The Waiting Place

by Sharron Arksey

“Careful, now,” I said. “I’m the mother of your unborn child, don’t forget.”

  Our two dogs were jumping around us, eager to join the play. Glen helped me up and we continued our walk to the barn.

  Later that night I found an advertisement in an online catalogue for a plastic snowball maker. It resembled a pair of tongs with circular scoops at each end. When you pressed the tongs together, the snow inside the scoops formed into a perfectly round snowball. Plus, the advertisement promised, your mitts won’t get wet or your hands cold. It seemed silly to me. Who cares whether the balls are perfectly round? I tried to imagine our morning snowball fight, each of us using our purchased snowball maker, and Glen wondered why I was laughing out loud. He just shook his head when I showed him.

  “A fool and his money,” he said. Sometimes my husband sounds just like his dad.

  “The more I learn about people, the more I like my cows,” I said.

  “Your grandfather?”

  “No, me.”

  I might have lied, though. Maybe I did hear it first from Grandpa.

  I suddenly realized what I wanted for my child. I wanted my child to know the seasons. I wanted to show him how to make snow angels and snowmen. I wanted him to throw snowballs and get his mitts wet. I wanted him to know what that felt like.

  He or she, the baby was becoming more real to me.

  “You are so lucky,” I told my cow Evelyn.

  She really is my cow. She was my last 4-H heifer and I moved her from Mom and Dad’s farm after Glen and I got married. She’s about eight years old now, and this would be her seventh calf.

  Evelyn was lucky because she didn’t need to buy maternity clothes. She was heavily in calf, but the brown hide that kept her covered all summer was still doing the job now. It was shaggier of course—nature’s way of keeping her warm through the winter.

  “And you don’t have to buy baby stuff, either,” I said as I scratched her. Whereas I had a long list of “need to buys” beside the grocery list on the refrigerator door.

  Crib and/or cradle

  Sheets and towels and baby facecloths

  Receiving blankets

  Diapers and a diaper bag

  Car seat

  Baby bouncer

  Sleepers

  Onesies (I had to ask about these, although I recognized what they were as soon as I was told.)

  Change table

  High chair

  Baby bathtub

  Soothers

  Rattles

  Breast pump

  My friend Diane offered me her breast pump, but I said no, thank you. I planned to buy my own, and I didn’t think I’d ever offer it to anyone else.

  And I hadn’t made up my mind about diapers. Carol was pushing me to go green and invest in cloth diapers, but I wasn’t sure how I could add the extra laundry to my workload without giving up sleep. I like my sleep.

  No one asked what I wanted for Christmas; instead they asked “What do you need for the baby?”

  I registered with “Babies R Us” to make their shopping easier.

  “Your mom has something to tell you,” Dad said, looking at everyone around the table before dipping his spoon in pudding and sauce. It was Christmas Eve.

  Mom looked at him.

  “Your dad and I have something to tell you,” she said.

  “Well, what is it?” my brother Jonathan asked. “Don’t keep us waiting now that you have our attention.”

  “I am moving to the city after the New Year,” she said.

  “You’re what?” I asked.

  “I’ve enrolled at university and I’m going to stay with my friend Donna in her apartment.”

  Donna was a long-time friend, dating back to grade school. She had married young, divorced less than five years after the wedding, and never remarried. Mom occasionally spent a weekend in the city with her and every once in a (very long) while, Donna would arrive at the farm for an overnight visit. Dad always took himself off for the evening when Donna was there. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Donna; they just had different ideas about a lot of things.

  “University? What are you taking?”

  “Women’s Studies,” she said.

  “She’s trying to figure out what makes them tick,” Dad interjected. “Then she’s going to come home and tell me.”

  “And how do you feel about this, Dad?” This from Jonathan.

  “Your mom’s gotta do what your mom’s gotta do,” Dad said.

  “But are you all right with it? Are you happy that she’s doing this?”

  “Your mom’s gotta do what your mom’s gotta do,” Dad said again and that was the end of that.

  Recent events became suddenly clearer.

  “That’s why you wanted to paint the baby’s room in November,” I said. “Because you knew you would be gone after Christmas.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Mom said. “Although I didn’t know for sure.”

  “But why keep it a secret?”

  “I didn’t find out I was accepted until just a week or so ago. Why get everyone all in a tizzy if it wasn’t going to happen anyway?”

  “But you never said anything. We never knew you wanted to go back to school.”

  “Your dad knew,” she said.

  “I can’t believe she’s doing this,” I said to Glen on the drive home.

  “I can,” he said. “Your mom always follows her own piper.”

  “But she never said anything. She should have told us. And she won’t be here when our baby comes.”

  “Well, she might, you know. Her exams could be done by mid-April.”

  “If she comes back after exams.”

  “You think she won’t?”

  “I don’t know. She was pretty vague about it all. What if this is the start of a new life for her that dad and the farm aren’t a part of?”

  “She didn’t say that.”

  “She didn’t say much of anything and all Dad did was accept her decision as if he has no say in the matter.”

  “He probably doesn’t.” He laughed. “You could be proud of her, you know. She’s doing something brave, I think.”

