Spring break has been so nice. Nils couldn’t come down with Ruth and me, but her parents, Joe and Irma, came down after us. It was a good thing, too, because I ran into some trouble and I really needed Joe’s help when some old biddy thought that calling the police on me for sunbathing nude was a crime. Turns out that the house they own on the beach was a private beach and was clearly marked as ‘clothing optional,’ and the old biddy got in trouble, not me. Unfortunately, I was hauled down to the courthouse in my birthday suit before it all got cleared up.

But, something nice came of all of that trouble. I think Ruth was able to get a boyfriend out of it! The police officer, Sergeant Donald Roy, was very kind to me through the whole ordeal and Ruth took a shine to him. So much so, she and I cooked him dinner that night and Ruth took him to her bed. Of course, Irma and Joe took me to their bed, so it all was fine. The next morning, Donald was pretty fuzzy-headed until he got the coffee I made, but he kept showing up each day and Ruth couldn’t stop talking about him.

It was unfortunate, though, that I couldn’t enjoy the whole week. Each morning found me praying to the porcelain god. A couple of weeks before we left for warmer climes, I found out that I was pregnant and when I got down here, I started getting morning sickness. After the first morning, I found the smell of coffee upset my tummy. “Saltine crackers and apple juice,” was Irma’s recommendation as she held my hair back each morning. Not much came up, but it was still pretty unpleasant. I felt very lucky that Irma was there to hold my hand.

After the first bout, Irma and I sat down and had a long talk about being pregnant. She told me she had Ruth rather late in life, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. Of course, she said, she had been disappointed when her monthly cycle kept showing up, but Joe had been very reassuring. Then, when she did get pregnant, I think he may have gone a little overboard and pampered her a lot. He was the one who held her hair when she was sick.

We also talked a bit about what my background had been. When she asked about my parents, I told her that they had been killed in an accident when I was a baby and my grandparents had raised me. They had been so good to me, even when I was the rebellious teenager.

Nils and I had gone to see Grandma the day after I went to the doctor for confirmation about being pregnant. She and I had talked a while, too, after we had sent Nils to get some ice cream. Grandma was so happy for me and also for herself: she’d get to hold a great-grandchild!

We talked almost head-to-head about what I might expect. She told me that her morning sickness with my mother had only lasted about three weeks, and my mother had only been sick about a month before everything had settled down. She also thought mine wouldn’t last too long. I was really hopeful about that: morning sickness really sucked! It wore me out each morning and I didn’t feel like doing too much afterward. Luckily, I was on a vacation and I didn’t have to do anything.

Irma agreed with me about the morning sickness, and then she said something that really got me to thinking about the future. Her beautiful eyes took on a far-away look and her face relaxed and she seemed to actually glow in the morning light.

“Yes,” she said, her voice husky with emotion, “morning sickness is horrible, and labor can literally be a pain and while you’re going through it, you think you’ll never go through this again, no matter what! But the truth is, once you hold that precious life in your own hands and you’re done checking to make sure all the parts are there and working, something very strange and wonderful happens! You forget about all the sickness, the awkwardness you feel when your stomach is all out of proportion, the swollen feet, and the pain of pushing a football out of your body; you forget all that and you wonder how long you’ll have to wait until you can do it again.”

I could see tears in her eyes, and I reached over to hug her and I could feel her sob on my shoulder. I could also feel her tears as they ran down my cheek to my bare shoulder and I started weeping in sympathy.

We held each other for what seemed like ages, gently rocking back and forth, but in reality, it was only a couple of minutes. When we separated, we both wiped at our eyes with our hands and I spied the tissue box. I grabbed us each a couple of tissues and she thanked me, sotto voce, so softly I could barely hear it. We blew our noses simultaneously and we both laughed, and I could feel the strong emotions drain from my body and my brain.

I told her that I was feeling tired and I was going to lie down. She surprised me and said that she was tired, too, and that, if I was OK with it, she’d lie down with me. Of course, I didn’t have any objection, so we went, hand-in-hand to the bedroom she and Joe shared. She crawled in first, lying on her back and I seemed to naturally flow to her and put my head on her shoulder. My breathing slowed and I felt her arms wrap around me and her sweet murmurings put me to sleep in no time.

I knew I was dreaming, but that didn’t seem to matter. I felt myself drifting around and I found myself floating. I was warm, but it was a liquid warmth, like water from a bath surrounding me. I opened my eyes and found I was in the ocean, the water being warm and caressing. All around me were fish, but only of one kind. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘if I’m in the ocean, then these must be mackerel and I started swimming with them. My strokes were strong, but the current was against me and the fish started swimming with the current, so I was also fighting them as well as the current.

Suddenly, all the fish darted away from me and I felt like I had been abandoned. A part of my mind was asking why they had left me all alone, and within a few strokes, I found that my hands were touching the sea floor. I pulled myself along a few more strokes and then worked my knees between my hands and I was able to stand upright. The waves were crashing just beyond me, the breakers higher than my head, but by the time they reached me, they were just splashing around my feet. It was pleasant, but noisy and I couldn’t hear what was approaching.

At the last moment, I looked up as I finally heard the scream. It was an eagle flying right at me! I understood why the fish darted away from me. They had seen the shadow of the raptor above them and I wasn’t paying attention.

He was the largest eagle I had ever seen. His wingspan had to be at least nine or ten feet, his height at least four feet from bottom of his talons to the top of the white feathers on his head. I could now hear his scream over the crashing of the waves, his golden-brown body hurtling towards me at an unbelievable speed.