Matt and I were both worried about Sharknado: the 4th Awakens! The third installment had been so delightful that we wondered how the producers might top it. Was our worry justified? Read to find out!
It opens with a Star Wars-esque blanket of text spooling off into the night sky telling us it’s been five years since the last sharknado. Tech company Astro-X, led by Silicon Valley maverick Aston Reynolds, has used their revolutionary technology to prevent new storms.
Ngl, my notes are fuzzy on this one. The next thing I wrote was literally: It’s tricep
I think I was referring to Ian Zering’s muscles as he chops wood in Kansas, where he lives with his mom and the son that got pushed out of a very vulvic slash in a dead shark by Tara Reid at the end of the last movie before she got chomped. Fin (IZ) is a farmer now I guess?
Remember how Fin’s dad (David Hasselhoff) sacrificed himself in space for his son and the world? Turns out he was chilling on the moon and got rescued!
Now we meet Aston Reynolds, the Elon Musk stand-in, who has used some of his ill-gotten gains to build Shark World Hotel, a hotel in Las Vegas with a giant pool full of sharks. What could go wrong?
Fin goes to Las Vegas–I remember not why–with his Very Sexy cousin Gemini, and his cab driver is Carrot Top, complete with giant novelty glasses and a giant novelty flask. Stay with me here: Did you know there are two different schools of clown? There’s classic circus clown, like Barnum & Bailey, twenty clowns in a VW Beetle-type stuff. And then there’s European clown, which is a true theatre art that requires deep study and vulnerability. Twenty years ago, I saw a show in New York called Slava’s Snow Show, and it was one of the most profound theatre experiences I’ve ever had. All that to say, I’m loath to call someone a clown in a derogatory fashion, but trust me when I say Carrot Top fully transitioned from comedian to clown, and I mean that in the most derogatory fashion.
Tom Jones shows up, and boy has he had some work done. If you stood him in Madame Tussaud’s, he’d pass.
Fin and Gemini are being very sexy to each other, and it would be hot except they’re cousins, so I feel uncomfortable, although that might be your porn search term, and I don’t want to kink-shame you.
Fin’s grown son calls his dad from a plane. He’s about to get married, and then the lovebirds will skydive to the ground, as one does. Only problem? A storm forms and sucks up all the sharks from the hotel! They swirl in the air and fall to the ground, where a bunch of Chippendales dancers punch, kick, and pelvic thrust them.
Fin goes to the top of the hotel, does not catch his parachuting son, but does catch his new daughter-in-law. They are in a car(?) at the top of the building(?), and they drive down a spiral-shaped sign(?) being carried on the storm(?) to the ground(?). They jump into a ship(?) in the moat around the building(?) and swordfight with sharks(?). I have concerns for any people who dropped acid before watching this movie. Like, have they healed?
AND THE OPENING CREDITS ROLL. What the actual fuck.
There’s somebody very skinny running in a black hoodie–you can’t see their face–and it turns out to be Tara Reid! She was rescued by her scientist dad, Gary Busey, and is now a cyborg. Gary Busey had told Tara Reid her whole family was dead and vice-versa.
TR: “You lied to me!”
GB: “You weren’t ready!”
For what, Gary.
Gary. For what.
Aston Reynolds begs Fin to save the day because his technology obviously no longer works, so Fin visits a country store that just has CHAINSAWS in big letters across the front. He also has isotopes so that’s good. You need isotopes to stop the -nados, and there are so many kinds! Oilnado, firenado, icenado, cownado.
You guys, so much happens. My notes are just a list like:
David H sucked into storm in antique car
Tara Reid catches car above head
Paul Shaffer busking
House falls on Stacey Dash (In addition to a bunch of Star Wars references, there are a ton of very clunky allusions to The Wizard of Oz.)
There’s like 92 more items just like that I’m gonna skip.
Just know, the movie ends at Niagara Falls, and literally every character gets eaten, and there was a moment when I shouted, “Turducken! Sharksharken! Sharkwhalen!” Do with that what you will.
Given that, in this franchise, getting eaten by a shark is less a tragedy and more a momentary inconvenience, pretty much everybody’s saved, and we’re all set for movie #5.
