Advice to the Young at Heart*

* Total props to whomever can figure out where this is from. No cheating!

People, I can't tell you how many posts I have started and then stopped this week (well, ok, it was three, but who's counting?). I have lots to say, the written diarrhea is backing up, but I can't quite find the right words to express it. I have lots of ideas written down - but none seem inspiring. Where is my muse? Does infertility even have a muse? If it did, I would imagine that it would be Melpomene, she of tragedy. Thalia could be the pinch hitter if good ole Mel was hitting the town one night, desperate for a little levity after the woes of the infertile world.

Maybe I should take the cue of the Greeks and write of cautionary tales and other mythology (although I thought it was so freaking hysterical that they recently reported that the vast majority of ancient Egyptian scrolls discovered in 1896 were torrid romance novels full of porn. 2,000 year old porn, people!). Or perhaps, since it is the season of graduation, I should write my speech as the graduating speaker - which will likely never happen, but if the woman who spoke at my college graduation could actually be invited, there's hope for me yet.

Ah, yes, I think I will indulge in a little navel gazing, but instead of addressing acne-ridden teenagers who are aching to go get trashed before the ink on their diplomas dries, I will speak directly to the me that ten years ago this year graduated from college. Lord knows I could have used some words of wisdom. Here goes:

Dear Ms. X,

You have now been out of college for a month and frankly, you're a bit of a mess. No forward momentum to propel you to the next adventure, no plan for the future. Knowing what I know now, here's some advice for getting through then.

Seek engagement (no, not a marriage proposal). I know how much you loved college - the friends, the sense of being and fitting in that you never achieved in high school, and I know how hard it is for you to say goodbye to those things. I don't think it would be possible to recreate the experience that you had in college (and in some respects, you probably don't want to), but remember how wonderful it felt to be engaged, learning, constantly introduced to new ideas and new people. You now have to seek those things out for they will not come as easily.

Lighten Up. I do remember very well how much you thought of yourself and how seriously you took things. I'll just say two words: lighten up. Nothing you experienced in your 22 years in any way compares to the shit storm you will run into later in life. Failure to start lightening up will result in a nasty five-year hangover down the road.

Be compassionate. Remember that no one's life is a bed of roses and nine times out of ten, the person who is making your life difficult has a lot of difficulty themselves. The one out of ten person is probably just an asshole and not worthy of further thought.

Be gracious. You know the Golden Rule, but it bears repeating. Treat others as you would have them treat you - even if they don't hold up their end of the bargain! Not only do you get to ride the moral high ground, you have done a good deed that has lightened someone else's burden.

And, most importantly, be mindful. You have your whole life in front of you. Now is not the time to rush it.

Smooches, Your Older, Wiser Self.

ps - those birth control pills that you were taking for endometriosis? Totally not needed. Throw those bad boys out (but still use a condom!). Use the money you would have spent to buy stock in Apple. You could pay for numerous IF treatments off of the earnings. Just a thought.

What would you, dear reader, tell your younger self?

Mind the Gap

I have a gap in between my two front teeth. It's not particularly noticeable (unless you are me, who notices it all. the. time). It used to be a much larger gap, but thanks to the magic - and pain - of orthodontics, it is now a dainty little thing at the bottom of the teeth that leaves curious bite patterns in apples.

image: flyzipper

I am 32 and Mr. X just turned 35. There is a gap of three years in our ages.

There is a cavernous gap in between my ears where, supposedly, my brain is supposed to be. I think it goes AWOL alot.

There is a yawning gap between me and my first cousins, due in large part to the extreme dislike my father has for their father, his brother. I don't really know my aunt and uncle.

By far my biggest gap, though, is the gap between what I expect will happen to me and what actually does happen to me. It is also the hardest gap to get over. There is no magic jump, no equation, no mathematical formula, or easy numerical explanation. It is a gap.

I know that I need to somehow bridge that gap, find the neutral ground, the median, the way forward through the center. The easy way, of course, is to stop having expectations. That's pretty hard to actually put into action. We are surrounded by reminders of what we should expect - the weather is predicted for us down to - literally - the nth degree, store ads tell us that we should expect to give presents to our fathers on Father's Day (and of course, contribute to the economic well-being of the nation), we even say that a woman is 'expecting' when she's pregnant. Expectations are all around us - both external and internal.

To be able to just abandon those one day is a Herculean feat and one that I don't think I am up for. So, now that I have eliminated the first option, what's next? First, it is to recognize that there is a gap - there will always be a gap between what we expect and what we get. Sometimes the gap will be teeny, other times it will be ginormous. Somehow knowing that there is going to be this gap makes it a little easier to accept it.

Then, well, still try to work on letting go of expectations. I can let go of expecting rain and getting none. It may be much harder to let go expecting that I will be able to carry a pregnancy the whole way through. But, I'll try.

That way, it will be one of the best surprises of my life.

From Never! to Absolutely! in A Few Short Years

The house where we lived when I was in middle school and high school was in a new development (well, new back then). We were one of the first families to move in. The house to our right was purchased by a confirmed bachelor - very nice guy, engineer, with a wonderful dog.

His confirmed bachelor days ended pretty soon after he moved in when he got married. Several years later, they welcomed their first child, a boy. A few years after that, they had twins. One day, after I had my own car and drivers license, his wife asked if I could drive her and the twins to the airport - she had to change out a ticket (this was before the Internets, people!). We loaded up the car with me, her, the kids and all of their paraphernalia and headed out.

