Babies babies babies babies!!!!! I had a full day filled with baby talk. First it was the baby shower, which I have to say my cousin scored at . . .I mean she got everything, from powders and shampoos, to cribs and change tables, she won't have to buy anything . . .well until her baby gets here and the next 20 or so years she has to support the child. I had fun at the shower, but started to feel nautious when the essentialist gender rhetoric was flying free and wild. There was no way to control it . . . not just about the gender of the child, also about the gender roles of the parents. I tried not to scream, but seriously at times I wanted to cry, all these intellignet women, sitting in this room saying so much crap . . . There was this sence of trapment, not just pressure to have babies, but all this talk of graduation moving on, the next stages of your life, buying into the system. NO I don't want to have kids, NO I don't want to buy a house, NO I dont' want to get a car, NO I don't want to get married, NO I dont' want to settle in the burbs and be brainwashed in to hegimonic capitlaist normativity!! Fuck. (the irritation I felt from this house filled with femme staight blond women was compounded with the fact, that I couldn't eat anything at the party, this I blame on no one but myself, I should have brought my own food, I just didn't think about it . . .oh well) Putting all of this aside, the party really was beautiful for claire, I mean, three of her friends that she has known her whole life organized a sweet party, everyone there had either has known Claire her whole life, or was related to her and just met her a few years ago when Claire met her birth mother. So much love was in that house . . .
in the evening Claire and I rented Rabbit Proof fences , which I recommend, while we were sitting on my bed, Claire grabbed my hand and placed it on her belly, I can't explain how beautiful it was to feel the baby moving around, stretching, trying to get comfortable . ..
It become so real at the moment, she is having a baby, a real live child in less than a month will enter the world. I felt so happy, proud, and in awe of this moment. I can't imagine what it must be like to have this child growing inside of you, knowing that your body has the capabiltiy to care for a living being . . .the pressure you must feel to know that soon you will be responsible for a life . . .I lied on the bed with my arm around claire dreaming about this little child that soon I will be the aunt of and soon my cousin, who I grew up as a child with was now having child of her own. I know she will be an excellent mother . . .and this time when I feel like crying they are the happiest tears that I have inside . . . .