Tea Leaves

I told myself I was going to be very good. I wasn't going to test early. I wasn't going to symptom-spot.

Symptom-spotting, Succotash, is when a woman reads her body like tea leaves, trying to interpret arbitrary patterns of residue as if it holds meaningful codes to the near future. Conventional wisdom holds that symptom-spotting, like tea leaf reading, is a waste of fucking time and energy. On the one hand, any sensations that appear in a body as freshly pregnant as mine might be will be indistinguishable from the symptoms of a coming period, and on the other tea leaves are garbage that should just be thrown away.

I was being really good, I think. Yesterday to distract myself I applied for a writing job at Princeton. Ridiculous, right? I mean, it's the kind of job they only give to people who are famous and on high school reading lists. Or, like, young white guys with five o'clock shadow who have written only one book. Those are the choices - either Jamaica Kincaid, or some young white guy. His book will have come out with Graywolf Press. His author photo will have him in a black t-shirt and lit in a way that makes his eyes supernaturally blue.

But I digress. I was being really good, is what I was saying. I was ignoring my body. I am exceptionally good at ignoring my body. You know the whole Cartesian thought experiment that posits human consciousness is a trick and we are nothing but brains in vats? Of course you don't, because you don't exist, and if you don't exist you haven't had the chance to read Descartes. Suffice it to say, when I first learned about that thought experiment, which is supposed to strike the budding philosopher as absurd, I thought "Huh. That would explain a lot, actually."

So. I thought I had it nailed, Succotash. I was going to completely ignore my body until it was time for our determinative blood test.

That was before I woke up this morning with tender nipples.

Sorry if that's TMI, Succotash.

Now, logic suggests that I ignore this metaphorical clump of tea leaves. That I hold the cup under running water in the sink and rinse out the leaves and take them for what they are - arbitrary.

And yet. My breasts are often sore before a period, these past few years. It never was that way in my twenties, and I can't account for the change, but there it is. They typically get sore. Sometimes too sore to touch.

Not just the nipples, though. It's usually the whole shebang.

DAMMIT. See what I just did? Succotash, what the hell? I'm staring at the tea leaves instead of washing them down the sink. I'm squinting at them, and seeing shapes. Just as I promised myself not to do.

You would-be mother is a hypocrite, Succotash. A hypocrite who lies to herself. What hope can you possibly have, with such a woman for a would-be mother?