Chapter Two of My Novel

2

The day was one of the perfectly pleasant Pacific Northwest summer days that make up for the months and months of winter rain.  Up and down the block, boys were pushing lawnmowers, the gentle “thach-thack-thack” of the blades hitting the overlong grass resonating in the air.  The fresh sent of cut lawn was coupled with the salty tang of a sea breeze coming inland.  The rain of the day before had been a transformational one.  Dirty roads were now fresh, the blacktop seeming darker than just black.  The flowers sprang open with a new vitality as the sun summoned them to attention.  Walking down the hill to the diner, Camilla smiled to the world.  She was positive that she would soon have an addition to her family and she would have someone to encourage to see the world as she never did.

Bellingham had been Camilla’s home, and she would most likely never leave it for long.  She knew this about herself, but she had longed for the chance to adventure around the world.  Her desire to travel was always trumped by her desire for safely.  Camilla could walk down the street and greet every person she met by name.  That sort of belonging to a community had taken years to achieve.  Now that she had it she felt a sense of putting down roots, a sinking of tethers which bound her to this spot.  The feeling was a secure one, and one that she did not relinquish lightly.

This conflict within herself had manifested only once in her life.  She had tried to go to college in Seattle.  Camilla had enrolled in her freshman term only to come home to her parents three weeks into it.  Her first class, like most freshman level classes, was in a lecture hall of hundreds.  Each time she attended class, she met new people.  Each time she walked to the quad for a meal, she met new people.  Every time she entered her dorm, she met new people.  After three weeks of constant introductions and change, her nerves had gotten the better of her and she went home.  Her parents had known that she would, and rather than disappointment she felt remorse.  She felt that the person she had hoped she could be, a strong adventurous woman, was dead and had been defeated by nothing more than too many introductions. 

What kind of person was defeated by too many new things? A person who was looking for predictability and stability.  Not someone who was looking for a passionate and unpredictable life filled with tumult and struggle.  She was a girl who wanted to know who lived in each of the houses on her street, not just the houses on her block.  She was a girl who felt life was best lived when governed by traditions and family and a sense of place.  Camilla discovered that when her world got too big, she got too small.  She had felt herself becoming less and less significant with every new person she had met.  When she returned home and was able to be the only Camilla anyone knew, her sense of self returned.  She was a small fish who what content to be a small fish in a small pond.  When the  pond got bigger, instead of growing into the space, she only felt smaller.

Arriving in the downtown area, Camilla slowed her pace a bit to allow for casual greetings with the people she met walking about.  Everyone seemed to have a smile on his face today, and the sun had put everyone in a good mood.  Feeling especially content, she walked into one of her favorite stores.  This store specialized in infant and toddler clothing.  After Camilla and Christopher got  married she was in this store nearly every week hoping that she would soon need all of the baby things she touched with longing there.  It had been nearly a year since the wedding, and Camilla had not had so much as a hopeful moment.  Like clockwork, her period had started every month on the same day and each time it did she was sad for a few days. 

Christopher also wanted to start a family.  He was gaining respect at the college and people were starting to wonder what the hold up was.  His wife was a beautiful and gracious hostess who impressed the department members with her ability to create a friendly dinner no matter who the attendants were.  Many other young married professors in the department were starting families, and there was pressure to follow suit and have the children grow up as friends.  Camilla and Christopher had talked it over and both had recommended patience to one another.  Unable to blame each other, both had started wondering if the problem was their own.

Looking at the christening gowns one last time, Camilla pulled her head out of the clouds and continued on her way to work.  She was covering the afternoon shift today so that one of the other girls could go to her son’s baseball game.  The season opener, even in little league, was a big deal in these parts.  In part because it was rare that an early season game was not called for rain, and also because the war made everyone stand a bit taller when the national sport was being played.  Camilla knew that in other places in the country people were burning flags instead of saluting them, but she had never seen those parts of the country.  This far north, the people were fiercely independent when it came to how they lived, but no one would dream of belittling the national symbol or of not supporting the troops who were at the front lines. 

Camilla was thankful that her husband was in academics.  He would make a lousy soldier and Camilla was sure he had never fired a gun in his life.  Christopher had grown up living in books, as Camilla did, and although he was gifted with languages, he had never had any wanderlust that she could detect.  This was one of the reasons Camilla had agreed to marry him: she felt certain that Christopher would be content with living where they were at for a very long time, and she would not need to face the frightening possibility of moving to a new place and setting roots down anew. 

