Day 5. A Pregnancy Journal

Day 5. A Big Day in the Trenches.

We get nowhere. Our two ends never meet. If I loved her more...

She saw the scan at the hospital. She saw it there, the size of a peanut or a walnut, she said and it was right where it was supposed to be. Now today the doctor called and said the rest of the test looked good. Friday another round, to test hormone gains or decreases. Pluses or minuses again. Yeses or nos.

I can't talk to her without getting confused. She says I'm cold, that I have this fence around me that no one gets inside. I know what I want - maybe that sends a chill. I'm starting to get the message that if we don't ultimately procreate then I'm useless to her. That's the stripped down version that she puts across more tearfully and emotionally. Something about not wanting to grow old with me, alone with me, despairingly I think she said. What - after six months? So unless we've got someone around to entertain us, fulfill us, justify our existence, etc... I don't need that. I don't find my fulfillment in another and I guess that's the difference. She's looking for it outside and that seems weak to me. It makes me tired. It wears me down. I shouldn't have gone over there last night but I thought I was doing a good thing, comforting her. It's becoming apparent that the only good I can do is to say yes, and it might even be too late for that.

I like my life, I say instead. Why would I want to complicate it, to change it? I'm not interested, I continue, there are enough already that are - fine let them. That's the wonderful thing about being a human - we have a choice. This isn't nineteen-fifties America anymore, and we're not playing Barbies here either. What do you think is going on out there in the world these days? Have you noticed? The planet is bulging, the glaciers are sliding off into the ocean and half the people in the world have less clean water and sanitation than the Romans did 2000 years ago. Why? Because there are too many of us. Because we have not adequately addressed the population problem and the strain that it puts on the planet, not to mention our governments and social institutions.

But it's sad.

It's not sad, it's nature. It's sad to you because you believe in fairy tales.

And like this, we get nowhere. Our two ends that never touch.Day 6. Another Round But We Don't Hear the Buzzer.

Something has changed but I should know better than to be deceived into thinking that we are getting somewhere. She says it's going to be fine. I tell her we should wait and see what her blood tests say. She says it doesn't really matter.

But it could inform your decision, I say. Or make it easier, I am thinking.

Maybe she's focusing. She has interviews at two colleges in the next two weeks. This is what she wants. To be in her body, to teach dance, to choreograph. Not to go the other way, further.

But she wants both things. That's possible too. And that's where I come in but the books and poems don't write themselves. And they don't get written when I'm working either. Maybe they don't mean that much to her but they mean everything to me. Obviously, something has to give. The thing that you can't make bread from, the piles of words, all the arranging and erasing, soul food, my soul food, that's what will go first. A relaxed ten days a month freelancing on film sets will turn into a scramble for twenty that would break a younger man's spirit. I repeat, I like my life. I like it right how it is.