I have started fantasizing about you. Who you might be, and what you might do.
I have looked up summer camp in Marblehead. Short day camps start at 4. Childrens' Island starts at 7, where you head off on a boat with a packed lunch and run wild on an island with a swimming pool and an arts and crafts shed.
Intro youth sailing starts at the Pleon at 8. Last night your father dreamt about us sailing with you as a little boy, so by the time you go to Pleon you'll have already gone out afternoons with us on the Ensign. I am imagining buying you your own Opti when you are seven, wading out into Little Harbor and watching you muck about in it when the tide is low and going, so there's no chance of you getting in over your head.
I became very focused on thinking about names with your father this weekend, and made a large spreadsheet, and bounced several names off of him. Some he liked and I didn't (Abner), some I liked and he didn't (Adonijah), but we have a couple lined up now that I think could be good. I have a strong preference for one over another. It comes with a good nickname. I wonder if it's the name of a boy who is tall and confident, or the name of a boy who is bookish and shy. Or of a boy who is maybe a little bit on the spectrum, as I always suspect I am, who has to be cajoled to look people in the eye and who talks too long and with too much focused interest on obscure topics without understanding the boredom of his listeners.
A blue eyed boy? A brown eyed boy? Your father's are blue. Mine are brown. But three of my four grandparents were blue. I'd be lying if I said I didn't always want blue eyes. Internalized racism? Anti-semitism? Colorism? I don't know, but I'm still pleased to think that you have a 50/50 shot.
I'm already puzzled by the assumptions other people are bringing to you, as if mine aren't bad enough. Your step-granddad planning to buy you Astros onesies. Wondering what sports you will play. Because you're a boy, I guess. Never mind that your father hated sports, and still does, and of the two of us I'm the one who likes the World Cup and America's Cup and half-heartedly keeps up with the Red Sox just because I feel as though I should. Gender is a prison, little male person who is coming into being inside my body right now. I don't know how I'm going to free you of it. I probably can't. I can try to help you. Listen closely to what you tell me. Pay attention to your passions as they bubble into existence.
"We will have this kid for the rest of our lives," L said to me the other day. "This kid. Our son."
Our son. Succotash, still, for the time being.
You.
Monday, April 29, 2019
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Pressing the Coffee
I had just gotten back from walking the dog and giving him some fresh kibble and I was pressing the coffee when the phone rang, and it was a 212 number from an official-looking place.
It was NYU, calling with our NIPT results.
They said that Succotash was at a "minimal," i.e. 1 in 10,000 risk for chromosomal abnormalities, and that they had information on the sex if I wanted it. Did I want it?
"Yes please," I said, still pressing the coffee.
"You ready?" said Olga, the nurse on the other end of the line.
"Yes," I said.
"It's a baby.... boy."
"Oh. Oh my gosh," I said, and I immediately started to cry. I think she congratulated me, and I know I thanked her for calling, and then we hung up and I was done pressing the coffee and I had to call L immediately and tell him that not only are we having a baby who is healthy, but he's a boy, and he's going to be a real person, out in the world.
This is really happening.
You. You are really happening.
It was NYU, calling with our NIPT results.
They said that Succotash was at a "minimal," i.e. 1 in 10,000 risk for chromosomal abnormalities, and that they had information on the sex if I wanted it. Did I want it?
"Yes please," I said, still pressing the coffee.
"You ready?" said Olga, the nurse on the other end of the line.
"Yes," I said.
"It's a baby.... boy."
"Oh. Oh my gosh," I said, and I immediately started to cry. I think she congratulated me, and I know I thanked her for calling, and then we hung up and I was done pressing the coffee and I had to call L immediately and tell him that not only are we having a baby who is healthy, but he's a boy, and he's going to be a real person, out in the world.
This is really happening.
You. You are really happening.
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Dream
Last night I dreamt that I had a 1965 Pontiac Firebird that I forgot I owned, that had been sitting in a garage for ten years. It was covered in tickets and one of its tires was flat, but when I got in it was perfectly shiny and clean, and I found two pairs of sandals and a couple of bras of mine that no longer fit. Small, delicate, and lacy. The car started right up when I turned the key. A convertible.
When I woke up I wasn't sure if there was such a thing as a 1965 Pontiac Firebird. I looked it up, and there was, and my dream reconstructed it with complete accuracy.
It's not unusual for me to dream detailed architectural dreams, but they are usually rooms I discover in my house that I didn't know where there, or alternative arrangements of basements in apartments where I no longer live. Sometimes I dream about boats. But this is the first time that I know of I have had a detailed car dream.
It makes me wonder what other things I don't know that I know. And what these forgotten and rediscovered spaces might mean.
When I woke up I wasn't sure if there was such a thing as a 1965 Pontiac Firebird. I looked it up, and there was, and my dream reconstructed it with complete accuracy.
It's not unusual for me to dream detailed architectural dreams, but they are usually rooms I discover in my house that I didn't know where there, or alternative arrangements of basements in apartments where I no longer live. Sometimes I dream about boats. But this is the first time that I know of I have had a detailed car dream.
It makes me wonder what other things I don't know that I know. And what these forgotten and rediscovered spaces might mean.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Outing
Well. Here we go.
Today in discussions with editor and agent about revised delivery deadline for a second novel, I had to out myself as someone who will need an extra year on the deadline because lo and behold, but I am having a baby come October. I had reasons for wanting to keep the news to myself, but keep it I could no longer.
And because my colleagues now know, I have told my parents that they can tell their friends and family if they want to.
You are very shortly to be a secret no longer, Succotash. God help us all.
Today in discussions with editor and agent about revised delivery deadline for a second novel, I had to out myself as someone who will need an extra year on the deadline because lo and behold, but I am having a baby come October. I had reasons for wanting to keep the news to myself, but keep it I could no longer.