If she could summon the courage someday, she would like to go to Paris.  The city was so romantic and traveling there with her husband would be safe for her.  If she had his constant support and encouragement, she felt certain that she would not fall apart and could enjoy the trip.  The pictures of the Eiffel Tower always had impressed her, and watching “An American in Paris” set her heart racing as she thought about what it would really be like to go there.  That movie, as idealistic and optimistic as it was, was her favorite.  She went back to it time and again and wished she had a temperament that would allow her to go after something like in that movie. 

Right now, Camilla needed a temperament for serving burgers to the lunch crowd.  The soup of the day was chicken noodle and noodles were being slurped by two children in a booth.  Their mother was chiding each to eat properly, but Camilla smiled and handed the mother more napkins and walked away.  The joy of seeing some involved noodle slurping helped Camilla to feel positive about the future.  She knew that soon her pregnancy would take and then she could get busy with the nursery.  Until she was actually pregnant, she had ket herself from growing to interested in making the baby’s room.  She felt that having everything ready may jinx the process.

Two hours later, having served BLTs, grilled cheese, and plenty of burgers, a triumphant team of little leaguers thundered in, jamming into two of the booths.  Their successful season opener was marked with ice cream cones all around.  Vanilla and chocolate swirl cones were doled out to the squirmy little boys who were actively reliving, and embellishing, each play for the waitresses at hand.  These boys thought they had just won the world series and the excitement spread throughout the diner.  Each of the boys believed he had made the play of the game, and had the dirt or grass ground into his pants to prove it.  The parents were laughing and joking with the boys and exchanging knowing looks over their heads while listening to each act the star for a moment.

Camilla hustled about bringing more napkins when horror struck and a cone dropped to the floor or wiping the chin of someone who was out of a parent’s reach before the chocolate could drip onto the white uniform.  The crowd was gone as quickly as it arrived and Camilla sighed in amazement at the mess a dozen little boys could make in less then 15 minutes.  “This is what I am looking forward to?” she questioned herself not quite seriously.  It wasn’t that Camilla wanted to have a baseball team all at one time, she just wanted to have one of the players.  And she did look forward to the messes as well as the rest of it.  Being a parent was a messy operation, she knew that, but it was one of the greatest joys of life and she was not about to miss out on it.

Camilla began putting the booths back in order, wiping the finger smudges off of the seats, table tops and windows, and ordering the salt and pepper shakers who had been used as mini players as tales had been told.  Her work was nearly done for the day.  Glancing out of the window she saw that there was still plenty of light and that she would be able to enjoy the late afternoon in her garden.  The rhodies were taking over the back yard and needed to be trimmed, and her roses needed some care if she wanted to make the blossoms last well into the summer. 

The walk home from work that day had been nice.  After watching all of the kids tear through the diner, Camilla was ready for some time in her garden.  Her garden was not really a garden yet, it was more like lots of overgrown plants that someone else had decided needed to be in the yard.  There was very little order or thought applied to the selection of most of the plants.  Things that did well in the shade were planted on the south side of the house, and things that needed sun shine were on the north.  Camilla had a sneaking suspicion that the previous owners of the house had picked plants that looked good, and planted them just before putting the house up for sale, not really bothering to learn what was the correct placement for each. 

Today, Camilla was going to dig up many of the ill placed plants, reevaluate what her goal was for the space, and trim back the two long established rhododendrons that looked like they had been planted when the house was built, long before Camilla was born.   These rhodies were planted along the front of the house and bloomed purple blossoms.  Most of the year they just had a nice looking, large, wax leaf that added a lush feeling to the space.  When the plants went to bloom, the front yard popped with color and announced that spring was official.  After moving into the house the summer before, Camilla had waited to do any trimming to the plants.  She wanted to see what color the blooms took before working on the rest of the yard plans. 

In the back yard there was a tree that one day would be a great place for a tree swing.  Camilla had fallen in love with this house after seeing the tree in the yard.  She imagined that she and Christopher would one day have a pack of children, boys and girls, who would live to have a big tree swing to play on.  The house had room for a family, and she was ready to start filling up the space.  As she waited for her little family to take root, she would work on getting the garden to take root as well.  She wanted to have a place where little kids could play without worrying about ruining anything.  The last thing Camilla wanted to be was a nagging mother who never let her kids have any fun. 

