Fair

It's easy to get depressed.

Just stop in the course of your Blackberry-Scrolling, Iced Chai-Swilling, Windows 7-Was-My-Idea'ing day. Just... stop. Just be a little still for a moment or two, maybe with your eyes closed (ill-advised if you're driving, operating a wheat-thresher, or negotiating a spiral staircase in a pair of stilettos or mukluks or, worse, stiletto mukluks [patent-pending]) and, if you just think, honestly, about your place in the world or your family, or your aging loved ones, or your job, or your long-dead grandparents, or about Israel, or about the oil spill, or about young widows, or about children without mommys, or about British cars from the 1970s, or the violence in the Sierra Leone, well, you'll get depressed pretty much in no time.

Though my blog may have successfully concealed this fact, I've been in an incredibly depressive funk for the past several weeks. I don't know if it's Depression, the kind that middle-aged women have in TV commercials-- the kind of Depression that's pronounced "Fibromyalgia"-- but I definitely am depressed. Little d.

The lowest point was when I called my mother a couple of days ago, just to yell at her about how selfish and disgusting my middle sister is, and how I hate her for what she's doing to our family-- having a baby practically out-of-wedlock, married to a man she doesn't love, and using my parents as full-time baby-sitters, and expecting everyone to wait on her hand and foot. My mother, dumbfounded and blindsided, didn't say much. Not getting the reaction I desired, I suppose, I hung up. She called me back later that night, because she's my mother. Anybody else would have stopped speaking to me for at least twelve years.

"You know," she said, "I don't really believe that's what you're upset about."

"Oh, really?" I replied, challenging her, "I'm upset about fuckin' everything-- so, pretty much, if you pick something, you're bound to be right. Better odds than the Roulette Table."

"Well," my mother began, in an unusually deliberate, careful way, "that may be true, but I still don't think that's what you're upset about." She took a breath. "I think you're upset about your miscarriage."

For a moment, I said nothing. And that always says something.

"Well that may be true," I conceded dryly, flatly. My tone belied the rage-tainted blood pounding through my veins. My head hurt and I wanted nothing more than to hang up the phone and not have this conversation. It was a taboo conversation to have, and my nine-month-old nephew's very existence made it taboo.

"It just isn't fair," I said to my mother, like a little boy might. "Why should she get to have a baby? She's got a shitty apartment in the city, she hates her husband, and she never, ever wanted a baby, and she barely gives a shit about him now that he's here. It's just not fucking fair," I whined.

"Fair doesn't even begin to enter into it," my mother said, sighing. "You have no idea how my heart breaks for you. And I know what you must be going through every time you see your nephew. I know. And you see us all with the baby-- and you're not pregnant yet-- and it hurts. But you will have a baby, and it will be wonderful." She stopped, maybe waiting for me to answer, maybe to gain her own composure. I don't know. Then she went on. "I know it's very hard for now-- and this is around the time you were going to be due, and I think that's really what's going on. Don't you?"

"I don't know," I said softly. And, really, I don't. I don't know if it's our miscarriage, or the fact that my time at my current job is dwindling down to nothing, and I have no solid leads on a job. I don't know if it's the curse on my head that fates me to be doomed to make $30,000-a-year for the rest of my life, in spite of a Master's degree and a nice vocabulary and a respectable haircut and a closet full of ties. I don't know what it is that has brought the little d to visit me whenever I have a moment to stop and sit and think. But it's here. And it hurts.

The miscarriage hurt-- no-- hurts. I know it happens. I know it wasn't a viable pregnancy. I know I know I know I know I know I know. I know it happens to lots of people. I know it might have even happened to you and, if it has, I'm very sorry and I'd hug you if I could. And I know it isn't fair to take it out on my shithead sister or her stupid, worthless husband. And it certainly isn't fair to take it out on their baby, with whom I love to play on my parents' living room floor. I think it's fun when he uses my finger as a teething toy, and I like to feed him his bottle. One time I almost fell asleep feeding him as the warmth of his body against my chest just lulled me away. He's pretty funny, and he is a brilliant mimic, just like his uncle. If you curl your fists and grunt, he does it, too. When he does this, my eldest sister calls him "Frustrated Frankenstein."

I remember the only other time my mother and I talked about the miscarriage-- well, we didn't really talk about it, we communicated about it. It was shortly after my nephew was born, maybe two months or so. I came over to their house to see him, and he was sleeping. And my mother and I stood by the carriage together looking down at him, watching his chest rise and fall so rapidly the way they do at that amazing young age and I caught sight of my face in the wall mirror-- on the wall of my own childhood bedroom-- and I saw my lower lip curl and I wanted nothing more than to look away from that, but I just looked down at the baby again, and these crazy, hot tears just started streaming down-- they were everywhere, on the arm of my shirt and racing down my nose and my fingers, and my mother was just standing there next to me and she put her hand inside mine, her dry, skinny hand and I could hear that she was crying too, but I didn't dare look at her-- I just didn't dare because, well, then it would have been real. It would have been not just me, it would have been a real, real thing, and I thought, well, if I can just keep it to me, it will just go away.

It hasn't, of course.

And I know it's not supposed to. I know. But thank God I have my wife, who is everything, and my mother, who knows everything, and my charming little nephew, who imitates everything. And you, who listens to everything.

Thank you.