Nerves by the Oven

Celia was probably about fourteen the time that she and Jason pledged to help Jason’s mom get ready for the church bake sale one weekend. But baby Ginger took a lot of Mrs. Regan’s attention and she asked the two young teens to make one batch of brownies without her: “I’ll be upstairs if you need me, just follow the directions.”

So they followed the directions religiously. They took every precaution they could think of; they wore the biggest oven mitts they could find as they slid the pan into the oven. They continued to recheck the directions while the brownies were baking, certain that they missed something and things were going to turn out wrong…

When the brownies turned out just fine, Celia and Jason shared a sense of triumph at doing the impossible, (even if they’d seen other people do it so many times before,) and they thought they had made the best brownies ever made in the history of humankind!

Who ever thought having those brownies in the oven could stir the same kind of emotional anticipation as having something quite different in the metaphorical “oven”? Jason was grinning as they pulled out of the church parking lot, but his eyes held that unsure, “Are we really doing this right?” look. Celia had all her shaky, thrilled energy pent in her hands folded primly in her lap. She ran her fingers along the wedding band, just a little over a year old.

“We were grinning like idiots when we invited my dad and Lily over, you know that?” she said. Smug, juvenile, like: ‘Man, Jason, you should’ve seen how red your face was, we are so lucky we didn’t get caught’.

“D’you think they caught on?”

“Lily might have, but if she did she decided not to burst the bubble to our faces. Dad’s probably clueless, but Lily will fill him in.”

“D’you think she’ll fill in my parents too?”

“Oh I’m sure your mom figured it out by the tone of your voice when you called her right after I peed on the stick, you asked her if she and your dad wanted to come over and hear “some pretty cool news” along with my parents and step-parents… and you didn’t even have a date picked out for the get-together yet.”

“There’s a date now,” Jason sounded proud. “Three more weeks.”

Celia sighed, thinking of how their lives were going to revolve around countdowns for a while. Three more weeks and they told all six “grandparents” the news. Seven more weeks and hopefully she’d stop barfing in the mornings. Seven more months and… would it turn out alright?