You wouldn’t know it by looking at me now, but I was once an only child. Pampered, adored and secure — my parents treated me like a little princess. Though, the light dimmed in my kingdom when the interloper arrived, six months after my third birthday.

I distinctly remember standing on the front seat of our car, one arm slung over my daddy’s shoulder as he drove through town. These days, this behaviour could buy you a child-endangerment charge. “How about an ice cream cone, my little angel?” I recall Daddy saying. Though money was tight, it was obvious that my happiness was all that really mattered to him. I could go on and on about the idyllic life I led as an only child. Then — without warning — my days as an only child were over!

Of course, there had been some warning — my mother’s protruding abdomen, for example — but I was far too young to see these things as a prelude to another chapter of the “amazing story of life.” All I know is one day in May, my grandmother appeared and my mommy disappeared. A weird white basket on wheels appeared in my parents’ bedroom.

When we all sat down to dinner and Grandmother prayed — not for me, but for the precious new baby girl who had been born into our family. Then for the first time ever I learned what it was like to sit at the table without being the centre of attention. I will always see that incident as a premonition that life was about to throw me a curve. — Beliefnet.com