Chapter 24

Cassie

Then came the day in March when I realized that my period was definitely late. I can't say that I'm as regular as clockwork, the way some women are, but I don't deviate by whole weeks, and yet I'd not even seen a single spot and it was a week beyond what I had expected. Of course that wasn't positive proof, but it was enough that on the way home from work I bought a pregnancy test at Wal-Mart and stuck it in my purse, and while Yirmeyah was reading the paper after supper I took it into our bathroom and followed the directions. It was supposed to be able to tell whether a woman's pregnant just a few days after she catches, and it had been a few days since my period didn't start, and so I figured it would be as accurate as anything I could do outside of a doctor's office.

I didn't scream with delight when the test came up positive, though I wanted to. Instead I calmly walked out into the living room, or as calmly as I could, and sat down beside Yirmeyah and laid the little piece of plastic down on the coffee table. I took his arm in my hands, and leaned over and kissed his cheek, and said, "I have something to show you."

He lowered the paper and looked at me. "What?"

"It's there," I said, and pointed.

He looked, and saw the thing, and lifted an eyebrow, and picked it up. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Yes." My voice was breathless with excitement.

"You mean you're pregnant?" So was his.

"Yes!"

I hadn't screamed, but Yirmeyah emitted a sound that I suppose was the famous – or infamous – Rebel yell, and gathered me up and danced us around the living room. I'd heard that Baptists don't dance, and I knew that Yirmeyah had grown up a Baptist and that his previous church had been a Baptist church, but if he wasn't dancing then I'd like to know what on earth he was doing, for it was as much a dance as a waltz is, though probably less graceful. I've never learned to dance, not being interested in dancing, so I don't really know what waltzing is like, but Yirmeyah was better at furrows than women's feet, as I learned that night. He was in his stocking feet, which made that more tolerable, but though he wasn't a giant I was smaller than he was and it did dampen my enthusiasm for a few minutes.

After I'd quit saying things that, while perfectly printable, were not necessarily kind, and after Yirmeyah quit apologizing for hurting my toes, we found ourselves back on the sofa, with me in his lap. Just as he's not a giant I'm not a pixie, even if I am so small that I only came up to his chin, so I must have been heavy, but he didn't seem to notice. All I really knew was that I had my arms around the man I loved, and he had his around me, and inside me there was a new life, a life that came from both of us and joined us together more surely even than our wedding.

We were silent for several minutes, and then Yirmeyah spoke. "Cassie, have you ever heard that men don't cry?"

"I've heard it, and I've seen men doing their best not to cry, and being ashamed of crying, too."

"Well, Cass, that's poppycock." And then he used the strongest language I'd ever heard from him. "It's the unadulterated feces of a male bovine." I hadn't even known he knew words that big, except theological ones. "I know it's poppycock because I'm a man, and I'm crying."

I turned my face up to see his, not bothering to hide my own joyful tears. "I see you are, Yirmeyah. And you know what, my love? I don't think less of you for it, not at all. If a man didn't find it so wonderful and amazing that he was a father that he had an emotional reaction, I'd say he probably wasn't fit to be a father to begin with. You go ahead and cry, Yirmeyah, my adown. I don't mind a bit."

"Then I don't mind either. In fact I didn't mind anyway. But I'm glad you don't mind. I'd hate to think my wife wanted to cut out part of me."

"Yirmeyah, I don't want to cut out any part of you at all. Yes, we've had our differences, and I'm sure we'll have others along the way, but I love you as you are, and I married you as you are, and all I want is for you to be a better you than you are."

He chuckled, and I loved the sound of it as I leaned my head against his shoulder. His hand came up and stroked my hair, and found my ear and gently ran around its curve, and then fell to my neck and stroked and squeezed lightly there. Ever since the wedding Yirmeyah had been unable to keep his hands off me, and I confess that I loved to have him touch me, anywhere and anytime. "Being a better me," my husband said, "is exactly what I'm after. It's what being a Christian is, in a way. God predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son, and if that's not an improvement then I don't know what is."

"Only God could improve on you," I said. "I couldn't, however much I might want to try sometimes, because I can't even do a commendable job of improving myself, much less anyone else, and especially not anyone as good and godly as you are, Yirmeyah."

"But there is one improvement in you, Cass."

"What's that?" I asked, almost indignant, wondering what on earth he had found lacking in me.

"You're pregnant. And after a while you're going to look pregnant, and if you think I love you now..."

"Yirmeyah, I don't think you love me now. I know you love me, and I know you will love me even when I'm big and bloated and my ankles are big enough to support an elephant and I lose my breakfast two minutes after I eat it. And I know you'll love me when I look up with sweat all over me and my hair a horrible mess and hand you our child. And though how I don't know either of us could love the other more than we already do, I'm sure we'll both love each other more then than we do now."

Yirmeyah

It was all I could do to keep from jumping up and down and shouting like a cowboy. We'd wanted to have a baby, and here it was, five months or so after the wedding. We'd hoped for a pregnancy earlier, but it could have been later. So we weren't about to complain.

The next step, of course, was to locate an OB-GYN and get the professional test. Since my time was the most flexible, I took care of that. The next morning, after Cassie went to work, I grabbed the phone book and went to work. Not knowing the doctors in town, the only criterion I had to work with was location. I looked at the map and saw where the nearest hospital was. It looked like that was Presbyterian's Kaseman Hospital, on Constitution between Pennsylvania and Wyoming. Preferably we'd be able to find a doctor somewhere between there and the parsonage. And there was one, I found – two or three, actually. The next step was to find out if one of them was taking new patients, and the insurance I had through the church.

I'd say I got lucky, except I don't believe in luck. Ruth didn't just happen to arrive in Boaz's field, even though that's how the Bible describes it. God led her there. Jesus didn't just happen to find Matthew sitting there collecting taxes. It was a divine appointment. The God who put the stars in the sky and calls them all by name, and who knows every sparrow that falls, surely doesn't allow His people to arrive where they're going by luck. So I won't say I got lucky on my first call. But however you describe it, the first call I made was to a doctor who was in fact taking new patients, and who had a slot open for that Friday. I made the appointment.