Pregnancy & Potatoes

My grandfather was a potato man. He wasn’t a farmer, he was an eater. Loved them mashed. Loved them. Would always make such a fuss when they were made. Couldn’t get enough. Loved them with brown gravy, loved them with white gravy, loved them with butter and salt and pepper. Grandpa would finish a huge meal with meat and mashed potatoes, and while everyone else was having pie or cake or whatever we were having for dessert, he would have another helping of mashed potatoes. He thought that they were the best thing in the world. I never really understood it. I mean, I love mashed potatoes but not with any kind of spiritual fervor like my grandpa. I was always a stuffing man myself. But mashed potatoes, well, they really made the world go ‘round for my grandpa. He was 82 when I got married to Tambee and we moved to Provo and got ourselves an apartment.

Our second apartment was smaller than the first. Which is saying quite a lot. It was nothing more than small bedroom/living room with a cozy little fireplace, a smaller kitchen with room for a table for two, very romantic and a hallway that lead to a bathroom. This was all situated in the upstairs of a small house in downtown Provo, Utah where we were living and going to school and learning how to live together. We had been married for just over a year and were still really enjoying each others company. We spent a lot of time together and even by that time I learned what my job was – it was to make Tambee laugh. I have so few natural qualities I knew I had to make the most out of what I had. And more than anything I began to fear that our marriage was going to be one long illusionist show. I had to keep Tambee from looking behind the curtain. Because once she realized I wasn’t the charming, handsome, intelligent man she thought I was, then I was out on my ear. So I kept her laughing.

She was going to school and working and I was just working. We were working. It felt like that was about all we were doing. Just working. This was marriage. Work. Work at work. Work at home. And we were into a routine. I did a lot of cooking and she did a lot of cleaning. We were already in a kind of groove and we liked it. She would come home from work and I would cook something for her and we would sit and do homework and just talk and laugh. There was always the laughing.

Tambee was working at a food service place and she had to get up at some horrible hour every day. An hour they don’t even have a name for. Sickly dark. She was always tougher than me and more dedicated. She would get up so early, with just a few hours of sleep and go to work, then go to school. Every day. She didn’t really like the job she just did it. We needed the money and she was willing to put her body and mind on the chopping block and through the wood chipper so that we could make it. She was amazing. Her dedication, even today, fills me with a deep and seething envy. She makes me look so lazy. When I’m only mostly lazy. It’s when you hang out with a super skinny person, they make you look super fat, when you’re only kinda fat. You know? Anyway, she makes me look super lazy. And it makes me angry. Angry and lazy. That’s pretty much my life.

So her job was wearing her down. Slowly, day by day, she was wearing down. School and work, day after day, really weigh a person down. And you could see it in her. She would drag up the long narrow stairs, and into the apartment and have a hard time getting back up. Then it was my job to make her something good to eat, make her laugh and try and coax her into bed. Wink wink. We were, after all, still newly married.

So one day she comes home and barely makes it into the apartment, and I mean barely. She dragged herself up the stairs, stair by stair and just gets inside the apartment and lays down. Just lays down right there in the hallway with her coat still on and school bag still over her shoulder. Just lays down. Not normal. And even though I’m lazy, I’m concerned. Because if she can’t work then I can’t eat. It’s important that she not be sick or I won’t be able to live in the luxurious style I’ve become accustomed.

I laid down on the floor with her and ask her if she’s okay. And she, like always, nods and says she’s fine. Just a little tired. That’s my Tambee. Can’t quite make it up the stairs, can’t even make it down the hall to the bed, laying in the hallway, and says “Just a little tired.” She makes me look bad. Says she just needs to rest and grab something to eat. Asks me if we can have some mashed potatoes. Says that sounds super good to her. We don’t really eat potatoes. We eat rice. Strange that she would ask. I tell her I’ll make her rice. She looks disappointed and says thank you. But I’m concerned and we talk about what it might be. After a minute we stumble upon pregnancy. Could it be? So we get something to eat and head to the store. We buy ourselves one of those home pregnancy tests, bring it home, use it. And it’s negative. Negative. She’s still tired so we go to bed and try and get some rest.

The next day is worse. She doesn’t actually make it into the apartment. She barely makes it to the top of the stairs. She drags her bag, literally up the stairs, and just before she makes it to our doorway, she stops, exhausted, sits down and lays on the stairs. I watch all this from the top of the stairs with growing concern now. She’s obviously beyond normal tired. She’s literally exhausted and I don’t know what to do.

Sitting on the stairs we talk for a minute. I’m trying not to panic. And finally I suggest, although it was more like a demand, that we go see a doctor, that night, right now. We have a friend of the family who is a doctor, happens to be a gynecologist, and he’s just a couple blocks away. I tell Tambee we have to go see him. Maybe he can tell us why she’s so tired because we know she’s not pregnant. As I make this suggestion she’s nodding her head, still cradled in the crook of her elbow, still laying on the stairs with her book bag over her shoulder. With a new gleam in her eye she looks up and says, “After we’re done at the doctors can we get mashed potatoes?” “Sure.” I say. Anything to get her back on her feet and out the door.

So the visit to the doctors office is a blur for me. I only remember the nurse coming out with a smile on her face and looking at us both and saying, “You’re pregnant!” and taking us both in a big hug. It was so shocking and exciting and confusing all at the same time. But within about ten seconds of the announcement, in fact still in mid-hug, Tambee leans out from me and says, “Can we go get some mashed potatoes now?” “Sure.” I say, this time with tears in my eye because I know that it’s not just her that’s asking, it’s my first child, speaking through my beautiful pregnant wife, that while she waits to be born, mashed potatoes would really make the wait time more bearable. She even got a second helping for desert, just like her grandpa that she would meet nine months later when she was born.