I like pickles.
(of the variety pictured above, you dirty, snarky…)
I have always liked pickles. I have liked them since I was little. I don’t know exactly what it is — but they are crunchy and sour and they make whatever you put them on taste alive.
So I didn’t realize that when I entered my childbearing years, that I would have to suddenly tread so carefully around my old friend the pickle.
Because if you are a woman, of a certain age, and you have been with a boy, for a certain amount of time — your love for pickles must become secret. To be safe, it must go underground. Because if you are in public, you mustn’t reach for the pickles. You mustn’t ask to be passed the pickles. You can /try/ and sneak some relish, but do it quickly, and make sure it is rapidly concealed by bun.
Because every. damn. person. will ask you if you’re pregnant.
Oh, and they don’t just ask me. They ask me /seriously/. They actually think that there is a very real chance that I’m preggers, and this is how I’m choosing to announce it. Via pickle.
If you are a woman, of a certain age, and you have been with a boy, for a certain amount of time, everyone around you goes on high baby alert. Baby fever sweeps through your social circles like the plague. Friends, family, co-workers, they’re all on bump-watch. (Actual bump watch, I’m not really packing much extra around the midsection, and yet I actually caught it getting scanned the other day. I’m not paranoid either, or at least I got my paranoia confirmed later by a friend who said “what was she, looking for the outline of an adorable onesie?”)
If I was dipping said pickle into a tub of ice cream, and eating it pointedly while lovingly patting my belly and gazing deep into my boy’s eyes, you might have a case. But if I’m just picking up a gherkin off the cheese tray..
I liked it better back before I was an incubator being watched to see when the light would turn green.
I suspect it would bother me less if I felt like people were more respectful of the choice not to have little’uns at all. I have nothing against babies, kiddies, and all their future incarnations, but I am certainly not chomping at the bit to make some of my own. But somewhere along the line the idea that some people choose not to have kids got diminished. Maybe it is the giant upswing in the cult of ‘Yummy Mummy’, or the offspring mad celebrities. But I could say, point blank, that we’re not even /thinking/ of having kids for at least the next 4-5 years, and still get a knowing smile and dismissive nod, often even an “that’s what you think now”.
So here’s the giant sekkrit — what I think correlates directly to what I /do/. As a smart, savvy, organized young woman with a stable partner, I am in absolute and complete control of when the babies do and do not arrive. So here’s the schedule – posted on the interwebs for all to see and take note: the light on the incubator will be remaining in the unblinking red off position for at least the next 4-5 years, at which point there is still a solid 60:40 chance that it will remain that way, in perpetuity.
In the meantime, I may print a shirt for myself, and all the other happily non-expectant women out there, which reads “Yup, still bump-free (and lovin’ it)” across the lower belly.