Planned Parenthood in Phillipsburg was bad enough, my hands shaking the whole twenty minutes spent in the shoddy waiting room; trash of Pennsylvanian girls coming in (I say this not to be mean, I truly encountered dirt there) yelling, YELLING I SAY about the fact that she'd had sex the night before as she filled out the probing forms. Shae and I sitting in plain view, she enters the private area of the clinic, comes out and says, "Well Jesus if I'd known she was gonna give me THAT kind of exam, I'da cleaned up for her!"
What the fuck kind of exam do you expect at a gynecologist?
What the fuck did she need to clean up?
"Medication" as Shae puts it so pleasantly, after bagels and coffee, the fattest joint I've seen him roll in ages. He too, is overly shaken by the situation, overly sleep-deprived and anxious. Truthfully, he's had more dreams, nightmares, visions, whatever, of us and our daughter than I have. To me she's an aching bloat in my abdomen, this awful acceptance-like trance having come over me. To Shae she's a bundle in my belly and all he wants to do is hold her.
Today, at work, I doodle and sit and stare, listless and tired and unimaginably at a loss. And eventually I draw her, from my dream, a tiny little two-year old with curly raven hair, and freckles, a baby-sized flannel shirt and a stuffed Babar.
I snap at three of my students and sit outside in the woods for 15 minutes before I can bear to be surrounded by children, no mind that they're in middle school already. She'd be in middle school one day, and I'd be thirty-two. The same age my mother was when she had me.
Eleven years' difference.
And my mother couldn't get pregnant for three, or ever after she had me.
A trip to my normal ob-gyn today, assuring my mother that I'm not pregnant and everything is fine. Have to go back in two weeks for my follow-up exam. I'll tell her my pap is abnormal, and that they need to re-do it. And problem solved.
Now let's hope they don't ask too many questions about the money.
What the fuck kind of exam do you expect at a gynecologist?
What the fuck did she need to clean up?
"Medication" as Shae puts it so pleasantly, after bagels and coffee, the fattest joint I've seen him roll in ages. He too, is overly shaken by the situation, overly sleep-deprived and anxious. Truthfully, he's had more dreams, nightmares, visions, whatever, of us and our daughter than I have. To me she's an aching bloat in my abdomen, this awful acceptance-like trance having come over me. To Shae she's a bundle in my belly and all he wants to do is hold her.
Today, at work, I doodle and sit and stare, listless and tired and unimaginably at a loss. And eventually I draw her, from my dream, a tiny little two-year old with curly raven hair, and freckles, a baby-sized flannel shirt and a stuffed Babar.
I snap at three of my students and sit outside in the woods for 15 minutes before I can bear to be surrounded by children, no mind that they're in middle school already. She'd be in middle school one day, and I'd be thirty-two. The same age my mother was when she had me.
Eleven years' difference.
And my mother couldn't get pregnant for three, or ever after she had me.
A trip to my normal ob-gyn today, assuring my mother that I'm not pregnant and everything is fine. Have to go back in two weeks for my follow-up exam. I'll tell her my pap is abnormal, and that they need to re-do it. And problem solved.
Now let's hope they don't ask too many questions about the money.
