Loree Sandler

“Hmm,” Bob said, looking over his Father’s Day gift. “It’s original.”

“What would you have wanted instead?” I asked, straining to be civil. “A tie? A book? This is literally what makes you a father!”

I’d looked forward to this presentation for weeks. My husband softened, reconsidered. “Yeah, I can see that now,” he offered.

The positive pregnancy tests, ultrasound photos, hospital bracelets and anklets, baby’s first footprints had been sucking up space in my desk, destined to eventually get tossed.

Then I saw something in a magazine. Not the whole mess of stuff, but a framed ultrasound or footprint, and thought it a clever keepsake.

When I’d brought the items to a framer, he pinched Spencer’s test strip between pointer and thumb. I’d peed on it ten-years before, so it didn’t seem gross to me, but apparently the framer disagreed. By the time Ian and Graham were conceived, tests had advanced with plastic edges to grip.

The gift was hung in an upstairs hallway, far from visitor traffic. Nevertheless, anyone who passed by stopped to comment.

Despite the frosty reception (who says Father Knows Best?) this gift was among my crowning conceptions.