Day 2. What We Don't Know and How We Are Blessed By It.

Day 2. What We Don't Know and How We Are Blessed By It.

A long day ago I started this journal. If you're wondering where I got the 'Love Nest' part of the title, it's my pet name for her. But today it's the word preggers that keeps going through my head and I write it down just to see how I feel about it. I don't like it. It seems like there should be two 'g''s, just to keep the egg part in the middle, but I'm going to drop it altogether.

I've decided to cut back on the nightly wine and cigarettes. I'm bracing myself for something. I don't want to be numb when it comes, stuck in the middle of one of my self-inflicted tirades against the soul.

All day long it doesn't feel right. I vaguely wonder if I should talk to someone. I make an appointment for a check-up at the doctor. I'm overdue but there's also the added implication. I don't call anyone else.

I go for a walk and feel out of my body. I cut over the same streets I do everyday and there is none of the usual joy in it. I have no step. I am not amused or touched in any way. All I want to do is get back to my fourth floor bachelor and close the blinds.

Off and on throughout the afternoon I find myself thinking that it must not be that hard, not if almost everyone else does it. I began to deceive myself and think that I might even be good at it. Of course, almost everyone drives a car too - something that I find quite doable and yet most people don't seem to manage very well. Maybe there should be a test: if you can't parallel park then you aren't allowed to make children.

What is birthright anyway? Maybe it's not enough just to be born anymore. The world's gotten a lot more complicated since Evil Kneval missed that jump over the Snake River Canyon. Maybe their should be some qualifications before you're handed a birth certificate. Some test you should pass. Like if you're a mouth breather you have to automatically go to the back of the line and re-test. If you don't pass the second time, you don't get a driver's license either.

I remember that infamous jump, of course. As a child in the late seventies, it seemed like the whole world was tuned in. This was bigger than the Olympics, but in the end it wasn't much. It was kind of...well, a let down. The rocket more or less nose-dived when the chute opened too early. Here was this man, this red, white and blue daredevil DIY American before there was such an acronym, falling into the mouth of that canyon and pulling behind him, it seemed, all the hope and optimism that America had left. This was the straw. After two Kennedys, King, Vietnam, Kent State, Watergate, Flower Power, an energy crisis and unchecked inflation, not to mention terrorism, hijackings, kidnappings, bombings - and disco.

This was a turning point for sure. No one could see it then of course, not clearly, what with all the coke spilled everywhere and the flashing strobe lights. But America was doomed, and here we are almost thirty years later, living proof. Nothing's been quite right since.

If I could time-travel, I would. Who wouldn't I guess. But where would you go? For me it's a no-brainer. Back to that summit. That peak, when America was hitting it's stride and defining itself, no, announcing itself, really and really taking the party to new heights. Nothing since has touched those times. We've had a whole information revolution and nothing worthwhile has come of it, except maybe MySpace and Project Runway. Otherwise we've just gotten fatter and more insular, yes, and dumber. But really if I could, I'd just go back to last month, pre-fertilization.

I give up on time travel and make dinner - rigatoni puttanesca, drink a bottle of two-dollar and fifty cent wine (part of my cutting back) and smoke only half a pack of cigarettes. I cap the evening with a horror film starring Gena Rowlands and Kate Hudson. What a dish. So was Gena in her day - in an Angie Dickinson kind of way especially. I'd like to see that film again. The one with Michael Caine, I think, who is her shrink and a cross-dressing stalker. I can't remember the name, but there we go again. Those were the days.

I've taken to writing recipes down on little squares of torn paper and taping them to the refrigerator. Every time I do it I feel like someone's grandmother, you know, with the pink-flowered house dress and the used tissue sticking out of the hip pocket, drug store eye glasses on a chain, gray curls, chin whiskers, the whole deal. I wrote one for the salad I made last night. Peeled Cucumber and Fennel Salad with Blue Cheese. I've been cooking a lot lately. And writing down these little inventions of mine. Part of my new and aggressive approach to domesticity. How else can I explain a butternut squash stuffed with onions and walnuts and sage? And soups galore. Red lentil, pasta and leeks. Chicken, red lentil and leeks. Chicken, rapini, kidney beans and shallots. They're all related, of course. And they've all been successes. What can I say? It runs in the family.

So I get a call late in the evening, but I'm watching the horror flick. I call back afterwards. Baby, I think we're off the hook, she says. She's had some bleeding, which happens sometimes, she tells me. She seems to feel ok. I'm glad. I'm concerned with what's happening but she has a doctor appointment the day after tomorrow. I hope you're not disappointed, she says. What do you mean, I ask. Well, if it turns out that I can't do this for you. Here, I had to delicately gather and tread. I was touched, actually, by how out of touch she was. She had to know where I stood generally, and even though this caught us both off-guard, we really needed to talk before she continued the narrative all on her own. I let her know this as quietly as possible.

Shortly after, I went to bed glad and a little unsure about things. Actually, a lot unsure. I had dodged a bullet that had taken down my lover instead. She was mourning already. On the phone I could hear it in her voice. She had never been pregnant before, she said, and all along she knew of course. She could feel her body changing two weeks ago, adjusting, making room. And all day, ever since the two positive strips yesterday in fact, she felt like a woman. She had been confirmed. Confusing as the outcome might be for us, there was no denying her this accolade in it's most terrifying and miraculous sense. And just like that, with a similar and instant magic, an invisible hand seemed to be pulling it all away from her. The little paper plus signs, in turns out, were hinged in the middle. It's an old trick of course, making things appear and disappear.