Ready or Not

The clutter had been bothering me for weeks. Months, even. If you want to get technical about it, it had actually been bothering me since the week we moved into our house almost three years ago. That week where I unpacked boxes, putting away stuff that we use and wear all the time in its proper place, and tossing everything else into empty closets and drawers in spare rooms that I quickly designated as "someday." 

Most of the time I didn't think about closets and drawers filled with clothes that neither of us wore or boxes I never quite figured out what to do with but when I did my fingers got itchy and I started thinking about all the things I could do with the space but I could never figure out where to start so I ended up starting nowhere and doing something else instead, like binge watching all five seasons of Friday Night Lights, or re-reading my favorite romance novel for the tenth time.

One weekend this past October I dug in and transformed the useless room downstairs into a home office, but that was about as far as I got, until last weekend.

I have been spending some time over the past couple of weeks making lists of all of the things that we'll need for the baby - things like clothes and diapers and wipes and bottles and receiving blankets and a million other things that I probably haven't thought of yet. 

Thinking about all the new stuff that we have to bring into the house made me anxious enough to remember all the stuff that is currently in the house that we don't need or use, and was enough to send me diving into those long-forgotten closets and drawers, making frantic piles of clothes to give and throw away, and using enough Stop and Shop brand heavy duty trash bags to make me wish I owned stock in the company.

On Sunday I took thirty bags to Goodwill to donate, and came home to a house that was as clutter free and as organized as mine has ever been. I sat my pregnancy-afflicted aching back on the couch, determined to do as little as possible for the rest of the day, and it occurred to me that it was a good thing I got this all taken care of, because my due date was about three weeks away.

And how the hell did that happen?

Somewhere between doctor's appointments, and my disappearing feet, and my inability to bend over and the frenzy to get everything done at work before I go out on leave and the end of my morning commute, April turned into June and then all of a sudden June is half over and the big event seems like it's minutes away.

And while practically, the end of the aforementioned back pain and inability to bend over or to sleep for more than an hour at a time or to turn over in bed without assistance makes me pretty happy, in actuality, the haste with which time is passing leaves me a little breathless. I feel unprepared. Like I am hurtling at full speed down a highway without directions and with no idea what awaits me at my destination or even, actually, what my destination is.

With three weeks to go I have this overwhelming urge to memorialize this slice of time. To somehow document the things that I am feeling and thinking in the short days before my world changes and cracks opens to welcome another human into it. Before everything is different. Before I become a mother.

But the truth is, I can't seem to grab on to any singular thought or feeling long enough to give it a name and put it into words. I suspect that one day, with the privilege of time and a little distance, I'll be able to look back on these weeks "before" with a little more clarity and some understanding, but today, it all seems to be packed tightly together and lodged somewhere deep inside of me, held down by the frenzy to prepare for the unknown and the stroller and carseat currently sitting in two massive boxes in my living room.

I also suspect that the way I feel is blessedly normal, and aside from the quick and intense desires to clean out a closet or organize a drawer, I have been spending these last few weeks enjoying the summer and doing the things that I do best: reading my books, watching lots of TV, baking my way through Smitten Kitchen's archive of desserts, and eating the delicious results.

Because ultimately, though all this newness is big and intimidating and coming faster than I ever could have imagined it would, it is a brand new chapter that we wanted and hoped for and waited for for a long time. And even though we have no idea what we're in for or what we're doing, we are determined to get this right, this making of a family, to be good at it, to enjoy it, and to figure it out together as we go.

And it's a good thing.

Because ready or not, here it comes.

The Last Commute

This morning was my last train commute to work in Manhattan until I go back to work after my maternity leave. I'll still be working for the next six or so weeks - as long as I possibly can - but I'll be driving into the city and parking across the street from my office instead of taking the train. With all the stairs and the walking and the rushing and the muggy, hot mornings, I knew that the closer I got to July the harder it would be to make myself do it every day, and since Metro North commuting means making decisions for an entire month at a time, today was it for me.

So, on Monday morning, instead of waiting on the platform for the 7:43 train to Manhattan I'll be, more than likely, fighting traffic on the West Side Highway to make my way into midtown. And instead of sitting in my regular first row seat in the quiet car, book in hand, I'll be sitting in the drivers seat of my car with the radio turned up.

