Starbucks to Staples

I was standing in Staples the other day staring at the clerk behind the counter. She was asking me a question and I couldn’t hear her. My mind was so loud that her words flew past me like the wind. ‘Are you okay?’ I finally registered from her voice as we remained staring at each other. I wanted to tell her how much this moment meant, this silly little postcard we were designing together; that making 500 copies of it was tangible evidence I was starting something that began months ago.

But I spared her my monologue and paid the deposit and left – of course not before buying fifty number 2 pencils and colored pens and scatch ‘n sniff stickers that we never need. I sat in my car and called Rory. Rory is a dear friend that started a writing class called Write to be You over a year ago and now she deals with a wait list each month. I encouraged her to take the plunge with her intention of this class and now she has pushed me to get Yurtime pregnancy classes – my doula driven course for pregnant ladies – out there in the Universe. I started dreaming about it, literally, which she said was the final sign that I need to just bloody do it!

I find it incredible how long I can procrastinate about something that I really want to do. From London to LA and back again, I can organize my boys’ routines within an inch of their lives and yet when it comes to me, my work, filling the fridge and the cupboards and the boys’ schedules becomes necessary even when it’s not, and takes away all the time in each day. It must be fear; my fear of trying to create an environment that I know is worthy but having to translate what’s inside my head into a successful class structure. Why bother to do the class, why care? Because I do.

None of my friends, or any of their friends, are pregnant. When you surround yourself with people in roughly the same age group, it’s as if none of you age. Until something like finding a pregnant lady enters the game and no one knows any!! Are we all on the other side??? When the heck did that happen? Personally Husband would have us having another and I suppose I love him for saying it; keeps us young, or thinking we are young. Babies in your forties make you younger even though our bodies would disagree. It’s having that newborn energy in the house that makes the family focus on the simple joys all over again, like smiling and the first funny fart, instead of the terrifying teenage angst and puberty and beyond.

So I find myself in Starbucks staring at pregnant women and wanting to walk up to them and tell them about my class; or follow them around the corner and see where they are hanging out so I’ll know where to place my fliers; as if they are alien creatures living on the Pregnancy Planet and hold the secrets to where all the pregnant women are hanging out. I want to put myself out there without having to sell myself. My own self, it feels like, my personal self. Why the hell am I doing this again???

Oh yeah, because it’s fair to say I know a lot about having a baby and want to try and make a tiny difference in a woman’s life by giving her support and a safe place to be during her pregnancy. And breathe. Off to Staples tomorrow to pick up the fliers.