Hello Dakota! Goodbye Cheyenne Hope 1994

The rest of 1993 went by without incident except at Christmas time, Kelvin had went to the new Walmart on North Belt highway and put a faux leopard jacket on layaway for me. He had it down to 10.00 left to pay and got antsy and didn't want to wait until I got paid on Thursday, December 1st so I could give him the 10.00 to pay it off. Another friend in the trailer park had a boyfriend who was visiting her there that day while I was at work. They were talking about Christmas trees and how he, the friend, was wanting one but didn't want to pay the high prices they were charging at the grocery store on Mitchell. Kelvin mentioned that when he was younger he used to steal Christmas trees from the parking lots of stores and sell them for 10.00. He also mentioned he needed 10.00 to get my jacket out of layaway and didn't want to wait for me to give him the money for my own gift. The guy said he'd give Kelvin the 10.00 he needed if he could "obtain" a tree from the store. Kelvin agreed and had the tree in the Geo, took it to the guy's apartment, took the 10.00 and went to Walmart to get my jacket. Unbeknownst to Kelvin there was another guy in a yellow station wagon who was at the store at the time of the theft and saw him leave with the tree. He followed him to the trailer park to get the address of where we lived, and waited for Kelvin to come back to inform the police. By coming home first he led them right to our door. When I got home from work after 11:30 that night, Kelvin called me from the police station and told me what had happened and that he had been arrested. I was to call a friend, Mudbone, as he was called, to get the 75.00 he would need to bail him out. I was so furious I told him to stay there and rot as far I was concerned. Mudbone or another "friend" went to the station to get him out. I understood why he did it, I guess, but I was not in the mood to listen, since he was still on parole and I was not about to watch him go back to prison. The judge actually laughed about the incident and let him off with a small fine and even mentioned a time or two when he was younger himself, "walking off" with a few Christmas trees. Nothing more was said about it but I found it hard to wear the jacket I had loved when I had seen it in the store and mentioned to him that was what I had wanted for Christmas. I didn't want it that way. I had been living such a sheltered life for the first 40 years, albeit an honest one.
In January of 1994 Kelvin talked about his two girls, his oldest daughter Vallie who was eight years old and his youngest daughter Shelby who would be three years old in May. His brother who lived in Hawaii, working for his uncle who owned a big construction company on the island of Oahu, Keith, had two boys. He had always wanted a boy and found it unmasculine not to have one, wondered if I could still bear a child at the age of 40. I would be 41 in April and had thought I was through with all of that when Charles had his vasectomy after Chuck was born. I thought of how cute and cuddly a newborn would be, afterall my baby was 14 years old and would be 15 in October. My darling baby girl had graduated from highschool in 1991 and would be 21 in February. I was starting over with a new life, new husband, and living in a new place far from the farm and Kansas. I decided I would like to have a baby but I couldn't gaurantee him a boy, after all that was for his sperm to decide. I stopped taking "the Pill" and by March my menstrual cycle had stopped. I knew I was pregnant because I had always been regular, and when I had decided to have Jennifer and Chuck, those pregnancies started out the same way. I bought a pregnancy test and hurried home to take it. It took forever for the results but when they finally came they seemed opaque and illegible. I showed the stick to Jennifer and she thought it was unreadable and negative. I knew what I knew and that was that. I threw the test in the trash, disappointed and certain of the results no matter what it said. A couple of hours later, I dug it out and looked at it again. Lo and behold a pink line was visible and I indeed had the proof I needed. I called Jennifer and gave her the news which she promptly said " Oh, My God!!" it was more of a gutteral sound of dread and " What have you done!" at your age! Chuck was happy and always wanted a little brother. I had two names picked out, after going through all the objections of my spouse and family, Dakota and Cheyenne Hope. He, of course wanted the middle name to be Ray after his biological father who had died in a car accident in 1967 on Mother's day, I wanted the middle name to be Rain. Cheyenne Hope I thought was pretty for a girl and the Hope part came after my favorite character on Day's of Our Lives which I had been watching since 1983. I had a crush on Alan Thicke, even though his late night talk show, Thicke of the Night, was a horrible show, I thought Alan thicke was the most handsome man since Paul Mccartney and watched anyway. He had mentioned his wife, then, Gloria Loring, was on a soap opera called Days of Our Lives. Unfortunately it came on at noon at the same time All My Children came on, but I was getting tired of waiting for Jenny and Greg to get together on that show so I thought I would check out the competition on Days. She, Gloria Loring, Liz on the show, was very pretty and could sing like a bird. I was totally facinated, gave up Children and have not missed an episode of Days since. Gloria Loring and Alan Thicke parted ways shortly after his show died, and on Days she went to prison, never to be seen again.
Due to the fact that he had produced two girl children I had little hope of producing a boy so concentrated on little Cheyenne Hope. We had both boy and girl clothes and I was reminded daily of the promise of a boy. When I had my sonogram sometime in the summer of that year, I was lying on a gurney between Kelvin and the lady doing the sonogram, she asked us if we would like to know the sex of the child and we eagerly said, "Yes!" I have not understood the "waiting to be surprised" theory a lot of husbands and wives take on the subject. If you find out now, before the baby is born, you'll know what colors to buy and what name to call "it" and you can stop calling "it" an "it" and use the terms He or She.
I held my breath and when she said it was certainly a boy and quite obviously so, I thought Kelvin was going to jump over me and impregnate her! I'd never seen a man so happy, except when Chuck was born and we had to be surprised because they didn't do sonograms then, Charles almost passed out but that was another time and place. I, on the other hand felt as if Cheyenne Hope had died, even though there had never really been a Cheyenne Hope except in my mind. I laughed and reveled in his happiness. We went to Walmart and picked out a onesey that read, "Daddy's Boy" across the front. He immediately called his Mom in California and his brother in Hawaii to tell them the news.