Growing up, I heard women,
aunties, neighbors, elders,
my own mom
speak of their water breaking
as if an epoch event.
Akin to the day
President JFK, Jr. was shot:
"I remember where,
I remember when."
"I remember the clothes I wore
and the shoes I ruined."
"I made such a scene!"
They spoke of membranes ripping,
yielding to heavy,
unpredictable cargo
as if a precarious shelf
shearing off an iceberg
slipping into the sea
with a deafening crash.
Of liquids gushing,
warm and sudden
fluids flowing down legs,
foretelling of an imminent arrival.
My own water broke while I was in bed
in the dark velvet before dawn
and I knew it, I was already awake
my mind racing, ruminating,
on what to do next.
For me, their amniotic sac ruptured
with a leak not a gush
giving me time,
almost too much yet not enough,
to weigh my opinions
as I lay awake beside
my then sleeping, then husband,
whose dreaming face belied a peace
that I myself had not felt in years.
Getting up out of bed would be admission
that this was happening
that I was to be a mother
that I would be a co-parent
that from hereout I would be responsible
for keeping another human alive
for the remainder of my existence.
Acknowledging the break
would also be to sit with the truth
that I would have to learn how to lie,
even better than I'd learned to-date.
That I would have to study up
on how best to omit, delay,
soften the edges, dim the lights,
around the stories
of this child to-be's day of birth.
Of why I was already up,
unable to still my mind or my heart.
Waking him up,
bringing him in on this journey
would be a tacit admission
that I needed him.
That I was too scared to go this alone.
That I could not see a way forward
without remaining tethered to him,
at his side, silently suffering
all the while praising him publicly.
The weight of these choices
bore down on me harder than
the life force clawing their way out of me.
I slipped from bed,
stole my way to the kitchen,
my gait stilted and awkward
like a leashed dog in hot sand.
I went to the fridge,
retrieved two brown
Rhode Island Red eggs.
I broke them into a bowl.
The cracked shells
revealed translucent membranes,
taut and firm,
encasing the gentle slipperiness
of marigold orange yolk and albumen.
I stared at these broken things
as I contemplated the break in my water
in my soul
in my marriage
in this house of haunted obscurations.
I made myself forge ahead:
I selected my inherited wire whisk
scrambled the pair of once possible life
poured my mess into a waiting cast iron
heated and stirred the fat-laced proteins
until mounds of golden brown curds appeared.
I sat at the the table, in my foraged chair.
My great-grandparents had bought this
hefty white oak rectangular dining table
seventy years prior, to feed their family
to pass along indefinitely to their progeny.
And there I was,
running my fingers along the grain,
staring off far through the woods
into a horizon I could not see,
could not will myself to see.
I picked at the egg pebbles,
forcing myself to gain nourishment
for the unknowns
that swiftly mounted in my future.
I placed the mixing bowl and the whisk
and my dirtied plate and fork
in the sink basin; washed my hands.
I adjusted the hand towel
I'd shoved in my pajama bottoms.
I had found temporary decisioning,
in lieu of clarity.
I would not be the one
to break up this lineage.
This baby would come into a full,
if shattered, home.
I trudged upstairs,
where I convinced myself
to shake my shoulders
and reset my face
like Emma Thompson
in Love Actually.
The character whose actions
I never understood.
And who, in each viewing,
I yelled at the screen:
"Leave Him!"
It was a film which was,
in retrospect,
a hugely toxic movie
that was my favorite at the time.
Which is how one could
plausibly sum up
my own situation
in this cold empty hallway
at the break of dawn.
I turned the corner
into our shared room
and I sat at the edge of his side
and I roused him gently.
"It broke."
"Hmhhh?" He mumbled.
I sighed out
from deep inside my lungs
what remained of my vigor,
my zest, my fight.
I shrunk, I quieted,
I contorted.
Back in this together now,
for our child.
"My water broke."
"We're going to be parents!"
My voice broke, then, too,
as I stiltingly feigned normality.
Staying caged on the day
our baby became free.
That is the epoch moment
which I carry to this day.
