Small Pink Things: Part I

A friend asked me to be in a wedding for the upteenth time and while I certainly have bridesmaid experience I gave the wedding a miss. I sent a good present though and that at least calmed the bride. She really couldn’t fathom why on earth I would turn down such a good offer to be bridesmaid for the 12th time but composed herself when her next-door neighbour agreed to do it. So I went to the David Jones gift registry to buy something that would alleviate my guilt at declining both my bridesmaid obligation and attendance as wedding guest. It used to be white goods and wine glasses but now it’s all stainless steel and man that shit is expensive, especially when purchasing solo. Anyway the great thing is that if I’m asked again in the near future to go to a wedding I will have a partner to go halves in the gift. Certainly not the blind date even though he wasn’t from a Wes Craven movie but because finally Todd got his shit together!


My friend Gwen, started talking about having children very soon after the wedding. Sometimes I feel some girls are programmed from an early age to marry and breed before they even really experience life. This seems rarer these days though. It’s all about one thing. Biological clock. Tick, tick, tick. It can all get pretty fucking loud.


It has been interesting watching friends go through the whole trying to get pregnant thing (not literally of course), pregnancy tests, great results, miscarriage, one that sticks and the emotional roller coaster the whole thing creates. It never ends. From conception to death, yours preferably, that is one fairly important screw you are having.


Gwen was quite concerned about her life changing, which of course it did, immensely. She knew that down deep inside but persisted in asking people who have children whether or not that is true.


“Oh shit, yes,” they told her, “life will never be the same.”


“Bugger,” she said.


“No really. Never. Never, ever, ever, ever.”


“Right yes. Think I’ve grasped that. Thanks for your input (asshole),” she murmured, dry reaching.


Some just laughed hysterically at her and wandered away.


I just watched this and whispered to her, “told you.” Because it was amusing for me and because I was also jealous of the fact that she had a small child inside of her that will some day be calling her ‘Mummy’ (and much later ‘bitch’ and ‘mother fucker ‘in its teenage years).


I think Gwen had a very small, I’d even go so far to say teeny, denial problem about it arriving. I had been asking her for the last month or two of her pregnancy if they had any baby stuff yet and if they had prepared the nursery (I knew they bloody hadn’t because I was there quite a lot) and the answer of course was ‘no’ to both questions but when the nursery issue was raised she mumbled something like,


“We’re just putting it in the study”.


“Ahh right. What study?” I ask because I know they haven’t got one.


“Top of the stairs,” she says.


“That’s not a study. That’s the top of the stairs. There are no walls, just a computer and the bathroom. It’s a landing.”


“Proximity of the bathroom’s important.”


“You’re ambulant. Getting to the bathroom will not be a problem.”


“Good to be close for leakages.”


“What leakages? C’mon,” I say, “just make a nursery in one of the three bedrooms you have.”


“Nah.”


“A small one, with just a miniature frieze of tiny blue bunnies or something?” I beg, because this child will be my Godchild and I don’t want a Godchild of mine being placed willy-nilly on a cold hard brown tiled floor next to a desk and a scary stairwell.


Then I recall that this is the girl whose wedding I was bridesmaid in where we picked out her wedding dress in 30 minutes and she used to sit back, talk about it now and then while leafing slowly and very infrequently through reception venue brochures, just a wee three months before the wedding.


The hardest thing for her after she fell preggers was the lack of social invitations. Most of their friends like a drink or two and didn’t consider often inviting a pregnant woman who can’t drink, although she made for a pretty good driver so got a flag when it suited transport arrangements. She worried that their societal position would look like a black void after giving birth and having an extra attachment that may or may not lie quietly at dinner and can’t really go to the pub with them. It was all very scary to her.