My Happiest Day

I didn’t know the doctor. I don’t know how I chose him. Perhaps my landlady had recommended him or maybe I simply picked him from the yellow pages. I was two thousand miles away from my mother or any relative or friend with whom I could go to for advice. It was embarrassing to open up to this stranger, but I needed to know. The doctor had bad news for me. I was not pregnant and it was doubtful that I would ever be pregnant. My body had betrayed me. I left his office in despair and cried myself to sleep in my young husband’s arms after I had burdened him with the doctor’s report. I wanted to be pregnant. I needed to be pregnant. Most of the young brides of my age had a baby during the first year of marriage. It was going on two years for us with no sign of pregnancy. I was alone all day while my husband worked and my baby would be company. We had come to this city for work, when my husband could not find a good paying job near our native home in North Dakota. I was young and lonely. The doctor had given me a prescription to take for the symptoms that had puzzled me. I don’t remember the name of the medicine but it made me very ill. The nausea did not get better so I returned to the doctor. He decided to give me the rabbit test. The test came back positive. My husband was worried about me. World War Two was in full swing. He thought he would be drafted and he didn’t want me alone in the city so far from my family. We left the city of Detroit and moved out to the West Coast where my folks now lived. We arrived by train, just two weeks before my baby was born. It was March 4th, 1943 when I first held my beautiful son. I inspected his perfect body, gazed at his beautiful face and smiled at the bright red hair on his head. It was the happiest day of my life. For Carol Brown's Happiest Day contest won 5th place