My mother’s Aunt Rosemary had six children and they were all blessed with the most beautiful strawberry red hair. We slept at their house one summer. Just a nap, the mothers cooed, ushering us upstairs to the hot attic bedroom. Opening the windows to allow the summer breezes to cool the room, I remember the white window sheers blowing softly, as if Papa was snoring, his soft puffs of sleep blowing them in and out. All of the children around me fast asleep, but I was prone to sweat, my terry cloth jumper already sticking to my back, and I believed I was much too old for naps. I crept to the top of the stairs, listening to the mother’s voices below. Recognizing my mother’s voice, I crept down to get closer, surprised when I heard her voice, watery and breaking.

“They cannot have a baby. The doctors have run the tests. They don’t know why. She just isn’t able to.”

An audible gasp filled the room, then the sound of chairs scraping the linoleum floor, as they stood to hug my mother. She must be talking about my sister Pam, who was ten years older and had been married for two years. Pam without a baby? It didn’t seem possible. Pam only wanted a baby. She talked about getting married and having a baby, all of her life. It was the only thing she did talk about. How many times did I make a face when she talked about babies because I found the whole topic absurd and ridiculous? And now she can’t have a baby? How could this be? I wanted to scream, “Take my baby, I don’t want a baby, give her my babies!”

I crept back up the stairs, knelt by the window, spying the tiny white flowers on the rosemary in the garden. I thought how they looked like tiny babies with jeweled heads. And I thought of my sister Pam, as I wept.