Longings for inclusion

written by Orley Garber during her pregnancy

A grape is stuck in my throat as I stand alone in the smaller of the two rooms that make up my tiny preschool. It isn’t the kind of grape you chew and swallow until it disappears – more a grape-like thing lodged there, preventing me from talking. I never have it when I am alone with Mummy. I usually don’t have it with Daddy, but yesterday I had a haircut after school and by the time he came home it’d grown so big I couldn’t tell him about my day. It’s mostly there on Saturdays when Grandma and Grandpa visit us, and it’s always there with friends and teachers, always there at school. Only my friend Simon can make it go away. I stand there in that little room with the puzzles and the crayons, hoping that as I’m by myself some words will come out, but they don’t. 

The grape was there for two years. I promised my teacher Mrs. Grimshaw, via my mother, that I would talk on my 4th and then my 5th birthday, but both times as I stood on the stage with the other Birthday Children the grape turned into a plum. I wanted to talk. At home, I could sing all the songs and recite all the poems that Mrs. Grimshaw taught us; I remember them still. I loved painting and playing outside and learning my letters and numbers. I wanted to talk to Mrs. Grimshaw and my friends, but as soon as I entered Heronsgate Nursery School each morning I would feel the grape. 

I watched the other children. No sign of any grapes. They sang and talked and played and squabbled, especially Gabrielle, who always had a circle of girls around her and ignored me. I wanted to be her. I wanted to be inside the circle. “What the magic word?” she would ask each friend before letting her in. “Abracadabra,” I thought. Why couldn’t I say it? “Please” the girl would say. Why didn’t I know that “please” was the magic word? The grape got bigger. 

It took years, decades, to make a connection between the grape and anxiety. Even today, when I mention my two years of silence people joke: “Well, you sure made up for it.” They have seen me take on leadership roles on committees and in my professional life; they have seen me teach children and adults, address groups of parents, chant Torah in synagogue. They don’t know about the hours of rehearsal I need before a public appearance in front of anyone other than children. When I ran the Jewish Society at Oxford University, I had to stand up and announce upcoming events at the end of our Friday night dinners. I would practice: “The bagel brunch is on Sunday. Tell your friends.” 

Friends have seen my agitation in the face of the smallest of challenges – a wrong turn, a missed train, a changed plan. Take a breath, I hear, and want to scream: It’s not that easy!  I know what my anxiety could cost me after all this time, but I can’t get as far as taking a breath. I can’t wait that long.

And now, with my baby growing inside me, life is all about waiting. There are years that have flown too fast; this one stretches in front of me, unmanageable. How will I get to the end of May, let alone December? So far there’s a head, a body and maybe some hair on the ultrasound, a distinct form labeled BABY. The baby is 7.7 cm long. Someone else, someone completely vulnerable, is depending on me to stay calm. An even more terrifying thought: if I can’t handle a rescheduled coffee, how will I cope if I lose this baby? I can’t lose this baby. 

Maybe what will help me is the thought that if this all turns out right, I could be inside the circle. Gabrielle’s circle became Maggie’s in elementary School and Nina’s in high school. The reasons for my exclusion were articulated: I was fat, I wasn’t good at sports, I must be a lesbian if I was staring at the girls. 

The tension has always been deeper in my body than my throat; the throat just caught my attention first. I walked late. I spent afternoons when I was in elementary school lying on the couch, tightness in my chest and psoriasis on my toes, fingers and butt, a skin infection I now know is stress-related. I got my period late. I kept boyfriends at bed’s length, telling them and myself that my diagnosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome, and probable lack of fertility, made them better off without me. My exclusion became more and more connected to my femininity, or lack thereof. 

But then they extracted some eggs. Healthy eggs that defied even my optimistic fertility doctor’s expectations. One of those miracle eggs is back in me now, half of a C-class embryo that has become a growing baby. 

As soon as I got the news that I was pregnant, I felt a switch go off in my body that said: Nothing else matters now but you, baby, but maybe what I am feeling is even more than the yearning for a healthy child. Maybe the yearning is to be able to look out, from inside the circle, and say: Now I am a mother. Now I belong.