How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane (32 page)

I wasn't pregnant. Not even a little. Huh.

Now you're probably thinking, “Wow, she's flaky AND has hysterical pregnancy tendencies.” And again, you'd be right. But the most interesting takeaway from this story isn't the fact that I'm able to talk myself into thinking I'm pregnant (I've always been pretty persuasive); it's how relieved I don't feel at finding out that I'm
not. And that “fear of change”? It's gone. Seems it's been replaced, knocked out of position by a faint sense of sadness for the little delinquent that never was, and never will be.

Which isn't to say there can't be another. Dr. V says it's true, given my age and the dustiness of my ovaries, my odds of conceiving are low and, yes, getting lower with every passing day. But, he says, if I want another, there's no reason we shouldn't keep trying.

And now I do, and so we will; we'll pull the goalie, pray for the net, and let the chips (and sperm) fall (and swim) where they may.

twenty-one

PRIVATE TIME

T
he important thing to know is that we are not sex addicts.

We are not cavalier about where or when we engage in sexual congress.

We have a door on our bedroom, and we do, on occasion, close it. Because—I don't want to speak out of turn here, but—in the immortal words of Sylvester Stallone in
Rocky 5
(or
Rocky 6
or
Rocky 117
, I can't recall), after ten years of marriage, we “still have a little something left in the basement,” if you know what I mean.
^*

And while I won't get into raw specifics about what was going on behind our slightly ajar door on this particular Friday night, let me try to set the stage.

It was around nine o'clock. I was cuddling with the kid, having just read her a bedtime story. It's a lovely ritual that brings the day to a sweet close in a warm, cozy fashion, so warm and cozy, in fact, that nine times out of ten I pass out in her bed, only to wake up sometime around one in the morning with the hardback version of
Goodnight Moon
splayed across my face and a Barbie-shaped kink in my shoulder. Most nights I stumble out of her room like some sorority girl doing the walk of shame out of a neighboring frat house. Other nights the husband will rouse me and send me to our bed at a decent hour, sparing me permanent damage to my face and back.

On this particular night I awoke to him giving me a gentle shake/shove. When I staggered dead-eyed into the bedroom, he gave me a come-hither glance and whispered sweet nothings to me: “WANNA DO SOME (
euphemism for intercourse
)-ING?”

It was no wonder he'd gotten turned on—I was wearing my third-most-flattering yoga pants and a T-shirt/sports-bra combo that squishes my breasts together into one long, ready-for-anything uniboob.

I shook the cobwebs from my head like a Looney Tunes cartoon character, and then responded to his offer by purring something seductive like, “Y'ARIGHT, LET'S GO.”

We commenced our foreplay routine. On that night we decided to go with #4A, though we did shake it up with
a few added elements—and again, I won't go into too much detail so as not to embarrass you, dear reader.
^*
But I will say that I did reach into my bedside table in which we have a small selection of, let's just call them “implements,” that were given to me as jokey shower gifts back when we got married. While the rubber on the majority of them has turned to sticky dust, and while the thing that works on AAA batteries is now corroded (though there was that time it turned itself on spontaneously in the middle of the day), there is one device that does still work, and therefore is put into service on occasion, and yes, this was one of those occasions that we plugged it in and let it work its magic.

Fast-forward, maybe twelve minutes or so—again, I won't go into much detail here, though I will say that my thigh muscles were being worked to capacity and that I was making good use of my balancing skills, while the husband was exercising his neck muscles and his ability to hyperextend his elbows. Also, three of our most supportive pillows were in use.

Imagine what you will (and feel free to reference the author's photo on the back cover, though, full disclosure, my hair was considerably less coiffed by this point), just know that things were progressing and going fairly well—I'm guessing somewhere around a “B+” if we were being graded—and we were both poised to “complete our tasks,” you might say, when I happened to turn my head
and see the child standing at the bedroom door, rubbing her sleepy eyes.

“MOMMA?”