  If Mom and I have a disagreement, Glen always seems to take her side. It irritates the hell out of me.

  “But she’s not going to be here when I need her. I imagined her being with me when the baby came, living with us for a week or so. Being there when I called with questions. I don’t know how to be a mother.”

  “Is that what it’s about then? You’re upset because your mom isn’t fitting her life to your schedule? Maybe it’s a pregnant thing, the way you’re acting,” he said.

  Now I was just angry.

  “Why does it come down to that? Why is everything with women always a hormone thing? Don’t we have the right to feelings just because we feel them? Why do they have to be linked to our bodies?”

  We were silent the rest of the way home. We brought in the presents we had received and the roaster of cabbage rolls I had taken as my contribution to the Christmas meal. Once the cabbage rolls were put away, I turned on the Christmas tree lights in the living room.

  “Coming to bed?” Glen asked.

  “In a bit,” I said. “I think I’m going to sit for a while.”

  “We could have a Christmas drink,” he said.

  I rubbed the bump that defined me these days.

  “I wish,” I said.

  “I could keep you company.”

  “I’d kinda like to be alone for a while,” I said.

  “Suit yourself.”

  I could tell he was hurt by the way he turned and walked up the stairs to the bedroom. I sat there in the almost darkness, feeling sorry for myself.

  When I did climb into bed a half hour later, I curved my body around Glen�
�s, resting my hand on his hip.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I feel like a spoiled little kid.”

  “No problem,” he mumbled.

  “Merry Christmas, Glen.”

  Glen turned to face me. He placed his hands on the swell of my tummy.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  In the morning, we followed the Christmas ritual we had begun after our marriage. We went out to do the morning chores together. We took our time and gave the cows, bulls, and weaned calves a little extra grain and hay. It was Christmas, after all.

  SEVEN

  Things that come in sevens. The days of the week. The Seven Dwarves. Seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror. Seven wives for seven brothers. Lucky seven. Seven Wonders of the World. Seven deadly sins. Canada’s Group of Seven. Seven swans a-swimming.

  The young woman in the next bed has been in labour for eighteen hours. Her husband brought her in last night and has remained by her side.

  When the nurse asks her how she is doing, she says, “Great” and seems to mean it.

  “The pain is not too bad?” the nurse asks.

  “I can handle the pain. And my husband is here beside me in this wonderful journey that God is taking us on.”

  “I want to puke,” I say and Glen brings over the puke bowl.

  “No, I said I want to puke, not I have to puke. I want to puke. I hate them.”

  Glen grins.

  “Me too,” he says. “Want me to put a hit out on them?”

  “Seems extreme,” I say. “Maybe just put a curse on them. May they feel my pain.”

  We went to Mom and Dad’s for supper the night before Mom left for Winnipeg. The meal had an awkward Last Supper feel to it.

  “What exactly are you going to learn in these Women’s Studies of yours?” Jon asked.

  “A lot of history, I think,” Mom said. “Religious and cultural practices around the world.”

  “Are there Men’s Studies?” Jonathan’s seven-year-old wanted to know.

  “No, I don’t think there are.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s a good question, Damian. I don’t know why not. Maybe my Women’s Studies will help me find out.”

  “Dad, you’ll have to come over for supper lots,” I said. “Or I can bring you casseroles and things.”

  “I can cook, you know,” Dad said. “Although I appreciate the offer and I shall probably take you up on it from time to time. I’ll probably be sponging off Jon and Andrea a lot, too.”

  “You look thrilled, Andrea,” Glen joked.

  Andrea threw her napkin at him.

  “Dad is welcome at our house anytime and he knows it,” she said.

  Dad did know it. We all knew it. Andrea is one of those translucent people who blends into our family without standing out. She has done so ever since Jon first brought her home to meet us. Without calling attention to herself, she became part of the family.

  I have often envied that ability of hers. And it’s not just here at family gatherings. The same thing applies wherever she is—at home, at school, at community events. It’s as if she can expand or compress herself to fit available space, rounding out her edges or even forming a right angle if that is what is needed. She is part of the whole, rather than an add-on. I don’t know how she does it.

  “We phoned Sam today,” Mom said.

  My youngest brother usually makes it home once a year, but not often at Christmas. He had called Christmas Eve when we were all together and had talked to each of us in turn.

  “What did he have to say?” Jon asked.

  Dad laughed.

  “He said, ‘You go, Mom.’”

  “I’m not going away forever, you know,” Mom said. “I’ll be home on weekends. Well, maybe not every weekend depending on the roads and weather and how much homework I have. But most weekends probably. And we have phone and Internet. You’ll be hearing from me often.

  “I want to thank you all for going along with me on this. I know it was a shock and perhaps your dad and I should have included you in our discussions about it. I worried that you might think it’s a midlife crisis of some kind and you could be right. But maybe it’s just a midlife change of direction. I am excited and scared about it. It has been a long time since I was a student. I need your support and I’m hoping I have it.”

  “Mom gave a speech,” Jon said.

  Everyone laughed. Speeches were not usually Mom’s thing. But I wasn’t sure what Mom’s thing was anymore.

