Pendulum

I had to drag my winter clothes back out this week. Our 1929 house has itty-bitty closets that could never accommodate my winter AND summer clothes. Every year I am guilty of trading them out too early; there is inevitably a 60 degree day early in March that inspires me to box up all my coats and boots and exile them to our garage. Turns out the storm didn’t hit the way they thought it would and I  would’ve been okay to leave my coats sleeping in hibernation. But when I looked outside our front windows, I commiserated with the tulips: I felt a heaviness on me; I felt blanketed in cold. I felt ill-equipped to weather the storm.

I am astonished by the highs and lows of this process of trying to conceive.  One day I can fawn all over a baby. I coo alongside its mother and am practically drooling myself over their sweetness and chubbiness. The next day I turn into a wild dog with my hind leg stuck between the metal jaws of a trap. I glower and snarl at anyone who draws near, despite their efforts to help free me. I sniff out the various peace offerings that are tossed my way, but ultimately leave them where they were thrown. I retreat into my cave where I can lick my wounds alone.

On good days I feel capable and hopeful and sometimes even blessed to be granted this extra time. Eric and I play scrabble every day and indulgently thumb through our Rolodex of favorite restaurants come dinner time. We can get on a plane to anywhere and not worry about anything except whether or not we’ve forgotten our passports. We sip wine and watch Chopped  and sleep in and go to the gym.

But on bad days I am touchy and prickly and feel like someone whose house has just been broken into. My personal space and comfort has been invaded as I cautiously navigate each room of the house. I glare at everyone who passes by. I am critical and accusatory and hateful towards no one and everyone, nothing and everything.

I know my condition is not unique. It’s universal to experience seasons of discontent and helplessness. I know people who are unemployed, going through a divorce, grieving the loss of a loved one. I feel petty and selfish when I allow grief to knock me on my ass. But that’s the thing about grief--it barrels through your door, uninvited, and stays as long as it wants. You can turn out all the lights and change into your pj’s and it still might not take the hint that it has overstayed its welcome.

Today the sun blazes. We are in Santa Barbara for a wedding. Eric is golfing and I am tucked inside our boutique hotel room sipping coffee and watching our gauzy white curtains flutter in the breeze. Two people will exchange vows this weekend and I am humbly reminded of the life that pulsates just outside my set of circumstances. There is a pair of binoculars resting upon a stack of vintage books in our hotel room. They are meant for bird gazing. I will use them to step out onto our balcony, broaden my lens and try to grasp a glimpse of the bigger picture.

Thinking Down the Line

Eric and I found paradise on Earth. It came in the form of a little Tuscan village near Sienna called Buonconvento. Months prior, when planning our trip to Italy, we booked our farmhouse on a wink and a prayer that it would be half as charming as the photos indicated. It ended up being twice as much. We traversed the Italian countryside in our Fiat, the wind in our hair. Surrounded by rolling hills of lavender and sunflowers, we found the entrance to our Cyprus-lined driveway. Our car coughed and hiccuped as it climbed higher and higher. Our home for the next several days sat perched atop what seemed to be all of Italy; the clouds and the vineyards and the olive trees extended as far as the eye could see. 

We picked fresh vegetables and herbs from the garden to add to the  pasta we had purchased in town. Buonconvento:  the cobblestone corridors gave way to the butcher shops that sold mortadella the size of a whiskey barrel. The cheese mongers offered samples of creamy mozzarella as the scent of rosemary and oregano perfumed the fall air. Long banquet tables were joined together and cloaked in white linens where five generations sat and broke bread. Chianti glasses clanked and the laughter was boisterous. And this was no holiday. This was just Sunday. 

In Italy (and every country I have visited outside the United States) I have been moved by the tremendous value placed upon family. I am especially gripped by the reverence and respect that is bestowed upon the elderly. It goes back to the provenance that I wrote about a couple entries ago--knowing your point of origin. Lineage is linear, a line woven through a family from its earliest descendant to the baby being born today. We lose that in the United States. We are caught up in a white-picket-fence notion that family is a nuclear thing that exists within the walls of a house. Lineage is severed and families become islands, independent and isolated. 

