July-

I think I had the best birthday of my life this year.  Chad and I had a delightful time shopping, wandering around the zoo, and relaxing in the hotel room.  We didn’t even go out to dinner.  We ordered room service, watched a bunch of ridiculous TV, and talked for hours.  It was wonderful.

The boys didn’t seem to mind spending the day with doting grandmothers, grandfathers, and aunts, well aunt, and I got to spend time with Chad.  I told him that I thought it was ironic that a couple of years ago I thought he was ever-present and a bit clingy and now I was abandoning our children for a few hours so I could be more clingy.  Surprisingly enough, he isn’t complaining.

One of the most wonderful parts of the trip was a walk around Granddad’s neighborhood.  He showed me where Mother’s best friend’s house was, told me he’d written her to tell her about me and what happened to Mother, and even pointed out where she got on the school bus every day.  It was strange to see everything that Mother knew but probably wouldn’t recognize anymore.

We’ve gotten very close, Granddad and I.  The boys’ birth changed something in us and for that, all the pain was worth it.  I’d wondered about how he’d take our naming Liam after him, but when he picked up his little namesake he said, “David William.  I never imagined you’d use my name.”  It wasn’t the words that affected me so deeply, it was the way he said them.  My Granddad was honored in our choice.

Wow.  I don’t think I’ve ever said or written that before.  “My Granddad.”  My little lads are going to know their granddads and have a lifetime of memories with them if the Lord will see fit to let them live long enough.

Liam is through nursing.  I guess it is time for me to put down my pen and pick up a bucket.  Tomatoes are calling.

Willow stared at her journal as she nursed a very fussy Liam.  She’d missed journaling for nearly three weeks, and now her little guy was teething making it hard to keep current.  Chad had mentioned something twice about how she’d be sorry if she didn’t take the time to write down the little things that kept her days so busy.   “Those entries of your mother’s are so meaningful to you, Lass.  Don’t you think that our sons or their wives and children will want to read them as well?”

A fresh feeling of shame washed over her as she remembered her snappish retort and the look in Chad’s eyes.  She now knew exactly what he’d look like if she ever slapped him.  Her words already had.

August was half gone.  In another week, Ryder would be off for his first year at Rockland U.  He planned to commute and hoped to get as much work in as possible between studying and classes.  Caleb and he planned to carpool when possible but agriculture and criminal justice were as nearly opposite as two boys could choose.  The irony of the choices of their hired hands amused her.  She was agriculture, Chad criminal justice.

“Hey Lass?  You up there?”

Hoping not to kill the drowsiness dropping over little Liam’s face, Willow tried for a cough.  Chad’s footsteps echoed in the stairway growing louder as he neared the top.  He leaned against the bedroom doorjamb smiling at the picture of Willow in her chair nursing the baby, her feet propped on the foot of the bed.  “Still fussy?”

Nodding, Willow whispered smiling, “He’s almost out though.”

Her hands caressed his little head smoothing the hair into place.  He had a three inch piece of hair growing near the crown of his head forward like an elderly man  who combed one long  piece over a bald spot.    Chad’s voice brought her attention back to him.  “I could watch this all day.”

“Better get a picture then because I cannot sit here all day.  My leg is growing numb, peaches that are screaming to be processed, and now that you’re home, I can pick some more while you rest.  Lucas stopped fussing about half an hour ago and he’s,” she stood gingerly and shifted the baby and pulled her shirt down discreetly, “going to stay out this time.  I rubbed his gums with a little brandy.  Mother’s journals said that seemed to soothe me and two of her medical books recommend it so I tried it.”

“Did you ask Dr. Wesley about it?”  Brandy for a baby seemed awfully risky to Chad.

“I didn’t think about it.  Two books and Mother were enough for me, but I’ll call when I get a chance.”

Willow settled Liam next to Lucas and patted his back until he wiggled his head into his brother’s stomach and settled into sleep.  The boys slept like that often—one head tucked into the curve of the other’s fetal position like a human ‘T’.  She closed the door behind her and crept downstairs to make Chad a sandwich before she spent the next couple of hours picking peaches.

