Recent Utterances, Cosmic Humor, An Announcement, and Divine Punishment

Some conversations that I had one week in early September:

My mom: Did you know J. (my cousin) is going to have another child in April?
Me: Oh that's great! I wouldn't mind having another baby myself.
My mom: That's the last thing you need.
Me: Don't worry, I'm getting too old for that anyway.

I relayed the above conversation to Pa and we had the following conversation:

Pa: Do you really think you are too old to actually get pregnant?
Me: At 41, yea. As women age, their luteal phase of their cycle often becomes too short and it can make getting pregnant difficult. At this point all of the stars, planets, and moons would have to be in alignment - you know, nothing short of "perfect celestial harmony ".
Pa (laughing): That's reassuring.

Pa and I first heard the term "perfect celestial harmony" in reference to toilet-training toddlers. It has been kind of a joke between us when something lucky happens like finding a good parking space or realizing that all of the kids have busied themselves with something (relatively) quiet.

I also relayed the conversation with my mom to a friend of mine and here's how part of our conversation went:

Friend: Do you really want to have another child?
Me: It's not so much that I want to have another child. I just like knowing that I could if I wanted to. The fact that one day it will be impossible to be pregnant is the one thing that really bothers me about aging. It would be cool to know I still "have it".

One more conversation between Pa and I:

Me: Mr. Laura came down this morning and wanted to sit in my lap. He is getting so big that I realized I don't have much time left before I won't have a child I can carry. It makes me kind of sad.
Pa: What about Miss Almanzo?
Me: She may be 2 1/2 years younger, but she is almost as tall as Mr. Laura and weighs more than he does. Her days are numbered too.

In case you don't see where this is going, it does indeed appear that perfect celestial harmony occurred sometime around August 25. My expected September period was late and then later and then later and so far has yet to make an appearance. I explained it away as the beginning of peri-menopause. The old body is finally starting to sputter and stall -the beginning of the end. I knew deep down this wasn't true though. Too many pregnancy symptoms were beginning to appear - waves of nausea, a ridiculously heightened sense of smell, bone-crushing fatigue, middle of the night trips to pee, aversions to any and all food. I finally peed on the stick and it confirmed my "haveitness". Pa is currently in denial and keeps vacillating between "How did this happen? I'm never going to get to retire" and "adding one tiny infant with no language or grief issues has got to be a piece of cake compared to what we just did" (That is adding three non-English speaking big children to our family at one time.)

I am currently a tangle of emotions and thoughts as the reality sets in. I am on the cusp of being a mother to 6. Yikes! How did I get here? One of my all time favorite movies is Out of Africa. There is a line in that movie that keeps playing in my head over and over. Denys Finch Hatton has just suggested that he could keep his things at Tanne's house and come and go from there. It is not the commitment she is hoping for from Denys, but it is a big gesture on his "live one day at a time" part. She responds by saying "When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers." That is exactly how I feel right now.