It Begins

I came home yesterday, tired. My exam had finished up at 6 on Monday; I had immediately shared celebratory shots of Absolut Citron with Uncle, which did a good job of counteracting the caffeine-and-all-nighter high I was running on. I took a nap, was awakened around 9:45 to knock up the wife, watched some X-Files, went back to sleep. Woke up in the morning around 11, watched more X-Files, rescheduled my chiropractor appointment so I could vote, went to therapy, went to my class (taught by a pleasant, easily distractable old man who really doesn't do anything to direct the discussion), got out early and went to that chiropractor appointment, got dinner at my favorite Mexican place, went to what I thought was the first Arabic class of the semester only to discover that, last week while I was cramming for the exam, they had all met without me. Got out of class at 10, walked exhaustedly to the subway, listed to my Lupe Fiasco/Shakira/Jay-Z playlist of the moment six times (or however many, I didn't pay attention except for mentally choreographing the trailer to the X-Files movie about colonization they're never going to make to the sounds of Hello Goodbye--there's lots of Dana Scully with AK-47s), wandered in the door, dropped my shit, and said hello to my wife.

Who promptly burst into tears.

She didn't feel well. She was having cramps. Her stomach hurt. Everything hurt. She didn't know why she was crying. She didn't know anything. She was just crying.

And as I sat there, holding her hand, saying everything was ok, petting her hair, telling her to call her mother if she wants to, and all of that, I thought: oh, shit. She can't be more than 24 hours pregnant. Honestly, at most there's a little fertilized egg in there trying to figure out whether it wants to implant. And that's if she's pregnant at all. And she's hysterical already.

And all of a sudden I'm realizing precisely what I meant when I told my therapist that I was going to have to deal with her hysterical pregnancies two weeks out of the month from here forward.

She calmed down. I held her and petted her and we laughed about the mood swings and I told her everything was OK. She's still crampy and bloated today, and I swear to God she looks fatter. (My wife, she is the opposite of fat.) Who knows? Maybe these are the best signs every and she's totally pregnant. Maybe her body is reacting to encountering sperm for the first time by screaming in horror. Maybe it's a psychosomatic reaction. But this is how it's going to be from here forward.

I think I'm ready. I hope so, at least.