out of context

In a college creative nonfiction class I wrote about the banalities of being pregnant. I wrote at lengths about the bathrooms in all of the buildings. I remarked on which ones always seemed to be out of soap, which were the most crowded, which ones had the green, water-saving flush handles.

In a writing workshop the professor leads the discussion. "What is meant by this detail," he asks. "What is the author saying about the green, waters-saving flush handles?"

I remember the class staying silent. Me thinking, nothing. I meant nothing about the green, water-saving flush handles.

The silence is broken because it will not be broken until someone breaks it, and someone, I don't remember who, says "It's because she had to go to the bathroom a lot?"

I don't remember the ensuing conversation on my bathroom habits, instead I thought of the intention of words, writing, speaking, sharing. How great it is, how terrifying to let go a part of you, let it float around. What it is like to have your words in someone else's mouth. To hear them with a different accent, different emphasis.

(A word is dead//when it is said//some say//I say//it just begins to live that day.)

But to be misunderstood, to be taken out of context, is this not the worst thing you can do to a person? To judge someone, unfairly, to take a piece of them and construct a picture based only on that? The greatest injustice! To take someone's skin color or religious affiliation or political party (or words said in the dark, words in response to a gaze) and to judge them based solely on that?

Oddly enough I find myself echoing the sentiments of this New Yorker piece, about the lawyer Judy Clarke, who has most recently defended the Boston Marathon bomber, and generally defends, to borrow from the title "the worst of the worst." What she does is to ask the jury not to judge the defendant on their worst moment, but to consider them as a whole.

Consider not, only, the green, water-saving flush handles, but the whole toilet, if you will.

It turns out I meant a lot about the green, water-saving flush handles. I was trying to say, look at the small ridiculous details of life. Look how much we miss, going through the motions. Look how many things are right in front of us.

Y'all. I have so many goddamn stories about bathrooms. Because when you're pregnant you have to pee all the time and literally someone asked me what I missed most about not being pregnant and I said being able to expel everything from your bladder at one time. LITERALLY. Also this is still the most satisfying feeling in the world, it's up there with an orgasm. Be pregnant, and you will never take peeing for granted ever again.

And also the green, water-saving, goddamn motherfucking flush handles. (In Greenlaw and Peabody but not yet in Saunders.)

In my preliminary examination I was told to be more precise in my language, and I get that now. And again. Be intentional with your words, I learned in writing, because they are they one thing you give to the reader. (Or the audience. Or the boy, in the dark.) And those words, those are all you can give, and it is all you can do to hope that they live on without you.

It is unfair it is unfair it is UNFAIR, I used to scream at the world. For my decisions, for my life, it is unfair. And then something flipped in me, a switch, a green, water-saving flush handle if you will, and I started to live my life with intention. With precision.

Now I am taken less out of context. Less is taken from me without my consent. But some things still are. And to them I whisper, this is unfair. And I gather my words in my mouth, and turn and walk away.

The attic room

I didn’t have all the warm and fuzzy pregnancy memories that I imagine most people to have. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant, I was at the end of a relationship, and on top of it all, I didn’t even realize I was pregnant until month five. Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of room for poetic moments and likening a growing fetus its comparable fruit size.

People ask and ask and love to ask how on earth did I not know, and how out of tune do you have to be to not even realize what’s happening, and I give a variety of answers every time, and I think I’m just now coming to grips with the real truth, which is, on top of those variety of answers that I like to give (I was busy, travelling, just didn’t notice, no morning sickness, I was running more and losing weight!), a large part of it was denial. Which still isn’t entirely true. Month one and two were denial, and then because I was busy, travelling, no morning sickness, losing weight, I just forgot about it completely.

Here’s my most delicious memory from being pregnant.

I was in Cambridge, England, living with family friends Bob and Jenny, and their two boys Duncan and Connor. We had some “arrangement” I guess, I sort of helped out and played with the boys a lot, babysat really only once while Bob and Jenny went out, but I basically got to visit for a few weeks over the summer while they were on a year sabbatical. It was really fun. I was 20, and I was a young 20, and I appreciated being part of that family unit, while also being on my own. I wasn’t that exciting, I spent most of my days walking around Cambridge, drinking lattes and writing and reading. Bob and Jenny were cool, they were adults but they weren’t my parents, I loved Duncan and Connor. Duncan was 4? then? maybe 5? and we listened to the Beatles on my iPod. Connor was this wonderful bundle of energy and happiness. And kids love people that they deem not-quite-adults and not-quite-kids. It was really fun.

They lived in this cool townhousey house within walking distance of “downtown” (European downtowns are different than like, Chapel Hill downtown. Anyway, it was in walking distance of the city centre.) And all the little houses were smushed together, and everyone had little fenced in backyards that went out into a street behind them. It was two stories, except for the third story which was an attic bedroom, and that’s where I slept. It had sloped ceilings, and pretty much just fit my queen size bed, and it had these great windows, kind of small, but you could look out and see all the tops of the houses. European houses, of course, with great cobbled roofs, and old-timey antennas, and if you looked out and down from those windows you could peer into other people’s backyards and see all their laundry hanging out to dry. I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about that attic room lately, but what I remember so clearly about it was just feeling so peaceful.

In retrospect, I did experience one first trimester/second trimester pregnancy symptom. I was so tired. I think I about slept 15 hours every day almost the entire time I was there. (Bob and Jenny must have thought I was crazy! Then of course it was all explained later.) I would go to sleep around 11 or 12, and I would wake up in the mid afternoon the next day. My attic room was so cozy and warm from the sun. I would wake up to the natural light, filling my room with a wonderful warm glow. I love waking up when the day has already started. Something about that has always been so magical to me. As if they day has been up before I was just getting ready for me. In that attic room, I felt so peaceful, so special, so deliciously lazy.

When I planned to go visit Bob and Jenny and Duncan and Connor in Cambridge, I had all of these grand plans of taking these weekend trips and backpacking around, and I must have bookmarked hundreds of websites of places I wanted to go, buses to the coast, trains to London, and what won out, what it turned out I most needed, was that attic room.

I was safe there. And that was a time that I didn’t know I needed to let my body be, and that was the most important thing I could do for myself.

Still to this day my favorite way to wake up is slowly, when the sun’s already been up for a while, and it’s had a chance to warm up my room, and I can just lie there, cozy and under the covers, blinking my hellos to the day.