Unexpected Pain
This isn’t about the physical pain. Not directly anyway. It’s hard to watch Ms wince and squirm with Critter’s every kick and punch, sure. I wish I could take that away, or some part of it. Share in the experience. Lift the burden. Anything, really. But I can’t. It’s a recurring theme, isn’t it? Gestation is exciting! We’re having a baby! It’s magical! But at this point … it’s really not. I’m not growing unexpectedly (much to Ms’ dismay, I appear to be shrinking a bit, which is both good and overdue). I’m not suffering mystifying pains and tweaks and cramps. I’m not dependent on a bizarrely (and hilariously) shaped pillow just to get a little bit of comfort at night. I don’t have something punching me in the bladder. I’m not confronted at every turn by conflicting pregnancy advice. Nobody is finding slots in my calendar to schedule a shower (and, please, don’t). I mean, I’m not doing nothing. I’m working like I always do, maybe a bit more lately. I clean up animal crap. I try in my limited and unskilled way to do as much as I can around the house. I nuke heating pads. I prepare snacks and try to cook dinner, even if it’s just shells and cheese. I’m not patting myself on the back here, but I think I’m doing more or less what I’m supposed to be doing. But here I am wide awake at 1:30 in the morning in a state of something like shock because … I don’t even know how to say it. A few days ago, we were at the doctor getting an ultrasound. Critter was there, actually looking a bit human (a positive development!). Ms and I had driven separately, because we’d each come from work. After the appointment, she headed back to the office. I headed to a gas station to fill up, and then headed in the same direction she’d gone. I hopped on the Interstate and immediately was caught in horrible, bumper to bumper traffic. Checked the map, and there was an accident several exits ahead. I texted Ms (don’t worry, I was sitting still): “Fucking traffic.” Ms didn’t respond. And didn’t respond. I was suddenly overwhelmed with this horrible, clenching fear that she’d been in the accident. I pulled up a traffic camera (still not moving), and right at the accident was a small patch of pixels in the shape of a car the same color as Ms’ car. It wasn’t. She called me a minute later to let me know she’d gotten off the Interstate and was headed home because of the traffic. I’d never been so relieved to hear my wife’s irritated voice. That’s where I am right now. My life is almost mundane. It’s busy. I’m doing all the stuff I’m supposed to be doing, but there’s nothing particularly extraordinary about it. And Ms … she’s doing all the things she’s supposed to be doing, a few more things she wants to be doing, and ohbytheway growing a baby, with all the stress and pain that involves. And I’m on conference calls. Intellectually I know that’s ok. I’m not the one with the plumbing to grow a baby. There’s no physical way for me to share the hardest part of this process. She’s built for it. Her body is the end result of billions of years of evolution to create this bizarre, inconvenient way of making more of us. But...
Efforting
It’s one of those idiotic corporate-speak words, “efforting.” As in, “Efforting is being made to show an improvement in negative profitability by inverse hiring.” Truly, it’s a magical, stupid language, something that should be preserved for all time as an example of the frailty of human enterprise. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about vacuum-brained corporate drones. Just a brief observation tonight: it seems like my entire existence these days – and I mean this in an entirely positive way – is based on scouring my brain for anything that has ever given me pleasure or reduced pain in order to combat the myriad tweaks and discomforts that comprise Ms’ current existence. I mean, she’s not, or doesn’t seem to be, a walking pile of fail or anything. She’s remarkably fit, limber, and energetic. For anyone, I mean, not just for a pregnant woman. But she’s suffering any of a number of system failures these days. Low blood pressure? Tingly sensation around her solar plexus? Foot pain? It sends me into this overdrive mode of “Ok, I need to fix this NOW!” She noted last night that I’ve become awfully protective lately. And it’s true. She doesn’t need protecting. She’s tougher than I am in every way. But I figure we’re dealing with some pretty hard-coded genetic imperatives here. It makes me chuckle. Now off to figure out whether Tiger Balm will give our baby...
Family is weird
I could just stop the post before it starts. Everybody knows family is weird. Family gets even weirder when a baby is on the way. Family members chime in with slightly creepy joy, someone inevitably makes a really, really inappropriate comment about how you came to be a parent-to-be, and somebody trundles along with the “welp! your life is over!” cynicism. And then there’s the person who observes, possibly innocently, on the physical state of your wife in a way that should simply never be. I think my dad managed to hit all off those yesterday. A brief word about my dad: he’s emotionally awkward. He’s a loving, kind man, but he’s peculiar. He’d admit that he was peculiar, though he’s from an era that didn’t have our confessional culture, so he’d wring his hands and think it was weird that we were talking about it. Any conversation with my dad contains at least one that makes you want to wander away and crawl under a rock for a good week or two. So when he asked how Ms was doing, I prepared myself. He didn’t disappoint. Dad: How’s Ms? Me: She’s great! Dad: How’s her … Insert a long, long pause here. This is common with my dad. He will sometimes wander off to some other, more interesting place in his brain for a few seconds. I knew, however, that he was trying to work out a way to ask about Critter. Me: What? Dad: How’s her … girth? Me: I’m sorry, what? Dad: How’s her girth? Here he chuckles. Me: I assume you’re referring to her pregnancy. She’s great. She looks like a pregnant woman. She looks wonderful. The conversation goes on like this for a few minutes before he decides to wax sentimental. Dad: You’re going to have a great time. Me: I hope so. I’m looking forward to it. Dad: Having a baby will give you great happiness. And if it doesn’t, well, remember it’s all your fault. I honestly don’t know whether he’s referring here to my responsibility to find joy in raising our son, or whether he’s making an extremely awkward comment about how we came to be in this situation. This is my dad. He is odd. As it turns out, I have some of the same affliction. Ms was wandering around the house a couple of days ago in a body-clinging garment that she’d been wearing under work clothes. I don’t understand women’s clothing, so that’s all I’ll say about it. She made a comment that she looked like a very strange superhero, so I said – honestly – that she looked great. She did. Then I told her to fly like Superman, which she did, and I took a picture. Because husband. Later, we were talking about it again, and the following happened: Me: Naw, you look great. Although… Ms: What? Me: I really shouldn’t say it… Ms: You started it. Now you have to finish it. Me: Ok, well, you looked like a little like the performance artist from The Big Lebowski. At this point, there is a pause. A brief but weighty pause. A cusp, you might say, beyond which reality could take two vastly different forms. Happily I can report that Ms bellowed with laughter. She has a good laugh. And I might be more like my dad than I care to...