Christmas Eve, or "Oh...holy crap"

I took to the snow covered roads in my faded candy apple red Mustang convertible on the morning of Christmas eve with a short but important shopping list. The snow had fallen deep the night before and the roads were only partially navigable, but I was able to slide my way to the local mega-all-purpose retail center of my choice. I turned right out of the driveway of our apartment complex, the rear end of the Mustang sliding to the left, and quickly straightened the steering wheel and let off the gas to correct the slide. It was slow going down Ford road, but enough traffic had passed through to have worn tire ruts in the snow. I made it to the store without accident or difficulty and trudged to the front door after parking in what I thought was a spot in the snow covered lot.

First on the list, a snow shovel. The apartment complex plowed and cleared the snow...in theory. But the snow was still untouched on the walk leading from the front of our apartment to the parking lot when I had left, and that was late in the morning (they were still untouched when I returned after my shopping trip).

Second on the list. Cat litter. Very important. The cat was becoming impatient with the growing mounds of mess in the over-sized litter box. I had the tendency to just pour on more litter rather than scoop out the refuse; I was out of litter and the box was out of space.

Third: Tampons. I was a new husband of seven months and this was not the first time I had picked up some of those at the store.

Fourth: pregnancy tests. Now this item was a first for me. I bought a three pack. As I walked to the checkout lanes I wondered if I could return the Tampons if the pregnancy tests turned out to be the most applicable purchase I had made that day. If memory serves I also bought beer.

The lady at the register looked at my items, looked at me and with a smile asked: "Having a good day?" I returned a weak smile, paid for my items and left.

I used the shovel to clear my path to the front door and the area around my parking spot when I got home. I cleared the litter box.

Oh, and a pregnancy test was used too.

What we got as a result was a single vertical line. We were perplexed and enraged. What does that mean?!?!?

Well, it was a single line...like a minus sign, but vertical instead of horizontal, more like part of a plus sign. This told us nothing. Maybe it was defective. The second of three pregnancy tests was used, to the same result. Were we pregnant???

No, we couldn't be, right? We took the proper precautions. Sure, they are not 100% effective, but that 1% wasn't really going to happen, right?

We decided to try an experiment. We would have someone that we knew was not pregnant pee on the pregnancy test. We did not think it would work right if I tried it. But fortunately for us, my wife's sister was coming over to our apartment before we left for Christmas Eve Mass. When she arrived we explained our predicament and she obliged our request to pee on the pregnancy test. What happened next was not encouraging at all.

She got a negative sign. A real one. One that was horizontal, not vertical like my wife's was.

Were we pregnant? Couldn't be. My wife's sister-the wonderful, supportive sister she is-volunteered to go get one of the fancy, fool proof tests that actually says "pregnant" or "not pregnant". Me being a tightwad had bought the cheap, store brand ones. That was the problem, we were not pregnant. The cheap tests were defective. The expensive tests would be more accurate.

But no, the expensive ones that could have said "not pregnant" ended up saying "pregnant".

There we were, a young newly married couple without gainful employment or insurance, trying to digest this situation. To make the situation more excruciating, we then had to go sit through Christmas Eve Mass, trying to keep our composure while thoughts of our impending future danced in our heads. And once Catholic Christmas Eve mass concluded, since we are of "mixed" denominational background, we got to sit uncomfortably through yet another hour of church thinking about babies and our future as parents while all around us a protestant service crept through the little town of Bethlehem, the silent night, the manger, shepherds and the wise men. Thoughts of the young pregnant mother of Jesus giving birth alone in a cave or barn or whatever it was did not help. My wife cried. I tried to keep my composure.

With every day, every little event, the fact of my wife being pregnant became incrementally more real to me. Telling our parents, telling friends and co-workers, shopping for baby things and preparing the baby's room all brought me a little closer to accepting the fact that I was going to be a father.

But no one thing made the fact more real to me than seeing our first daughter enter the world, screaming angrily at being torn from her happy-snug womb. In honor of when we first learned of her existence we gave her the middle name Noelle. We had narrowed down the first name to either Miriam or Sylvie. But when she emerged she did not look like a Miriam, rather, more like a Sylvie, and so her name was decided on. (Coincidentally, Sylvie is of French origin, roughly equivalent to "woods". So quite unintentionally we named our daughter-loosely translated-Christmas Trees).

Perhaps there was one thing that did make the reality sink in more. That was when we walked out of the hospital, leaving the safety of the nurses and the nursery and the doctors behind. We loaded little Christmas Trees into the car for the ride home, more terrified than overjoyed. The joy would come later, after the overwhelming fear of our new responsibility gave way to the enjoyment of seeing a little ball of baby grow into a wonderful little person.