Rachel closed the door to their small duplex and walked toward the sofa. Outside, she could hear her mother's car backing out the drive. She sat her packages on the coffee table and collapsed on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and settling into the quietness.
It had been exhausting, shopping the malls for baby things, but fun, too. Her mother's excitement over the baby was special, and she had walked her legs off. Weren't parents supposed to get slower as they grew older?Suddenly, the furnace clicked on. It broke the stillness with its low, money-nibbling rumble.
She could hear the voices of children outside, across the street. Home from school, they were relaxing from the strain of cramped classrooms and pushing back the drabness of winter as they romped on the damp grass.
A slice of orange sunlight filtered through a slit in the blinds. Tim would be home from class soon and then off again to his evening sessions with the team. She would put a couple of potatoes in the microwave and some fish sticks.
But first, she wanted to take stock of her booty.
She pulled open the white plastic shopping bag. Out spilled the three tiny baby pajamas that her mom had purchased. She began sorting through them.
The little floppy legs with the closed-in toes hung over the edge of the table. The rows of snaps were cold against her fingers, but the material was soft. She picked up the white one with the little patterns of light blue elephants holding balloons in their trunks, and yellow horses with red spots, and green rabbits sitting on pink crescent moons.
She pulled out the sales tag, attached to the label with one of those tough plastic strings, cradled it in her palm and studied it.
Below the bar code was a line of numbers: VENDOR 413017, VENDOR STYLE 68352, DEPT 413, MULTI 1, SMALL.
Small.
She held the sleepers up in front of her and studied the tiny arms, the tiny legs and the tiny neck, so small she could barely fit her hand through the opening. She held it against her face and smelled it. The fabric smelled just of cloth, but somehow that smell and the feel of the cloth was putting her in touch with something she had never felt before, something that, at once, excited her, and at the same time, made her feel a bit afraid.
She placed one hand against her stomach and felt again the firmness that was making it more difficult to fit into her clothes lately.
The book said it would be about an inch and a half long by now, about the size of a golf ball.
She held up her hand and measured an inch and a half of air between her finger and thumb. Then she held up the sleepers again and tried to picture a face emerging from the neck of them. The image of it was so profound that it startled her.
Outside, the children across the street were laughing. She could hear their muffled voices through the wall. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with the most intimate sense of tenderness she had ever felt.
She laid back against the pillows of the sofa, pulled the soft sleepers against her face again and began to cry.
Ten minutes later, Tim parked the car in the drive and walked up to the front door. He opened the aluminum storm door and was about to reach for the doorknob, when, suddenly, Rachel opened it from the inside.
Her eyes were teary and red. She had a Kleenex in one hand.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "You've been crying. Is everything OK?"
He was afraid that maybe someone had called with bad news or something. Then, through moist eyes she broke into a reassuring grin as she wiped away a tear with her Kleenex, stepping, at the same time, into his embrace and the softness of his jacket.
Again, he asked, "Is everything OK?"
"It's OK," she said. "It's just good to see you."
Then, with a slight tug at his arm, "Come here a minute, I want to show you what we bought at the mall today."
How innocently we step from the gardens of childhood into the forests of parenthood, where we meet the little people who will grow, if we are lucky, into the friends we hoped we would meet someday to accompany us along the well-traveled road.
They enter our lives in such unassuming costumes that we are sometimes surprised at their arrival.