I admit it

Being back home again after 6 years, I've been moving like someone reading crowded bathroom graffiti. The things I wanted to forget are still here, scrawled into every surface. People who left their imprints on the couch, voices on the phone, the loop of sidewalk I ran with angsty music in my ears, lanes of traffic I still navigate on auto-pilot. After all this time, it's comforting again.

So a few months ago, I found out that I was pregnant. This was not happy news - it made my hands shake and ears go cold. Around that time, the I wish my mother had aborted me article was circulating the internet, and I read it thoughtfully before deciding the article was bullshit. This was not a story about why a woman should have had an abortion - it was a story about why a woman should have dumped her damn boyfriend. It would have been my mother's story, my sister-in-law's story, my aunt's story, but these women bit down, left the men, and went on with their lives, education, and careers with their children. I still might have gone in for the pills, but my cousin had just lost her baby at 22 weeks, and it felt cold of me to discard the pregnancy while still grieving with the family for hers. I couldn't do it. But I had the choice, and being able to make that decision and move ahead with purpose was important. Had I been forced, I would have been desperate to claw it from my body.

So I needed to leave Maui, like, now. I had been interviewing for transfers for months, and the government hiring scene was grim. Leap and the net will appear, they say. I sent the kids ahead to Oahu. I gave up the job. Mike came and gathered me bodily to take me home. I had mixed feelings about that. I can't get rid of him, but I need the help, and he's kind.

Now there is family, and illustration, and holidays, and time. Gavin rides to school on the back of my mom's motorcycle, wearing a new helmet because he outgrew his old one - which makes him a hell of a lot cooler than I was at 9 years old, and gives me a lurch of anxiety every time I wave goodbye manically to them in the mornings. Leif is finishing his month at preschool before staying home to challenge my skills as nurturing stay-at-home parent - a gig which drove me to get my Master's degree and publish a book the first time I attempted it. I've been making a routine of housework and cooking, which has resulted in my closing myself into doors, splattering dishwater and stove grease all over my belly, falling over headlong while trying to bend over with a dustpan, and scrabbling on furniture to stand up after sitting down and getting stuck. My natural pelican-like grace has been even further compromised. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this thing that is happening, but I've been making sure to separate my feelings about the pregnancy from my feelings about the baby. She didn't do anything wrong here, and she's mine. The little kicks and hiccups make it easier. She's a quieter fetus than the boys were, so far.

yesterday, 24 weeks

I've also become reluctantly attached to the ugly little baby birds, which I've been nannying during the days. They have horrifying little feathers now. Should knit them a snugli.

erlack. And awww.

So that's that. I am embarrassed and scared and determined and optimistic. Which is pretty standard stuff for this type of thing. So if I look suspiciously fat in some of my recent pictures, that is why. And it's just how it's going to be for the next 3 months.