100 Words Per Mile: Discovery vs. Work

FedEx delivers a baby-making kit and I prove to my wife I love her.

What follows are miles 11-21 of this project. I hope you’ll read, subscribe, and share 100 Words Per Mile with your friends and followers.

Thanks for reading.

August 30, 2020
7.00 miles
54:37

My brother, his fiancée, and my little niece stopped by today. Between my busy season and his new job, Sunday is the only day we both have off, and even though we were tired, I wanted to see him and my niece, and talk about the doctor’s appointment.

My niece was born in February of 2019, sixteen months after my wife and I miscarried, which means about seven or eight months after we lost our little poppy seed, my younger brother came over to tell me his girlfriend was pregnant. He was nervous to share the news and was very sweet and gentle about it, but still, I asked him not to say anything to my wife. I wanted to be the one to break that ice.

The truth is, I knew before he told me. I found out at the barber shop a couple days prior. We get our hair cut by the same people (back when I was getting haircuts), and the barber said to me, “I hear you’re going to be an uncle!” There are four of us brothers who are patrons of this spot, but I knew which one as soon as she said it. I pretended to know what she was talking about and paid her the usual tip on my way out.

My wife had a harder time with the news than I did. At this point, we didn’t know about my “mild male factor” and because we had yet to get pregnant again, she was beginning to have concerns there was something wrong with her. The more we read about it, the more we learned about how difficult it was to have a baby. It was a wonder that anyone was ever born at all.