I've been pregnant now for 34 weeks and obviously, it's not something that one easily forgets about when they are literally growing a person inside of them. We've met pediatricians, gone shopping to pick a stroller and a car-seat and something for the baby to sleep in for those first couple of weeks, decided which room in our house we'll eventually convert to a nursery, and even talked about which one of us is better suited for 4am feedings.

So it's not like we are entirely unprepared for this thing that is happening.

And yet, this morning, when I got on the train, I had this moment. This moment where I remembered that this is the last time I'll be getting on the morning train until sometime around the beginning of November, and it stopped me cold. Because I'm someone who has never excelled at change, and it hit me that my life is about to change in the biggest and most dramatic way possible.

And it made me wonder. what will happen when this kind of change - stunning and irreversible as it is - steamrolls into my life? Will I roll with it and take it as it comes? Struggle to adjust to a new normal?  Mourn, just a little, the life that I am leaving behind? 

I know myself well enough at this point to understand that it will probably be a little bit of all three. And I've decided it's ok. It's ok to have no idea what I'm doing. To worry about raising a tiny human. To wonder if I'll be good at it. To obsess a little over the details of it all. To miss the part of my life that ends while a new one begins.

I think that there is no right way to do this, to become a parent, and the only way is to do the best that I can.

So on Monday morning I'll get in my car and I'll point it south and I'll drive to Manhattan. And when I do I won't just be going to work, but starting the first slow steps into the newness and unknown that stretches out ahead.

Radio Silence

I took a little bit of time off from this place. Not from writing, mostly, but from publishing the things that I wrote. I thought about posting every single day that I didn't because I've been writing and posting here for more than three years, and to ignore it for awhile was strange for me. Foreign. Because for three years I have documented my life on these pages. For better or worse, big things and small things, these pages tell the story of my life for the past three years.

Or, rather, most of that story.

Because a big part of that story over the past year is one that I haven't told yet. I've written bits and pieces of it but I haven't published it because it's not quite time yet. I've mentioned it from time to time but I haven't told it all from start to finish because I wasn't ready. I will be though. Soon, I think. Because for better or worse, I document my life here. Partly because I like to, and partly because, after three years, I need to. Because writing here about myself has become a way for me to puzzle through a life that is good and rich and also complex. To process Really Big Things and to document things that are less big, but no less important.

The thousands and thousands of words that I have written here are deeply important to me. And I am proud of them, even, maybe especially, of the hard ones. The ones I had to reach down deep to find and yank out to put on the page.

There will be more words. Lots of them.

But the problem with having so many words written and not sharing them yet is that I found myself unable to share anything else. There has been so much happening but all the words to explain it all get lost somewhere between my brain and my hands and well, radio silence. But the thing about this blog is that it has become a time capsule of sorts. A place where I write not just things that I want to puzzle over, but things that I want to make sure not to forget. 

In about nine weeks, we're having a baby. It's still a little surreal to say those words out loud. The first twenty weeks dragged by in a haze of all-day sickness, tests and a constant, low-level anxiety that something would go wrong, could possibly go wrong, or was wrong already. Then when the tests assured us that everything was fine I graduated to angst over my slowly dwindling wardrobe and the train-wreck that was getting dressed for work every morning, my concern that I would grow out of all of my coats before the longest winter in history finally came to an end, and vigilance over the constant necessity to always be within five minutes of a bathroom. Pregnancy is not for the weak.

But lately, over the past two weeks or so, something else has happened. It's not just that the weather is finally nice enough for the coats that I can't zip or button anymore to no longer be necessary, and it's not because I finally have a maternity wardrobe that makes me feel like a human being when I get dressed in the morning. Those things certainly don't hurt, but it's more than that. Much more.

It's that for the first time since I saw two lines on a test back in October - and then a plus, a pink line, an unequivocal "pregnant" and a simple "yes" after taking one of every test on the shelf at Target - I can think about life after these months without qualifying it. I can say "we're having a baby" without silently adding in my head "unless something bad happens." I can make detailed lists of things we need - my specialty - without worrying that those lists will be somehow unnecessary.

It's not that I don't worry. When you've been where we've been and walked where we've walked I think there is always worry. It's that the worry is almost all crowded out by a sense of the wonder of it all. Not the wonder of pregnancy, exactly, because that part is just rough. But of the knowledge that we were able to do this thing that we thought we wouldn't be able to do and that in a little more than two months there will be a whole new person in the world that we created that is part of each of us. And the understanding that this whole thing is just one big leap of faith and that even though that should terrify me, somehow, at this point, it just doesn't.