The husband and I froze for a split second, before uncoupling with the force of a gasoline explosion. One moment we were on the bed, and the next we were separated by the approximate length of a football field. The husband somersaulted into a pile of laundry only to emerge fully clothed, wrapped in a pillowcase, my yoga pants, and a “Got Milk?” baseball cap, while I stood there, nude (except for socks; it was November in Chicago—don't judge), babbling incoherently (“Hi hah huh, why are you, do you need pee, or glass water, you need, Mommy's cold, I'm just going to put this dish towel around my legs”), and wondering if we had just scarred our child for life.
^*

Without warning, the kid emitted a gleeful shriek, ran to the bed, climbed up onto it, and began jumping.

“BOUNCE TIME!” she squealed. “BOUNCE TIME!”

Clearly, she was very
not
disturbed by what she had seen—if anything, she was in a state of pure delight, having gleaned that we were in the middle of some hilariously bouncy party game—and she wanted in on the fun too.

It took some delicate wrangling—underscored by my saying no in every tone imaginable—but I was finally able to usher the child back into her own room for the night.

The husband and I crawled back into our bed. He switched off the light, and we both went to sleep, because
by that point we were both too tired, too disturbed, and frankly in denial of our sexual organs to even consider resuming our previously scheduled activities.

Several nights later, now mostly healed from the shell shock and mortification, the husband and I endeavored to finish what we had started. This time we closed the door and were taking a no-nonsense, no-acrobatics, almost surgical approach to the finish line—when I heard a slow CLICK, looked up and again saw the kid standing in the doorway. This time she was holding an armful of dolls and giggling in that high creepy voice that, in movies, usually signals the arrival of the Antichrist.

It was even more shocking the second time around—it was as though she had developed some sort of perv-y sixth sense that, coupled with her then four-year-old fighting weight (which meant she was not quite heavy enough to make the floors creak), allowed her to simply materialize like the sex-murdering specter that she was.

One week later we installed a lock on the door. It seemed a perfect solution, and it was, in that it effectively kept her out of eyeball's reach. But it also prompted her to sit outside our door and wail—and FYI, it is darn near impossible to achieve any sense of “closure” when someone is pounding their tiny fists on your bedroom door and yelling, “NO BOUNCE! NO BOUNCE!”

Concerned that, were we to allow this
coitus interruptus unbefuckinglievabus
to continue, the husband would suffer from permanent blue ballage, we decided that the time had come for a conversation about boundaries and
privacy. I would take the lead, and he would stand by to add color commentary on an as-needed basis.

We planned to keep it simple and unemotional, and just like the parenting books tell you to do when embarking on a sensitive conversation, we would answer her questions but wouldn't go into any more detail than necessary.

I unlatched the door and picked up the teary-eyed little party crasher.

“I WANNA BOUNCE ON YOUR BED.”

“It's nighttime. Everyone is going to sleep.”

I carried her into her room and tucked her in. The husband stood at the doorway while I sat on the edge of the bed and started. “When Mommy and Daddy's bedroom door is closed, that means they are having special time together and they need their privacy.”

“BUT THAT MAKES ME SAD.” Her lower lip folded into a floppy pout.

“I know. But part of being a big girl is understanding that sometimes people need their privacy.”

She stuck her thumb in her mouth and was quiet for a moment. Then:

“MOMMA?”

“Yes?”

“WHY DO YOU PUT THAT LONG THING IN YOUR BUM?”

Now it was my turn to be quiet for a moment.

“What?”

“THAT LONG THING IN YOUR PURSE THAT FELL OUT AT THE BANK.”

I quickly ascertained that she was referring to a tampon; those things leap out of my purse in public on a biweekly basis. (The husband clearly had not yet ascertained what she was referring to, as he was staring at me from the doorway, mouthing the words, “WHAT THE FUHHH?!”)

“That's called a tampon. And I don't put it in my bum.”

Thumb in mouth. Another pause.

“MOMMA?”

“Yes?”

“WHAT IS A SPECIAL HUG?”

Er. That was not a phrase she'd heard from us.

“Where did you hear that?”

“I DUNNO. I JUST KNOW IT.”

Sure you do. “Did Rebecca tell you that word?”

She shrugged and stuck her thumb back in her mouth, then pulled it out to ask: