Birth of a Contradiction (Part Two)

The nascent youths were separated soon after kind Yearning had caressed their frail souls and cried for their impending absence. Cognizant Yearning was aware of her husband's cunning, and his intentions were made quite clear in an argument that erupted several days prior. It seemed that Regret, who had become disillusioned with his wife upon realizing that it would be impossible to undermine her faith regarding the debilitating futility of idleness, stopped listening to her altogether. She would talk, and he would hear, but he would rarely reply with a coherent response largely because he interpreted none of the words that floated somewhere between the unhappily married couple.

Several days prior to the birth of their three children, however, he tuned in to Yearning's frequency, if but for a brief second, and caught the tail-end of a string of words involving "bearing, child, pregnant," and "in several days." In short, Regret finally learned the reason for the swelling that Yearning had suffered in the previous eight and one half months. The generally apathetic husband, soon-to-be father, was fuming.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me earlier!" he cried. He sunk into the deepest of temper tantrums he had ever experienced, storming left and right, eyes glazed, gesticulating like a madman, wailing about his wife's ineptitude at communicating her state, that he was unprepared and surely dissatisfied with the entirety of their household -- that he, that his entire home, was unfit for children. But most importantly, he decried the incoming youths as completely inopportune, birthed when time was invaluable to him. Yearning knew all too well that Regret's time was always priceless; he would never have "time" for a child, or what time he did have he would most assuredly reconsider spending on anything, let alone the nurturing of a newborn.

The fact that Regret did not yet learn of the potentially sobering knowledge that Yearning was especially heavy this late in her pregnancy -- with three children, as opposed to a single "time-consuming maggot," as her husband had eloquently put it -- was conspicuously absent in Yearning's response. She merely apologized for not enlightening her husband earlier (although she knew damn well that she had notified him on her status at least every day for the past eight months) and walked away, leaving him to fume at the tables, wall, chairs, bureau -- anything but her. She was tired of their arguments, which luckily had been laid to rest after he had stopped listening to anything she had to say. Her fatigue was continuously exacerbated throughout the next few days until, finally, her exhaustion culminated in the birth of three startlingly unique children.

Yearning made it a point to perform the birth in secret, away from the sometimes maniacal hands of Regret. Later that day, she was elated to learn that several individuals had responded to her ad in the newspaper, which read "Adopt a child: must travel, love children, inspire achievement and MUST detest inactivity." Coincidentally, three kind, friendly and appropriate couples approached mother Yearning, and each returned to their home ecstatic at the imminent prospect of raising a child. Yearning had no regrets in releasing her children, for her intentions were wholly good. She knew that Regret had a furious temper (for which he apologized profusely later), and would never let the birth of their children pass unnoticed. The youths’ lives were at stake.

When Regret learned of kind Yearning's actions, he was even more furious than several days before. He fumed and yelled and kicked, and two days later Yearning was at the bottom of a three-story stairwell, no longer breathing. Such was the bittersweet sacrifice that the selfless mother of three was compelled to make.