When Will I Feel it?

The internet says Succotash is the size of a mango, or just about, as I am still a few days way from 19 weeks. The internet also says I will start feeling him soon. Little flutters. Gas bubbles?

The funny part is, in the novel I have coming out next month, the protagonist feels a quickening at a crucial moment in the plot, and it's so surprising and distracting that it changes something that the protagonist is in the middle of doing. In the book I describe it as butterfly wings, or as the flickering of a fish.

I am very curious to learn if I got that part right.

I am very curious about all of these things.

Back in New York, unpacking my sailing bag, I tucked a tiny regatta sweatshirt and a regatta hat signed by all the crew into the top drawer of my dresser, where I have been hiding miscellaneous things. It used to be mostly swimsuits and long gloves, things used seasonally or for special occasions. But it also contains a stuffed rabbit in an apron that I had as a child, and a big stuffed lobster with "Boston" on the claw, and a pacifier and binky from some friends, and a few other sundries. Baby presents, perhaps.

Last week my father brought up his silver porridger with his name on it, polished to a high sheen and lovingly dented from his own babyhood. L laughed at our family tendency to use things that are "perfectly good." I have my mother's silver baby spoons, and my own silver baby cup, and my own silver baby rattle, and I imagine tying these things with ribbon to Succotash's high chair and letting him use them too. Because why wouldn't I? They are perfectly good.

I wonder if feeling these butterfly wings that I have imagined into a literary person already will bring this story I've been telling myself, this hypothetical baby I have been trying to conjure out of thin air for the past six years, into a sense of reality. He's only four months away. How is that possible? That's no time at all! Four months!

Four months.

Waiting for the kicks that tell me it's really happening.