Day two of our look at the family, a continuation from yesterday.

         I was eight years old. As the youngest in my family, I had never been around a pregnant woman. In fact, back then you didn’t say ‘pregnant.’ A woman was ‘with child’ or, more common, ‘in the family way.’ That was completely beyond my understanding. I knew it was something that happened to women occasionally and I vaguely knew that my mother had been ‘in the family way’ at least three times. But it had never intruded on my life.

         And then, my aunt became ‘with child.’

         At first I paid it little mind. It didn’t matter to me one way or another. But then Aunt Evie began to swell up. As I said, I was eight and didn’t know much about the world, but I did know that this looked like something was seriously wrong with my aunt. Everyone seemed happy for her, though. Even my father, who kept calling my uncle ‘you old son of a gun!’ Something just wasn’t right. As time went on, my beloved aunt began to slow down. She looked haggard (even though my mother kept telling her how wonderful she looked). It became apparent that standing up from the chair caused her great discomfort, and then sitting back down required special care. We farmed, but we didn’t have animals. I had never seen this before, and it was alarming. My parents had both grown up on farms and they did have animals and I suppose they thought I understood because at my age, they would have known about it all. But, though I watched carefully, I just couldn’t figure it all out.

         In the last month of this ‘being in the family way’ nightmare, Aunt Evie was in agony. I couldn’t stand being around her. I watched late Friday night TV and the scary shows that came on. Old horror movies. I was just imagining that there was some horrible creature getting ready to burst forth.

         One day my aunt asked my mother if I could come and stay an hour or two. She hadn’t seen me much and I guess she just wanted to visit with me. I DID NOT want to go, but eight year old children did what they were told back then. My aunt was laying on their sofa, looking very much like a beached whale I had seen on TV. I was not having fun. Neither was she, but she never seemed to have fun anymore. I sat in a chair way on the other side of the room (near an exit) and I answered any question she asked. Left to my own devices, I would not have said a word. Every once in a while she would wince and jerk, and finally I asked a question.

         “Are you OK?”

         “Oh, sweetie, he is just moving around a lot.”

         HAH! I knew it! There was something in there. This was not good!

         “Uh, it’s moving?”

         “Oh my, yes. Come over here and lay your hand on my belly.”

         AAAHH! Are you nuts? It will explode out of there and eat me alive! Of course, I didn’t say that to my aunt. Again, eight year old children did what they were told back then.

         On wobbly legs, I crossed the room. Very slowly I laid my hand on her belly. AND THE CURSED THING KICKED MY HAND AWAY! That was definitely not good!

         I tell that story to get back to Mary and Joseph. From as early as I can remember, all the kid’s books pertaining to Mary ‘being with child’ had her riding a donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. After my experience with Aunt Evie, I knew that riding a donkey was pretty much out of the question. My aunt got to where riding a chair was hard. I had ridden a donkey. It sure wasn’t like sitting in a chair. Years later I finally found it. Not in the Bible, but in some Catholic writings. The Protoevangelium of James, chapter 17. (Go ahead. Look it up. You don’t know what a Protoevangelium is any more than I did. Make yourself proud.) In that passage it says Joseph made the donkey ready and put Mary on it. Then, the older son led the donkey while Joseph followed. That is right. The older son. It is interesting that the Catholics accept the donkey but not the older son.

         So, the Bible doesn’t say she rode a donkey. It was a 90 mile journey. She was nine months pregnant. There were mountains. She could not have walked. How then?

         Well, clearly she rode something. Not an animal. I imagine Joseph was a big strapping man. I spent a lot of my growing up years around my father’s Amish friends, and some of them were carpenters. Big, strong men. But even so, Joseph could not have carried her. The only logical solution was a wagon. Being a carpenter, Joseph would not have had a wagon, or the animal to pull it. But it was all that made sense, although not very good sense. I always assigned that to the mental file of “Questions to Ask Upon Arrival.”

         And then it was revealed to me by one Mr. Ed Fitch. The simplicity is perfect. I had always over thought the whole thing. And we will save that for Sunday’s edition of this story.