The Last of the Mohicans

I was sitting on the back porch of our house with an older writer friend, and I was deep in a vin triste.

A vin triste, imaginary baby, is a French name for this thing that happens when you've read "A Farewell to Arms" too many times. Suffice it to say, there was wine and I was emotional. I thought I was anxious about my job. A stranger walked by outside our protective hemlock hedge, and your dog barked at him.

"Shut up!" the stranger snapped at my dog.

"No, YOU SHUT UP!" I screamed at him. Nobody insults your dog for doing his job. Not while I'm drunk on the back porch. He went away, and your dog resumed his patrol of the fence, and I felt foolish.

"Is this because you haven't been able to get pregnant yet?" my friend asked gently.

I looked at her, blinked once, realized she was right, and blew my nose on my shirt.

She was very patient.

"You know what you need to do," she said after refilling my glass. Which, by the way, is only one path out of a vin triste. You can either sober up (recommended), drink past it (not recommended), or give in to the self-pity and weep (utterly not recommended). All options are equally bad. This is why Hemingway is dangerous to read.

I took a ragged breath, tossed back some more rose, and said "What."

"You have to watch The Last of the Mohicans," she said sagely.

"You mean the Daniel Day-Lewis film?" I asked.

"Yep," said my famous older novelist friend. "I've had two friends, both of them trying to get pregnant. They watched The Last of the Mohicans, and bam. Just like that."

"You're kidding," I said.

"Nope," she said. "It works."

I don't have any siblings, imaginary baby. When I outlive my parents, and when I outlive my husband, my family will come to an end. Unless my novelist friend's idea works.

I, Chinoochtuk. The last of the Mohicans.

Social Media

Hey there imaginary baby,

So, out here they have this thing called the internet, where some people live. It's very noisy and distracting, which is a surprise given how little real content or aesthetic experiences are available there. But the rent is cheap.

It can be easy to keep track of people there, though, which has both its good sides and its bad sides. There will be people in your life about whom you care, but who for whatever reason you are unlikely to ever see again. Or at least, not see that often. It can be nice to have a way to keep tabs on those people. It's like seeing people in the school cafeteria. You don't say hi to everybody. Some special few you greet with a hug. Some people you wish would be hit by a truck. But most of them fall somewhere in between, people about whom it's nice to know that they're basically doing okay.

Lots of science has recently proven, however, that all our desire to demonstrate our essential okayness can be hugely depressing. Partly because in any given life an inevitable period of majorly Not Okay will fall. I'm not even all that old, and yet some major Not Okay has befallen me already. And people I know, too - death. Illness. Financial loss. Fear. There's bad stuff. It does occur.

But we often only want to share those bad things with people who make us feel safe enough. It's hug-level friend news, not cafeteria news. So we keep it hidden. And to those of us at cafeteria level, it looks like nothing bad is happening.

A few women I know were ambivalent around the same time I was. And now, all three of them have extant babies. Chub-faced pictures fill my feed. And for some others, the chub-faces have started to subside into kid-faces.

I think we've missed it, imaginary baby. And I don't want it getting all over the cafeteria, but it's starting to make me really sad.

Chub

I've put on weight.

I'm not sure how much, because fortunately the scale here isn't working. It isn't all *that* bad, as all my clothes still fit, with the sole exception of this one sheath dress that was really, really tight to begin with, and which works better with foundation garments anyway, and the last time I tried I could still get the zipper up, I just couldn't sit down, and it was kind of riding up on my hips in a not so flattering way, which suggests that there is some extra weight in my ass region.

Where I've really noticed, however, is in the boobs. I was never a chesty person, to put it lightly. In fact, I did one of those DNA tests a few years ago, the most hilarious part of which was that the test would tell you what color eyes and hair you had (because, why not?). Among those salient and easily confirmed details I was also informed I had smaller than average breasts. Thanks for the tip, I thought.

But in the last year or so, that hasn't been as much the case. I cleave now. I've had to acquire new technologies, in sizes heretofore unimagined. At different moments, they ache.

They're aching right now.

I don't know if this is due to this brain tumor situation, which changes hormones in there, or what. That seems like a reasonable explanation. Or perhaps it's just the vagaries of age. Do other women wait until their late 30s to grow breasts? Maybe not. But here they are. I can move them around, fluff them up, make them pretty.

I'm due again on Sunday. Are my newly plush breasts a clue? Or a coincidence?

I guess we'll find out soon enough.