ARE YOU READY?™ Nad asked, peering through the screen of our front door in Okaukuejo. “If you want to get back to camp tonight, you’d better hurry.” The thought of elephants beckoned, but I had one thing left to do.
“Just a sec. I want to get this e-mail off to Sara before we go.” As I hit the send button and imagined my message flying across the world, I thought about how quickly life could change. In an instant. A car tumbles down a ravine. Someone says “I do.” A soldier steps on a land mine. A baby cries, those first lusty cries, while another one’s heart beats for the last time. And the instant evil takes shape, when two heavily armed boys walked into a library and changed a country forever.
The tragedy at Columbine High School had made headlines around the world, including Namibia. In the weeks following the shooting, I knew that Sara and her friend and producer, Andi Gitow, had been going back and forth to Colorado, spending time with a family who’d been tragically affected by the shooting.
Sharing heartache, putting your own in perspective by helping others deal with far greater sorrow, was one way to move beyond tragedy. Perhaps this was Sara’s way. I couldn’t know. For the first time since that long-ago dinner in New York during which we’d reconnected, sharing stories of old and new loves as well as our evolving dreams, I felt a distance between Sara and me. After twenty years of having lives which were entirely intertwined, despite the thousands of miles which separated us, it felt as if our braided lives had come undone and were beginning to fray.
I couldn’t forget our phone call just a few weeks before.
“Hey, we just got back,” Sara had laughed.
I’d instantly felt off-balance. “I didn’t know you were going away.”
“Yeah, it was a spur-of-the-moment trip. Andrew and I went to Paris for a long weekend with Andi. We all needed a break after Columbine, plus Andi had lived in Paris for a few years, so she gave us an insider’s tour. We went to the Louvre, checked out the street markets, and I ate so much yummy food I’m going to have to diet for a year.” I’d listened quietly while Sara continued, breathlessly listing the shops, the galleries, the fashions, the wonderful restaurants, filling a void with excitement, with places, with things. It was so unlike her that I knew then, without her having to say another word, that she’d lost the baby.
“It sounds wonderful, but, Sara?”
I could almost feel the intake of air across the line.
I paused, then asked as gently as possible, “Did you lose the baby?”
And then I heard the tears I couldn’t see. “I wanted to call you, but I just couldn’t talk about it.”
Since her miscarriage, Sara was at once stronger and weaker, depending on the moment and what she chose to reveal. I could scarcely imagine her pain. I remembered when I had been pregnant with Kimber, feeling him kick and hiccup, how months of joy had crystallized at the moment of his birth. But for Sara, ten lovely weeks of anticipation had ended in shock and sorrow. And while I knew she was thrilled for Nad and me and our son, I wondered if her loss made it hard for her to witness my joy. Or perhaps she thought that by avoiding me, she could keep the shadow of grief from clouding my happiness. But I couldn’t help but worry that the presence of my precious child was beginning to drive a wedge between us. After we’d shared so much over the years, it was hard not to be the one she confided in.
It was also incredibly selfish. When she needed a hug or a big, messy cry, I wasn’t there. I couldn’t take her out for a stiff drink or drag her out to a silly movie; we couldn’t stand together and shake our fists at the heavens, ranting and raging about life, fate, and timing. Not only did I live thousands of miles away, but we’d recently left our house with its precious telephone and reliable e-mail for a remote base camp in eastern Etosha, one that didn’t even have a radio telephone.
“Gin, come on.” After spending the afternoon back at the research station at Okaukuejo, Nad was impatient. “Kimber is about to fall asleep. Let’s go.”
I typed a breezy note—Off to camp, wish us luck—and hit send. I didn’t add that I was worried that this latest heartbreaking assignment, taking on the trust and the pain of a lovely, wounded family, would add too much to her personal grief. That instead of giving herself time to heal after her miscarriage, she was willfully making choices to prove that she hadn’t been shaken to the core, that she was still tough and work was still important. I knew it wasn’t the time to question my friend’s motives.
The computer connection closed. Nothing. Sara must be in the air.
