1) It was the due date for my nephew to appear. (Yes, was....unless I get word in the next 61 minutes. I think Missy is less anxious than me, who awaits a text from the Twin Cities, a la Obama/Biden '08.)
2) It was occasion for two friends and I to host a shower for another friend, Joy, who expects a daughter in a few weeks. There were 14 ladies--10 mothers themselves--and I was exposed to items I never before knew existed in the universe: nursing stools, hanging diaper stackers, nasal aspirators. And stories about swaddling.
Funny. My sister and my pregnant friends (3 in my immediate circle!) are all younger than me, yet I feel the baby of this group myself. As in, less mature on the subject. I have no spare bedroom for a crib, no extra income for a college savings account, no chance of imminent conception, and absoutely zero knowledge of cervical dilation.
The fact of which, I'm sure, is a great relief to my mother. She coined a phrase of legend in the family some 15 years ago in a car along U.S. Highway 2....a phrase invoked to this day whenever the subject of babies comes up. My parents in the front seat, my two sisters with me in the back, returning from my parents' anniversary dinner in Devils Lake. For reasons known only to history and the unremembered logic of that moment, my mother turned and proclaimed:
"Karin, you look fertile. I bet you'll get pregnant the first time you have sex."
We have still not determined what constituted a "fertile" look that night.
I've also not shown up at any holidays back in Minneapolis with a baby bump so at 35, I kind of wonder what she might think about the more intimate details of my life in the interim. Or really and truly don't want to go there.
Ah, Saturday night with the cats. The mind doth wander.
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