Kid B.
We are having another kid.
Maybe its a boy. Maybe a girl. I don't know and I don't care. In the ultrasound room the other day, it all happened so fast. The nurse shoots out the jelly onto Monica's Dom Deluise and I turn around and there he/she is. A face. An unfinished human nugget swimming in darkness towards the neon lights of the coast where we wait. One minute I was at work, using a Home Depot brush to wipe cancer dust off some exposed brick. The next minute, I'm staring down the barrel of tomorrow.
"Hey can you tell me something?", I ask the nurse.
"Sure." she says, though I can tell she isn't so sure that she can.
"There's just one in there, right?"
The manic notion of having two babies at once hunts me. It horrifies me and terrorizes my dreams. Two nerve bags squirting shit at me from all directions; one screaming for a moment until the other one joins in; two cop car sirens blaring down the middle of my skull and crashing through the front of my face as hot bitter piss shoots up into my eye and one of the kids falls off the changing table onto a meat fork Violet stole from the dish washer and left lying around.
I cannot imagine two at once.
I know people do it. They manage. But I don't know how. I'd be back to smoking weed in no time. I'd drown my sorrows in fried cheese and Nutter Butters dipped in Nutella. I'd be a Jerry Garcia in a year. I'd just be stoned and enormous. I'd be a resort for deep-cavity heart attacks .
My eyes dig into the screen. It's in 3D now. Or 4D. Whatever. I see just one face, but what I see doesn't mean shit. There could be a nest of corn snakes in there and I probably wouldn't be able to tell. Monica watches too, of course. She's nervous. We've talked about how she's bigger this time around than she was at three months pregnant with Violet.
"Yep, just one baby in there," the nurse says.Fireworks go off behind my eyes.
The kid flips over as we try to get a sneak peek at a pecker or something.
The kid turns it's little back on us already.
Love is on the way.
8 Comments
Reader Comments (8)
Congratulations Serge - two's as easy to look after as one. The first ones made out of glass, the second one is made out of rubber. Give yourself a pat on the back !
"...and one of the kids falls off the changing table onto a meat fork Violet stole from the dish washer and left lying around."
Oh my God, that cracked me up!
For what it's worth, coming from a complete stranger over the Internets: You're a brilliant writer. And a good papa. And everything will be okay.
I worried I didn't have enough love for another, since I had so much for the first. But then, yeah, two did come at once. enough love was the easy part. This week I'm sending them off to college and my heart hurts.
omg, enjoy. it just gets better and better with kids. You know.
...yeah, I worried about "can I love the second as much as the first?", and then found out that my heart just gets bigger, and YES there is plenty-o-love. Now they drive, and date, and go to off to college. Janet is right: it hurts because your heart got bigger in order to love 'em so much!
mazel tov!!!
sending you much love and good vibes from eire
xoxo
sweet blessings to a good enough dad!
enjoy the ride!
congrats, my friend. i love your writing.
and congrats, too, on there just being one. we had three at once and it almost killed me!
tell katie hi for me.