On a Sidewalk in LA

In April Vince and I took an anniversary-visit friends-eat Pinkberry trip to Los Angeles. Vivian was at about 17 weeks in my belly (she was all Benbo then-we didn't know she was a girl yet) and I was finally feeling good (read: my appetite had returned! Oh, I had missed my appetite!). So we ate and walked and visited our way through LA. It was a delicious, sunny and happy trip.

One day in Brentwood, Mer was getting tea, Vince was-- I don't know-- getting coffee? on the phone? and we were all trying to decide what to do next. Matt and I were waiting by the car so we didn't get a ticket and a middle aged homeless woman asked us if we had any spare change--she had children who needed to be fed. She had kind eyes and asked so sweetly, but I usually don't give money on the street. Instead, I've adopted Vince's sincere "Sorry--Good luck to you" mantra. She smiled and walked on; no hard feelings. After she had asked someone else coming out of the coffee shop, she turned back to me, looked me right in the eye and said "Congratulations!" with a beautiful smile. I looked at Matt, wondering if I had missed something. Congratulations for what? "Well, you are pregnant, aren't you?" I turned all shades of pink and said "Yes," sheepishly. She was the first person to ask if I was pregnant-- a rather ballsy move, given that my belly was barely bigger than it was before I got pregnant. I was wearing my regular clothes-- jeans and a t shirt-- nothing maternity about them. How did she know?

I think about this encounter far more often than you would think. This woman saw something in me and knew my little Benbo was growing in my belly. Sometimes you just know things. Is it intuition? A premonition? God whispering in your ear? Dumb luck? The thing is, you don't know until after the fact if that knowing was nothing or something. And the somethings are what make you wonder when you get that feeling in your gut. Make you wonder if you'll look back at that moment, that feeling, and say I knew it.