It's Okay to Laugh (14 page)

“. . . when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born—and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.”

Anne, you better be right.

Tomorrow, my sister will pick me up and a doctor will remove this baby from my uterus. It will be as if it never happened. In a week, my father will die in a makeshift bedroom we've created in his former study. In a month and a half, I'll dress my husband's dead body in his favorite J.Crew clothes and send him out the door with two handsome young undertakers.

Someday, I will see where this led me, and it will make a little more sense, but it will always, always be sad, and I will never forget that wraith of a figure, still as stone, a little shadow within me.

I am done trying to reason with it. For now, at least. There is no reason. There is nothing to understand. There is no could-have or should-have because there is only what is. What happened is the only thing that could have happened: this little human was not meant for this world, but gave it a try anyway. My father got sixty-four years. Aaron got thirty-five. And I don't have to like it, but I can't change it, either.

I talk about it because none of it needs to be a secret, and because I don't want to forget any of it, even the parts that were
hard to watch. I'm proud to have kept my eyes open when it would have been easier to look away. I'll carry forever the images of our lifeless child suspended in the darkness of my own womb, my mother leaning over to kiss good-bye her husband of forty years, my husband politely apologizing for “ruining dinner” while his body jerks under the power of a seizure. The last time Aaron told me he loved me, he was lying in a hospital bed in what used to be our office, gazing adoringly at me in my retainer and L.L.Bean pajamas. Those three words were the last he ever spoke to me.

These are the diamonds I picked from the darkness, that shine with meaning only for me.

I
took my first pregnancy test when I was sixteen, in the bathroom of a Walgreens six miles away from my parents' house. There was a Walgreens just half a mile away, but buying a pregnancy test literally in the shadow of my Catholic grade school was simply too risky. I was guaranteed to be seen by someone's mom or brother, even if I tried to conceal the telltale box with a
Seventeen
magazine and some two-for-one M&M's.

So instead, I drove my mother's lime green VW Beetle to the nearest suburb, a hot pink, plastic gerbera daisy bobbing its head in the dashboard bud vase.

This was 1999, before every child was born with an iPhone in its hand, so I had nothing to do but wait with my own thoughts for every agonizing minute until the test decided my fate.

How would I tell my parents? I wondered. How would everyone react? How rare, exactly, was it for a virgin to get pregnant besides Jesus' mom?

To my shock and delight, my test was negative. Probably
(although I'm not going to pretend to be some kind of medical professional, so please do not consider this medical advice) because I
was
a virgin. Most virgins aren't extremely concerned about unplanned pregnancies, but our friend's mother, who was a registered nurse, had recently given us all a real cold shower of a talk. She swore up and down that she'd just delivered
twin
babies to a fifteen-year-old mother in St. Paul who was a virgin. A virgin! Her patient had thought she was safe as long as she didn't have penis-vagina sex but she learned the hard way that nope, that was not the case, and she sure wished she had just stopped at kissing.

Typing this story out now I realize that his mom was just trying to keep us innocent and prevent her son from becoming a teenage father, but instead she drove me to an obsessive belief that I was always pregnant.

After scrutinizing the results for approximately ten minutes to make sure I hadn't misread them, I was satisfied with the veracity of the test. I wrapped the little plastic wand in about six pounds of toilet paper and buried it in the garbage can, hoping it couldn't be traced back to me in any way should a curious custodian happen to see the vague outline of a pregnancy test through the garbage bag and, surmising it had come from a wayward youth, decide to call the cops, who would immediately run some DNA testing on it and then find my parents and tell them their daughter was a Grade-A SLUT. You just can't be too careful.

My mother probably deserves some of the blame for this hysteria, if only because I like to blame her for most things in my life. She'd told me and my first boyfriend, who she once caught kissing me on the couch after school, that if we had sex, we would
without a doubt
get pregnant.

“I've had four kids,” she told him as he contemplated jumping out our dining room window mid-lecture, “and both of Nora's
grandmothers had nine.
Nine.
She comes from a long line of fertile women.”

