Never Walked In High Heels

There are certain everyday things in life that, due to my disability, may as well be from a different planet. Last summer, I managed to drive my friends insane when I became obsessed with shifting water inside a half-filled bottle back and forth. The weight counterbalancing in my hand felt like a small wrist massage. At times I find that I see or feel something like I’ve never felt it before, like insisting that playing with shaving cream is a good idea, or eating cookie dough with one’s own hands is the proper way to do it.

On this particular occasion, I was moving into my first apartment. My mom, my roommate Amy and myself, had just bought a kitchen in a box from Target. While washing all the different pieces and trying to learn what exactly they did, our friend Maria dropped by to welcome us into our new home. She was seven months pregnant. She offered to help Amy, my mother, and myself (who combined probably had enough skill in the kitchen to burn a piece of toast) make heads or tails out of the chaos that was supposed to be turning into the kitchen. Within a few minutes however, her swollen ankles were exhausted as she waddled along to the newly unwrapped couch, and put her feet up. She watched us and gave her own opinion as she saw fit.

The conversation continued for a few minutes and then Maria let out a gasp and began to push on her ribcage. “Gosh darn it! Darn little terror always gets stuck right up there!” She began to push at her side a little more as if trying to pop some sort of bubble.

“Oh I know exactly what you mean, this one…” my mother said pointing at me, “used to always get her hand caught on my left ribcage. I swore that I was gonna make you feel the same misery when you came out.”

“You mean you can actually…like… feel the details of a baby inside you?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I had just always thought a baby was this sort of blob of life that you knew was there, but you couldn’t get your head around any of the specifics. Kind of like having a light in your belly.” This was my very high-tech definition of what having a small human being inside your uterus must feel like.

“Blob of life?! What the heck does that mean?” At this point I reiterated my own history of never having babysat and being quite proud of that fact, so I had an excuse for my ignorance.

“Have you ever felt a baby kicking?” Maria asked me while rubbing her stomach. I replied that I hadn’t and then timidly asked her if I could feel her belly. She nodded and I walked forward kneeling beside the couch and gently put my hand on her stomach. She took my hand and pressed it even firmer against her gut. Nothing happened. She began to talk quietly as if talking to newborn Tara herself, even though she had yet to meet the baby. In this voice she explained to me that while she, the mother, was walking around, Tara was more likely to fall asleep, but when she was lying down and still like this, that’s when Tara woke up. At least, that’s usually how it works. I waited five minutes gingerly cupping my palm against her stomach, and holding my breath—hoping to feel the tiniest bump that may or may not have been imagined.

And then I felt an electrical shock going through her stomach.

My hand flew backwards and I stood up, “What in the world?!” I began. I couldn’t see my mother behind the counter anymore because she was doubled up from laughter. Maria smiled and asked, “Did you feel it?” mocking me and my shock. “Yes I felt it! I had no idea it was going to be that big! That’s ridiculous! I always thought that when mothers talked about babies kicking it was all in their heads. How do you sleep with that?” Ten thousand questions gushed out at once. My mother and Amy still had not recovered.

Turns out, you adjust to having a human being growing inside you. You supposedly even begin to love it after a while. As a single woman loving my ability to be spontaneous, I can’t imagine it, at least not right now. Looking back, I’m certain that Maria couldn’t imagine motherhood in its fullness, just as only four years before, she was the one trying to pull out a full kitchen from a single box. Each new phase of life that comes seems to have been packaged without an instruction manual and it’s up to us to figure out what goes where and what’s missing. Whether it’s the final year of college or a new baby, a new life is always coming down the pipeline and no matter how organized we are, we’re rarely “ready.”

I’ve become quite adept at unpacking a kitchen in a box having done it in three different countries in the last four years. Every time I buy one, regardless of what country I’m in, they all seem to have a pizza pan and be missing something you actually need, such as a can opener. But having mastered one phase of life, there always seems to be another one just around the corner. And the little things which I never really thought about or simply never experienced, can be mundane to most people but they can still shatter my worldview. Something as small as a baby kicking always serves to remind me that after 25 years, I am still woefully inexperienced in life.