Planting Dandelions Read Online Free Page A

plastic stick, then watched with Patrick as the test developed. It was hardly the first time I’d nervously waited for the results of a pregnancy test, but this was a different kind of nervous. It was looking into the same little window from the opposite side.
    The first pink line, and then the second, developed, confirming that I was indeed pregnant—and as far as I was concerned, the first woman in the history of the world to ever have been. It was critical that I gestate perfectly. I immediately regretted the couple of glasses of wine I’d had since conceiving. How bad was that, I wondered. Where else had I already gone wrong? I needed answers. I ran straight out and bought a copy of the prenatal health classic What to Expect When You’re Expecting, commonly referred to as WTE within online pregnancy support groups—a convenient abbreviation, as it converts readily to WTF after you read the book.
    What it told me to expect is that breeding is a highly complex and delicate process that requires standards and oversight not enforced in nuclear facilities. Fall short of 100 grams of protein a day, and you have only yourself to blame for your child’s subpar intelligence. Allow preservatives or alcohol to cross the placenta, and you are begging for social and emotional disorders. Sugar? Why don’t you just take a shit in the gene pool? It’s the “Scared Straight” program of prenatal health.
    We moved from our one-bedroom apartment into a two-bedroom downstairs duplex, and began scavenging yard sales for baby gear. The array of equipment deemed essential by parenting magazines was staggering. We couldn’t hope to acquire all of it, even secondhand. The cost of raising a child to adulthood is a newswire perennial, with the bottom line always estimated to be roughly even with the GDP of a small developing nation. I take a skeptical view of the math today. It strikes me as a transparent scare tactic to keep poor people from reproducing, perpetuated by the same experts who would have it believed that a human fetus can’t thrive if exposed to a Twinkie. But then, I believed every word. We needed that stuff.
    Relax, said my midwives. Get some diapers and a car seat.
    â€œHow much will it all cost?” I fretted to Patrick.
    â€œIt will always cost a little more than we have,” he said with uncanny foresight. “Relax.”

    The pregnancy books and magazines set impossible standards, but at least they were measurably impossible. I could tell where I came up short in grams of protein, or pairs of booties, and decide how much I was willing to worry about it. But I had no way of knowing if I possessed enough love or patience, or if I had the right psychological equipment on hand. I could avoid hazardous substances like preservatives and alcohol, but what about toxic feelings? Did anger, resentment, and insecurity cross the placenta? I hoped not, because I was surely exceeding the safe level. Angst churned in my gut like acid, and the source of it was the gaping disconnect between the way Patrick and I were experiencing pregnancy. It might seem like an obvious state of affairs, given that I was pregnant and he wasn’t, but I had naively assumed that we would be of one mind, if not womb, from the moment of conception to the moment of birth. Meanwhile, he acted as if expecting a baby was just one of several compelling things going on in his life—sometimes as if it was the least of them.
    I thought our rock-and-roll lifestyle was behind us, even before I got pregnant. When a kitchen fire shut down the bar I worked in, I heard it as last call, and decided to sign up with a temp agency and look for office work instead. Patrick, who already had a straight job, had been playing a little guitar on weekends with a rhythm-and-blues cover band, but it conveniently crashed and burned around the same time. Anyone could see the writing on the wall. But where I read “The