A Guide to Being Born

The thing about this pregnancy isn’t sickness, cravings, bloating, or exhaustion. Yet. I’ve been fortunate, I know. The thing about this pregnancy is that my appetite for language has dwindled dramatically, seems near nil. I am all id, craving the material world, exercise, temperature, food. The pool. A very ripe strawberry. An hour or two in front of the air conditioner watching season one of Deadwood. Reading essays/ fiction (even writers who I adore and can usually bring me back into the fold with a turn of the page) as well as writing are exercises in lassitude, sleep-walking-in-circles. I wonder if other women experience this? Sometimes I fall asleep in front of the computer trying to get a sentence down. What I’m writing is that dull!

It’s been a few days now since I’ve finished Ramona Ausubel’s collection of short stories, A Guide to Being Born. Every story in the collection left me awestruck. More interesting than the fact that the stories are categorized (a little arbitrarily?) into life cycle stages (e.g., Birth, Gestation, Conception, Love) were the stories themselves. These were surrealist fables of parents loving their severely disabled daughter (Poppyseed), a grandmother accepting and embracing death (Safe Passage), a child playing catch with what could have been the ghost of a civil war soldier (Catch and Release), the grief of a child over a dead pet (Welcome to Your Life and Congratulations), recognition of a child from a mother who expected to give birth to an animal (Atria), acceptance of a man's weird deformity by his lover (Chest of Drawers), the gentle wooing of two former supermarket clerks. Each story was suffused with magic, demonstrated the enormity of heart reminiscent of early George Saunders stories, and was written in plain language that verged, at times, on poetry. It reminded me of why I like to read, namely to feel possibility, love, tenderness even in the most unfair of situations. The stories were a lesson in joy, which is something that feels particularly precious at this moment in time.

 Also read: A Sport and a Pastime, Salter