The Lougheed community hall is filled to capacity and beyond – over three hundred people which is about one hundred more than the official village population. More chairs are brought out and placed at the ends of rows. Still there are knots of men standing at the back.

            People are hot in their heaviest winter coats. There are whispers and low murmurs, but mostly there is silence.

     Mum and I were alone that bone-chilling December evening, curled up on a lumpy, pull-down couch in a strange hotel room in New York City. I was eight years old, and it was my first time in New York, and Mum’s first time, too. In fact it was the first time either of us had ever been out of Alberta, the first time we’d been on a plane. We’d left behind Dad, Grannie, my two-month-old baby sister and everyone we knew and loved. We couldn’t even use the phone on the desk beside us to call them because there was no telephone at home on the farm.

      No one remembers the other baby – no one but me. No one even knew she existed except Greg and me and the doctor.

     All the attention, all the concern focused on Elizabeth. Our Elizabeth had just reached her first birthday. She had been a happy, healthy newborn. She latched on to my nipple the minute she found it. She was, after all, the fourth child of a La Leche League Leader. She knew what she was doing. She was a bright, healthy, beautiful little girl, getting ready to walk and talk.

     It is Christmas Eve and the whole family is gathering for the traditional Chinese food supper at Grandma Donna’s. Four uncles, three aunts, even Great-Grandma Martin and Great-Granddad Cookson, all supervised by one-and-only cousin Abbey, aged 11, all brimming with excitement and expectation. And then – the star of the occasion, baby Ashlyn, just two days under eight weeks old, rides triumphantly in her car seat through the door.

My Dear Son attended a La Leche League Series Meeting last Thursday evening. But he wasn’t in my arms. I wasn’t even there. He held another woman’s hand as he walked through the door. I didn’t learn that he and his lovely, eight-months-pregnant wife had been there until he mentioned it casually on the phone the next day.

“There were a whole bunch of pregnant women there,” he observed. “But I was the only father.”

It’s Halloween. The elevators in my Edmonton apartment building are locked, and no goblins have knocked at my door.

It’s almost midnight, and I am doing a final dance with my e-mail before curling up with my bedtime book.

The message chimes through so innocently.

“We’re at the hospital now,” writes son Jay. “Serena is having a few contractions. No dilation. Membranes still intact. They’ll start the induction in the morning. I’ll keep in touch.”