Rachel is Pregnant

Rachel is pregnant. I mean, you know that. We all know that. She’s pregnant. As soon as I heard about it I was fine. Just kidding, I was scared. Even I did not know how scared I was until it was time to go visit her. I was so nervous on the bus over and when I was waiting for her to walk up and meet me on the corner of 34th and 34th that my stomach was kind of turning. Not gluten related.

I had written this little play a month before about how much I hate and am terrified by baby showers, about how I feel the are a ritual in which women strip other women of their agency and personalities and turn them into a facet of the great blobulous faceless collective mother. It was also a little about what happens to their childless girlfriends. Do they get cast aside? Inevitably? I was fine.

Look, I know in my mind that motherhood does not take away personhood. I’m always saying it in pithy feminist discourse. “Motherhood doesn’t take away personhood!” I might pithiliy say. But now we are talking about Rachel. Rachel who has always been incapable of dishonest inquiry. Rachel who paws scratches around at the base of ideas until their doors open. Rachel who sat with me the night before my wedding drinking pink drinks and telling me I didn’t have to do it, and then just sitting and being my friend when I miserably countered that I did. Rachel who never fails to make me feel like a real person instead of an impostor. Ugh. I need that particular person.  More than some baby. And certainly more than the concept of motherhood, which already has plenty of power, thank you very much.

But when Rachel walked up to 34th and 34th, she was carrying that baby like it was a book. There could not be a more natural thing for her to have on her. She was beautiful, actually. I know that people say that pregnant women are beautiful and they mean that that is because they are busy furthering our species with grace and serenity, and that is not the beautiful that Rachel is. She’s beautiful because she does things her own way. Within the course of the night, she would climb on to a replica of the bomb from Dr. Strangelove, straddle it like a horse, and take a photo with her fist pumped in the air.

Pregnancy, thank all the gods and goddesses, has not transformed Rachel. Rachel has transformed pregnancy. She’s made it as real as everything else about her, and therefore real to me. Far from being sucked into a hormone induced fog of serenity, she’s as sharp and engaged and living as ever. Maybe more. She’s living twice at once.

I don’t know why I was afraid that I’d find her diminished. Maybe because that’s what motherhood would feel like to me. But I’d underestimated her. I found her multiplied, and in all the things I secretly fear that mothering steals. In power, in freedom and in knowledge.

Look, I don’t want to make people, but I’m glad someone is and I’m really glad it’s Rachel. She says that when she’s getting too stressed and anxious, the baby kicks her. Alright, baby. If that’s how you’re going to do, we are on the same team. It’s like the baby wants to be in the conversation, and in the process of making us more present, thoughtful and human. The baby doesn’t want to steal our minds or our friends, the baby just wants to get in on the action. Surprisingly, I find, I have room for that.

I mean, good, I’m glad the baby is a buddhist. Seems the baby can hang. But more importantly, Rachel is still very here, making pregnancy real and soon to make parenting real and making me real with her reflection of me back to myself as my secret real self.