Heather Ross

“I waited until I was five months pregnant to tell my mother that I was having a baby. "I'm calling with some news," I said. "God, what?" she responded, sounding hopeful for something juicy and terrible. She could be counted on to be sober and in good spirits until late afternoon, and I timed my calls accordingly but always braced myself. The death of her parents and of her brother, my uncle Mike, who had been gone for almost five years now, and the sale of the land had left her in a raw and scattered state that I still hoped she would recover from, eventually. She seemed to want to talk only about tragedies and bad news and would complain to me that my sister never called her and that nobody ever told her anything, or included her in any of their lives.
I cut her off as she began to tell me something I did not want to hear. "I'm calling with good news," I said, starting again as though she might not recognize it as such.
"What?" she said, her tone urgent, almost desperate.
"I'm going to have a baby," I told her.
She let out an exhale, then, sounding exhausted from the three seconds of suspense and relived but not happy, she said, "Well, it's nice to hear some good news, because I've been following this massacre? In Arizona? With the congresswoman who was shot in the head by that lunatic? It's just god-awful." I forced myself to give her a few details calmly, including the due date, then got off the phone as quickly as I could. She sent me an email the next day that said, simply, "I don't have any advice for you. Everything is different now than when I had you. I hope that you'll let me see my grandchild sometime. Your sister won't let me see her kids."
I spent that whole day in bed, with a hand on my stomach, terrified.”
― Heather Ross, How to Catch a Frog: And Other Stories of Family, Love, Dysfunction, Survival, and DIY