The day I found out I was pregnant is etched forever in my brain...it's one of those vivid memories like "where were you when you heard that JFK was dead?".
My very first reaction was to faint in the exam room...seriously, I fainted. I was 16 years old, and I had decided to go on the "Pill". So I borrowed my foster mother's van, and I drove to Planned Parenthood. It was an early-evening appointment across town (San Diego). The weather was perfect...there was a mild summer breeze blowing. I felt so "mature" that I was being "responsible".
There was a group of young women waiting to be seen by the doctor. We were all given little plastic cups to pee in, just to be sure we weren't pregnant before being prescribed birth-control pills. Then we were all sent to a conference room, where a nurse gave a presentation about the different forms of birth control, how to use it, side effects, etc. And then they started calling our names out one-by-one to go into the examination room for our pelvic exams.
When I walked into the exam room, I stopped just inside the door. There was a nurse sitting down on this chair, swirling around a vial of some sort. She just kept staring at it, and then she looked up at me with a kind of somber expression. And she simply said, "you're pregnant". I put my hand on the exam table to steady myself...and then I fainted.
I was taken into this really grungy-looking small room, where they kept their lab equipment, medications, and supplies. They sat me down on a chair in front of a coffee pot that was brewing on a hotplate. And I just sat and stared at that darn coffee pot. (I vaguely remember someone offering me a cup of extremely strong black coffee.) I remember someone talking to me about abortions, how they were legal now in California if your parents signed the consent form. (Governor Ronald Reagan had signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act in 1967, five years before Roe v. Wade.) I kept nodding my head while several people talked to me...later that night, I couldn't even remember most of what they said. And then I stood up, thanked them for their help, and left the clinic.
And then I drove down I-5 at about 80 miles per hour. I was in a total state of shock, and there I was at the wheel of a bright purple Ford Econoline van, speeding down the freeway. My mind was somewhere else...I had to keep checking the speedometer so I'd remember to take my foot off the accelerator. It was crazy. The car radio was blaring a new song that had just hit the charts:
"Maggie May" by Rod Stewart. To this day, whenever I hear that first line, "Wake up, Maggie, I think I've got something to say to you," my mind goes back to that warm evening so long ago. I drove home, asked my foster mother if her 6-year-old daughter had Rubella (a big scare going around that summer in San Diego), and then asked her if I could drive to the beach.
I took the van down to the boardwalk in Pacific Beach, where all my friends were gathered. (Cruising the boardwalk was a big pasttime in those years.) I found my two best friends, sisters who had been adopted five months apart from each other. And I blurted out that I was pregnant and didn't know when Mike (my boyfriend) was coming back from a camping trip in Yosemite. I remember my friend Terri saying that if I had an abortion, she'd never speak to me again. I told her there was no way I was going to have an abortion. And then the rest of the evening goes blank in my memory...
The panic and total shock went away within a few days. And if I keep writing about all the emotions I went thru during the rest of my pregnancy, I would bore you poor ladies to death! So I'll close off on this missive for now. Maybe I'll go put an old Rod Stewart album on the stereo for old-times sake, lol...