***

Chad carried his sandwich out the back door, dropping crusts for Portia as he crossed the yard, wandered around the barn, and back between the tree break to the orchard.  As he neared, he could smell the comforting scent of alfalfa.  It was time to harvest that too.  The next day was his day off.  He’d get started on it then.

The baby monitor crackled in his pocket and he paused to listen, but there was nothing.  The garden cart had four buckets filled on it already and Willow was carrying a fifth to it.  “Wow, you’re working fast.”

“My body seems to be screaming for some hard physical work so I decided to reach as far as I could, work as fast as I can, and carry things a bit in order to give me some exercise.  I think I’m weaker since having the boys than I was while I was pregnant.”

“Of course you are,” Chad teased taking the bucket from her and forgetting that she wanted the work.  “When you were pregnant, you carried weights with you everywhere you went.”

“Well, now I need to give my body some real work or its going to protest.”  She punched her still-paunchy stomach ruefully.  “And if this doesn’t start looking a little less pregnant, I’m going to protest.  I don’t mind looking pregnant when I am but the boys are four months old and I look at least that pregnant.”

Chad wisely kept the mental adjustment to himself.  “Sorry Lass,” he thought amusedly, “that’d be six months for the average pregnant woman.” Aloud he reassured her with something his mother had mentioned the last time they spoke.  “Mom says it takes your body nine months to get out of shape so it is only reasonable that it’d take that long to get it back where it belongs.”

She nodded absently as she grabbed another empty bucket and walked away pointing toward the house.  “Go to bed Chaddie Lad.  I can see you’ve had a rough day.”

“How?”

“You don’t want to sleep, but you don’t want to talk either.  You just want me to talk to you.”

She whipped her head around, and Chad sucked in his breath sharply at the sight of her smile half hidden by her wide hat.  How did she do that?  How did she go from being just ‘attractive’ to amazingly gorgeous at the oddest times?  Why had God chosen to bless him with this life, this wife, and the two most amazing little sons a man could ever hope to have?

Willow waited for him to protest and then nodded satisfied.  “Tell it to Jesus, Chad.  He’s waiting for you to talk to Him about it anyway.”

He waved, hefted the handles of the garden cart, and forced it down the path, around the barn, and carried the buckets into the summer kitchen.  It wasn’t much help, but Chad hated thinking of her pushing all that weight.  She thrived on it, but to Chad, it was like expecting a woman to change her own tire.  Sure she could do it, but that didn’t mean she should.  Even as the thought entered his mind, Chad brushed it aside.  If Willow knew it had even drifted into the vicinity of his thought processes without being blasted away, she’d blast him!

Cart returned, he dragged himself back to the house, up the stairs, and kicked off his shoes.  A peek at the boys found them sleeping soundly.  Hopefully Willow would be back before they woke him with their demanding cries for sustenance.  As he lay in bed waiting for sleep to erase the mental images of twisted metal and broken bodies, he remembered Willow’s not-so-gentle reminder to take his pain to Jesus.

Lucas’ piercing wail sent him flying from his bed almost the moment he fell asleep.  Chad hurried to the crib to grab him before Liam woke again.  Fortunately, the boys were deep sleepers or neither would have ever gotten any good sleep.  Chad shoved the little pillow Willow had created to simulate their sibling’s body against Liam’s head and wondered just how helpful it was.

By the time he reached his bed, Lucas snoozed again in Chad’s arms as though he’d never awakened at all.  Willow found them there two hours later, Chad snoring softly laying on his back propped by pillows,  while Lucas gave his own impressive snore for someone so tiny every now and again.  “Like Father, like son I suppose,” she muttered as she grabbed clothes for a quick shower.

“If there is one thing about motherhood I don’t like,” she said to Chad that evening, “It’s the loss of a good, long, hot shower.”

***

“What on earth are you doing, woman?”

Chad rounded the corner to the orchard to find Willow on the ladder, shirt flapping open in the breeze, breast pumps strapped to her body,  pumping away as she picked peaches.  “Where are the boys?”

