First Sunday in June.

I want to be asleep right now, but I’m not, so I have to write about why.

It is so damn hot in this empty third floor apartment. The movers came today and took all the big stuff, now there is only scattered junk. Things I was too weak and too tired to pack. Things that will go into boxes for Sam and I to move later, over the next few days...weeks, probably.

I’m so lonely. I touch my belly. My baby. I saw him (her?) for the first time today at the hospital. The doctor took blessedly cool goo and squirted it on my belly. She ran a small thing that looked like a price scanner over me, and then turned the screen towards me.

A small, peanut shaped thing, floating in a bubble. “That’s my baby?” She turned the sound on and I heard my baby’s heart beating. I started to cry. I wanted my husband to be there. I wanted him to see our baby. I don’t want him to be hooked up to tubes in a hospital room that will always be too far away, no matter how close to his doctors we live.

I haven’t been able to sleep beside my husband for two weeks.

I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in two weeks.

I miss college, where my best friends were in the same building. I could wander to their room on a hot night in my underpants and know that they would make room for me, and let me cry or talk or be silent. Now they live in other cities, states and time zones. They have jobs to get up for tomorrow morning, and anyway, calling would only do so much. I need someone’s arms.

Tonight I am a single mother in a hot apartment with no furniture. I need someone to lie down next to me and let me sob for a few hours, until I get over this gaping loneliness. The only friend I have in the area buttresses, he does not hold.

Tomorrow I will drive to our new house. Maybe unpack a few things. Wander around, figure out where things will go in this big new space. We need everything to find its place, so that when this little peanut gets here there will be room for all of his (her?) things. I’m probably going to just lie on our mattress for a while, though. I’m going to be caught between two cities for a while. I hate that feeling. I hate being so alone and so tired and with so much still to do.

I’m not alone. My baby is here. Does he know I’m his mother?

Does he know I’m scared and lonely? Why am I so sure that he’s a boy?

It’s summer and it’s so damn hot in this third floor apartment. When I was little I used to have to go to bed while it was still light out this time of year. When I was little I would have to take cool baths to get all the dirt and sweat and summer off me before going to sleep, cool and dry and safe with my parents down the hall.

Now I’m hot and damp and so lonely, even though my baby is here.

I wish I was asleep right now.