I have always been a nostalgic person. My Mother-in-law, Linda, gave me a set of shrimp forks and butter knives that date back to the early 1900s. They came from Eric’s great-grandmother. Linda knows that it's not the silver or the cocktail fork itself that interests me. It's the story. It’s the symbolism of something being passed down from generation to generation. It’s broadening a lens and belonging to a greater purpose, one that involves more than an SUV and a Golden Retriever. It is equally important for me that my child be bounced on the knee of his/her grandparents as it is for him/her to be cradled in my arms. 

***

I stood behind an elderly man in the grocery store earlier this week. He was probably about 85 years old and took great pride in his ability to run his own errands. He wore pressed khaki pants and a button-down shirt and carried a worn, leather wallet that matched his worn, leather belt and shoes. He counted out exact change for his handful of purchases. The cashier and the two customers in line behind him and in front of me treated him with impatience and haste. They clicked fingernails on the counter. They heaved great sighs of annoyance and shifted their weight from foot to foot. It would never dawn on them that, in Italy, this man would be seated at the head of the table for Sunday dinners. He would be looked upon with respect  and his words of wisdom would fall on receiving and teachable ears of the generations laid before him. He would bounce babies on his knee and they would know their role in the story that God set in motion at the dawn of time. 

My Life, A.D.

Two years ago I received an Easter basket from Eric, who was my boyfriend at the time. He proudly presented the basket that he had perfectly assembled and filled with delights. I was inwardly panicked because I hadn’t given Easter much thought. I had no hand-crafted gift to offer. So I sat on the couch in my little apartment and rifled through my basket of goodies. Eric seemed a bit anxious as I took time enjoying my unexpected gift. Finally I reached the last tissue-paper wrapped morsel in the bottom of the basket. It was a diamond ring. I looked up at Eric who already had tears in his eyes. He got on a knee and asked me to be his wife. 

I don’t think I paid much attention to Good Friday that year. I was thrilled, elated, content. My time in the wilderness was ending and I would be married! Eric and I would lay to rest our time as boyfriend and girlfriend and would be resurrected as husband and wife. Good Friday is the darkest day in the Christian calendar. We light candles in memoriam. The only “good” thing about Good Friday as that we know the rest of the story. We know that death is not permanent and that, in a couple days, there will be life. 

 I was driving through our neighborhood this week and passed a small, brick church with a sign out front. It simply read “Waiting For New Life.” Eric and I are enduring our own Lenten season of waiting. The hours turn into days, the days into weeks, and suddenly our wait has swelled to a year and a half. It’s hard to dream, imagine or hope at this point. We don't know the rest of our story. We are stuck somewhere between Good Friday and Easter: we have grieved a death and are awaiting new life. 

A few months after my Easter proposal, Eric and I exchanged vows. A sweet friend of mine has reminded me of something recently: There is no asterisk attached to marital vows. “In sickness and in health*" (* but only if we conceive a child). “Till death parts us*" (*Or until the Dr. confirms that we are infertile). No. We took vows to be man and wife NO MATTER WHAT. That IS a story to which we know the ending. I do have hope because God granted me the desires of my heart that day;  he gave me my husband. My cup runneth over.  

Post Script:

A.D. (Anno Domini) doesn’t really stand for After Death like most people (myself included!) think. I just thought it was a quirky blog title. It translates as “in the year of the Lord.” Which I guess fits, too. My life, in the year of the Lord. 

Cracks in the Glass

Thirteen years ago, I graduated from college with a degree in Social Work. Back then, I was still an INFP (for all you Myers Briggs folks), destined to change the world, or at least hopeful to make it better. I was 22 years old when I applied to the Oklahoma City Department of Human Services, and was hired on as a Child Welfare Specialist. I would become the glue that would try to piece together broken families.

My training was extensive and horrific. We learned of parents who "disciplined" their potty-training children by lowering their bare bottoms into pots of boiling water if they had had an accident. I sat in training, mouth agape and eyes wide. I was a baby myself, really, who had lived my entire life up to that point cozily inside my perfectly insulated bubble. What did I know about abuse, abandonment and neglect? My only reference points for those atrocities was in their total absence from my life.

Before I was eligible to inherit my own case load, I endured weeks of paper pushing. I was a governmental peon who reported to work just to make copies and run menial errands. But one day I was asked to go pick up a child from a youth shelter in Northern Oklahoma and transfer him to a similar residence in Oklahoma City. The task would take nearly 5 hours round-trip. I would have done anything to get out of the office. So off I went.

