Last night we went to our church rummage sale. Before my very eyes, the world turned into a Baby Bonanza.

I've said that Eric and I are planning for children in the near future. Perhaps I should clarify: Eric is planning for children. I am obsessing. For about two years now.

It started with a simple interest in the subject. I've always been a big kid lover. I taught Sunday School for years. I loved hanging out with our neighbors' little girls. A cute toddler in a restaurant would usually elicit from me a grin and brief dialogue of faces. Somewhere around the middle of my first year of grad school, though, something changed. The interest became more than passing. I began scouring the internet for information on pregnancy and birth. I subscribed to listservs. I bought books. What was once a tentative plan located somewhere in the future became something to plan for in the quickly approaching future.

Now it's becoming almost physical. Our rector's wife had a baby a month ago. I saw him four days after he was born. The rector was coming toward us after choir practice with a blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms; even so, I wasn't prepared for him saying, "This is my son," and removing the blanket to reveal the newborn. At that moment, I actually felt my uterus cramp. Eric said he saw it in my face.

Now the cramps are happening more frequently, and lasting longer. Last night, there were at least four tiny infants being carried around the church. The church was selling baby toys, baby furniture, baby clothes. I found myself standing over a table holding a pair of infant socks, almost in tears.

Eric knows the level of emotion I'm feeling about this. I think, though, that the biggest stimulant of that emotion is my inability to talk to him about it. He's told me that discussion of the subject makes him feel pressured, tense. I don't want to give him any discomfort, so here we are. He's preparing himself, and I'm biting my lip.

At first, he had declared March, 2000, to be the date to shoot for for conception. Recently he wavered and said perhaps February would be good, too. Last night, though, he said maybe January or late December. I stopped cold.

"Why are you saying that? Are you actually serious?" I was deathly afraid that he was just trying to mollify my obvious pain, at the sake of his own feelings, and that he would change his mind when the time arrived.

"The socks were cute," was all he would say.