Literary Newspaper · Read at night at the moment
Whether it is for pregnancy or for life, the author Udon has a very unique perspective and writing style, and can pick up a piece of ordinary time at any time to make it shine. On May 25, 2022, in the 22nd week of Udon's pregnancy, she began to write "Walrus Diary", which records the journey of becoming a mother and losing a mother at the same time with rich imagination and subtle narrative ability.
This article was first published in "One".
The pregnancy of a strange woman
One day, I suddenly started looking up the difference between a sea lion and a walrus. Because I vaguely felt like I had become one of them. Literally, a sea lion is a lion on the sea, and a walrus is an elephant at sea. I think I may have accidentally had the laziness of both: reclining on a sofa stacked with pillows and blankets, like being on a tidal flat covered with warm sand, with a sun above my head and an ocean around me. The coffee table with precious fresh water and food is a broken piece of ice floe, seemingly out of reach.
I stretched out my leg and tried to hook the ice over it, cursing global warming or something in my mind. My cat swam over and licked me, and when he found that he couldn't eat it yet, he swam away again. My husband was writing his dissertation on the shore not far away. I couldn't see him, but I thought he was still in human form, wearing sunglasses and holding a cocktail.
I'm pregnant. I don't know what about the others, but I seem to have become something else.
First of all, my upper and lower body disappeared. Originally, there was a clear demarcation between them, with the top for clothes and the bottom for pants. Now it's gone, or rather buried under a full, full belly. I was so confused when I stood in the fitting room.
I had been wearing pants for more than thirty years, and suddenly I couldn't find the place where it should be. If you want to keep your hips and thighs comfortable, lift your pants up to the middle of your tummy. But this belly is so united and so delicate that it refuses to be divided and bound by any elastic band. I tried to think back to the middle-aged man with a beer belly, trying to get some inspiration. As a result, the first thing that comes to mind is the belt on the stomach and the belt buckle that is as bright as an exclamation point. I now finally understand the true meaning of the belt, which is not a belt at all, but a bold and black underline to emphasize the difference between the upper and lower body. This distinction is so basic and important.
If you look at children's drawings, you will see that the human body is usually divided into these two parts, and they are often painted in different colors. I turned around and looked at my side: my body was like a thick branch, and the fruit on it seemed to be growing in the direction I wanted — and the maternity app told me that the baby would grow from blueberry size to cherry, then to apple, coconut, and finally to a watermelon. And just like that, my upper and lower body disappeared and became my front and back body.
If you're like me, you've stumbled across walrus, and you'll see that this streamlined body is perfect for swimming, sneaking, foraging, and courting in the water. Walruses can reach speeds of up to 24 kilometers per hour in the water and can only move clumsily on land on their short hind legs.
I clumsily walked out of the fitting room, lost in thought. Am I a streamlined human being better suited to live in the ocean?
If I could float in the water throughout my pregnancy, my belly would become an island that kept growing. (If a thousand pregnant women float together, the waters will turn into a scenic Thousand Island Lake.) ）
But nature is so mysterious that an upset stomach can put an end to such a wonderful idea. I have a keen sense of smell and have even developed some synaesthesia: I don't know what kind of fun Hayao Miyazaki's animated film "The Goldfish Princess on the Cliff" brings to you, but I retched a few times along the way - the goldfish princess is probably fine, and her huge, beautiful Queen Mother of the Sea should smell fishy.
Before the awakening of motherhood, there was a primitive animality in me that seemed to awaken earlier. I imagined one of my female ancestors, resting in the depths of a cave, her nose twitching sensitively and her eyes sparkling. I'm the same now, when I smell my next-door neighbor's fried hairtail, I immediately yell and sound the alarm. My husband (let's call him Al) came running over, closed all the windows, and lit a stick of incense by my bedside. Sometimes there is also a plate of fruit. The woody aroma and fresh fruit gave me more comfort than I had ever been.
Ah, the primeval forest, my hometown. My husband (also known as Al) still has some human worries about how we will deal with ourselves when our children reach puberty. I can't think so deeply right now. I hid in my cave and rested, browsing food delivery apps, my eyes shining.
I didn't seem to be able to really realize what was going on, or maybe my subconscious was refusing to admit it. I rarely think about this child, because I have to hurry up and think about myself. My body was like I was sick, but everyone said it was normal.
