Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Redemption Guru
And still I couldn’t stop her.
My desire for 10-toed pink perfection, my need to pass on my DNA, was as strong as hers. For the thousandth time since the start of our synchronized naked insemination schemes I chastised my brain, told it to think positive thoughts.
“Make sure you tell him about the abortion,” I reminded my wife.
She waved a backhand at me. I should know better than to bring that up, it said.
If only we’d birthed the Down’s foetus into a baby, my brain countered.
But of course she was right. The first pregnancy was easy. We couldn’t have known we were in for a famine of infertility.
Now, just as foretold by my aneurysm, here we are, mitten in mitten, feeling our way up the final peak to our last hope.
If this Redemption Guru is the quack I can’t stop thinking he is, we’ll summersault to our childish deaths, joining our Sherpa guide, who took his own life a trimester ago.
“Look,” shouts my wife. “There he is!”
I’m snow-blinded. Gently sobbing, she guides my hand over his folded, up-slanting eyelids, over his protruding tongue and shortened arms, which hold a guitar. I can feel in our Guru's face the features of down’s syndrome.
He sings ‘Come Back, Baby,’ by the Ramones.
-
Labels: 2007, Fiction, nova scotia, politics
Many writers are brave. They confront cold reality without a shudder. Borges, for example.
I am more cowardly.
Things like this happen in many a young family. Something like that happened in mine. But I'm incapable of writing about it.
: 3:31 PM 
TWM: thanks. i wasn't sure if it worked.
and i'm glad it's fiction..
but the yearning is not fiction..
and i think it's becoming a reality based on visiting your other blog?
That was really sad, and got to that anxious place, I've been there.
: 10:28 PM Foam: the pregnancy yes, fortunately not the other stuff. we're quite excited and have no plans on genetic screening.
Lynn: hopefully it was a good story then. maybe in a different way than I thought.
Toast: i had taken that sherpa thing out and then put it back in. thought it was worth the few words it took after all.
Thanks Kissa and NS for your kind comments.
XD: i believe it was something along the lines of how people spend all this time and money on self-help and wisdom, yet for him the greatest source of wisdom was the mentally challenged people with whom he volunteered.
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