Ready or Not

by Cara Bastone

When I first got pregnant I had this precious little hope that I might be the one woman who could keep wearing heels to the office and my morning sickness wouldn’t be that bad and a bluebird would perch atop my shoulder and tell me how awesome I am at every turn.

Lollll real

The grocery list made me cry. The sound of my dog’s nails on the kitchen tile made me cry. Just remember, when you’re pregnant, nothing is real. Everything is seen through the funhouse mirror of pregnancy. Try not to make any big decisions. Heavy machinery, et cetera. Everything you’re feeling is a pregnancy symptom. Don’t take it too seriously. These’ll help with the nausea.”

But right now I have the warm hands of someone who loves me, and ending it is inconceivable. I’d very much like me and my kicking bump to be treasured. Even if just by a friend, and even if just for a moment.

You acquire a whole new set of interests when you have kids. Whatever they’re into, you kind of have to get into yourself, otherwise you have nothing to talk about with them.

Paternity testing gets such a bad rap. It’s for moms on daytime talk shows who may or may not be lying, right? Wrong! It’s so your kid can eat fresh vegetables and have a qualified professional watch over them while Mom is at work, putting those fresh vegetables on the table. Is that too much to want?

My erotica stash has never seen so much action. My ebook reader slams a Gatorade when it sees me coming.

LMAO

I spend the next two hours placing orders for office supplies and trying not to publicly cry. There should be a rule against your work life and private life both being in shambles. One shamble at a time, please!

Or maybe I told him that men with fresh haircuts were absurdly hot to me and he went out and got one. And now he’s sitting there in a button-down shirt that I’ve never seen before, with the sleeves rolled up, forearms out, and he’s watching me watch this dumbass preview. How does one get to the bottom of such a haircut? Does your haircut mean you love me?

Lololol

The streets melt past and the night melts around the cab and inside the cab I’m melting against Shep.

He stirs, his eyes moving behind the lids, and then his lashes dip-dip-swoop and we’re staring at each other. It’s a dozy perusal; nothing quite feels like the real world yet. The light from the window is grainy and it sounds like the rain is still coming down. His eyes are sleepy and happy. Our worries are not invited into this moment.

He blinks down at me, a slow expression, filled with a depth that only decades of knowing someone can give you. This here is a man who knows me. And I feel known. His palm is warm against my cheek, and then he’s tucking my hair behind my ear. “I’ll make you breakfast,” he says. And gets out of bed.

Wowowow scute

Ethan may have gotten my uterus pregnant a while back, but I’m pretty sure Shep got my heart pregnant.

Lmaoooo

“Because you being comfortable in my house is pretty much the only criteria I’m currently using for picking a place.”

HEs down so bad

It would be so much easier to just decide Eleni is the bad guy and everyone else gets to be the good guy. But, of course, Eleni is a person, with complex feelings of her own, just like mine. And so is Ethan. They’re not stick figures holding up labels for what kind of person they are.

So wise

I’m hugging her again. Have you ever wanted to hug all the bad feeling out of someone? Like water from a sponge? I want nothing more than to wring her free of it all.

Because of my self-centered versus other-centered theory…It’s not just the pregnancy bell curve. It’s a lot of what motherhood is too. Moving from being self-centered to being other-centered. A huge chunk of motherhood is realizing that your children are little bits of your own self out there eating cereal straight from the box and learning to pay their own taxes and wondering whether or not now is the right time to adopt a cat.”

“For me, at least, it wasn’t just my children. Motherhood changed my view on the entire world. At first it was just other children, the kids who’d play with my oldest at the playground. You see the grown-ups who push them on the swings and you realize that each kid is someone’s whole entire heart. Soon it was the middle schoolers. And then it was the high schoolers. And then, eventually, it was the middle-aged people and the older people too. Once I started seeing the web, I couldn’t stop seeing it, all the people who love all the people.”

!!!!

This isn’t all about me. It isn’t all about Ethan, or Willa, or Shep, or even the baby. It’s a web and—God, what a perfect system because—each of us is somebody’s favorite.

This is my life, on purpose. I didn’t choose the way this pregnancy started. But I can choose the way I bring this kid into the world. With joy and full desire: “I want you.”

Is there any compliment higher than someone dropping everything for you?

Yeah. When som.eone says "this made me thibk of you" (preferably its something about Taylor Swift)

“Everything’s hard, Eve. All of life. For everybody. You can’t spare your child that.”

“If you can’t tell…” he says. “If it’s not totally obvious…I’ll say it because I’ve really, really needed to say it for a long time…but, Eve, I love you more deeply than I’ve ever loved anyone else. I’m bananas for you. So in love I…”

They put the baby, wriggly and wet, onto my chest, and it’s the sort of weight that completes you. This perfect cap of wet-matted hair is all I can see, but this person is everythingeverythingeverything.

Sobbing. This.

“You’re a love letter too,” I whisper to her. “Without Ethan, you wouldn’t exist, and without Shep, you wouldn’t have made it into this world. That’s because they love us so much. You’re here because we all love you so much.” I’m rambling and maybe it makes sense, but sometimes the truth doesn’t make sense and that’s all right.