Savoring life in a time of loss

THE PARENTS: Alicia Rainwater, 38, and Tim Hanchin, 45, of Havertown

THE KIDS: Jean Margaret, 3; Edmund Michael, born Dec. 23, 2020

THEIR NAMES: Jean is named for Alicia’s mother and Tim’s paternal grandmother; Edmund was the name of Tim’s maternal grandfather — and, they learned later, the patron saint of pandemics.

Alicia left the Starbucks in Brookline, Mass. — where she’d just spent an hour talking with the stranger next to her — and murmured a small, private prayer.

“I remember walking down the street and thinking: Is something happening here? Am I supposed to be paying attention to something? At the time, I was dating someone who was a really wonderful person, but I had that inkling that it needed to end.”

Tim recalls spotting Alicia, then sliding into the empty chair beside her. “I finally asked her, ‘What are you reading?’ And then we found out that we had a lot in common.”

Both had done service work in Guatemala. Alicia was studying for a master’s degree in international social work, and Tim was earning his Ph.D in theology. They talked about their studies, their families, their faith.

“All of a sudden, she said, ‘I’ve got to go,’ and started packing up her books.” He tore off a corner of notebook paper and scribbled his name, his email, and his cell number. Alicia hurried across the street to the home she shared with an elderly woman whom she helped with meals and housework.

“I thought that was it,” Tim says. Later, he found her on Facebook and suggested they meet at a library on campus. “After one more of those meet-ups, I realized: Wow, I have a thing for this guy,” Alicia says.

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A month later, she got in touch with Tim to say that she was single. “I was holding out that hope, but I hadn’t expected it to come,” he says. “It almost felt, at that point, like something was fated for us.”

That was spring 2011. At the end of that year, Alicia left for a four-month field placement in Ghana, a stint apart that clarified their desire to be together. The following year — both were still in Boston following Alicia’s graduation — her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and Alicia decided to move home, to Dallas, to be with her.

For Tim’s birthday in July 2013, he arranged a kayaking and camping trip to an island off the coast of Massachusetts; after dinner, he fished a ring from the tent and knelt by the campfire. He also told Alicia that he’d made a secret trip to Dallas a few weeks before, when she was traveling with girlfriends, to declare his intentions to her entire family.

“That year was filled with poignant moments: joy and a lot of pain,” Alicia says — including their wedding, one of the last occasions when her mother still had energy to dance and socialize. Both recall the giddy, private photo session before the ceremony, and the ritual foot-washing they incorporated into the liturgy.

Their conversations about children focused on timing. Tim wanted to finish his doctoral studies first, though Alicia gently reminded him that babies have a “long baking period” from the intention to conceive until they’re actually born.

She held on to the positive pregnancy test for nearly a week, then told Tim around Thanksgiving with a scrapbook about the first chapter of their married life; the last page read, “Coming July 2017, Baby Hanchin.”

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It was a smooth pregnancy: some morning sickness in the first trimester, then energy enough to relish a “baby-moon” trip to a lakeside cabin in the Adirondacks. Alicia looked forward to nursing — friends had described that as an intimate bonding experience — and to seeing new aspects of Tim emerge as they became parents.

“It would be a radical decentering,” he says. “And a sharing of the love we had with each other, that can’t be contained between the two of us.”

Jean came slowly and quickly — five days past her due date, in a labor that began with an induction at Bryn Mawr Hospital and progressed swiftly through transition to pushing out a “little red ball of a baby” whose sheer existence made Alicia laugh.

“I remember the surprise of: How did this creature fit inside me?” she says.

Tim wept, stunned by “the disproportionate gift that had been given to us. And soon after that, this fear: Now we’re responsible for this baby. What do we know about that?”

They were satisfied to be parents of one child, but they wanted a sibling for Jean. This time, conception took longer; Alicia had a miscarriage in the fall of 2018, and they both underwent fertility testing. “There was nothing wrong. We just needed some time,” Alicia says.

This time, she brought the test stick into the kitchen as soon as she’d taken it: “Look at this!” she exclaimed as Tim was making omelets. It was March, the start of the pandemic. “After we got pregnant, I thought: Oh, gosh, was that foolish?” Alicia recalls. “Tim is ever the positive personality. He said, ‘We’re going to be fine.’ ”

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The pregnancy was harder than her first — more nausea, more back pain — but made easier by working with midwives whose approach was nurturing and team-based. At a checkup the day before her due date, one of the midwives noted that the baby was extremely low, then swept Alicia’s membranes and said, “I bet I’ll see you pretty soon!”

After some “weird upper-back pains” — she squeezed Tim’s arm every 10 minutes — her labor ramped up quickly at home, then in the car on the way to Einstein Medical Center Montgomery. The nurse pushing her wheelchair quipped, “I’ve always wanted to deliver a baby in an elevator.”

Edmund managed to wait for the delivery room — barely. Alicia clocked 90 minutes from her first strong contractions to the moment she pushed him out.

Like their marriage during the year of her mother’s illness, parenthood during a pandemic twines gratitude and sorrow, possibility and loss. “COVID is a time of collective trauma,” Tim says. “There’s something terribly appropriate about the joy of welcoming new life into this world at the same time.”