Chapter 2
Chapter two
“Ithink you’re overreacting.”
Josh’s voice is mild as he leans against the counter, his leg, newly healed and liberated from its cast just two weeks ago, stretched out in front of him, complete with walking boot.
He’s still limping, as well as tiring easily, but he’s diligent with his physical therapy, and he’s grateful to be off the crutches…
even if he’s frustrated that he’s not leaping and dancing the way he’d hoped he would be.
“I’m not overreacting,” I state firmly, “because I’m not freaking out. I told you, he seems a perfectly nice man, but I don’t need the kids getting an earful about the end times.”
“He could be right, though,” Josh replies, his eyes glinting, and I am reminded of when he told me how dark a place the world had become when he first mooted the idea of homesteading.
Clearly, his opinion hasn’t changed. “Who knows,” he continues, “we might be heading toward an energy crisis and a food shortage and… what was the other thing?”
“A civil war,” I fill in a little flatly, and he nods.
“A civil war. Definitely could be that one.”
“Josh, enough.” I nod toward Jack, who is sitting at the kitchen table, somewhat miraculously reading a book, his ears decidedly perked.
He’s already told me he thinks Mike Landry is pretty cool, even if he’s no fan of the man’s spruce tea.
“Let’s not give anyone ideas.” I don’t need my thirteen-year-old son giving me another argument about needing to arm himself.
“Mom, I don’t think there’s going to be a civil war,” Jack drawls as he flips a page of his book. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be because Mike the Prepper said so.”
“Jack,” I protest, although I’m not sure what I’m protesting. Calling our neighbor Mike the Prepper feels a little unkind, but also… true. “What are you reading?” I ask, both to change the subject and because I am curious. Jack is not known to be much of a reader in our family.
He doesn’t glance up from his tome as he turns another page. “The Shooter’s Bible.”
“The what?” I glance at the cover, which has a photo of five different types of guns, from a semi-automatic rifle to a small silver pistol, as well as the subtitle ‘The Complete Guide to Firearms, their assembly, disassembly, and maintenance’.
I give Josh a pointed look, and he shrugs, smiling. It looks like our youngest son has already gotten ideas, but then, he was pretty interested in guns before Mike the Prepper came on the scene, which is part of the problem.
All in all, I feel a little guilty about my reaction to Mike, just Mike.
He’s our neighbor, he’s clearly on his own, and he seems pretty friendly.
And I’d be naive if I didn’t think most people around here keep multiple firearms at home the way he does.
Several ladies at Bible study have conceal and carry permits and bring their pistols in their pocketbooks along with their Bibles to church.
It’s not the way I grew up, and I’m still kind of uncomfortable with it. Obviously.
But as for Mike? It’s not so much the guns—although it is that—as his take on the world.
The idea that he’s not just waiting for Armageddon but maybe ushering it in.
I don’t want that kind of energy in our lives, but maybe I’m reading too much into a single conversation.
Like Josh seems to think, he could be harmless, or more to the point, he could be right.
In any case, I’m not yet ready to invite him to dinner, and he seems too busy to accept anyway.
Most days, we can hear the sound of a hammer and saw all the way on his property from our front porch, and the sounds go on for some time.
Anyway, there’s plenty of other stuff to keep us busy.
It’s heading toward late March, and spring is starting to…
well, spring. The grass, which has been brown and dead-looking all winter, has turned a bright, verdant green.
Our new calf, Daisy, totters across the barnyard on still-spindly legs, and we’ve gone back to early mornings, milking Mabel, then pasteurizing the milk and making cheese, butter, and yogurt, which is a time-consuming process.
Josh has big plans for our garden. We’ve spent hours planning out our vegetable plot row by painstaking row, working toward being—as I intimated to Mike—somewhat self-sufficient.
We have an order for sixty more meat chickens to come in June; I’ve only got six left in the freezer.
Josh is looking into getting two butchering hogs; a farmer down near Hacker Valley will have piglets to sell in a couple of months.
He also wants to look into solar panels—he hasn’t even met Mike yet, but clearly, the off-grid sensibility is influencing him—and a generator. We don’t have the money for either yet, and we probably won’t for some time, but Josh insists there are cheap ways to do it.