I wasn't going to take any chances, so I started birth control before I even started having sex—
just in case—
and still anxiously awaited the arrival of my period every single month.

Poor teenage Nora would be relieved/sad/confused to know that I didn't eventually get pregnant from kissing. I didn't even get pregnant from having sex.

I got pregnant from science.

After Aaron's diagnosis, right before he started treatment, I asked Aaron's oncology nurse about having babies. They'd already cautioned us against unprotected sex, or as they sensually described it, “the exchange of bodily fluids,” and I could hear her shift uncomfortably on the other end of the phone before telling me how unpredictable and challenging this disease would be for him. But that's not what I called to hear, so I asked again and she recommended he take a visit to a nearby “cryogenics lab” before he began radiation and chemotherapy.

While it sounds extremely fancy, a cryogenics lab is just a fancy term for
sperm bank,
which is just a fancy term for a battered, vaguely medical office in a suburban strip mall. This particular one was wedged between a closed bookstore and an insurance office. The lab was a perfect example of just how misleading a website can be: there are no perfectly polished and smiling nurses in lab coats, no handsome and eligible young Ivy Leaguers in the waiting room waiting to donate some sperm to a couple in need. Just a red-eyed guy with a breakfast Mountain Dew who takes your insurance information, and a few weathered and meth-faced guys in beat-up Caprices in the parking lot who I would pay to keep their sperm away from my vagina.

Aaron had a half dozen doctor's appointments that week, a
hundred ways for them to poke and prick and examine him before they treated him, but he still woke up at seven to jerk off in a strip mall closet so we could have a family someday. That's love.

I once saw the nurse who got me pregnant while I was standing in line at the airport. It took me a while to place her, which I hated, because I'd like to think I could quickly name all the people who have ever seen my vagina, let alone the number of people who have inserted a small syringe of sperm into it. That syringe of sperm had ended up turning into a positive pregnancy test that had turned out to be Ralph, who was now sitting like a prince in an expensive running stroller, with his own ticket to Arizona, earning miles on his own frequent flier account.

“All right,” I had said to her on that April morning two and a half years ago, spreading my legs and closing my eyes, “go ahead and get me pregnant.” I'd kissed Aaron good-bye that morning and let him sleep off the chemo while I headed off to be inseminated before starting my workday.

She nailed it. I was totally pregnant, and it was all thanks to her, and to the pregnancy pact I made with my two childhood friends. Never doubt the power of a pinkie swear made at a wedding reception when you're all kind of buzzed. I had always planned to send my nurse a thank-you card for impregnating me, in which I said all the right things and thanked her for her hand in creating the small human whose dragon breath wakes me up every morning with a terrible-smelling but achingly sincere “I love you, Mama,” breathed directly into my face and followed with a wet, open-mouth kiss. But it turns out that card doesn't exist, and no matter how I tried to catch her eye as we wound through an endless TSA line, I couldn't make it happen. I also couldn't remember her first name, so I didn't know what to yell, and “Hey! Hey! You got me pregnant!” seemed like it might be a little too aggressive for an
airport. So instead I will consider this paragraph as my thank-you card, and hope that she reads it in the break room while she rests between impregnating other women and making their dreams come true.

I also hope that my friend's mom is reading this, because she was right: you
can
get pregnant without having sex, it's just going to cost you a little more than dry-humping your boyfriend in the front seat of his parents' Lincoln, and it will involve a series of strangers becoming very intimate with your swimsuit zone. The medical community calls it IUI, but I call it immaculate conception. Because it's a fucking miracle.

A COLLECTION OF UNSOLICITED TIPS AND TRICKS FROM TOTAL STRANGERS.

Follow your instincts.

Your instincts are best verified by a quick Internet search, a call to the nurse line, or by referencing one of a dozen books written by dueling pediatricians or celebrities you didn't even know were mothers. Or, just trust the first online forum you find through Google.

Sharing a bed with your child helps you form an unbreakable bond that women for centuries and centuries have enjoyed.

