The Opposite of Love – Sample Chapter
Extract from The Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum
Your picture is already hanging on the fridge. Black and white, 3 × 5—unposed, unselfconscious—you, curled up and in profile. You, wholly contained inside of me.
Here’s what I know: I eat mass quantities of red meat, curse religiously, sing out of tune but with conviction. I cry when it suits me, laugh when it’s inopportune, read The New York Times obituaries and wedding announcements, out loud and in that order.
You: You weigh less than a pint of milk. You are no longer theoretical. You are a girl.
When the doctor told us today, he clapped, as if taking credit for the whole shebang. As if he were the one to transform you into an exclamatory event, from the intangible to the concrete, an it into a baby girl. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but we knew I was having a daughter all along, from the first second we found out I was pregnant, just as we knew we would name you Charlotte. (Your dad keeps correcting me—we are pregnant, he says, not just you—but are his ankles so swollen that it looks like he’s under house arrest? Are his breasts hanging like water balloons? He may be expecting, but I am pregnant.)
“A million women have peed on these sticks. You can do it, Emily.” That’s what your dad said to get me into the bathroom to make what we suspected official. I was nervous, though, and it took a good hour and a half until I went anywhere near the toilet, and then another one after that, because he came in with me and I got stage fright. But I did it, like the millions of women before me, and then there was a plus sign, which, after triple-checking the box and confirming with a 1–800 number and peeing on a few more sticks, told us all we needed to know.
Download the sample chapter here – Sample chapter The Opposite of Love
For more information see The Opposite of Love or Parenting .