Why Wait?
I write to you from three days past my due date, and this might be my last letter for a while (she says ominously). Everything I do these days is cast with a valence of precious scarcity, because I feel as if I am living with a terminal diagnosis. Terminal: being able to leave the house unencumbered by small human or guilt/anxiety (save the existential dread that is my constant companion). Terminal: in moi and moi’s small dog being the center of my orbit. But, of course, the new era will shepherd in new beginnings, joy, and, more than anything, the unknown. And I hear I get to wear adult diapers for a while, so SCORE!
I’ve spoken to other parents about the baby bucket list feeling, and I think it’s actually a hallmark of the third trimester, like nesting. One pal said he went to the Met three days in a row and lit out to Jackson Heights for cumin lamb. Another said she treated herself to midweek facials and manicures. Another was just happy to be able to roost on the couch sans guilt with Ramona and Bethenny and LuAnn, her “real” friends. The creeping inevitability and attendant desire squeeze the juice from these last days of disco is a true fact. (But let me be clear: since D-Day has come and gone all I want to do is gnash my teeth, rend my garments, and watch 90 Day Fiancé. I would like to go to prenatal yoga but I’m too ashamed to show my face in there without a baby, so options are limited.)
I contend one needn’t be in a family way to grasp this city and this life by the cajones and get out there. Which is why today I behoove you: why wait?
The list of delights I’ve been grinding on includes:
-a trip to the Spy Museum
-a trip to the Whitney
-a visit to the Met
-a stroll through the Brooklyn Museum
-movies, so many movies! Highly rec: Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Free Solo
-a Real Housewives trip upstate with my friends. Did you know I’ve never taken like a weekend away with a group of friends because
1. I am allergic to groups
2. I’m cheap
3. Being unwed and un-child-ed I’d never had occasion for a “____ weekend” but seriously one should’t wait for any such milestone to do this. It was truly the best 48 hours of my life, in no small part because my pals organized a Cameo from the one and only DJ James Kennedy, which sent me directly to the floor in a fit of hysterics, so much so that I thought I was going into labor then and there. If only.
-leisurely lunches with freelancer friends (our work may not be remunerative, but we are wealthy in lunches)
-a sound bath
-trips to the theatah: Oklahoma! and The Band’s Visit blew my mind
-decadent walks for Bonnie, mostly by virtue of the fact that I'm very slow and she prefers to sniff out every square inch of sidewalk. Like her mother before her, she’s exceedingly nosy about other creature’s business.
-so many foot massages at the happiest place on earth
-writing fan letters to people I admire, a la a Make-A-Wish kid
-rediscovering swimming, since it is one of the only exercises available to me at the moment. (HOT TIP: if you sign up for a day pass at the Dodge YMCA, you actually get THREE FREE VISITS!!!! DO IT! And do not say this letter never got you nothin’.)
-a magical weekend away to the DeBruce with my baby daddy
And here’s the thing: all this stuff is out there, all the time. Just took me a little while to get my ass in gear to take advantage. And believe me it isn’t without huffing and puffing and bemoaning my aches and pains as I do these things. I find myself peeked just at climbing the subway stairs and require a cheeseburger to fortify myself for the journeys ahead. But I feel sheepish that I’d let the more intrepid part of myself go fallow, the part that when I moved to the city was seizing all the cultural opportunities and saying yes to things. I’m grateful I have found her anyway, swollen feet and crap attitude and all.
A part of me believes I will, in fact, be pregnant forever, or at the very least like a hippo who gestates for two years and delivers a 100 lb calf. The doctors seem to think that this baby is measuring Samoan in stature, so we’ll see. (I’m *pretty* sure Scott is the dad, tbd). I was once afraid of labor. Now I say BRING IT ON. And in the spirit of hopefully divesting this baby hippo from my body by hook or by crook, and in the spirit of why-waiting and holiday gift shopping, without further ado, let me give you my year in reading! Full throated endorsements all around:
Your Duck is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg
A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen
Redefining Realness by Janet Mock
Nobody Tells You This by Glynnis McNicoll
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
Kudos by Rachel Cusk
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
The Death of Truth by Michiko Kakutani
The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwan
The Upstairs Wife by Rafia Zakaria
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
Mr. Nice Guy by Jen Miller and Jason Feifer
The Spider and the Fly by Claudia Rowe
The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
Convenience Store Woman by Sakaya Murata
When Katie Met Cassidy by Camille Perri
Forty-one False Starts by Janet Malcolm
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani
Headless Body in Topless Bar by editors of The New York Post
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Like a Mother by Angela Garbes
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Florida by Lauren Groff
You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
Hell-Bent by Benjamin Lorr
Tangerine by Christine Mangan
And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O’Connell
The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian
Now accepting thoughts, prayers, and any voodoo spells you know for getting babies out. See you on the other side!