Menstruating on Mother's Day

Red.

Fruit. Ripe tomatoes bulging with heirlooms. Strawberries crawling with seeds. Cherries pregnant with pits. Seedless watermelon.

Roses are. Mothers receive them into their arms like an aromatic baby plucked from the vine. Inhale the scented oxygen and maybe blink down grateful tears. Plunge cut stems into a vase with water and plant them on the table. My mother prefers a few clipped lilacs or a dainty bouquet of sweet peas. Me too. If roses, only wild, left growing in the ground, and then purple.

Blood, obviously. Carries oxygen to the cells, carries toxins to the lungs. Exhale a happy sigh, gather in the sight of momentarily reverent, adoring children. Inheritors of her blood and partakers of her body. Permanent residents of her heart. Product of genetics and miracles.

Makeup, maybe. Lipstick that chubby hands will later smear on the mirror, vanity, carpet.

Candy. What else could a mother ask for? Besides blissful sleep, no doubt.

The uterus. It thickens with blood. The heart. It thickens with hope. And then they shed.

White.

My wedding dress was custom made to fit my body. Beautiful white fabric flowing from rib cage to the ground. The chest and arms wrapped in elegant lace with a randomized spread of floral stitching. Little beads glinting like dewdrops in the delicate webbing between buds. That day, the dress fit perfectly.

My skin is called white. Standing next to James, brushing teeth, I see in the mirror that his white skin compared to mine is more pink. He's the underdone middle in the chicken breast, and I'm the season-salted baked meat. My skin has had to adapt to an increase in body mass. We have hormones to thank for that. But also emotional eating, no doubt. Toothpaste spit into the sink is white—a tiny bit of pink if I flossed too well.

White like brand-new toe socks worn before washing. And I cut my big-toe nail too short, so now there's a copper smudge on one side where the sock protected tender toe from constant shoe. If the stain doesn't come out, I'll always know it's a right sock.

The whites of your eyes are hedged with reddish-pink lines; you'll see them peek out if you keep staring forward as you turn chin to shoulder. Or pull your lids down or up. Mostly you have to go looking for them to notice anything but white seas surrounding the iris islands. Unless you cry.

The stick I dip into the urine collected in the tiny one-ounce plastic sampling cup, hoping to see that second line of pink, is white like a ream of printing paper newly opened and shoved in the printer. The printer is out of ink.

White like the pantyliner pressed onto the fabric slinging between my legs, wrapping my womb, and pinching my waist.

Pink.

A tempered red. Diluted with white. Just the right mixture of hope and heartache.

Lamplight. The lamp beside my bed...really, it's ridiculous. It's a little girl's bedroom decor item. Light-pink fabric wraps around a wire frame in the bulbous shape of a purse. The handle of the purse lamp is giant clear beads. A white feathery-boa trim lines the rim, and the feet of the frame curl like Cinderella's pumpkin-vine carriage wheels. But its level of light is softly perfect. It makes my skin look somewhat fairy golden in the dark. Flaws are smoothed over, and I feel a sexy confidence, comfort.

Sex is pink. A mixture of love and intercourse. A little lighter pink when you're trying to make a baby the twenty-eighth cycle following twenty-seven failures. Sex can go a little darker pink when kids aren't involved.

"Just have fun with it" is pink advice. A mixture of ignorance and positivity. Best for newlyweds. Fun doesn't make a baby, though. Bodies do. Biology does. If my biology isn't ripe, no amount of fun will plant pregnancy in my body. If your biology is fruitful: red congratulations.

Newborns after first breath. A miraculous mixture of sperm and egg, of love and sex, of mother and father.

Life is pink. An infinite mixture of known and unknown. We're always counting. When we know what's coming, we count down the days, anticipate. Two days to Mother's Day. Twenty-eight days to my birthday.

If we don't know when the event's arrival will be, we count up, hope. Thirty-three years, hoping for thirty-four and beyond. Twenty-eight cycles, hoping it's the one.

Counting calories to fit my body into that dress again. Counting pills to swallow. Counting days past ovulation. Counting the months to see when the due date would be.

But if a white dress never fits custom to my body again, if I'm never wrapped plumply in pregnancy, I count on being healthy and happy. Which I am. Happy. A practically perfect pink happiness. Lifelong mixtures of red and white.

Counting. Hoping. Shedding. Cycling.