CheeseburgerBlue's Journal: A Threat of Stability

Last summer, at long last, my life threatened to achieve some measure of stability. I had secured a spacious apartment in an old but well maintained building in a green part of a prosperous megatropolis. My freelance workstyle was finally providing enough meat for me to forget any nervous thoughts about getting a full-time job working for somebody else; in fact, it looked likely that my so-called savings account might be able to live up to its name (even with the banking fees factored in). I was living with a beautiful girlfriend who was only grouchy once a month, and we had enough disposable income to buy fabulous laptop computers for one another.

One August twilight as we sat on our balcony sipping cocktails and watching baby birds learning to fly, I opened my mouth to tell my lover how utterly content I was. She interrupted to tell me that she'd been thinking it over, and had decided to move across the country for a year to go to the University of Pretty Mountains to become a Master of Neurolinguistics.

"I'm sorry, sweatheart -- what were you going to say?"
"Nevermind."

We proceeded to discuss how we could make her plan a reality. I would sit on the fancy apartment while managing our herd of cats, and fund her scholastic enterprise with megatropolis dollars. We would liquidate our accumulated airmiles in an orgy of cross-continental flights. In between, we would reap the benefits of a competitive long-distance telephony market, and make use of free teleconferencing software in order to make kissy-faces at one another through chunky streaming video. (I have always enjoyed living in the future.)

Seeing as I had been planning to propose in the autumn anyway, I asked her to marry me. I figured that this would mitigate the separation anxiety somewhat. She would be less inclined to imagine that I was being seduced by green-skinned dancing girls whilst she was away, I reasoned, if she had a sparkly ring on her finger as a symbol of my fidelity. I bought the ring, she said yes; she packed up the car with her school toys and the dog, and drove west. (Shortly thereafter I would fly out to visit her, and find myself trapped there with her for a few weeks while the Pentagon the twin towers burned, but that's another story and shall be told another time.)

It is this spring, and preparations for the wedding have hit a frenetic pitch. We go to the supermassive department store and get to touch things we like with scanning guns, so that people buying presents for us know what kind of crap we like. She delights in scanning silverware. She wants nicer sheets, and duvet. We pick out wedding bands. We choose flowers; we choose music; we choose words; we choose photographic opportunities; we choose scents; we choose lighting; we choose receptional hall placemats and serviettes; she draws up elaborate seating charts, to accomodate intrafamilial likes and dislikes. We book a honeymoon in a private villa at the edge of a Maya village close to the equator, to bronzen our fish white bellies and to get diarehea, to climb ziggurats and to fuck like monkeys. Dresses are commissioned for bride and maids; tuxedo rentals arranged. All of our ducks are in row. Everything is scheduled to run like clockwork during our marriage skit.

I am sitting on my balcony the other night, watching the sky turn from gold to purple and enjoying a frosty beer. We have moved out the plants for summer, and it smells wet out here. I am not afraid of marriage. I am anxious for the fuss to be over. On the far side of the honeymoon, I think that I catch a glimpse of something I have not seen in a year: my life, threatening to achieve some measure of lasting stability. A warm contentment suffuses my evening. At last, my patience will be rewarded.

The phone rings. My spidey-sense is tingling. I pick it up.
"What are you up to?"
"Well, I was just sitting out on the balcony and saying to myself--"
"I'm pregnant."

According to an informative website, Baby may already have a heart, a wee micropump the size of a snail's bum. It has a crescent-shaped line of neuronal fibre for a spine. It is working its way toward having arm buds. So far, there is no sign that Baby plans to self-terminate (due to an unknown error of Type -39, perhaps). My mother-in-law-to-be tells me that she and her daughter come from a long line of women with iron uteri that clutch foeti with a renouned vigour (unlike my own mother, who legend has it had to avoid uncrossing her legs for fear that yours truly might fall out during his gestation). All indications are that we should not treat Baby as a drill, but rather as a fully-blown substitution for the new puppy we'd planned to get. (Or rabbits -- there had been talk of rabbits.)

No puppy, no rabbits. No fish-superquarium. No homebrew wine kit. No 3D animation render-farm.

Baby.

I know that if I had to be a man with a family and no career or a man with a career and no family, I would without hesitation (almost without hesitation) choose the former. In that spirit, I welcome Baby. I have only the best spirits when I contemplate the chocolate mess Baby will make of our finances. I am suspending consideration of how the sanctity of my home office ("the laboratorium") may be violated. I don't have space to think about what can no longer be: I can only giggle and be terrified when I consider Baby's micropump and Baby's arm buds.

I still feel like a child. Does that stop when Baby comes?

(Somehow, my imminent marriage skit just isn't as significant an event as it once seemed.)