Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [7]
It’s a good day for splitting. Fifteen below at dawn, and even in mid-afternoon the oak is frozen tight. Wet wood split in summer absorbs the ax with a punky tunk! You spend half your time wrenching the sunk blade free; the beveled steel cheeks press out a watery froth. Today at subzero, nearly every stroke terminates in a crisp ker-rack! The halves part neatly, releasing a scent like musk and cheese. The exposed wood is laced with crystals of ice that refract the sun and salt the grain with an interstitial twinkle.
I split a while, then stack a while.
The baby is due in early April, just over three months from now. After a slow start, I am astounded at the speed with which Anneliese’s belly is growing. Whatever is in there, it is a kicky little creature, and prone to nocturnal hiccups. Nearly every night when we lie in bed, Anneliese’s midsection begins to lurch sharply and at measured intervals. It is my understanding that the sensation is equivalent to the baby playing foosball with Anneliese’s innards. It is tough to drift off with a miniature single-stroke engine boing-boinging between your liver and bladder, and compounding the problem, ever since Anneliese became pregnant, she has been struggling with insomnia.
We do not know if we are having a boy or a girl because we have had no ultrasound, and barring some pressing sign or symptom, will not have one. Anneliese is defiantly self-directed in these matters, relying on a coterie of friends covering the spectrum from pagan shamans to a home-educated evangelical Christian nutritionist. I have gone to the medicine cabinet seeking an aspirin and come up with powdered kelp.
I am nervous about the baby business, but this is hardly news. I am nervous about everything—from last year’s tax calculations to the blinking light on the answering machine. Discussions in the arena of health care do not always go easy between Anneliese and me. Thanks to the holistic curriculum provided to me by the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire School of Nursing during the years I thought I knew what I wanted to do for a living, I am willing to give consideration to a wide range of alternative treatments, but remain decidedly partial to Western medicine. In part, this comes from my unwillingness to swim against popular tides, coupled with extreme trepidation about doing the wrong thing. My wife does not labor under the same unattractive state of wimpitude. In a marriage that has so far been everything I hoped it might be, our most difficult—even heated—discussions have been about medicine. Having said that, regarding neonatal issues, she has several advantages, chief among them being that (A) she is carrying the baby, and (B) since we are paying for prenatal care and delivery out of pocket, I am happy to go along with the economically attractive elements of her program.
Economy is as economy does, and having observed my progress at the woodpile for a month now, Anneliese has lately begun lobbying for a wood-splitting bee, in which we invite the neighbors and get the whole works done at once. She says I shouldn’t be toiling out there all alone. I suspect she has also calculated my ax stroke to BTU ratio and fears that by next February we’ll be busting up the last of the kitchen chairs for kindling. “We can make chili,” she says. “Terry can bring his splitter, and we’ll get it all done in one day.” It’s a good idea, and indeed, our neighbor Terry has offered to share his gasoline-powered wood splitter. It’s a smooth little machine with a small engine and hydraulic ram mounted on a steel I beam that rides on a set of trailer wheels. You just hook it behind your tractor or pickup and tow it to wherever it’s needed. Once the wood chunks are placed on the I beam, the operator moves a lever forward