Most Likely

Recently, as a not-too-time-consuming procrastinatory/entertainment activity, I've started to Google people from my past: my sixth-grade best friend (now a middle school social studies teacher, best I can tell), my third-grade best friend (impossible to track down, since she has the same first and last name as somebody who's been in the news a fair bit), the boy I had a crush on in the first half of elementary school (Ivy league professor specializing in Japanese popular culture), a particularly flamboyant camp counselor (can't tell what she's been up to--the combination of her first and last names, which seemed initially as though it must be unique, turns out to be a not uncommon upper-crusty joining of two old family names). And then, some people you know are just going to be a lost cause, so you don't bother looking: Margaret Baker, Rebecca Henderson, David Olson, Ricky Smith, Paul Giordano, Tony Peters, Debbie Ginsburg.

A day or two ago, I looked up a boy from my elementary school. He used to be kind of shy and second-smallest in the class, with moss-green corduroy pants, a pale little chin, and a flop of heavy silken dark blond hair constantly in his eyes. He would take time out regularly from third grade to go to the high school for math classes. I had found out some time ago that he and my husband actually went to Ivy University together as undergrads, and I knew they'd been in touch periodically since, though I didn't know details. I pictured him still small and eccentric, still slightly unkempt in green corduroy, and maybe, I don't know, a professor of theoretical physics at Reed or something. Yeah. Um, turns out he's Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security for the Bush Administration. Yikes. There's a picture. Short hair, suit and tie, a strong jaw, and scary, ultraconfident eyes.

Political allegiances aside, it made me think of all those women in the class notes of my college alumnae bulletin. I mean, I know, I know, I know that it's the classic response to reading one's class notes, but I can't help but feel abashed when I see the titles, the achievements. And I know, I know, I know there are plenty of others who haven't scaled any professional peaks, who are just going along, living odd or ordinary little lives. Having kids, gardening, organizing adult soccer leagues, learning to knit. But the other day I realized, reading the New York Times online, that the name in a series of policy article bylines I'd been half-registering as familiar was not that of somebody famous, but of a woman a couple years ahead of me in college. (Not to mention a founding mother of the Cool Smoking Lesbian clique that persisted to my year.)

I guess it all reminds me of what I thought I'd be. I think that a long time ago, I really thought I'd be special. I think I really believed that there was something about me that meant I'd always be lucky, and always impress, and find myself rising inexorably, if perhaps seemingly serendipitously, through some as-yet-unimagined but terribly important professional life. I didn't worry overly much about finding my path, figuring it would just happen, as easily as anything, as easily as I won a spelling bee or got an A+ in Trigonometry. In the high school yearbook, I was "Most Likely to Succeed." I effortlessly believed the hype.

What is it that separates those of us who scrape by, who just manage to get by day to day, from those golden, high-achieving ones we used to sit next to in freshman English? I have these moments of what feels in the instant like clarity, when I think it's mostly just expectations of oneself. That if I fully and naturally believed that I should and would end up as--whatever--President of Habitat for Humanity, a respected character actress in prestige films, US Secretary for Health and Human Services--that I would start doing what it takes to get there. And then I actually might get there, or alternately, might get somewhere just as good.

There's the old joke: Moishe asks G-d, "please let me win the lottery." Each week, Moishe's prayers get more insistent, more pleading, full of reminders that he has never asked for much, and promises that he'll never ask for anything else again. "Please, please, please, let me win the lottery!" Finally, G-d's voice booms down, "MOISHE, DO ME A FAVOR... BUY A TICKET."

I take solace in stories of late bloomers, people whose first notable achievements came in their 40s, 50s, 60s. There aren't that many, but there are some. And it does occasionally occur to me to try to cut myself some slack. My therapist said when I first started going to her, "When I see someone in their 30s or 40s who has clearly not lived up to his or her potential, my first thought is always depression." So, um, yeah, there's that. And there's having spent my 20s with chronic fatigue syndrome.

