BIG QUESTIONS
You have been asking yourself the big questions lately. For example: How should a woman be?
Let’s say your best friend, Lorraine, wants to go to a pool party in the valley. You are living with your husband in a condo near the ocean at the time, having finished your second round of IVF and the suffocating feeling that your body is not your own. Let’s say you couldn’t understand how it had come to that, like a celebrity shaving her head and tap-dancing her way into rehab.
Let’s say you ask the universe, the gods, the trees, the wind, the rain, the fog, the waves crashing into coves, the wise crows, cliffs, and satellites how you should be. That is, your hope is to live a simple life full of meaning. You don’t want anything to change, except to be as iconic as you can be but without changing yourself so drastically that you are no longer you. Everyone would know that despite being childless, you were still serious about life, like a purple jelly donut, for example—that is, without needing to fill a space that isn’t meant to be whole.
Neither of you knew the pool party is meant for kids. Lorraine is wearing a low-cut swimsuit that draws attention from the dads. Let’s say you count thirty kids in the pool. Their shrieks pierce the air like hungry baby falcons, and all the splashing turns the water white. The water feels questionably warm on your toes, so you decide not to swim.
You and Lorraine are polishing off kid-sized fruit popsicles. You lick the sweet and sticky neon juice from the crevices of your fingers. Let’s say you ask Lorraine what she thinks about motherhood and she shrugs. “Meh,” she says. But how does a woman exist in this world without a child? You tell her that you won’t be any good at this stuff.
“What stuff?” she asks. She is looking at you, shielding her eyes from the sun.
“Kids. I’m terrible with them,” you say, wiping juice from the corner of your mouth. “Sitting here, I feel nothing. I wonder if I’m just selling myself into the idea because there’s nothing to celebrate.”
“Really?” she says. Lorraine wrinkles her nose in the way she does when she’s about to challenge you. “But you’re doing great with in vitro, your clients, everything. Is this fear talking?” A red plastic ball bounces off her head. She smiles politely, then tosses it over the fence.
“Probably,” you say. You watch a hawk circle overhead. A crow is chasing it higher and higher into the atmosphere. “I just wonder if I’m going through the motions,” you add. “Since we’re not all destined for motherhood.”
“Eh,” she says, shrugging. “Probably not. But you’ll be great. There’s no need to overthink your experience. Besides, all kids are shits anyway.”
Let’s say right then a child with chubby cheeks and a blue, floppy hat tipsily toddles over, smiles at you, and promptly face-plants onto a piece of pool furniture. His face crumples like a mylar party balloon and he begins to wail.
Let’s say Lorraine frowns, stands, and straightens her dress as the mother appears, covered in enough sunblock to resemble a ghost. The mother apologizes profusely to everyone in sight, especially the child.
Let’s say your friend grabs your wrist and points to a solitary shaded spot on the other side of the pool. As you both walk away, you say that it is a pretty stupid thing to cry about—falling, that is—but you both admit that you do not know anything about children.
As you hustle away it also occurs to you that this is the great power of being a woman—that you can decide on how you should be.
Nicole Cifani Lehmann-Haupt has been published in Active Muse Literary Journal, Mulberry Literary, and received a Pushcart Prize nomination. She earned a bachelor’s degree in information communication processes from The Ohio State University and a master’s degree in visual and media arts from Emerson College. Nicole has attended the San Francisco Writers Conference and the Iceland Writers Retreat. She teaches creative writing at The Writers Studio founded by Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Schultz. Nicole grew up in Ohio, has lived in Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Paris, and Tokyo, and now calls San Francisco home.