Cora held the baby in her arms, and sobbed. She dared not turn back the edge of the soft blanket, carefully and lovingly crocheted for the first baby. She remembered the feeling of joy when she found she was to have a baby in the springtime. It had been such a hard year, first to be without Wilfred for so long, then the joy of the wedding and sadness of leaving her family and all the comforts of Zephyr - to come here.

It was beyond imagination, this dry, barren prairie. And only more shockingly lonely when the snow came. The isolation was unbearable but for the feeling of the child kicking inside of her - she feared she would have gone insane. He had told her it wasn’t like home - but how could she have imagined? She only knew it would be *their* home, and that they would raise their children and live their lives together, and it had seemed enough. She had brought her china teapot and fine lace tablecloth, how could it not be a home? In Ontario, they would have had a fine home with those things. Here they were in stark contrast to the dirt floor kitchen in their home. If you can call a grenary a home, which it was, but her friends in Zephyr would be sure to disagree. Living in a grenary! With lace tablecloths and fine chestnut furniture.

Maybe that is how it is, with the baby. Like the fine rosebuds in on the teacups and the scrolled pattern work of the chairs - maybe the baby was just too fine and delicate to belong here, in this cold and lonely grenary. Another tear rolled down her face and fell on the blanket she clung to so desperately. The wrenching pain of the birth was nothing compared to the grief as she held this child - her second - but still she would not see him grow and know the joy of being his mother. The first baby they had taken from her while she was sleeping, and the neighbor ladies patted her arm and said it was for the best. But for this baby, she knew - no matter how exhausted, how she had bled and hurt for this child - she would not sleep. She had imagined that if only she had held the baby for a moment, if only they hadn’t taken her - she might not have felt such pain. So, she stayed awake for this moment - she stayed calm so they would not pat her arm and tell her she wasn’t in her right mind. She whispered “I am going to hold my child now” and this time they let her - but still, her arms were empty.

- By Cheri