Free A New Life by Stephanie Kepke Page A

breaking down into sobs. After hanging up the phone I sat curled on the couch, watching dusk fall and the streetlights come on. I didn’t bother closing the shades and shadows from the bare tree branches were crisscrossing the walls. When Zach came home from work I carefully explained to him that we should start trying for a baby, even though it was barely two months since our wedding night. I pulled the fleece blanket under my chin. The heat was all the way up in our small apartment, but I was still cold. Waiting until we were married for at least a year made sense, but the terror I felt muddled my thoughts. “We need some happiness. My family needs some hope,” I whispered.
    Zach pulled me to him. He kissed me for a long time—long enough for something to finally break down and let the tears flow. I sank into him and sobbed knowing I was no more ready to have a baby than I was to scale Mount Everest.
    Ten months later, after surgery and months of chemotherapy, my sister was cancer free. Somehow, against all bets, those mutant cells were gone, and the terror of the ordeal fell away. Even the endless hours I spent consoling my six-year-old niece during my sister’s hospital stay faded in memory. By the time Paula’s hair grew back into a chic pixie cut, and the color and smile returned to her face, I felt ready to get on with my life.
    Even that day at Walden Pond though, the rational part of my mind still said Wait a little longer, have a little money, a house, a future, your career on track. But, my heart said Now, now, now . “I’m going to be thirty in less than six months. If we want to have more than one kid, we better get started,” I reasoned. I also knew that a pregnancy before thirty was the best defense against the type of cancer that invaded my sister.
    Zach couldn’t argue with my logic. He was thirty-one. Even if he wouldn’t admit it, his biological clock was ticking too. I knew it was. “What if we’re not ready when the baby comes?” he said, softly.
    “Well, you get ready.” At the very moment I answered him, I saw the tree. Now, I wasn’t usually one to believe in signs, but there right before my eyes was that pregnant tree. I had never seen anything like it. “Look at that.” I pointed.
    We walked around it, studying that bump from all sides. We even took pictures of it—me next to it, hand on my tummy, laughing. There was no doubt, this tree looked pregnant. It was small, besides the belly, and bare, in a little clearing carpeted with blazing red and gold leaves. Only a few stubborn ruby leaves clung to it. I could touch the top branch, and I plucked one leaf. A thick log sat beside it. We lowered ourselves on to it. I fingered the leaf, an almost translucent jewel.
    “Well?” I asked.
    Zach smiled. “We’ll get ready.”
    ****
    When we brought Henry home, he was nursing every hour. I’d slept maybe five hours in seventy-two, and yet I was trying to clean up the steadily mounting mess. Gift wrap and shopping bags littered the floor; my discharge papers were still strewn across the bed, along with What To Expect the First Year , Attachment Parenting and three baby magazines. My laundry from the hospital was piled in the doorway.
    I had just refilled my hamster, Hamlet’s, food dish with his favorite sunflower seed, corn kernel, raisin and banana chip mix. I felt terrible—he usually got fresh food by 7:00 p.m. and it was already 10:00. I’d emptied the old food, so I knew he wasn’t hungry, but I still felt guilty for ignoring him. While I was pregnant I had a dream that I put my baby, a girl, in the hamster cage and fed her granola and sunflower seeds, while I nursed the hamster. Hamlet was my first baby, strange though that may sound. He was more like a cat than a hamster. “I’m sorry,” I whispered into his cage as I passed carrying Henry.
    “Lie down,” my mother commanded. “Have some soup. You’re gonna collapse.”
    “I feel fine,” I answered, as I lay Henry on