Green

I’m finding myself absolutely green with envy when I think of my friends here who have had their babies last month, or have their due date coming up in the next week or so.  These are the folks I’ve waddled and commiserated with through the last few months.  One gave birth about three weeks ago.  One is due next Friday.  The fact that I’m due approximately two more weeks AFTER next Friday brings me pain.  No, not that kind of pain.  Still, pain.

I imagine that the grass is always going to be greener, isn’t it?  Folks trying to conceive will be jealous of the pregnant people.  Ladies in the first trimester will be jealous of the second and third trimesterers.  Pregnant people in general will be jealous of the people who finally met their baby on the outside.  Infant-havers will be jealous of the people who have interactive smiling, then rolling, then crawling, then walking babies who sleep through the night and eat pureed bananas.  Baby-chasers will be jealous of the potty-trained babies.  Bum-wipers will be jealous of the pre-school and kindergarten attenders.  And so forth, until one day when you’re sitting with your high school senior at the dinner table, filling out college applications wondering where all the time went and longing for those bum-wiping years.  So so eager for the next milestone that you lose track of the now.  Then again, maybe it’s just me.

My wife and I tend to always look forward, and hardly ever intentionally look back.  You know, unless it’s to check a blind spot.  Occasionally, we’ll reminisce about our first date, or when our dog was a tiny, sleeping, black lumpus, or what it was like when she worked shift work and we hardly saw each other for a whole year.  Also, my wife is kind of a terrible reminiscer, since she tends to forget things immediately after they’ve happened.  Sort of like constantly emptying your computer’s recycling bin.  In fact, I have to remind her how old she will be every year when her birthday comes around.  And you should see her lack of remorse utter delight in deleting folders upon folders of digital pictures, weeding out bad shots and duplicates with glee.  But this is part of why I love her.  It keeps us all a little bit more sane (and not to mention free of a lot of digital clutter).

We can make it a few more weeks, even though they feel light years away.  I’ll try to keep my jealousy in check.  Jealous that birth-three-weeks-ago doesn’t have to worry any more about when labor will start, how long it will last, how much it will hurt.  Jealous that due-in-a-week has been on bed rest for the last two (three?) months and it’s really only a matter of days (hours?) until she goes until labor, since they’ve been trying to keep her from NOT going into labor for months.  In the meantime, we’ll be here in the now.  Patience, grasshopper.