I'm itchy now, though. Itchy to get on with it, but still unsure what "it" is going to look like. Once I start my job as oncology nurse, I imagine that will keep me busy and striving and absorbed and learning and moving forward for a while. And making myself into a good oncology nurse can be the necessary next step in whatever my (delayed, idiosyncratic) career trajectory is going to be. I might also remind myself that in my heart of hearts, I am just fine not being Acting Under Secretary of anything.

Could We Maybe Call It Something Else?

Pete signed Cassie up for gymnastics. This kind of gave me the willies. I guess the picture in my head of "gymnastics" is a bunch of skinny, snotty little girls with perky ponytails and lip gloss whizzing around in hideously sporty bodysuits and making fun of the halt and the lame. Insert sweet, earnest, soft, klutzy Cassie into this picture, and... eeuughh. Not good.

See, there's been this ongoing concern about Cassie's gross motor development. At both her 2-year and 3-year check-ups, her pediatrician was concerned that her gait looked kind of funny. The teachers at preschool have mentioned that physically she's not really at the level of other kids her age. At home, she trips over her own feet. She even got an evaluation by a physical therapist who thought maybe one leg was longer than the other. She's clearly a bit pigeon-toed (like her mama). So in discussing the issue with the pediatrician, we agreed to schedule another appointment with an orthopedist. (Pete took Cassie the first time a year or so ago, but the guy they saw kind of brushed them off without even really doing a full exam, treated the report of the physical therapist's concern with derision, and was generally just an arrogant asshole.) And the other half of the plan was to get her in to some kind of extracurricular activity that would help with coordination.

Pete had mentioned swimming lessons, which sounded great, and I was also thinking maybe dance classes (to me, infinitely more gemutlich than gymnastics, probably because the connotation is artistic rather than athletic). But I was dawdling about signing her up for anything, partly because I still don't know what my schedule is going to look like, and partly because spending any money makes me so anxious these days. And then, a couple weeks ago, Pete announced he'd signed her up for this gymnastics thing. And so what could I say? Well, I guess I did kind of make some doubtful, "we can just wait and see how she likes it, right?" sort of noises. But basically, he'd risen to the parenting task, and I hadn't, so we'd do it his way.

Pete took her for the first class last week. It was the day of my job interview, so I was distracted enough not to think about my tender child being subjected to the terrors of a commercially offered gym class (projection, much?). But then when I got home, I remembered all in a rush, and anxiously hit Pete and Cassie up for their verdict. Pete was casual, nonchalant: "It was good." Cassie, on the other hand, was bouncy and very enthusiastic, though I wasn't quite able to follow the whole narrative. Something about frog jumps and walking like a jaguar and having cookies on your arms. I was unspeakably relieved.

Later, after Cassie was in bed, Pete told me about getting to see another of Cassie's peccadillos in action--her preschool teachers had mentioned in our parent conference that while she is utterly reasonable and tractable when you ask her individually to do something, she often seems oblivious to the fact that she is included in "everybody" (as in, "everybody sit down on the rug now" or "everybody put away the blocks"). Pete said it was the same way in gymnastics--she would wander vaguely off until specifically and individually asked to join the group, at which point she would immediately and readily comply. He said that the instructor was not only tuned into this but also articulate about it in a little, informal end-of-class check-in, as well as entirely matter-of-fact and non-judgmental. Well okay, then, I thought. Okay.

This week, Pete was invited to lunch by the Dean, who is apparently going through and meeting with faculty and generally trying to make nice (there are some changes going on in the institution, and faculty are apparently feeling pretty skittish in some quarters). The wisdom is that if you're invited to lunch by the Dean, you go. The problem was, it was on a Wednesday. Daddy-Cassie day. Gymnastics day. So I was called upon to go beyond feeling a distant relief and grudging acceptance, and to participate materially in my daughter's going to gymnastics. I would give her a ride, and then sit outside the gym on the other side of the one-way mirror and watch it all happen.

