A couple of nights ago I was standing in the kitchen eating a piece of the cake I had baked for my husband’s birthday and reading David Sedaris’s “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” on my Kindle. I came across an especially funny bit in the story “Memento Mori” and I began to laugh, a real, loud and deep belly laugh that left me breathless and also with a bit of urine in my underwear. Having had two babies in rapid succession, I don’t know, maybe I didn’t do enough kegels because I’ve noticed that if I laugh for a millisecond I tend to wet my pants a bit and this never happened before I had children.
Every time this occurs it spurs me into action and I do a few kegels, and then proceed to forget all about doing them, until the next time and then I tell myself that I must be vigilant with them, to not stop, to keep at it since I have no plans to ever stop reading and rereading David Sedaris’s books. So, then I do them, until my body feels like I can’t actually stop and then I have to go start doing something else to cease.
My husband turned 40 earlier this week and he showed me a picture today of himself from about 20 years ago. He was planning on throwing it out (we’re trying to really clean up our stuff in preparation for our upcoming move) and I said “Oh, you should keep it, after all, you’ll never look like that again.”, and he said “I wondered how long it would take for you to bring age up.” I tried to explain (successfully) that I didn’t mean it the way he took it, I simply meant it the same way I could see a photo of myself pregnant and say “I’ll never look like that again.” – Not younger, just in a different phase of life and he understood what I had meant and kept the photo. Besides, I can’t be the only one with embarrassing photos from the 1990’s that my children will one day laugh at.
Speaking of pregnant, two years ago my biological clock was going mad. The ticking was so loud I felt like everyone must be able to hear it. “What’s that noise?” I imagine I could have heard someone young at the food co-op ask their companion, “It’s got to be that woman over there. Yeah, her. If you look really closely, you’ll be able to tell that one of her eggs is drying up right… this… very minute.” the companion will answer. “Oh wow. Like, I had no idea you could, like, you know, be able to tell.”
I had always thought that if one had children then one’s biological clock function would somehow be halted. I was wrong. There were some months when my husband and I would sit together and watch something on the television when a commercial came on that would make me weep. Or a passage in a book would bring about a torrent of tears. Or one of my children would do something especially adorable and I would just start crying. It could be just about anything and my long suffering husband would hug me and rub my back.
All of It (and More) 