We had
bought a few pregnancy tests in our marriage, so our “three hour tour” to Kroger
was not the first time for either of us.
This is how
it usually went: We would return from
the store. She would go into the
bathroom. Shut the door. Silence.
I would wonder why it took her so long.
Silence. I would begin thinking
about home improvement projects in the hallway connecting the living room to
the bathroom. Silence. I would calculate the square feet of the
hallway connecting the living room to the bathroom. Silence.
I would try to imagine hardwood floors in the hallway connecting the
living room to the bathroom.
Silence. Then, she would say,
“Matt, will you come in here?”
I would walk
in.
“Can you
read this? Is that one line or two?”
I would look. Clearly one line. No doubt about it.
“One line,
babe. We are not pregnant.”
We would both
breathe a sigh of relief.
This time,
she did all of that. The silence, the asking
me if I could read it. Everything.
“Can you
read this? Is that one line or two?”
I looked. Clearly two lines. No doubt about it.
“Two lines, babe. We are pregnant.”
It was
Sunday night. Father’s Day, 2003. That’s when I found out I was a father. There was no time to rethink the situation or
call a “do-over.” No calling in sick, no
excuses. This kid was coming and it was depending on us to be parents. We were in the race now, the baton had been
passed. More importantly, our little
child was depending on us to be married.
It had to be a full-on effort, requiring more maturity and love from
both of us.
Sunday’s
response to our “two lines” was brilliant, by the way. She looked up at me and said, “We are
pregnant.”
The wording
here is important. She said “we” are
pregnant. Not “I” am pregnant. We are pregnant. Whether I was ready or not, whether she was
ready or not, we needed to get ready in a hurry. The test was positive. I believe we had the right answer from the
beginning. At that moment, in the
bathroom, “we” meant three. It didn’t
matter that her parents divorced or that I had not thought about raising
children as much as she had. It didn’t
matter that she had intuition and that I had none. It didn’t matter that we never think alike
and that we are totally different people with different backgrounds and
different ideals. It didn’t matter. “We” were pregnant. “We” had a positive test and “we” are
pregnant. (I had to repeat that to
myself until, after about three or four months, I believed it)
Now, I bet
you think I am trying to say that my body stretched and grew and hurt and
warped like Sunday’s body. I bet you
think I am saying that my emotions were a wreck and that I had indigestion for
months on end. I bet you think I am
saying that I had to use the restroom more times than a four-year-old at a Kool
Aid guzzling contest.
Well, I am
not saying that. This is what I
mean: Sunday had a baby growing inside
her, but that did not mean that I was off the hook. I needed to be fully involved, just in my own
way. I needed to become a better
husband, a better lover, a better man. I
must. Just as she is changing, so must
I.
It was
natural for both of us to assume that this pregnancy, this baby, immediately
impacted both of us. “We” were now
pregnant. It didn’t impact us in the same way, but it certainly changed our
lives forever. In a good way. Forever.