was doing the sprinkler.
“That’s all I want, Kath. Right there. Funny kids who like each other.”
She leaned into me and said, “It’ll come. You’ll get it. Oh! Look—”
Just then, Aaron and some other guys lifted Kathy’s husband, Tony, over their heads, and Tony crowd-surfed, like Jack Black in the last scene of The School of Rock . People went nuts—cheering or reaching for their cameras or looking around for the father of the bride to see how this was going over with him. Over all the laughing and hollering,I could hear Aaron’s voice. “Stay stiff, Dad! Like Superman!”
Dad and I were still opening wedding presents when I started to think about getting pregnant. I’d watched so many friends struggle—Tracy’s seven in vitros, Mary Ann’s three miscarriages, Kristi’s baby born still. Dad and I were lucky, if lucky is a big enough word for it. Another way of putting it is that we were spared years of torment. Here’s a third way of saying it: I’ve had cancer twice and if I had to pick one fate for you, cancer or fertility problems, I’d pick cancer.
One well-timed roll in the hay, then two weeks later: Gasp. I cried—though less than you probably think, less than I did the other day when we were reading about the Lorax popping out of thetree stump and the Once-ler handing over the very last Truffula seed. That about killed me. Georgia, you hate it when I cry. All my conspicuous emoting turns you off. That fed-up look you give me at teacher retirement parties or soccer games or the winter concert is partly how I know that I am only a few years away from exasperating you by the way I apply my lipstick or talk to waiters or answer the phone or drive or walk or breathe.
Anyway, Dad hugged me and made some crack about his uber-sperm and the Teutonic Knights. I held up the pregnancy test stick and said, “Should we keep this?”
“Is that gross?”
“I don’t care, I’m keeping it,” I said.
Then Dad suggested we go downstairs, have a Guinness, and play some darts. So we did.
Darts is the only “sport” in which I have a real chance to beat Dad. He seems to have forgiven mefor not being the athlete my family background would have predicted. All those Corrigan coaches and athletic directors and all-Americans—and me, a girl who’d hear birds singing upon entering the office supplies aisle at Radnor Pharmacy. You girls can pin your fixation with file folders, hole-punchers, and three-ring binders on me. Watching you fashion a wallet out of index cards and double-sided tape, or embellish the edges of place cards with deckle-edge scissors, or swoon over a metallic, fine-tip paint pen? Talk about genetic validation.
But back to darts. I spent the first two years after college mastering bar games with a bunch of Sigma Chi’s, while somewhere in downtown Little Rock, Dad worked until midnight at the analyst desk of an investment bank. Before I challenged him to a game, he’d never held a dart. He caught on. A few years later, on our honeymoon,we ended every night playing on an outdoor dart-board, usually alongside an Indian busboy named Ibrahim, who had this unforgettable hair, perfectly cut and styled, shiny and black—the moon laid down a line on it like it was a lake. The point is, as funny as it seems, darts are kind of a romantic symbol for us.
When I finally started having contractions, forty-one weeks after the Guinness, Dad said, “Stay here. I’ll get the good darts. We’ll play to pass the time.”
“They’re on the corner of the table,” I called after him. “Underneath some bibs and board books.”
I have the video from that day. It’s not much to watch—it took seventeen hours and an IV of Pitocin to start active labor—but every so often, you can see me bend over and wince. I’ll show you, assumingyou’re old enough to hear me say “sweet-Jesus-mother-fucker.” You know the rest of the story—the three-foot umbilical cord, the Jackson Browne song that
“That’s all I want, Kath. Right there. Funny kids who like each other.”
She leaned into me and said, “It’ll come. You’ll get it. Oh! Look—”
Just then, Aaron and some other guys lifted Kathy’s husband, Tony, over their heads, and Tony crowd-surfed, like Jack Black in the last scene of The School of Rock . People went nuts—cheering or reaching for their cameras or looking around for the father of the bride to see how this was going over with him. Over all the laughing and hollering,I could hear Aaron’s voice. “Stay stiff, Dad! Like Superman!”
Dad and I were still opening wedding presents when I started to think about getting pregnant. I’d watched so many friends struggle—Tracy’s seven in vitros, Mary Ann’s three miscarriages, Kristi’s baby born still. Dad and I were lucky, if lucky is a big enough word for it. Another way of putting it is that we were spared years of torment. Here’s a third way of saying it: I’ve had cancer twice and if I had to pick one fate for you, cancer or fertility problems, I’d pick cancer.
One well-timed roll in the hay, then two weeks later: Gasp. I cried—though less than you probably think, less than I did the other day when we were reading about the Lorax popping out of thetree stump and the Once-ler handing over the very last Truffula seed. That about killed me. Georgia, you hate it when I cry. All my conspicuous emoting turns you off. That fed-up look you give me at teacher retirement parties or soccer games or the winter concert is partly how I know that I am only a few years away from exasperating you by the way I apply my lipstick or talk to waiters or answer the phone or drive or walk or breathe.
Anyway, Dad hugged me and made some crack about his uber-sperm and the Teutonic Knights. I held up the pregnancy test stick and said, “Should we keep this?”
“Is that gross?”
“I don’t care, I’m keeping it,” I said.
Then Dad suggested we go downstairs, have a Guinness, and play some darts. So we did.
Darts is the only “sport” in which I have a real chance to beat Dad. He seems to have forgiven mefor not being the athlete my family background would have predicted. All those Corrigan coaches and athletic directors and all-Americans—and me, a girl who’d hear birds singing upon entering the office supplies aisle at Radnor Pharmacy. You girls can pin your fixation with file folders, hole-punchers, and three-ring binders on me. Watching you fashion a wallet out of index cards and double-sided tape, or embellish the edges of place cards with deckle-edge scissors, or swoon over a metallic, fine-tip paint pen? Talk about genetic validation.
But back to darts. I spent the first two years after college mastering bar games with a bunch of Sigma Chi’s, while somewhere in downtown Little Rock, Dad worked until midnight at the analyst desk of an investment bank. Before I challenged him to a game, he’d never held a dart. He caught on. A few years later, on our honeymoon,we ended every night playing on an outdoor dart-board, usually alongside an Indian busboy named Ibrahim, who had this unforgettable hair, perfectly cut and styled, shiny and black—the moon laid down a line on it like it was a lake. The point is, as funny as it seems, darts are kind of a romantic symbol for us.
When I finally started having contractions, forty-one weeks after the Guinness, Dad said, “Stay here. I’ll get the good darts. We’ll play to pass the time.”
“They’re on the corner of the table,” I called after him. “Underneath some bibs and board books.”
I have the video from that day. It’s not much to watch—it took seventeen hours and an IV of Pitocin to start active labor—but every so often, you can see me bend over and wince. I’ll show you, assumingyou’re old enough to hear me say “sweet-Jesus-mother-fucker.” You know the rest of the story—the three-foot umbilical cord, the Jackson Browne song that
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