…woman is her body as man is his, but her body issomething other than her.
—Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
That spring I walked into the hospital for a minor procedure and walked out with a handful of balloons into the strangest six weeks of my life. At forty-four, I thought I knew the contours of the possible. But standing at the curb, squinting in the afternoon sun, I knew I’d been thrust into something else. I stood with my balloons, dazed into silence. My husband drove up in our truck. I reached for the door and climbed back into our life, taking care not to let anything pop.
Before that spring, winter had taken its toll. November to March had been five months of darkness and enclosure. My part-time job at a college an hour away was going nowhere. To address that dead end, I spent my mornings writing painful cover letters for jobs in other fields for which I was both overqualified and unqualified. My husband was working seven days a week to cash in on overtime, analyzing data from samples at the local nuclear clean-up site. The post-election season of 2016 had left us stranded in the wilderness of Eastern Washington, where the president-elect had won by twenty-six points. The inauguration had been followed by a winter of record snowfall. For a minority of us, hell had frozen over. Our anticipatory dread got pummeled by snow and freezing rain, apt preparation for what lay ahead.
My commute became a white-knuckled voyage through a muffled landscape. The snow and ice reduced the highway to one lane in each direction. Semis careened over the road like an ice-age, post-apocalypse video game. I’d chip two inches of frozen sleet off my windshield before I drove to work, asking myself whether it was worth all the risk.
Snowmageddon was relentless. By March, I’d decided to take advantage of one of the few perks of my meager position at the college—spring break. I needed to kick the thaw of winter into a higher gear. I pulled up Google Maps and consulted weather reports to see how far south I’d have to go to get some blasting sun. One night of fantasy web surfing told me it was southern Arizona or bust.
I lucked out and found a cheap ticket from our regional airport to Tucson. I got a guide book for the Sonoran desert and followed an impractical urge to rent a convertible. At certain appointed junctures, luscious indulgence can be an important part of the moral life. I dreamt of saguaro, and tequila. Heat, and melting ice. I needed Tucson to deliver, and it did.
When I returned, the balm of the desert carried me into spring. The tequila I’d brought back in my suitcase helped, too. I went back to work. I started a night class at the police department, to explore other career options. The five-foot snow banks melted from our driveway. The death grip of winter loosened.
One hiccup was that I had to get a benign cyst removed from my uterus. It was the suspected culprit for excessive bleeding during my periods. I’d put it off, and it had reached a point where it could no longer be ignored. The first day of my period I had to change my super-plus tampons every hour for twelve hours straight, which was un-tenable.
I’d scheduled the procedure for mid-April. But it conflicted with a tour of the jail for my law enforcement class, so I moved it to early May. The procedure was minor, but still required full anesthesia. I hadn’t been giving it a whole lot of thought. But the week before, I heard about a local woman my age who’d died during surgery from a blood clot. I knew the chances of someone healthy dying under anesthesia were very small, but it scared me. Also, I was about to hit the year anniversary of a failed in-vitro fertilization process that had consumed my life for eight months, before we’d moved to Washington. I wasn’t wild about commemorating the anniversary with another mission into my reproductive organs. A year had passed, but the sound of my doctor’s call still rang in my ear, the bluntness of his locutions still echoed.
Looking at scientific fact without looking away requires a bit of courage. He conveyed the facts. I beheld them. And then I’d moved on, slightly ghosted by what had not happened and what might have been. Something I’d been open to but never totally gung-ho about, had become something I’d been open to, and now could never be gung-ho about. Not devastation, but something else: the gap left when something you’ve desired with ambivalence has been taken away from the horizon of the possible.
During IVF I’d been put under anesthesia three times. I’d never worried about it. So, a year later, to go under again with a different recognition of the risks was unsettling. It altered my perspective on what I’d put my body through. What had it all been for? But more: why had I submitted to the medical regimen involved when bearing a child out of my body was not a necessity for me? Had I succumbed to social presumptions about marriage and motherhood? Had my tendencies toward mastery mixed with a curiosity about creation, slipping me headlong into a misguided endeavor? Had I simply been scammed by the gleam and polish of a lucrative medical industry? Or had I just plunged into the current I’d followed my whole life, to explore big, unknown experiences? I’d kept such questions at bay. When they surfaced that spring, it was impossible to give them answers.
The day of the procedure arrived. I had to fast until my mid-day appointment. When my husband took me into the hospital, I was dehydrated and missing my morning coffee. I walked into the surgery center in a mild fog. I would emerge a couple hours later in a much greater one.
