Of all the things putting me off the idea of getting pregnant, I never would have imagined a silk foulard would be among them.
Like most women, my annual gynecological exam is not a cause for celebration. I have an irksome tendency to get pathologically anxious in medical situations, and being mostly naked doesn’t exactly alleviate the problem.
I had also been informed by my French girlfriends that the gynecologist I was about to see was an aristocrat of sorts; the proof was in his last name which began with the prefix “Le”. I was determined, nevertheless, not to let this add to my stress level. This was post-Revolutionary France, after all, and we were all children of Rebublic. Liberté, égalité, fraternité and all that. Besides, I reasoned, he may be one of those fun, quirky, down-to-earth types of aristocrat.
As I sat beside Franck in the waiting room mindlessly thumbing through an issue of Paris Match, it dawned on me that being in France added a hitherto unexplored dimension of stress to a gynecological appointment. Over the years in Canada I had become familiar with the standard procedure. Here in France I had no idea what to expect. I'm not the kind of person who particularly likes having no idea what to expect, especially when again, the chances of me being naked when the unexpected occurred were unarguably on the high side.
Erratic heartbeat. Check. Burning crimson patches on face. Check. Blood pulsing behind eyeballs…wait a second, that was an entirely new symptom of extreme anxiety to add to my repertoire...I was firmly in a state where the slightest little thing could put me off. So when my French gynecologist glided out of his office wearing a foulard artfully tied around his neck, I felt like I had been jammed with an electric cattle prod.
Dorothy, I said to myself, you’re not in Kansas anymore.
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