Genesis

Perhaps the shaky image at right could serve as the literary device I most love, that of foreshadowing.

As all stories go, this one has a beginning, middle and end. Presently, the beginning is the only known piece. In time, the middle will reveal itself. As for the end, I'm not sure I will know of it in advance. I presume it will be my own mortality, as motherhood is unending.

Or maybe, Gilda Radner got it right when she said: "Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity . . . "

As I look back, I suspect I have become more comfortable with Radner's view. But, I certainly wasn't on September 24, 2011. To be honest, facing reality--let alone contemplating the journey--was terrifying to me. Yes, I HAD always wanted to be a mother. But, with it now staring me in the face, anxiety set in. And then, there was the matter of it being a surprise. As a type A personality to the nth--having not planned this major life change threw me for a loop. We'll circle back to this notion in my next posting. Let's just say, "delicious ambiguity" was not a phrase in my vocabulary, it was completely beyond me and my reality.

As the month of September came to a close, I confided the "weirdness" I was experiencing to my girlfriend, Charlie. Repeatedly, her advice was "take a pregnancy test." Shrugging this possibility aside for about a week, I finally decided to buy a pregnancy test--mostly just to prove her wrong. As Shoots watched the Bobcat game at his folks, I opened the kit and followed the directions. When it came time to read the results, I took the above picture and texted it to Charlie. Asking her to read the results--because mine was "just a thin blue line, quite different from the picture in the example"--I held my breath as she called me with her answer. "You definitely are pregnant. The width of that line doesn't matter; that it's there does!" she said. "You've got to tell Shoots immediately."