Early this morning I sat out on the porch and had half a cigarette. Some dude floated by downhill on a bike. He was typical PT fare – forty-ish, Carhartts, a silly purple beret, and some kind of bedroll on his bike. He didn’t see me watching. I thought how nice it would be to be so unencumbered. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks he wasn’t headed to a job, but to a coffee shop. Free of little ones and all their bodily fluids and piercing shrieks. Even when I’m out of the house without them, I can feel them clinging to me. It isn’t a bad thing, mind you. It just is. But still, for a moment, I remember how my body felt without their weight.
I just put my daughter to bed. Instead of a child’s story, we read Hot Mama together – a coffee table book of sorts my friend Abbi gave me when I was pregnant with The Boy. Sophie is interested in being pregnant, so we read the entire book together, going at her pace. She asked about her womb. I can just picture it – a tiny plum-sized pink little organ nestled in her tummy. “I want to eat steak, and beans, and bread, and carrots when I’m pregnick [of course she can’t say ‘pregnant’ right, which makes it all the better]. I don’t want to eat fish.” We learn that being pregnant sometimes makes your tummy nauseous, but that your hair and skin often glow and look beautiful. She takes it all in stride. She goes to sleep comforted by what women can do.