So, yeah, it obviously wasn’t good, and it wasn’t bad in the right way. But this little tradition means I get to leave my kids with a babysitter on a Saturday afternoon and scream at a TV with my three favorite gays, so I left with nothing but delight in my heart.
Back when I was fun, I used to go to my friend Matt’s house, we’d watch a terrible movie together, and he and I would individually post our recap-reviews online. But then I had kids so I was no longer fun. Cut to TEN YEARS LATER, and Matt tells me he still hasn’t watched the rest of the Sharknado series because we watched the first one together and he was saving them for me. <sob>
Well! I’ll tell you what I did–I hired a goddamn babysitter and went to watch Sharknado 2 with him and Geoff and Dave.
We open on an image of a plane’s tail cutting through clouds… like a SHARK FIN cutting through WATER. Subtle as monkey pox. I love it.
Only a minute in and we have our first cameo–Kelly Osborne as the flight attendant. She is star struck. There in coach is Finn (Ian Zering), the absolute legend from the LA sharknado, doing a bang-up job of eyebrow acting. Could he sign her copy of his memoir? He passes it off to Tara Reid, who ghost wrote it. Tara Reid is so so skinny. Like her eyeliner looks blousy on her.
Finn looks out the window and hallucinates a shark flying through the air, but no, it must be a PTSD flashback, but NO, IT’S REALLY A SHARK. Cut to the cockpit, where the captain is the dude with the drinking problem from Airplane! Yes! The producers leaned in hard, and I’m loving it. Uh-oh, turbulence. The captain has seen worse.
A shark hits the wing! Finn freaks out and is subdued by an air marshall. Dozens of sharks swirl in the clouds! The CGI looks like it was done with oil pastels. The pilots get sucked out the windshield! Oh no, who will fly the plane! Finn, that’s who, and he’s comin in hot. Tara Reid is nearly sucked out of the plane, hanging on by a thread, but the air marshall hands her his gun. So smart! She shoots sharks, but one swims(?) up and bites off her shootin hand. Finn cachunks the plane onto the runway.
Finn’s sister and family are in the Big Apple. Mark McGrath is the dad. He and the son head off to a baseball game, while the girls do the girliest thing of all–visit the Statue of Liberty.
Finn details the incoming maelstrom to a crowd on a Manhattan street including Andy Dick in a Spirit Halloween-level cop costume. Only then, after this speech which seems like it could’ve been delayed a bit, he accompanies his wife to the emergency department and delivers her into the capable hands of surgeon Billy Ray Cyrus. This movie is a mad lib. Before she heads into the OR, Finn admonishes his wife not to lend a hand so literally next time. My god.
Finn’s sister and niece are on the ferry. The girl holds up a pamphlet, which is entirely blank on the back. The props department is staffed entirely with high school sophomores.
The mom’s sorority sisters (I may be making that up) tell her about the plane crash, and they look out to see a synchronized swim team of sharks in the Hudson River!
Finn has to go to the ballpark to rescue his brother-in-law and nephew so he hails a taxi with Judd Hirsch at the helm. Cut to Richard Kind waxing nostalgic about his time playing baseball at that stadium. Alas, he never hit a homer.
At that point, my friend Geoff said, “What’s this movie about?” and all the bones in my body dissolved.
Tara Reid changes into all black, except for her gauzy nub, and escapes from the hospital to go find Finn. She is so steady on her feet after general anesthesia–OK, queen!
At the ballpark, Vivica A. Fox kisses Finn, but he says “it’s complicated” between him and Tara Reid. I’ll say! Everything about this movie is complicated!
It is raining on one side of the stadium and a beach day on the other. Finn convinces his crew to get out of there. They pilfer bats from the souvenir shop, and VAF breaks hers over her knee! Badass but also strategically questionable!
Sharks rain down, and Richard Kind sends one into the stands–the home run he’d always dreamed about.
The whole stadium runs out, but somehow only a few dozen of them end up in the subway? That’s probably good though because THERE ARE CROCS IN THE FLOODED TRAIN LINES. They eat people, including Perez Hilton, but unfortunately not Jared from Subway, who is down there just sitting on a bench. Ugh, it’s like when Donald Trump shows up in Home Alone 2.
