I realized that I'd reached a new low the day I stood crying over a pot of water boiling away on the stove. My eight-year-old niece Jenny regarded me solemnly from her perch on a stool at the kitchen counter.

"Are you hurt, Aunt Hayley?"

I sniffed, wiped my nose unceremoniously on my apron and turned to her. "No, honey, I'm just a little weepy."

"Was I bad?"

I went over to her and gathered her into my arms.

"Of course not. I'm just being silly. Some people cry when they peel onions. Your Aunt Hayley cries when she's coloring eggs.

Jenny didn't look convinced, so I laughed. "See, all better. Shall we make this batch purple?"

"Oh, yes!"

Jenny loved deep dark purple tones, pale lavenders and all shades in between. My sister Maddie, the psychologist, and Jenny's mother, credited it to the innocence of childhood and the belief that anything was possible. I liked to think it showed a genetic/psychic link between Jenny and me. I still loved anything from magenta to periwinkle, and I was nearly thirty-seven.

Concentrating on our project, I tried to direct my thoughts to what we were doing. But I'd dyed and decorated eggs for so many Easters now that my movements were automatic. So, unfortunately, was my thought process.

"You've got to stop dwelling on it, Hayley," Maddie would tell me again and again. "You're going to have to start dealing with it."

So all right, already, I'd got through the denial part and was stuck somewhere between anger and acceptance. It didn't make any sense for a farmer's wife to be jealous of chickens, but I was. Every time I went out to feed the voracious little beasts, I envied their casual and constant production of both eggs and chicks with an over-zealous contempt.

Brian had tried his best to be there for me, totally. He'd been on the same emotional roller coaster that I had. Buoyed up by one doctor's opinion and crushed by the next professional's negative assessment.

"I feel like some kind of damn guinea pig, Hayley," he'd often said. "I've been poked and prodded and tested until I feel that everybody in six counties knows everything about me. The only difference between me and a lab rat is that lab rats at least get room and board. All we do is pay and pay and pay for disappointment."

I couldn't blame him. I'd felt the same way myself over and over again. First I'd get on an emotional high when I'd hear about some new technique, then I'd find out that it wasn't appropriate for our situation, or that we couldn't afford it.

"It isn't that I don't want kids," Brian would say. "But our money is limited. We need a new brooder if we're going to stay competitive around here, and there isn't enough money to do both."

In the end, I'd had to agree. We'd already spent so much on pipe dreams. If it had ever worked anywhere for anybody, I was willing to give it a shot. But now, nearly ten years after we'd begun trying to have our own child, I'd had to admit a sense of inevitability was creeping into my thoughts.

Maybe I wouldn't have been a good mother, anyway, I'd think. But then I'd look up, like I was doing today, and catch Jenny's eye. She'd giggle, and I'd follow suit, and we'd instantly link moods. I knew I'd have been as good a mother to my own child as I was an aunt to her, but I feared I wasn't ever going to have that chance.

I managed to keep my emotions from getting too scrambled while Jenny and I finished the eggs. Then Jenny went out to follow Brian around while he did the chores. She came back begging for a glass of milk and a plate of cookies, full of the wonder of the things she'd seen.

"Uncle Brian took me down to the pond to see the ducks," she said. "He says pretty soon there will be baby ones."

"Pretty soon," I agreed and mentally kicked myself.

After all it was Spring, the traditional time for new life. I diverted my thoughts, and by the time Maddie had come to pick Jenny up, we had packed a basketful of colorful eggs: sunshine yellow, sky blue, blush pink, and our favorite bright purple.

"Thanks for doing Jenny's eggs," Maddie told me, "I'm such a klutz in the kitchen."

"You know I always love to have her here," I said.

After they'd left, extracting my promise to bring Brian and come for Easter dinner the next day, I moped about cleaning up the remains of our enthusiastic endeavor, putting a small bowl of rejects, eggs that hadn't taken the color or that were cracked, in the 'frig for Brian. He loved eggs in any way, shape, or form. They made me choke, except when they were used as an ingredient in something else.

I sighed. It had gotten too quiet, too quickly. I recalled a recent visit from my friend Tina of the infertility support group. She'd been trying to get pregnant even longer than I had. But with luxury of family money she'd been able to try all the accepted and even fringe treatments, not covered by any insurance.

