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On the first day of preschool, my son gripped my hand. He peered into the classroom, his eyes wide. “Go ahead,” I said, squeezing my fingers out of his and nudging him forward. The teacher approached and crouched to his level, saying his name with a smile.
Read MoreWould you feel differently about me if I wanted to have children?
His pause told me everything; before he could parse out, I think so? I knew. It was more telling than the way he’d wheezed, I'm excited to see you too, dread of my visit dripping from his voice. In less than a week, I was supposed to fly out for a long weekend together. We’d been dating long distance for six months and everything seemed to be going well. He mentioned via text the previous night that he’d call to explain his ‘situation’ in the morning. I’d understood his situation as ‘needing a ride to the dentist’ while I was in town; he’d just received the bad luck news of an impending root canal. I didn’t anticipate his ‘situation’ would entail phrases such as my love has plateaued and I just need to rip off the Band-Aid.
Read MoreOn my study’s display shelf devoted to cherished objects stands a miniature porcelain Dutch clog from Delft. HOLLAND it proclaims above a hand-painted image of a windmill and house by a river, small waves brought to life by slashes of cobalt glaze applied by a skilled hand.
At first, I wonder if this is a memento from a trip to the Netherlands, homeland of my maternal grandfather. My cousin sends me photographs of other Delft blue and white porcelain brought from Zeeland by our great-grandmother and given to her mother, my aunt: a set of two canisters, a platter, a dairymaid statuette. I fantasize that this clog creates a connection between me and relatives I’ve never met. I want this heirloom to show me how I belong to this family, and it does, but not in the way I expect.
Read MoreI’m sorry I couldn’t go to your wedding and that my explanation was vague and seemed rude. My doctor wouldn’t let me fly. I couldn’t find the words. I worried that mentioning pregnancy loss would cloud the conversation of your celebration.
Read MoreA woman appearing before you desperately frightened by the usual gesticulations, the kicks and rolls inside of her becoming suddenly still, by the warm trickle down her leg, fluid or blood but too soon, too soon. What if you took her by the hand and walked her to a room much like a bedroom, with bleached sheets and pillow cases, bassinet and muslin blankets, with warm light coming through a southern window but stark for its waxed floors where blood pooled at your feet just last week, now a shadow upon which you sometimes slip for the mercilessness of memory? Merciless because this isn’t the first time and, by the wickedness of fate, it will never be the last.
Read MoreI was twenty-nine. I didn’t know what to feel, or what it would feel like. That first sonogram seemed other-worldly. At every twitch I thought I was feeling the first flutters, but when they began to come with regularity, the realness set in that I was at a different stage of being a woman.
Read MoreMy friend came over and we slowly drank wine and talked—her miscarriage (a couple years earlier), my miscarriage (current), the moments that blindsided each of us in a wash of grief, what the aftermath was like for her and what getting pregnant again was like. I was smack dab in the middle of my experience and found comfort in talking to friends who had been there and who had now had time to assimilate it within a zoomed-out picture of The Rest of Life.
Read MoreMy two young children, clad in neon swimsuits, danced around impatiently in the backyard, checking on the progress every now and then. Our new inflatable pool—turquoise and gray with an attached blow-up slide—was being filled with the garden hose; it was taking forever for any noticeable progress. It was mid-June and the Wisconsin weather was in the low 70’s; I wasn’t about to tell my kids that even when the pool had filled to an acceptable volume, the sun still had to heat the water, cold and sputtering from the spigot, and that it was likely to take days, not hours.
Read MoreSuspended above the Delaware River, I can no longer time my contractions. The fierce waves of pain sweep up my facility to do anything but breathe. Breathe I do, with an equally fierce grip on the vinyl door handle of my husband’s pickup truck—never more thankful for its heated leather seats. As my insides constrict, my fingers squeeze the handle tighter. When my muscles release their grip, I release mine, measuring my breath with a will resolute.