Sharing a bed with your child is a great way to crush him in your sleep or KILL HIM WITH SIDS
.

Putting your baby in his own room is cruel. What, are you going to let him
cry it out,
too? You know what crying is, right? It's a baby's
natural reaction to wanting something because he can't express himself verbally. What kind of a mother would ignore that just so she can watch a few extra minutes of
Real Housewives
?

Crying it out is a great way to teach your child independence and resilience. Plus, I mean, babies cry. He'll get over it.

Nurse your baby in public, f*ck what all these uptight jackasses think of the female body. You're providing your child with the nutrients necessary for his development and survival.

This isn't
National Geographic
,
put your nips away. How can I possibly explain to my children that you as a female have
breasts
and your child is eating from them? How can I possibly reconcile the fact that you are exercising your body's capability to nourish the life you brought into your world with the fact that I think of boobs as purely for my own sexual entertainment?

Formula is a perfectly safe alternative to breast milk. In fact, some scientists think it's better than breast milk, because it's made by science, unlike your boobs, which are just there for decoration.

Formula is great if you hate your baby. We're not judging at
all,
do what ya gotta do. But have you at least
tried
breastfeeding?

Savor every moment. Are you savoring the moment? Every. Single. Moment should be savored. Savor it. This moment. The moment that just passed. This upcoming moment. It's going to pass you by before you know it. You missed it. You should have savored it but you were busy reading this book or wondering when the next episode of
Property Brothers
is going to be on.
Property Brothers
is
always
on.

Go ahead and give him a bottle. You don't want him to starve while your milk comes in. Do you? Maybe you do and that's fine. You're the mother, after all.

Give him a bottle too soon and he'll reject your breast forever, opting instead to suckle from the sweet plastic teat you offered him too soon.

Every baby is different.

Every baby is different . . . buuuttttttt your baby should definitely be achieving certain milestones by a certain time. If he hasn't played the kazoo while using sign language to let you know he prefers a paraben-free lotion, I'm sorry but he is autistic.

But if he doesn't do that, I mean, no big deal. He's fine. Probably. Google it just to make sure.

Make sure your baby always has a hat on, because the heat is literally just shooting out of the top of his head at all times and you don't want him to get cold and die.

Make sure that there are no blankets in his bed, or he will die of SIDS.

Make sure your baby doesn't freeze to death in his crib, you monster.

His crib should be free of all bedding or bumpers, because, you know, SIDS.

Make sure he's not exposed to the slats of his crib or he'll get tangled up like a fish and die if SIDS doesn't get him first.

Your child should learn to soothe himself without the aid of a pacifier.

You are an absolute monster if you don't give him a pacifier; are you trying to raise a weak little thumb-sucking mama's boy?

Don't listen to any advice.

Follow your instincts.

(Or Google it.)

R
alph Jay Purmort burst forth from my vagina on January 22, 2013. It was his due date, which is apparently rare, but I expected nothing less than punctuality and good manners from my offspring, so he slid on out at a decent hour, after not a ton of work, and he didn't tear my vagina apart in the process. He's a good guy.

Ralph showed up, was whisked off to the NICU, and four days later pulled a teeny-tiny version of
Prison Break
, trading the hundreds of cords and machines that had been hooked up to his little body for the freedom of living with his parents. He was not a cute baby. He was small and wormy, with a giant bruise on his head that looked like it was Voldemort trying to take human form. He'd had a bit of “trauma” coming through the “birth canal,” which
means he had bashed his head somewhere inside my vagina, and we were waiting for the swelling to go down. In the meantime, I double-filtered the Instagram photos and used creative cropping to make it look like he wasn't just a skinny, hairless, two-headed guinea pig.

Ralph was born just a few weeks after his father had his second brain surgery, to remove a pesky and persistent Stage IV glioblastoma brain tumor, which is a medical term for Totally Fucked. A week before Aaron tried—and failed—to catch Ralph as he sailed out of my lady parts, he had been lying in a hospital bed just a few floors away, confined to a room for forty-eight hours while a team of doctors and nurses pumped him full of poison, hoping to keep him alive by trying to kill the part of his body that was trying to kill him.