My drive north was long, albeit uneventful. I mentally reviewed the details of the boy I would be transporting: Isaiah, age 12, numerous siblings, ward of the state. I learned that he had been in protective services for most his life, bouncing from youth home to youth home. I didn't really know what to expect, as this world was still very foreign to me. I arrived and went inside to fetch my precious cargo. He stood carrying his worldly possessions: a grocery bag full of odds and ends and a ratty duffle bag. Despite the genuine warmth of the staff as they said their goodbyes, Isaiah stood numb and detached.

We climbed into my beat up Honda and strapped in for a long drive. I tried to start up conversation, but Isaiah said nothing. I worked every angle I could. OU football was booming and I was well-versed in Josh Heupel stats. I tried talking about Nintendo, music, TV, sports, books. Nothing. The boy was silent. So I just drove. About an hour into our drive, with plains and fields stretching for miles in all directions, a bird collided into my windshield. It truly came out of nowhere and it made the loudest SMACK you've ever heard. I screamed and swerved and looked at Isaiah and his eyes were wide open and he also shrieked a bit. And then we laughed. We laughed so hard we could barely breathe. We were hysterical. We went on and on about that poor bird (and my poor, cracked windshield).

We stopped off at a 7-Eleven for gas. I told Isaiah to get whatever he wanted. He spent his time combing over his options and finally brought his meager candy bar to the cashier. I said, "Isaiah, I told you to get ANYTHING!" His eyes lit up as he went back for chips and Gatorade and an assortment of gas station junk food. We got back in my car like we were old buddies. We sipped our drinks and munched our Cheetos. We chatted comfortably for the remainder of the drive. He could tell by the changing scenery and my deliberate street sign reading that we must have been getting close to the youth home. He went quiet again. He said, "Excuse me, Ma'am? Do you think there is any way I could come live with you?" My heart sunk. I was thankful my sunglasses were hiding the tears in my eyes. I cleared my throat. "You know what, kiddo, I wish you could. I really wish you could."

I couldn't tell him that "everything would be OK" or that "things will get better." He has probably heard those empty promises from well-meaning adults his whole life. I left him at the check-in counter of his new home clutching all he had to show for his life plus a few extra candy bars. That was the first night of many that I cried myself to sleep. God sent a bird to crack my windshield and also to crack open my heart. He made room inside of me for the possibility of fostering or adopting one day. He continues to send birds my way-- fluttering reminders of the human experience. I have never, nor will I ever forget Isaiah. I pray for discernment and direction and clarity so the next time someone knocks on my door, I might be ready to let him in.

Greenhouse Effect

March is a splendid month in Colorado. The thick blankets of snow soak into the parched earth where life is beginning to awaken from its winter slumber. The natives are restless. We are birds flapping our wings against the cage door waiting for release into the temperate air.  

I attended a gardening class at the Denver Botanical Gardens a couple Saturdays ago. I am hoping to start small, maybe an herb garden and a raised bed or two. Lately I have been weirded out about all the garbage Americans consume. I like the idea of provenance:  knowing where something came from. There is value in knowing that the salsa I am eating came from my own garden. Our grandparents ate organically because food was organic back then. I don’t remember stories of “my Great Aunt Norma and her lactose intolerance” or “my Great-Grandmother Vincenza's aversion to gluten.” Back then people were fruitful, and they multiplied. Lately I have started to wonder if my own genetics have been modified.

Gardening is the great analogy of life: you plant a seed in rich soil and, with time and consistent nourishment, the seed sprouts, grows, bears fruit and the cycle of life begins again. We learned about phototropism, plants that visibly grow toward the light. Unlike full and rounded Elms or rosebushes, these plants have  arched spines and offshoots that are desperately outstretched toward the sun. I, too, am phototropic, desperately reaching and seeking the omnipresent Light. 

I love walking into nurseries. The tingly smell of fertilizer mixes with the earthy geraniums. Water features are lined up against the back wall, burbling zen-like,  competing with the steady whir of industrial fans. I used to think that these fans were meant to precisely mimic and regulate the climate of the very organism it was fanning. But we learned that those fans aid in a vital process called “strengthening.” The brisk air blows directly onto the fragile pansy and johnny-jump-ups so their stems will survive the transplant--so they can stand tall against the inevitable winds of life.  

