Taking the Tape Off

This weekend, we painted the nursery. Well, Bruno painted the nursery and I did all the heavy-duty angsting about the color.

For months now, I've watched my fellow June Due Date friends order their nursery furniture, select their crib sheets and clean out and rearrange their houses. I've listened with a mixture of envy and amazement as they set up registries and had baby showers: how can these women have the audacity to believe their children would actually arrive, unscathed and on schedule and without horrific disaster arriving to take away all their dreams.

I couldn't even participate in discussions about hospital tours or birthing classes. "Why do we need those things anyway," I carped. "I figure I'll just show up at the hospital and they'll tell me where to go and what to do." Truth was, I was weeping with terror at everything I was missing because of my paralysis, my inability to allow this pregnancy to become real.

And then I passed 28 weeks, and things started to change. My cervix was termed a work of art by my perinatologist. Four bouncy seats appeared in my living room, and my office furniture disappeared from bedroom #2. The vacuum left behind pronounced itself "a nursery" and demanded to be filled. I started surfing the web, looking at baby store sites and setting up little registries, small tests to see if the sky would fall.

And then I was 30 weeks, and I had ordered a chocolate polka-dotted gliding loveseat and matching poof ottoman. The babies were still thriving and the sky was still over my head and I was now dreaming in pink and green. And having a little fun

And this weekend as we round the corner on week 33, Bruno painted bedroom #2, irrevocably changing it into our nursery. I spent nearly as much as it cost to paint the room on paint samples, which Bruno dutifully painted all over the walls. This one was too minty and this one was too hospital-ly, and this one was so saturated I feared the room would look like an ode to Kermit the Frog. Nothing was right. On Thursday, Bruno announced that he was painting the room on Saturday, and that I'd seen quite enough paint samples and it was time to pick my color and get on with it. Time was up for messing around in worried anticipation and indecisive lack of commitment.

Saturday arrived, and Bruno started prepping the room: he carefully taped all the moldings, the windows and doors and junctures with the ceilings. He pushed the cribs and changing table to the center of the room and protectively covered them all. My mother and father showed up with cans of the color I'd finally selected, and Bruno started to paint.

At first, it remained about the task at hand: Bruno marveled at his newly found painting skills, and he and my mother gently tortured me about my color choice angst, calling out things like, "Oh dear, this looks awfully hospital-ly!" I couldn't discern the joke, and burst into tears, leaving my poor father to comfort me. He did so by stating, with a wink and a grin, "Oh, I don't know; I thought it looked more minty."

The afternoon went on, and my parents left and the painting was nearing completion. Bruno turned on some music, and as I lay on my bed listening, I realized it was an album we had listened to nearly incessantly on our cross-country trip when I was pregnant with the boys. I filled with feeling, remembering how happy we were, how innocent, remembering our dreams for our family. And realizing we had never gotten to this stage with our sons, never gotten to lovingly design a room devoted to their care and comfort, never changed the color of walls to celebrate their coming into being.

I started to weep, and I knew that somewhere in our house, Bruno was doing the same.

I got out of bed, and wandered the rooms, finding Bruno hunched over the deep sink with the brushes, tears dripping off his face. I hugged him, and we both sobbed together, and I heard him choke out, "It should have been blue." I made some lame joke about how I probably would have made him paint the room green for the boys too. He allowed himself a small smile, and allowed me to blot away his tears, and then ordered me back into bed.

And on the way there, I passed by the now-nursery; the walls were the most beautiful shade of green. Not minty, not hospital-ly, but some cross between a grass-stain and new leaves and early spring. It is perfect, just what I dreamed of, and I love it.

A few minutes later, Bruno asked me if I were ready to commit to the color, because he was about to take the tape off, and, once he did that, we were done. No more second guessing, no more equivocation. I told him I was ready. And I meant it.