Yes, the children would need to be careful, there was no need to supply the boys with pellet guns, but a back yard is a place that should be ready for a child to poke around, turnover stones to look at bugs, and dig in the dirt without getting yelled at.  Camilla always envisioned herself the mother of several boys.  Rowdy and adventurous boys who would explore the world and bring back amazing tales of their adventures together.  These boys would look like her and Christopher with brown hair, but one would have her eyes, blue, and another would have his eyes, brown. 

As they grew up, the boys would get into fights, climb trees, play baseball, and read about the world.  They could have pirate wars in the bathtub and then save the fair maiden from the dragon before bedtime.  Camilla would lose track of all of the sandwiches she made for the boys through high school and secretly enjoy the weekends when they returned home from college, even though they always brought several loads of laundry that needed to be done. 

Camilla, with her boys, would be needed, and she would be the one to protect them from harm for many years.  She also hoped that someday she would be able to use what she learned by raising boys and gain some courage of her own.  She knew that letting go of boys would be hard for her, and it may help her to let go of the other fears she had as well. 

Today, looking at the yard, Camilla could see her future family and it made her very happy.  Now she needed to make that dream a reality.  As she and Christopher worked on making the children, she could make the yard part of her vision and at least see some progress.  Camilla had thought it would be easier to get pregnant that it was proving to be.  It seemed to Camilla that her mother had scared her away from sex before marriage by convincing her that she would get pregnant just by looking at a boy with desire in her heart.  She was looking at Christopher with more than desire in her heart, and still after almost a year of marriage she had yet to even have a pregnancy scare.  Her monthly cycle was as regular as it had ever been, and each month she hoped it would be the one where she would be late, and then know she was going to have a baby soon. 

The trying was starting to get to Christopher as well.  Camilla tried not to look at the baby things in the stores, or to think about preparing a nursery, but she knew he could see the look on her face when watching reruns of “Leave it to Beaver” or “The Partridge Family”.  Any television show that featured a group of kids often had Camilla tearing up with longing, and Christopher wasn’t able to deal with her when she was emotional.  He typically left the room and retreated to his study, rather than talk to her about the issue he was choosing to ignore something was wrong. 

Camilla didn’t know what to think about this behavior.  She knew that he was an educated man.  He should understand how children come to be, but all of his actions intimated his ignorance in the issue.  After nearly a year of marriage, Camilla had a reasonable expectation to be expecting a child soon, but she knew that something was not running as smoothly as it should in that area.  She was considering going to her doctor and discussing possible medical reasons for her inability to conceive.  If it was something that she was doing wrong, she could work to overcome it.  If nothing was wrong with her, she was not sure if she could convince Christopher that he needed to seek medical assistance so that they could have a family. 

For now, Camilla still harbored hope that she would conceive soon, and all of these worries could be set aside and forgotten.  Opening the garage door and walking into the dark, she flicked on the lights.  The garden tools were all on a pegboard on the side wall.  Part of the wall had a work bench with storage under it.  This part of the peg board housed the smaller tools for the garden and all of the automotive tools that Christopher had.  Each tool was outlined with black paint, so that everything could be put back where it belonged when it was finished with.  On the wall to the right of the work bench hung the larger garden tools, the shovels and hoes that would be used with plants, and also the rakes that were needed each fall for the leaves.  These too were outlined and needed to be returned to their specific places. 

Camilla had yet to know Christopher to use many tools other than the lawn mower.  He was a literature teacher and lived up to the bookish image that most professors had.  Hanging pictures was something Camilla made happen by calling a handyman.  She had found a nice young man named Bobby Cooper who was helpful enough with small projects around the house.  Bobby seemed to be talented and would make something of himself one day, so Camilla didn’t mind helping a local boy start out on his own. 
Camilla selected the pruning sheers, a hand trowel, and a hoe from the wall and took these outside with a large bucket in hand.  The bucket was for all of the ill placed plants that needed to be moved. 

Camilla was planning on saving and replanting what she could, but some of the plants looked so sad that she was not sure what would survive the shock of being dug up.  She started on the shady side of the house, the side that the driveway ran along.  The north side of the property was not a very big space, really little more than the driveway was there, but it was a part of the property people saw when they parked and Camilla wanted it to look nice. 

She set to work removing plants and weeding as she went along.  It was soon obvious that one bucket was not enough for both the plants she wanted to save and the weeds that needed to be gotten rid of, so she made another trip to the garage for a second pail.  The dirt was cool in the afternoon sun and it held the moisture from a rain several days ago.  This side of the house really didn’t get much sun and needed plants that could handle growing in the shade of the house.  The remainder of the day was spent choosing what needed to go, what she should try to save, and what could be left alone.

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