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Saturday, January 22, 2011

Rachel getting pregnant

My friend Rachel is pregnant. She and her husband Darren are the first in our immediate group of friends to pass this big milestone, and Rachel is the first close friend whose pregnancy I've gotten to witness in a day-to-day fashion. We used to joke around about who would have kids first, but it was always rather obvious it would be her - my labor phobia combined with our itinerant life plan pretty much guaranteed that. We even once went to an art fair together, and I bought a card especially for her that said in big letters "I'm glad you're having a baby," and in small letters "and I'm not." After the card gathered dust for a few years, I finally got to dig it up a couple of weeks ago, and I had a moment of profound awe as I placed it in the mailbox. I've had a similar feeling every time I see Rachel with her tummy slightly bigger than the week before. While the message of the card still holds true, and I do not feel anywhere close to ready to join in the club, I find it moving and, well yes, sort of epic, that my friend is becoming a part of a story that will reach so far beyond her and be told long after she is gone. To her little baby boy, she will be the first Woman. She will be somebody's mom, that defining figure he will associate with warmth and love; the mysterious force he will one day try to describe to a partner or decipher in therapy like I still try to decipher my parents. Maybe one day he will say to me: You knew my mom before I was born. What was she like back then? And I will answer - yes, I knew her. I saved a card for her for three years before you were born, saw her belly grow each week, and helped paint your baby room in their first house. Let me tell you about the art she made everywhere she turned, from stationery to food. In fact, let me tell you about the time...

I know kids don't usually ask these sorts of questions about their parents, at least until all their parents' friends are dead; I know these sorts of narratives are more common in literature than in real life. Yet I can't help but realize the good fortune of having friends close enough that the birth of their kids is a major event in my own life, inspiring dreamy and tender thoughts about their future as well as my own.

1 comment:

  1. how is it that I am lucky enough to have a friend write something so beautiful about this stage of life I am in right now? baby boy is already blessed to have people like you who are excited to meet him and share in his life :) love you

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