Something like Drunk in Love

But more like drinking and crying. Sometime in November or December we went over to our friend Alex’s house for drinks. We climbed up the steep steps to his house, and admired his neighbor’s twinkling Christmas lights. We were excited to tell he and his girlfriend our big news. We sat in his kitchen, at the big wooden table he has there, and mostly wine was opened and poured and sipped. Alex knows a lot about wine and has a pretty insane wine collection. He always brings the best bottles to a dinner party, or to Tomales Bay for oysters, and if you go out to dinner with him, he wants to know what everyone’s thinking about ordering before choosing something from the wine list, rather than the other way around. He’s a good person to know. Well, at just about twelve weeks pregnant, I forwent the wine. I could wait, I thought, there’s usually the promise of more good wine down the road.

Somewhere as the evening went on, we started talking about scotch. Alex hopped up from the table, opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle. I got this from this town in Scotland, he said,  you can only buy it there, they don’t sell it anywhere else. The more he described it, the more special it sounded. I stared hard at the bottle. I don’t think I even looked at anyone. Maybe I pouted a little. I hate missing out on experiences. I sipped my water, feeling it slide down my throat, feeling well-hydrated because what else was there for me to be. He gathered three fresh glasses and set them on the table, pouring the booze. I don’t remember if there was ice involved. Maybe, maybe not. Everyone smelled it and had a sip. This was my chance to taste this flavor that I’d probably never get to taste again. And so I had a small sip of Scott’s. Barely enough to get past my lips and onto to my tongue. And then my face started to get hot, and the tears started to well up and all of a sudden I was crying and laughing at myself for crying and embarrassed to be in this brightly lit kitchen crying in front of my husband and our friends for such a silly thing as a sip of scotch.

As we were walking home, What happened in there? Scott asked. It tastes like fun, I told him. Licking my lips again as if there might be some of that flavor lingering behind (there wasn’t). It tastes like letting go, like relaxing. I’ve talked about this with friends over the last few months, but I think that one of the hardest parts of pregnancy is that is that nothing is really satisfying. You can’t have that glass of wine at the end of the day to unwind. I used to run for miles and miles to relax, to get those endorphins going, to explore the city and take in those beautiful San Francisco views of the Bay. Running was the thing that got my head right when I was grumpy or anxious. That’s off the table for now. Same with a really hard yoga class and sleeping well. It’s hard to let go of whatever you used to do to get happy. There’s still hanging out, and House of Cards, and less guilt eating dessert whenever you feel like it, but it’s not the same.

I know this all sounds whiney, and I’m so grateful that everyone involved in this whole baby thing is healthy, I’m knocking on wood right now that we continue to be so lucky. But right now it feels like I’ve been pregnant for a long time, and there’s still a few months to go. This whole thing of creating another person is all so strange, and I definitely didn’t expect this elusiveness of satisfaction.