Finn fights a shark with his commemorative bat and almost dies but then STABS the shark with the bat and comes out of the scuffle with a baby shark (do do do doot do do) attached to his hip. “I need a chainsaw,” he says. “I need a smoke alarm and other hardware items to make a bomb and throw it at the storm.” (Paraphrased.)
The girl group makes it back to Manhattan, but the daughter has a cramp from all the running! No worries, a businessman offers to take them to his office, but then, wouldn’t you know it, he gets flattened by the rolling head of the Statue of Liberty, which just keeps rolling down the avenue like the boulder in Indiana Jones.
On the news, Al Roker corrects Matt Lauer–it’s a sharknado, not a sharkstorm. How many sex pests have cameos in this film?
Finn’s group ends up at a pizza shop owned by Biz Markie and then gets swords n’ whatnot at a medieval weapons store. Everyone knows that Manhattan is lousy with medieval weapons stores.
Tara Reid finds a little kid crying in the hospital and says, “Don’t worry, I’m gonna save you,” and then immediately hands her off to a stranger. Tara.
The streets are flooded, so Finn’s crew swing across from the roof of their cab to… the roof of another car? What’s the endgame here? Vivica kisses the teenage nephew in a way that makes me uncomfortable, and the cabbie gets eaten. Am I high? Because I feel like I’m high.
VAF and Finn take a slow awkward elevator ride to the top of a skyscraper where she pulls out a slingshot and he reveals a whole bunch of… bombs? They look store-bought, but when did that happen. They sling a bomb into the storm. It doesn’t work. They duct tape two together. No dice. Finn: “Even the sharks are tougher in New York.” Quadruple bomb!
Me: “Was Vivica A. Fox’s thong just showing?”
Dave: “You mean her whale tail?”
Finn is back with Mark McGrath and crew, and they’re stuck in a stairwell with sharks at the bottom. Mark looks at Finn and says, “Remember how we used to do?” At which point, my friends and I have no choice but to make jokes about mutual masturbation. But no, they run down, grab the fire ax, and I guess fight the sharks. I’m losing the plot.
Now there’s discussion of the freon tanks on the top of the Empire State Building. Tara Reid sees VAF and says to Finn, “That’s your ex, right? I can tell she still likes you.” And the mayor gives Finn a chainsaw. It’s like all the footage spilled on the floor and the editors picked it up and scotch-taped scenes together.
Finn stands on a truck, does a backbend worthy of an 80s hair band rock video and slices a flaming shark in half.
I guess they’re on the top of the Empire State Building now. Tara Reid shlunks a circular saw on her stump and uses her saw-hand to fuck up some sharks. VAF wires the freeon tanks, but the wire is not long enough–she has to hold it together, she’s gonna sacrifice herself! Zzzzzzz! She’s thrown into the air and gobbled by a shark.
But their plan–whatever it was–worked. Sharks are falling out of the sky, and New Yorkers on the street are using the farm tools everyone has for their farms to kill the sharks.
Tara Reid recognizes the shark that lands next to them–it’s the metaphorical croc to her Captain Hook! Finn reaches inside and pulls TR’s arm out of its mouth and shoots sharks with the gun. Then he pulls the engagement ring off the severed hand and proposes to Tara Reid. That is so romantic except aren’t they already married?
The end.
Me: “Can we do this again?”
Geoff: “Yeah! It’s gonna be hard to wait ten years.”
One of my clients dashes out the back door as soon as I open it and heads into the yard for a potty break; the other gets close and then scooches backward, tail tucked. “Come on, Sweet Girl,” I tell her. “I know you have to pee after being inside all day.” But she refuses. “Whatever,” I say and leave the door open when I go outside in case she changes her mind.
I had pulled into the driveway only three minutes before, but suddenly the sky is… different. Three hours’ darker, and the wind–my god, what is happening. It thunders, loud and close. I call the Good Boy, he gallops back, and we duck inside. The lightning and thunder are simultaneous and angry.
