.
I'm pregnant.
We've been trying for eight years. I can't believe it. I'm pregnant.
Okay that's not true. I'm not pregnant. We haven't been trying for eight years. Actually I've been trying for as long as I can remember not to get pregnant with marked success. Maybe I'm not even capable of it. How would I know? A doctor once told me he thought I was pregnant and insisted I take a pregnancy test. He was wrong.
I just wanted to see what it would feel like to say I was pregnant. (It made me laugh.) I think I'm going to start announcing it to anyone who asks me how I'm doing. I think I will keep saying it even when I'm sixty.
*
I am now ten pages closer to the end of thesis hell. Thesis hell ends in just under eight weeks. What will it be like to have time that belongs to me again? What will I do between the hours of 4:00 and bedtime? I might get a hobby. I might get a boyfriend. I might get bored. It will be weird to pay taxes again rather than writing off all my tuition. Maybe I will start on the PhD straight away. Or I might celebrate by buying myself a great big coat made from the carcasses of dead animals.
*
A former student who is now 25 wrote to me last night. He said he wanted to apologize for his poor performance in my play in 1998 but he had to confess he was more concerned at the time with how he looked in his costume than with learning his part. Hilarious. I guess his conscience is pretty clear in general if these are the things that prey most heavily upon him at night when he's trying to sleep.
*
One more foray into the Winter Prairies is just a month away. Chances are that it will be bitterly cold. I rarely contact anyone when I go there, which is antisocial and strange, but this time I have told one person I am coming. I have told one person I do not know very well but who was always on the edge of the circle. When I was younger I knew how to put myself in the centre of the circle, and for reasons I can no longer remember, wanted to. He was one of those people who was too quiet and self-conscious to speak much and therefore remained mostly invisible. But now I am old enough to be able to filter out sound and focus on what truly interests me rather than upon what makes the most noise. He was always Friend-of-a-Friend but I think I am going to promote him to Friend in his own right. He reads the same authors I do and Shawn says I can date him for the four days I'm back on the Prairies. He's so agreeable.
*
Peter Mansbridge and his ongoing reports about the situation in Egypt have been preventing me from being able to stop watching the news. Sometimes I seriously tell myself to stop, but I almost never listen. I have relatives in Cairo. Now their cell phones work again, I can call them and tell them the good news about the baby.
*
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
Well, you certainly got my attention! Not that you needed to resort to extreme pronouncements to do so. And don't be dissing those 60-year olds, Missy. A woman in Spain, I think, gave birth a few years ago at age 63. I don't know if she has a coat of dead animal pelts.
Hardly worth it if she didn't have the coat. No, I'm not dissing 60 year old women as some of my best friends and favourite people fall into that category... but babies at 60? Unfathomable. Do you suppose she did it on purpose? Or was she just a reckless women who "got in trouble"? Her mother must have been horrified.
I. Can. Not. Believe. How. Psycho. You. Are.
Seriously woman were you drinking when you wrote this?
So anyway, what does it take to get your husband to let me take you out on a date?
(ehC)
You do not need to convince him, you need to convince *me*. And so far I am unconvinced. Name calling will get you nowhere. I have delicate feelings.
I can be gentle.
(ehC)
It's a strange story, as you may have guessed. The elderly primipara took care of her mother all her life, her mother died, and she sold their house and used to money to undergo IVF treatments. I think she had twins. Actually, though, I like your speculation better, that she got in trouble and horrified her mother. (I think it was quite selfish considering her life expectancy, and what will become of her children when she dies.)
I dare say, if you were pregnant, the thesis and prarie visit would take on a whole different slant. Though it wouldn't change anything in Egypt, or how well former students sleeps at night...
Indeed, there is nothing like 'menstrual retardation' for gumming up the works of everyday life!
"...I am old enough to be able to filter out sound and focus on what truly interests me rather than upon what makes the most noise." That rings a very personal bell.
Susan,
That *is* a strange story. I wonder if no longer taking care of her mother she needed someone else to take care of, someone who would outlive her?
jb,
Undoubtedly, if I was pregnant I would see everything differently... As it was, I gave myself a nightmare last night in which I was pregnant with twins. This is what I get for fooling around. I was terrified.
Jerry,
I wonder why it takes some of us (I mean me) so long to learn how to filter like that? Nonetheless and at any rate it is a good skill to finally have mastered.
I appreciate the filter too, but I worry it comes from a new inability to pay attention to anything for very long. A lot of what looks like focus is a state of nearly complete blankness.
Hilarious. Brilliant post! Hopefully, those in Egypt will understand when you break the news about your baby carcasses.
Hmm that's an interesting theory. Maybe I'm not really tuning out noise, I'm just tuning out everything so I can travel inward? Where do you go when you're completely blank?
I think those in Egypt will appreciate hearing from me. They've been through a lot, and I think they deserve some good news.
Ok..you stopped my heart for a few seconds there! You are such a goofball, and I love you. Does your friend of a friend have a friend? Maybe we can double date!
Wow, that was a hell of an intro/recant. I took a couple of years of between masters and Ph.D. And then got pregnant right at the end of that. I'm not sure it was the best plan, but life is weird that way.
Double dating would be fun. Are you up for a road trip? Love!
A couple of years between degrees might be a good idea. (Or I might just stall and never start up again.) I've been told that waiting for the right time to have a kid means you never have kids... so who knows about plans?
Post a Comment