Just Who the Hell Are You?

While we wait for my mom’s sandwich to be prepared at the deli counter, we flip through baby gear in the gift section conveniently located near the counter. Mom is buying a travel sandwich for the long haul across the country tomorrow. Earlier she was filling up on cute onesies and books for her granddaughter—and my niece—Lyla.

“Isn’t that precious?” She says as I hold up baby t-shirts with pictures of gnomes, owls, and flowers on them.

“So cute,” I say.

Although I am not beyond feeling weird and slightly out-of-place in baby stores, I make myself face them and let the chips fall where they may. I try to remember how it felt to enter baby stores when I was a new aunt, thrilled to shower the first baby in the family with presents. It felt weird then too, but a different weird. Back then, a question mark hovered above my head as I browsed through tiny pants and striped hats. Will I ever have a baby? Now the question mark joins with an exclamation point. Will I ever have a fucking baby?!?

Near the deli counter, Mom and I coo over the cute offerings.

“I think I’ve gotten her enough already,” my mom says as she attempts to resist the ghome onesie.

A fifty-ish woman of the aging urban hippie variety approaches us, holding a card. “Excuse me, are you a new mother?” She asks me.

I shake my head.

“Are either of you mothers?”

I point to my mom. “She is.”

“I’m her mother.” My mom squeezes my arm.

“Can I get your advice on something?” The woman asks.

A friend of hers is recently pregnant. She is hunting for the right card. She pulls her hand back to reveal the one in her hand. A fat baby with “Alive” printed on its diaper and a mushroom plopped on its head stretches its limbs. It was exactly the sort of card that I would have loved to receive. Strange but joyful.

“So, what do you think? Is this a good card?” She asks.

“I like it,” I say. “It’s weird for sure, but good-weird.”

She holds the card up to my mom. “You’re a mother. What do YOU think? Too weird?”

I don’t exactly reel from her segregation of the two of us into mother and non-mother camps. I steel myself as I have been doing all weekend. I wanted my mom’s visit to be all silly family stories and laughter and shopping for shoes and baby stuff for Lyla. Whenever miscarriage threatens to intrude on our weekend together I grit my teeth and mutter some seemingly emotionally present thing like, “There are ups and downs, but we’re good.”

At Lauro on Friday for Mom’s birthday dinner, I remained seated throughout the entire dinner although my bladder threatened to burst. The one server, our favorite server, who we told about the pregnancy—more accurately she dragged it out of me when she didn’t believe my blithe comment that I drank cranberry juice instead of a martini due to “doctor’s orders”--is working.

As she zips by our table, I conjure an awkward conversation about how she really should not have pressed me about the cranberry juice.

“Why couldn’t you have chalked it up to some sort of cleanse?” I want to ask.

I drink my martini in salty slurps. Does she see me? Has she put the pieces of the puzzle together? Whatever happens, I pray she doesn’t throw me a pitying looks. I’ve had my lifetime fill of pitying looks.

I don’t want to let my mother into this mine-laden wasteland of undeveloped fetuses and tears. The misery in her voice when I told her of the first miscarriage haunts me still. I can only imagine how hard it is to witness your children suffer. Maybe this is my rationalization for my temporary denial. Maybe I really am my mother’s child and am not as comfortable expressing my emotions as I’m always claiming. At least not with her.

My mom considers the card in Aging Hippie Woman’s hand, casting a sideways glance at her for her disregard of my childless opinion.

“It’s cute,” she says.

“Oh, but it’s so early. Maybe I shouldn’t.” The woman says. “You know—“

Her trailing off voice contains the sum of my pregnancy experience. I am a boogeywoman. All the “you know” happened to me.

“That’s always a danger,” I say, forcing my way back into the conversation.

My mom rubs my back quickly, a band-aid swipe for all the “you know.”

“Well, you could always get it now and then keep it for a few months,” Mom says.

“That’s what I’m going to do,” the woman smiles. “Sorry for bothering you. Thanks.”

She walks away with her card. I lead us out of the baby stuff aisle and pick up a box of cute dog stationary before Mom can say anything about the interaction. “Isn’t this adorable?”

Only cute can save us now.