16.
ARTWORK: Sian Williams
The Pregnancy Journal George Owens I don’t think I can take care of a child and a chocolate labrador at the same time. My labrador is beautiful but sheds everywhere. She has fine haunches and a thick chest, and a broad, good-natured face. She is also dumb and does not respond to me, especially when she is playing with other dogs. She is loud and clumsy and pushes those she is playing with. I always try to feed her well, or at least as well as the food packet tells me to. But sometimes when I fall asleep on the couch before dinner, I don’t feed her until I wake up, which may be as late as the early hours of the morning, and by then it is almost time for her breakfast. Once, after I stayed with a friend across the city, I did not feed her dinner or breakfast the next day, and she spent the entire day inside. But I tell myself that I would not, could not do this with a child. There is a pot of geraniums on the window sill that I also try to feed well. I keep them in a spot where they get good light and water them once a week, and even though I feel like I have satisfied its two only, simple demands, the flowers are edged with brown, and some of the leaves are speckled with ugly-looking spots. Sometimes I wonder if this is because I don’t truly care about the plant. Other than feeding it water, I never think about the plant and its needs, nor ever even imagine it needing. But surely I would care about a child, and I certainly know that a child has needs, even if I don’t know all of those needs right now. I care about my personal possessions and try to keep them from harm, like I would do with a child. With books, for example, I do not curl the pages, or dog-ear them, and when I’m reading I open the book only partially, and do not stretch the spine. I try to keep food and drinks away from them, and if any crumbs fall in I brush them out. I am even
more careful with older books that already have damaged spines and pages falling out. I handle them with infinite care, I hold each page reverently between my thumb and my forefinger when turning them. But I know that despite my best precautions, many of my books have small rips, and covers with white nicks around their edges. Some have had drinks spilt on them, and have wrinkled pages and light brown stains. Some even have large creases where I have dropped them. I worry about dropping my child, about leaving a permanent crease. I am only slightly mollified by the idea that a body can heal but a book cannot. I also wonder how I can take care of a child when I struggle to take care of myself. I am often messy and unkempt. Some mornings I forget to do my teeth. Some days I do not shower. When I’m hungry I eat, but the meals I make for myself are often not very tasty, and sometimes even make me feel slightly sick. When I’m tired I sleep, but then sometimes I am still tired when I wake up, and sometimes I feel drained at midmorning, and sometimes I feel tired in the very early evening but do not go to bed because it is not late enough. Sometimes I’m tired and cannot sleep, though I try. I worry about my skin. It is very pale and in the mirror often looks speckled or pallid. There are wrinkles under my eyes, permanent bags. I worry that I do not get enough vitamin D. I worry that I do not exercise enough. Sometimes I feel a pain or a sadness in my body and I don’t know where it came from or, even, where it is affecting. When I feel this way I think, if I, who knows my own body better than anyone else, cannot care for myself, how can I identify the causes of pain or sadness in a child? How can I care for a child? These thoughts and more have been running through my head since I took the test last Thursday.
