“It’s so tiny,” I said. “It doesn’t look like much.”
“Amazing how something so small can cause so much trouble, isn’t it?” the doctor said.
Tia told me to dress slowly, but I slipped into my underwear and leggings swiftly, suddenly feeling like I needed to get home. Ryan was alone with all five kids for the second time in a week. We’d told them I was visiting an old friend in Madison, but eventually, one at a time, I’d tell them the truth. I hoped Ryan would beam with pride, praise himself: “I didn’t scream once.” Later that evening, I’d escape to bed and bawl—deliverance from some black hole in my personal universe, feel-good, life-sustaining hormones beginning to drain from my body like water from a bathtub—but for now, I vowed not to cry. As Tia guided me to the recovery room, light-headedness blew a fuse in my brain. My blood pressure dropped, and I collapsed on my knees in the hallway. “You OK, baby,” she said, squatting beside me. She eased me into a reclining chair, between two other women, and pulled over a fan, cranking up the dial. The propellers whipped, fast and dizzying.
The young woman to my right turned to me, and I to her, several times before I initiated conversation. I asked how she felt; she returned the favor. She confessed that, with her parents’ moral and financial support, she was getting the abortion behind her boyfriend’s back. She planned to tell him she miscarried. “He’d never forgive me,” she said. When the young woman—better yet, girl—to my left joined our conversation, she said her parents blamed her boyfriend for demanding the abortion; they were shunning her now and might fully disown her later.
Despite their pain, I envied them both, their reproductive lives unfurling in front of them, full of color and streaming like ribbons from a maypole. “You have plenty of time, when you’re ready,” I said, flanked by youthful promise, old enough, just about, to be their mother. Another young woman joined us in recovery, obviously having elected sedation, entering the room like a sleepwalker, eyelids drooping, adrift on some faraway ocean.
A nurse sent me twice into a bathroom to monitor my bleeding: one streak, and nothing more. After an hour, I felt startlingly strong, as if I could run the ninety miles back to Oshkosh, my body a well-calibrated system, a scientific wonder to which I owed the gratitude of five beautiful children waiting for me at home.
Out in the lobby, one of the young women’s parents looked up at me expectantly. “She’s doing well,” I said. “She just needs a little more recovery time, and then she’ll be out.” With our faces, we tried to convert angst to tenderness, bracing ourselves against shared secrets. Downstairs, I stopped at the receptionist’s window to make sure an escort awaited me outside.
“Actually, no, our last volunteer just went home,” she said.
The eldest woman at the clinic, she wore her silver hair long, with children’s plastic barrettes, and holey jeans. A woman in her sixties who’d come of age in the 1960s, she’d preserved herself, still riding those old waves of feminism.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’m not supposed to do this, but come with me.” We voyaged through the tangle of hallways and time, a snarl of decades, even centuries, it seemed, to a staff-only exit, where she vented the door and peered beyond. “All clear,” she said and nudged me toward the daylight. I squinted in all directions and then dashed for my getaway car, a van with a SWIM MOM bumper sticker and upholstery kid-stained beyond detail, except that I wasn’t getting away. I was going home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My son Leo says I use too many exclamation points in my personal notes. Why do I insist on such over-the-top punctuation?
Simply put: one of my greatest anxieties is that I will fail in adequately expressing my gratitude to people who most deserve it.
But herein, I shall try, without a single dagger of typographical joy, to thank my most essential partners in publishing this book.
Infinite gratitude goes to:
My wise, tenacious, and unwaveringly loyal agent, Nat Sobel, and the Sobel Weber team, especially Siobhan McBride, Sara Henry, and Adia Wright.
Anna Bliss, my editor, whose faith in The Motherhood Affidavits and whose supernatural gifts, one of which is mind reading, made me a believer in the spiritual process of collaboration.
Matthew Lore, who is a kinetic wonder of creativity, tirelessness, and generosity. I would not want to publish this memoir anywhere but with you.
The entire staff at The Experiment, including Karen Giangreco, who helped to brainstorm more than fifty title options; Sarah Smith, who designed the book’s jacket; Jennifer Hergenroeder, whose matter-of-fact lessons on publicity prepared me for the real world; and Dan O’Connor, who gave the pages a last look before printing.
Anne Horowitz, who carefully straightened every paragraph with her fine-tooth comb.
Suzanne Williams, my publicist, who championed my story.
Elizabeth Johnson, who mapped my Midwestern debut.
Kim Thiel, who captured my genuine laughter during the author photo shoot, and Ken Koenig, who designed my colorful website just as I imagined it.
Staff at the UW Oshkosh Women’s Center, who hosted an event to celebrate my book’s release.
Readers who endured early chapters of the manuscript: Alex Albertson, Stewart Cole, Peter Geye, Shelley Puhak, and finally, Jenna Rindo, who inspired me to log my sanity miles and baked me plenty of treats to earn back those calories.
Heidi Wheaton, Laura Sandberg, Kelsey Maples, Jamie Lynn Buehner, Betty Wegehaupt, Angie Mich, Shannon Berg, and Paul Klemp: additional names I find soothing in the event of an emotional emergency.
All my writing teachers over the years, notably Judith Claire Mitchell, Ron Kuka, Eileen Pollack, Peter Ho