I know that every parent aside from mine believes their child to be special, but they are mistaken. My child, however,
is
special. Almost instantly, Ralph knew that he had not been born into a family where he would be the sun, worshiped and revolved around. He knew, inside that head with another head growing off of it that Aaron was the number-one priority in our household, followed closely by my trying to grow in my eyebrows after overplucking them as a high school junior.

The week before Ralph was born, when I was swollen with pride (and, as I found out a few days later, preeclampsia), Aaron's new chemo doctor (there might be a technical term for that) stopped in to meet us before his new treatment. I don't think she meant to recoil at the sight of me, but she did, twisting her face up in a way that indicated she had smelled something shitty, and that something was the baby growing inside of me.

“Oh,” she said, clutching her clipboard to her chest, “you're pregnant.” She ran her hand through her salt-and-pepper hair, cut short enough to show off the glass bead earrings I imagine she
made herself, a way to blow off steam after long shifts walking through winding hallways of decaying patients, telling them the kind of thing she was about to tell me.

She went on to explain to me that what Aaron was doing was very serious, which I hadn't known before, you know, it being Stage IV cancer and all. I'd considered the past year of chemo and radiation to be our honeymoon, apparently. This new, very serious treatment would mean he would be very tired, and did I understand that? I nodded to show her that though I was clearly stupid, I was doing my best to comprehend the words coming out of her mouth. She went on to tell me that Aaron couldn't spend his time caring for a small baby, because he would be tired. He would be tired, because as she mentioned, the serious treatment would make him tired. It was serious. Aaron really needed to focus on himself, and that's why they (she) didn't usually recommend having babies.

As much as I appreciated being told I should basically consider giving up this child for adoption or throwing myself down a flight of stairs, I did what most adult women would do: I left the room to cry and make a phone call.

“Oh
God,
” I sobbed to my big brother over the phone in the family waiting room, most likely loud enough for her to hear me, “now I'm worried that this baby is going to kill Aaron and it's all my fault.”

My older brother, Austin, was used to picking up the phone to listen to several straight minutes of my ranting, so he waited patiently for me to take my first breath.

“Nora,” he said, “babies aren't like that. They just . . . they kind of arrive and feel out the vibe of a family, and fill the need they see.”

The women in our family only want to hear what they want to hear, and Austin's years of practice with two hysterical sisters had clearly paid off. I felt better.

I went back to Aaron's room, stopping at every nurses' station to let them rub my stomach, hoping Dr. Doom would see me.

Our first night at home as a family of three, Aaron and I were staring at a small, wrinkly little alien, asleep in a bassinet in the middle of our king-size bed. Ralph didn't make a single peep. I stayed up the entire night, to guard him from SIDS and ghosts, and I saw that my brother was right. This kid
got it
. He didn't cry or fuss when he was ready to eat, just turned his head toward me and opened his mouth, waiting for me to put a boob in it. He slept peacefully in a sling while I unloaded the dishwasher, made dinner, or played
Fruit Ninja
on our Xbox Kinect. Most babies have wild and uncontrollable limbs, but in Aaron's hospital bed, Ralph was always careful not to disturb his IV or kick the help button on the guardrail while he was cuddling. He let me nurse him in the MRI waiting room, and change his diaper in the Infusion Center, on one of those extra-wide waiting room chairs that at least ten thousand different butts have sat on. He happily cooed in the arms of the oncology nurses, who have spent more time with him than have some of his family members. One night, while Aaron and I were enjoying a typical hospital date night—takeout tacos in Styrofoam containers with
The Sopranos
streaming on a laptop—Ralph decided he wasn't happy at the foot of the hospital bed with his stuffed animals and pulled himself up to join us.