Turning out of the gate at Okaukuejo, taking the dusty road east, I thought about the many times Nad and I had made this drive across the park when I was pregnant. Each time we’d loaded our Land Rover with tents, electric wiring, a basin, shade netting, anything we could beg, buy, or borrow to make life at our soon-to-be-constructed camp more comfortable. Along the way, we’d talked about names for our baby, wondered if he’d sleep well, and if he’d be able to tolerate the heat. With each trip the camp had taken shape. Nad had finished digging the trenches for water pipes, attaching them to a cold-water shower in an abandoned horse stable and to a double basin—one side for washing dishes, the other for washing our baby—under a large acacia tree. Near the fence Nad and a few friends had dug a twenty-foot pit for our long-drop toilet, and then our two tents had been raised. But with camp looking increasingly like home, more questions emerged. I’d begun to feel the isolation, and had brooded over what we’d do and where we’d go if our child got sick. Then I’d put worries aside and simply longed to finally see him, wondering what on earth he’d look like. Now I glanced at the sleeping baby beside me, light brown hair, blue-green eyes, and lashes as long as a giraffe’s. His arrival had answered some of our questions, but there was still so much more I longed to know about my son. It would take a lifetime, and I looked forward to every minute of it.
I reached out and stroked his chubby pink cheek. After we’d celebrated his birthday back in Virginia with my family, Kimber was now a year old. Walking and chatting in a combination of languages uniquely his own, he’d changed so much since the first time my parents had seen him. They’d flown to Namibia the week after Kimber was born. For three weeks they’d strolled, rocked, and cradled their first grandson. At sunset they’d carried him to the fence to watch elephant herds descend upon the water hole. When Dad had had to return to the U.S., Mom had stayed on, hanging out countless loads of laundry, filling the kitchen with the aroma of bacon and brownies, wiping tears from my tired face, and beaming at the sound of her grandson’s first delightful coos.
Mom had always laughed that she’d been a young mother, but that her girls had made her an old grandmother. She had been half my age when her first child was born. Three more daughters followed in quick succession, including Tish, with her very special needs. With Dad on the road Monday to Friday, working hard to support us all, Mom found her joy, made her mistakes, and raised her kids largely alone. Just a kid herself.
I couldn’t remember my mom—now a grandmother, a self-taught and serious antiques collector and dealer, and a wicked tennis player—ever wishing that she’d had a career first and then children, that somehow order and timing had deprived her of a more interesting life. My parents weren’t kids pretending to be grown up, they’d had to grow up fast, and they’d always put their children first. Once, when we were young and Tish had been very sick, I remembered asking my mom if she wanted to get rid of all of us. It was a child’s question, asked with a child’s innocence and raw intuition. She had laughed and then said very seriously, “Never, ever.” I’d believed her then, and when I watched her playing with my baby boy, I believed her still.
But just six weeks after Mom had arrived, we’d been back at the airport. Through tears, I’d made a promise to bring Kimber to the U.S. to meet his American family before he turned a year old. Then she was gone and I was on my own.
The next few months passed quickly. Kimber’s demands to be fed at night became less frequent, and he breezed past milestone after milestone. With such a healthy, bright son, I slowly began to gain confidence in my new role as mother. Problem was, I missed my old role as wildlife filmmaker.
Filmmaking had become a vital part of my life, a part I wanted to share with Kimber. I had imagined turning the Land Rover into a traveling nursery, our very own four-by-four stroller. With the camera mount on one door and the box of camera gear on the seat beside me, Kimber would have the back of the vehicle all to himself. I’d pictured bold blue, yellow, and red blocks of cloth strung across the windows for curtains, an elephant mobile hanging from the ceiling, baby books, and a quiet, restful child. I would film, read, write, all the things I’d always done while out in the bush. Kimber would grab his toes and learn his ABCs. Right. Obviously I’d pictured all of this before I ever had a laughing, crying, rolling, eating, grabbing, delightful, into-everything precious baby.
Fortunately, our move to camp helped to make my life as a working mom work. With all the comforts of home, camp was also within easy commuting distance of a dense population of elephants. But that was not all. We had something my mom had never had while raising four children—a wonderful nanny. Selinda. A sturdy woman quick to smile and equally quick to discipline, Selinda was a Heikom bushman who had been born in Etosha long before the land had been proclaimed a national park. She and her husband, Ou Jan Tsumeb, a colleague of Nad’s, had raised their four children here and were helping to raise their grandchildren. Fortunately for us, Selinda had agreed to help us with Kimber.
It had been eleven years since I set out alone for Africa, embracing an adventure that had turned into a way of life. From filming headless warthogs to becoming a filmmaker with an expanding résumé, from protecting my broken heart to risking the thrill and the pain of falling in love again, I knew that my next adventure would be wonderfully different: it would be shared with my family.
