SHANA

Photo: Shana and Skitch

THEN (mostly):

Three months after I hit the ripe old age of 13, Lila gave birth to Shana. I'd recently read several historical romance novels by the genre-pioneering author Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. My favorite was a spicy novel called "Shanna". I loved the name so much that, when Lila told me she was pregnant, I thought, "I wish she would name her Shanna." I was on a roll with predicting the sexes of babies. I'd only missed once in all my long 13 years, and I was certain Lila was carrying another daughter. I told her as much, but I did not suggest the name because I was equally certain she would never take the advice of a child on naming a child. When she called a few weeks later and told me, "If this baby is a girl, I think I'll name her Shana," it seemed like a miracle. I decided that I had wished that beautiful name on my niece so hard that it somehow pushed into Lila's mind. I've taken secondary credit for it ever since.

Shana was a gorgeous baby, and unlike Tanya and Bo, she didn't intimidate me. I was older, more practiced, and much better at appreciating babies this go 'round. I strove to be her second momma. Shana was bubbly, full of life and joy, and I loved her so dearly that I soon called her nothing but "Baby."

Soon the family discovered that Shana had asthma. She suffered one hard bout after another with bronchitis or pneumonia. Many nights, Lila stayed with us in order to have help with all three kids. Li and I would stretch out on either side of Shana and think about sleeping. Through the night, Shana's chest would heave so violently that it often seemed to be a separate entity from the rest of her. It was as though her muscles were forcing her to take just one more breath. I often found myself breathing in the same unnatural rhythm, praying between each convulsion of Shana's muscles, praying for the next pull of air. In the dim light, my eyes would meet my sister's and our souls would speak the fears that our mouths could not utter...

"What if she stops?"

"Could life ever go on?"

When she was healthy, life was golden. Shana lit up the darkest room with her smile, her bubbly way, and later, her constant mispronunciations. She had this delightful habit of accidentally using words we were not supposed to use. They always sounded so out of place falling from her cherubim lips. She pronounced "Roscoe" (a favorite uncle) as "Asshole" and would yell that name at anyone that reminded her of Roscoe, which unfortunately was any medium aged man with brown hair and a beard. I can remember running down the street with Lila, cupping our hands over Shana's mouth while she twisted her head and screamed her uncle's name at some confused guy that certainly was not her uncle, and probably didn't deserve verbal abuse from an 18 month old. My dad got a kick out of telling Shana to say, "I'm a smart feller." Inevitably she told him, "I'm a fart smeller." Nothing could have been less funny to my mom, or funnier to my dad. He'd laugh until his eyes disappeared in folds of wrinkles.

Shana was a brilliant baby (and is a brilliant lady. She made the Dean's List repeatedly in college) but those days foreshadowed a lifetime of twisted words. She never quite got the hang of a brilliant vocabulary. For example "specific" often still comes out "pacific". As a child, she told her mother they tried to make her eat "fruit fox tails!" at school. (Investigation discovered it was actually fruit cocktail.) And, unlike her very deliberate brother, Shana has always been good at "accidental funny." As a babe, she leaned in her mother's arms, out over a casket, and said, "Shhh. Papaw's sleeping...Boo!" She then laughed delightedly and added, "I scared Papaw to death!" She turned heads with her beauty, with her joy, with her malapropisms, and with her "accidental funny." She turned heads!

Shana's first sentence to me came from a song. I was singing along with the radio. "Don't you want me, baby? Don't you want me, ooh?" And Shana, who was "Baby", sang back, "Don't you want me, Dee Dee?"

Shana is now an adult and a very devoted mother. I've lost count of how many times she's made it through pneumonia. Thankfully, she is like my mother in that she's much tougher than she knows. Her greatest battle came when she had her son. High blood pressure, early inducement, an emergency c-section, a spotty epidural, she fought them all... And won. May God keep her winning, for I still feel the same way I did when she was tiny. "What if she stops?" I don't know what I'd do without her bubbly smile, without her created words, without her accidental funny, without her gigantic heart loving me every day. She loves fiercely and forever. Without her "could life ever go on?" I pray God that Lila and I never find out!

Photo: "Baby"