Identity

Yesterday, while chopping vegetables, I noticed something sticking out of the dog's mouth. The two little bitty legs of an acorn girl.

Sometimes I act insane.

I saved the acorn baby. Her little acorn shell hat still intact, and her twisted body could be molded back to girl shape. If only we had cute hats, and wooden heads, and wire bodies to mold back into a semblance of health and happiness.

:::

It is rainy and gray here, and yet I am okay with the sweaty coolness of this particular type of day in early summer. I've been crying a lot lately, thinking about my life as it is. Thinking about how much has changed about who I am, and what I want out of people, out of myself, out of my family. Every aspect of me is different.

I used to want to write novels about identity. Being an identical twin means I have questioned my identity a lot. So varied. I grew up with virtually no one knowing which person I was. My identity was simply my unique birth. The twins. That is what we were, and in the 70s/80s, there weren't as many around. And now, my identity is different. It is dead baby mama. Grief. Loss. Sadness. I hope it is more than that, deeper than that, but right now, it is all I read in the pictures I see. My identity keeps getting all tied up with birth.

When Lucy died, I couldn't comprehend the ways in which I would change. I remember thinking, "Nothing is ever going to be the same." But what that meant, I had no idea. I feel bad when I am still flaky, out of it, recovering from a bout of sobbing and trying to appear as though I were sneezing. I feel even the most patient of my friends are growing impatient with me. Sometimes I cannot believe how tired I am, how obliterated my brain is, despite doing the most menial of tasks. And I know it is the grief catching up with me, reminding me that I am not who I think I am.

:::

Yesterday, I noticed the woman behind me in line staring at the pile of stuff on the Target conveyor belt. She looked at me, and back at the stuff, then back at me.

I had a pregnancy test, condoms, Hello Kitty band-aids, ziplock sandwich baggies, and three boxes of cereal. A two year old, who looks nothing like me, in the cart talking about her milkie, Mami's milkie, my milkie, your milkie...all milkie. "Oh, please, lady," I thought, "don't tell me you have never seen someone buy condoms and a pregnancy test before." I'm thirty-five. I have shit to take care of here, and no time for your petty judgments. Everything I do is respectable. But still, I had the sudden urge to explain that I had a dead baby.

I thought it would be a long time before I would start in with the hysterical pregnancy crap. I'm not sure this is an indication of steps towards or away from normalcy. For those who know me in real life, know that just about every cycle, I believe at some point that I am pregnant. Whether I had sex or not or whether I used protection or not. I blame my mother for this trait. Teen pregnancy was pretty much the root of all lecture conversation in my teenage years. She instilled the fear. "If you have sex, you get pregnant, honey," she said in her combination Panamanian/Pennsylvania Dutch accent. And really, being an honors student obsessed with the Cure, dressed all in black and wearing dorky buddy holly glasses is pretty much the best birth control out there for a high school student. But still, when I did get pregnant at age 32, as happy and wanted as it was, I felt a little like I had done something wrong.

Since Lucy died, it hasn't really occurred to me that I could become pregnant accidentally. But yesterday, in the parking lot of Target, it occurred to me that I could be pregnant. I sat there after eating a soft pretzel very quickly, puking into the car garbage bag. It came on suddenly. And as it was happening, and it was that liquidy biley puke of early pregnancy, I thought, "Oh, man, I had sex. I am pregnant. Just like Mami said."

And so, I went in, and bought a pregnancy test, along with the rest of my list. And I continued from Target to my other errands. I felt fine after that, which only enhanced my conviction. And yet, I had to sit with this possible reality. What if I am pregnant.

I am not pregnant. But for those two hours, I was okay with it. I asked Beatrice, "Do you want another sister, or brother, Beatrice?" And she said, "Okay." As though, I were going to hit the baby aisle on my way from Target. I'm not saying that we are going to actively start trying, but I'm just saying, I didn't freak out at the idea of it. Small steps.