The moment Mark and I announced the pregnancy, the messages started to come in: warm congratulations from family, a few practical questions from close
The moment Mark and I announced the pregnancy, the messages started to come in: warm congratulations from family, a few practical questions from close friends, and then an avalanche of “helpful” advice from one person in particular. Linda. Mark’s best friend since college, Linda, had a way of speaking like she’d single-handedly written the rulebook on life.
She’d always been in the background of our relationship, the voice Mark called when he needed validation, the woman who knew more about his college pranks than I did, but pregnancy changed the volume of her presence from background hum to full-throttle stereo. At first, I tried to be reasonable. Linda wanted to throw a dinner to celebrate.
Fine. She insisted on picking out the pram. Fine.
She sent me three dozen articles on soothing techniques, swaddling, and the evils of certain baby products. I read them, nodded, and put them in a folder called “Helpful (Maybe).” Mark laughed about it, more nervous than annoyed. “It’s Linda,” he’d say.
“She just wants to be useful.”
Useful, in Linda-speak, meant control. By week nine, she had drafted a guest list for the shower of more than fifty names, half of whom I had never met. She had already chosen a theme (“Pastel Perfection”), a venue, the caterer, a color-coordinated invitation template, and unbelievably, a section on the invitation that read: “Hosted by Linda Harper: Celebrating Emma and Baby”.
The omission of Mark’s surname felt like a small cut at first. It grew into a bruise. When I gently told Mark I wanted to be part of the planning, he shrugged.
“Let her help, Em. She’s excited.” But the phrase “let her help” never sat right. This wasn’t helpful.
Linda was drawing a map and handing it to everyone else while telling me to follow. The breaking point was an email titled HOSTING OPTIONS: Essentials You Didn’t Know You Needed. Linda had appended hyperlinks to breastfeeding classes (which she thought I’d need, though Mark and I had already attended one together), a list of books she considered “parenting musts” (she had, coincidentally, written a glowing review of all of them on her blog), and worst of all a carefully annotated registry that included an entire section labeled “Mark & Emma: Non-negotiables (A.L.)” with notes like “Mark prefers neutral tones; Emma likes floral lean neutral.” The parenthetical A.L.
was her initials. I felt smaller each time I read one of her emails. The pregnancy ballooned with strangers’ opinions; my own voice shrank.
One sleepless night, after replaying yet another text where Linda insisted she knew the “right” brand of crib mattress, I sat on the edge of the bed and told Mark, “She’s taking over things that are ours.”
He frowned, the way grown men do when words land heavier than they expect. “She’s not trying to take over. She just cares.”
“Does she?” I asked.
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