[This is my 2011 Creme de la Creme submission, but after I submitted it, I moved to Wordpress. Feel free to read here or visit this post in my new spot. Thanks.]
I'm picturing A Beautiful Mind when the guy becomes obsessed with numbers and sees them everywhere. We see his face framed by a window on which he's feverishly written equations. I'm picturing Lost when kids in soccer uniforms run through the airport - 4 8 15 16 23 42. Significant numbers are swirling around me, but the numbers aren't equations or ill-advised lottery tickets. The numbers are dates.
I remember this day last year - the day before my first positive pregnancy test. We'd been trying in earnest for five months and kind-of trying for three months before that. I took a test and the familiar "Not Pregnant" popped up in the window. (Naive as I was, I had no idea that I could have seen two little lines, probably for days already, if I'd been using a different test.) The next day, I'd stare in shock at the "Pregnant" stick, and wonder about the ways in which my life had just changed. We were having a baby!... until we weren't.
Two weeks from now. The estimated due date of our second baby, Ant. Poor Ant. Never even got to the gestational sac stage. Ant, our baffling 6w4d pregnancy diagnosed as "chemical" (though I struggled to understand how a chemical pregnancy could last for so long).
Four weeks from now. The one-year anniversary of our first miscarriage, Lima Bean. The earthquake that shook us to our cores. After that we repeated to ourselves so many times, "We can't go through this again. We just can't."
Nine weeks from now. My sister's due date. I've never stopped being terrified for her, even though her pregnancy has been a breeze. I won't breathe easy until her little girl arrives, safe and sound. The little girl that would have been ten weeks older than her cousin Carlos. Or seven weeks younger than her cousin Ant. Or six months younger than her cousin Lima Bean.
I reflect on these dates not because I'm sad. I'm actually okay. Good even. But to borrow a line from the talented Kimya Dawson, I'm haunted by the ghost of the girl I used to be. I still find it hard to wrap my mind around the fact that, at this time last year, none of this had happened yet. Pregnancy was idealized. Yes, vomiting and tiredness and frequent urination (and please, let's not even think about the birth!), but aglow with the certainty that a baby would arrive at the end. The false confidence that bad things wouldn't - couldn't - happen to me. Now I feel sorry for the girl who, at this time last year, was about to go through so much. I wish I could warn her so that she wouldn't be devastated. So that she wouldn't become bitter. So that she could smile knowingly and say, "Ah yes, three miscarriages, but then we get to adopt and we'll be so happy with that choice that we'll wonder why we waited so long." She'll know that one year from now, she'll be nearing the end of the home study. She'll be learning so much about a country that was barely on her radar screen before. She won't regret that her baby won't have blond hair and blue eyes like mommy and daddy. She'll be happy again.
I think that knowing would comfort the girl I used to be.