The noise that comes next is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s a sound, yes, but also a feeling, like a Mack truck running into the wall. The lights go out. “Holy shit!” I yell. The boys and I gawk out the window, and all we see is a snarl of green and brown. The same door I’d just walked through is blocked by limbs and branches.
Arlo starts crying; Patrick is clearly frightened too. “It’s OK,” I tell them. “We’re OK.” And I shuffle them into their room. Patrick climbs in his bunk, and I snuggle Arlo in his.
Every time it thunders, Arlo wails, “Off!”
“I can’t turn it off, buddy,” I tell him. “I’m sorry.”
I continue to coo at him and rub his back for fifteen minutes until I hear the rain stop. The sky brightens, and I peel myself off the bed and walk out the front door. It’s sunny. The landscape is littered with leaves and sticks. The giant willow oak had indeed dropped a 30-foot branch by my back door. The gutter is bent and dangling. Dang, I think, that’s gonna take some work.
I circle around the other side of the house and gawk. On my roof is a branch. But see, that word doesn’t really do service to it. The oak itself is at least a dozen feet in circumference, so this “branch” is more like the trunk of a regular-sized tree. I definitely couldn’t wrap my arms around it all the way. And it’s on my roof. On my roof? In my roof. There’s a hole, about the size of a minivan in my roof. The branch extends beyond the edge–the whole soffit’s ripped off–and down into the yard. Two 8-foot sections of my fence are smashed to smithereens.
“Fuck,” I say.
My neighbor Luis comes over. “You want me to get it off your roof?” he asks. “I do this kind of work.”
Stunned, I tell him sure, and he heads off to get his chainsaw. I forget to ask him how much.
My brother-in-law comes down with his chainsaw too, and the two of them ascend to the roof and buzz away at it until dark. They barely make a dent.
Inside, my bathroom floor is soaked–rain must’ve poured through the vent–and insulation hangs through a hole in my bedroom ceiling.
“Fuuuuuuuuuck,” I say.
I sleep terribly. Mid-August in central North Carolina is beastly, unlivable without air conditioning, but power is out in a huge swath of the city, and Duke Energy estimates it’ll take days, maybe a week, to repair the damage.
In the morning, I duct tape my fridge door closed to remind me not to open it, and we go in search of a McDonald’s that has power. The boys are delighted–McMuffins and pancakes, what could be better?
Back home, I inspect the damage again. Somehow it looks worse than the day prior. Phone calls to my insurance company don’t go through–I’ll learn later they have no power or internet either. I don’t own a chainsaw; I don’t even own loppers. I stand in the yard with my hands on my hips. It’s humid as fuck already, and the sun’s only been up two hours. Tears brim in my eyes. I text my family: I feel so helpless.
My brother texts back: You’re not helpless. You’re doing exactly the right thing under the circumstances. You are a rockstar of competence. Even rockstars have to deal with the early stages of a crisis by going to McDonald’s sometimes.
Just then, my brother-in-law stops by with his loppers and a hatchet. He has to go back to work, but his tools allow me to start clearing. I hack at a limb and drag it to the street. I hack another. And another. And within fifteen minutes, my mindset has totally changed. I think, it could’ve been worse. I think, the roof did its job. I think, that’s what homeowner’s insurance is for. I think, Jesus Christ, I’m gonna get my steps in today.
And I do, I cut and clear brush for almost ten hours. My phone tells me I have walked 9.37 miles.
The roof will get replaced. The fence will get patched. All I have to do is feed my kids and put one foot in front of the other.
Joan Baez said, “Action is the antidote to despair.”
Ain’t it though.
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It was a Tuesday afternoon when I realized my kids had early release from school the next day. Being a single mom and a public school teacher means childcare is always a struggle. Forget fun stuff–I use up my babysitter budget on things like getting my will prepared, or pap smears.
So I was stuck. Should I do the drop-in daycare thing? The boys…don’t love it, and of course, it costs money. I’d be paying a babysitter so I could teach. Should I take them to work with me? No, they’d be too distracting. Should I ask a family member or friend that works from home to stick them in front of their TV? It’s not that easy, and I didn’t want to bother anybody.
