Reminder

The showers for those of my girlfriends due the week I was are coming up soon. I knew this time would come, and I was really dreading it. It is such a painful reminder of that which I thought would be but which will not. In August we each, in the privacy of our own lives, saw a positive pregnancy test and felt the excitement that comes along with it. We each innocently began to make plans, to fix a future date in our minds, to look ahead to April without any thought that anything could go wrong. And for the other three, it didn't. Part of me almost wishes my next appointment was after these showers rather than before them, as I fear that appointment will go badly, and the sorrow will overwhelm me, and I won't be able to be there at all. As the midwife pointed out at my last appointment, seeing a heartbeat at 6w2d didn't really change the risk profile at all.

We decided, after it became clear that we weren't going to get any Red Sox tickets this year (screw you, Virtual Waiting Room, and screw you scalpers who bought all the tickets and had them listed on eBay while we were still trying to get through), to head to that scary mecca down the road otherwise known as BRU to do some shower gift shopping. Like many others, I have such a love-hate relationship with that place. But we went. And I bought some registered-for gifts, small and soft and sweet. And P and I dared to look at some of the bedding sets. And he has a weird obsession with Pack N Plays, so we looked at some of those too. And we actually caved and bought ourselves two tiny pieces of clothing. I love them and the hope and promise that they represent. I just want to look at them all the time, as though they might somehow serve as amulets to ward of any ill that could befall us. As though they have the power to fill themselves with a warm, wiggling, crying, pooping body come September. As though they have some sort of power of their own, other than that which I ascribe to them.