Sometimes I don’t think I can take too much more wind. I retract and slink away into my cave. But if I expand my lens to see the bigger picture, I understand that maybe this wind is strengthening us. It is, in fact, equipping us to better weather this storm. 

My provenance is this: I am my mother and father’s daughter. I began as a seed and was germinated in the womb. I have received tremendous nourishment and am being strengthened by the winds of time. I grow and I seek the Light in hopes that one day, I, too, can bear fruit. 

Walk Monica, Walk

I watched Forrest Gump on a layover recently. I watched it as though I haven't seen it a kajillion times-- bawling when Jenny threw rocks at her childhood house and cheering when Lieutenant Dan walked into Forrest's wedding with prosthetic legs. After the movie ended I YouTubed Tom Hanks' acceptance speech for his much deserved Oscar (worth watching if you haven't) and cried hysterically. Something stirred in me that day, a feeling that has taken form and is ready to fly.

Running is a central theme to the movie, seen first when Forrest breaks free from his leg braces and runs to escape ridicule and harm. Jenny is his cheerleader; she urges him to Run Forrest, Run. Later in the film, Jenny is gone. Forrest is rocking in his rocking chair on his sprawling plantation porch, wordless and unblinking, staring miles ahead.  There is no monologue set to this scene, no narration or commentary. Forrest's expression says it all: his eyes have seen the breadth of loss; his heart has learned the depth of grief.  If there were words, they might be to the tune of "What. The. Hell." Or "Enough is Enough." Forrest stands up wearing his shiny new Nikes and starts running.  For three and a half years, he doesn't stop.

Ok, so I am not a runner. (And, please, Runners, don't write me and tell me that I could become a runner.) It hurts my knees and makes my face turn beat red and causes things to jiggle that have no business jiggling. And that's just after the first quarter mile. (Has anyone seen the Friends episode of Phoebe running? Yeah.) Still, I have this desire to move. I want to break free from my own shackles and fly.  Enough already.

Forrest's Mama said, "you got to put the past behind you before you can move on." This implies if not demands forward momentum. I am blessed with an army of friends and family who are nudging me along, cheering from the sidelines. I still haven't determined if I am running from or toward something, or if it really even matters.  I just know that it is high time I put one foot in front of the other. It is time to get going.

Sink or Swim

I have been playing a lot of J.S. Bach. Particularly, I have been pounding out the notes to one of his Prelude and Fugue sets that he wrote in the early 1700s. The piano was not yet invented; these songs were written for the harpsichord- an instrument having very little softness or sustain. I pluck this piece from the tension of the Baroque era and play it in the softness of my home. I have found solace in playing the classics, the same comfort a mathematician might derive from working equations that demand a precisely certain solution. These songs are rigid and structured and closed to interpretation. Unlike emotional and romantic Chopin and Debussy who would follow, there is a bit of madness to the Baroquians. They belong to an era whose very name means “rough, imperfect pearl.” 

I have been thinking about the late 17th century, the century into which Bach was born. There were no fertility clinics, no prenatal yoga (can you imagine?) and no ovulation kits. Simply, if you could not get pregnant naturally, you were not meant to be a mom. The word barren makes people from this century twitch. We are control freaks; we are not comfortable with permanent diagnoses. There is always something we can do. Bach had 20 biological children. (Go Johann, you stud!) If you read the footnotes, though, you will learn that only 6 of them lived to adulthood. Are the tears of the barren women and grieving mothers from the 1600s the same as the tears I cry today? I believe we march to the same drum. I believe I am playing their same tune. 

Eric and I are beginning to discuss the lengths we will go to to manufacture a child. If we were born into a different era, we would not have the options of labs and petri dishes and injections. We would wear black robes as we strolled through our village (because I’m sure they did that!) and would be marked with a scarlet B on our foreheads. Barren. We would love each other immensely, sure. But we would grimace as the little babes in bloomers and bonnets would crawl at our feet as we walked through the schoolyard. 

