There is this thing my brother does, his wife tells me, when she feels sick; he lies in bed next to her and massages her hands until she falls asleep. There is something about this that makes me ache a little bit inside. I can’t quite put my finger on it, I can't quite pinpoint the exact cause within the actions, but there is definitely something about it that makes me hurt in some hazy way, as if suffering from pains in a phantom limb. She feels sick a lot these days, waves of nausea rising in her at regular intervals. A few months ago we went to a spa and a praying mantis jumped on her cream towelling gown. The ladies massaging almond cream into our calves laughed and laughed as she tried to swat it away, telling her, “You know this means you will be pregnant soon. A Praying Mantis is always a baby.” And we in turn laughed at the quaintness of the folk lore, the fertility equivalent of ice cream leading to nightmares or playing with matches causing you to wet the bed. A month and a half later, my brother cleared his throat in that way he does when he has something of consequence to say, and told us, “So guys, a bit of news… Corlia is pregnant.” and then there was much hugging and congratulating and sly tears that leaked from the corners of our rapidly blinking eyes and Matthew hurrying to the freezer to retrieve the bottle of champagne he’d previously secretly stashed in order to quickly chill. As we sat and talked about it, laughing at the sheer absurdity of this age old occurrence that is completely and utterly miraculous with each happening, she said to me, “Remember the praying mantis?”
And now she suffers from morning sickness, that is really also afternoon sickness and night sickness and when she does, my brother lies in bed next to her and massages her hands until she falls asleep.
We went to the coast last week and at night, when I lay in bed down the hall from them and I could not sleep, I thought of who that house harboured. It was no longer just us; there was the tiny thumb sized (thumbnail sized?) human they are bringing into the world too. And I thought about how something was fundamentally changing. I can’t fully describe it, I’ve yet to find the words, but now when someone asks me what is happening, I want to say, “Everything. Everything is happening.”
