The Announcement


Originally uploaded by peach plum bear

This is how I learned that my beautiful bride had transformed into an expectant mother-to-be. It was a little after 9:00 on Monday evening. I was in our basement laying down carpet pad. My wife was upstairs. When I heard her calling my name, I sensed immediately that something was up.

After three years of marriage, I have learned to interpret her different hollers so that I know what to expect when I respond. For example, she has a certain type of yell that means she has been startled from discovering a bug, and wants me to murder it immediately. More usefully, based on subtle inflections of timbre, I can tell if an angry shout means that she is furious with me, upset, or merely peeved.

But the sound of her voice that night was unlike I had ever heard before. It was a nervous mixture of fear, excitement, and something new. I met her at the bottom of the stairs and she showed me the pregnancy test with a plus-mark in the results box. And that's when I knew that nothing would be quite the same again.

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