***

There was a man drowning in the sea. He trusted God to come down and rescue him. As he was flailing and gasping, a large boat appeared and threw down a life raft. “Climb on!” they shouted from the deck. The man said “No! I am trusting my God to save me!” A helicopter hovered overhead and lowered a rope. “Grab the rope!” the pilot yelled. “No! God is coming to my rescue!” The man drowned. He got to heaven and said, “My God! Why didn’t you come down from heaven and save me?” God said, “Uh, DUDE, i sent  you a helicopter and a boat...”

I too am bobbing in this raging sea awaiting rescue. The question is, what is my life raft? What rope do I grasp? Will I get to heaven to hear God say, “I provided you with the option of IVF; why didn’t you try?“ Or do I intrinsically belong to an era of women who trusted God alone to fulfill their maternal needs. A world where your story ends and doesn't begin with a negative pregnancy test.  Maybe I am plighted to be a gritty, misshapen pearl. Maybe refinement lies just around the bend. For now I will tread water and pray for a boat to appear, and that when it does, I will possess the gumption to climb aboard. 

The Other Side of the Fence

Not long after my miscarriage my husband and I were running errands. We pulled up to a stoplight and watched an obese woman and her chubby child frantically scuffle across the crosswalk. The woman’s five-ish-year-old son seemed to resent being tethered to such a disaster . In the commotion, her parka shifted open and revealed something that made me and Eric simultaneously groan: her pregnancy. This disorganized, overweight lady yanked at her scowling son and growled at him to hurry up and she was pregnant. Eric said wryly, “I wonder if she derived her protein from legumes in order to conceive.” We both laughed hysterically at that moment and frankly, off and on since. It was the perfect comic relief to such a perplexing conundrum: how do some of us get pregnant and others don’t?  

Of course my commentary of this woman is judgemental. My knee-jerk reaction to most pregnant women these days includes an eye roll and lip curl. If I were more highly evolved I could recite the “correct” reasons for why I am not pregnant:  because God’s and my timing don’t often coincide. Because there is something I am meant to learn as I navigate this wilderness. Because it’s strengthening my marriage (it is!). But I am a lowly amoeba who is not highly evolved who still gains immense pleasure in making snap-judgements. Let’s face it, maybe the Crosswalk Crosser sat down with her doting husband one evening and discussed her maternal longing to expand their family. Maybe she really is eating protein-rich beans instead protein from hormone-pumped animals.  Maybe she was dragging her son across the street because they were late for the bus that would transport them to their volunteer shift at the local nursing home. But probably not. (See?? There I go judging again.)

My spheres of support overlap like a Venn Diagram. There are those of us who are trying to start families and those whose families are established. Somewhere in the middle, in the shaded area, reside those of us who have miscarried. We don’t belong to either category, wholly. I  draw support from both spheres, trusting my girlfriends who are moms when they tell me “it WILL happen,” and crying on the shoulders of girls like me who are desperate and yearning. It becomes excruciatingly difficult to adjust when a friend leaves one sphere to enter the other. They walk through the gate to the other side of the fence where children are skipping rope and other moms are sipping tea. They peak at us through the slats of the fence, rueful to leave us behind but elated to be standing on fertile ground.  

We all embarked upon the same journey, and there can be no fault placed upon those who arrived a bit earlier than the rest of us. For some reason their paths were free from detours and dead ends, unlike our own. Inevitably you reach that fork in the road, that stopping point where you bid your friends adieu and watch them walk under the balloon arch down the gilded path stretched before them. And suddenly your path seems darker than ever before. Your footing is loose and the buzzards circle high above. Of course you really never say goodbye. You meet for coffee and discuss baby names and attend baby showers and pin things to your Baby Board on Pinterest because you believe that your paths will meet up again one day. One day you will sit around a table and exchange stories. One day you will be offered a cup of tea. 

We plow forward arm-in-arm like a chorus line. We bolster each other’s hope when our own is gone. We pass smelling salts under each other’s noses so we can be jarred out of paralysis. And we keep going. 

Mutton Bustin'

I recently took my two nieces to the Stock Show in Denver to watch some Mutton Bustin’. It’s hilarious. These helmet-clad kiddos wrap their scrawny little arms and legs around the sheep and grasp onto fists full of the woolliest wool you’ve ever seen. Bareback they rocket out of the shoots wobbling atop the spastic sheep as they await their inevitable launch onto the dirt floor of the arena. They lay splayed until nervous Moms and rodeo clowns race to the rescue. As the dirt is brushed off and the kids are tugged to their feet, the crowd laughs and cheers. My 5-year old niece sat transfixed. She would have signed up right then and there if she could have. 

