Can't Forgive

by Kim Goldman

  Was I the only pregnant woman who would run the other way if I saw a child in a stroller?

  I am going to be such a shitty mother.

  I was embarrassed to tell anyone about this bizarre reaction I was having to infants. I didn’t think these revelations would go over so well.

  The other thing I wasn’t expecting to feel when I was pregnant was panic. At that time in my life, I only had a few friends who had kids, and I didn’t remember anyone expressing panic. And it wasn’t panic like,I am going to screw it up! I was afraid of how to be a mother.

  I knew how to be a good sister and a good daughter, and maybe I could qualify myself as a good wife, but mother? I never had one to model any type of behavior after, so where would I learn the skills?

  I had no positive memories of my own mother; from the awful ones, I only knew what I didn’t want to become. But how could I know what I did want to be? Was being a mother different from being a dad? The daddy-daughter relationship is all I knew. What would a mother-child bond be like?

  My friends always said that because my mom left when I was at such a young age, I would probably be a really good mom to my own kid because I would want so desperately to give my child what I felt I had so sorely missed. But I didn’t know if I even realized all of the things I missed out on by growing up motherless.

  I walked around in a daze after finding out that I was pregnant. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Not only was I pregnant, but I was also unemployed and with no real sense of what I wanted to do with my life. Staying home to raise a baby was never part of the plan, not for me or for Mike and me.

  First, we couldn’t afford it, but second, I was a worker bee. I enjoyed that busy lifestyle. I knew I would stay home as much as I could after the baby was born, but I wanted to be at work, too. So with that goal in mind, I spent hours looking for employment. I had a small window of time before I started showing, and assumed that once I looked pregnant, it would be virtually impossible to get a job. That was an added pressure I didn’t want to have.

  By nature, I am a planner. So in between all my job searching, I started looking at bedding, cribs, strollers, swings, playpens, and safety stuff. I was a research freak—the more I looked, the deeper I got sucked in. I was home most of the time by myself, so I got lost in the computer, bookmarking page after page of things I might need to know later on. I read about all of the things I shouldn’t do and couldn’t eat. What to Expect When You’re Expecting was my safety blanket.

  I was curious if everything I was feeling and thinking was normal. As a female, I wasn’t all that connected to my femininity, and I often joked that I had no idea where my uterus or my cervix was. So the curiosity as to what was happening to me was on high alert. Every time I peed, I checked for blood in the toilet (this subsided after a few months). I was terribly forgetful (that has yet to subside), and I was so tired, which is torture for an insomniac. I signed up for weekly updates on a popular pregnancy site, and sent my dad the alerts, too, so he could stay up to date with my progress. He loved getting the e-mails that told how big the baby was each week and all of the things I should be feeling and experiencing.

  I loved sharing this with my father, and missed my brother more than I had for months. The yearning for him was deep. We had been through so much together; with the exception of my marriage, and now the impending birth of my baby, his nephew, all of my major life changes had happened with my brother by my side.

  Ron was supposed to be here.

  My heart ached for him.

  * * *

  I don’t want to know the sex of the baby and, thankfully, Mike agrees. I want that to be a surprise. Despite all of the things that happen in my life outside of my control, at least I can control this, the not knowing. I am not hung up on knowing the sex of the baby; it’s more the “how I would find out” that’s more exciting to me. I have this image in my head of the doctor delivering the baby, Mike saying, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” and then running into the waiting area and announcing the news to the room filled with other expecting parents.

  Yes, I am aware that I just described a scene from the 1950s, but in my weird brain, I want that. I want the Saturday Evening Post image of “family,” but without the old-fashioned stuffy roles. I envision Mike, the proud dad, passing out cigars and getting hugs from strangers, and me holding our little bundle of joy, looking as if I just walked out of a beauty salon. So if not knowing the sex of the baby was going to get me one step closer to that image, I am going to remain in the dark for nine long months.

  I don’t really remember being too much of a dreamer growing up; I have always been very logical, pragmatic, and realistic. Especially after my brother’s murder, my ability to fantasize about the future stopped completely. My life had been anything but a Norman Rockwell painting. When the thought of meeting my child for the first time popped into my brain, I held on to the image, fearing it would be the last time my mind would let me wonder.

  * * *

  One Tuesday night in early March, Denise and Wade ask if they can come over for a visit. It is unusual for a weeknight, but I am so excited to see her. Things had been strained between us since I told her my news. I am so grateful to make any kind of contact that I would have met her at the gas station for thirty seconds if it meant reclaiming our close bond. She is trying so hard to be engaged, but it’s hard for her to see me have the one thing she wants so badly but can’t get for herself. I remembered how crushed she was when other people in her life got pregnant.

  When I see her standing at my front door with Wade, I am elated. I rush them inside and motion for them to relax on the couches. Mike and I sit on the loveseat, while Denise and Wade sit across from us on the couch. My favorite coffee table, which was my first furniture purchase when I moved out of my dad’s house, separated us. Even though the space where we are sitting is fairly intimate, I feel worlds apart.