  It was strange, not having her around. We could still talk on the phone and we texted each other. Mom even joined Facebook and invited me to be her friend. I hesitated before replying because I had never thought of my mother as a friend. She’s my mother. But I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and so I accepted her offer. She didn’t seem to be on there much, which must have meant that she had other things to do.

  But it was weird to not be able to go home and find her there. Dad didn’t fill the house the way she did.

  When he started phoning every evening, I knew he was lonely, but he wouldn’t say so.

  We sold the first load of steers early in the new year, wanting to be rid of their daily feeding before the cows started calving. It would just be too much work.

  I got up with Glen early in the morning before the cattle truck arrived to take our steers to a feed lot in Alberta. I brewed a pot of strong coffee and poured it into a thermos to take to the driver. We loaded forty-five 900-pound animals into the back of the semi and I cried as the truck drove out of the yard.

  I used to cry when I said goodbye to my 4-H steer every year. I loved showing heifers because I could bring them home again. But a steer had to be sold and butchered; its carcass evaluation was one of the ways in which club members were graded on their year’s project.

  I’m a farmer’s wife and a farmer’s daughter. I’m not about to barricade the road so that the semi cannot get through. It’s OK to kill to eat, not OK for anything else. They’re not my words. An actor repeated them in a murder mystery on television the other night and they stuck in my head.

  Still, I was sad when the steers left our yard. I was glad, however, to have fewer chores to do every day. Pretty soon we would be living the erratic hours of an obstetrician, finding brief hours of sleep between births.

  That same day a Colorado low blew in, dumping fifteen centimetres of new snow and piling it in banks with eighty kilometre per hour wind gusts.

  “Snow day!” I said, although in truth the weather made no difference to our plans. It was not a regularly scheduled work day for me at the clinic and we didn’t need to go anywhere. Good for us that we had loaded the animals that morning before the weather turned; more luck than management, of course. I hoped that the semi driver wouldn’t have too much trouble on the roads; I thought he would have few troubles since this was a Colorado low, and not an Alberta clipper. He would drive out of it fairly quickly.

  Glen took advantage of the storm to catch an afternoon nap. Although I was tempted to join him, I succumbed instead to the lure of the attic. There was a trunk I had had my eye on for some time.

  When I lifted the lid, however, I was disappointed. The trunk contained nothing but farm papers. Nevertheless, I started sifting through them. I wrapped myself up in an old afghan crocheted in shades of orange, brown, and green and sat down beside the trunk, listening to the wind howl around the corners of the house.

  Here was the farm expense book for 1986 entered in Joan’s tiny precise handwriting. She had written down each item, then ticked it back in red ink at the end of the year to ensure she had matching receipts for each entry. The receipts themselves were separated into categories—machinery expenses, fuel, vet bills, and the like—and stapled together in chronological order. At the end of the year, she totaled each category on an adding machine and stapled the p
aper to the appropriate page. Such diligence.

  I am the bookkeeper nowadays and I cannot imagine that kind of paperwork. I enter each item into our accounting program and let the computer do all the arithmetic. It isn’t perfect and sometimes there are mistakes, but those mistakes are always mine, not the computer's. I have miscoded something, for example, or forgotten to separate out the GST paid out on a purchase.

  In 1986 there would have been no GST. When that was introduced in 1991, Joan must have had to manually deduct the tax from each bill and keep a separate total of tax paid for reporting purposes. No wonder people swore when the new tax was mentioned.

  Their gross income in 1986 was $45,000. Glen’s grandfather would have been alive at the time and I think he still had a share of the farm, so the income and expenses would have been split.

  In 1986 their cattle sold for about $650 an animal, more for steers and heavier animals. I don’t know if they considered 1986 a good year or a bad year. I do know that in recent years we have seen similar prices. Not much change in more than twenty-five years.

  But there were lots of changes on the expense side of the ledger. Everything from fuel to taxes costs significantly more than it did in 1986.

  If I owned a business that manufactured trunks, for example, I would charge enough for each trunk to cover the cost of the materials it was made of, the wages of the staff person making it, taxes and utilities for the building it was made in. If those costs went up, I could increase the price of the trunk to offset that increase. If I charged too little, my expenses would exceed my income and I would go bankrupt. If I charged too much, my sales would decline, my expenses would exceed my income, and I would go bankrupt. Tricky decisions, but there would be room for maneuvering, I think. And it would be my call.

  It doesn’t work that way for farmers. The weather is the predominant factor in the quality and quantity of our product and we have no control over the price of the product we do have for sale. Those prices fluctuate from week to week and are influenced by everything from politics to the price of rice in China.

  I was tired of thinking about finances and turned to an old bookcase along the far wall. Tucked inside a hardcover copy of fiction by Nellie McClung I found a folded piece of onionskin paper. Inside the fold a crocus, so dry I did not dare touch it. A razor thin memory of a long ago spring. The book, printed in 1912, was a collection of short stories entitled The Black Creek Stopping House. There was no name inscribed on the flyleaf. I did not know who might have placed the crocus there for safekeeping. But there were words written in tiny, cramped script on the paper.