And for the first time, I feel wildly grateful, instead of afraid. For the first time. I want to write about it. To document it in words so that one day I can go back and read them and remember how it was. Because this is the beginning of a brand new part of my life and of our lives.

And now, I don't want to miss any part of it.

Maybe Some Point is Going to be Today

Every time my doctor hands me a strip of the blurry black and white pictures I stuff them into the side pocket of my bag with the hair ties, ear buds, clear nail polish, travel bottle of Tylenol, and other random things that live there indefinitely. Then I forget about them until I need to tie my hair back, watch Netflix on the train, repair a nail or stop a run in my tights, or cure a headache. I rummage around in that side pocket for whatever I need, and instead come up with a handful of ultrasound images.

For a second I think that I should really do something with the pictures, if for no other reason than to get them out of my bag that already houses more stuff than I ever actually need. But then I put them right back in the pocket.

I can practically track the baby's progress just by reaching for a lipgloss. 

7 weeks, just a blob on the screen. 10 weeks, arms and legs and a heartbeat of 153. 13 weeks, fingers and toes. 16 weeks, a mouth and a nose. 20 weeks, all the important parts right where they are supposed to be. 25 weeks, a wave from a tiny hand. 29 weeks, a stretch and a perfect profile shot.

And I can track other things too.

Walking to the doctor's office wondering if maybe those two lines on the test were somehow mistaken and there was no baby after all. White knuckling the chair in the waiting room and wondering if there would still be a beating heart. The ultrasound technician who almost gave me a heart attack with her silence and her stern face. The other ultrasound technician with her smile and kind eyes and her promise to show me the heartbeat first thing so I didn't have to be afraid. The time I ended up in the hospital for blood pressure that is completely normal except when a nurse tries to take it at the beginning of an appointment.

Because one time about a year ago I was expecting my second strip of pictures, the 10 week ones, but instead I got no pictures because there was silence where there should have been two beating hearts. And my plan, already in effect, to stick the pictures from every appointment into the chapter for the corresponding week in my brand new copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting came to a sudden and jarring halt.

So this time around I had exactly zero plans for the pictures and that still brand new book has stayed on my shelf, unread and out of sight, because I didn't want this time to be anything like last time.

And it hasn't been.

So maybe I'll take all the pictures out of my bag and find a drawer where they can live because when you've been where I've been I don't think that you ever really stop worrying, it's just that at some point you decide to be brave, and to start saying "when" instead of "if," and to consider the idea that this time there will be a happy ending to the story, as improbable as that once seemed.

Maybe I'll do it tonight.

Maybe that some point is going to be today.

Nothing Gets in Between Me and a Good Snack

I walked through the front door of my house, glowing with the satisfaction of a successful shopping expedition.

I sat down on the couch to review my purchases, marveling first at the beauty of my new red bag and blessing the luck that placed it in my direct line of sight in the accessories department of T.J. Maxx. And I admired the maternity pants that I finally bought to replace my favorite pair of pre-pregnancy black pants that I had been holding onto for dear life until buttoning them made breathing a chore and sitting down nearly impossible and I finally had to wave the white flag and admit defeat. I could practically hear my unborn child sighing with relief when I folded them away.

With the results of my shopping spree reviewed and confirmed, I walked into the kitchen to put my "binge-watch Friday Night Lights and eat the maple walnut fudge that I had made the night before during a strange confluence of pregnancy cravings and nesting impulse" plan into action.

I heard the splashing noise that, unfortunately, was not altogether unfamiliar, while I was standing at the counter, pastry knife in hand.

At first I thought it was the radiators getting ready to heat up and then I figured it had to be water dripping into the sump pump from outside due to sunshine and melting snow. But my head already knew the source wasn't nearly that benign.

One short trip down the basement stairs confirmed that thought.

Grey-tinged water and tiny bits of toilet paper were gushing out of a discharge pipe and spilling onto the floor, and the smell permeating my basement was vaguely reminiscent of a well used porta-pottie.

For a minute I just stood there watching the chaos unfold, but then I turned around and went back upstairs, closing the basement door on the whole big mess.

If I had known at that moment that this wasn't the simple do-it-yourself kind of plumbing issue we're used to but was, in fact, a complete clog of our main sewer line that would require a midnight emergency and very expensive Roto-Rooter visit and another hour of disinfecting the basement, I might have reacted with the mix of panic and helplessness that characterizes my general disposition when faced with house issues.

