Little Farmhand in my Belly
June 14, 2010
Since I have decided (just now) that this blog will now be my more personal blog, I will just spill the beans and say: I’m pregnant. Almost 5 months. And I am having a boy.
First, let me say when I saw a little penis on the screen when we were doing the ultrasound, I almost didn’t believe it. I guess in the back of my mind I had just thought, of course I’m having a girl. Girl things are what I know. I like faeries and faerie things! For pete’s sake, I have goddess prayer flags hanging in my office at home!
But I must say, blog readers, I came to a realization on Saturday. After a hellishly long day of harvesting (it wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t taken 11 hours), we were pretty dirty. It had rained, and I had been crawling around on the ground plucking low-growing snap peas, trudging through thistle and grass plants. Alex and I looked like two Oliver Twists, if Oliver Twist had worked on a farm in the rain; we had mud everywhere, from our cheeks (Alex more), our hair, our pants, our boots and arms.
My mom had helped that day, working from the morning until 4 or 5 in the afternoon. It was awfully nice of her, and I honestly did not think she could take all those hours. Of course, when it began to rain, we immediately pulled her from the field and sent her to the covered washing station. But she did get a little rained on, and did have some mud on her boots.
Later, though the jobs were not done, she insisted on taking me home and treating Alex and me to thai food take-out. So off we drove, and as we parked in the restaurant’s parking lot, my sister called and I listened as my mom told her, “You should see us. I mean, we are about to walk into this thai food restaurant and we look terrible! Oh, you should see Alison! She is covered in mud, with plant material caked to her pants! Literally, plant material!”. It was funny listening to her, because I guess it had just never really registered that this would be weird. What was weird about walking into this restaurant looking this way? Alex and I do it all the time! In fact, sometimes we look way worse! The only times I feel bad is when I have dirt chunks falling off of me and onto a restaurant’s nice carpet or even a grocery store’s freshly mopped floors. (I try to not have this happen and will scrape off huge chunks accordingly.) But as for just looking physically dirt-splattered, I guess I have no shame. It’s not even really on my radar. I mean, I really have no choice…this is my chosen profession, and I certainly, quite often, look the part.
But as I listened, it struck me; maybe it was good I was having a boy. Not to get all gender specific, because as everyone knows I hate that, but, more likely, a boy will not mind going into a thai restaurant looking like a swamp creature. In fact, he might even LIKE it.
I could practically hear my sister’s thoughts as my mom lamented about the horrifying/interesting experience of her day at the farm; “poor al! poor mom!”. She’d not be into it. Even for a day. And as much as I complain about farming and about how hard things seem to be and how I never have time for much of anything else anymore, when I am picking snap peas in the mud, light rain coming down, fogging up my glasses, crawling through the wet jungle of grass and thistle and clover, I actually am having fun.
So yeah, I like girl things. I like faeries, I like little girl tea parties and soft rag dolls. And unless our son likes those things too (which I am actually hoping for, but understand if it doesn’t happen), I know that I have to let him be who he is, even if he wants to play with toy trucks and make them crash into each other over and over. The upside is that he might also enjoy crawling in mud in chilly rain with his mom and dad.
