During Her Unplanned Pregnancy, Christa Parravani Considers the Ripple Effects of Barriers to Abortion
December 17, 2020
Tony arrived home a few hours after I made my last pleading Pittsburgh doctor call. It was late afternoon, well after I’d returned from the visit with the young Cheat Lake physician. Tony found me sitting at the dining room table, head in hand. He stood behind me and encircled his arms around my shoulders. He rested his chin on top of my head. I told him what I’d learned of my options. He didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t have believed either, the day before. But there we were.
WBUR reporter Simón Ríos walks around the dining area of the barn he recently restored. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
It was a crazy idea: we d sell my mother s house and turn a massive century-old horse barn into a modern abode.
The proposal was to go in on a property together just south of Boston, consisting of a house and a barn just steps away. I would live in the house, and Mom and her partner would live in the newly-renovated building designed to their liking.
It would bring Mom closer to her son and her granddaughter, and it would allow them to downsize and enter their seventh and eighth decades in a barndominium on one floor, plus another roughly 800-square feet upstairs.