Corona Diaries: That Time I Didn't Hear It

The test said I was pregnant. Undoubtedly. Indubitably. Pregnant.

The shock of it all drove me to the vodka I brought home as a souvenir from our recent cruise, and to the precipice of stress smoking. You know, the kind of smoking where you can hear the inhale followed by a 30-second whrhhhhhhh of an exhale that obliterates an entire cigarette.

But then I remembered, no that can’t be a thing because this little person inside of me will also be drinking whatever I drink and can’t even roll down a window for air when I whrhhhhhhh.

That person arrived a day early. A couple days later, I wrapped her up to go home with us. All I could think was a WHOLE NEW PERSON IS COMING HOME TO LIVE WITH US FOREVER.

Then she did this:

Oh precious little girl, we have NO idea what we're doing!

I burst out in tears. I mean, I just wasn’t prepared and I knew it.

We brought her home anyway.

She was funny, smart (way smarter than me and I knew that when she was three-years-old and called me on the carpet about her role in picking up her toys) and that she was a deep thinker.

I was way, WAY out of my depth.

There was the time when she got her own bottle out of the fridge and I cried. Then there was the phase when she didn’t want to potty train and I cried. And then there was the phase that seemed to last a lifetime when she refused to use public toilets. I cried. A lot while earnestly praying that the Second Coming would lift me out of the eternal misery called public restrooms and into eternal mansions built just for me.

Then, I blinked.

There was a day when I asked her about changing her room set-up. Someplace in the fog between the public restroom horrors and junior year of high school, her dad had constructed built-in bookshelves and a fold-out workspace in her room for her artist’s space.

The need for Artist's space is real.

That’s when the email came: Attention Parents of the Class of 2021.

Yep. That’s me. She’s in that class and I’m that parent.

Senior pictures will be due by MM/DD/YYYY.

The letting go time is knocking at my door, and has been for years.

Somehow, I guess I just didn’t hear it.

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