Dear Ladies,
I don’t know you and you don’t me.
Yet, when you noticed the basketball “hiding” under my shirt and asked if I knew the baby’s sex, and you learned that I already have a two-and-a-half-year-old son, and I am expecting another son, you felt the need to sigh heavily and say:
“Oh, maybe next time you’ll have a girl.”
Maybe, Farmer’s Market Lady, just maybe, next time you won’t feel the need to add your two cents when I’m having a lovely conversation with the butcher at the deli counter who is slicing my Boar’s Head turkey breast, and confessing how sexy he finds pregnant women. Maybe you won’t assume that I’m having a third baby when I HAVEN’T EVEN HAD THE SECOND ONE YET! And maybe, just maybe, you won’t assume that I was “trying for a girl” this time.
And, you, Lady at the Apple Store, you felt the need to pause, blink back a tear in your icy blue eyes and say to me, a perfect stranger, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” when I revealed I was carrying second boy.
Thanks so much, Dr. Phil! Of course it’s okay. And, it’s not just “okay,” it’s fabulous.
Do you ladies know the infinity pool of baby boy clothes that I am swimming in here at my house?
Do you know the fleet of boy vehicles that I have just waiting for another driver to hop on?
Do you know the vast store of little boy counterinsurgency tactics I have picked up in the past few years?
Do you know that I have a toddler who is counting the seconds until he meets his little baby brother? Do you know that he can’t wait to buy him stuffed animals and take him for walks to the park and squirt the hose in his face?
Do you know how much joy and excitement and laughter and insanity and life that our son has brought to our lives?
Do you know how thrilled we were in that ultrasound room when we spotted what was undeniably a boy part and we looked at each other and said, “Shit, we’d better hit the gym hard because we are going to need to be in shape!”?
Do you know that not all families need both a boy and a girl to be complete?
So, random ladies (and men too), please stop offering condolences to me. It is so inappropriate.
A year from now, if you spot me in the supermarket being head-butted by both sons or perhaps worse, now THAT is an appropriate time to offer your condolences to me – or at least withhold judgment when I release my shopping cart, both sons on board, twenty feet ahead of me and pretend that I’m the mother of the docile little girl who is checking the sugar content on the cereal box next to me.
Sincerely,
Stacy