end of the affair
Wordpress, I am sorry I cheated on you. It won’t happen again (or at least, not until the next time…?).
I don’t know whether the theme I’ve got now for this blog is permanent or not. I think not. I think I’ll test it out for the rest of this month, then choose another in June. It is transitional, and I’m transitional at the moment, so it all seems appropriate.
I won’t be restoring the comments I’d lost, nor the archives prior to November of last year. That month I became a U.S. citizen and made my pregnancy public. That’s when I knew I’d say goodbye to academia for good, and not give the academic job market another go-round. Once was quite enough. That November is the month a new me was born, so it seems as good a beginning as any for this blog.
Have you ever had one of those mornings when you wake up and suddenly you know what to do? That’s the kind of morning I had today. I’ve been struggling with a largish long-term project that kept refusing to become coherent. This morning I woke up, and suddenly, hey presto-ish, its parameters were clearly there.
I am also well aware that I won’t be getting much further with it for the next few months, not unless I turn out to be Supermom. Doubtful, that. It’s probably best to just let things go along their merry way. My mom told me, when I worried to her that I don’t know how I’ll handle having a newborn - what with the sleeplessness and all - to just relax because my body will take over. If I let it happen, it’ll be easier
than I think.
I worry about what will happen after but giving birth? It really scares me. My body and its needs will have full control of that one. That’s not to say I believe in natural childbirth. It’d be lovely to have one but… childbirth is dangerous business: before much research and experience developed the methods of medical intervention we know so well today, it was a huge killer of women. If you were a woman living in colonial America, chances were 1 in 8 that childbirth would be the cause of your death. So I think I’d like that medical intervention right there at the ready, thank you very much, even if I hope none of it will have to be enacted upon me. No birthplan for me!
When I manage to think of childbirth in these terms, I feel a bit less frightened. I can focus on the bigger picture, and know that what’s important will begin afterwards, on the other side of that great divide. And somehow that also lets me muster the certainty that my own life, too, will go on, and I’ll even get my project done, it’ll just have to happen in a way that I can’t quite imagine yet.
