The hot air filling our lungs didn’t make physical exertion sound any more appealing, but as we rode down the street a surprising breeze broke the humidity.
Barbara led us along the side of the road, her hair streaming behind her. She and S were well-matched travel companions, both always ready to dive into the ocean or go for a late-night swim. I watched how they relaxed without envy: I loved them both and yearned to be more like them, following their example and welcoming their influence. Pedaling along, I dropped my shoulders and took a deep breath, glancing at my hips and thinking of the fetus curled up inside me. That morning I’d read that it was now about the size of a fig. I thought of its heartbeat, wondering if it was aligned with mine.
Up ahead, I saw that Barbara and S had made a left turn into a field. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at me, her teeth crooked and charming. “Shortcut!” she hollered. I nodded as I steered off the road, my bike bumping on the new, uneven terrain.
The field seemed vast. As I pushed on, I felt my bike lose speed in the thick grass. The clouds that had offered coverage for most of our ride parted, the breeze stilled, and I broke into a sweat beneath the hot sun. It beat against my forehead.
I could tell S and Barbara were starting to struggle as well: their postures changed, and they appeared to push their pedals with more focused effort than before. A light-headedness overwhelmed me as my chest tightened. The horizon was dramatic: all blue sky and tall green grass. I worried for a second about the baby—how is his heart rate doing now that I am so out of breath?
S turned toward me, and I couldn’t help but think of how gross I must’ve looked—my face has a tendency to get splotches of red whenever I do anything strenuous. My swollen breasts felt sore beneath my oversized T-shirt, and I was bloated and dirty. I fought my instinct to stop, feeling a new determination rise up in me. I am with the people dearest to me on a bike ride on a beautiful day, I thought. Don’t you dare wuss out.
I pedaled harder, pushing through the discomfort. My thighs burned. I swallowed a chunk of spit. I saw the road ahead and watched Barbara’s body bounce on the seat of her bike as she crossed back onto the asphalt.
They slowed down to wait for me, and I felt a rush of tenderness as I registered the familiar shape of their backs hunched over their handlebars. It doesn’t matter what I look like, I realized. Blood pulsed up through my thighs and I thought again of the tiny life housed in my body. My closest friend and my husband grinned at me lovingly. Without saying a word, we rode on. My eyes welled with tears. I wanted to cry out: Thank you! What a joy life can be in this body.
* * *
As a child, I was terrified of stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, anxious that I might “break my mother’s back.” I believed that my thoughts had an effect on everything from the role I would get in the school play to what my future would hold or how tall I would grow.
This habit of magical thinking has persisted into adulthood. Some of my superstitions: If I plan a trip, I will be sure to get a job. If I dream of someone, I expect to hear from them soon. If I share good news with anyone before it’s official, the fortunate event will not happen. My latest is the belief that if I keep my son’s name on my body （on a necklace or a bracelet inscribed with his initials）， he will remain healthy.
If there is something, anything, I can do to steer the outcome of events, then I am less powerless. I am less afraid. This notion is so deeply ingrained that even as I confess this, I worry about the jinx I am placing on my rituals. Will my tricks no longer work now that I have shared them?
I often struggle to delineate what is my gut instinct and what is my hypervigilant, superstitious mind playing tricks on me. Audre Lorde wrote, “As women we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge.”
A logical part of me knows that events are not affected by supernatural forces dictated by me. Still, I don’t want that to be true, at least not entirely. I want to believe in some kind of magic, in some kind of power, even one that is outside of my control.
* * *
No one knows what exactly triggers a woman’s body to go into labor. During my pregnancy I learned that despite the confidence of doctors who act as if there is no mystery or magic in our physical lives, this is something for which we have no clear explanation. At one of our final appointments, S asked our OB who decided when it was time: the baby or my body.
“Probably both?” she’d answered vaguely, studying her beeper.
Six days before my due date, nearly midnight on a Sunday in early March, my water broke. Earlier in the day, we’d driven to the Upper West Side for our favorite bagels and whitefish salad as a reward for putting the finishing touches on the nursery （we’d also finally hung paintings that had been leaning against walls for years, as if the baby would be judging our interior design）。