And then I remembered, I could just take the day off. It’s always the last thing that occurs to me. I have tons of banked PTO, and if I took the day, I could use the morning to cross a bunch of shit off my to-do list, the shit that’s hard to do with two little kids in tow. I could go to the post office to return the faucet aerators that I ordered that turned out to be the wrong size! (In related news, being an adult is a huge rip-off.)
Anyway, I put in for a sub and planned for my Day of Victory. As is true for many teachers, I have a second job–writing for Patreon and Slate magazine–and a third job–dogsitting. My current client, a sweet mutt named Jessie, had been eagerly investigating my compost pile, and that night, she woke me up at 2:00am with liquid poops. I let her out, wiped up the gross trail she left on my carpet, and collapsed back on my bed. Right when I was drifting off, maybe 15 minutes later, I heard the tippy-tap of her claws on the side porch and got up to let her in. At that point, there was no going back to sleep. I listened to a podcast for hours, and just when I started to get sleepy again and was rejoicing in the fact that I didn’t have to get up to go to work, I remembered another doggy-client was being dropped off at 6:15.
The commotion of his arrival woke up my kids, and so that was it. I’d had maybe four hours of sleep. OK, well, my kids are 7; I’m no rookie–I’d caffeinate and power through. So that’s what I did. I got the boys ready for school, dropped them off, went home, and started absolutely decimating my list. I made my bed, I flossed my teeth–I like to write very small stuff on my to-do list because it keeps my momentum up. I did laundry. I cleaned stale French fries out of my car and surreptitiously recycled first grade artwork.
Then it was time to make the rounds. I mapped out my strategy: hit the post office, swing up to donate stuff to the thrift store, vacuum the Cheeto dust out of the newly tidy car, then pick up the groceries and head home, all in time to get the boys off the bus.
The post office had a ten-minute line, and I stood there without having to entertain anyone with rock-paper-scissors or hiss at anyone not to lick the mailboxes. I returned the stupid aerators. Yes. Check. To the thrift store!
But as I was leaving, I noticed a plasma donation place that had set up shop in the adjacent strip mall. Back in college, donating plasma was all the rage because you could go between classes and earn your drinking money for that night. I never actually did it. Too squeamish.
Shmrrty-shmrr years later, however, I’d been through pregnancy, where one suffers all manner of pokes and jabs and how’s-yer-mothers, and now I can get a blood draw with minimal drama. I still don’t crow with joy when I have to get labs drawn or watch enthralled as the blood leaves my vein, but if I stare at the wall and do some deep breathing, I’m OK.
Standing in front of this clinic with a poster in the window that said, “Earn $825 in a month!” I thought, “Eight hundred twenty-five dollars could pay for a lot… of pap smears.”
So I detoured from my Day of Victory. I walked in and slapped my ID on the counter. They handed me a folder and sat me in a cubicle with a computer to watch the consent video.
The first part of the video was all about what they do with the plasma–make medicines, help people with hemophilia, and whatnot. Now I felt virtuous–not only was I padding my pockets, I was saving the world! So much Victory!
The next part of the video described the donation process. A needle is inserted into your arm. My stomach clenched a little bit, but I was OK. The blood is drawn out through a tube and routed through a machine that separates the plasma, and the red blood cells are sent back into your body. At that point, I noticed a burning sensation in my face. The rest of my body was cold, but my face was definitely aflame. The video went on, This process takes–and I’m thinking, what could it take, 10-15 minutes?–forty-five to ninety minutes. My head went swimmy, and my limbs felt numb. Then the talking head on the screen mentioned the volume of the draw. Up to 880 mL. My hazy brain was calculating–1,000 mL to a L, that’s half a 2L soda bottle. Uggggghhhhh. I realized at that point that I definitely needed to lie down or throw up or both, and I leaned out of the cubicle to look for a couch or a bathroom or a superhero. Nothing. I remembered the sweet cold air outside and knew what I had to do.
I grabbed my purse, glasses, and phone, stood up, and started shuffling to the front. The front door was in my line of sight. With every step I took toward it, it retreated into the distance. I told myself, Just get there, and kept trudging, but my vision was closing. My head was being flattened like in a cartoon.
