and I felt less like giving thanks than ever before. I was due any day to deliver a baby that would begin dying as soon as he was born. My family is rather large, and every holiday is rather like a reunion. Rocky and I found ourselves surrounded by loving people who offered their support and good wishes--and a LOT of people it was, too. All day, I squirmed and fretted, never finding a comfortable spot to perch or sit or stand. Scenarios of dead babies and dead marriages kept dancing in my head. Our struggling marriage simply could not withstand such a blow as a neonatal death. We had fooled ourselves--we had played with grown-up fire and were going to be blasted with God-like punishment. For the first time in my life, I faced situations my mother could not help me correct or even understand--and I was too insecure to seek my husband out and try to understand his own pain and bewilderment.

Night fell, and the various segments of my extended family withdrew into their own lives once more, leaving me with the shattering remains of my own. We retired for the night, all too glad to surrender our pain and troubles to that cure-all called sleep. Or so we thought.