Peggy sat at the table of the Blue Jay Restaurant, staring out the window and wondering where her life had gone, and what she should do with her new condition.

She had hoped that the signs she felt from her body were false and that she was simply sick. But she knew from what happened to her older sister that there was no getting around the truth.

Peggy was pregnant. The man she surrendered her virginity to had helped her to conceive a child. It was a dream she had since childhood and nursed along since reaching puberty.

But, he was not the man she had hoped for. He was much older than here. She was 21 years old and got to know him while working at the pizza store he operated along Girard Avenue in the heart of North Philadelphia, where Peggy was raised and hoped to leave someday.

Romantic love discarded for sake of child-rearing

Now her plans for the immediate future would change. She’d be forced to make choices that would alter her dreams and the bright tomorrow she had hoped to see on reaching adulthood.

No, she would not seek an abortion. Peggy was raised Catholic and she would not consider such action which the church considered a mortal sin. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t know where to seek such a procedure, having little or no contact with any women’s movement that could possibly guide her with her situation.

Give birth to the child out of wedlock? No. Place the child somewhere through an adoption agency? No.

She’d get married to a man that she knew could be a good provider and a good father. If all went well, he’d be a good friend.

So what if she didn’t love him, So what if she still cared for her old boyfriend, the one she and others believed would one day get married and settle down. He was in the army awaiting orders to go to Vietnam and who knew if he would ever return, or if he did, whether he’s still be the boy she had given her heart to.

No, she knew it was better this way.

Better for all concerned; better for all parties forever more.

Wasn’t it?