After fifteen weeks of pregnancy, I still have a really hard time actually telling people that I am pregnant. I think of myself as a pretty good story teller, and yet there's no neat way to build up to the climax of procreation -- here's how I told my friend Felicia yesterday:
"Yes, we miss living in the city a lot. It's so quiet here, which can be nice sometimes, but which makes crowds surprising and kind of scary. When we actually find where the people are, it's disconcerting to realize there are so many of them. We were trying to make it down to Marc's parents about once a month, but even then we usually don't get into Manhattan, because by the time we reach the Bronx on a Friday night, we're too pooped for plans, and Saturday somehow gets devoted to family events. We've been in for a couple of Sunday brunches, and that's nice, but it's still Sunday, you know? Lately we haven't even really been to the Bronx much, because, er, I'm pregnant!"
My mother, on the other hand, has reached new levels of sharing thanks to my pregnancy. I was trying to find out if anyone else in my immediate family had a known inability to burp on command, a talent I wish I had to help with the gigantic bubble of gas trapped in my throat, when my mother asked, "How does it come out? A fart?" (To which I hastily replied, "No, it comes out right before my lunch does.") It's going to take me some time to get over this, my mother's first known use of the word fart.
