Shiver of Sharks

Courtesy of deviantART

We lay awake thinking about where we'll be sleeping this time in say March. Lately, we lay awake coughing. Phlegmy but harsh, or dry and every 90 seconds. But soon the coughs will be gone, and we'll still be wondering.

He's two flights away from finishing flight school. So in February - unfortunately detracting from the time he needs to be spending in preparation for Valentine's Day - he'll receive his naval wings and become the hybrid animal many dream about, a flying fish of sorts.

But for a few more days - weeks - we'll still have a hard time quieting our minds about where we'll end up, no, where we'll arrive. And what kind of fish he'll be flying.

If I do manage to mute the issue, the other issue surfaces: Everyone I know is being impregnated. Not with some body-snatching alien, thank god (even though that would be kinda cool), or in a tricky knock-up situation, but with what will be a perfect mashup of their astounding, adoring parents. But still. Still.

The static between my ears as each announcement comes is unavoidable - the rush of blood to the head that isn't as thrilling as the Coldplay song makes it sound. Childbearing. The stage women love and fear. So in addition to wondering if we'll become East Coasters or San Diegans (AKA residents of "the whale's vagina"), or residents of one of the beautiful and tantalizingly far off naval isles of Guam, Japan, or Hawaii, we're peppered with the following questions, albeit on a lovable basis.

Courtesy of the Schwarze family blog

Are you pregnant? (When did this become okay to ask after every declined drink, roll of sushi - which I will still eat while pregnant since fish aren't caught with broken thermometers for hooks - or stomach bug?)

Are you pregnant? (Did the first jaw-drop not settle this?)

Are you trying? (You really want to know if we're humping like bunnies?)

Are you trying? (Has your cheek met the palm of my hand?)

Are you on birth control? (Is that not the same thing as trying anymore? Oh you mean trying is actually stripping away every shred of spontaneity and carefreeness from doing the humpty dance? 

Because at some point we became adults on the brink of barenness instead of biblically fertile young adults.)

Do you want boys or girls? (Oh is that technology available now?)

What names do you like? (Ishmael and Jose, because everything else will be either tainted, taken, or briefly mentioned and therefore the cause of the cold shoulder by the time we get around to knowing the genders of our unborn children.)

Did you know you don't have to have kids... (Wow.)

One question that gives me fuzzy insides when I answer is, What's it like being an aunt? Corbin James Pritchard is my brother's son, my sister-in-law's boy. He stretches and smiles now and was the most precious curled up potato bug I'd ever seen when I met him for the first time over Christmas. One day he might answer to Stretch or Corbster or bring some new, weird, wild and wonderful thing to our family like a contagious laugh or emo style. One day he'll have a big heart like his dad and be an unconditional ray of sunlight like his mom. And maybe I'll get to read to him and with him, show him a story for the first time, discover new ones together. Maybe he'll come stay with his cousins. The one thing I do know is that, that love is there regardless, more solid than anything; it's more sure than where you'll live or work or when you'll have another.

Since I can't sleep, probably like a lot of the superhero moms out there right now, I look through pictures of the Corbster that family have sent and consider myself well on my way to popcorn lung as the DVR'd Golden Globes play in the background.

Night turns into morning as I watch Felicity episodes and surf the Web, (I find out a group of sharks is called a 'shiver'), instead of writing like a good girl. The inspiration happens when it happens. Offspring, too.

In the meantime, I continue to want to chop off my hair despite the critics and blog about surfing baby waves on a beach in the Mariana Islands (forgetting about shivers in more ways than one). Or hole up and write. Or visit places like Kyoto and Godzilla Park.

And they can come, too. When they get here. There.

Courtesy of this|next