“He's crawling!” we shouted, ridiculously proud of the baby who was so lazy I had to take him to a special assessment at Children's Hospital just to be given “he's lazy” as an official diagnosis from a physical therapist. Before he could reach the laptop screen and the R-rated content of an HBO show, our room filled with nurses and nursing assistants, who cheered and scooped him up in their arms, whisking him down the hallway to celebrate his milestone
while Aaron and I, beaming with pride, finished our dinner with Tony and Carmela.

Aaron and I were always a team. I'd never before loved someone who was always so definitively on my side (with the exception of the time he told me I couldn't make penny loafers cool, which I still disagree with and just attribute to the fact that his brain tumor was keeping him from seeing what a trendsetter I am). Ralph was the perfect addition to our little universe, and no matter what that doctor told me, I know for a fact that Ralph and his superior attitude are what kept Aaron alive for another year and a half. It's science.

After Ralph was born, when the nurses took him to the NICU and explained his issues to me in that vague horn noise the adults in
Peanuts
cartoons speak in, I lay alone in my hospital bed, in a pool of my own blood, and cried. Not because it hurt (the epidural kicked in riiiiiight at the end, so I felt pretty amazing) but because of what Aaron had said, after the baby slid through his hands and landed by my ankles.

“It's a boy!”

A boy. A boy who would spend his entire life being compared to his father, living in the shadow of a man he would barely get to know. It didn't help that beneath the wrinkles and baby acne and the peeling skin, Ralph did look exactly like Aaron. Which was also annoying, because I'd been the one who shared my Dairy Queen cones and Chipotle burritos with him for nine months. Me! And what do I get? His weird, overly flexible thumbs. That's
all.

I worry about that less now. Children grow into who they will be, regardless of what they look like. That's how my sister turned out to be a forty-year-old white woman in a Bollywood dance troupe, and how my brother turned out to be a twenty-eight-year-old who
collects cuckoo clocks and uses a cut of rope to hold his belt up. I won't be able to actually help it if Ralph grows up to be the kind of guy who grows white boy dreads; I can just hope I've given him the tools he needs to make better choices, and make sure he's excluded from my will if he makes such an infraction.

The day that Aaron died, I'd banished everyone from our house except the three of us. For weeks, our house had been filled with family, and we needed to be a unit again, our own little universe. Ralph was nearly two, which is a pretty terrible age unless, again, you are talking about my child. He walked quietly into the room where Aaron lay unconscious in a hospital bed. The same kind of bed we'd become secretly engaged in, the same kind of bed where Ralphie had learned to crawl. He carefully climbed up beside his father, without disturbing any of the cords, and gently laid his giant head next to Aaron's. “I luh you, Papa,” he said, sucking his thumb and rubbing the top of his head. “Bye bye.”

Losing Aaron was like having our sun burn out, but Ralph and I learned to revolve around each other. I get to watch him become the person he is, and he gets to watch me become a mother, though he still looks at me as though he's skeptical of my capabilities.

Like Aaron, Ralph is not amused by my singing or dancing. “Stop that!” he'll say, covering his ears and eyes when I try to change the lyrics to popular songs to reflect my unique personal take on motherhood.

Like me, Ralph knows all the best swear words and how to use them in context. “Slow down!” he'll shout at cars that race through our neighborhood. “We live here, jackass!”

And like only he can, he still understands that he was born into a different kind of family, that his normal is not like any other kid's normal. Someday, I'm sure, he'll tell his therapist about how having his childhood documented via hashtag (#ralphiegrams)
ruined his life, but for now, he seems to be thriving in the chaos of our little universe. He quietly flies across the country with me, laying his head in my lap and elevating his crossed ankles on his armrest like he's kicking up after a hard day, then waking up for a snack and an episode of
Curious George
as we near landing. He is as happy at day care as he is spending the day at a winery in Sonoma, or driving through the Arizona desert. He is flexible and resilient, and the only routine he has is his nightly prayers: one for my father, one for Aaron.

“Mama,” he says to me, smiling up from the tower of LEGOs he's assembled on our living room floor after we've returned from another trip, “you're a strong guy.”