“Lily and Tabitha picked them up an hour ago.  This fruit is going bad and they heard Jill say she’d buy all the preserves I could give her in the next three weeks, so they volunteered to take them so I could get it done.”

“And how is your pump running without electricity?”

“Lily went and got me a battery pack.  I didn’t know it was an option!  We can turn the electricity off again.”

The excitement in her voice told him that she’d been more bothered by keeping the breaker on than he’d realized.  He also realized he’d grown accustomed to flipping on lights that now had working bulbs, plugging in fans at random, and suggesting a movie much more often than they’d ever done before the boys were born.

“So, you’re pumping while picking?  Am I the only one not seriously bothered by this?”

“No one is around, it only takes about twenty minutes every few hours, and this way I’m not stuck in a chair while these milking machines drain me.”  She pointed to her canteen.  “Can you hand me that?  I’m parched.”

“Mom would have come…”

“I know, and it’s not that I didn’t want her, but Lily called and asked, and you’re always saying that I never accept help from the church so I thought I’d accept this time.”

For the second time in just a few minutes, her words irritated him.  First the glee in finding a way around using electricity as if it was some great sin, and now casting his words back at him like he didn’t know what he said and she didn’t know what he’d meant.  It was as though she was deliberately trying to provoke an argument or something.  Chad’s irritation threatened to erupt in anger.

She grabbed the bucket and awkwardly carried it toward the cart.    The sight of her arms fighting to move around the pumps and hold the bucket with both hands would have made him laugh if Chad was in a better mood.  Irritably, he took the bucket from her and hoisted it onto the cart waiting for her protest that she could do it herself.

“Thanks.  It’s not so easy with these things in the way.”

Unaware of the storm brewing in Chad’s heart, Willow unstrapped the pumps, poured the milk into a jar in the ice chest at the back of the cart, and set the pumps in a basket.  “Why are you home?  I thought you didn’t get off until four?”

“Judith swapped beat with me and then the Chief came in grumpy and said I could either sort the filing or go home.  I opted for home.”

“Joe and Judith’ll kill you.”

“Brad too, but hey.”

Unaware that Chad needed to talk out some of his thoughts, Willow pointed to the cart.  “Mind taking that up to the barn for me?”

He sighed and reached for the handles.  Willow mistook his  sigh for dismay at the weight and moved to the front of the cart to help pull.  “I’ll help.  Sorry.”

“I’ve got it, Lass,” he growled and jerked his thumb ordering her out of the way.

She stood watching him wheel the cart through the trees until he vanished from sight.  Something wasn’t right with him, but she didn’t’ quite know what.  Maybe he should spend the afternoon fishing or take Lacey for a long ride.  Shrugging, Willow grabbed another bucket and moved the ladder to the last two trees.  At this rate, she’d be ready to start processing within the hour.

Chad wheeled the cart back to the orchard, his temper smoldering hotter with every step.  Any moment, the slightest spark would make it flash into a full blown fire.   The sight of Willow teetering at the top of the ladder as she stretched for a lone peach on a branch just out of reach struck the final blow.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?  Get down from there!”

She missed the seriousness of his tone and laughed.  It was the wrong move.  Before he could dive to save her, Willow and the ladder crashed to the ground, Willow laughing harder than ever.  “Can you get that thing for me.  I think I’m going to lose a limb if I try again!”

With an impatient jerk, Chad righted the ladder, gave his wife a helping hand, and climbed to get the peach.  “Is a stupid peach really worth the risk?  Would it have been so difficult to move the ladder?  Twelve seconds and no injury or spend that twelve seconds leaning for it?  Why do you have to be so selfish!”

“Chad, I just fell off a step ladder.  I fell five feet for heaven’s sake.  Maximum!”  She looked at his red face and stepped closer.  “What’s wrong?  You seem out of sorts.”

“You have done nothing but  criticize me since I got home.”  He dropped the peach in her bucket.  “I’m going back to work.  At least files don’t have sharp tongues.”