Read MoreIn high school, my philosophy teacher assigned each student a different question and corresponding primary sources for our term paper. He assigned me the question, “Are women free?” and handed me a Sandra Bartky article that outlined the fragmentation, domination, and objectification the female body endures.
Read MoreWe didn’t know the beauty we would find there. It wasn’t an obvious dazzling beauty. It needed to be unearthed, searched for. Our clothes stuck to us as we ambled off the plane. The heat and strong odors of others, of ourselves, pressed in on us. We cranked our windows down in the taxi as broken Soviet buildings rushed by. Their gray concrete stark against the sharp neon green of the trees and grass.
Read MoreHe poured his second, maybe third vodka tonic. He didn’t even look at me as he eased his six-foot-something frame through the sliding glass doors onto our deck. His words grazed by me as he sat down in the folding chair placing his drink on the small table between us, next to his worn copy of Machiavelli’s, The Prince.
Read MoreOn the day that you, fifteen, tell your mother you are sorry for saying words that hurt her, you will stand on the bottom tread but one of the hush-carpeted stairs that run through the middle of the two-story house. She will stand in the doorway to the blue dining room, which leads to the kitchen from which you’ve called her. She will furrow her brow, tilt her head, and say Thank you for saying that, then look down and wring her hands, or maybe a kitchen towel. Next, not meeting your eyes, she will heft a hurt into the air, heavy under the weight of double negative: This doesn’t mean you’re not still grounded.
Read MoreI was next to my father in the back of a police cruiser as the resentment towards my mother grew. I was six months pregnant and when I realized that the door locked from the outside, echoes of my doctor’s voice flooded me. You have to remain calm when you’re pregnant, eat well, play music for your baby to hear in the womb. They internalize your emotions in utero and can be traumatized before they are even born. I tried to breathe as I looked ahead through the grates that divided me from the backs of the policemen’s balding heads and put a hand on my hard misshapen stomach as I rolled my window down the two inches that it allowed.
Read MoreThe first time I sat in the waiting room, I faced a wall full of Christmas cards and birth announcements.
The second time I sat in the waiting room, Chris sat next to me, reading a book I bought him, which exclaimed in bold letters on the front, “We’re pregnant!” I held a clipboard and grilled him about his family’s medical history. When the doctor turned the monitor screen to face us, Chris couldn’t help but move closer, wanting to get as good a look at our little gummy bear as possible. But he didn’t let go of my hand, and for the first time he was pulled between me and our child.
Read More(Sometimes I forget).
I have a body. I remind myself stretching, the pops releasing my back before climbing into bed. I roll my wrists, tiny muscles spent from crocheting. We’re working on our relationship, my body and me. I’m working to listen better; my body, in turn, agrees to shout less. I’m trying to forgive the things it will not do, the question mark of grief that whispers, “I can’t.”
Read MoreThe cycle of days spent in a one-bedroom, largely rectangular rental at the triangular corner of Commonwealth and Beacon, conveniently positioned in the middle of Kenmore Square, were Happy Days (on re-run). Full of Seinfeld-inspired laughs and nights with Friends (in thirty-minute segments). Simple times woven of simple fare.
Read More“Shoot your vagina up to the ceiling” one male doctor helpfully suggested as your head inched forward and back into my body again. Limp I stared into the bright white hospital light above me where I saw a vision of my own blood and guts floating on the ceiling. I learned later that this particular delivery room was famous for having a tinted convex light that reflected the labor in detail if you knew to look.
Read MoreI snapped Amelia’s car seat into the stroller and fanned out the visor to keep out the sun and the wind, which were both persistent. Amelia slept undisturbed. I put on my sunglasses, pushed my hair out of my eyes, and headed for the zoo’s entrance.
Read MoreFebruary 22
We celebrate my son's eighth birthday. To my delight and surprise, it goes off without a hitch. Usually, weeks of anxiety precede his birthdays. Inevitably, great expectations turn to disappointment and anger when things don't go exactly as planned. Not infrequently, parties end with his screaming at his friends, stomping upstairs, slamming his door as I apologize and usher bewildered parents out of the house.
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