Waiting for Godot (pronounced guh*dough)

Waiting for Godot

In the early days when we first found out we were expecting, while I was still in a state of shock, and not ready to talk about it with anyone, a friend of mine called to invite me to meet her for drinks at a local brewery. “I can’t,” I blurted. She asked why not, and I couldn’t come up with a plausible response. All I could think to say was, “I’m waiting for Godot.”

Waiting for Godot was a play I read in high school, in which the two main characters spend the entire play sitting on a bench, waiting for a guy named Godot to show up. They don’t know what he looks like, they’re not sure when he’s coming, but there they sit, waiting for him. I starting thinking, that’s what pregnancy is like – waiting for someone you’ve never seen, you don’t know what he/she looks like, you’re not really sure when he’ll arrive, and there’s all sorts of things you can’t do while you’re waiting those nine long months. Things like drinking beer, spraying pesticide, eating feta cheese, moving a couch, bikram yoga, downhill skiing…soon it began to roll off my tongue. “Hey Cheryl, want to go paintballing next weekend?” “I can’t, I’m waiting for Godot.”

-C