Molly and the Homunculina

Allow me to introduce you to... my mysterious companion

This was the day, a while back, when I knocked over a sugar bowl with my stomach at a restaurant. “Don’t worry, we have a million of these in the back,” said the server, sweeping shards. It’s like piloting a rented U-Haul: my perimeter awareness is low, my capacity to strike foreign objects… heightened.

Over the past two months I've witnessed the abolition of an iron (if recent) law of American social intercourse. I'm referring to the law against commenting on a random lady's body. So far the comments have been infrequent and banal but also: gratifying.

"Aren't you adorable," said the security guard. 
"You just look so lovely," said the stranger on the subway.

It's not as though I'd been waiting years to find out whether or not a stranger on the subway believed me to look lovely, but boy has it been thrilling to find out.

The context for these comments is, I am With Child—now 8.5 months along. The body comments are pleasing not only for their defiance of norms but because they aren't actually directed at me; they are aimed at this abstraction of the future being. "You" is the word at hand, but the admiration feels more akin to complimenting a cowboy on his horse than an individual on her figure.

Here are some answers to commonly asked questions:

Is it a boy or a girl?
Girl.

Do you have a name yet?
Alarmingly, no.

How do you feel?
Fortunate, tender, convex.

Will you keep posting?
I will take a little break. Substack has an option where you can hit "pause" on billing people, so I did that. Nobody will be charged until the writing begins again. I will send an email with advance warning before that happens in case you've revised your reading habits or finances.

Is this why you haven’t returned my email?
Yes. I have entered email aphasia sooner than I thought. Not sure how online I will be in the immediate aftermath of Mysterious Companion’s arrival but the answer is probably “very little.”

A cool way to depict pregnancy: medieval painting with "cutaway shots" of fetuses

Will you write about Pregnancy™?
I have amassed stacks of material on Pregnancy™. An advantage of pregnancy is that it is one topic the author can possess to an extent that puts any scholar of any other topic to shame. No genius in history has possessed ion chromatography or vertical snail migration more thoroughly than even the below-averagely thoughtful woman has possessed pregnancy. 

On the other hand, the battlefield of pregnancy writing is littered with bodies. (Metaphorically.) I’ll revisit the writing in a couple months and if it exudes utility or interest, I will retrieve my polishing tools and get to work. If not, the pages will join the hundreds of other pages gently interred in my file cabinet.

Thank you very much for reading.

¡Wish me luck!

-Molly

p.s. I realize I haven’t sent out one of these emails in a while. Here are all the posts since I last wrote, in case you would like to poke amongst them.