Baby come OUT. We say this a lot. And as randomly as possible, to try to skeer him out. We tell him the world is beautiful out here. / And also, I’m proud that he’s still in. It must be cozy in there. I’ve kept him safe this whole time.

It’s not nesting, more like hosting that I feel. This guest is coming, and he’ll be staying for a long-long time, and my family’s coming as soon as we call them with any news. Once all these people come, I won’t want to be cleaning my closet out, and I can’t see any point when I will want to once this baby-permanent-guest arrives, so yesterday I cleaned out my closet. My mom cares about windows and how clean they are, so yesterday I cleaned (only the smudgiest) windows. I want the baby’s room to be able to get as dark as possible in the day for naps, so this past week I made white curtains with window-blind material on the back. I don’t know when I’ll be able to do that once the baby comes, so I did it on a deadline. Not because I can’t survive if every crack in the tile isn’t scrubbed with a toothbrush, but because I want to be a good host. I made my brother vegan cookies and put them in the freezer. I bought my mom the kind of tea she likes to drink every day at 4 pm.

I wear black all the time, to trick the eye. I don’t feel enormous to myself, but I know that I’m enormous to other people. A friend called me after two years of silence because he had to tell me that he saw my photo site and that I’m pregnant. Another friend, less tactfully, yesterday: well you look relatively good, considering.

I tie my own shoes, even the boots with lots of laces. I bend down to pick up dirty clothes. I empty and fill the dishwasher. All these tasks I thought would be impossible are strenuous but not impossible.

For all that we’ve wanted this, there is no way to know exactly what you’re wanting, or to know even if you’ll like it. All nine months there has been hestitation. Will I be okay when my life changes in this way that I forced into existence and nurtured as best as I could, blindly and with only faith that this growing belly is going to offer up a prize? I have been hungry, starving, for people to say how wonderful it will be and that I’ll be okay. But at this point, we have been preparing for so long, it’s just time now. There is so little hesitation anymore. Now it’s like sitting in a theatre waiting for a play that was supposed to start, it’s a couple minutes late, we’re all fidgeting in our seats. (Baby come OUT.)

January 4th, 2010 | Category: the baby thing | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL