Three is the Magic Number

I don’t like to make excuses. I’ve scarcely written a word in more than a week, posting photos instead. Words have sunken deeper, swirling in my subconscience and slowing me down. For seven days I’ve failed to run three miles without stopping short, panting behind a frown for more oxygen. Every time I’ve stood up, the world’s disappeared for three seconds behind a white vacuum. I couldn’t draw, couldn’t paint. I was incubating. Last night, I drove to the store for milk and returned with brownies and dark bars of chocolate, a magazine and a pregnancy test.

The test. Last night, I sat on the toilet and stared at the results laying on the bathub ledge. For fifteen minutes, the little white wand stared back at me with those mute, faint lines. I sobbed in denial. The moonlight poured in; it’s a full moon. The seasons, the changes, the moon: I’ve been more aware of every cycle but my own. I hadn’t had an obvious cycle in nearly three years. And we were taking precautions!

But I hadn’t read the instructions correctly. A crossed line in the oval window, not a single line, indicates pregnancy. I hysterically threw the wand into the trash and went to bed.

When I awoke, I took the test out of the trash. I remembered doing this with Chas’ pregnancy test: there was the negative result, yet all of the symptoms indicating pregnancy. Sure enough, when I lifted it to my eyes, I saw a faintly crossed line. And sighed, wincing, before piling the boys into the car and heading to the gym.

I stopped on the trail to do some knee lifts. Within a couple of seconds, I caught eyes with a whiptail lizard. It watched me from a hole in a tree stump for three whole sets, occasionally turning an eye to a passing jogger. Shortcutting across the meadow, I lunged through high clover, lush and fragrant. My legs felt like lead. When I greeted Ford at the childcare facility, he asked me if he could have a baby sister, point blank. I nearly fainted as I stood up from my bags to ask him if he wouldn’t mind repeating himself.

I wanted to sleep all day, even though I had promised Ford that we’d go hiking. Instead, the television numbed us and I fell in and out of sleep, and my watch would ocasionally chime at the hour. When I had worried long enough, and Damon flattered me plenty on my glow, I bought another test kit and snuck into my bathroom.

Pregnant!

+++

Damon walked into the room, where I was nursing Chas, and I shared my shy, pink grin. After a few tries, he understood, folding red, wet eyes between cupped hands, a happy jaw escaping words. We paced the house in wonderment together, doe eyed and dumbfounded.

Strangely, the only person the news has fallen hard on is Ford. He is heavy with grief. The levity of annoucing the news to family has been lost on Ford, who keeps telling me, “Promise me you’re kidding, you’re not pregnant, Mommy. I don’t want you to be pregnant!” Guilt cuts me with these words, but Damon tells me it will pass. Not to worry.

Meanwhile, Chas is dreaming in his sleep, sprawled on the bed. His frog legs are twitching and he appears to be mouthing words almost imperceptibly. Exhausted, I lay down between him and Ford (who is now asleep, himself). Sandwiched between the kids in the bed, I lay grounded by the mass of a growing family, while my joy flies high from a quiet smile. And Chas begins to laugh in his sleep.

Just like that, we are now FIVE!