Mother's Day

I’m working today. So, we had dinner and a movie night last night, during which BabyStar insisted on unwrapping, ahem, giving me my presents. He has finally reached the age where he doesn’t blurt out what the gift is as it’s being opened, but thinks anything taped up in paper is exciting.

The children’s father chose Marley and Me for the movie, as they had already watched all the other children’s movies on the OnDemand or Pay-per-View or whatever overpriced cable thing he has at his house.

And I am not even going to bitch about the end of that movie. I’ve read the reviews. I knew what was coming. And I knew that if the kids didn’t get upset on their own, they have a crier for a mother and would have gotten upset seeing her get upset.

I was just unprepared for what got me upset.

(I would imagine I’m the last person on the planet to see the movie, but just in case I’m not here’s your huge spoiler alert.)

There’s this scene early on where the happy pretty couple is expecting their first baby, and go in to have a sonogram. There’s the tense ultrasound tech, and the nondescript, soothing doctor speaking hollow platitudes in a hushed tone.

They left out a lot. They left out the cramps. They left out the blood, the copious, unbelievable amounts of blood. They left out how a body can open up and let go. They left out the catheter, the internal ultrasound, the Rhogam shot. The left out how kind, how willing to share their personal lives all the strangers who work at emergency rooms can be.

They left out the scene where you put your clothes back on and walk out into the cruelly bright April sunshine, into everything green and growing and blooming, and go forward carrying emptiness, carrying failure.