therapist? we’d been dating a month.

I was wrapped in one of those half-quilted hotel blankets, sitting on the floor of a hotel room on a rotary phone, at a wedding I’d learned last-minute I’d be attending alone.

“well I’m having a baby with or without you. either way” I announced.

clearly I was talking to myself. not unlike that thing I’d said a decade earlier: “If I don’t have a baby by the time I’d 35 I’m doing it myself.”

hmm… a project. but one you kind of have to sneak up on. one day I found myself thinking “hey, what happens when I have to travel for work? I’m going to be one of those people with a handful of Crying Baby Everyone Hates.” and I whipped around and got into a stupid relationship, wasted another month. woah, this is heavy stuff.

I mean, every realization is crazy stunning, like a sudden immersion in something you never had to breathe before. like that time my boat flipped and I found myself immediately upside down in the river, feet strapped in, no time to think… “what is this warm flowy non-air stuff?” uh. It happens fast like that, so really obvious things about being a parent hit you like a new language that’s emitted from some other orifice.

I gave myself a year to think about it. that was a new year’s resolution. november of 07.

that was a good idea, it took a long time to wade through all those scary details. I seem to be launching into the doing phase, having graduated (at least temporarily) beyond being startled by the cost of daycare (not thinking about that NOT thinking about that), and actually weighing the pros and cons of using my first two vials of purchased sperm (from a neuroscience major nicknamed “Van” – cuz it’s more memorable than his sperm bank #) vs. a known donor/dad I’ve been vaguely fantasizing with for years. we meet in our favorite smoky windowless gay bar in a small midwestern town and imagine our very own Weetzie Bat.

still pondering.