I dressed Cassie in the requisite comfortable clothes (no leotards involved, blessed be). I made sure she peed before we left. For myself, I brought cinnamon tea and the New Yorker. As it turned out, I barely made it through half an article. The spectacle of one's own child and four others of similar ages jumping around in a primary-colored gym is surprisingly riveting. It also seems that Cassie has made some real strides in gross motor development lately. Running around the mat during the beginning warm-up, she looked graceful and at ease. She frog-jumped and bear-walked seemingly effortlessly. She's still excessively cautious (again, like her mother), needing to be coaxed through the small tunnel, and approaching the inflated bouncing mat shyly and gingerly before every one of her six successful times across it. And there were certainly things that she looked awkward at. But she didn't look out of place with the other children (unfortunately, that was left to Angie, the very pudgy little girl who had trouble even mustering a jump on the bouncing mat). She looked fine. Age-appropriate. And she looked like she was having a pretty good time.

So who knew that this would be an opportunity for my personal growth. Just as Pete manages to pretend that he does not have a spider phobia in front of Cassie, I will keep my inner writhings about the idea of gymnastics to myself. And maybe I'll even learn something.

Seconds

Being pregnant with a second child is very different from being pregnant with the first. So much so that I'm half-worried I'll forget to go into the hospital when I go into labor. You know, I'll be busy and preoccupied with other things, and it just won't seem that important. Oh, yeah, having a baby. I'll call the midwives any minute now, really, just give me a sec to track down Cassie's other shoe and check the weather online and get in one more load of laundry and maybe write a quick blog post. And one thing will lead to another, and the head will be crowning, and I'll be wishing I'd gotten around to sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor because now it's all gritty under my butt.

I'm actually a little concerned that as a firstborn myself, I'm not ideally cut out to be the mom of a second child. What if I still retain all kinds of long-repressed resentments of the intruder into familial paradise that was my little brother? What if I hold second-childness against my own second child? (Not that my transition to being a big sister was particularly rocky, I don't think. If so, it doesn't show in the home movies, anyway. Plus I think my mom would have said something.) I guess it really is a bit early to say. I'm hoping that as this sort of theoretical child, represented currently as a fat belly and finally ebbing nausea, becomes an actual child, I'll get substantially more excited about it. At the moment, though, I'm uncomfortably ambivalent.

Babies are boring, for one thing. They're dumb little blobs that don't do anything but make noise and stink.

I think I might not have always felt this way. I seem to remember, actually, when Cassie was a newborn, feeling a kind of pity for the parents of those large, ungainly 9-month-olds, and certainly for parents of (shudder) toddlers, all huge and rough and loud and horridly un-cute. Thinking back, it may well be that I have consistently maintained an impressively delusional sense that whatever age Cassie is right now is the very best age that a child could ever be, and a conviction that babies and children in other age categories are simply inherently less lovely. So it happens that right now, 3 1/2 is the fabulous age, the pinnacle of childhood greatness. But I am starting to realize that it is possible that I am not quite entirely impartial on the subject.

So can I count on it happening again? When this one is born (in early March-ish), will I find myself with a sudden sureness that neonate and 4-year-old are the two perfect ages? Man, I hope so.

I remember that before events like moving, or going off to camp, or going off to college, somebody would reassure me that I would make new friends. And I would feel this great indifference, shading into distaste. I don't like people I don't know, I would say. And I guess theoretical babies are really not much different from theoretical friends. I don't like babies I don't know. They're stupid and boring.