I sat watching the sheep. Before the event commences, two sheep are escorted to the far end of the arena. The competing sheep (and rider) then barrels through the gate making a beeline straight for the target of its sheep friends. Sometimes the competing sheep is so over zealous to reach its sheep friends that it plows right into them. This process repeats until there are over a dozen sheep standing idly in a flock waiting for, well, shepherding.  With the help of a little herder dog, the sheep are corralled back across the arena and safely into their pens. 

Sheep are long fabled to be simple-minded creatures. They are seemingly incapable of acting independently from one another. Their greatest defense is the flock itself. Safety in numbers. I have been roaming through the wilderness, sheep like. I do as I’m told, follow the instructions I’ve been given and trot along within the safety of my own flock.  

My friends who are also TTC (trying to conceive) and I have reached a point of desperation, but mostly in a laughable que sera sera kind of way. One day in January I took mental inventory of my TTC efforts: I was gobbling up prenatals, receiving hormone alignment in acupuncture, abiding by dietary additions/restrictions, charting, carrying around an orange fertility stone from a Tibetan aura reader, consuming copious amounts of pineapple cores (it contains bromelain, an enzyme known to aid in embryo implantation), and...oh, yeah...having sex. In conception-enhancing positions. All that work! All for naught. 

I have been escorted some ways and corralled in others and have stood idly on my own. I have realized how much I need a Shepherd. A Shepherd loves his sheep because they are dependent upon Him for survival. They learn His voice and trust the gentle nudge of His staff. They are counted at night and led beside still waters in the day. Maybe these sheep are onto something. Maybe they aren’t so simple-minded after all. 

Don’t get me wrong: I will still borrow my friend’s fertility monitor and further investigate ordering a case of sea urchin water. (It improves your vascular system!) But today I trust my Shepherd. Whatever will be will be. The future is not mine to see.      

Starting Monday

I remember those lazy summer days between my Sophomore and Junior years of High School. My best friend and I would lie on our stomachs on the sun-heated trampoline with our chins propped up on our hands. We talked about where we would apply to college, the degrees we would pursue and the boys we would meet. It seemed like a far-off place, like Oz. But we were so certain we would attend college that we were blasé about it: “Oh, OZ. Whatever; that’s in, like, two years.”  

I make about a thousand New Year’s Resolutions each year. Oftentimes I declare yearly mantras: Year of Renewal. Year of Productivity. I follow through with a small percentage of these efforts, but only because of my laziness or mismanaged time. I could fulfill each resolution if I tried. I was raised to work and try hard and that, if I did, there would be great reward. And so I work; I plan; I organize; I learn; I pursue. Ever upward. 

This morning as I write, it is Monday. I am coming off my usual indulgent weekend of brunches and Netflix. My Monday Morning motivation courses through my body and I am reborn. In the middle of February, I can start anew. My friends giggle at my impassioned “starting Monday” lead-ins. Starting Monday I am going to exercise more. Eat less. Drink more water. Avoid caffeine. Starting Monday, I will get back on the horse.

I am not accustomed to the utterance “It might  happen.” In this nebulous limbo of trying to conceive, I am unable to apply my “Starting Monday” philosophy of achieving precisely what I put my mind to. It makes me feel like I am failing at something. For the first time ever, there is no immediate reward to working and trying hard. There is no guarantee that I will automatically graduate into The Next Phase of Life. 

I am not good at failing. That does not mean that I am Rico Suave at everything I have attempted. I sat in the back row of my piano recitals nervously awaiting my turn, perfectly packaged in dresses and bows but trembling like those annoying sweater-wearing lap dogs that shiver 24-7. I thumbed out my Rachmaninoff on my lap and heaved inward and outward sighs of distress. I slid off my chair into a pool of fear and self-loathing. And I was in the company of 7 year olds! Whose recital pieces were Old MacDonald and Chopsticks! In a Junior High School gymnasium! Where the Moms elbowed the Dads in the ribs when their heads bobbed in boredom! And yet the possibility of failure taunted me. Tremulously I would perform, rigid in the first few measures, but fluid thereafter. Though imperfect, I pounded out those notes and finished the song. The applause was uproarious. 

