Nine months have gone by and I keep thinking I should be writing more about pregnancy, but I’m not too good at taking advice, even from myself (maybe especially from myself). Though, to be fair to me, pregnancy has been less of an event and more of a gradual assimilation of new and strange experiences that sometimes make me question whatever I thought I used to know about life. And sometimes make me feel all the same things as before, but stronger.
In that way I guess I must be writing about my pregnancy, even when the word itself is missing–just like I often feel I’m writing about God, even in the observation of mundane things. When something is woven into your life you won’t be surprised to find it showing up in strange places.
Nodding at My Reflection in the Elevator
At what point will I find the new label fitting,
say it without thinking?
“Girl” sounds young, one syllable short of self-assured.
Girl is not the word for wives and mothers.
Girl is on the nametag of the clerk in the grocery store who knows
someday her name won’t be announced to every stranger
loudly in large letters,
a full three syllables that somehow still get mistaken
for one.
Someday she will choose the recipients of her name
on a Christmas card.
She will emphasize the syllables that matter,
she will expect to be remembered.
People won’t ask unless they plan to remember.
Someday the grocery store will be at a loss for her name.
Maybe one day the clerk will glimpse a letter or two of it as it passes
under his nose,
maybe he will wish she knew his name
and the right syllables to emphasize
and wonder if she will ever think of him again, in a moment of unprompted reflection.
Wonder whether, to her, he is a boy or a man.
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