Flotsam

[First, Congratulations to lovely Jo, of The Leery Polyp…we are all manically refreshing our browsers in anticipation!]

So, yesterday was my due date. And I wasn’t expecting it to be a great day, but I wasn’t expecting this in my email inbox, either:

“Im sorry about your miscarriage, but maybe it was for the best?? A child needs 2 parents!!! Make him MARRY you before you any more babies!”[sic]

I assume this person emailed me directly rather than posting in my comments section because she knew my readers reader would fillet her immediately. And I like to think of myself as relatively unflappable, but I will admit that this email shocked me. And hurt my feelings. And then made me want to tell her exactly what she could suck of mine.

Sentence One: I was going to leave the first sentence alone. Bloggers more eloquent than myself have expanded on the horribleness of the omnipresent “God’s Will” comment. But then…the writer of the email is not saying “there was something wrong with the baby, so it was for the best” but rather “you are not married, so it was for the best.” One is, you know, not at all a nice thing to say to a person who has miscarried and the other causes me to nearly crush my wine glass in my hand even as I write this.

Sentence 2: “A child needs 2 parents!!” And it would have had them, you miserable, condescending slutbitch. But, for the record, I don’t think a child does need “2 parents!!”. My mother raised me almost entirely by herself and the few contributions my father made were…the things that landed me squarely in therapy. Before I met the marvelous Nearly Fiance, I assumed that I would be by myself (not in a whiny way–it didn’t sound half bad, actually) and that I would use donor sperm (see this witty and talented lady–who better to raise the next generation, I ask you?) Children need a parent/parents who love them. The. End.

Sentence Three: I am assuming that by “him” she meant The Nearly Fiance. (I am also, apparently, assuming the writer of the email was a woman). “The Nearly Fiance” is thus named because, well, I thought it was funny—we spend a lot of time fielding questions from our families about when we are going to get married. We live together, and we have made it known that we plan to spend the rest of our lives that way (until I put The Nearly Fiance in a home in order to get my hands on all his poetry money). We are in what the kids call “a committed, long term relationship.” We plan to have a wedding someday. When I was pregnant, everyone wanted us to Just Get Married, For The Baby. Maybe we are selfish, but we want to get married for us—when we have the money to throw a gorgeous party, and preferably when I am NOT pregnant (I want to be able to wear a slinky dress and drink quantities of champagne at my wedding, so shoot me). Whether we will be married before we have kids is a tossup. The Nearly Fiance wants to wait a while before trying to have a baby, and I am not ready for another miscarriage, so that works fine for us. Because of my fertility issues, I do not have all the time in the world, so…we will start trying when the balance between our readiness and my dying girl parts is reached.

And as for “make” him marry me? Hmmm…I’ve already gotten knocked up once, and my father isn’t the shotgun type, and I haven’t practiced my knot-tying since Girl Scouts—what did you do?