Call a Friend
Pick up the phone. Try not to cry.
Say, “Any chance we can get together?” Talk past the shaky threads in my voice that say what I don’t: Now. Today. I need help.
Susan heard it in my call, my question, the shake in my voice.
She said, “Meet me tonight. Holiday Market at six.” Seven clear words holding a time and place and her, completely there.
This made me want to cry even more.
I got off the phone fast and cried even more.
These new tears were from the asking. And her response. To have someone come when I asked. Right now. Today.
I’d never asked for this kind of help from a friend before. The kind that involved someone seeing me in a mess and not knowing what to do.
Susan and I are just a year apart in age and we share a similar history and sensibility. We were girls raised on Mary Tyler Moore and Lucille Ball. Small-town girls who’d moved to the city.
All the time I’d known Susan, she’d worked full-time and had seemed to like her work. But a year before, when she’d had a baby, she’d given up her job. Now she stayed at home to care for her son. She had plans to have another child. Her husband worked and provided the income. He wanted kids.
I’d admired Susan’s life, but I hadn’t wanted it. Now, suddenly, what she had looked ideal. Someone like her might say, Yes! I knew you’d change your mind. Come over to my side. Have a baby. Be a mom! Let’s do this together! But this wasn’t why I called her.
Susan had a wide and generous view of the world. She wouldn’t try to convince me to join her on the mothering side. She knew how to listen, and she’d be honest with me. I hoped she could help me figure out what to do. One way or the other.
Tell a Friend
The Holiday Market in northeast Portland was an open space with varied booths and vendors selling food. The black-and-white tiled floors echoed with the sound of dishes and silverware and the people at tables. I went past the butcher, the pastry display, the vats of ice cream. I ordered tea and found a table for two.
Susan came with her big smile, her hug. She sat.
I felt raw and scared. I asked about her week. About her son.
Her answers were brief, and then she put her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. She said, “What’s going on?”
People passed by with their coffee and tea and ice cream, bags from the Lloyd Center mall across the street. Voices and footsteps echoed off the floor. The lights were too bright.
I’d thought I was out of tears. I wasn’t.
Susan sat in that straight-backed way of hers, head tilted, her eyes on me. I put the tangled-scared-sad-worried-disappointed-confused mess into the space between us.
Her eyes filled with tears when I cried. She didn’t try to stop my crying or push a tissue on me, or look around at the people passing by to see if they were staring at this woman with tears running down her face for all to see in the Holiday Market.
“Do you want to stay with Bill?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure he won’t change his mind?”
“Yes. And I don’t want to push him. I wouldn’t want a baby that way. With someone who isn’t really into it.”
“For you to go so fast from being okay with not having kids to not, based on what your mom said? This is about something more than having a baby.”
In that hour, with the backdrop of vanilla scent and the hum of other conversations, Susan took ends of the tangled mess of my wanting, and I took others. We untwisted some of them. The thread of Bill, the thread of family, of work, of child. The thread of my generation that said we women could have it all.
When we finished, I had my hands on the reins, but the herd was still running. The longing hadn’t gone away. But now I had this: what it’s like to share my hurt with another woman, to feel her hand next to mine as I tried to untangle what was in me. This was new.
Be Held
Cry.
Don’t talk about why. We both know why.
Let Bill’s hands soothe my back, my hair, my thighs.
Tell him there is nothing he can do.
Tell him I’m not leaving.
Tell him I will be okay. Eventually.
Hope that this is true.
Get Help
Ask around. Get a name. Call her office. Make an appointment.
Days had passed. A week. Two. Even after talking to Susan, I hadn’t moved on and snapped back to my easy self. The stampede chatter kept on in my head: Yes no, why why not, what if what if not, Mom said Bill said, I want don’t want, need don’t need.
This was not rational. I couldn’t control it. It felt like a grieving. Only no one had died, nothing was lost. Grief for what wasn’t. The craving in my gut. Lower. Higher. My womb. My heart.
I’d never been to a counselor before, even though it was my profession. I was the counselor. People came to me for help.
I sat on a couch and she sat on a chair. She had a notepad. I told her why I was there. She didn’t take notes.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “What if Mom is right? That I’ll end up a bitter, lonely old woman?”
She ran a hand, palm flat, across the yellow notepad. We both watched her hand.
The desk behind her held a tidy stack of files, another notepad, a jar with pens and pencils.
She lifted her eyes to me. “Well,” she said, “you better make a decision.” Her voice was stern. “Or you’ll end up a bitter, lonely old woman.” Her hand was still on the blank pad in her lap. “With children.”
Everything freeze-frame stopped. The chatter in my mind slowed. Her words held in the air between us as if they were floating. I would come back to these words always.
Bitter.
Lonely.
Old.
With children.
Oh.
I felt smart and dumb all at the same time. I’d been looking here, and the answer was there. The stampede chatter pulled to a halt. Dust rose. Dust settled.
A baby wouldn’t keep me from bitter-lonely-old. A baby wouldn’t make me special or loved or not a disappointment. It wouldn’t give me always-joy. Or make me happy or whole or unhappy or broken or loved or not loved.
What had been in me scattered and came together again in a new form.
I was the one who decided these things.
This would be my touchstone, the logic of my good sense.
But my body. It had a logic of its own.