It's been two weeks.  Last Sunday was his due date.  Even if he had been a little late, he would probably have been here by now.  There should be a cradle behind me.  

I was quite happy being a two-dimensional character.  Was the epic tragedy really necessary?  I could have gone my whole life without knowing that I can bear up under affliction, without discovering what a strong person I am.  Am I well-rounded now?  Am I interesting?

Of the five couples in our class, of the dozens of women I saw every day, of everyone I know, what was so special about us that singled our baby out to be the one whose heart stopped?

He was so alive.  That first prenatal visit, hearing his heartbeat before you could even tell I was pregnant (unless you were keeping track of how many times I sprinted for the bathroom), the way my heart felt like it grew three sizes.

The last prenatal visit, when everyone was so cool and calm when they couldn't find his heartbeat.  Panic!  Pretend to be TV doctors!  Run around, shout things!  Don't just sigh and tell me, "Well, that's it."

THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN!  IT'S 2011!  BABIES DON'T JUST DIE.

A million teenagers had unprotected sex with their boyfriends and had babies that they didn't want.  I'm 23.  I'm married.  We wanted this baby.  We were excited.  We were nervous.  We were HAPPY.  

We did everything right.  He was perfect.  When I delivered his poor little body, they couldn't find a single thing wrong with him, except that he wasn't alive.  It's 2011.  We just sent the Space Shuttle to the International Space Station with a robot among the crew.  I can call my brother on the other side of the world and video-chat with him in real time.  They can put a wand on my stomach and show me a picture of my baby's heart before he's big enough to make a bump, but they can't tell me why one day he was alive and kicking me in the ribs and the next day he was dead.  

He was beautiful.  He looked like me.  Dark hair, square face, my chin, my nose, my ears, my long dark eyelashes.  Ryan's long fingers and big feet.  We never got to find out if he'd have Ryan's blue eyes.  I never got to feed him, but the milk came in anyway.  We packed away all of the toys and the clothes and the furniture and put the house back in order.  We met with the funeral director and the pastor and I designed memorial programs with his footprints on the cover, and I wrote an obituary for the inside to try to share who this baby was with people who never saw him, who didn't feel his kicks, who didn't know that he liked cherry Kool-aid and Coldplay.  We went home with a jar of ashes instead of our son. 

And they can't tell me why.

Oh, Gabriel.  We loved you every day of your life.  We still love you.  And I miss you more than I can explain.

It's four AM

And these are all the things I cannot say

It's four AM

And it's okay - no one reads these anyway

It's four AM and I can't sleep, alone in the dark with you right there.  The only difference between now and an hour ago is the smell of your breath and the imaginary aquarium bubbling away, and I can't figure out how I got here, and I don't know what I'm doing.

I'll go to work today and smile my big fake smile and everyone will tell me how tired I look, someone will tell me how huge I'm getting, someone will say I'm not very big at all, and someone might even notice what the vacuum cleaner did, and I'll go through the paces and when 10:30 comes I'll linger around the bakery picking things up and putting them back down and arguing with myself so that I won't have to face the long drive home yet.

And I'll lie awake and wait, with all those songs running through my head, and when I need to escape I'll have nowhere to go.

I'll stop myself from saying things I'll regret, and I'll never say anything at all.

 

Whatever you say, you can't take them from me. 

REJECTED!  Always.

I hate the things you say sometimes.  I hate the way they make me feel.

Sometimes I'm afraid that the walls are closing in on me.  Sometimes I'm afraid that they aren't, that they're staying right where they always are and so am I.  That nothing ever changes.  That the world will always be like this, and I'm trapped here in it.

I discovered today that real dried figs taste just like Fig Newtons.  And look like giant insect larvae.  Tasty, tasty insect larvae.  No wonder they have to stick them inside Newtons to make them marketable.  But people have been eating figs for thousands of years!

People have been eating insects for thousands of years, too.  Newtons aren't going to help in that department.

Dates look a bit like large pupae, oddly enough.  What is it with dried fruit looking like the various stages of insect development? 

Look - a date:


A pupal cockchafer:


That worries me every time I reach into a bag of dates.  What if?  Color differences aside.

Incidently, if The Pupal Cockchafers isn't a band already, it should be.

And for the love of everything decent in the world, why do I read random wikipedia articles when I would have been perfectly happy NOT knowing what figging is?