My mother put the chipped ceramic bowl she used for mixing cake batter on the floor by our beds when we were sick, which struck us as worse than trying on our grandmother's teeth, something we'd gotten into trouble for. And then I went and used my mixing bowl to thaw sperm.
Jennifer and I didn't have a dishwasher, and had no plans of getting one, because sperm was a thousand dollars a month, so we washed the bowl by hand. But first, we held the tiny vial of sperm in the water, heated to 98.6 degrees, then quick, stuffed it into Jennifer's armpit and ran into the bedroom.
Emptying a vial of sperm into yourself isn't romantic. Even if the hand of the person doing the emptying is the hand of your beloved, the person who's promised to love you forever, who alone knows the words you say to yourself when you trip down the stairs. But conception is supposed to be romantic, isn't it? Or passionate. Or at least something of a turn-on, right? It's one of the big moments: There's down on one knee with a ring, there's the moment you just know, you're making a baby, there's gazing together at your bundle in the hospital room, and after that, who knows, you're never in the same place again. We didn't want to miss out on any of these important moments. A couple needs these moments. They're what you rely on to keep you together when, twenty years in, one of you stops showering regularly.
In the beginning, I lit tea candles and dimmed the lights before running water into the mixing bowl. Jennifer unscrewed the top from the metal canister the UPS guy had unstrapped from his wheely cart on the front porch, winking with a small smile when he turned to go. But the truth is, when you're holding your hips in the air, viewing yourself from an angle you wouldn't have chosen, and your wife says, "Hold on, I'm going to go get the flashlight," romance is out the window.
Any attempt we made at romance felt unadvised. The wrong move. Like when the kid you once babysat for hits puberty and shows up at your door in his father's tie, holding a single red rose wrapped in cellophane. You say, no no no. Wrong move.
A year in, we were all-business. Post-insemination, I watched television with my legs up the wall and called, "Can't you vacuum later? I can't hear Born Into Brothels," into the other room.
When it was Jennifer's turn to try to conceive, we went to a doctor. And although they would've pulled that little curtain around the bed to give us some "privacy," we had long abandoned any need for conception romance. Don't worry, it's not a sad thing, like when your friend tells you her husband makes her shower before hugging him in the morning. It was a perfectly fine thing. The first time we went, the midwife inserted the speculum, left it there, and got up to move around the room, loudly opening and closing drawers and muttering to herself. Jennifer and I raised our eyebrows and bit our lips, scared to be caught laughing.
It wasn't glamorous. There was no music, no fluttering silk nightgown, no clink of wine glasses. But who gets pregnant like that anyway? My favorite conception story is my friend who got pregnant in her kitchen, one foot up on the ring of the highchair where her first baby was banging a spoon, turned to face the wall, a sink full of dirty dishes behind her, her husband running late to work. They love to tell that story. Of course they do. At its heart, it's about the two of them sharing this what-the-heck moment, colluding together, knowing exactly how the other felt, knowing it was good. Just as when the conception happened for us, we were in it together: both bright-eyed and wearing those attractive rubbery shower caps, the fluorescent lights over the bed where Jennifer waited buzzing loudly. As I leaned in to squeeze her hand, I pushed in next to a woman I'd never met before, busy unwrapping instruments and setting them on a tray. I'm not going to tell you it was romantic, but it was this: one of our important moments.