I Can(not) Hear the Bells

Sofia’s voice rang out from my phone resting on my desk, “Meghan just had her baby a few months ago! She was pregnant at the wedding but didn’t tell anybody apparently and then yeah, she had her baby in February!”

I was sitting at my desk, in the middle of eating a last minute dinner I realized I needed to eat, when she had called to catch up. I had settled on one of my specialties, a fan favorite I had developed over the years— a thrown together with whatever-I-could-find-in-the-fridge microwaved quesadilla. I know this is disrespectful to quesadillas but a girl’s gotta eat. Sofia and I had texted earlier in the week about finding a time to chat, which I had nearly forgotten when I saw her name and a photo of us in tiny red cap and gowns at our kindergarten graduation fill my screen.

“Wait… what! You’re kidding, she was pregnant? At the wedding?” I could hardly believe it. Not just that Meghan had been pregnant and already had the kid, but that Sofia was thrilled for her. I set the slice of quesadilla I had been nibbling on down, eyeing it with suspicion. As if it might betray me and announce itself, letting Sofia know that my idea of being a functioning adult was not Midwestern marriage, 2.5 babies and Craftsman style houses. I was the version of adult that buys organic wine purely because it was on sale, who revels in being able to live alone, and who microwaves tortillas and cheese for dinner because she lost track of time, noticed the sun had gone down and hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

“Yeah I know right! That’s why she wasn’t drinking!” she said. I could hear her beaming through the phone. She sounded so genuinely happy for her friend, as if it was the most normal thing in the world for Meghan to do. To have a baby, to become a mom, to suddenly be wholly responsible for another human. Somehow Sofia had entered the doorway that leads to the time in our lives when everyone is getting married and having kids and it’s acceptable, expected even, to do so. I still stood not just outside that door, but at a safe, unthreatening distance away from it so as to avoid any potential side effects of getting too close; including but not limited to self-doubt, jealousy, inadequacy, or worse, “baby fever.”

“Oh my, wow…” I struggled to find the right words, ones that attempted to match Sofia’s own excitement while also not revealing how much I could not relate to wanting to be married and have kids so young. “I can’t believe she was pregnant at your wedding and no one knew! And that she already had the baby! She must’ve been fairly far along then…? Or wait, no— I guess yours and Aaron’s wedding was a while ago now, wasn’t it? Huh… If that was in June and then she gave birth in February… She would’ve been what? A few months? Or wait… no— less than that? Ah! Math! I mean it doesn’t matter! Either way, that is so so… wild! Wow, I just can’t believe it! But Meghan definitely seemed like she would be a great mom...”

I rambled. Tried to bring it back at the end, but I knew I wasn’t going to win any Academy Awards for that performance. I bit the nail on my thumb ever so slightly, worried I’d have to explain it wasn’t that I didn’t understand why they wanted to get married and give up their independence and settle down and stop making decisions purely for themselves and have kids, just— what was the rush?

“Yeah, totally. It’s funny, too, because her dad used to say that he knew his whole life that he wanted to be a dad. Just like… a great dad. And he was— is one. And Meghan was that way too— she always knew she wanted to be a mom, like since she was a kid. Now she is one! I’m just so happy for her.”

“Oh wow, yeah that is funny… and that’s so exciting for her and her husband!” I really was trying to convey some sort of agreement surrounding the excitement and happiness they all must be feeling.

“I know! When I was talking about it with my mom she asked how long the baby was, it was such a typical thing for my mom to ask. Because Meghan and Tate are so tall, my mom was like ‘That baby probably has such long limbs!’ Too funny. But oh my gosh, Sammy, whenever you have a baby, I bet that it’s legs are going to be sooo long too!”

