A few Wednesdays ago I received an envelope from my doctor’s office in the mail. Ah, these must be the results of my genetic screening test, I thought.
Hang on, my doctor has recently corrected me away from calling it a “genetic” test; apparently I was merely taking a basic DNA screening. I’d previously believed that all of the various levels of noninvasive prenatal blood testing were technically genetic testing, but she said no. Later I tried Googling “dna genetics” to learn about these crucial differences in terminology and the whole first page was links to cannabis seeds and swine, and I closed the tab and gave up then. You know what, I thought, I will entrust this matter into the hands of the Science Masters. As for my part in the Prescriptivist Battles, I will continue to respond with some heavy-handed remark on the baby’s sex every time the doc mentions its gender.
But let me flash back for a paragraph to my first appointment, when the doctor asked me how I wanted the gender, er, sex results delivered. We could schedule a phone call, she said. I briefly mathed out all of the scenarios in which the beau and I could both be in the same place to take a phone call between the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm on a weekday, and none of them made any sense. I asked: can you just send them in the mail instead? Well, I guess mail will take longer, but sure, she said.
Was mail really that odd of a request? I feel like my admittedly narrow window onto “gender” “reveals” always seemed to include the opening of an envelope at some point, unless they included a pink or blue confetti cannon or a very large tiered cake out of which Rob Thomas and Santana leapt to sultrily croon the big news (“Well it’s a vul-va…”). I also really liked that with mail, you didn’t have to talk to anyone. How do you even respond when someone calls to tell you what “type” of kid you’re having? Thank you? I love you? Will you be my new mother? Can I borrow your car? I can feel my social panic rising just thinking about it.
So at that first appointment they took my blood away from me and shipped it to San Diego, California, and some time passed. And some more time passed, and still I didn’t hear anything. And finally an envelope showed up in the mail, and I thought: The test results are here! Now I get to see if my genomes are, like, DNAing correctly, or whatever sciencey divination they performed down near the Baja border, probably whilst wearing hemp poncho hoodies and calling each other brah.
Straight away I tore open the envelope and unfolded the first third of the paper, and was surprised to see the letterhead of my doctor’s office with a bunch of empty space under it. Where was, uh, where was the text? Did they accidentally send me a blank sheet? Feeling suspicious, I began unfolding the second third of the paper more slowly, for which I am glad, because I juuuuust managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of the handwritten word “It’s” before folding the paper back up in a panic and stuffing it into the kitchen junk drawer.
I stood there, mind racing. Why would they send me the fucking SEX RESULTS before I even knew if I cleared the DNA screening or not??? This was my first time taking this test so I was clueless as to how the process really worked but I’d pictured, I don’t know, getting a letter with some lab results first, or maybe even just a Post-It note scrawled with “U FORMED BABBY OK.” Instead they came at me with the big spoiler and not even a single alert.
The beau was traveling for work and wouldn’t be home until the following night. In the meantime I was sitting on some white-hot information. I could find out if it was a boy or girl now, like right this second, and the allure of that knowledge was dizzying. I let myself imagine sneaking a look and then feigning surprise when the beau came home. Oh! A ___! Wow! Never woulda guessed! What would really happen in that scenario is that I’d mutely gaze at him with a scrunchy guilt face until I confessed. So for the next 24 hours, the secret stayed safe in the drawer.
The thing is, though, I am good about delaying gratification. Either that or I am obnoxiously bad about delaying gratification. It took me until two days after Christmas to finish opening some of my gifts, so I’m voting obnoxiously bad. I guess I like waiting until the moment feels right to enjoy something. So the next night, when the beau was home and the kid was in bed and he suggested we open the letter and find out, I looked at him like he’d lost his goddamn mind. Right now? Are you kidding? But we’re just standing here in the kitchen in our pajamas! So? was his rejoinder. So?? There’s nothing special about (gestures wildly at entire life) this!
What exactly constitutes a special way of finding out which sex organs your kid has? I didn’t know. I didn’t need or want a confetti cannon or a horny Santana guitar solo. But this was the last time I was ever doing this, at least I hoped so anyway. I hadn’t done any of the standard memory markers during my pregnancy with Vera — no fun announcement, no themed party, no maternity photos. I didn’t even use a damn pregnancy tracker app. And there’s a point to which not engaging in stuff is fine, and a point to which you start to wonder if being too cool for baby school is making you miss out. This was our last chance to find out our baby’s sex, and it seemed disingenuous to not even try to elevate the event beyond the level of, say, casual weeknight opening of bills.
So the envelope sat in the drawer for another 24 hours while I thought about how to do this thing. I had a friend who’d gone out to lunch with her spouse, handed the results to their server, and asked to have one dessert brought out if it was a boy and another if it was a girl. I thought this was sweet and simple and genuine, but we obviously couldn’t copy it because it was theirs. So I thought some more. We could… go out to eat and… open… the envelope… in the restaurant? Uh. Why don’t we just have dinner at home and open some wine or something? the beau asked. Buh-buh-but that’s what we do to celebrate EVERYTHING, I said. Shouldn’t this be DIFFERENT?
Okay, I’m all for making something special, but I was starting to make perfect the enemy of good. So the following night — yes, three whole days after I’d first received the letter, making me the Guinness World Records holder for obnoxiousness — I agreed to cook some kind of “treat” dinner neither of us can even remember now (it was probably boxed macaroni and cheese) and open a mini bottle of champagne which had enjoyed a previous life as a stocking stuffer. After we were done eating I said, OK, let’s close our eyes and I’ll open the letter, and then I’ll count to three and we’ll open our eyes and look. OK, the beau agreed.
One, two, three. BOY, I said. Ahh, the beau said. I set the letter down on the coffee table and we both stared at it. The “y” in boy was shaky, like someone had started writing a “g” and then thought better of it and carefully drew over it with a loopy tail. It’s a bog?
It was utterly imperfect and unremarkable.
Of course I’m saving it forever.
