on passing the test, and a new shore

On December 1st, just as the space behind the curtain started to fill with light, I quietly put my feet on the floor and made my out of the room.  I had spent the night before restless, rolling over to look at the clock every hour or so, awake with nerves.  Even though I had tried to tell myself that it would be negative, that it wasn't happening now, I had a feeling I couldn't shake.  A feeling that something was already happening. 

I took the test, and waited.  I put my head in my hands and did my own, personal form of praying.  Please, I thought, please let it be now.  I hesitated for another minute and then looked over to the test next to the sink.  No little lines to decipher on this model, the word said what I'd been waiting for.  Pregnant.  I made a sound.  A whispered yelp and then looked at the word again, not trusting the first sighting.  Pregnant.  The letters were still there.  I jumped up and looked in the mirror, half expecting to see someone different.  A few tears fell and I wiped my face and ran into the bedroom to wake Mike.  I climbed on top of him and told him the news.  He opened his eyes and asked me to say it again.  And I did.  He pulled me down on top of him in a tight hug and we stayed in bed for the next hour, amazed and happy and overwhelmed.

And in those minutes everything felt different.  At the time it was just a mass of rapidly dividing cells holding everything it would one day be, but still, it was there.  It was real.  A tiny bundle of genetic promise.  I put my hand on my belly and whispered, please grow baby, please stay with us.  And so it has.  Eight weeks after that morning and now it has hands and arms and legs which waved and kicked at us yesterday as we watched on the screen at the doctor's office. 

It's still early.  Just over twelve weeks.  But the riskiest part is nearly over, and so I am back to share.  After I found out the happy news, I didn't know what to say here.  I've always been a fairly good secret keeper, but the blank page asked for me to write about what was happening to us, and without sharing this huge new part of our life, I had nothing else to say.  There are unpublished drafts about Christmas traditions and a show with my brother, the new year and about sitting next to Patient Zero on the subway as he sneezed and coughed his symptoms all over me, but none made their way to this page.  It felt strange to write when the only thing I wanted to say could not yet be said.

I started writing here as a way of moving past the heartbreak that was losing Mike's mom so soon after losing his dad, but now the words on the side of this page feel fitting for this too.  Onward full-tilt we go.  To make good on a new shore. 

Saul Leiter-Mother And Baby In Mirror