I never really thought about having children when I was a child myself. I guess I assumed it would happen someday, but young me was more focused on staying out of my mother’s warpath and convincing Rye and Brann to let me play with them.
By the time I was old enough to think about my future it had all been planned out by my mother. I’d marry, right out of school, one of the merchant girls who had no brothers, maybe the blacksmith’s daughter, then become her father’s apprentice, have two children and live miserably ever after. That I didn’t like the blacksmith’s daughter and didn’t want to pound iron for a living didn’t matter. It was that or the mines, and as far as my mother was concerned I’d be better off dead than working in the mines.
And then I was reaped.
It’s not like growing up in District 12 was easy, but until that moment I had never felt particularly unsafe. Obviously the Reaping hung over everyone’s heads, but it was almost always Seam kids who were reaped, not the merchants. So very seldom the merchants. Any vague ideas I might have had about my future were wiped cleanly away when Effie Trinket lifted my name from that glass bowl.
But I survived the games. Not only did I survive, but I survived with Katniss, with the girl who had held my heart in her hands nearly my entire youth. That should have been my happily ever after; surviving the games, living the life of a victor with the girl of my dreams by my side.
It didn’t work out that way. At least, not at first.
It’s taken me years, and a lot of therapy, to understand that not every kiss in those games was fake. But at sixteen years old all I knew was that the loss of the future I’d started to hope for, with Katniss, was more painful than the loss of my leg.
And then the roller coaster ride of highs and lows that followed: the lies, the nights on the train, the forced engagement, the hardships that befell our district, the quiet moments with Katniss, getting to truly know her, falling more deeply in love with her…
I let myself start to dream. Let myself envision winning Katniss over with patience (and cheese buns). The wedding might have been for the Capitol, but the marriage could have been real. Thinking about children was easy, natural, when I pictured Katniss as their mother.
Then the Quell was announced.
I knew with utmost certainty that I wouldn’t come back a second time. But I was determined not only that Katniss would, but that she’d have the life I’d dreamed of.
Just with somebody else.
There were forces at play that neither Katniss nor I knew about, and once again my plans for the future were shot to hell, destroyed, decimated. I was shot to hell, destroyed, decimated. There was nothing left of my dreams because, by the time I was lifted from the Capitol dungeons, there was nothing left of me.
It’s been five, ten, fifteen years. I’m a man now; married to the woman I’ve been privileged to fall in love with over and over again. My Katniss. We have the future I didn’t dare dream of for myself, for so many years. A quiet home in our peaceful district. Freedom. Friends. A marriage that’s strong and loving and real.
And now, a child. Our child.
When Katniss and I returned to District 12 after the war we were both so broken. Still just children ourselves, alone in the world but for each other, forced to grow up far too fast. It took years of hard work, of patience, of fights and misunderstandings, of laughter and tears and pain, to build ourselves back up.
We did it together.
For so many of those years, the idea of children simply never crossed my mind. I had in Katniss the loving family I craved, and that was enough. We were enough. Even when our friends and neighbors starting having babies I didn’t really consider it a possibility for me. Still battling inner demons, still prone to flashbacks that left me confused and terrified, gripping the back of a chair, I simply didn’t trust myself to be able to care for a child. I know what it’s like to grow up afraid of your parent, unable to rely on your parent. I could never have done that to another child.
Ironically, it was Katniss who convinced me. Katniss, who had for so long insisted that she never wanted kids, could never risk failing another child the way she believed she failed Prim. Katniss made me see that I would be a good father, not in spite of my flaws, but because of them. We have overcome so much, learned a hundred lifetimes worth and discovered that, together, we are an unstoppable force. An unbeatable team.
We are so much better together. And we have so much to give.
Still, it took several more years before we were ready. Several more years of talking and reflecting, soul searching. I changed my mind a hundred times. Katniss changed hers a hundred and one. But that day when we found out that we were going to be parents there were no second thoughts. We both wanted this child, desperately.
I’m not saying it was easy. Katniss spent a large part of the pregnancy plagued by terror and self-doubt. I was tormented by nightmares. But we had each other.
Our daughter was born on a perfect spring day, at sunset. And though I’ve loved my wife - my beautiful, incredible Katniss - for practically my entire life, I have never loved her more than I did that day. Holding her hand as she labored tirelessly to bring our baby into the world, I was in awe of her strength, of her power.
And when the midwife placed our daughter, impossibly tiny and screaming in righteous indignation, into her mother’s arms for the first time I swear I felt my heart explode into a million pieces. Everything we had endured over our lives was worth it just to experience that moment.
