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
Copyright © Joyce Johnson | Year Posted 2010
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