It has struck me that I cannot rehearse for this fertility symphony. There is nothing I can do in my own power to play these notes just right. (“Yes there is!” you say. And I will get to that in another entry.) I am looking to the Great Conductor, my brow furrowed in wistfulness, awaiting the music to the song of my life. I walk one foot in front of the other down the yellow brick road with the only thing spurring me on being the Light that shines just over the hill. 

Oma Says Relax

This morning I am drinking regular coffee. Caffeinated, inorganic, chemical-cream laden, hotel lobby coffee. It has become sort of a routine: spend half of my month diligently abstaining from the substances I tested weak to in acupuncture (avoiding coffee being undoubtedly the cruelest admonishment), so my pure, unadulterated body could better create a pure, unadulterated embryo. But when no such embryo is generated, I indulge in my singular cup of tepid, Best Western coffee. Some consolation.

Acupuncture has been recommended to me several times over the last year. It is this perfect thing that bridges Western and Eastern medicine, not as exotic as tribal dancing and not as sterile as popping fertility drugs. My mom is an RN; my brother is almost finished with school to become and RN and I have watched more Scrubs episodes than I care to admit. I am a former asthmatic who was Albuterol-puffed back to life. I will demand epidurals. I will kiss every ilegibly scrawled prescription for antidepressants that comes my way. Ultimately, it was the palpable fear and panic behind the eyes of my well-meaning friends who stammered, “well, there’s always acupuncture??”  that got me through the door. So let the poking and prodding (both literal and metaphysical) begin. 

After a comprehensive two-hour session of applied kinesiology and allergy elimination, I was given The News. I have stong ovaries (yay!) but there are certain substances that diminish the success of their functioning: Gluten, which means I stab all the lifeless potatoes on my breakfast plate and sulk as my husband bites into his luxuriously doughy bagel. Soy. (It contains estrogen {?} and incidentally, it is in everything. Oh, and get this. There is gluten in soy sauce. I might as well be sipping absynthe). Chocolate. (I mean, c’mon.) And my beloved Coffee. And those are just the bold-print items. Of course there are all the obvious ones like sushi, alcohol, cold cuts and unpasteurized cheeses that women who are TTC (trying to conceive) should steer clear of. 

At this stage in the game, people are interested in my vital stats: I am 34 years and 5 months old; my husband and I have been TTC for over a year; we have one miscarriage (M/C) under our belts; we are continually asking What’s Next. I have used ovulation prediction kits (OPKs) and have charted my cycles for many, many months. I can tell you my most recent Day After Ovulation (DAO) as easily as I can recall when I last brushed my teeth. I know more about Cervical Mucus (CM) than I ever cared to and am frankly peeved that I can speak the vernacular to this cryptic language. It means I am IN it. I am not--nor can I ever again be-- a flitty girl who giggles the admission “it’s so funny!  My husband and I weren’t even trying and POOF! We’re preggers!” Because my husband and I are trying. Deliberately, tirelessly trying,  Except that we are tired.  

I started one of my more recent cycles on New Years Eve. My plan was to get home from work that morning and take a pregnancy test in the support of my mutually hopeful hubby. I believed I was pregnant. But I spotted on the plane. I had to play the role of Plastic Stewardess and say goodbye to all the cute holiday families with their even cuter cherub babies in tow while taking deep breaths to stave off the crocodile tears. I sobbed and hiccupped and beat my steering wheel the entire drive home and when I walked through the door,my tear streamed face was the only indicator my husband needed to infer that there would be no need to test that month. I sent an overly dramatic but legitimately raw text message to my nearest and dearest containing the words they probably read through squinting hopeful eyes each month, the BEEP of the incoming text triggering a Pavlovian stomach quiver: We are not pregnant. 

My Mom talked to my 93 year old Oma later that day and told her that it was not shaping up to be a Happy New Year for the Paddock household. My Oma: Mother of 6, Oma to 14 and Great-Oma to 18, in her sweet, German accent reduces her age-old wisdom to one simple phrase: Tell them to have fun and relax. Weeelllll....No can do, Oma. But I am trying. I will get there. I AM getting there. And today, along with your earnest guidance, my coffee is helping me clamber along.