Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Week 15 and magic


So we’re into our second trimester, and everything is apparently as it should be.


Funnily enough, the initial moments of “Wow” passed, as well as the occasional feeling of not owning my own body because it’s acting in weird ways it used not to, I feel like a fish in the sea & like being pregnant is the most normal thing in the world.

Which of course it is, but it’s also hugely and totally unfathomable, isn’t it? One of those things you have a hard time getting your head around. Realizing that you are growing another person inside of you and that one day, if all goes well, they will be as "big" and as "old" as you are right now. It’s like you always knew this was going to happen, but at the same time never really believed it. Like growing up when you’re little. (Well at least that’s the way I felt.) One of those things that seems totally unremarkable until you stop to think about it.

And it’s the circle thing… I’m going to be a parent, which means I am going to be what my parents are to me, to someone else. Auuehemerrr… that is weird. That’s scary. That’s well, I’m not too sure about that part.


Of course, I’m going to be my version of parent, mixed with my honey’s version, and with the inescapable twist and shake our lives and experiences will convey to our choices, actions and oversights. As my Dad has said billions of times (in a rather fatalistic, defensive and occasionally apologetic manner) we don’t make the mistakes our parents made, but we make others. I can believe that, although there’s a sometimes a boomerang effect, that brings us right back to where (what?) we were trying to get away from in the first place.


We probably all have a couple of vivid memories of things that we swore we would never do “to” our kids when we grew up and had them… (I made lists: of things to remember –or rather not to forget- of things not to do… A real Peter Pan although I desperately wanted to put childhood behind me and become an adult.) But then there’s perspective, and of course I’ve changed my mind on some of those things, but there are others… Ah well, I guess we’ll do our best. (I think it’s a bit early to go down that road right this minute.)


Anyway, it might be the hormones (I don't mean the replacement therapy ones), but being pregnant is bringing back flashes from my childhood, my teens, my whole life. I’ve always thought we carry with(in) us the 2, 7, 9, 13, 17… year olds we once were – but although these versions of me occasionally voice a point or two, now days they seem to be more vocal than ever, playing the reels of hazy long-ago snippets of my life with people who have played a role in it; Some no longer alive, whom I have not thought of in a while. Others, whose memory is much more vivid and have sometimes been embodied by living people who, it has seemed at times, were encountered and (put?) there for me as stand-ins for those who left too soon.


See? Hormones. You probably think I’m looney tunes by now.


But I do believe in a kind of magic. Maybe it’s destiny, maybe it’s God, maybe it’s the Universe, I don’t think the name matters much –I don’t think I would care if I were misnamed, as long as the concept of me …oh, oh, another one I don’t think I’m going to go down just now – sorry.

Anyway, magic… I think there is magic.

Maybe it’s in my belly, maybe it’s in the air, maybe it’s my hormone-drugged brain… But when you catch a glimpse of it, it makes you feel all warm inside and kind of happy-sad. Kind of like when you want to cry with joy or when I think of my Baba and her bordeaux shawl.


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