The Pleasure Of... Discomfort
On trying not to be macho about pain, and also, unrelatedly, lasagna.
I’ve been in quite a bit of pain this week. The doctor I saw for my routine checkup gave me a look when I said that and asked, pain or discomfort? Where’s the line, I asked. That’s the problem, of course, the incommunicable intimacy of pain, which you can only measure against your own, previous experience of pain. Or discomfort. To me the line is a reaction: does it make you panic? I’ve been experiencing intermittent, acute, but not panic-inducing discomfort: as far as I can tell, a combination of the baby’s position, round-ligament pain, and general crowding in the abdomen, the interloper throwing elbows to make room. It feels like a sharp stitch, and moves around like that. It’s worse when I’m walking, because I can’t adopt any of the positions that might relieve it, at least not without attracting attention, which is the last thing you want when the only kind of pregnancy pain anyone really knows or expects is labor. (We got a cab home from the doctor’s because I couldn’t walk comfortably, and I felt the need to talk loudly about how we weren’t going to the hospital, to reassure him that his upholstery and his insurance were safe.)
Obviously there’s nothing obviously joyful or pleasurable about this moving-target pain, especially not on top of a deadline crunch. But it isn’t grief or injury. It isn’t chronic, or terminal. It’s reminding me to find ways to accept help and to ask for it, both of which I’m bad at. It’s reminding me of what my body knows, and that it knows not to panic. My favorite part of prenatal yoga, incidentally, is going around the room and hearing how far along people are, and what they’re dealing with physically—a reminder of the variability of this sometimes monolithic-feeling experience. Often it’s things I’ve only read about, very occasionally it’s something I share. Mostly it’s a moment to imagine those parents-to-be at home, trying to sleep, to eat, to roll over or sit still or breathe deeply, and not panic, to take help where it’s offered.
T and I have taken years to figure out how to cook together, grappling with each other for control. When I’m alone, I cook slowly; I like the ritual and the rhythm of it. He’s a fast cook and a fast eater, a fueler. I don’t like to be rushed, and he doesn’t like to be slowed or corrected. So generally, I cook and he does the dishes. I’m aware of how that looks, or how it might look to a child, and want to model something more equitable and more joyful in the kitchen. We’ve learned that one of us has to be in charge, or we find a recipe that can be the boss of us both. So we found a butternut squash, kale, and ricotta lasagna recipe last week, and put it together, in a fairly slapdash fashion, a few nights ago, adjusting it based on the pan we had, the amount of filling, and around the things in the recipe that seemed silly (who is leaving a third of a box of lasagna? Just... adjust it so I can use all the noodles!) Anyway, it wasn’t the greatest recipe, so I won’t link to it, but it was joyful to make and joyful to eat, and now I’m on a kick, and planning to revisit a lasagna that IS great, this Martha Stewart (!!) recipe with sausage, lemon, chard, and white sauce. As good an excuse as any to buy a better baking dish.
Reading & Writing
I’m still writing it up, but I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jenny Offill about her new novel Weather this week, which has grown on me the more I’ve thought about it. She is wonderful, and we had a great conversation about climate change, art, activism, and the forces that stop us getting involved—as well as about libraries, British vs American humor, and many other things. I also learned that the Ace Hotel lobby is too loud for an interview, but the adjacent Breslin isn’t bad, and that they do a massive plate of very delicious pastries for $15, if you are ever in that part of town and need to carb-load with two or three good friends. You never know.