by Lisa Hanson
| Olive was the fruit-or-vegetable comparison for embryo size on pregnancy week nine. It was also my grandmother’s name and one I’d thought of for a baby. Maybe our baby would be salty and full of life like an olive, with the tough grit of her great grandmother? I had thought girl all along but would not be having a gender reveal. Re-entering the pregnancy world after twenty-four years was strange. It was still a monolithic normcore culture, but back when I had my first pregnancy, the wily and skeptical teen I was didn’t have the word normcore to express what I thought of forced femininity and assumed hetero married family dynamics. I didn’t know the words for any of that, I just knew I hated it. It was summer. My best friend had come from New York to visit me in Whidbey Island and I really wanted to just drink wine with her and not think about becoming a mother again. She was a mother now, after all the years watching me raise my son on my own, working triple time while living vicariously through the freedoms she had. I dipped in and out of pretending to be my own age back when we were young. Dancing sweaty at the Backdoor Ultralounge, flirting like I wasn’t a head of household with a seven-year-old at home. I could achieve carefree in the moment, but making breakfast the next morning, facing weekend homework, unpaid bills, and a work week ahead while brunchers were brunching took dedication to staying positive. I mean, I took my son to brunch plenty. We had so much fun. But underpinning the fun was the ironclad discipline of knowing we were both depending on me. I was absolutely rigid in my aim to succeed at taking care of us. The day before she would be flying back to her life in Brooklyn, I saw the two blue lines on the test. We were forty now, wrapped together in a blanket on the beach watching the ripple of Mutiny Bay when I told her the news. She drank the wine while I tried to fully comprehend what it meant. I woke up the next morning feeling like I had arrived after a night of playing carefree. My insides twisted like wringing hands; emotions sprung from every part of my body in a tangled mess. “What are you feeling?” my husband asked, an attempt at support, a simple question that seemed impossible to respond to. I was used to being more measured in my words, but as I started to verbalize my fear, it mounted into a tearful croak, I don’t even know if I want to be a mother again! What if I end up alone? Shortly after, we planned a trip to ease into the pregnancy and were lucky enough to have sun. Summer in the Pacific Northwest is a brief, triumphant reprise from the rest of the year’s damp gray, all the green and mountain views contrasting with the brilliant blue make the world sparkle with near-utopian beauty. We took the North Cascades Highway for the first time in my life. The weather was warm and the wildfires weren’t bad yet, so the air was clear. We stopped at a lookout above Diablo Lake, the deep green-blue so stunning it brought tears to my eyes. We took pics and my husband touched my belly tentatively, filling it with butterflies. We had decided to try for a baby together, we were in it together, we would have the baby and love the baby together. The rest of the drive to Winthrop was a quiet, golden buzz. There would be no wine on this trip, so I allowed myself the treat of expensive bubbly waters of all kinds for our time sitting in the sun by the river. Since that first outburst, I eased toward the warm, buoyant idea of the pregnancy. The intensity of eastern Washington sunshine burned off the layer of doubt that had lingered like mist. I drank my coffee watching the rush of the river; the sound of the river coursed through me. My husband offered to read that week’s pregnancy info from the app out loud. He listed the changes in my body, symptoms I was facing, and the size of the tiny embryo, his voice laying a rhythm over the whoosh of river water like an incantation. The idea of the olive-sized baby grew inside us and when we locked eyes at the end of the blog we clasped each other, simultaneously breathless. We went inside and he rubbed the magnesium mango butter over my belly. I didn’t usually like to be touched where my aged stretch marks resided, but at that moment my belly felt like a locus of power and beauty. I tasted lavender from the water I’d been sipping, a fragrant note on the dusty summer air. Our touching bodies were a conjurer, an entity that produced magic. My birthday has always marked the end of summer. That year it, would be on the equinox. A week before it arrived, we walked into the ultrasound office. We weren’t sure if it was too early to find out about the sex, but just in case, we’d decided not to. But no question came. The technician didn’t say much. On the ferry ride home, our midwife called. “I’m sorry. The pregnancy is not viable. We will schedule a follow-up to verify.” The ferry vibrated and bounced along the glittering sound. “Should we have any hope?” I asked softly. “No. I’m sorry.” I drank wine on my birthday with hints of salt from streaming snot and tears. My husband rested his hand on my knee as a comfort, then picked at his nails until I pushed it away. We had thought it was forever with Olive. But summer was over. Listen to Summer Magic here |
Lisa Hanson is a writer and entrepreneur with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Washington and a Master of Business Administration from Seattle University. She’s Co-Founder of Global Urban Village, an impact investing company that supports purpose-driven entrepreneurs. For more writing and updates on her memoir journey visit www.lisamhanson.com.