“What!”  Willow stared at his retreating back and then fury flooded her own heart.  “I don’t think so mister!  Who do you think you are?”  Her words grew closer and closer but Chad didn’t turn around until her hand grabbed his shoulder.  “What are you talking about?  When have I criticized?”

“First the electricity, then the jab at my mother, then the implication that I’m not capable of doing any work, and now it’s all about how I’m out of sorts.  I think you’re working too hard, overheated, and possibly dehydrated.  I also think you need to realize that you don’t have to do everything just because you used to do it.”

All the way to the back porch, Chad ranted about everything from lack of sleep to the ‘insanity’ of her insistence that she make the boy’s clothing.  “Did it ever occur to you that I might want to buy them little RU t-shirts once in a while?”

“Who said you couldn’t?”  Her initial anger was turning into repressed hilarity.  Chad sounded absolutely ludicrous.  Nothing he said made any sense and little of it was comprehensible on the most rudimentary level.

“You did!  ‘I don’t want to buy their clothes until they need jeans.  I enjoy making them.’  Well what about what I enjoy?”

“You asked if I wanted to go shopping for clothes instead of stitching their little rompers myself.  I said no.  I didn’t say  you couldn’t buy something.  I said I didn’t want to do it myself.”  Just hearing him made Willow want to scream.  Did he really think that because she chose to sew a baby outfit she was trying to forbid him from buying anything?  “What about your mother?  When did I make a jab about your mother?”

“Well, not really about mom  I guess, but you did have to throw my own words back in my face when I asked why you didn’t call mom.  You know how much she wants to be with the boys and how she tries not to intrude too much.”

“She’s family, Chad!  How can she intrude?  I don’t care if she moves into Mother’s room indefinitely if it makes everyone happy.  I love your mother Chad!”

Had she managed to make the statement without a hint of laughter in her voice, Chad might have dropped the subject, but feeling ridiculed, he threw back the first thing that came to mind.  “You didn’t act like it when Mom was concerned about you and your pregnancy.  You thought she was interfering.”

“Chad, she was.  Everyone was.  I was pressured from all sides to reproduce, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want her and she knows that.”  Her voice grew exceptionally quiet as she opened the back door.  “For that matter, you know it.  I don’t know what has gotten into you, but I don’t know who you are right now.”  Without another word, she disappeared into the house leaving Chad standing on the back porch, livid.

He threw open the door and at the sight of her chipping ice into a bowl threw up his hands in disgust.  “Look at that.  If you’d just  keep ice in the freezer in the barn—or better yet, put a stupid freezer in this kitchen, you wouldn’t spend so much time chopping ice.”

“We don’t need a freezer in here and in there.  And fifteen seconds to move a ladder is something you want me to spend my time doing but fifteen seconds for my personal comfort in getting some ice for my lemonade isn’t?  It’s too much work to chip a bit of ice?”

“Why does everything have to be a contest with you, Willow?  Why must everything be done your way?  Would it kill us to have a fridge in here where we could keep a never ending supply of ice for water, lemonade, maybe a smoothie every now and then?”

“We don’t have electricity in here most of the year to run it.  It’d be a nuisance and a waste of space usage.”

“We could have electricity if you weren’t so determined to live in the past!”

Her amusement was completely gone.  Her irritation had started to rise but now fizzled in a puddle of hurt.  “I can’t believe you just said that.  After all the times-“  Without another word, she left the kitchen, grabbed her purse, hurried down the front steps, jerked open the mini-van driver’s door, and in a cloud of late summer dust, was gone.

The irony of her actions wasn’t lost on Chad.  “Of all the absolutely modern and normal ways to duck out of an argument, that has to be the most hysterical,” he muttered to himself, slamming his drink on the porcelain drain of the sink and shattering it into a thousand pieces.  “The only thing better would have been if she’d chewed me out by text.”

Ten minutes later, Chad stared in shock as his phone rang and Willow’s text message flashed on the screen.  “The animals need food and tending.  Let me know if you’re not going to do it.”