Nicole Boucher
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Role Model
I knew I was pregnant by Thanksgiving. I didn’t officially know — on purpose, who takes a pregnancy test BEFORE a long holiday weekend with family and a three year old and extended car travel — but I knew. That weekend, I drank and I drank. Mimosas. An IPA at lunch. A second IPA at lunch. Early happy hour of a G&T or two, then a beer. Wine with dinner maybe. Repeat.
I knew it was all ending again. Or starting again. Depending on how you looked at it. My first pregnancy was “easy.” I was tired, yes, but no morning sickness, no crazy bloating. But I didn’t — and don’t, nor will I ever — like having no say, no control over my own actions or body, however noble or miraculous the reason. Which is to say, even though I knew I was probably pregnant, even though my intent was to get pregnant, I did not want to be pregnant.
But I was. And so the last hurrah. Saturday night I saw my best friends from home. The ones with me since I was fourteen. Leah asked if I would be a bridesmaid. The wedding was the end of July. I did some quick math in my head while my sister — who was fucking pregnant herself and gleeful that she wouldn’t have to be alone anymore — just started laughing. My due date would be the end of July.
The next day — the day before we were leaving to go back to New York, back to reality, back to the pregnancy test in my bathroom drawer— my parents, my sisters and I went to lunch at a local Irish pub. Everyone ordered a beer except my expectant sister. I ordered three, in quick succession. IPAs. And when I gulped that last swig, minutes before getting back into the car to hit the road, I felt it burn down my throat.
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Siblings
“It’s a boy.” The ultrasound technician said it in a matter of fact, almost bored way. She hadn’t cracked a smile at any of the nervous, gender-guessing jokes we’d made as she lathered up my belly with cold gel in the darkness, the glow of the screen and the little supposed being on it the only light in the room.
I gasped. When I found out my first child was a girl, tears of joy had pricked my eyes immediately. I am not a tears of joy kind of person. “I get a girl???” I’d asked. This time, incredibly, the same thing happened. The catch of breath, the disbelief, the sudden peek into a long life ahead with a boy in it, replacing the images I’d been nurturing up until that point of two girls. Sisters. A life of pink and purple. I was going to become a boy mom.
I had never been in interested in becoming a boy mom. Football, cars, superheroes. Trump, dirt, white male privilege. Tiny little boners. No thanks. But, in that split second, I saw things differently: I could raise my boy to be different. To be like his father. Not afraid to show emotion. Or to do the dishes.
Everyone asks if Brian was overjoyed to hear it was a boy. He was not. One of the reasons our marriage works so well is that we’re usually on the same page. Not about the little things — how to load a dishwasher, or when to start planning a vacation. We fight endlessly about that shit. But the big things, yeah. The things that matter. So, in that moment, when I started replacing unicorns with firetrucks, rethinking life as we envisioned it, he was, too.
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When You Know
I first laid eyes on Brian my freshman year at BU. I have no idea when it was. Maybe after winter break? We were in the dining hall of Warren Towers, a truly hideous dorm that towered over Commonwealth Ave. People talk about love at first sight. This wasn’t that. I don’t think. I did kind of settle my gaze on him and feel sort of a “huh.” on some cellular level. He was laughing, grinning, wearing an untucked button down and a baseball cap tilted off his head just so. He was with a bunch of dudes. Him, though. Huh.
I first spoke to, and then made out with, and then… more (but not all) with him in May. Mid-May. Right around that sweet spot of college life when you have maybe one more final left. Everyone is hanging out all the time. The sun is out.
When I went home that summer, I told my high school boyfriend, the one I couldn’t shake, that I had met the dude I was probably going to marry. That if we — that boyfriend and I — were going to do something, something real, the time is now. It wasn’t a threat, it just was.
That September was the 9/11 attacks. We’d been back at school for maybe three days. The night of the attacks, I laid in Brian’s bed, in my underwear, while he talked about Al-Qaeda and motives and the way things were.
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Day 43
The worst — or best — part about my daughter is that she is just fucking like me. When she gets pissed off, she theatrically throws actual furniture across the room. She says, “THAT’S IT. I’M OUT.” and storms off in a huff and slams every door. She returns almost immediately for a hug and to peer into my face and say “MOMMY? Smile???” She’s four.
The worst — or best — part about parenting is that it is forever. And that’s if you are lucky. They’re always there. Especially now. Our house in Montauk is only slightly bigger than our two-bedroom in the city, but there is a yard. And a little beach down the road. And absolutely no one but Brian and I to be with our two kids.
Tonight I took a drive. It was 7pm. I had a solid thirty-five minutes before Bailey had to go to bed. Thirty-five minutes I could not bear to actually spend with her. I got in the car. I drove past our beach. I kept going. I turned on the radio. Tom Petty: Free Falling. Too on the nose. I kept skipping stations, I kept driving. I kept driving until I got to Gin Beach, a stretch of sand close to the house we rented with friends Before Kids. I kept skipping stations until I got to “Are You That Somebody” — Aaliyah, a song from high school, one I never hear but one that makes me time travel when I do. The baby laugh, the underlying sensuality. Two extremes, existing together. And now: A cloudy sky, a setting sun. Pink, purple, grey, amber.
“…cause I’m not just anybody.”
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