At least I have had a few brief moments, split seconds when I've felt excitement about this whole new unknown human who's going to be joining us, along with a pure and sweet love and protectiveness. I had an ultrasound* a few weeks ago, and seeing the little face and limbs and brain and beating heart gave me a rush of that feeling. (Those right-to-lifers who set up "pregnancy crisis centers" and then get conflicted pregnant girls in for an ultrasound right away definitely know what they're doing. It really makes the pregnancy feel less abstract.) And I've had a couple other moments, too, here and there. Even just listening to the fetal heart tones on doppler in the midwife's office helped. And also when Cassie's teacher said that Cassie is talking about this as "her baby" ("Is it your Mama and Daddy's baby, too?" the teacher asked. "No," said Cassie breezily, "just mine.")--I guess because hey, if this baby is Cassie's, too, then it's not an interloper, it really belongs.

Then there were a couple of days a week or so ago when I was feeling some uterine contractions, and it freaked me out, thinking I might be at risk for miscarriage. I spent nearly two days depressed and paralyzed and crazy miserable before I finally called my midwife, and she asked me a couple questions, then said all kinds of reassuring things, including that she was almost certain that the pregnancy was not threatened. Whereupon I felt like singing and dancing and laughing and crying all at once. And then a few days later, I had a very vivid and realistic dream in which I innocently went to the bathroom, and then there was all this blood on the toilet paper, and I got hysterical, and woke up with my heart pounding. So, you know, maybe I do actually care a little bit about this pregnancy.

I don't know. I guess I just have to trust it's going to work out. It really doesn't happen all that often that a mom truly doesn't like one of her children. I guess it's not unheard of, but the odds are probably on my side. I just hope this kid isn't stupid and boring.



* For Early Risk Assessment--have you heard about this? It's new since the last time I was pregnant, so I hadn't known much about it. They do a certain set of measurements--of nuchal translucency--on ultrasound, and perform a couple of particular blood tests, and factor in your age and some other stuff, then they calculate a risk for Down Syndrome as well as Trisomy 13 & 18. So then you can decide whether you want to go ahead and have an amnio. Based on the results, this kid has a 1 in 125 chance of having Down Syndrome and a 1 in 3137 chance of having Trisomy 13 or 18, so I'm going to skip the amnio, especially since I think I probably/maybe/definitely/possibly wouldn't decide to terminate if there were Down Syndrome anyway. In a backwards way, it might even be easier not to know for sure.

Strangely Un-FP

I had my interview yesterday. Finally. The HR person really did take her sweet time in arranging the meeting with Maureen, the nursing director for the unit. But it happened. We met, and we talked, and I pretty much just told her the Story of Me (including the touchy bit about how it came to be that I left Famous Hospital after the Dramatic Incident), and she told me a little bit about her own story and her values and philosophy for being a nurse manager, and some of the current (very thoughtful) adjustments being made to the nurse training process. She talked about the difficulties and strengths as she's seen them in people like me moving into a staff nurse role. AND and and, at the end of our chat (more than an hour long), she offered me the job.

So in a couple short weeks, I will be an oncology nurse at Other Famous Hospital! This is on the floor where I did my precepted clinical experience for my nursing refresher course, and at this point (probably a bit honeymoon-ish still, I guess) I just can't imagine a better inpatient unit. I have been continually impressed with the level of matter-of-fact, unpretentious commitment of the nurses; their supportiveness of one another; their existing scope of knowledge and the readiness of even the most experienced nurses to learn new things as the occasion arises; their genuine respect and regard for their patients. And none of it is goopy or fake or sugary or over-the-top--it's all so low-key you'd think they weren't doing anything extraordinary at all. And besides all this, the unit is well staffed, and the hospital infrastructure things (supplies, linens, patient transport) as well as the supportive services (lab, radiology, pharmacy) are as close to well-oiled-machine status as I've ever seen in my limited experience with hospitals. Not to mention, the physical therapists are great; the chaplin is great; the dietitians are great; the nurse's aides are great (well, mostly--there is Lazy Cecilia, but she's definitely the exception); the desk clerks are great. I mean, really, it's almost eerie.