And the next thing I knew, I was staring at a fuzzy ceiling, my back against the cold tile. My head hurt. I had no idea how long I was out, but long enough for six people to have scurried out to hover over me. One of them had wheeled out a computer and blood pressure machine. They were saying, “Are you all right?” but I wasn’t.
Two of them hooked my armpits and hoisted me into a chair. When I said I was gonna throw up, somebody brought a barf bag. I thought, This is the best barf bag I’d ever seen–plastic with a round frame to keep the opening from collapsing. (I was glad they were prepared. I assume this was the first time this had happened during the consent video, rather than the actual procedure.) I was pouring sweat, retching into the bag. I still felt so weak. And embarrassed.
The woman whose nametag said director told me firmly, “Stop crying.”
Which I never in my life will understand. “Oh, are my silent tears disturbing you? Let me just turn them off.”
It took a full 45 minutes until I could stand up, at which point my sister arrived. In the car, I assessed the damage. I’d busted my left knee, the fingers of my left hand (but not my phone or my glasses–phew!), and clearly my head. I would have headaches for four days.
My sister wanted to take me to urgent care, but because we live in a capitalist hellscape, I insisted that she drop me at home.
When I got there, my poor doggy client had shat in her crate and was delighted to be set free, shaking poop droplets onto my walls and floors. I got her and the crate cleaned up and finally lay down on my bed. So much for my Day of Victory.
I tell my high school students, “Write from your scars, not your wounds,” because otherwise there’s no growth, no lesson, no message. But this happened a month ago, and I’m still wounded. The headaches are gone, but my knee is still tender. So I don’t know what the takeaway is. Maybe, though, it’s that if I could clean up dog diarrhea without barfing or passing out, the universe was telling me to stick to my strengths.
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The first time a friend introduced me to someone as a single mother by choice, it tweaked my brain. It wasn’t by choice, I thought.
But of course it was. It just wasn’t my first choice. My first choice would’ve been to make sweet love to my soulmate, resulting in a natural pregnancy that would bring forth one (1) adorable baby who slept through the night at three (3) weeks old. Two and three-quarters years later, we would bless our child with a sibling conceived in the same manner.
But at 38, I didn’t have a soulmate. I didn’t have a Mr. Right, or a Mr. Right Now, or even a Mr. Occasionally We Get Drunk and Bang on the Couch. I’d dated online–disastrously–for years. I’d met
the smart guy who danced tango but with whom I felt no sparks,
the guy who spent the whole date watching football on the screen behind me and later sent me Chapter 1 of his “erotic novel” (direct quote: “They increased the rate of stroking of their private regions”),
the guy who made me wish I carried pepper spray, and
the guy on dialysis who asked me to donate my kidney to him. He was kidding though. (Was he?)
There was a brief confusing affair with a Dutchman, and a humiliating revelation of romantic feelings to a longtime friend, who had recently broken up with his wife… and who would a few months later reunite with his wife.
It was becoming increasingly clear I would conceive no babies, planned or accidental, from sexual congress. I wanted kids, and as much as the idea of adoption appealed to me, I also wanted to experience pregnancy. And that biological window was closing.
So I decided to knock myself up. I went to a fertility clinic and an 80-year-old doctor from Eastern Europe told me how much insemination cost and the probability of success with each attempt. I said, “That’s a lot of dough for some pretty weak odds.”
He said, “Hyuman reprodyuction is remarkably ineffyicient.”
But I was determined. I looked online at cryobanks. Despite the fact that you can sort for height, eye color, astrological sign(???), and celebrity look-alike, I decided I wanted to go with a known donor. But who?
The Dutchman I mentioned earlier–the brief confusing relationship–had a PhD in biology and was funny and reasonably attractive, so I invited him to coffee. “I’m considering single parenthood,” I told him.
Before I could even ask the question, he said, “Oh, I’ll give you my sperm. That kid’ll probably be a superhero.” It was great—so generous of him—and I sobbed into his collarbone as we said goodbye.