But I didn't. Instead, I gathered my snack and took to the couch and my Friday Night Lights marathon and decided I just wouldn't flush the toilet for the rest of the day while I waited for David to get home.

I'd like to say that having a baby in less than four months has given me a new "don't sweat the small stuff" outlook on life. That it has made me focus on the important things like creating life, instead of the stuff that's no big deal and more or less easily fixed, like plumbing gone awry.

But really?

It's just that nothing was getting in between me and that maple-walnut fudge.

A Winter to Remember

Last night, we took a walk outside. It had been snowing pretty seriously since early afternoon, and while what we really wanted to do was stay on the couch and finish our House of Cards season 3 marathon, I'm co-chair of a project at my synagogue and had to be there for a couple of hours last night. With six inches and counting of snow on the streets and no plows in sight, driving there was out of the question and it was just around the corner, so I had to walk. After blasting a path out of our house with the snow-blower, David decided to make the trek with me.

My street was completely snow-covered and utterly deserted. It's not a busy street to begin with, but with the thickly-falling snow, it was like a fluffy white blanket had been thrown over my neighborhood, and we were living in the silence beneath it.

We picked our way down the street hand-in-hand, sliding a little bit here and there and laughing while the fat flakes coated our eyelashes, slapped our cheeks, and swirled around us.

I guess I could say that I'm sick of winter. That I'm tired of cleaning off my car in the morning and of wiping up my salt-stained entry-way floors and of being so cold all the time and of snow in general. But last night when we were walking through our quiet, snowy neighborhood it occurred to me that I'm not really all that sick of it at all. In actuality, I'm kind of grateful for it.

Because this year, winter is an interesting time in our lives. In October, I found out I was pregnant, which was the beginning of a flurry of morning-sickness filled days and nights, anxiety filled doctors appointments where we sat in silence and hoped that we would still see a beating heart on the fuzzy ultrasound screen, and with each passing week a fascinating brand of hope and anticipation that this was, in fact, the baby that would be ours.

And then it got colder and the snow started to fall and we started sharing our news - first with family and then with everyone. And we started to feel more confident too. But the first half of pregnancy is a funny thing. Because even though the news was out and I was finally - mercifully - feeling better, there were still all the tests to contend with. The ones that every woman gets, that are completely routine, but that seek to unearth every single thing that could possibly be wrong with the baby you've been growing for months. And well, who can relax completely with all of that uncertainty going on?

But then the test results came back and everything is exactly the way it should be and now we find ourselves in what I have come to think of as the middle place. There are hard things behind us, and serious, life-altering change ahead, but right now, it is just us and the snow, and cold nights under blankets in front of a fireplace, and dinner together on the couch in front of the TV, and winter walks through our quiet neighborhood with red cheeks and frosty eyelashes.

Spring will be here before we know it, and then summer will come roaring in on its heels, and I'm looking forward to all of that, and everything that comes with it. But I know that, years from now, when I look back on this time, it's going to be the winter that I remember. Those days when anxiety was replaced by anticipation, and when we were still just two, living in this amazing now and dreaming and planning for the days to come, with the snow-blower growling in the background.

And I'm thinking about the days behind us and wondering how the ones to come will look, but more than anything, I am living here, right now. Because even in the face of the monster change coming in just a few months, these moments right now are still the ones that matter. And this is exactly where I want to be.

This is Thirty-Two

My birthday was eleven days ago. I turned thirty-two.

It was a Saturday. I woke up to flowers at the bottom of the stairs and walked through a surprise snowfall to a friend's house for lunch. I celebrated at night with my oldest and closest friends with dessert at one of my favorite Upper West Side locales and then with french fries and nachos at a Manhattan Steelers bar, cheering for a Steelers playoff win that, sadly, never happened.

I talked to my parents and to my sisters and my niece and nephew sang to me over Facetime. I got text messages from my cousins, a singing card from my grandma, and a glove/mitten hybrid situation from my best friend that made me wonder why I haven't been wearing mittens instead of gloves this whole time.

It was an ordinary kind of day - and a quiet one - full of friends, family and fun. Just the way I like it. It was also the beginning of a brand new year - a year that will be anything but ordinary. A year that promises change of the most enormous kind. The kind of change that will divide my life forever into before and after. The kind of change that we've been keeping a secret for more than three months. The kind of change it's finally time to share.