Beginning a new project with elephants, exploring the mysteries of their movements and their long-distance, infrasonic communication, was in many aspects reminiscent of the old way of life we had cherished in the desert, but this project also reminded us of how far we had come. Our marriage and our child were thriving, and this time our film wasn’t being shot in the vague hope that it would sell. This film, Giants of Etosha, was for National Geographic.
FOR THE FIRST time since we’d left the baboons, I found myself completely immersed in a wild world. While the baboons’ environment had completely destroyed their society, Etosha’s elephants lived in a world that allowed their caring, complex, intelligent social groups to flourish. Although Etosha had more than two thousand elephants, we primarily followed one herd, getting to know their preferred feeding grounds, the water holes they frequented, the babies born to them, and the males who shadowed them in search of a female in estrus. But most of all, we got to know Knob Nose, their matriarch.
Whether I was peering through a lens or absorbing a scene with all my senses, I learned a lot about motherhood from watching Knob Nose and her breeding herd. Bonded by females with an extended family of aunts, sisters, cousins, and an assortment of their young, their breeding herd reminded me of my own extended family back in the States. Growing up under many watchful eyes, young elephants explore their world and test themselves in a warm, secure, and protective environment. Thinking of our Elee and Kimber, I watched the little ones as they walked along game paths, casually brushing up against their mother’s body. At water holes they’d play, chasing smaller animals or each other, and later, in a contest of strength, the males would push their growing bulk against one another, testing themselves and challenging one another, all within the safety of the herd.
At camp, Kimber was taking similar steps, from helping his dad stack firewood, to forming a tender bond with Selinda’s bright grandson Rian, to trusting his mom to return after sunset. And, perhaps most of all, learning to trust his own instincts.
This was never truer than one afternoon when Nad, Kimber, and I had been alone at camp. In the shaded area outside our tent, Nad had cut slices from a thick slab of rye bread. I’d walked back and forth from the other tent, bringing tomatoes, tuna, mayonnaise, a few basics for lunch. Kimber had moved around us, walking between our legs, under the table, helping pick up his toys, and then suddenly, at the edge of the tent where a huge steel beam held down the canvas material, he’d stopped and stood dead still.
In the next instant Nad had gripped the knife while I’d grabbed the tent pole. Kimber, my bouncing eighteen-month-old son, remained perfectly still and focused on the ground. Gliding over his feet, slowly, until the tail touched his toes, was a long, iridescent green snake, a boomslang, one of the deadliest snakes in Africa. Kimber had felt the grip of its scales, the coolness of its body, and yet he hadn’t moved a muscle. When the snake disappeared around the corner of the tent, he’d picked up a ball and started playing again.
Instinct—what an awesome power, what a truly amazing blessing. When all the adrenaline in your body begs you to run, instinct tells you it is safer to stand still. Nature or nurture, thank God Kimber had it.
My friendship with Sara began as an act of instinct, knowing innately that she was someone I could trust. Our bond and my intuition were gifts I’ve tapped into many times since we were twelve. And my time in the bush had definitely helped to hone my senses, keeping me alert to danger, to opportunities, and knowing instinctively when not to cross certain natural lines. As a filmmaker, I’d responded by knowing when to move in close and when to pull out quickly. I’d also known when to walk away. In Etosha, the same voice I’d heard in the Kuiseb, the one that said, Enough is enough, still resonated.
About a year into our study, I drove out late one afternoon. I’d given up finding the matriarch, Knob Nose, and her herd that day, and simply planned to enjoy the soothing bird sounds and the cool air while watching zebra and wildebeest trek across the plains and disappear into the bushes for the night. Suddenly the sounds of trumpeting, branches breaking, and another female elephant’s huge feet pounding on the road just twenty feet away broke any semblance of peace.
I threw the Land Rover into reverse, pulling away, giving my heart a chance to steady and the elephant time to relax. Then I began inching the car forward. I knew there had to be something wrong, and there it was. Lying on top of a mound of red earth was the elephant’s baby. Surrounding his body were elephant footprints and thin trunk lines in the sand, signs that his mother had tried desperately to lift him. His trunk was still; his chest had risen and fallen for the last time. I looked for wounds, for some sign of struggle with a lion or hyena, but his body wasn’t scarred, there was no blood splattered on the ground, only the sad signs of a natural, tragic death.
