Tally Talks 29 weeks

I’m uploading my own stuff to Aaron’s site now, so this is straight from Tally. He gave me his password.

I’m at 29 weeks today. I’m taking a parenting class. Aaron’s taking us three nights a week. Granny and I went the first class, but I felt funny. All the other moms had a guy with them, usually a guy their age, all loving and sweet to them. I didn’t want to go back, but the teacher, Jean, is so good, and she makes me feel special, and helps me get to know my baby. The next class, Granny didn’t come. She told Aaron, "you take her down and go on in with her. Mating couples have a smell I don’t care for."

So now Aaron picks me up, and we go to the class, and he sits with me, and for some exercises I lean back and he holds me, and he rubs my lower back when the guys rub the moms’s lower back. It’s a little town, I know, and most people know he isn’t my guy, but he’s being very sweet and hasn’t said a word about it. A.B.’s Honey doesn’t seem to care, she works late at night now because they are short staffed.

After class last night we went out with some of the other couples for coffee. It was the first time I ever realized I’m an adult. Four moms with round tummies and four guys at a table in a café having coffee and talking about grown up stuff. My baby is getting pretty big, you know I’m pregnant, and anyway Aaron says I glow, like my baby was a candle inside me. I have a job, and it’s just working for Granny right now, but after my baby is born I’m going to leave and go to the city and work in a big, big hospital. I’ll keep taking classes and maybe someday I’ll be a real nurse. I can see myself as a nurse with a little baby. I can see myself as an adult, sitting in a café and drinking coffee with the other adults.

Some of the other couples already have kids, and a boy about 3 years old sat on Aaron’s lap, and he was so good with the kid. They had crackers together, and Aaron made a kazoo out of the wrapper and a fork, and the little kid laughed and laughed, and the kids mom said "do you guys have any other kids" and Aaron said "no" and I said "this is our first", I don’t know why. I guess I’m afraid to admit how afraid I am to be alone. To push this little baby out by myself, and to have it all alone, with no dad to catch it and help me teach it all the things it needs to know. There are other things that can happen. Some of the class is kind of scary, about the terrible things that can go wrong when a bad baby is growing in there, one that doesn’t have a spine, or one that has her heart on the outside. What if my baby has her heart on the outside? Who will help me with that?

I think it has been good for Aaron to come to the classes with me. He’s been pretty uptight lately. The business isn’t doing that well, he isn’t writing. He’s made some furniture, but it looks pretty weird and you can get better looking stuff at Chinmart for thirty bucks. He isn’t very happy at home, his wife is always gone, at work he thinks. She isn’t going to have any babies her self. It isn’t good for Aaron to be so sad all the time. He didn’t come up to see Granny for a couple of weeks. He was up once to clean the spring box but he didn’t stay long and he and Granny didn’t drink any whisky or smoke any pot, since I can’t. He’s alone too much. It’s good for him to come up and get my baby and me and take us to the class. The class is about wonderful things, about soft little babies wrapped in blankets, smelling sweet and latching on their mama’s nice big nipples, about how important it is to talk to the baby and your partner, to share things, to snuggle. There’s this one part of the class, after we’ve done our stretching and toning exercises, where we sit on the mat and Jean turns the lights low and puts harp music on and she says, "it’s important to relax our bodies and get plenty of rest. Let’s all relax, take our deep breaths, and think of our babies, safe in our arms at last." I lean back, and Aaron always puts his arms around me, and sometimes I feel the scratch of his chin on the back of my neck and it gives me tingles.

I get it now that what Tomy and I did was fucking, straight up animal fucking. It was like a burger from Micky D’s, hot, greasy, satisfying, but not very healthy. I get that the other couples are having a different kind of sex, that they love each other, that they hold each other after, and are starting something together when they do that. I guess that is what I miss most of all, now that I know it is there and those couples have it, and I don’t. I think I’m ready to really love someone and hold them now.

I’m more than half way done with my baby. I hope her little heart is on the inside.