Testing, 1,2,3 (or 4)

I took another test. The fourth one. I don't feel sick. My boobs maybe hurt, but not really. I'm getting fat but if it's not for a baby, I have got to cut down.

The pregnant line showed up before the control line.

I'm pregnant.

I'm getting more used to the idea being for real. My husband and I had some kind of conversation in which we both agreed we were getting girl vibes. I can't even remember what he said. Something like, "you're thinking sister?" with a mild question mark, almost a period. As though of course we'd come to the same conclusion. We did last time. We were right. Go figure.

My friend is having a girl, and she just turned 40 with a great party last night. At least twice our mutual friends referenced, "when you have another" as though there was no doubt it would happen. And as though it weren't already.

I sucked in my gut on the size 00P jeans I could hardly button and tried to deflect attention from the comments.

Even if I had wanted to tell, someone else's party is not the place, and even the same week of her party wasn't the right time.

They might come here to the house for writing group on Wednesday. I moved just a few months ago and they haven't seen the new digs. I think I can only share so much of myself at once.

Baby's avatar

I had no idea when I was newly pregnant with my son that he'd come out a redhead with charcoal eyes. I don't profess to have had any visions. But his energy seemed somehow so nuanced, from so early on. Maybe that has to do with his having an intense personality, being a sensitive and dramatic soul. Now three, he's not one to fade into the background.

That's why I've felt a little skeptical that this time around, I have no picture, no sense of this potential for a person that's supposedly growing inside me.

So last night, I lay in bed thinking about this blank frame. It had less of a sense of soul than a new Internet user identity with no picture uploaded. You, know, the default image on a blogging platform or on LinkedIn, or wherever -- that shadow with a silhouette or sometimes even a question mark. There was no substance.

And yet, as I started to think about this blank, this empty shell, the frame started to change. It got scalloped like a stamp -- those frilly edges you think of more with Valentines, but they're actually on every USPS standard-issue stamp.

And the interior seemed like it got more opaque and textured. No longer a sad fading gray, the landscape inside the frilly frame deepened to a black through which show ragged scratches of color, overlapping in every direction.

I think I actually started to believe.

And it seemed like she was a she.