‘What was that about?’ Dylan tries to sound casual.
‘Ah you know Mhama, always on about some nonsense.’ Although Dylan would want more details, his tight-lipped wife does not let out, so he doesn’t interrogate any further.
‘I just spoke to the doctor, it might be a few more weeks before they let the babies go.’
Tanya mourns, ‘Arghh I want to go home, I hate staying here. And I don’t even want to think about the bill yet.’
‘Hey hey’, Dylan soothes his wife, ‘don’t worry at all about the bill. I have it covered; we are good for it.’
What he does not tell his wife is how much he is stressing about how they are going to pay off the balance that’s not covered by the medical aid. Tanya is in one of the best private hospitals in the country, but this comes at a high cost. He snaps out of his thoughts, wary that Tanya might read his expressive face.
‘It’s crazy how the boys have grown in just a day isn’t it?’ He says, the wonder on his face is like that of a 10-year-old at discovering something new about a favourite toy.
Tanya laughs, not remembering when last her husband was so uninhibited.
‘They are still so tiny though, it’s amazing that they will grow into full adults…I love them Dee, so much.’
‘I can’t believe they are healthy and growing, for a while it really felt like everything about me was going wrong.’
Dylan understands that what she really wants to say is that she expected to miscarry or at least have still births. He doesn’t fault her; they have been going through a season that felt like God had deserted them.
‘No, don’t think that. We need to shift from all that negativity. Everything is coming together now babe, God has always been faithful, even when we couldn’t see it.’
‘I sometimes wonder,’ Tanya says, ‘ if it was something I was doing, or not doing, that was causing all those storms? I often felt like it was my fault, all the trouble we went through.’
‘Honestly babe, that doesn’t matter to me now. As long as all this has led to us glorifying Him, let’s not worry about stuff we can’t change.’
He leans in and kisses her forehead, ‘Now, amai mwana, what shall we name our boys?’
Tanya smiles, shyly. She won’t say she already had picked names for them.
‘I don’t know, you’re their daddy, their owner if we are being cultural. Vana vako.’
She says , mischievously, itching for a response.
Dylan ,all the wiser, avoids the comments and starts sounding off names.
‘Matipa? No that sounds a bit feminine. Nyasha sounds good, and it’s fitting. This is all mercy. What do you think?’
‘Ummm how many names do they each get, I kinda had my own also?’ The last part of the sentence sounds like a question.
Dylan is taken aback a little, he hadn’t thought Tanya would want to name her own children.
‘You can give them their second names?’ He thinks this a reasonable compromise.
Tanya wants to protest but decides against it. She wants to bask in the glory of them getting along much longer.
