My tummy is tight and the room is loud with heaters blowing and OH MY GOSH I’m thirsty. I felt my way to the toilet at 2 something with no light and then stood at the sink afterwards grasping around for the tiny glass with the paper hat. I did get a small drink, but all I could think about the whole time was that YouTube video you forwarded me from Scott Chadwick a few years ago about the housekeepers giving each glass a squirt of windex and wiping out with a cleaning cloth before replacing the hat.
It’s 3 something now and this time I turned on a light instead of peeing in the dark and decided to find your water bottle for my drink. My belly is tight and my hair is fuzzy-wild and ticklish from going to bed with wet hair. You are very warm and snoring pleasantly. Wish I could be so lucky. But alas, here I am. Big, tight belly. Thirsty and wide awake at 3:25 am in Bristol, Avon, England, on March 6th, 2010.
I’ve been thinking about that beautiful brown line. The one pregnant ladies get from the top of their bellies, down the middle, past the reminder of their own birth—their belly button—to the bottom of their round bump. I’ve never understood what this is for, this line. I love it. Beautiful. Sensual. An outline? An arrow? A journey mapped? Mine is crooked. It veers off and breaks up a bit at my belly button. The casualty of belly button scar tissue and it’s hilarious stretchmark repercussions.
How very apt this seems. The journey never follows those beautiful straight lines. Nah. It’s a veerish sort of thing. Profoundly affected by decisions that seemed so beautifying and exciting and innocuous at the time. You look back later and wonder if you should warn others. “Belly button piercings might ruin your dark-brown line later on!” And you realize the absurdity not of the warning, but of the statement itself. The meanderings of my dark-brown line are my testimony. My path. To life. To motherhood and womanhood and to myself. It has never ever been straight. Nor have the meanderings been ruinous. Quite the contrary. They are my banner. The ‘interesting’ to my story. The tears and laughter and wonderful fodder for thought at 3 something in the morning lying next to your snoring self and obsessing about water vessels whilst dying of thirst.
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