I'll be making about the same as I was in my ill-fated position at Famous Hospital, maybe a bit more (especially when you consider $5/hour above base rate for evenings; $7/hour above base rate for nights; and an additional $4/hour above base rate for weekends). And there are vision benefits! I've never had vision coverage before. And for $36 a month, I can join the on-site gym, which apparently has an indoor and an outdoor pool. I mean, jeez. It's almost as if, from Funny Pathetic, I'm being catapulted into Funny Ridiculous Good Luck.

Well, I mean, we'll see, right? Who knows what's coming. Maybe this is the end of seven years of bad luck after breaking some mirror I don't even remember. Or maybe it's Pride Goeth Before a Fall. Or the eye of the hurricane. After all, life is so rich in possibilities for sudden tragedy, never mind sudden disappointments and set-backs. You really don't know.

But, well, at this moment, I may tell you that I have accepted a job in a wonderful place doing really good work; Cassie is happy and healthy and got an excellent haircut this week; and my uterus has nearly reached the midway point between the symphysis pubis and the umbilicus, with nice fetal heart tones. The index for Pete's book is finally done; my Jetta gets good gas mileage; the house is getting a bit less chaotic as I have some days free. And I just got some chamomille-scented baby shampoo to wash Cassie's hair with, and it smells really, really good.

Nausea

Eep. It's been a really, really long time since I've posted. And now I'm all tongue-tied, and it's hard to make the words come out. I told myself that today I would just put up the fragment of a post I wrote more than a month ago, and then tomorrow I will be braver and stronger and start again trying to make more words on the screen.

By the way, the nausea is still, at 14 1/2 weeks, not entirely gone. But it is way, way better, and I'm duly grateful.


July 27, 2005

In a perverse way, it seems easier to write when one doesn't have anything in particular to write about. Then it's just playing with words, following one's nose, until maybe something develops. Or maybe it doesn't. But then that just leaves more space to write something, anything, as soon as a fragment of an idea arrives.

When there is not only a thing to write about, but a Big Thing, it suddenly seems to get heavier and more difficult. I suppose it has to do the nagging feeling that one can't possibly do justice to the topic with anything less than a bildungsroman-meets-doctoral-thesis to the tune of 1500 heavily footnoted pages. Well, and then there's how a Big Topic gets all kind of murky and boggy and inchoate in spots, especially if it's emotionally laden. There's just not a nice, clean, crisp, dry way to get from here to there. Every attempt to write passages in one's head seems to end with getting stuck up to the chin in a morass of intellectual complexity and mixed feelings.

It wouldn't be so bad if one could just write about other things in the meanwhile. But there's something about the Big Topic that traps a person's mind in a useless high-rev, wheels spinning, burning lots of gas, getting nowhere. It happened to me before when I was trying to figure out a way to write about my struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome. I didn't write for two weeks as my mind spun and spun. Finally I was able to find the wisdom (or luck, or fatigue) just to give it up--telling myself a soothing story about how someday I would really sit down and write about it, just not now--and then start writing again about something else.

This time my wheel-spinning has had a somewhat different quality, but the ultimate result has been pretty much the same. So here's the Big Thing. I'm pregnant. Newly-ish. It will be 8 weeks tomorrow (in that kooky teleological way they count it, from the first day of your last menstrual period, as if from the moment you started bleeding, you were somehow destined to conceive 14 days later). We'd been trying, so it's neither undesired nor unplanned. It's still managed to feel surprising, though. I had begun in earnest to come around to accepting the idea that Cassie might well never get a sibling. (After all, I'm 39 and counting, and fertility starts going down fairly steeply around age 35, and it had taken 2 years to get pregnant with Cassie, and that was 4 years ago, and, and, and... )

One of the things about pregnancy besides the somehow inescapable mind-blowing-ness of it is the morning sickness. Sometimes the nausea is so big in my consciousness, it feels like anything else I think or feel has to squeeze through around the edges of it. The whole center of my mind is taken up with this big, uncomfortably overinflated balloon of queasiness.