I looked at his mother, standing guard over her dead baby, gently touching him with her trunk while keeping a wary eye on me. Clearly these images were dramatic, but this poor elephant had been through enough drama for a lifetime. She deserved to be left alone. Another filmmaker had once told me, “If you don’t capture it on film, it never happened.” If only that were true. My breasts ached and I decided that no amount of footage, no matter how potentially riveting for our film, was worth putting her through more agony. I left my camera in its case and went back to camp, back to nurse Kimber.
OVER THE NEXT months I left camp early, wanting to spend more time with Knob Nose and her herd. Then one morning I couldn’t find them anywhere. Fifty tons of elephant had simply disappeared. Fortunately, since Nad was an accomplished pilot, we had the option of radio-tracking the herd from the air.
Through the crackle on my headset, I heard Nad’s familiar voice. “This is India Sierra Echo, taking off to the east on a low-level flight in the Namutoni area. Any traffic? India Sierra Echo.” Nad went through the last-minute checks, throttled back, and quickly we were airborne. Setting out to find Knob Nose, we first flew toward camp.
“I still can’t believe it’s ours.” We’d been living at camp for over a year, but each time I saw it from the air, it gave me a thrill. From fifty feet up, it looked chocolate-box beautiful. Two tents in a grove of trees, the tin roofs covering the long-drop and shower reflecting the midday sun. A huge pile of firewood rested against the side of the smaller tent. Against the large tent there was a sandbox, yellow dump trucks and red shovels sticking out at odd angles. A swing made from an old tire hung from the thick branch of an acacia tree. Now camp looked like home, and we were the proud owners. As Nad banked the plane, dipping its wings over camp, Selinda stepped out into the sun, holding Kimber in her strong arms, both of them waving as we flew past.
“He’s fine,” Nad reassured me, knowing that I sometimes struggled to find the right balance between working mother and mother working.
“I’m sure he is.” I smiled. “I’m fine, too, thanks. Let’s go find Knob Nose.”
I plugged my headphones into the radiotelemetry tracking device and flipped a small switch back and forth, right and left, listening as the beeps grew stronger.
“Turn left.” As Nad banked the plane, the sound of beeps intensified.
“There they are, right below us.”
In a dense grove of terminalia trees I spotted Knob Nose, the matriarch, surrounded by her herd. Even without her radio collar, the big wart on her nose made her impossible to miss.
“Looks like they are moving toward the water hole at Cameldoorin. If we head back now, you can get them coming in.” The Land Rover, packed with fresh film and camera gear, was parked at the airstrip. From there it would take me about an hour to drive to Cameldooring. I would be there long before sunset.
“That’s great, but I’ll be back late.”
“No problem. I’ll get dinner going.”
“Please be careful with Kimber around the fire.”
Nad shook his head and laughed. “Gin, we are always careful. Give your boy some credit, he’s a bush baby.”
I looked out the plane’s window at the game paths streaked like veins in the earth, wondering which path the elephants would choose to enter the water hole and where I would set up my cameras, thinking of our shooting script and mentally composing the shots I wanted to capture that evening. That was when I heard a big clunk.
“What was that?” The sound seemed to echo in the pit of my stomach.
“I don’t know, but I’m climbing.” When you’re flying just twenty feet above the bush, a huge clunk, followed by “I don’t know,” is not good news. Climbing was the only option Nad had—the only way to put enough space between us and the ground so we could have a few extra moments to find a decent place to land. Nad pulled back on the yoke and we soared several hundred feet in just seconds.
I pictured Kimber down below playing in his sandbox, waiting for dinner and his parents to return. Eighteen months old and his closest relatives, Nad’s parents, lived two thousand miles away. Nad said nothing. He didn’t have to. I watched him rub his sweaty palms across his flight suit. I ran my hands through my hair and concentrated on breathing.
And then, finally, we were high enough, and I saw a stretch of wide, open dirt: the runway. “Don’t worry. We can glide in from here.”
When we touched down, I made a silent vow to Kimber to keep my feet on the ground. With rabid jackals, scorpions, and prowling lions, there were plenty of dangers in the bush; having one parent in the air was enough for any child.
After cutting the engine, Nad squeezed my shoulder. “You okay? You can still make it to Cameldooring before the elephants.”
An image flashed through my mind: elephants drifting through a cloud of dust, moving in shadows toward camera, becoming clearer in stunning light until Knob Nose and her herd emerged. It was quickly replaced by a much more powerful image: a little boy’s arms wrapped around my neck, his soft cheek resting against mine. “No, I think I’ll just stay home tonight.”