Later, he called me. His father had reminded him he had cousin who was “mentally r******* due to a microdeletion on his 15th chromosome.” Other associated conditions with the microdeletion are autism; learning difficulties; emotion regulation problems; and bipolar disorder, which the Dutchman admitted he had. (My confusion during our short relationship suddenly made much more sense.)
I was still OK with using his sperm, but he wasn’t. With no other prospects, I went back to the cryobank’s website. It was so overwhelming. There were hundreds of profiles, and sometimes I thought about printing them all out, pinning them to a wall, and throwing a dart, but then I was like, Amy, be reasonable, so I did what anyone would do–I formed a sperm-selection committee of my friends.
And we chose: 6’4”, blue eyes, atheist, post-doc in math and engineering. He was perfect. I wanted him to be my husband, but a vial of 10 million of his sperm would have to do.
A surly nurse explained that it was going to be like getting a pap smear except maybe more uncomfortable because they couldn’t use any lubricant during insemination. Fun. I put my heels in the stirrups and slid my butt down to the end of the table. She inserted the speculum. “Hm,” she said. She slid it out and tried a different angle. “Well.” Out and back in again. “Your cervix is really deep in there. I’m gonna use a longer speculum.”
“OK,” I said, meekly.
She tried all through the winter, across the spring and summer, into late autumn, before she stood and said, “I can’t seem to find your cervix. I’m going to get a physician.”
Shortly, she came back in. “I couldn’t find a physician.”
I thought, You’re bad at finding stuff.
She brought another nurse. Immediately, I felt more relaxed. This one too was having some trouble locating the target, but she sounded like she genuinely wanted to know when she said, “You doing OK?” and just radiated general warmth. “There it is!” Finally. She inserted the catheter and shot, then cupped her hand around her mouth. “Swiiimmmmm,” she called into my vagina. Speculum out, and I was done.
Twelve days later I peed on a stick. And my hand. And the floor. But a plus sign showed up. So I peed on another stick. I peed on three more sticks. All plus signs.
At my 6-week appointment, the doctor stuck a lubed wand up yonder. On the screen, a hole blorbed into existence, and attached to one side was a tiny strobe light. He pointed at it. “That’s a heartbeat.”
I put my fist to my mouth and started to cry.
He shifted the wand to my left side, then stiffened, and his mouth dropped slightly open. “…There’s another one.”
I didn’t understand what he was saying, but he was pointing at another orb. “What?” I said.
“There’s a second one.”
My neck went numb. “Does it have a heartbeat?” I said, but I could already see it. Pulse, pulse, pulse.
And that was when I collapsed into full-on, laugh-cry mode. “Oh my god!” I said. “Two?!” The doctor stood there stiff, eyes wide, mute. “But I’m just one person!” I said. “Hahahahaha. Boohoohoohoo.”
He lowered his chin slowly but didn’t look away. His eyebrows were knitted. “I… I can’t tell how you’re doing,” he said.
“Me neither!” I said.
I eventually recovered from my meltdown and became completely wedded to the idea of twins. I loved them, and even though every part of my family plan had gone to hell in a handbasket, I was so glad I was having two babies.
Then came the “borderline” measurements and “inconclusive” test results, until finally at nearly 18 weeks, a white-haired doctor with the soft voice, gentle manner, and sensible shoes of a kindergarten teacher informed me that it looked like Twin A had Down syndrome. Amniocentesis would confirm her diagnosis. I wondered, was it something I did? A poor choice I made along the way? Or worse, that I’m a defective person who made a defective baby?
The genetic counselor said, “It’s not anything you did. It’s just an accident of nature.”
At that point, I came completely unglued. I sobbed. I had panic attacks. I desperately wanted to abort the abnormal fetus, but it would increase the risk of miscarrying the other one. Could I take a mulligan?
Making the choice was wrenching. I told a friend it was the first time I truly understood what “anguish” meant. Right about then, I got some sage advice from a nun–she was a character on “Call the Midwife,” but whatever–that at every moment we get to choose between fear and love. So I chose. I was scared and lost, but I was going to have two babies, one with Down syndrome.
