Sep 06 2005
What, me worry?
There is surely no shortage of things to worry about during child-bearing and child-raising years. Seriously. The list is endless.
But take a seventeen year old girl who gets knocked up (um, moi’) and leave her alone in the house with the book “The Exorcist” and - voila’ - you have a mother-to-be who is TERRIFIED that her baby might be possessed by a demonic spirit. Not once did the thought of birth defects or chromosomal disorders cross my feeble teenaged brain. I only sat there and thought “Oh my god God, what if she is possessed?” (at that point, I figured I’d better be a believer and, you know, make his His name uppercase like all the other good Christians do - JUST IN CASE… I mean, really - the lengths we go to in order to keep our children safe and demon-free, right?).
Fortunately, when I was pregnant the second time, I was much older (19) and, of course, much wiser. I no longer fretted about demonic possession. No. This time, I was consumed with stupidity. I just didn’t think I had the patience to deal with a stupid child. It’s shameful for me to admit, but it’s true. Fortunately, now that I was so intellectually superior myself, I could spell the word god with a lowercase g.
It was a close call. For years, I watched and wondered if she was going to pull off the smart girl thing. There was one time we were returning from a vacation in the beautiful mountains of West Virginia where my doubts loomed large. This second child, then around 9 or 10, said to me “I want to go to college in West Virginia, Mom. What language do they speak there, ’cause I figure I’d better start learning it now.”
At that point, I was wondering if a cheerleading scholarship was too much to aspire to. I didn’t see any hope of academic achievement paving the way. This girl did the work and aced the academics and is very happily earning her journalism degree in one of the best j-schools ( a very selective one) in the country. Fortunately, she knew the language (and let’s face it, there are some West Virginians who DO seem to speak a foreign language, right?)
By the time I started popping out kids again, I was in my 30s. I took a break from being psychotic in my worry-weirdness and, you know, just worried about the normal things. For example, choking. What mother doesn’t worry about choking? Who hasn’t envisioned that round piece of hotdog plugging up the child’s esophagus as if it were a drain stopper in the bathtub? Who hasn’t carefully sliced the hotdog length-wise, then rotated it 45 degrees and sliced length-wise again, then sliced it width-wise in such small tiny un-choking pieces that the kid needs a freaking particle microscope to get a bite of LUNCH?
I did not have any odd worries about my 3rd, which is why I blame myself now for her 9 year old dorkiness. It totally snuck up on me. Had I been VIGILANT (like I was with demonic possession and stupidity), perhaps it could have been avoided. But no, I relaxed and focused on hotdog slicing and so I must take full responsibility for what has resulted. Can it be turned around? Perhaps. I’m trying to seduce make mommy-friends with the mothers of the cool kids in 4th grade. I think it might be our best and only hope.
When I got pregnant the fourth time, I had passed the magic age of 35 (that’s two hundred and fucking forty five in dog years, people!) and I no longer had to manufacture worries on my own. From this point forward, they were provided - free of charge - by my doctor. It started from my first visit when I was declared to be of advanced maternal age. From there, they wanted to do special blood draws and fetal neck measurements and they even had the audacity to talk to me about this huge long-ass needle that they wanted to stick into my stomach to push into my uterus to draw amniotic fluid out. I told those sons of bitches “I don’t care if I’m gestating a one-eyed one-armed flying purple people eater, you are NOT coming near me with that needle.”
Turns out, my fourth has both eyes and both arms and has only thus far ATTEMPTED to eat a few people (mostly fellow toddlers with the balls to reclaim the toys she took from them) but I still find myself wondering if that test would have better prepared us. You know, to maybe consider open adoption - perhaps finding an enemy we could foist her upon for the early years. Or maybe we could have sent her over to Iraq to work her sleep-deprivation and non-ending crying black magic on them. Had we sent my fourth child over, I’m quite certain that the lot of them would have turned over Osama MONTHS ago without a second thought.
My final adventure in popping out babies took place just months before my 40th birthday. I think I’m just too worn out to be worried anymore. I take it in stride. Will the 9-year-old’s dorkiness rub off on the other two? Maybe, but at least they’ll have each other. Will the Evil Toddler succeed in crushing the spirit of the baby? Perhaps, but I think the plan is backfiring and the baby is going to kick her ass very, very soon. My second one isn’t stupid. And the oldest? Well, if she’s possessed, at this point it’s most likely by the spirit of Captain Morgan.
My biggest worry now is whether, in 18 years, I’ll be able to sign over my social security checks to pay for college tuition for my youngest. But I’m SURE that this blogging thing will make me rich and famous by then, so truly I needn’t worry, right? (just shake your head up and down and mutter “Yes, Linda” and I’ll pretend not to notice the look in your eye that says “This girl is a MORON. She must certainly be of advanced maternal age.”)
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