Here we are, April 15. Two months out. By noon, Scott and I had been to Lowe’s, turned up the grass on the side of our house, and put in roughly 1/2 of a mulch bed. We had watched Saturday Night Live because we can never seem to stay up late enough to watch it on Saturday when it actually is live. And we watched two twenty-something Brits try to survive in a Venezuelan prison. Sometime later today I’ll get in a short two mile run.
None of this compares to the stress of the activity we just completed: grocery shopping.
No, the stress had nothing to do with sales or crowds or anything else remotely grocery related. I felt like was on the run from the produce section to the registers.
All I wanted were sweet potatoes. Instead, I got a heavily pregnant young woman standing in front of my rubbing soothing circles on her stomach. I know this game. Those soothing circles are meant for the people nearby as much as the baby inside. They are the “Look at me, I’m pregnant. Notice how happy and radiant I am?” motion most women have mastered by the third trimester. From sweet potatoes to parsley to bagged salads, Preggers was there at every turn. Always rubbing. Always smiling. And there were moments where I swear her eyes were locking on mine, as though telling me I had to be happy for her. It is, after all, part of the woman code. You are happy for other women who are pregnant.
I wanted to yell at her to stop rubbing her damn stomach and expecting me to be happy for her. Instead, I turned around and ran out of the produce section, through the deli, and into the bakery, only to turn around and find she was waddling after me, still beaming. She was still again for the applesauce, the chicken, the soups- in and out of the aisles, every time I turned around, there she was- mocking me- daring me. I finally lost her somewhere in dairy, as we skipped back in search of batteries and the checkout lanes.
Unfortunately, from there Scott spotted a peripheral friend we hadn’t seen since we announced our pregnancy to our friends the summer before. We didn’t know if she knew what had happened, and, of all days, we didn’t want to deal with it today. Best case scenario: we’re hearing “I’m so sorry” in the grocery. Worst case? “Congratulations! Where’s the baby?”
Until we were in the car, I felt like I was on the lookout for either of these women, hoping desperately that we would run into neither of them.
So after all this, is it believable for me to say we’ve come a long way in two months? The scary thing is, we have. We really have.
- Marci