My uterus recoiled at the mention of having to house a fetus for nine months and my legs tightened. I was grateful we were having this conversation over the phone so Sofia couldn’t see the complete and utter panic etched across my face. I gripped the ridges of my hips, my fingers pushing into my pelvis and my thumbs jamming into the excess fat and skin on my lower back. I glanced down at my stomach, at the layer of fat that I learned in a physiology class had a specific purpose for women, which was why it seemed no amount of crunches or sit ups or twists or plank minutes could get rid of it. This particular layer of fat on my body, the one I affectionately called my couch pouch, was supposed to protect my reproductive organs— as a woman, according to this professor, I was biologically predetermined by evolution to participate in the old fashioned miracle of childbearing.‘When’ I have a baby?! No thank you!

“Oh geez,” I forced a laugh, “Well we’ll definitely have to see about that.” I chuckled again for emphasis. She laughed too and I wondered for another second if she could see through me, hear the counterfeit in my voice, but she didn’t acknowledge it.

“So yeah, and Raina’s wedding is in June so hopefully we’ll all get to see the baby then,” Sofia continued with the same nonchalance in all of her announcements regarding engagements and weddings and babies.

“Wait, what!” I felt like a broken record, “Raina! She got engaged?”

“Oh wait— I didn’t tell you? Yeah! Raina got engaged maybe... a month? After our wedding." I was silently trying to do more mental math. Trying to figure out the algorithms, timelines, diagrams and graphs that might add up or help me understand how these massive life events were unfolding at rapid pace right in front of me.

It hadn’t even been a year since Sofia had gotten married. Less than a year since I shut a part of my conscience off, went against all of my morals and flew to a wedding in Iowa in the peak of a global pandemic. Flew to be in the wedding of one of my closest friends since we were five years old. To be there to show my support and my love for my friend. That painfully long weekend in Iowa, I had met Meghan and Raina and everyone from the second part of Sofia’s life, the people she had found at her conservative college in Minnesota. Meghan had been married just over a year to her husband, Tate, and I found we didn’t have much to chat about other than she had been an English major too and was currently tutoring high school students part time for the SATs. Raina, the maid of honor, was Sofia’s best friend from college, the person she apparently experienced a religious reawakening in Austria with, and the youngest of four girls. Both of Raina’s older sisters were already married, which made Raina an expert on all things wedding, bachelorette and bridal. It also seemed to cause Raina to clarify every time her sisters were mentioned that they were married while she still was not. But she had been dating a guy, a red headed man named Adam or Ryan or Blake, for awhile now and she thought they were on the right track. A guy she had just been friends with in undergrad and even though she didn’t really find him that attractive back then, she assured me she had seen him in a new light when he slid into her DMs a few months ago.

“Stop, oh my god,” more scratches on the record, more repeating myself over and over, “So she’s engaged to who… that red headed guy? What was his name? Adam? I thought they had just started dating!”

“Close, Dylan. But yeah, no, they’re wedding is in June this summer so me and Aaron will head out to Minnesota for it for a bit and then I think to Iowa to see his family. But we have to plan a trip for me to come visit you!”

“Yes, anytime! Of course! We’ll both be vaccinated by then and hopefully things will be somewhat on their way back to normal and I can come visit you guys too. I am dying to see your guys’ new place.”

Our conversation trailed on back toward familiar spaces of sharing stories about what was going on at work and with school, what books we had been reading lately and how our families were doing. After about an hour of the standard check in, Sofia said she had to run and I had to get back to my cold quesadilla, even though I wasn’t all that hungry anymore.

I sat back in my chair, resting my head back and felt a weight crush down against my chest. Not even a year had gone by since I last saw my friend and yet it seemed as if decades worth of life events had been bursting around her nonstop. Is that how time moves when you go through that doorway to marriage and babies? Sometimes it seemed as though I could stretch out a moment like taffy, filling it with endless tiny details and tasks and still have room to feel the bittersweet sensation of boredom. I could spend hours in silence, only exchanging a few knowing glances with my dog and not noticing how quiet it had been until my phone rang. Time felt limitless. Forgiving. Malleable. Even when I wanted it to speed up, it never seemed to end. When Sofia itemized her friends' engagements, weddings, childbirths, it was as if their lives were moving at hyper speed. I felt so far behind, so disconnected from that mindset, so very much left in the dust of the slow lane. But I liked it there. I could drive at my pace, I could look around. I could enjoy the view.