Beginnings

It was about this time of year when my husband and I learned that I was expecting our first child.  Often, I felt a  spine tingling sensation  the same I felt when rising up the crest of a hill and careening into the air of nothingness, an abyss.  Parenting certainly was an unknown.  I had never been one before and I had a mere nine months to prepare.  I wanted my child to have every advantage.  My body was supporting another life.  An appointment was made with a nutritionist, I did not ingest anything that might harm and I walked each day.

My pregnancy was unremarkably remarkable.  It was in the warmth of a late spring day that I began feeling a tightness. I was in labor- a slow labor.  My husband and I arrived early, my in-laws going about their morning routine. They lived nearest the hospital.  My father-in-law had been working for hours already hauling wealthy and common folk's trash to the dump.  He had come home to take care of some billing and was sitting in his plaid rust colored chair, peering over his spectacles as we trudged through the door.  My mother-in-law, drying her hands on a dishtowel cleared the couch and fluffed up some pillows.

The T.V. was forever droning in the background-white noise for living that did not seem to require attention.  That day I was in labor and I felt I needed attention!  Raquel Welch as a cave woman did not amuse me. "Turn that thing off, " I insisted, "I'm having a baby now. Here!"

Normally argumentative in a traditional controlled way, my father-in-law turned off the T.V. and all was quiet for the longest time.