Secret Club

So I have started to tell more and more people about my little pregnancy "secret" which has come with its own onslaught of emotions.  It has been really interesting to watch the different reactions from those I've told.  Of course, everyone is happy for me -- I think there's a law on the books somewhere that says you have to be -- but it has been an unexpected opportunity for people to share their stories.  There have been a lot of "when I was pregnant . . ." or "when my wife was pregnant".  And I am struck by how much people want to share.  It's not even that they want to share so much detail as much as they want to share in the rite of pregnancy and all of the rituals that go with it.  Like it's this joint adventure that people who come to this point in their lives get to go on together.

Very much like a club.  There are lots of secrets and tips and tricks and insider information that come with being a member of this club.  I wasn't entitled to any of this information before -- heck, I didn't even know there was a club or any of this information to be had.  Which is weird, right?  There was this whole facet of people's lives that I was totally in the dark about.  People I am close to and who don't keep secrets from me; and yet there was this big gaping hole in how I knew them and was able to connect with them.  On the one hand this is uncomfortable and a bit unsettling, and on the other hand I feel very embraced and secretly supported by this whole cadre of people who have gone before me. 

I feel like I have ascended the ranks now somehow, into this upper echelon of "cool kids" whose secret club is made all the more "cool" by simple virtue of its exclusivity.  Which is dumb.  Because MTV has stayed on the air for upwards of a decade by making shows about kids having kids, and any idiot who has survived puberty can make a baby.  So the club isn't really that hard to get into.  But the club of parenthood is privileged, and I am getting the sense that I don't even begin to appreciate the magnitude of that privilege yet. 






So I am thinking about the enormity of this privilege, and the funny camaraderie that is generated amongst members of this club, and how entirely odd the whole thought of a life growing inside of me is. . .

Namaste,
~Clare