"I swear, Hayley," she'd said. "I was nearly ready to try the turkey baster. I read in the paper where some woman in the South and her sister did just that, with sperm donated by her sister's husband and the woman standing on her head. It worked for them the first time."

"That sounds pretty desperate," I admitted.

"Haven't you gotten that low, yet?" she asked. "I have, a number of times, but something has always come along to raise my hopes, just before it dashes them again."

"I know that feeling only too well," I said.

"Tom and I have come to the decision that biological children are just not an option for us," Tina said suddenly. "It's taken a long time, and we've been fortunate that we've been able to try a lot of different avenues. It all comes down to just how far we're willing to go to try to conceive."

"You're done trying to have your own baby?" I asked, incredulous.

"We're just not comfortable with spending more and more money trying to achieve something that just isn't happening, even if we can afford it. We attended an international adoption forum last weekend."

"You're considering adoption seriously?"

"More than seriously," Tina told me. "We filled out a pre-application form. Then Tom and I did lots of talking. We been closer these last few days than in a long time. We feel we've finally made the right decision."

"How long does it take?"

"The average is about eighteen months. That sounds like a lifetime, doesn't it? But really, compared to the time we've already spent, that's really no time at all."

I had to ask the question that immediately crossed my mind. "But how do you and Tom feel about adopting a child that may look nothing like you?"

"We've talked a lot about that," Tina admitted. "But after all we've been through - you know how embarrassing some of the tests have been - we just aren't as self-conscious anymore. That's one of the luxuries you give up in a hurry. Having loving arms cuddle around your neck and a real voice say 'I love you,' would transcend the issue of whether the arms were white or brown or yellow." She reached in her purse and pulled out a brochure. "Here's the information if you want to call them."

I had taken it with an unsure hand, but I wished her well, and we promised to stay in touch. After she left, I was more unsettled in my mind than ever. Were Brian and I barking up the wrong family tree? Should we begin to realize that we might never have our own child? I had placed the pamphlet in a kitchen drawer to read later.

The next day, after a pleasant Easter Sunday spent with Maddie and Jenny and the rest of the family, I brought up the subject to Brian on the drive home. I recounted a little of my conversation with Tina.

"Do you think you might be ready to think about adoption?" I asked him.

We came to a signal light and had to stop, so Brian turned to look at me intently. "I've been thinking about it for a long time. The question is, are you ready, Hayley?"

This was a big step for me, as Brian well knew. "I think I'm ready to think about it," I answered as truthfully as I could.

A few weeks after Easter, Jenny came to spend a sunny afternoon on the farm, and she and I took a leisurely walk down by the tree-shaded pond that lay on the edge of the property.

"Look, Aunt Hayley," Jenny cried. "There's the duck that Uncle Brian and I saw before."

I smiled as I thought that at least to me, all big white ducks look the same. But the lone duck finished taking a long drink, then turned to look at us as if to say... "Don't I know you?" Then it waddled away toward the woods.

Suddenly from the underbrush a streak of red fur flashed between the woods and the pond. Almost before my mind could register what I was seeing, the fox had caught the duck in its mouth and was running back into the forest.

"Oh, no!" Jenny cried and ran after it.

I hurried after her, heart heavy with the reality that Jenny would have to face. The fox, of course, had long vanished. Jenny, tears pouring down her cheeks stood over a sheltered nest on the ground. In it, a lone egg sat waiting the return of its mother. I saw some scattered shell fragments nearby.

"Don't touch it, Jenny," I warned.

"That's Mrs. Duck's egg, isn't it?" Jenny asked. "We've got to get her back."

"She's gone," I said softly, and went over to put my arm about Jenny's shoulders. "But maybe we can save the egg. Go and get Uncle Brian in the barn. He'll know what to do. I'll stay here and guard the nest."

Jenny only hesitated a second and then ran as if her life depended upon it, blonde pony tail flying behind her.

In a few minutes, she and Brian had returned. Brian carefully picked up the egg by holding it in the middle and placed it on a glove.

"Yes, it's a duck egg, all right. We'll take it to one of the chicken's nests. But you mustn't be disappointed if it doesn't hatch, Jenny. We don't know how long ago it was laid or how long it's been left."

"But the Mother Duck was just here. She went to get a drink, and that bad fox caught her!"

