Member-only story
Pro-Control, Pro-Options
Walking up Broadway back to my apartment early on a Sunday evening, feeling good after watching a game and with a few beers in me, my live-in girlfriend at the time called me.
“Can you stop by the drug store on your way home and pick up a pregnancy test? I’m late.”
Whatever good feelings I had in that moment were instantly flooded out by nerves, anxiety, panic and fear. We weren’t ready. We were on the path to marriage, that much we knew. (Divorce, too, that much we didn’t).
But our apartment was small and being parents is something we envisioned, if at all, in the distant future. We didn’t think we’d ever want kinds, much less have them.
What would we do?
Years later, lying in my girlfriend’s bed, not too far from falling asleep for the night, she turns to me and tells me she needs to tell me something. I tell her OK, whatever it is, just say it.
“I’m late,” she says.
I wish I could remember exactly what I said in response. It was something along the lines of OK, whatever happens, happens, we’ll figure it out, I love you.
I hid, to a certain degree, my anxiety and panic. Maybe having been there before made me more calm, less jittery.