This is going to be a really big year.

This is thirty-two.

Thirty-two is going through fourteen months of fertility treatments - of hope and heartbreak and grief that brought me to my knees and almost broke me into pieces - and then finding out I'm pregnant on a random and rainy Thursday night this past October after absolutely zero fertility treatments at all. 

It is knowing without any doubt that things happen when they are meant to happen. That I can try my hardest to control every little thing, but in the end, there's some higher power out there that may have a different idea about the way it's all supposed to go. Thirty-two is a brand new appreciation for the ways that life can surprise. It is witnessing a miracle in my very own life, and knowing in the deepest part of me that this really was the way it was meant to be.

Thirty-two is laying in a darkened room holding David's hand and staring at a monitor while my doctor shows us a real live person that we created all by ourselves and understanding that this is a moment that will be etched in my memory for as long as I live. It is standing just on the brink of enormous and humbling change and feeling a gratitude so huge that it seems almost tangible in its presence. It is trying hard to soak up these days in the "before" when it is still just us, just two people who met and fell in love and got married and somehow made something brand new that is a little bit of each of us, and knowing that there is something extraordinary waiting for us in the "after".

Thirty-two is realizing that the rocky road that got us to this place is a part of my story now. It is an experience I can't forget or wish away and I'm not so sure that I would even if I could. It seems so cliche to say that - like it's what people always say when they go through something terrible and come out the other side - but for better or worse these months have changed me and have taught me what it means to hold on and to let go and to stop planning so hard for what may or may not be. When I told my friend Alisa the news she said to me, "some things can't be planned when they are already written in the stars," and I know now that she is just exactly right.

Thirty-two understands now more than ever the importance of telling our stories. Even - maybe especially - the hard ones. Because the truth is we all have rough paths to walk and by telling our stories, we allow people who have been there before to walk that path with us, and show us the way through. And if thirty-one was about putting my head down and plowing through the tough stuff, thirty-two feels a deep and abiding responsibility to tell the story of the last year; to turn around and hold out my hand and my heart to the women who might be walking this path behind me. To tell them that I've been there now, and that I can show them the way to the other side.

Thirty-two is tough because the past year has toughened me, but I also know that that's not such a bad thing. Because being tough means making sure I get exactly what's important to me, even if what's important is just to skip the laundry for an extra hour outside in the summer, or to have a really good dessert. Because thirty-two understands that life is short and this is the only one we get and you really don't want to be the one looking back on all the times you should have sat in the sun or just eaten the damn cupcake.

Thirty-two is different than all the years that came before it, and not just because of the big changes ahead.

Thirty-two is taking my health seriously. It is having regular check-ups, actually getting myself to the dentist twice a year, never going to bed at night without washing my face, and finally deciding to make strength training a part of my regular routine because everyone says I'll thank myself later, even if I'm a little skeptical. It is also understanding myself enough to know that no matter how healthy my eating habits are, I will never give up french fries, and I will never learn to like kale because it's disgusting, no matter how many people tell me it's the most super of all the superfoods. Whatever that means.

Thirty-two is making my friends and my family a priority. It is tending to those relationships and feeling lucky in the people who populate my life - people who hold my stories and know me all the way through. It is being old enough to understand that the friends I have now are the kind that last lifetimes and knowing how important it is to have people who knew me then and know me now and will know me when. Thirty-two is remembering the friends my parents had when I was growing up and still have today, the ones who raised me just as much as my own parents did, and being a little stunned to realize that we are that age now and we are the ones watching each other's children grow.

Thirty-two is celebrating a lot of babies, but very few weddings. It is having a house and a mortgage and a community with a synagogue where we pay dues and where I might even chair a committee, mostly because they asked and I couldn't say no. Thirty-two is real grown-up stuff. But it is also having a neighborhood full of people who take care of each other and knowing that we were lucky to end up in this place.

Thirty-two is looking back and knowing that there is a lot of life behind me and that some choices really are irrevocable. But it is also realizing that the choices I have made were more right than wrong, understanding that, hopefully, most of my life lies ahead, and believing, as I stand at the beginning of a brand new chapter, that the best is still yet to come.

So, really, thirty-two is a giant privilege. Because just to be here, to live, to be making a family, to have purpose and people to love who love me back? This is what it's all about. These are the things that matter.

This is thirty-two.