Visiting Hours

He looks like him. That was the first thing I thought of when I looked at my son.  He had Joe’s coloring, his hair color.  His eyes were dark, dark blue, which everyone told me meant his eyes would turn brown within the first year of life.  Everything about him, including his sex, was more [...]

It’s Time

I hadn’t slept all night.  The insomnia thing, it was amazing to me.  I’d never had trouble sleeping, ever.  I was the kid who never fought to stay up late; I put myself to bed when I was tired.  I loved my sleep. But nine days after my due date, with my belly riddled with [...]

Lamaze Partner

I was standing outside St. John’s Hospital, watching my father get interviewed on TV by a local news anchor. His career had taken a definite upturn in the last few years, often getting interviewed on the news for his take on issues with this drug or that food emergency.  His position at the Food and [...]

Showering Solo

I was home.  It was time to get ready for my first baby shower. It was June, and I was staring at the laundry basket full of the recently moved clothes, desk supplies and newly purchased maternity clothes, wondering which outfit I should wear. I left Michigan State University six months pregnant.  In the final [...]

Alone

I was laying on the bed, my top bunk in my dorm room, staring at my stomach. It was growing, daily.  I was in awe of how it was expanding, the magic of how my body knew just what to do despite the ignorance of the girl inhabiting it.  No one living outside of my [...]

On A Break

I was sitting across the table at a Big Boy restaurant from Mr. H. I’d come home for my Spring Break, and called his home phone number to arrange the meeting.  He’d included it in the long letter he’d sent me a few weeks ago at school, in response to my cry for help sent [...]

A Promise

“If that’s the way you want it, you will never hear from me again.” Joe C to me,  March 2, 1989. I don’t really remember how it all unraveled.  That’s wrong, don’t you think?  The events leading up to Joe’s and my breakup should be etched in stone in my head.  They should be indelible [...]

Flashes Back In Time

Vignettes from January, 1989: Going to my GP to have my first gynecological exam to confirm my pregnancy. This was the first time I admitted to anyone outside of my comfort zone that I was pregnant.  Again, Joe was not with me. This should have worried me at the time, but not having a frame [...]

Telling the Parents

“Mom, there’s no other way to tell you this, so I’m going to just come out and say it:  I’m pregnant.” My mother considered the words as I dropped the bombshell.   She looked nonplussed as she looked back at me.  “Well, I thought that was what it must be when you said you had to [...]

Maybe

What I find most remarkable about my thinking back then as I waited the interminable hours between when I knew what was going to happen and when I could tell Joe what was going to happen was that I honestly didn’t think at all that he might want something different than I did.  Or anyone [...]