As I held Kimber in my arms, watching as his eyelids became heavy, his breathing deepened. I finally carried my sleeping boy to bed. It was a priceless evening, worth more than any footage I might have shot. And it was followed by special moments with the elephants that were captured on film.
In the past two years we had learned a great deal about the details of the elephants’ lives: their bonds, their wisdom, and their connection to their environment. And while we’d celebrated moments of great joy while filming them, we hadn’t expected to discover how much death was a part of the elephant’s journey.
The dry season of 2000 proved particularly brutal for Etosha’s young elephants, and Knob Nose’s family suffered more than most. Lurking in the soil, anthrax, a natural part of Etosha’s ecosystem and an ancient bacterial disease that can be ingested by unsuspecting animals, claimed the life of Knob Nose’s older son. Several weeks later we found her standing over the body of her last child. In less than two months, Knob Nose had lost both of her offspring to anthrax.
Knob Nose stayed with the body of her second child, gently touching the bones, lifting her sensitive foot and running it across the length of her little one’s body. In time other elephants joined her, caressing the bones in an ancient, eerily familiar expression of grief. As the camera rolled, I could almost feel the breath from her trunk released onto the bones, and in the silence, I could almost hear them mourning. While I captured these moments on film, Nad recorded sound. I was conscious of the sound of the tape rolling, quietly round and round, capturing the stillness.
As a mother, I felt haunted by the double loss of those intelligent, wonderful creatures. Later that month back at camp, when Knob Nose and her herd had moved to the far eastern corner of the park, I told Nad, “I’m worried about Knob Nose.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“What if she isn’t?”
Kimber, who had been adding wood to the fire, perked up, ever alert to changes in our moods. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”
“Darlin’, Knob Nose’s babies were sick and they both died. It’s very sad.”
“Kimber,” Nad chimed in, “it is sad, but it’s a natural part of life in Etosha. Disease helps to control the numbers of animals in the park; that way there is enough food for the other animals.”
“Oh yeah, like the smoke?”
“That’s right, that jackal who was prowling around here had rabies. It was very sick.” A rabid jackal had stumbled into camp. Nad had shot it, and Kimber had witnessed everything. Six months later, what he remembered most clearly was the smoke coming from the end of the gun.
“But Daddy saved me.” Kimber smiled and hugged his daddy’s leg, his head not quite reaching Nad’s knee.
Growing up in the bush, in a world without television, video games, and PlayStations, Kimber already realized that there was nothing artificial about life and death.
KIMBER WAS ALMOST two years old when Nad and I closed the zips on our tent, loaded the last of our film in a box, and for the first time all three of us flew to the U.S. to edit our elephant film. Kimber stayed with my family in Richmond, getting to know his cousin Maggie, the dogs Alice and Lucky, and Millie, our big beautiful cat. I gave Millie an extra scratch behind the ears, as she was the very cat my mom and my sisters Marsha and Dona had given me years before, when Kevin had broken off our relationship. What a long time ago that seemed, and how much I loved that cat.
Creeping out before our son woke up on Monday mornings to take the early train two hours north to Washington, D.C., we would return on Thursday evenings in time to put Kimber to bed. In between, we spent our first days in Washington on the fifth floor of National Geographic in the edit suite. Gliding down the hall, wishing everyone a good morning, was Keenan Smart, head of National Geographic’s Natural History Unit. I introduced him to Nad.
“I remember you from the baboon film,” a simple sentence flowing lyrically in his Scottish brogue. A look passed between the three of us—of a prior screening, a past disappointment—but a look that ended in laughter.
“Glad these people finally came to their senses,” Keenan continued. “We are all looking forward to working on your film. Come on and say hi to Kathy and Anny. Great girls. You’ll be in good hands.”
And we were. Kathy Pasternak, our supervising producer, kept us on schedule, while Anny Lowery Meza, our editor, stayed late, never complaining, always quick with a smile and a late-night toast with Cognac. She worked her magic with the raw footage, crafting beautiful scenes infused with her warmth and intelligence. One scene in particular evolved with a poignancy we could never have expected when filming in Etosha.
