

On one of those occasions, when our eyes met... her eyes full of tears, she whispered, "We can move."

To be continued...