In these last weeks I already miss being pregnant. If it could only be like writing a book. I always have one begun before the previous one ends. Protection of sorts. I might have had twenty children. Alas. In another time or life. Am I crazy? Yes, a little, today.
Oh, the might-have-been — that melancholy tense.
My genuine physical aptitude for making and carrying children — the ease in my body, a certain animal trust — I feel a genius of sorts at it. I am happy and well, and without nervousness. Looking forward to the birth. Am I crazy? Probably.
“Think your way up and over this contraction, locating any tension that is left in your body and letting it go, letting it ease through your hands and feet” (Bradley Method). Think your way through?
In the doctor’s office today a lot of end-of-the-pregnancy people looking genuinely miserable. I am uncomfortable but really quite happy. I love my latest shape. True I am incredibly unwieldy, cannot turn over in bed. I am more like a beached whale than a person these days. Seem to only have beached whale thoughts. But I am happy. I am unfazed by the inability to sleep. I have never been able to sleep.
This will be a happy book.
The article in PW comes out, slightly more garish and sensational than one would hope, but all in all, all right. An old jab at Gordon Lish makes its way into the pages. Retrieved from old interviews, I guess. The Knopf-as-a-whorehouse quote — all the greatest hits — the wit and wisdom of C.M. How removed I feel from my former self and from publishing in general. It all seems silly from this vantage point. Only the work matters. Only the baby. Helen. My family. My handful of friends. I am back to the barest and most essential. Film, music, of course. The trees.
God, the trees this time of year in the country! Have they ever been so magnificent?
Exhausted by even the idea of Defiance in the bookstores.
Saw my first copy on a front table at B. Dalton today. Thought it looked beautiful. Really much more beautiful than the rest of the books. I pat it on the back. I wish it well. When I open to a random page and read, it still burns in my hand. A good sign, I think.
On Wednesday a book party at Cathy Murphy’s gallery, Lennon, Weinberg. Reading is hard with all the breathlessness. Reviews starting to come in. Great or terrible, over-inflated or condescending, they have never much mattered to me. Though some of the mean-spiritedness has hurt me, and some of the stupidity offended me.
The sudden need to finish Frida before the baby comes. My way of feathering the nest, I suppose. God, what kind of mother am I going to be? A bed of words.
For a soon-to-be-born present we get you Lolita read by Jeremy Irons on tape. Figuring she might want to hear something good by now.
Feeling very antsy to get to The Bay of Angels, but that is always the case when trying to finish up a book. The charge of the new versus the drudgery of the almost-finished. Also there are the essays to get together.
Very, very tired.
Feeling very vulnerable with the arrival of Defiance in the world.
Went shopping in my daze for something to wear Wednesday night. Can’t get away with any of the regular dresses — even the very largest sizes won’t accommodate this belly. No one in real life has a belly quite this big. I find something finally at A Pea in a Pod. Odd to be a pod. And yet that is distinctly the feeling.
Aishah presides over the baby blessing up at the house. Black matriarch — and my mother seated on my right side, white matriarch. Though I dreaded it (the very idea of a shower), still it was a very moving, very lovely event. My mother trying to remember a lullaby her mother once sang her long ago.
Friends not seen for a very long time. What keeps me separate, apart from even those I love?
More notations these days I notice — now that I am free of school.
The book party was fairly painless. Mercifully there was something else to talk about other than the book. The book always over for me by the time it is published. Trying to keep up some enthusiasm always a chore. But tonight there is a new subject. I am having a baby! Yes, we see! A surprise to many of the people there.
Back to quiet, after the book party, the baby blessing, the social whirl.
Purple lilacs against a blue field of hills, above it the lighter sky. My gray cat Fauve on my lap. All is still. The baby moving.
Dreamt she was born blind. Anxiety for the first time.
Dinner with Georges and Anne Borchardt. It was very nice to see them. Georges tells a funny story about ordering Anne’s dinner for her in the hospital after she delivers their daughter. Such a wonderful French man! I don’t see him much, but I revere and respect and in a strange way adore him. Irrationally. It has kept us from really being friends, I’m afraid.
Washington, D.C. — too long a ride just to do a reading. The car feels like a tomb. The book shall take care of itself. I have to stop this.
We all listen to Lolita the whole way.
Gordon Lish after all these years still acting like an ass. Saw the PW piece and is throwing a little fit.
Oh, for the days of Marimekko muumuus — who said that the other day looking at me?
A radio interview downtown in one of the federal buildings. When I’m done I look up and see a sign that says marriage licenses. We’ve been meaning to do this for years. I call up Helen and she comes down and we get our domestic partnership certification. Or do they call it a license? Practical reasons motivate me. If we don’t do this they could, in the event of Helen’s death, take the apartment away from me. She wishes I were more romantic. But I have always distrusted such conventions — the ceremonies and sanctions. The buying into a prefabricated value system. The assumptions. The burdens. It’s stifling. It makes it impossible to breathe or live anywhere. We are on line with two women who are going to have an enormous “wedding” that weekend. We hear about the invitations, the parents flying in, the church, the food, the band. They have set up a register at Ikea. Some of my usual condescension returns, some of the old disdain. Astutely they note my condition and I tell them that we’ve been together for twenty years and that she is finally making an honest woman of me.
The Afghanistani I bought a banana from downtown before my interview rubbed my stomach and said something in his language. What are you saying, I ask him?
I am praying for a boy.
Worries all of a sudden pile up. All that lead paint in our country house. And what about that antibiotic cream? Can’t sleep.
Dreams of the blind baby. Sunglasses and a little cane.
The baby’s nursery hardly begun. And the bathroom in the middle of renovation. Because the old bathroom is no place for a baby. Too much mess and chaos, however. Renovating in late pregnancy. Why have we waited until the last minute? I can’t live like this. Wake up with a hundred lists in my head.
bassinet
crib
bouncy seat
layette