I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
Sylvia Plath
* * *
It has been over a month since I posted and a bag of green apples it's been. At 11 weeks into the altered reality of pregnancy I think I may see the light: I only feel utterly miserable only three-fourths of the time.
I sincerely hate being pregnant. I thought perhaps that my first pregnancy was rather miserable due to the stress of two moves and four weddings. But the truth is: pregnancy just does not become me. I was speaking to a friend's mother recently, a mother of seven, and she told me she had so many children because she loved the hormones of pregnancy. She felt calm and peaceful while pregnant and nursing. After each child was weaned she dreaded the return to her normal self--so she just got pregnant again. And I concede that this is a problem worse that the one I am saddled with. Nonetheless, I think two children will do just fine for me: my mother-hormones tend to suggest things more like jumping off the roof of our 6-story building. I might as well ride out the remaining six months or so ahead of me lying in bed eating Häagen-Dazs lemon ice cream.
But ah! I am already a mother of a boy! There is no ride this out in bed. Ike unearths my hand from its hiding spot under the covers and pulls with all his toddler might, crying, "Go! go! go!"
Go, indeed. Go to the refrigerator and stand there, desperate to eat while despising everything I can see. Eating while pregnant for me means being so stuffed full of food that I couldn't take another bite while being overwhelmed by the urge to keep putting something--anything--in my mouth to ward off nausea, and at the same time detesting the smell, feel, color and very idea of food.
I am trapped in my body. I am trapped in a 5-block radius of my apartment in a suddenly distinctly ghetto neighborhood. The subway disgusts me. Our car is in a garage 9 blocks away. I cannot leave the building without ziplock baggies of candied ginger, saltines, apple slices, hard candies, a bottle of watered-down orange juice swinging on my arm--all to go 3 blocks to the grocery store where I will buy food that will then sit uneaten in the refrigerator because it is the most disgusting food I've ever seen.
Oddly, I am nauseated by colors too--particularly green and gray. I am nauseated by chartruese, forest, aqua, teal, lime, moss, putty, turquoise, ultramarine, beige, mushroom. Consequently, I am nauseated by the better part of my wardrobe. I am nauseated by Facebook. By my half-finished website. By my computer itself.
I'm sure soon, when the 2nd trimester finally takes hold, I will remember why I volunteered for this misery. But for now I am content that looking at my computer screen no longer completely turns my stomach.
{ poetry wednesday }