On the surgery ward, a nurse’s assistant led me through the pre-op protocol. Then she asked if I could provide a urine sample. I looked at her askance, since I hadn’t had anything to drink in sixteen hours. I said I’d see what I could do.
She led me to a pre-op compartment on the ward. I was handed a gown and a plastic bag for my belongings. She left, and I changed. The lead nurse came in, I got into bed, and she connected me to monitoring devices. She exuded competence and familiarity, navigating the unspoken but acknowledged line between small talk and patient privacy.
A second nurse came in to put the port for an intravenous line in my arm. He seemed German and was quite strapping. He was maneuvering the IV tube discreetly into my arm when the lead nurse came back into the compartment. Apparently they’d used my urine sample for a pregnancy test, and it had been inconclusive. So they had to do a more accurate blood serum test, given the nature of the procedure. I had little reaction to her words. Between my water and caffeine withdrawal, my age, and the lengthy IVF debacle in my recent past, I barely processed what she’d said. I presumed it was just a glitch with the meager urine sample. She made a comment that presumed pregnancy would be good news to me. The strapping German nurse playfully chided her for her uninvited commentary. I told them never mind. I’d been through the whole trying-for-pregnancy rodeo and the blood test would clear up the urine snafu.
The phlebotomist came in and drew my blood. The strapping German nurse exited. The lead nurse said she’d get my husband. I’d have to wait a while for the blood test results. I was mostly concerned with how long the glitch would delay me getting post-op food and beverage. Which should come first, coffee or food? Coffee, always.
I considered whether I should tell my husband what the delay was about. There was no way I was pregnant, and I didn’t want to catch him up in any unnecessary brouhaha. But when he arrived at the compartment, I told him, with genuine nonchalance. He too was unconcerned. We waited behind the curtain. And waited some more.
The curtain leading into the compartment was open just enough to afford a glimpse of the digital clock on the wall above the nurses’ command center. I’d glance at the clock as my husband and I talked about everything other than what was going on. We drifted into our own connection and blocked out the hospital setting. But after a while, as I tracked the red numbers on the black clock, re-pixelating into the future, I became alert to the limbo we’d been left in. The wait seemed to be taking too long.
Mid-conversation, our compartment cocoon was interrupted. We looked up to see the curtain being swept aside. A gang of nurses streamed in with pink and blue balloons yelling: “Congrat-ulations!!!” One nurse led the brigade and rushed to my bedside, handing me the balloons. Up close, I could see they were anchored by pink and blue candy cigars. As my stunned eyes took in the scene I caught the strapping German nurse seeking my gaze, trying to assess my reaction amidst the burst of glee and scrubs. I glanced, in shock, at my husband. The balloon crew made a semi-circle around the hospital bed, awaiting my response. I blurted: “Are you fucking kidding me?!?” They took that as their signal to exit the compartment.
As they filed out all I could say was “It isn’t possible! It isn’t possible! It isn’t possible.” With the nursing staff gone, and the curtain redrawn, the rush of energy ebbed. I finally got to share a real look with my husband, probably the most loaded look we’d ever shared. It brimmed with the surprise, joy, and trepidation of the moment. Without saying anything, we knew the news was delightful, and at the same time we also knew its goodness might become overwhelmed by the realities of biology, and not last. The look contained everything: the delicacy and magnitude of it all. Then I began sobbing.
The nursing attendants stayed away. We live in a family-centered, baby-happy place. The staff’s method of conveying the pregnancy results speaks for itself. My response was likely not quite what they were expecting. They couldn’t have known my procreation history, and my age might not have been a big deal to them. In a surgery ward, I imagine surprise good news is hard to come by. You may need to take your miracles where you can.
But my doctor got it. He came in about twenty minutes later. He speculated I was about four weeks pregnant. My trip to Tucson had been so redemptive that I’d come home and promptly gotten knocked up. My doctor went through a list of symptoms. He asked if any of them were familiar. When they were strung together, it seemed like what had been going on should have been obvious. I’d been throwing back espresso like it was water for two weeks because I’d been so abruptly fatigued. But pregnancy was so far off my radar it never crossed my mind. I was my body, but it also was something other than me.
My doctor was only generally aware of my IVF history back in Colorado, where we used to live. But based on the general outline, and my age, he knew why we felt a mixture of gravitas and levity. The embryo might be from a random, genetically normal egg renegade. Or, not. All we could do was hope for the best and be prepared if the best didn’t come to pass. He reviewed the follow-up testing I’d need to do, and then left.