  Wade and Mike share a beer, while Denise and I have water. Denise is really responsible when it comes to drinking and driving, and it is Wade’s turn to have a few beers, since she would be getting up early the following morning. We make small talk for a few minutes, before Wade says, “You gonna tell her or what?”

  Denise slaps his knee in reaction to what he said, and then throws down, onto the corner of the table, the most beautiful picture I have ever seen: the ultrasound of her eight-week-old twins!

  I am ecstatic. I actually find myself more excited that she was pregnant than when I found out I was.

  After all this time trying so hard to start her family, all the sadness Denise felt for years could finally ease. The struggle of having to celebrate everyone else’s good fortune as she mourned her losses, the guilt I felt for conceiving a child so easily and so quickly, and the rift that I feared would get bigger with time—we can put all of that to rest and experience this incredible journey together.

  What were the odds of that?

  I am speechless, but thankfully the crying and the laughing take the pressure off talking. I have so many questions, but Denise starts talking first.

  A few weeks earlier, she and Wade went for their final in vitro procedure, deciding it would be their last attempt. They opted not to tell anyone, just in case. The night I called to tell her my news, she was too afraid to tell me they were in the waiting phase. She was afraid that this attempt would fail, as it had all of the other times, and she didn’t want to take away from my good news by focusing on her fear and anxiety about what potentially would be her last chance at becoming a mother.

  She apologizes for her reaction the night I called. She knew she hurt me with her lukewarm response; she had been carrying this around for weeks. We didn’t keep secrets from each other, and it was eating away at her and at us.

  Even now, as I write this, I am moved to tears. Being a parent is a gift to be treasured, nurtured, and honored. To think that for five years Denise had to deal with believing she would never experience that, just breaks my heart.

>   All is right with the world again.

  Even though Denise hasn’t told her family yet, she agrees to let me tell my dad. He lets out a squeal of laughter and delight, and in that moment, some of the panic leaves my mind. I feel less alone, and I can finally embrace my own pregnancy without the guilt.

  I had been in such a tizzy about my news, and couldn’t share the excitement with her or anyone else for that matter. That was stressful and put a damper on what should have been a joyful moment.

  My husband can only go so deep into what I am experiencing; my father, too. He can’t offer me much about what it was like with my mother before I was born.

  I am starting to feel the loss of a mother in a way I hadn’t expected.

  What would it have been like to share my experience with a mother?

  I can only imagine. It breaks my heart that I am stripped of that connection. So when my best friend stands before me, pregnant, it lessens that loss for me and I am able to connect on a deeper level with another woman in a way that I had never experienced before.

  To this day, Denise believes that God wanted us to be pregnant together, and so He waited patiently for us both to be ready at the same time. I really don’t believe that, but I do know that I am happier than a pig in slop to share something so beautiful and so hopeful with my best friend, rather than all the despair and loss we had both suffered for so many years.

  * * *

  As my body changed with each passing day, I found myself deep in thought about what this must have been like for my own mother.

  It always had bothered me that I knew nothing about her. I always felt orphaned in that regard. And that, of course, is not meant to be demeaning toward my dad and all of his efforts in raising and nurturing me.

  When I considered my mother, I had no connection to her as a human, let alone relating to her as a little girl, a woman, a wife, and now a soon-to-be mother.

  What were her experiences like? Would mine be the same? What kinds of things “ran in our family?” I had nothing to go on.

  I felt as if I was always operating in the dark.

  And now, to have a person growing inside me—and to still be in the dark to some degree—left me wondering and feeling scared quite often.

  Having been raised with two men didn’t provide me with many of “those” kinds of talks.

  Actually, I am surprised I even got pregnant, considering both Ron and my dad taught me that penises were bad!

  * * *

  Being pregnant along with Denise (and later my very dear friend Lisa) was incredible. However, it didn’t eliminate that yearning for a connection, a bond, between mother and daughter. I suddenly felt cheated as an adult—a feeling I never recalled having while growing up.

  My father had done an incredible job of filling in the spaces where Sharon had left gaping holes; I never knew I was missing anything. I actually felt truly fortunate because I had two amazing men—my brother and my dad—who walked alongside me. They held my hand and wiped the tears away and helped give me a sense of self. That was my normal.

  But no matter all that my dad was for me, as my hips shifted, my moods became affected, my peeing quadrupled, and my lack of confidence increased. I couldn’t help but wonder, Did she experience all this, too?

  Despite my emotional turmoil, I had the world’s easiest pregnancy.

  I had no morning sickness, no back pain, no weird cravings. My feet didn’t swell or grow another size. (Thank God, because I am a shoe whore, and all I could think about was that none of my one hundred pairs of shoes would fit if my feet grew!) I gained twenty pounds, and popped in my seventh month.

  Besides that whole “can’t stand to be around babies thing,” which was horrible but thankfully short-lived, the worst thing that happened during my pregnancy was that I developed an aversion to carrots. That is strange, because it was all I ate before I got pregnant. I also had severe acid reflux, so I slept sitting up in the later months. Denise suffered from that, too, and we laughed when we found ourselves passing Tums to each other instead of cocktails.

