Watson, a change is afoot (but I know not when)
Thoughts on new parenthood (again) and the uncertainty of good things to come
On my 25th birthday, my state shut down. COVID-19 closed schools and offices and theaters, killed hundreds of thousands and permanently injured countless more, changed life as we knew it forever and permanently stripped away the trust I'd felt for many people I once respected.
In just a moment as I drove home from work– I'd taken a half day to celebrate my birthday and give myself a little extra rest in the midst of third-month morning sickness– an announcement came on my local NPR station that Pennsylvania was now in a state of emergency and essentially everything would close down to mitigate the coronavirus. I don’t need to rehash everything that happened in those first few weeks of lockdown in March 2020. If you’re old enough to be reading this, you remember what happened– and if by some miracle you’re a literary prodigy of under two years who actually doesn’t remember the beginning of the pandemic, let me not be the Debbie Downer who informs you of how it all happened.
Catastrophe so often strikes without warning. I suppose we had warning, of course–I more than many, because I did office work in a hospital (in the Infectious Diseases division, no less!) But as many have already hashed and rehashed, no one could have predicted exactly how the COVID-19 pandemic would change life as we knew it, or how quickly it would sabotage the normalcy we took for granted. Car accidents, sudden illness, natural disasters all fall from the sky (well, all right, usually it’s only the natural disasters that fall from the sky) without giving us time to prepare. Is it any wonder that sudden change isn’t typically something we hope for?
Yet as I’m staring down what ought to be the last two weeks of pregnancy with my second son (unless he decides to follow in my first son’s footsteps and arrive LATE, which I do not condone) I find myself waiting in hopeful, happy uncertainty for a sudden and irrevocable change to my life.
Some people say of babies what Gandalf said of wizards: that they are neither late nor early, but arrive precisely when they mean to. As the parent in this situation, however, of a child who will not come of age for 18 years and maybe two weeks, I’d prefer to be the one calling the shots in this instance.
And of course I can’t. I can only hover in the unknown, waking up each morning and wondering if this will be the day when my life never goes back to the normalcy I have thus far taken for granted.
Good change normally follows a plan and an execution date. A move, a wedding, a new job, a new school– I’ve been through all of these at one time or another, and been able to temper the anticipation of the uncharted with the known factor of a concrete start time.
But a new baby? Even a planned induction or C-section has potential to skew from its schedule. (My first son was scheduled to be induced first thing in the morning on a day I thought would be his birthday, but a busy labor and delivery unit postponed our arrival at the hospital and my baby didn’t arrive until late on the following day. It’s a good thing I didn’t monogram anything with his birth date ahead of time.)
The knowledge that, technically, this new baby could arrive at any moment and beautifully upend our lives forever is… actually one I haven’t been dwelling on. Not because I fear it like the unexpected tragedy of a cancer diagnosis or vehicle crash, but because the knowledge of my own lack of control in this situation is unsettling. Like Gandalf trying to influence Theoden, I have no power here. (Again with the Gandalf references! What am I, a Lord of the Rings nerd now?) I can eat the dates and drink the teas and take the long walks, but ultimately our new little boy will show up in his own time.
It’s humbling. But then, so is parenting, I guess. So is trying to figure out your taxes. So is parking in a curbside spot that’s just a smidge too small. So is trying to write out the philosophical thoughts rattling around your brain like tennis balls in a dryer, and wondering if it will make sense to anyone or if it’s just the addled rantings of all the pregnancy hormones.
I don’t know how much time I have left as a mom of one. It makes me a little teary when I think about how my sweet firstborn (who is so, so excited about his new baby brother, whom he plans to “hug” and “tiss”) isn’t going to be my only for much longer. Every just-the-two-of-us day could be our last; every bedtime power struggle or Curious George book read aloud over lunch might be the final one before a new person enters and shakes up and renews our lives with his snuggle-able, precious presence. But all I have to decide is what to do with the time that is given me; and so I wrote this to remember how it felt.
Yes, that’s yet another Gandalf quote, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I’m very late with this April post, but I’ll recap what I’ve written elsewhere since I last sent you a newsletter! It’s not much. The whole baby-growing thing has taken a lot of my energy lately. My tagline for this Substack is “naptime is writing time” but lately naptime has been, uh… well, naptime.
Christian, Please Put Your Mask Back On on Medium. This piece was in the works for several months and provided me with several rejections for my collection; eventually I decided it was an important message that I wanted to share (and contained some wise words from friends I’d interviewed that I wanted the rest of the world to see) so I went ahead and self-published it. I’m very glad I did—the messages I received on social media from other people who have felt alienated in church from a lack of pandemic precautions were sobering and saddening but also affirming and validating. Those of us still trying to be careful are not alone.
On a lighter note, I had another opportunity to publish with The Belladonna Comedy, one of my favorite humor publications. Potential Causes for Acid Reflux in Your Third Trimester was the epitome of the old maxim “write what you know.” Ugh.
And on a more personal note, I got to work on my school’s undergraduate literary journal this semester, and an piece of creative nonfiction I submitted was chosen (not by me, ha ha) for the Best Essay prize! Apart from a poem I wrote for a kids’ nature magazine at the age of nine, this is the first time some of my work has appeared in actual magazine print, and I’m excited to share it with you once it becomes available online.
Until then, I bid you adieu. I cannot promise when the next of these newsletters will appear, but I sincerely hope it will follow the arrival of this baby. In the meantime, I shall just patiently wait for the unknown and live my life with the time that is given me. …Unless darkness takes me, and I stray out of thought and time, and wander far on roads I will not tell. I’ll let you know.