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I had to look three, four, five times. Last time I tinkled on a stick, I was camping and made my sister build me a toilet out of rocks, because princesses don’t tinkle in the forest. Anyway, this was a different kind of stick and the outcome wasn’t what I’d hoped. I’m old enough to feasibly be a grandmother, and I’m pregnant. The stick was positive. The stick doesn’t lie. I threw the stick down the garbage disposal.
These things can just happen, the doctor says. No, they really, really cannot. Nails in my tires can just happen. An ingrown toenail just happens. A bird crapping on my head just happens. Even Ebola can just happen. Pregnancy doesn’t just happen. It’s sort of the end result of a series of events, if you catch my drift. And here I am, incubating the end result.
What was I to do? I laughed, I cried, and then I hyperventilated and fell to the floor. I wailed, “We’ll be gumming the same foods at the same time!” And I shrieked: “When other mothers are pushing their children on the swings, my child will be pushing me in a wheelchair! We’ll both have walkers! Mine will have tennis balls on its legs!”
This was not what I planned for my 50s. It wasn’t what I planned for my 20s either, but that was just the way the cookie crumbled back then. And kept crumbling, apparently.
When I told my friends the news, they gasped and held their hearts. They thought that it was a physical anomaly given the assumption my ovaries were preparing to pack their bags for an assisted living facility called Meno-Village Estates. Apparently, however, although they were embarking upon retirement, they were still half-operational yet fertile, like a blow fish.
Here’s how I picture the next 18 years: We’ll both be in diapers in tandem. While he learns to walk, I’m going to learn not to fall down. When he is learning his ABCs and 123s, I will struggle to remember my phone number and security code to open up the garage door. When I take him for his immunizations, I will be getting my shingles vaccine at a generous AARP discount. He will lose control of his bladder; I will lose control of my bladder.
People will ask him why he’s always with his grandmother (and not his mother) and I will punch those people in the neck. When they ask for parents to chaperone the second grade field trip to the Crayola Factory, I will hire someone to go in my place.
No way will I make that trip without my blood thinners, support hose and three rest stops. When he needs assistance with his homework, I will pretend I’m having a stroke, because the only Common Core math I know is…none. When he graduates from high school, I will be on my second hip replacement and third face-lift. (It’s because that kid said I looked like his grandmother).
And, that, my friends, is how I imagine the downward descent of my senior years… if I were to be pregnant. The stick never lies.
But I do.
April Fools!
Pregnant? Me? There’d be a greater possibility of me sprouting wings and flying too close to the sun.
Sorry, Dad. But that was fun.