The Trouble with Letting Go

All change requires some degree of letting go. The bigger the change, the more you must let go.
I'm not very good at letting go.
I have a lot of books. Many of them I've never read, and will likely never read. I have three copies of August Wilson's Fences, a play I've been intending to read ever since I saw Wilson's The Piano Lesson on Broadway. When I was 13. In 1990. Yes, three nearly identical copies.
It's on my list to finally read this summer. No, really. Consider it done.
I also own a lot of CDs. When we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I loved nothing more than going to the cavernous record store Amoeba and buying a dozen used CDs for around $20. Some were real finds - beloved (but obscure) artists, whose records I still treasure.
However, have you ever heard of the metal band Squatweiler? Yeah, neither has Wikipedia. I've had that CD for a decade.
I sampled the first track yesterday. It's most definitely not my cup of tea. I've moved that album twice, including across the country from Menlo Park, California to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
And so this past weekend, I began the laborious process of cleaning the cluttered office to make space for the baby's room.
Some decisions were easy. Yes, I can get rid of those albums and books I don't recognize, and eliminate duplicates. But those are a small fraction of my book and CD collections.
For now, I'm fooling myself by thinking the rest can go in bankers boxes in our storage spaces. Because I apparently truly believe that someday I will remove R.J.B. Bosworth's 692-page history book Mussolini's Italy from a dusty box in the attic and sit down for a scholarly look at my homeland in the mid-20th century.
All change requires letting go. Most of the time that process is painful, but worth it. This one's a no-brainer.

And yet discarding these CDs and books means facing that fact that I will not accomplish everything I'd hoped in my life. I will probably not someday sit down and read the 10 plays in the anthology Alternative Japanese Drama. I will probably not master all off the accents in Stage Dialects (the book and three companion cassettes). I'm not going to overcome my tragic tone deafness. My chance to master the violin is past.
No one accomplishes everything they hoped to when they were young. It's a sad fact of our abbreviated lives. But if the impending addition to our family forces me to consolidate and prioritize, that's probably not such a bad thing ~ and likely long overdue.
So thanks, little Bun.

Things are Quickening

Carrie's been feeling kicks/flutters for a week now. She said that at first they felt like the bun was lightly and intermittently tickling her from the inside.

The pokes have gotten more frequent and more vigorous, so Carrie is concerned they could eventually feel like karate chops to her abdomen.

On Wednesday, our midwife Moon (that's really her name; I am not making this up) told us that the moment a pregnant woman feels a flutter is known as the "Quickening."

The occasional kicks are reassuring, of course, given our history. If their presence is comforting, though, their absence can be a bit frightening.

Fortunately they never leave for long.

One night I asked Carrie to let me know every time she felt a flutter. Eventually, Carrie was saying "kick" so often, I felt I had been adequately brought up to speed.

Last night, I finally felt a couple of these kicks myself. Twice in succession, my hand could discerned a slight but present pulsing inside Carrie's belly.

I've decided to name the first time a dad feels a flutter the "Hastening." It's less romantic than the "Quickening" but that somehow seems appropriate.

We fathers-to-be are at a slight but tangible distance from the biological magic churning inside our wives' tummies. It's like riding inside a Toyota Camry in the adjacent lane of the Electric Mayhem Bus.

Movin' right along ...

The Singular Plural

Two of my favorite people

Typically when Carrie leaves for a conference, or other multi-day excursion, I say, "Take good care of you; you're my favorite person."

On Tuesday, Carrie left for a conference in Georgia and I found myself saying, "Take good care of you; you're my favorite people."

Pregnancy is an amazing trick. It's made Carrie plural.

On the phone last night from her hotel, she told me that she often imagines that if she wants and likes something, the bun (our other name for the "tiny monkey") does too. She craved and enjoyed nachos for dinner; surely the bun did as well?

Since the two are sharing oxygen and nutrients through their bloodstreams, distinctions are in fact difficult. Does this mean the bun loves me already? Carrie insists he or she* does. 

"I've started to wonder if it's going to be traumatic for the bun to come out. I go back to being singular," Carrie said last night. "And then I won't know what the bun wants."



*For the record, we're not finding out the sex of the tiny monkey beforehand. I suspect this will be the subject of a future post.

Trying to Stay Positive

Google tells me I first registered this blog in August 2009. Yet this is the first post. And it's not because I'm lazy.

For the past three years, our lives have resembled an absurdist comedy, like Waiting for Godot or The Bald Soprano. Time has completely lost all meaning, and we've been stuck in a cycle of hope, joy, loss and sorrow that can best be described as existential. Endless doctor's appointments and ultrasounds and blood work and hospital visits have yielded nothing but angry anecdotes about insensitive doctors (especially the infamous "Doctor Boatshoes"), and a growing disconnect from longtime friends who've had babies.

Yet the current "cycle" (see photo, above) seems inherently different from all the last. We've made it safely and smoothly into the second trimester. Our last doctor's appointment lasted a-minute-and-a-half. The anxiety has begun lessening, although the terror has risen. Hope inevitably leads to sorrow, right?

I'm restarting - or perhaps more accurately, finally starting - this blog as we prepare to announce to the world our news. Yes, we're going Facebook official tomorrow. I worry that this is further evidence that we're pushing our luck, tempting the fates to once again shoot us down. And yet ...

We've begun to refer to the fetus in Carrie's belly as "the tiny monkey."

Estimated date of arrival is Aug. 4.

At last, we're ready for lift-off.

Right?