While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Archives for February 2013

You’re pregnant forever, and then you’re not

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Two of my closest girlfriends are pregnant right now, both of them due around the same time: late May/early June.

You already know one of them – my best friend Ro. And guess what? Her baby girl (Mia) is due on Henry’s BIRTHDAY: June 5. How’s that for timing?

It’s killing me to not be in New York right now. The last time I saw Ro she was 48 hours pregnant (I’m exaggerating) and supervising my kid at a park while my father and I went about the serious task of testing climbing the park’s playground equipment. Even then it was obvious she exhibited better parenting skills than myself.

Her baby shower is the day before St. Anthony’s Triathlon, thus I am unable to attend. ANOTHER MAJOR BUMMER. Consequently, it is possible that my best friend will fully gestate and I will never see her baby bump in person. UNFATHOMABLE. Fifteen years ago, when I filled three pages in her high school yearbook, I never imagined we’d BARGAIN SHOP without each other much less give birth to babies on opposite ends of the Eastern seaboard. Kvetching over the phone about the marvelousness and shiteousness of pregnancy is not the same as seeing it happen before your eyes. I’ll never get to feel Baby Mia kick Ro in the ribs – at least not in utero anyway.

Ah. But such is life. I signed up for this when I left Buffalo nine years ago. (NINE YEARS AGO?! WHAT?) After a decade away from home your absence no longer goes missed. It simply becomes a matter of fact. You miss Christmases. You miss birthdays. You miss pregnancies. You miss babies being born.

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If this ring could talk

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If my wedding ring could talk, it would sound like Jean Arthur, the throaty-voiced spitfire in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It would be full of piss, vinegar and the kind of wisdom you earn the hard way. Picture 84-year-old Katharine Hepburn: blunt, memorable, sarcastic and dressed in baggy trousers. She would be full of good gossip and zingers. My ring would be the life of the party, if rings were dames.

Of course I have no basis for these flights of fancy – just an overactive imagination and an antique wedding ring that once belonged to Joe’s great-grandmother Millie.

Here’s what I know about Millie: she was a small Italian woman who lived with my mother-in-law in a three-story walk-up in Brooklyn, where she cooked big dinners and sewed fabulous clothes. She was married twice and couldn’t keep a secret, especially if it was a pleasant one. Other than that I don’t know much else about the woman, which feels kind of wrong since I wear her wedding ring 24 hours a day.

Some girls spend their girlhood picturing their ring finger bedecked in a diamond, emerald-cut and mounted in platinum, fastened to a band that was dipped in gold at the end of a rainbow somewhere in Africa. Me? I had other fantasies. On more than one occasion I said I’d be perfectly verklempt if my husband-to-be proposed with a hot tub.

When I did, however, finally warm to the idea of a ring I latched onto one word: antique. I wanted a ring with a past. But since Joe and I rarely spoke of marriage, much less marriage BLING, my fondness for antique rocks never came up. I figured if my hand ever needed a swift Liz Taylor-ing I’d browse Zales in my jammies and order one of those eternity rings middle-aged husbands buy for their middle-aged wives to let them know they’re still the cat’s meow.

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One mother’s fairy tale

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When Henry was an infant he went through a ghost phase. And by ghost phase I mean he saw ghosts (ie: waved at Nothing, smiled at Nothing and acknowledged the presence of Nothing in a way that was both unsettling and mystical to his reasonable parents.)

This phase lasted from about nine to 12 months of age. It began one morning when I waltzed plodded bright bleary-eyed into Henry’s room and spotted him staring into space, smiling and blah-blah-blahing at a very specific Nothing in the corner of his room.

“Good morning Henry,” I said.

No reaction. He was too preoccupied with the Thing I Could Not See to pay me any mind.

For three whole minutes my perfectly rowdy baby failed to whine, coo or so much as nod in my direction. Although I was invisible, the Thing I Could Not See remained perfectly in focus.

I stared at the Nothingness he was staring at.

What on earth was he looking at? Or better yet, WHO was he looking at?

“Henry? Yoo hoo? Good morning,” I sang croaked.

It took some effort to divert his attention. When he finally did turn to face me he gave a little goodbye wave to the apparition in his room.

“Sweetheart, did you see something over there?”

He smiled smugly as if to say YOU DUMB ADULT. YOUR EYES ARE TOO OLD TO SEE WHAT I SEE. Returning to his usual helpless state, he threw his arms in the air and grunted – the universal baby sign for GET ME OUT OF MY CRIB DAMMIT.

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I told you Scandal was good

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Duh to you, Entertainment Weekly’s Mark Harris. So I was totally on target last year when I interviewed Kerry Washington about her new show Scandal. (Thanks Creative Loafing Tampa.) Sure I gratuitously used the word juicy during my chat with the actress, but how could I not? Her character is sleeping with the president and the relationship is hella steamy and … you guessed it – scandalous.

Now the chick is everywhere and rightfully so. When Michelle Obama debuted new BANGS at her husband’s inauguration the ‘do was touted as “The Kerry Washington.” Oh, and what’s this about Michelle banning Kerry from the White House because she flirts with Barack? I know it’s just celeb gossip, but it sort of explains the bangs doesn’t it?

Rumors Plausible political drama aside, I’m just saying the girl’s got momentum and I called it. So take that, Magazine I Wish I Wrote For.

At the time of our interview Kerry was still filming Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in Louisiana. She was pretty mum about the movie, though it was obvious that her role as Broomhilda (a slave in the pre-Civil War South) would bare no resemblance to Scandal’s Olivia Pope (a high-powered Washington D.C. political fixer). I knew Django would catapult her status in Hollywood and draw (much deserved) attention to her work on television.

My favorite part from our brief phoner: when a dude drove past Kerry, yelled to her that she was driving with her car door open and upon recognizing the actress audibly freaked out. Apparently I’m not the only Season One fan.

(BTW: The reason Kerry was doing press last spring was because the show was pulling in mediocre ratings and ABC, which had just released Scandal’s Season One box set, was looking for a boost in positive coverage – ie: get Kerry to talk sweetly to reporters.)

NOW, onto ABC’s Nashville, also a guilty pleasure of mine that opened to pitiful viewership. Who wants to hook a girl up with a Connie Britton interview?

The red drug balloon

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It’s the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. I’m without Henry. His grandparents have him for the day so I can work on a magazine story. I’m walking Cubbie, enjoying a break from my computer. The sun is in my eyes. The pug is especially pokey, stopping to sniff every tree trunk and urine-drenched blade of grass.

I’m plagued by things related to the magazine story, none of which I have any control over. I spot someone in the distance riding so slowly on a bicycle I wonder if they’re pedaling at all or miraculously stationary. The strangeness doesn’t stop there. The cyclist is holding a red balloon, stranger still.

As we get nearer I notice that the cyclist is young, a teenager. He looks like he’s 16, but then again I’m a terrible judge of age since I still think I’m 22. Despite this denial I’m old enough to make these three calls: he’s a kid, he should be in school and he’s up to no good.

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