Stunned, I changed back into my clothes. My husband handed me the balloons. We exited the compartment through the curtain, back into a changed world. On the way out, the manager of the surgery unit came up to me and shook my hand. A few others escorted us to the elevator. Pregnancy celebrity, even out here in the boonies.
A couple days later I got a message from my doctor through the hospital’s online portal. He said the hormone level by which they detect pregnancy was so low it had been lucky we’d caught it. Turns out you can be just a little pregnant. Had my procedure been a few days earlier we probably would have missed it altogether. I was about a month pregnant. All we could do was wait and see if the relevant hormones started skyrocketing.
Skyrocket they did. The transformation was undeniable. All of me ripened overnight. My usual energy was zapped. I felt like all movement transpired in transparent molasses. Much of the time I could only repose on our porch, looking out on a world I had no motivation to act within. Thankfully, the semester had ended. My body had taken over and I was no longer in control. And this drove me crazy, while also being oddly liberating. But mostly I was filled with dread.
The changes in me were visceral and surreal. Pregnancy had been something abstract for my entire life, even throughout the faux concreteness of IVF. Now that it was actual—within my very body—it eluded all comprehension. It had been the greatest surprise of my life, and yet I quickly slipped into the mundane oblivion of it all. The fanfare had lasted about twenty-four hours, and then I was just anticlimactically pregnant. Because the possibility of miscarriage was high, we couldn’t tell anyone and we couldn’t embrace the future the pregnancy portended. I lived in a state of perpetual suspension.
A few things did become evident. Most principally: if you have ambivalence about becoming a mother, or bringing a child into your relationship, getting pregnant does not magically assuage that ambivalence. I was suspended in an oblivion born of my body, and my mixed regard of motherhood stubbornly remained. It was the precise situation I’d presumed would clear up any irresolution, and instead I felt taunted by the cosmos. My body was all-in. Which rendered me too out of it to gain clarity about what I wanted to happen. All my prior forms of evaluation were now moot exercises, misaligned with the body in which I found myself. Woman is her body, but her body is something other than her. And that became the crux truth with which I had to tussle.
I had an early ultrasound, to ensure the embryo hadn’t taken up residence in one of my fallopian tubes. It was normal. But I was just shy of the six-week cusp when a heartbeat can be detected. The doctor suggested I wait a couple weeks to repeat the ultrasound, so we’d get definitive news about the heartbeat and the viability of the pregnancy. If the embryo was genetically impaired, most likely that would show itself earlier rather than later. Due to a scheduling overload at the imaging center, I couldn’t get an appointment for over three weeks. So began the time of what I called The Great Unknowing.
Three weeks seemed eternal, given what the first weeks of pregnancy knowledge had been like. Seven more months, if the pregnancy lasted? It just blew my mind. I couldn’t comprehend how I’d sustain the state of suspension that long. What I really needed was a good margarita and a romp in bed with my husband. But that was how I got where I was in the first place.
But after naming The Great Unknowing, I decided to abide with my fragmentary sense that the pregnancy had come to show me something, however it turned out. I didn’t know what that was. I opened myself to receive it, whatever it might be. At the outset, all I knew was that my body was other than me. I’d regard the slippage between self and body not as a threatening split, or a fearful estrangement, but as the mysterious way in which I would be shown what I needed to be shown.
What came was mostly uneventful. There was no epiphany of recognition in which my maternal destiny became clear. It was a period of creeping anxiety amidst the everyday patterns of life. I was high, I was low, and then just often enough I could catch the wave of suspension and glide along.
In the most literal way I’d ever experienced, there was nothing I could do. No act, or practice, or effort, or deliberation, or thinking, or even prayer could influence whether or not the embryo in my uterus would make it. Or so I thought at the time. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could know. I’d been thrust out of every basic assumption I’d had, even though I’d thought I wasn’t one of those types of people, and had known the miniscule role we play in the grand fabric of things.
The days crept by, no matter how I tried to fool my sense of time. My body forged on, relishing its release into the timeless biology of creation. I wondered if my body was enjoying itself, apart from the dread occupying my mind. I hoped so, because while it was sliding into the first trimester groove, I was left to ponder the notion of radiant pregnancy with incredulity.
And then I remembered something. How I’d forgotten it seemed impossible. The events of the month and the brain fog of pregnancy had dislodged it temporarily. But then it returned. Or, I should say, she returned.
