Polaroid

Last year, I broke the rule and did what no spouse is supposed to do: I bought a birthday gift for my husband that was really for me. (Although to be fair, it wasn't nearly as egregious as the bowling ball that Homer Simpson bought for his wife.) I surprised him with a Polaroid camera and 4 packs of film. He was skeptical, but I insisted that it wasn't just a present for him or me, but that it was a gift for the family that we were going to have someday (I would conceive just a week later, but I didn't know that then of course). It was a gift for our children.

When I was a child and teen, I used to pore over our family albums. I loved going through them again and again. I loved looking at pictures of my baby brother (he was so adorable) and my dad with his Afro and my mom in her wedding gown. There was so much that I couldn't remember about the early days, but I had proof of them right in front of me, and that was FASCINATING to me. Looking at pictures depicting moments that I have no memory of just captivated me. It was like looking into an alternate universe.

Some of those pictures were taken by me when I got a little older. I loved to play with my mom's instant Polaroid. I loved blowing on the film in the hopes that it would make the photo develop more quickly. I loved changing the film cartridges and I loved the noise that a Polaroid camera makes as it expells a newly-taken picture. It was all so...tactile. And just real.

I thought when I got pregnant, that we would create an album for our son just like the one my parents made for me (it was for themselves, probably, but I just don't think that way about it). I thought that as he grew up and grew older that he would know what it feels like to grip such a huge, heavy, and clunky camera with tiny fingers and to peek through the viewfinder at someone that you love (and loves you - so much!), to press that button and to pull out the film and to wait in eager anticipation, surrounded by family, for it to reveal itself to you.

But no, I guess it will never be. The Polaroid instant line has been discontinued, and my son is dead. No, wait; he wasn't even born. No, wait! He wasn't even a son. Might not have even been a "he." It was only ever just a stupid pink plus sign and a lot of puking and sleeping and a very still shrimp-shaped blotch on the ultrasound.

I should be on maternal leave right now, I should be spending my days and my nights with my baby. I should be feeding him, bathing him, talking to him, dressing him, burping him, holding him. Smelling him. Seeing him. Hearing him. Touching him. I should know by now that he ever existed. But he didn't, and I don't. This family of mine is still just a daydream.

I should be loving him, and instead here I am in this stupid gray cubicle in this awful windowless room, weeping and alone. It's been months since I last cried over this. I'd hoped that I was finished.

This sucks, my friends. This fucking sucks.