Pregnant pause for thought

We had dinner at our house recently. I found myself sitting with three young couples, all in their 30s. Wine was flowing and so was the conversation.

I’m not sure how we got there but I turned to the young woman to my right and asked her if she and her husband were interested in starting a family.

She looked at me. I’m not sure what she was thinking, but she was thinking something. I know what I was thinking the moment I said it.

I wanted it back. I wanted a redo. I wanted another chance.

It wasn’t as if I haven’t asked some dumb questions in my life. I have because I’ve found sometimes dumb questions can lead to better questions. Dumb questions can be disarming.

However, Herb knows there are at least two questions you don’t ask women and I had asked one of them.

Thirty years ago, I had asked the other don’t-ask question. I hadn’t seen a friend in six months, she was wearing a loose blouse and she looked different. Different as in heavier.

I asked her if she was pregnant. When you get pregnant, you put on some weight. It’s natural and certainly I’m not going to hold it against you.

I wanted to be the first to congratulate her. So I did.

She looked at me. The look said it all. The look said, “You have just congratulated me for getting fat.”

“No, I am not pregnant.”

I wanted to disappear. Turn into a pillar of salt. Be swallowed by a manhole.

I apologized and spent the next few years apologizing to her every time we saw each other. That apology had legs and eventually, we laughed about it, but it took awhile.

“You know we’ve been trying,” said the woman seated to my right at the dinner party with the three young couples at the table.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Talk about something that is none of my business.”

I apologized again. It was worth a second apology. A second apology without several years spaced in between.

Then she surprised me. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she had hit me with a right cross. A real honest to goodness right cross or the verbal version of it.

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “I’m glad you brought it up. It’s one of those subjects that no one talks about because there seems to be an element of shame involved.”

You’re glad?

“A lot of couples are going through this and I’m not sure they talk to each other,” she said.

Turns out, two more of those couples were sitting at the table with us. That made three.

The conversation shifted and for a minute everybody stopped talking about what they were talking about and talked about trying to get pregnant, which can be more challenging in one’s 30s.

Everybody didn’t include the men. They looked like they would have preferred to be elsewhere. Like the moon or somewhere on the other side of it.

These were three outstanding, solid couples. The kind who would make great parents. The kind who should be having kids.

I’m rooting for them. For them, their husbands and the children who would be lucky to have them as parents. I will wait for the good news.