Date: Friday, 10/3/69

Yesterday seems like a long time ago. Time stretches back to a point right after we left the doctor’s office and drove to the drug store to buy the Pill. Previously, the Scags who was in love with Charles, was a student at the College and had been a daughter in the Morgenstern family, her life has now taken on new dimensions. It’s like that image in my head of Odessa kneading dough to bake bread. How she has to stretch the dough in all these directions and how it stays dough but is altered. It is going to be made into something greater than the uncooked dough that has to be kneaded to be baked.

In a sentence, If ever there was a day that made me see the difference between my old world in Skokie and my new one here—yesterday was that day.

When Mama handed me this diary as I got on the train in Chicago, she never could have foreseen the enormous changes that would occur and how quickly.

If she could have hidden secret messages inside these pages about what my new life would be like, could she have written what it’s like to go to a gynecologist for the first time and to be put on the Pill? Would she have been shown the materials this doctor had in her office documenting the horrors of illegal abortions and the resulting deaths?

I would have been so grateful had Mama written in here: “Scags when you find your new boyfriend, make sure he takes you to the doctor so you can be on the Pill. Those nasty condoms are messy and can break. You’re a lucky girl, my darling daughter, you can take the Pill and never have to worry again that your fun with Charles will be interrupted by an unwanted pregnancy.”

I don’t want sex to be about having fun or even mostly about having fun. I worry what would happen were I to become pregnant. Reading Virginia Woolf’s description of Mrs. Seaton’s life and her 13 children made me realize that one can’t contribute to the world while worrying about all one’s children. If there is one thing Charles is teaching me it’s that I want to use my time on Earth to contribute rather than to only succeed.

The doctor I saw is one of the only doctors here in Town. She’s an older woman who has been in this community all her professional life. Evidence of her involvement in the community was posted on all the walls along with her diplomas and degrees and licenses.

In the way she examined me and in her questions, I saw how limited her time must be with all her “well” patients. She was abrupt, yes, but also gentle. Having a waiting room filled with patients, you can’t spend endless time gossiping with each patient on your examining table.

The doctor told me I was in perfect health. I knew that. She prescribed a birth control pill for me and told me to come back if I have any problems with it or in 6 months to refill the prescription. She also warned me to remember to take it faithfully or that it wouldn’t work. I wanted to tell her that was going to be the only problem I would have—remembering to take it. I zipped it, though, as Goldie would have advised and left her office with a clean bill of health and a prescription for the Pill in my purse.

Charles took my hand as we walked down the street to the drug store. I felt awkward being with Charles after the examination. All of a sudden, it became real to me that being in love with him had consequences. I never thought that falling in love would also feel like that, that I had responsibilities. In the drug store, it felt like everyone watched us go to the pharmacist to have the prescription filled. Having all eyes turned to us, made me feel like petal after petal was opening on a flower and I wasn’t going to ever arrive at the center of it and be able to experience its core.

I am relieved to have gotten that examination out of the way but I still worry about having to tell Mama and Pops at some point about Charles and me.

It feels like I’m whispering as I write this but Charles was very tender with me last night when we made love. It was as if he knew that a milestone had been passed. We came home and he had set up the bedroom. Candles waited to be lit. The bed had been heaped with many pillows. A bottle of wine sat on the bedside table with two glasses waiting to be filled.

After we made love, he fell asleep. I pulled back the covers to look at his naked body. It looked so vulnerable lying next to me not knowing how I was examining it. In the glow of the candles he looked sculpted and bronzed. I ran my fingers down his long back and across his small buttocks and down his legs to the ankles. He never moved. I wrote on his back with my fingers messages of how I felt from moment to moment. I wanted to believe these messages passed through his skin and into his psyche, received with all the love and trepidation with which they were sent.

I know that melancholy after lovemaking. I like it but it keeps me awake. When I don’t feel it, I fall asleep in Charles’ arms.

Tonight, I am awake and thinking and worrying about what I am going to do with my life. I won’t be pregnant now unless I choose to be. I almost didn’t have time to worry about that. Everything happens much faster in my life now.