  The month before my due date, I started obsessing over all the “what-ifs” and the “shoulda, woulda, couldas.”

  I started to feel and grieve the loss of my childhood more than I anticipated—the so-called “normal” lifestyle with two loving parents: a mom and a dad. It would hit me at weird moments. There were the obvious changes to my body, combined with the reality of knowing that in a few short months I would assume the role that I was the least familiar with: being a mother.

  I also realized the next phase of my life would look drastically different from what I ever thought it would.

  My brother and I had always dreamed of raising our kids together. We used to talk about living next door to one another, so our kids could be close. We both so desperately wanted a family, and we knew that we were going to have to create it together.

  We wanted our kids to have aunts and uncles and cousins and happy chaos! We wanted family BBQs, pool parties, and every birthday and holiday celebrated with each other. We wanted to watch our babies grow up right before our eyes.

  We wanted all the things that we didn’t have.

  We were really lucky in the sense that we liked each other as people, not just as siblings, and it had always been that way.

  My brother was the one who knew how it felt on Mother’s Day when we had nobody to call, so we always called each other instead.

  It was my brother who was my soul mate.

  It was my brother who was my best friend, and I missed him deeply.

  I knew I wanted to name my unborn child after my big brother. I also knew that it had to be a middle name, because I couldn’t bear to hear myself call out “Ron,” day after day.

  Mike and I worked hard at coming up with boy and girl names that would fit with some variation of Ron’s name. My brother hated the name “Ronald”; it would have to be “Ron.” But “Ron” didn’t really work for a middle name for a girl. In that case, it had to be “Ronny” or “Ronnie,” which I hated because that’s what Sharon called him when we were little.

  But somehow after many days and nights of ruling out combinations, we ended up with Samuel Ronald or Danielle Ronny.

  I finally landed a job as a consultant for Cure Autism Now. It was a local organization that dedicated itself to funding biomedical research for autism, to help find a treatment and a cure. Initially, I was hired on as a consultant to help with their fund-raising walk, but it morphed into more of a communication/marketing position. I was really excited to do something slightly different from what I had been doing for the past few years. I was able to use my creativity and my writing, and there was value placed on my ability to perform and succeed.

  Despite the “consultant” title, I was assured that I would come on full time, after the first Walk Now event commenced. So I decided to keep my little secret until I was an official full-time employee. So I clocked my hours, built my resumé, and worked toward securing my place within an organization that I believed in.

  The financial grip that had almost paralyzed Mike and me was loosening its viselike hold. The breaths I took, finally, were a little deeper.

  Since Mike was a captain for a small commercial airline, he was gone typically four days a week, and it was pretty haphazard. His schedules came out days before the new month, so there was no realistic way to plan ahead—especially with the uncertainty of a baby being born. The baby was due the second week of September, so Mike and I were trying to determine how to ensure that he would be there for the birth. I was so afraid of being alone for labor; I worked myself up into quite a frenzy.

  I had grown accustomed to doing so many things in my life by myself, but this would be one time where I was adamant that I needed people on my team and in my corner, without having to ask for their help. I am terrible at asking for help, and assumed that being pregnant would assure assistance without requesting it. But because I had never been in this position before, I didn’t know wha
t to expect.

  I have a very active imagination; adding in all those hormones was a recipe for disaster. I asked my father to be in the room with me, which immediately brought him to tears. He was so moved and honored by my request that he was rendered speechless. I couldn’t imagine him not being part of the process, so for me it was a given. But even that brought anxiety, because my dad and Patti lived in Arizona, and it would take them six hours to get here.

  That didn’t ease my fear of going into labor at home while my cats curiously watched on, or worse, while the grocery store clerk stood idly by, because I convinced myself that my water would break while picking out peaches.

  Clean up in produce!

  It’s funny, because when I shared my anxiety with Mike or my dad, they said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be there. You won’t have this baby by yourself.”

  Nope, that didn’t help.

  But my pregnant girlfriend Lisa’s response?

  “Oh, my God, I am thinking the same thing. We need to establish a call list. Have a Plan A, B, C…” Ah, anxiety confirmed, comforted, and commiserated with. Thank God for the ladies in my life!

  But the truth was, we were all first-time mommies and had no idea what to expect. So all the planning in the world would eventually mean nothing, because it wasn’t up to us. Damn near devastating for a bunch of hormonal, controlling, waddling women about to push an actual human being out of a hole that could barely fit a tampon. Yikes!

  During all of my worrying, wondering, and working, Mike was doing his best to relate. Being gone for his job made it hard for both of us to share this experience fully. I went to a lot of appointments alone, was up at night with insomnia, alone, and felt the baby kick for the first time, alone. None of that was anyone’s fault, but it was my reality, and it was lonely.

  We already had difficulty connecting on an emotional level, and by this point, our marriage was slightly strained (although I didn’t realize to what extent). I was grasping at every chance I could to keep him involved, but we bickered a lot, usually over stupid stuff, and our fights got ugly. In my head, I assumed that the baby would make some of that go away. I fantasized that Mike would revere me as beautiful, awe-inspiring, even ethereal perhaps—anything other than the enemy that I became in those fights.