…I think.
It isn’t entirely unexpected.
You see, my wife and I have been trying off and on to have a child. “Off and on” is the key phrase with how we’ve been going about the whole process. I’ll let you fill in the details.
A few weeks ago we were in the “off” stage and didn’t really think anything of it until my wife mentions that she is a little bit late.
“Late for what?” I ask over a cup of coffee.
“You know….”
“No, I don’t – Oh… Well….”
“Yeah…”
“Okay, then.”
And that is the end of the conversation for the day. A few more days go by and she buys a pregnancy test. But she doesn’t buy just any pregnancy test. No, I’ve taught my wife well. She buys a digital pregnancy test because anything digital has got to be good. She opens it up and unfolds a poster-sized instruction sheet and starts reading through all the intricate and detailed steps she has to take which basically boil down to: “Pee on stick. Wait.”
She puts the test aside and says she’ll use it “tomorrow” and we go about our business, not thinking much of it.
Today is “tomorrow”.
So this morning she wakes up and goes into the bathroom and follows the aforementioned complex instructions and, while she is still in the bathroom and I’m sitting on the bed reading the paper and again drinking coffee I hear her say, “Oh my god!”
I’m a guy and I’m pretty dense so I’m not entirely sure what this initially means. It could mean that she just read another disturbing bit of trivia about the Nick and Jessica breakup in People magazine, it could mean that she can’t figure out the instructions to the pregnancy test, or it could mean –
“I’m pregnant!” she says when she walks in the room a moment later.
I smile and she smiles and we hug and I tell her she’s going to be a wonderful mother and she says I’ll be a wonderful father and I ask her if she thinks it’s mine.
It’s remarks like that which keep a marriage lively.
Now, this was only one test. And even though the package claims to be “99%” accurate (they wouldn’t sell many tests if they were advertised as “71%” accurate, now would they?), we’re going to hold off telling anyone or even thinking too much about it for the moment. She’s going to take another test in a day or two and make an appointment with her doctor and go through all the necessary checks and balances.
We spend the rest of the day going shopping and fixing up the house and doing all the normal things we do on the weekend. Then, as I imagine most people do when they find out they are going to be parents for the first time we go out to dinner and drank beer and smoked cigarettes and come home and make love like crazed weasels, knowing that this night would be the last time we could probably do this for the next 18 years.
And, of course, we talk about the baby the whole time. Life is good.
One Response to “I’m Going To Be A Father…”
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zip says:
“It’s remarks like that which keep a marriage lively.”
…and it’s remarks like that that keep me smiling and chuckling while I tell all my friends about this fabulous website I’ve come across.
There’s quite a few people here in Yorkshire, UK, looking forward to the news of the baby and news of a novel
February 12th, 2006 at 3:45 pm