Oh man

Would you look at this?

Shit.

Nothing written here since April. I'm sorry, imaginary baby. It's not that you haven't been on my mind, because you have. I've just been really busy, you know? I know. That's not your problem. Fortunately, I console myself that lack of existence also suggests an independence of time. And so April is the same as July is the same as tomorrow. Feel free to disabuse me of this assumption, should you ever come into being.

Not much has changed since last we spoke. I've had some busy work time, with another book coming out, and then another on the horizon, and yet another one due in a mere forty days. A lot can happen in forty days, as you may one day discover. Just think. In forty days you yourself could venture from hypothetical to possible. Not quite actual. Just short of actual. But certainly possible. I guess we'll see.

You should know that I've stopped with the plastic sticks. I'm not convinced they're the best approach. According to the doctor who is treating my brain tumor, by the time the lines or the crosshatches or the smiley faces or whatever appear, it's actually a day or two past prime exposure time. So what's the point, then? Just another case of the commodification of women's bodies, if you ask me, which you didn't. Trust me, though, that's a thing. One hopes it might be less of a thing, when you roll around, but I don't have high hopes. Suffice it to say. No more plastic sticks.

Which is not to say that I'm giving up, necessarily. I'm taking the brain meds and everything. I'm just endeavoring not to worry about it as much.

Actually, I'm sort of lying. L thinks we're giving up.

Are we giving up? Am I?

Are you?

The world has enough people, it could be argued. And some of them need homes. In fact, one of those people has been living in my house over the past year - your half uncle (is that even a thing?). He's nineteen. I don't really need to go into that with you right now, but let's just say, it's tiring. Teenagers, man. They're a lot of work. This is why you, you lucky duck, will be sent to your father's boarding school for high school. Trust me, it's a good idea. You'll thank me when the time comes.

If the time comes.

Better Living Through Chemistry

My bathroom is now littered with plastic sticks soaked in urine. I expect a comfort with bodily fluids is good preparation, should this project ever come to fruition, though frankly it's not my favorite part of the process. The plastic sticks are supposed to tell me important information, using a complex visual code of bright lines, faded lines, absent lines, crossing lines, pink lines, blue lines, and in one instance, a flashy smiley face. Though I'm pretty sure my urine was corrosive enough that it fried off the flashy smiley face after a few hours abandoned on the side of the sink.

I've made one sally to an acupuncturist. My smile began as genuine, and then it too was fried off as the acupuncturist - "witch doctor" in my husband's idiom - explained to me about temperature-taking and charts and herbs and cupping and went on and on and on and frankly, it just sounded like a lot of work.

I smiled and nodded, all the while thinking "You know what? I don't feel like doing any of that."

 By the time I wound up stretched on my back, socks off, fists riddled with stick pins, clutching a remote doorbell button to summon the doctor in the case of panic, I realized a mistake had been made. Is taking your temperature really so much work, compared to the amount of work that goes into caring for a totally dependent small animal? I mean, no. But that doesn't mean I'm willing to do it. As I reflected on the limits of my own willingness to use a portion of my limited time on earth charting my temperature obsessively and swallowing herbs I don't understand, tears started squeezing out of the corners of my eyes, and painful electric heat began zapping around under my skin, through my muscles. The doctor reappeared, remarked that I looked emotional, and pushed the needles in deeper.

It really hurt. I made it another five minutes before I rang the doorbell and insisted on being allowed to leave.

The doctor panicked. But why, she wanted to know?

"I'm sorry," I said, wiping tears and snot away with the back of my sleeve. "But I am in pain. And I don't think this is for me."

She fluttered around me, apologizing, feeling guilty, saying I should keep coming, that she would keep my file so that I could come back any time. I said "That's won't be necessary," and flexed my hand to bring feeling back into my thumbs before signing the credit card slip. No cupping. No herbs. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not for me.

So, it's back to the plastic sticks. I catch myself wondering if the housecleaner has noticed the surfeit of plastic sticks in the garbage can. They rattle when you kick it.

An Apology

I feel like I should apologize to you, first and foremost, because you do not exist. It's not just that, because not existing, by itself, is probably not all that bad. After all, you don't know that you don't exist, so you probably don't have much of an opinion on it. But I want to apologize anyway, because I happen to know that there are a goodly number of people who wish that you did (my husband, for instance), and also because today is the first nice spring day we've had. The windows are open, and there is a pair of cardinals shopping for a condo in our hedge outside, and you're missing it. I'm sorry about that. There will be other new spring days as fine as this one in your lifetime, should it occur, but not this one.

I should also apologize to you because, given my age and that whole "brain tumor" situation, there are no guarantees that you will one day be around to experience a spring day like this one. My GP thinks you probably will. She looks me up and down, and sees me slim and healthy and glossy-haired and vegetarian and doing yoga, and not smoking and generally speaking coming across like a decent and responsible person, and she feels confident that once I'm back on the brain meds for the tumor (that's a scary word, but you don't have to worry about it at this point, I promise), that you will begin to appear of your own volition. Six months, that's her opinion.

I have to be honest with you, and this is part of the apology. I wasn't sure you were such a good idea at first. That's why it's taken me so long. It's not personal. I just mean that I wasn't sure you were a good idea for *me.* What if I'm not as responsible as I appear? I sleep late. I'm selfish. I'm definitely obsessed with my work. Also, it took me awhile, as it does many American women, to come to love my body as it was. That was a whole process. And now, to think about spoiling it - on purpose! - that didn't excite me. That probably seems very petty to you, and I'm sorry for it. But I'm just being honest.

The funny thing is, I've caught myself thinking about you. Books I think you would like. Artwork that I really want you to see. I have purchased a few toys for you, because I think you'll really love them, and I'm worried they'll go out of production. I have a bed for you. It's the same bed I slept in, and my dad slept in, and an unbroken line of taciturn people with my basic genetic makeup all the way back to the 1820s. I've already cautioned you, in my mind, not to jump on it.

I have your name, in mind. Well, two, depending on which side you go with. I like them both. I want you to like them, too. I want you to feel like they give you a sense of place, a sense of continuity with your family. Unlike others of your generation, you will  not be given a name that's supposed to make me sound cool. Aidan, Jaden, Bookcase, and Clyde. Your name will be sort of stuffy. You will probably hate it, for a time. But eventually, I hope you will secretly enjoy it. That the stuffiness will become a family joke.

I have already thought about where you would do best in school. I'm making a lot of assumptions about you, I realize, which is hardly fair, given that you don't even exist. But I want to stoke your curiosity as thoroughly as I can. I am willing to be a hypocrite in service of your education. I will put you on lists.

I'm sorry that my work will make me a bit remote from you, emotionally. I'm sorry that I will spend so much time shuttered away in my office writing. And I'm definitely sorry for the myriad ways in which your life will be mined for my work, which it inevitably will be. Here you don't even exist, and I'm already doing it. The trade-off is, I want you to be in the wider world. I will take you traveling with me. We will consider ways to live broadly. We will huger for experiences together. You can take your revenge on me in a memoir, and I'll even help you get it published, because I love you.