And besides all that, there are the normal routines of life—Josh’s online tutoring and my two days a week working the checkout at Kroger.
William is still working full time for the forestry division, and Bethany is working for Josie at the health food store in Buckholt three days a week while completing her introductory online modules for midwifery.
Plus, every week I’ve got homeschooling Rose and Jack, something that too often falls by the wayside, as well as our co-op, my Bible study, my dad’s PT appointments, and the never-ending laundry pile.
Life is busy, and I tell myself not having Mike the Prepper to dinner is okay… even if I still feel kind of guilty about it.
Besides, I have something even bigger to occupy my thoughts—the eighteen-week ultrasound where we get to find out if we’re having a boy or a girl.
It seems crazy that I’m nearly halfway through this pregnancy.
As much as I have gotten used to the idea of being pregnant, it still doesn’t seem possible that we will have a little human being in our midst in just four and a half months.
By the end of the summer, we’ll be reaping another kind of harvest.
We have yet to do any preparation for this baby, which is slightly alarming.
I haven’t wanted to broach the subject of bedrooms, which I know will be a sensitive one, because the likely outcome is that Rose will have to share with the baby while Bethany keeps her own room.
And as excited as Rose is to have a little brother or sister, she’s not that excited.
Still, that’s a problem for another day.
Emmy has promised me a bunch of baby stuff she kept even after Ed got the snip—a bassinet, a crib, a changing table, a bouncy seat—but she hasn’t taken it out of her attic yet, which frankly is fine by me.
We don’t really have the space for all that stuff, even if we’ll eventually need it.
And as Josh told me a while ago, each day has enough trouble of its own, so today, as we head into Buckholt for the ultrasound, I’m focusing on that.
“Do you have any preference?” I ask Josh curiously. We haven’t actually talked about the reality of this baby all that much. “Boy or girl, I mean?”
“Nope.” He shoots me a quick grin. “I mean, we have two of each, so why would I? All I care about is the baby being healthy.”
“Yeah, me, too. Speaking of that…” I hesitate, because this is something I have only just started thinking about. “I’m pretty sure that because of my advanced age, they’re going to want me to have a whole bunch of tests. Maybe even an amniocentesis.”
Josh frowns. “Why?”
“Because I am officially a geriatric mother,” I tell him, trying to sound as if that amuses rather than horrifies me. “And you know, the older the mother, the more the risk of birth defects and… stuff like that.”
Josh’s frown deepens. “And?”
“Well…” I shrug uncomfortably. “I guess if something could be wrong, it might be good to know about it, but on the other hand, the test they do can only give you a percentage. I don’t think I want to get an amniocentesis, even though it’s more certain in terms of any diagnoses.
It carries a risk of miscarriage or other complications.
Very small, but still.” Now that I’ve come to terms with this pregnancy, I realize I want to go through with it no matter what.
“Well then, it doesn’t sound like we need a lot of extra tests,” Josh says reasonably.
I feel a little wave of relief, because that’s how I feel, too.
I appreciate that there are tests that might be crucial or life-saving for some couples, but surely, that’s not the case for us now.
Knowing myself, if I was told a percentage of what could go wrong, I’d just obsess about it and create needless anxiety and angst, of which I already have an abundance.
I don’t need to spend the next four and a half months worrying about what might—or might not—go wrong.
“Okay,” I reply with a smile and a nod.
Josh smiles back, seeming as glad as I am to be on the same page with this.
A short while later, we’re being led to a darkened room for the ultrasound.
Just a few weeks ago, I was in this exact same room, albeit with a different technician, fearing I was in the process of having a miscarriage.
I don’t have the same kind of fear now as I did then, but I still feel as nervous as I am excited.
I scoot onto the examining table, and Josh reaches over to grasp my hand, even before I’ve properly lain down.
I shoot him a quick smile as I twine my fingers with his, then wait expectantly for the technician to do her thing.
She does, squirting the cold, clear gel on my bare stomach, talking me through what she’s going to do.
I pretend to be listening while my brain is actually going a million miles per hour.
We’re going to find out if it’s a boy or a girl!
Why, I wonder distantly, does that even matter so much? Like Josh, I’d be happy with either. Yet knowing will make it—him or her—so much more real.