Brian led us out of the woods and back toward the hen house. "It wasn't a bad fox, it was just a hungry fox. It was just bad luck for the duck to have been in that place at the same time as the fox. It's a law of nature, Jen, and we can't change that."

"But we can try and help the baby duck, can't we?" she pleaded, tears still streaming down her face.

Brian smiled at her, "We'll do our part, and Mrs. Chicken will do hers. But there's still a chance that it won't work out."

I followed them into the hen house and watched as Brian selected a likely candidate. "What do you think about this one?" he asked Jenny.

"She looks like a good mother," Jenny answered.

I was curious. "How do you know what a good mother looks like?" I asked.

"By the kind look in her eyes, and how fluffy her feathers are," Jenny replied.

I studied the chicken carefully, trying to decide if the eyes were kind looking. They were certainly bright eyes, and the feathers were very fluffy. I decided Jenny's criteria were as good as any. Brian placed the egg carefully, and we went back to the house

Jenny was impatient for the baby duck to hatch, and even though Brian had warned her about how long it would take, she still called us every few days to be sure that she'd not missed the event. When by Brian's reckoning, the big day was at hand, Jenny had wangled an invitation to spend Saturday night and Sunday with us. After Jenny had been reluctantly been coaxed to bed, Brian and I sat talking in bed, enjoying the cool and the quiet of the evening.

"Do you think Jenny's duck will hatch?"

"I think that the chickens may hatch tomorrow," he answered. "But as for that duck, well, it's anybody's guess. But if pure wishing has any affect, I'd say Jenny's chances are over the top."

"Will the mother chicken accept a duck?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised what one animal or another tries to raise," Brian said. "We had a cocker spaniel when I was a boy that kept trying to steal the neighbor cat's kittens. Her own puppies had died, and she wanted to mother something so badly that she risked the wrath of the mother cat."

"And in the end?"

"The mother cat lost interest after the kittens got a little bigger, but the dog never did. She and one of the kittens became inseparable until the dog died."

"That's a sad story."

"Think so?"

"Yeah, but I give the dog credit for making the best of her situation."

"That's all any of us can do," Brian told me gently.

"Are you trying to tell me something?"

"Are you hearing something?"

I hit him with my pillow. "I am thinking about it, Brian, but I just need a little more time."

"Take all the time you need," he said, kissing me good night.

Next morning, Jenny was up at the crack of dawn in anticipation and rushed off to help Brian with chores. I prepared breakfast for all of us, and when I opened a drawer searching for an oven mitt, I found the the adoption alternatives brochure that Tina had left for me. I read it carefully while I waited for the biscuits to bake. I saw the happy faces of the children and their new parents. Maybe it was time for me to try another way to fulfill my dream of being a mother. If Brian was ready, why wasn't I? I was just about to call the two early birds in to eat, when Jenny burst through the screen door.

"Aunt Hayley, you've got to come!"

I stuffed the brochure into my pocket and trailed the galloping child down to the pond. Brian stood there grinning. I watched as Mrs. Chicken and her brood strolled by, trailed by a fluffy yellow duckling.

"That's him!" Jenny cried. "That's my duck!"

I looked at Brian for confirmation and he nodded.

As we watched, the duckling at the end of the line of chicks stopped, and then confidently stepped into the pond. The hen attended to her other hatchlings, all chickens of course, and not inclined to enjoy a swim. She glanced back and clucked what seemed to be a warning, but the duckling was busy observing and copying the other ducks. But after a few minutes and some anxious clucks, the duckling emerged from the water and returned to the hen. The mother hen fussed over him for a few minutes as if to assure herself that all was well. Then she started on her way across the barnyard, the other chickens in pursuit. After a brief pause, the duckling followed.

"They're off for breakfast," I told Jenny, "and it's time for us to eat as well."

"I'm starved!" Jenny cried and ran off ahead of us.

Brian and I linked arms and made our way more slowly.

I looked up to meet Brian's amused face. "That should restore Jenny's faith in Mother Nature." he said.

"Mine too," I agreed. I stopped for a minute and stared deep into his brown eyes. "Brian, do I have kind eyes?"

"Huh?" he said. Then a grin spread across his face as he reached over to push my hair behind my ear. "Eyes will do, but the hair needs a bit more fluff."

I pulled the brochure from my pocket and handed it to him. "Then I think I'm ready to take the plunge!" I said, easing into his welcoming hug.