Diagnosed, oh no, the test that confirmed the pregnancy, I found that I had a report with a value as high as 100,000, and the normal person should not have a value of more than five. The moment I saw the upward arrow (indicating that the value was too high), I seemed to see a small line written underneath: "You can ascend to heaven." "It's over! I must have something wrong! It turned out to be just a pregnancy. The doctor even said that the data was quite healthy. A normal pregnancy state made me no longer refer to the standard of "normal people".
If you think about it, there is a living human being inside a living human being. I tried to accept it: this is too normal! It's as normal as a matryoshka doll, as normal as a stacked plastic lunch box, as normal as a sandwich mochi, and as normal as a dumpling wrapped in a coin. The real "abnormal" should be men! They are hollow eggs all their lives, with only egg whites and no yolks. They don't know what to think about their useless mammary glands that can get breast hyperplasia, mastitis and breast cancer, and they even put such a fragile reproductive system outside the body and entrust the task of conceiving offspring to others.
Al (the child's father) pondered for a moment: maybe it was because our men were too show-off and wanted to run away.
Because of the presence of this embryo in my body, I became the epidermis, the outer shell. Since the baby was not yet born, I became a swaddling cloth, a coat, and a stroller. I only dare to associate myself with these functional words, and I never dare to think about the sacred word: Mom. Even if it's written as "hemp", it won't work. In my life, there is only one and only one mother, and my mother is her, my mother. I'm an impostor, how dare I be her? How can I replace her?
It's just that my hearing is more sensitive now. In supermarkets, parks, and random streets, I always hear children calling "Mommy". Children will always call "Mommy" over and over again, and there will always be someone who will answer over and over again. Maybe I have to be called by another person a thousand times before I can finally admit that the person who is called "Mom" is me. It's like some kind of contract, to recognize the only "mother" among thousands of voices, and once you answer once, you have to answer forever.
Al is even further away from the word "father". After all, he was a man, unable to feel morning sickness and fetal movements, and could not even step into the ultrasound room for half a step. All he can do now is to raise his little belly a little bigger, creating an illusion of "we are pregnant together". When we hug, the belly and belly will be the first to stick together, like some kind of boot ceremony.
In five months, a long family drama is about to be staged. At the moment, we only got the role, we haven't got the script, we haven't met the director, we haven't even seen the money.
However, this drama, we have some review and expectation for it. It must not contain bloody, violent, pornographic and other content that is not suitable for children, and the process should not be too tortuous, and the ending should not be too gloomy.
I used to imagine that when two bars appeared on the pregnancy test, I would say to Al:
Friend, the appearance of two bars here means that we have only one choice in life. The two of us no longer have the right to fall and go crazy, and we must do our best to avoid traffic accidents, family failures, premature descent into nihilism and accidental death. From now on, we can only live honestly and honestly, because there will be a pair of innocent eyes that will monitor us all the time, reflect us, and let us know what we are. This child is the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes". We can't hide it in front of him or her.
What an exciting speech, I was almost moved by myself. It's just that I'm using a cleaned box of tofu to take a urine test for pregnancy, and I'm organizing it in my brain (no wonder it's so smooth). As a result, the pregnancy test stick I bought did not show two bars at all, but directly displayed the two Chinese characters "pregnant". I didn't have time to say anything, I just screamed, and Al outside the toilet door understood.
"We made it!" He said.
"Our relationship has to be successful." I know that's what he's actually trying to say.
"It's not success," my speech jumbled in my head, "it's honesty." ”
I was probably a little excited.
"Our mirror is coming! We're going to be honest, damn it! ”
Now, five months later, I sit up from the couch with chapped skin, aching skin and bleeding gums. My appetite was much better, especially at the thought of having a thin umbilical cord to deliver nutrients to the little man who had already taken shape.
For the first 30 years of my life, I was always running away and giving up easily. Not anymore. I had to be honest: happy, proud, vulnerable, fearful, tired.
How to say it.
All.
Content selected from
Udon/Author
Surprise丨Guangxi Normal University Press
New Media Editor: Yuan Huan
Pictured: Stills from "Goldfish on the Cliff".
id : iwenxuebao
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