When we’d arrived in the U.S., we’d sent Kurt Fristrup, a specialist in bioacoustics and animal communication at Cornell University, the sound tape we’d rolled when Knob Nose had been caressing the bones of her dead baby. Other than a whispering wind and a few birdcalls, we hadn’t heard a thing. But since elephants communicate below the threshold of human hearing, we’d asked Kurt to run the tape through one of Cornell’s machines capable of capturing infrasonic sounds just in case. Kindly, he’d agreed.
When the tape arrived at National Geographic, Anny blew it a kiss before putting it in the editing machine. At first the room was quiet, then there was a single voice, a bellow, deep and mournful, rising and falling. Soon it was joined by other voices, a symphony of sound, subterranean and rich with emotion. Knob Nose and her herd had lingered not at an elephant graveyard of myth, but at a very specific grave site, the place where her own baby had perished. The sounds continued, rising, falling, a single voice, then others, echoing with pain, moving Anny and me to tears. It was the first time anyone had heard these sounds for exactly what they were: the mourning of a very special elephant by a very special herd. The elephants’ silent language of grief.
Just as we had been with the baboon and Bushmen films, Nad and I were blessed to have an editor who treated our footage and the elephants’ story as a gift, one that she protected, nurtured, and wove with clarity and care. As we worked our way through the collaborative process of filmmaking, one I’d become more comfortable with through the years, Anny continued to work her magic.
During the fine-cut screening before a host of producers, Anny turned to me and whispered, “I love this part.”
The dark edit suite came alive with images of Etosha that made me glad I’d gotten out of bed on those dark, frosty mornings: green plains full of purple and white lilies, tall lilac cosmos, and pools of deep blue water. An elephant moved into frame, leading the herd: it was Knob Nose. Behind her walked a baby, flat ears and stubby black hair on her head. After losing two babies to anthrax, Knob Nose had had another, a little girl who might prove to be the herd’s next matriarch.
I smiled at Anny. Our film had a real-life happy ending.
NAD HAD ADDED such a refreshing and intelligent perspective to the edit, but eventually he had to return to Namibia to his veterinarian duties in Etosha, so while I finished the film Kimber stayed with my parents. On my last day in Washington, when we’d just completed layering in sound effects for the final “mix” of the film, Sara came down from New York to celebrate. “How’s it going at the Geographic? Weren’t you going to pitch them a new idea?” she asked.
“Yes, on the natural history of anthrax. Nad and I think it’s a fascinating story, but they said, ‘No. Who wants to hear about a disease?’”
“I think it sounds interesting, too, but maybe they do have a point. It’s not anything that ever happens here. Plus it only kills animals.”
“It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the challenge. When we figure out how to tell the story in a more captivating way, so it’s not just some rotten old disease, we’ll be able to make the film. Anyway, what time is your interview tomorrow?”
“I have to be at Senator McCain’s office at ten A.M. I’ve done most of the prep work, so there’s no rush tonight.”
“Great.” We moved around each other in the luxurious bathroom at the Ritz-Carlton, sharing lipstick, blow-dryers, and memories.
“Nothing like my bathroom in Okaukuejo.”
“Speaking of Okaukuejo, I have a little something for Kimber.”
She went back into the bedroom, rummaged down to the bottom of her suitcase, and returned with a beautiful Babar print, a delightful scene of a little elephant blowing on a campfire.
“Not that I’m quite sure where you’ll hang it, given that you still live in a tent! I can’t believe I haven’t met him yet, but when I saw this in Paris I thought of him.”
My dear friend who had gone to Paris to forget, at least for a weekend, about her miscarriage, had remembered my son. As I hugged her, I knew without a doubt that my feelings of being out of sync, disconnected, had passed. I no longer feared that our friendship was fraying. It was stronger than ever, and so were we.
“Thank you, Sara, it’s beautiful and so is he, but you’ll see him this weekend. Come on, I’m starved.”
In a restaurant known for its delicious food, Sara pushed her dinner around the plate.
“Sara…” with a raise of my eyebrows, was all I had to say.
“I think I might be. But I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
The next morning Sara crept into the bathroom while I pretended to be asleep. Not for long. She ran out and jumped on the bed.
“It’s positive, it’s positive!”
“Let me see.”
“It’s in the trash can!”
“Are you crazy, get it out!”
She ran into the bathroom and ran out waving the tiny stick with its two pink lines clearly visible.
I grabbed her and hugged her and wouldn’t let go. “Sara! What wonderful news! You’re gonna have a baby!”
Like my little boy, I trusted my instincts. And this time I was just sure there would be another real-life happy ending, and this one would be Sara’s.