While she was inside dealing with the ticket, I sat out in the car with the children (this was also pre-9/11 so you could still park your car at the curb of the airport). As an only child, I had limited exposure to little kids when I was older, so I was exceedingly uncomfortable having two screaming infants in my car even for a few minutes. What would I do if they really started crying? How would I explain it to some authority figure as to why I had two screaming children? I could do calculus, but I couldn't do babies. Talk about poster children for birth control!

My neighbor must have seen how uncomfortable I was with two screaming infants, because when we got home again and the children were safely ensconced, she tried to reassure me by saying, rather condescendingly, that "you'll feel differently when you have you're own."

All I could think was, "Fat chance, lady!" I couldn't even see to my high school graduation, let alone having children. I was, to put it mildly, not entirely convinced back then that I would get married, let alone pop out some progeny. Ambivalent didn't even begin to describe what I was feeling (I think "militantly anti-child" was closer to the truth).

See, I was not one of those kids who a) knew they would have kids or b) even wanted them. I hated playing with dolls, playing house or planning my dream wedding. At the same time, I wasn't exactly a tomboy. I was just me: bookish, but quirky, with a love for Chuck Taylors and a wicked CD collection.

By the time I met Sweetie, I still wasn't entirely sold on the idea of having children. I was in my first year of graduate school and trying to keep my head above water. Of course, our talk came around to this topic generally. I tried not to freak him out too much so I just simply said, that I didn't really know if I wanted them. In later years, he claimed that I was adamant about not having children and I explained to him that I wasn't adamant, I just didn't want to scare him off by even bringing up the topic.

The thing is, I didn't decide that I wanted children, until I met the man I wanted to have them with. He was the first man that I had dated who I even could picture myself having children with and who would be a good father. So for me, deciding to have children was less a function of my biological clock than it was a function of totally changing my mind. At the same time, I don't know if all of me has caught up - I still catch myself at restaurants with screaming children being thankful that they aren't mine, or that I can still sleep in if I want to, go out on a moment's notice, etc.

Maybe I will feel differently when it is one of my own.
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Thank you to everyone who posted with their thoughts on how to break my funk. Each of them made my day a little brighter. Yesterday was better - I had a great day with my mom and we didn't talk at all about my infertility. It was nice to have a normal conversation. We went to the fabric store to show off the quilt I made, then grabbed some lunch, and headed to my favorite consignment store, finally stopping at a cross-stitch store that I hadn't been to. It was really nice.

The Post in Which Mrs. X Puts the 'X' in Existential

Even before our historical soujourn in Paris (did I mention that we saw a pirogue that plied the Seine 3,000 years before the Romans turned up?!), I had been giving a great deal of thought as to what it means to live a full life. How is a full life defined? Who says what is full? Who judges?

For a while now, my definition of a full life required that I have children - preferably my own biological children. I've been clinging to this notion that my one purpose in life is to have children, not because I want them (which I do), but because I'm a woman and therefore it is my purpose. Very Biblical, I know.

I didn't use to think this way. It has only really taken root as our slog through the mire of infertility has gotten longer and harder. In other words, with every passing month, disappointment or loss, it just gets entrenched even further because it is the most fundamental biological function that I haven't been able to fulfill which I must fulfill to prove that I was a woman. Pretty screwed up, eh?

The first clue that this is what is nicely called 'fuzzy logic' is that I don't ascribe it to anyone else. I think other women are a success in their lives if they are happy - no matter what happens to their uterus. My second clue is that I didn't start thinking this way until my first miscarriage, which threw very cold water on my euphoria at finally being able to do that one thing that I was supposed to be able to do. And, more recently, the perspective that I gained in Paris showed me first hand that very few other people truly care whether I give birth to a child and I will probably be more well known if I have an interesting life than if I propogate the species.

Each of these points is slowly chipping away at the wall of expectations that I have built for myself (again nobody else!) but the foundations are still there. Foundations last a long time. We saw the foundations for the medieval Louvre that dated back to the 12th century (personally, I found this way more interesting than the Mona Lisa) and the foundations for the Bastille. Foundations that were laid before my ancestors even got on a boat, and in at least one case, before there even was a New World. Foundations are dug deep and meant to last. They get buried and forgotten.

I need to excavate my foundation, bring into the light, study it and then dismantle it because it is only making me suffer. So far, though, despite all of my rational thought on the subject, I can't shake this idea.

So, I've turned to a radical new place for affirmation that my idea is frankly bull: obituaries. I have always adored reading obituaries. They are truly a person's life resume. They are the record of who you were, what you did and where you went to the rest of the world. Of course your family knows what you did and has special stories about you, but isn't everyone most interested in getting their story out to as many people as possible? For most people, that doesn't happen until they are dead.

What has struck me in recent years reading obituaries is that more often than not, the discussion of the person's life only mentions their children at the very end, usually in the list of survivors. The narrative of their life focuses on them, what they accomplished (other than having children) and what they enjoyed. In short, the focus is on the person's interests, history and accomplishments, but not necessarily that they had children. For most people, you wouldn't think that they had children at all!

You probably wouldn't believe how helpful I have found this, morbid as it may seem, because it provides a great lesson: in the end, it doesn't really matter. When they write my obituary, they will discuss how I met my husband on-line back when it still was not very well known (back in my day, there were no pictures!), I had many interests ranging from history to interior design, I played the flute and the piano and loved classical music, I painted in watercolors and oils, I was passionate about animals and the environment (yes, I am a tree hugger), I took pride in my work and my relationships with those I worked with, I enjoyed traveling and reading.

All of these things are true and absolutely none of them have to do with the fact that (so far) the largest my belly ever got was after an orgy of barbeque. In the end, it doesn't really matter what happens, as long as I can look back and claim (genuinely) that I was happy. And, right now, despite everything, I can say that.
left image: ::: Billie / PartsnPieces :::; right image: caribb