Sharon O’Connor – on pregnancy and mortality.

Cabot, Vermont
January 4, 2001

Hey Mimi –

I trudged down to the post office in the snow this evening, just before five, to find your birthday card: “Mon Cherie…a toast to the best day of the year! Your birthday.” It almost made me cry. So, it seemed appropriate to write to you on this, the last evening in my twenties.

I started to write to you earlier this month to tell you that Charles and I were expecting our third. Then I started bleeding and eventually miscarried. You know me well enough to know that death’s really never far from my thoughts, but usually it’s more like an airplane thing. You know how the whole time you’re flying you tell yourself all those stats, “It’s safer up here than in a car…it’s more likely I’d be hit by a bus…” But you still think about your mortality every three seconds and until you land you don’t quite breathe easy. If I thought about how everyone could zip out of my life like Dad and Brigid did (almost ten years ago now), I wouldn’t be able to function.

So I spent the last few months thinking about life, a new life in me. I kept thinking about how fifteen years ago I gave Misha a tarot deck for his fifth birthday. The first thing he did was turn over the three of cups, which has three women on it, and said, “These are your daughters.”

I guess I’ve talked about and believed in Misha’s prediction for so long that my brain had actually wrapped itself around the idea that this pregnancy would be my last. I had kind of settled on Hazel Francis being her name. It seemed surreal to be casting the last character of our little drama. Like, okay, all the members of the family are here. Charles and I are the matriarch and patriarch of this little life we’ve created.

What freaked me out was the thought that we’ve created little beings that will have to feel what it’s like to lose someone they love. And sometimes it was so surreal, like the sunlight would be coming through the window a certain way, a magical way, and I’d see the girls take that in and I’d realize they were making one of those memories that they’ll have forever. It could be thirty years from now and they might be anywhere and the sun will come through a window a certain way and they’ll feel that weird mixture of nostalgia and sadness and happiness all at once. And that’s what being alive is. But it’s so big, so huge and we were going to pass that on to yet another soul; that huge mess of experiences and emotions to navigate.

Then I was out Xmas shopping with my mom on a Saturday. I came home with a really stiff neck. We got the kids to bed and Charles and I sat in front of the fire watching TV. He rubbed my neck for a long time and when he was done I was crying, though I had no idea why. Really crying, really sad. I went in to pee before we went upstairs and I had started bleeding. I called my midwife, and she said it was a hopeful sign that I wasn’t cramping, and that I should keep her posted. But I bled all weekend and on Monday she explained that I would probably miscarry in a day or so. She said the fetus had probably been dead for over a week.

The good news was you only have to dilate to three cm (not the ten cm you need for labor). I was still a little shocked on Monday night when the cramps turned into contractions. Forty-five minutes of contractions and then such a bloody mess that I had to camp out in the bathroom until I birthed the little mass. It was a few inches long and I could make out the basic shape of the spine. Then it was over. I was so relieved not to be having contractions any more. I actually thought, “Well, at least I’ll be able to have wine on my thirtieth birthday.” Isn’t that sick? And then on Wednesday I was out Xmas shopping with Mom again. Nothing skipped a beat.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about my friend Maria, from grade school. The night before Jamie and I tripped with her for her first time she took a shower before we went to bed. She came in afterwards and said, “That was my last shower before I trip.” Her mother was very religious and it made all of Maria’s events, all her choices, shimmer with an importance I didn’t have to reckon with. I can’t remember the last shower I had before I miscarried.

Since the miscarriage I’ve had the oddest flood of memories about Maria. When we were thirteen she spent the night at my house and we lied and said we were staying at a friend’s. We took a bus to Atlantic City via Camden. I still get shivers when I think of us, two silly white girls in Camden, at thirteen, by ourselves. We ended up spending the night with two losers in an abandoned shed outside one of the casinos. Earlier that night, I lost my virginity to loser # 1 on a toilet in the casino bathrooms. I remember lying and saying I had just finished my period because I had gotten blood on his white sweatshirt (because it was my first time) and I didn’t want him to think I was inexperienced. Maria got away with just giving loser # 2 a blow job. We got back into town at daybreak and went to Friendly’s to eat breakfast. The weird thing was, as we talked over breakfast, she seemed more changed by that blow job than I did by my own deflowering. Everything that changed her seemed so symbolic.

I think I must be craving a little of that purity that Maria seemed to embody. I know where to put the mythology that is me and Charles, I know what drugs and sex and travelling and death of loved ones did to me, and I can honestly say that nothing has altered my life more than Mazie and Clemmie’s births. But I’m at a loss to know what to feel right now. And that’s a little unusual for me. It’s rare that I actually make room for a random glitch. It seems belittling that it could have just been a misfire, a mathematical inevitability.

Charles and I noticed the lonely pregnancy test on the top of the bookcase the other night. We’d saved Mazie’s and Clem’s for their scrapbooks. I know that’s kind of gross, since it’s just a stick with my urine on it, but it heralded their births. With this one we really didn’t know what to do with it.

Last night I had a dream that we were all in Ireland. Charles and the girls were at a pub with some other family while I went to do some errands. I was driving up to a rotary. I think I had just bought groceries. I saw in the rear-view mirror that I had narrowly avoided being rear-ended by a big semi truck. Then I felt the impact and realized I hadn’t gauged right. The truck was going to plow right over me and I wasn’t going to make it. The last part of the dream I remember I was screaming Charles’s name with all that was in me. I woke up almost shaking and kind of slid over to Charles, spooned him, and cried myself back to sleep.

So that’s been my life lately. I’m fragile and fine. Snappy with the kids. Tense with Charles. Unsure if we should be using birth control while I get my body in a little better shape. And very aware that turning thirty tomorrow means that time is careening along and I hope I’m not too self-involved to notice the gloriousness around me. I love you Mimi. Thanks for writing. I’ll call you soon.

All my love,

Sharon.