At some point, in the pit of our dreary winter, a female figure had come to me in one of my daydreams. Or, not quite a daydream, but also not a meditation. Just one of those times when I sit and look out. It wasn’t a visitation, or a vision. She was a presence in my consciousness, whom I could see and sense. The figure was an old woman. She had aged, tanned skin, full and low breasts, and slim but pillar-like legs. Her hair was long, grey-white, and wavy. I never saw her face. If I tried to see her, it tended to be from behind, or at an angle. She exuded wisdom and retired sensuality. She never spoke. She would just appear from time to time. I couldn’t make out why; I hadn’t solicited her arrival.
Sometimes she would arrive and stand near me. Sometimes she arrived but didn’t seem to care I was there. Sometimes her arm would surround my back, as support. She came and went as she pleased, with consistent infrequency.
I remembered her about midway into my three-week waiting period. Maybe I remembered because my altered state had shifted me closer to whatever niche of reality she occupied. When she reappeared, I knew she’d come not to give answers, but to bolster my attempt to live in suspension. All my usual forms of adapting were proving useless. Why not hang out with the female presence in my imagination? She certainly seemed to know what she was doing. While I, most patently, did not.
I began to coax her arrival. Whenever I was trampling the open space of what I was living with, or was caught in my defenses of catastrophic speculation, I invited her in. When I couldn’t shake the hard questions—“What if the fetus isn’t normal? What if it is? Am I too old, too me, to pull off newborn care without losing my mind? How will our marriage be changed? How would I live with both my deep ardor and my deep hesitancy about this pregnancy?”—I quit formulating answers and let her drift in, creating a different kind of center to live from. She’d arrive and stand behind me, in an embrace. Or, if I was resting, put her hand on my back. Or, if I was walking, move with me. I was still solitary, but not alone.
I was almost forty-five, pregnant, and had an imaginary friend. We don’t know what will happen in a life. We don’t know how life will open to us. We don’t know how life will reveal itself to us. Life is inside us, in all kinds of ways, and it emerges in unexpected forms.
The three weeks passed. Most of the surface of life appeared normal. There were no obvious signs of what I, my husband, and my imaginary female companion were privy to. My body kept churning through the hormonal and flesh realities of gestation.
In the days leading up to the ultrasound, a strange kind of high set in. Being on the brink of life-changing news lit me up. It opened a zone of perspicacity tinged with a drunken, if alcohol-free, buzz. It was almost euphoric. On the one hand: “Wow—holy shit—I’m going to have a baby and everything is going to change with wild abandon!” On the other hand: “Wow—holy shit—I’m not going to have a baby and will be free to do whatever I want with wild abandon!” They were oscillating, similarly potent, equally valid responses.
The honest confession, one I couldn’t bring myself to share with my husband, was that I felt the pull of the latter option more strongly and brightly. Maybe, partly, it was a form of release from the daunting and thrilling unknown of motherhood. Maybe, partly, it was a form of defense for bad news. But beyond those, it was also a gesture of instinct, a gut hit of the soul saying I was at a threshold. I could either transmute the experience into a rebirth of my purpose on the planet or I could waste it, allowing the period of suspension to close up and die, its potentialities dissipated back into the body without remainder.
I made a short list of all the things I was going to do if it turned out I wouldn’t be devoting the year to pregnancy and a newborn. You might regard that as shallow, or endearing, or sad, or intriguing, or familiar, or whacked-out. But it is what happened. I made and cherished the list without a shred of shame or guilt.
The day of the ultrasound, my euphoria fused with sobered bracing. The combination let me function. Monumental events often happen in banal settings amidst the generic workings of the human world. A parking lot. A waiting room. An office hallway. A darkened exam room with institutional art on the wall and blinking equipment all around. The most intimate of experiences unfolding in the most unsacred spaces. It would be crushing if it didn’t transpire at such lightning speed. Maybe that is why we have time. To usher us through the excruciatingly delicate and blunt edges of being human. To press us into summoning the virtues needed for living with dignity.
I was back in a medical compartment, dressed in a hospital gown. My husband was by my side. My imaginary companion was there too. I was fatigued by The Great Unknowing, ready for it to be over. But I was also aware that, in an elemental way, it would never come to an end. No matter what else happened, it had been born.
The ultrasound technician stuck her magic wand up my vagina, to see what was there to be seen, to resolve the three-week wait with news of my fetus’s heartbeat, size, and vitality. You likely want to know what that magic wand saw, and brought back. How the news was delivered, what it was, what it led to. But this has been about suspension, and The Great Unknowing. If I could do it, so can you.
Jennifer Ruth Keller is the author of Ordinary Oblivion & the Self Unmoored. She served as the humanities chair at Deep Springs College.