Seven weeks before my due date I couldn’t stop peeing my pants. That’s what I thought anyway. Actually, I was leaking amniotic fluid. Twin A’s sac had ruptured, and I’d be in the hospital until I delivered, which I did six days later in a harrowing emergency c-section.
Thus began nearly eight months of eating hospital food. Patrick came home after a month in the NICU, but Arlo, the one with Down syndrome, would undergo medical trauma that would end a weaker person. There were surgeries and invasive tests and feeding issues and infections and twice CPR, like actual compressions on his tiny, tiny chest. Patrick smiled at three months, but Arlo didn’t. One day it dawned on me he’d had very little to smile about. But on March 13, 2015, when he was almost six months old, the corners of his mouth ticked up, and I melted into a puddle of goo on the floor of the NICU.
At one point, my brother and I stood on opposite sides of the bed, looking down on my sleeping baby.
“It’s funny,” I said. “Remember how I asked the Dutchman to be my donor, and he backed out when he found out about the chromosomal funk in his family’s genes?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Isn’t it ironic that I ended up with a baby with Down syndrome anyway?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“But seriously.” I gestured at Arlo.
Reading my mind, my brother said, “What’s better than him?”
After nearly eight months, Arlo finally came home on Mother’s Day 2015, and even then trouble abounded. He didn’t know how to eat, and his stomach hated everything, and he didn’t sleep, and his brother didn’t sleep, and I didn’t sleep. And I was losing my mind.
But with a LOT of help from friends and family, and just, you know, putting one foot in front of the other, we made it through. That’s a story for another time. Right around his third birthday, Arlo learned to walk. Then run. And then jump with both feet. He learned to sign more, all done, help, and–thank god–eat, which he did with gusto. Bacon, eggs, waffle–the most important meal of the day. He loved playing with his brother and singing songs. His best friend was a blue stomp-rocket tube he named Odie, after the dog in Garfield, his favorite TV show. I once rescued Odie from a five-lane highway, another time from a 10-foot storm drain.
When he started preschool, everybody knew him–teachers I’d never even seen said, “There goes Arlo.”
Out in town, he’d go up to complete strangers, tap them on the knee, and wave at them. I’d say, “Have you met the mayor of Durham?”
He became a nudist and potty trained himself. Woohoo!
He started talking. “Maw” (ball). “Weewee” (TV). And of course, “waffle,” which he pronounced perfectly and added a kiss at the end, maybe to express his devotion to them.
Most recently, words have become phrases, and he’s started workshopping his standup routine.
“Ho coco nat?” he says, pointing at his red shirt.
“I don’t know–what color is it?” I say.
He grins. “Weeeeee?”
“No, it’s not green,” I say, and he giggles.
“Loooooooob?” he says.
“No, it’s not blue.” He chuckles.
“Blap?”
“No, it’s not black!” I say. He cackles. I cackle. Every day, we do this. Hey, if a bit works, work it.
He still likes to greet strangers on the street. “Morlyyyy,” he says to the construction workers we pass. “Morlyyyy!”
Late in the day, I correct him. “It’s not morning. It’s afternoon.”
“Morly anoo!” he calls.
Sometimes, like the rest of us, he gets salty. “PATIC, GO ‘WAY!”
“Don’t say that to your brother–that’s not nice. Hey, how about you put on some pants and a shirt?”
He turns and clomps toward his room, waggling his blue tube. “Ohwee cahmee,” he declares.
“Yep, Odie’s coming.”
“Mama cahmee?” he calls over his shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I say.
Of course I’m coming. I’ll never not come if he asks me to.
The boys will turn 7 this month. Patrick reads chapter books and plays Minecraft with his cousins and revels in arguing with me about uncontroversial things. (He still asks me to snuggle in his bed every night though.) But that’s a story for another time.
My elderly father moved in with me, and I went back to changing diapers. But that’s a story for another time.
There have been so, so many accidents along the way. I made plans and choices. I did research. But I learned how little control we actually have over our lives, and how torturesome and sublime that can be. I wanted a family that looked a certain way, and I got one that looks totally different.
“It’s just an accident,” the genetic counselor said, and it really did comfort me at the time. Now though. Now I wish I could take full credit.
