The Baby Chronicles. Judy Baer

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СКАЧАТЬ a good hurt. It feels as though it might explode with joy.” I snuggled into his chest and sighed.

      “And?”

      “And what?”

      “And what was that sigh about? It wasn’t the sigh of a totally happy woman, now was it?”

      “No fair. You know me too well.”

      “So spill it. What’s not right in your world?”

      “It’s Kim. She’s…” I searched around in my mind for a word, and could only come up with one. “Obsessed.”

      Chase tucked me closer to himself, a sign that he was ready and willing to listen.

      “They are finding adoption complicated and intimidating.” I thought back to this morning when, during her coffee break, Kim had filled out a self-assessment quiz meant to help her and Kurt identify their feelings and goals about adoption.

      “Whitney,” she’d said, her eyes wide, “I assumed we’d adopt a healthy infant and raise him or her as we did Wesley. I didn’t even consider the children with disabilities who are in desperate need of parents.” She’d held out a paper for me to read. “Look.”

      “Which disabilities in an adoptive child,” the sheet had read, “would you be willing to consider?” The inventory had been nearly a page long, listing everything from premature and drug-exposed babies to those with Down syndrome, blindness and a host of family history issues, such as diabetes, mental disorders and alcohol addiction. Then it had asked which racial heritages she and Kurt would consider and whether they had gender preferences or would think about taking twins.

      “How can I decide? If a child needs love—needs us—then we would take it, wouldn’t we?” she’d lamented. “And what about all those we can’t take? What happens to them?”

      “She either wants to bring all the children home with her or give up on the process entirely, depending on her mood,” I told Chase.

      “They’re forgetting something important,” he commented. “They already have someone who is willing to direct them, someone who will find the perfect child for them—if it’s His will.”

      I looked Chase in the baby blues. “You are absolutely right. God is on their side. He knows if they should adopt a baby or not. And He also knows who and where that baby is right now. Perhaps it isn’t even born yet.”

      You knit me together in my mother’s womb…My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret…Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

      Psalms 139:13-16

      I, too, sometimes forget God is in charge and try to tackle the world on my own.

      “You’re so wise.” I brushed my fingers against my husband’s cheek. “Kim and Mitzi are both doing the ‘What-ifs’. No wonder they’re nervous.”

      It makes more sense for Mitzi to be nervous. Although she doesn’t seem to mind that Kim and I are Christians, she doesn’t appear interested in joining the club herself. Just because she and Arch once committed to join a denomination in order to marry in a particular church, that didn’t make them Christian anymore than standing in a kitchen makes one Julia Child.

      “Ah, for the good old days.” He gathered me into his arms and nuzzled his nose into my hair. I detected the faint, crisp smells of shaving lotion and soap.

      “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      “I want to have a baby the old-fashioned way. You know, homemade, a do-it-yourself endeavor…”

      “And if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?”

      He grinned, and his even white teeth flashed. “It’s a project I’m willing to commit my life to.”

      “Like the post office? ‘Neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet will stop…’”

      “Something like that. In fact, I think playing post office is a good place to start.”

      I didn’t even hear Mr. Tibble or Scram complain when I dumped them off my knees and onto the floor so that I could get my arms around my husband’s neck.

      Monday, March 29

      On Monday morning, Mitzi dealt out party invitations around the office as if they were Old Maid cards.

      “For you, for you, for you…” She paused and gathered herself together before putting one on Bryan’s desk. “For you…”

      Bryan isn’t exactly the life of the party. In fact, he can suck the energy right out of one. If he overhears an argument, he gets nervous and hides in the bathroom until it’s over. “What’s this?” Kim held hers up to the light to see if the flat vellum envelope contained a bomb.

      “Arch and I are having a get-together on Saturday night. There will be appetizers, a buffet by the pool, music, and scads of doctors and their wives there. I thought it might be good to water down the intellectuals with you guys.”

      Leave it to Mitzi to extend a gracious invitation.

      “Suddenly, I think I’m busy,” Kim retorted.

      “Don’t get huffy. You know what I mean. I don’t want these people discussing appendectomies and thyroidectomies all evening. You’ll be a diversion.”

      “Like a juggling clown, or someone who does balloon art? You aren’t helping your case, Mitzi.”

      “I’m having the food catered by Ziga’s.”

      Ziga’s is a well-known dining spot on Lake Zachary, where Mitzi lives.

      “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? They have the best food I’ve ever eaten.” Kim exchanged a resigned glance with me over Mitzi’s head. We’re a family; we show up for each other no matter what—especially when food is involved.

      Thursday, April 1, April Fools’ Day—Innova’s Annual Day of Celebration

      Forget Presidents’ Day, Labor Day and the Fourth of July. April 1 is my company’s day to howl. Quite literally, in fact.

      The first thing Harry did when he walked into the office this morning was to stub his toe on the leg of Kim’s desk and start hopping around as if he was riding a crazed pogo stick.

      “Ouch, ouch, owww…”

      Immediately, Kim jumped up to help him, Bryan headed for the bathroom to get out of the way, and Betty lunged to the phone to call for help. I, meanwhile, had the presence of mind to find the man a chair so he could sit down. But it wasn’t until Mitzi sauntered over to examine the damage to Harry’s shoe, that he erupted out of the chair and yelled, “Gotcha! April Fool!”

      We all groaned in unison. How could we have let Harry get away with the first April Fools’ gotcha? There is, after all, a trophy at stake for the one who tricks the rest of the office with his or her April Fools’ joke. Harry had, in the first СКАЧАТЬ