And because my colleagues now know, I have told my parents that they can tell their friends and family if they want to.
You are very shortly to be a secret no longer, Succotash. God help us all.
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Seeing You
I can't believe you're in there. Just chilling. Lying on your back, with your hand up by your head, which incidentally is how I sleep. I start on my side and wind up on my back with my arms over my head. It is also how your grandfather sleeps. And presumably your great-grandfather. And everyone else.
You don't even exist yet, and yet you do. In there. I look down at myself, and I can tell, and people who know me well can tell, and my pants are getting snug, but if you are a stranger on the street you are a secret.
I'm at the library today, and I bumped into my friend W, who you will come to know, because you will follow his daughter around and crave her approval every Christmas when they come to visit. I had your ultrasounds in my handbag and so I showed him, spreading them out on a cafe table in the lobby of the central research building, which you will come to know when I bring you to activities in the basement. I pointed out your hand up by your face, explaining that's how I sleep, and a somewhat unstable woman one table over hollered "Are you pregnant?"
"Yes," I said.
"How far along are you?"
"Ah.... about three months."
She eyed me, and then said "Good luck."
"That was inappropriate," W said quietly when she had turned away.
"Yep," I agreed.
Then I told W how during our scan when some pressure or something disturbed you, you punched me. I didn't feel it, because you are too small and weak. A little silkworm in there. But I saw it.
Last night I dreamt that I was in my father's parents' house, at a luncheon crowded with old people I didn't recognize. I understood it to be a family reunion, but everyone was old, and I didn't know anyone. I got into a heated argument with a woman who was trying to talk to me about patrimony and New England, and I shouted something like "There were people here first! We stole their land! That's nothing to celebrate!" And then I stormed off in a huff to sulk in a study with a huge fireplace, high ceilings, lined with books and portraits I didn't recognize either. I understood that the house belonged to me now, though I couldn't understand what I would want with a house in Conroe Texas (which is where the house this dream is based upon was), or what I was supposed to do with it.
Your father thinks I had this dream because I am thinking about names, and heritage, and what family means. If I were a more superstitious or magically minded person, I would wonder if I weren't at the center of some ghostly confabulation, a discussion amongst the dead over where our family should go, and what it should mean. These strangers, haunting us, in ways seen and unseen. Both of us asleep with our arms over our heads.
You don't even exist yet, and yet you do. In there. I look down at myself, and I can tell, and people who know me well can tell, and my pants are getting snug, but if you are a stranger on the street you are a secret.
I'm at the library today, and I bumped into my friend W, who you will come to know, because you will follow his daughter around and crave her approval every Christmas when they come to visit. I had your ultrasounds in my handbag and so I showed him, spreading them out on a cafe table in the lobby of the central research building, which you will come to know when I bring you to activities in the basement. I pointed out your hand up by your face, explaining that's how I sleep, and a somewhat unstable woman one table over hollered "Are you pregnant?"
"Yes," I said.
"How far along are you?"
"Ah.... about three months."
She eyed me, and then said "Good luck."
"That was inappropriate," W said quietly when she had turned away.
"Yep," I agreed.
Then I told W how during our scan when some pressure or something disturbed you, you punched me. I didn't feel it, because you are too small and weak. A little silkworm in there. But I saw it.
Last night I dreamt that I was in my father's parents' house, at a luncheon crowded with old people I didn't recognize. I understood it to be a family reunion, but everyone was old, and I didn't know anyone. I got into a heated argument with a woman who was trying to talk to me about patrimony and New England, and I shouted something like "There were people here first! We stole their land! That's nothing to celebrate!" And then I stormed off in a huff to sulk in a study with a huge fireplace, high ceilings, lined with books and portraits I didn't recognize either. I understood that the house belonged to me now, though I couldn't understand what I would want with a house in Conroe Texas (which is where the house this dream is based upon was), or what I was supposed to do with it.
Your father thinks I had this dream because I am thinking about names, and heritage, and what family means. If I were a more superstitious or magically minded person, I would wonder if I weren't at the center of some ghostly confabulation, a discussion amongst the dead over where our family should go, and what it should mean. These strangers, haunting us, in ways seen and unseen. Both of us asleep with our arms over our heads.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Moody
I don't know what's going on. But I'm in a mood. A deep, intractable, immobile, dark mood.
Part of it is pain. I am running out of places to stick myself with progesterone in my haunches that don't hurt. Sitting down hurts. Walking hurts. Sticking myself hurts.
Part of it is boredom. I am preoccupied with my body, and how it feels, and how it is changing, and managing the parts of it that don't feel well - my nausea, my fatigue, my soreness. These things crowd into my brain and crowd out everything else, like creativity, curiosity, attention. And then I soon grow bored with myself. I can no longer stand how tedious the inside of my mind has become, which is to say a catalogue of symptoms instead of a person, or a collection of ideas.
And then, because I feel like I am losing a part of myself that matters, I grow despondent.
And I worry this is who I am going to be now. A suffering body instead of a mind.
Part of it is pain. I am running out of places to stick myself with progesterone in my haunches that don't hurt. Sitting down hurts. Walking hurts. Sticking myself hurts.
Part of it is boredom. I am preoccupied with my body, and how it feels, and how it is changing, and managing the parts of it that don't feel well - my nausea, my fatigue, my soreness. These things crowd into my brain and crowd out everything else, like creativity, curiosity, attention. And then I soon grow bored with myself. I can no longer stand how tedious the inside of my mind has become, which is to say a catalogue of symptoms instead of a person, or a collection of ideas.
And then, because I feel like I am losing a part of myself that matters, I grow despondent.
And I worry this is who I am going to be now. A suffering body instead of a mind.
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