I'M SORT OF UNCOMFORTABLE TALKING ABOUT THIS, BUT I NONETHELESS CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT IT

For awhile I was writing about pregnancy. I wrote a couple stories, the play I am writing now has a pregnant person. Here's an excerpt from a play I wrote last year that I abandoned:

LIZZY
This is reality, mother! I am pregnant. With child. Knocked up. Corked. Embarazada.
JOAN
I don’t see why you insist on doing this to me. You have always had it in for me. Ever since you were a little girl.
HAROLD
(Incredulously)
Pregnant. Huh.
LIZZY
This has nothing to do with you. This is about me and what I want.
HAROLD
(HAROLD chuckles)
Well, Joannie? She’s certainly not a lesbian.
JOAN
Lesbians can have children Harold.
LIZZY
I am not a lesbian!
JOAN
It happens all the time.
HAROLD
Why do you know so much about lesbians?
JOAN
I don’t know so much. I know something, that’s all. About an alternative culture that I was perfectly ready to accept in my own daughter...
LIZZY
I am not a fucking lesbian!
JOAN
But now-- well, this is much worse than being gay. Did you hear me, Elizabeth? Much worse.
LIZZY
What about cancer? Would you have preferred that too?
HAROLD
I don’t know. I mean, not that I think being a lesbian is bad or anything...
LIZZY
Oh Jesus Christ.
HAROLD
But, I’m glad you like boys, Lizzy. I must say. That was a bit of a relief.
JOAN
Of course. Relief. I think that is the perfect word to describe the way that I am feeling right now. Relieved and relaxed.
LIZZY
Mom, calm down.
JOAN
Calm and serene and relieved. Right Harold? May I have a drink before I faint?

I seem to have gotten it out of my system, though. No one has been pregnant for awhile. Now I keep writing about race and racial tensions. One piece after another about it. I don't even realize I'm doing it until it's done. And the whole thing makes me uncomfortable.

Apparently, I'm not the only one.

BABY LOVE

I know, I know. But I've been ill, seriously. And I'm still waiting for that guest blog, Gregory.

Tuesday night some friends of mine had a baby. I went to see them the next day...the hospital is a block away from my house and I was home anyway, making pork tenderloin with tomatillo sauce. How much do I love matinee day? Boss is onstage, I am...left alone.

So, I walk into the hospital room. I am the first to visit--it's Wednesday, after all, people work--and there they are: the happy couple and their new baby. They started telling me the story about the water breaking, rushing to the hospital, the triage nurse getting a handful of amniotic fluid. There were med students, intense pain, tearing and vomiting--the works. Thirteen hours later, there is little Isaac.

I looked at my friends. They looked happy, sure, cuddling in with their new little ankle biter. But mostly they looked absolutely spent. My reaction, far from the expected, "Oh! I can't wait to have one of my own!" was rather more, "Jesus Christ, what an ordeal!" It really did seem very unpleasant.

We'll see how I feel when the kid starts talking.