Goodbye To All That, Hello To Something Completely Different

I always knew I wanted children. Unlike everything else in my life – partners, professions, even countries – I never bothered to question it, assuming that, at some point in my adult existence, I would move into this daunting yet (allegedly) fulfilling world of self-cloning.    

And yet, time went on. As one year rolled into another, a different kind of adult existence set in. It was one shaped by singlehood, the kind when you are alone for so long that it becomes your comfort zone; the kind where you set your own terms and live purely for you – gluttonously, frivolously, without any extra cares or responsibilities. The more time passed, (and the more independence and opportunities I accumulated), the more fun it became: the impromptu trips, the month-long “research” sojourns in Paris, the long mornings spent drinking coffee and writing my heart out. Life in a bubble with me at its center. 

When I finally did move in with my boyfriend at the age of 33, after only six months of dating, it was great, but it also came with a sacrifice I hadn’t been prepared for. Suddenly, the routines I had carefully cultivated over the years were crudely cut short, interrupted by breakfast-making sessions and blasting news and household chores I had never needed to deal with. (Fact #1: men produce debris merely by existing.) I could feel myself losing not only my focus but also my creativity, as though my newfound happiness had plugged this fountain from which good words and ideas emerge. (Or, perhaps, said words and ideas had always been generated by solitude– a chicken or the egg scenario, so to speak.) 

Then came the baby news. Beautiful news, happy news in a year drastically short on happiness. And yet, amidst the excitement came one of the most intense psychological punches I had ever experienced, delivered by way of a tsunami of small revelations. I would never again spend a day Citi-biking around Manhattan without reporting to anyone; I would never again spontaneously hop on a plane to Timbuktu; my days would never truly be my own. My freedom, a defining pillar of my time-honed version of adulthood, was over for the foreseeable future. 

As though privy to my selfishness, my body seemed to be intent on torturing me: each day of the first trimester came with infinite bouts of nausea, made worse by the hellscape of a mid-COVID New York summer. (Fact #2: “morning sickness” is a misnomer, the joyride lasts all day.) As the days went on, I sunk deeper into a hole of bitterness, confusion and self-loathing – a state of misery tainted by the stench of piss-drenched city sidewalks and foul egg sandwiches floating at me from the bodegas. (Fact #3: newly pregnant women have sharper noses than TSA canines.) My boyfriend hardly recognized me – hell, I hardly recognized myself. 

I remember the day it all changed. It was a Saturday and everything I had attempted to do that day had gone to shit: my boyfriend and I had had a fight, the dryer in the laundry room had been broken, the vendor at the farmer’s market hadn’t accepted my credit card, and, to add insult to injury, something in the air had triggered  me to keel over a garbage can on the corner of 8th and 23rd and hurl my guts out. At some point, I gave up and went home where I sunk into my bed and turned on  Little Fires Everywhere, swallowing down episode after episode just to numb everything I felt inside. And then, in the finale, all hell broke loose and Reese Witherspoon’s character screamed at her daughter “I never wanted you in the first place.” 

Something cracked. The minute I heard those words, I felt a crashing wave of guilt, followed by an almost animalistic surge of love for this tiny little speck of human inside of me, who I already knew would be a girl. (I had known ever since the first pregnancy test, when a faint parallel line had jolted my entire world.) I thought about how tiny and powerless she was, and how I was failing at my one job, which was to love and protect her. I never wanted her to feel unloved or unwanted, even on some metaphysical level at the plum-sized gestational age that she was. (Fact #4: Americans measure pregnancies by fruit sizes.) From then on, it was easy. Everything guided by love is easy. 

As I sit here, six months later, relishing in one of my last mornings of real freedom for the next 18 plus years, I worry – about the little things – like what kind of sling tub I should buy (Fact #5: baby stuff is a science) and how long the overpriced newborn-sized onesies I ordered will last. But also about the big things, like what kind of mother I will be, and what kind of parents my boyfriend and I will be together (oddly, I never doubted his parenting skills, maybe because he’s been practicing on me for a year and a half). I worry about what will happen with our relationship, a relationship that never got a chance to develop at a measured pace, skipping pages if not chapters. I worry that I will completely lose myself in this new endeavor, to the point where the mundacities take over and replace every goal I have ever set out for myself,  to the point where I resent my family.  

And then, I get a kick in my pancreas, or my small intestine, or some other body part I had never had the joy of feeling so intimately. Or I look back at the photos that they gave us at 20 weeks, the ones where you can already see the baby’s face and start cross-referencing it to both parents and figuring out whose nose she has (mine!). The love instantly returns and I know that there is something behind it, something that can open my eyes in this crazy world of ours and make me understand it better, make its colors look more vibrant, and make time feel even more precious. I just hope I use mine correctly.