At age 39, Bay Area film critic Mary Pols discovered she was pregnant after a one-stand with Matt, a hunky but unemployed (and unmotivated) man 10 years her junior whom she'd met in a bar. It was a plot worthy of one of the movies she screened weekly, but Pols, who had decided to have the baby even before the extra line appeared on her pregnancy test, had no idea where it would lead. Realizing that her circumstances were less than ideal--she was living paycheck to paycheck already--but understanding that this might be her last chance to have a child, Pols prepared herself for single motherhood even as she informed Matt that he was about to become a father. But Matt surprised her with his immediate and enthusiastic support. Their subsequent journey into parenthood (and its attendant gamut of emotions) forms the bulk of this frank, funny and immensely readable memoir.As she hashed out plans for living arrangements, maternity leave and day care, Pols found plenty of help from her many loyal friends (one of whom put her up in a trailer while she saved money for a bigger place) as well as her family. The youngest of six, Pols maintained close ties with her siblings and parents (both in their 80s when she became pregnant). But this support could not insulate Pols from the emotional turmoil of pregnancy. Continuing a sexual relationship with the almost pathologically passive Matt led her first to confused attachment and then despair when it became obvious that they would never fall magically in love and live happily ever after. The physical indignities and hormonal madness of childbirth and the postpartum period, which Pols relates with spot-on accuracy and gallows humor, also took their toll.
Most difficult for Pols, however, was that both her parents went into decline soon after her son was born. In the book's most moving section, she describes trying to find a balance between her joy in becoming a parent and her deep sadness in losing both her mother and father within the same year. Learning to co-parent with Matt would be less easy to resolve. Although driven to distraction by his immaturity and lack of direction, Pols finally learns to appreciate Matt's sweet and complete devotion to their son and begins to realize "the limitations of all my old expectations." Both thoughtful and candid, her book is an entertaining, refreshing look at family and what it means to be a parent.--Debra Ginsberg