Me in the Year 2010

This new year has been strange in a million ways: the fact that my father is lying in the cold ground under a Christmas-decorated tree, the fact that I am not pregnant and have no children, and the fact that I am not an ethnobotanist.
Perhaps I should explain that last one.
When I was in my 4th grade gifted class, I had to draw a picture entitled "Me in the Year 2010." Of course I can't find the masterpiece now, but it was the kind of thing I saved, along with my brilliant pre-adolescent poetry and my endless conjugation of romance-language verbs.
In the picture, I was living in a bubble with my husband and four children. (Yes, even as a child I was obsessed with dystopias, which perhaps explains my profound love for the literary talents of Margaret Atwood.) And, because I developed a very detailed story around my life in the picture, I remember that I had projected that in the year 2010 I would be an ethnobotanist.
I was telling my husband about this in the supermarket just before New Year's Eve. He asked, "How were you studying the uses of the plants of other cultures if you were in a bubble?" I had to think about this, but I think I remember that other families lived in other bubbles and we could get from bubble to bubble in some sort of walkway system, which presumable led to places where people had not yet ruined the environment and had important things to teach us about the medicinal uses of plants. I'm not sure. But I am sure that my services as an ethnobotanist were in very high demand, VITAL to the health care of the dystopia of 2010. And that I projected that I would have four children of various ages well before this year.

But that's not what happened.

Instead, on December 23 of 2009, I learned that the embryo I was carrying had died in my uterus.



So we canceled our plans to go visit my in-laws, and scheduled a D &C for December 29.

This is what I wrote the day of my surgery:

Most of my dreams last night were about food, specifically not eating it.
In a few hours I go in for a D &C. That’s right, those of you who know what that means. I was pregnant, but now I am not. Since the day before Christmas, I have been in a between-place, where I know the embryo I am carrying is no longer alive, and I carry it around to church on Christmas Eve, to decorate the trees around my father’s grave, to the gym, and I wait for this day, when my dead embryo will be taken from my body to make room for someone new.

So, as usual with anesthesia, I cannot have anything to eat or drink today, and, as usual with my sub-conscious, I processed a variety of my anxieties in my dreams.

-I dreamt I was in an Italian restaurant and ordered a beautiful plate of pasta, a delicious salad with balsamic vinaigrette, and when it arrived, I remembered I was having surgery and had to apologize to the chef and leave the restaurant.

-I dreamt I was in a car being driven by a friend who has just had her second child. My husband was sitting next to me in the front seat and there were three or four people in the back seat (No, I do not know what kind of car it was.) My friend announced that she was pregnant with her third child, and everyone in the car was looking at me to see how I would react, so I said, “Well, you should give that one to me to even things out. And everyone frowned and shook their heads. “It’s a joke,” I said. “I’m trying to make a joke.” And even my husband shook his head and said, “that is not appropriate” and that is when I knew I was dreaming.

-I dreamt I was walking through a stone courtyard filled with fine green grass. I was walking with my father. We were in a hurry to get somewhere, but since I realized I was dreaming, I stopped and turned to look at him. He was at a healthy weight, not emaciated as he was at the end. He was wearing a black and yellow plaid shirt, and a brown suede jacket over brown pants. And I wanted to look at him forever, to memorize every detail, but I realized I was dreaming and might not have this chance again, so I hugged him tight and I said, “Daddy, I love you so much. I’m going to miss you so much when you are gone.” And he said, “There will be plenty of time. We don’t have to talk about this now.” But I knew we didn’t have time, that we would never take the time, that we would run out of time. And then I woke up, and there were tears on my face, but those moments with the dream of my father were the best Christmas present I received.


Me the in Year 2010.
No baby, no ethnobotany. And a great deal of grieving still to do.