The Damnedest Things

I haven't written about The Infertility in a while. This is in part because it's kind of a non-issue now; we have Shae, she is irrevocably ours, and we are too busy being happy with What Is to waste any time wondering What Might Have Been. And we both know that "shoulda-woulda-coulda" is an exercise in futility anyway: been there, done that, have the psychic scars.

But yesterday Shae said that I should have a baby.

And I would be lying if I didn't admit to thinking about it, occasionally, more than once. I don't feel like anything is lacking in my life, but if I am happy now, would I be even happier ... if? Don't they say that children multiply one's joy? And, really, if our lives are already filled with diapers and clutter and cat hair, wouldn't it make sense to do it while you're already used to the mess?

Of course. But should we? And can we?

He and I have mentioned it, of course. It's kind of a running joke with us. People are always saying, "Now that you've adopted, you'll get pregnant, I know someone who ..." Everyone thinks they "know someone who." Personally, I don't. That actually almost never happens, but everyone thinks it happens all the time. It's an urban legend.

That doesn't mean it can't happen, or that it definitely won't. But I ain't getting any younger, and my eggs ain't getting any less scrambled. We're getting dangerously close to that intersection of "Highly Unlikely" and "Haha Hell No." And of course, let's just address the elephant in the room, shall we? We've been unable to get pregnant without medical intervention so far, and I am NOT putting myself through that again. NO WAY.

People have been asking us when we're going to adopt again -- not IF, but WHEN -- and the honest answer is: (shrug). We don't know. It's come up in conversation, but it's not something we really want to entertain right now. We can't afford an international adoption, or a private adoption, so we'd have to do another foster care adoption, and our experience with Shae was one of the most grueling of our lives. We're not ready, and possibly not even willing, to go through that again.

But Shae says I should have a baby.

Kids say the damnedest things.

Mick Jagger, Prophet

Something kind of monumental happened to me today, something I think is worth mentioning, so here it is: for the first time in literally as long as I can remember, I found out that someone I know is going to have a baby, and I didn't immediately collapse into a blubbering, self-pitying mass of tears and anguish.

It sounds very emo, that last statement, but it is in fact the truth. I can't remember when it started, this desperate need to have a child "of my own," but yet here it is. My biological clock has been ticking since I found out I had one, I guess, and it has affected me in ways I have never really been prepared to deal with.

And since we got married almost ten years ago, I have been to A LOT of baby showers. I must have gone to two or three dozen showers since we started trying to have a baby, and that was only about 5 years ago now. Everybody and their sisters have been having babies -- even couples who hadn't yet met when I took my first dose of Clomid have a rugrat or two already.

We both sort of suspected that it was going to be difficult for us if we didn't get pregnant right away, although we never really talked about it. Fact is, I think I knew it even before then -- my cycles were never regular, never normal, never predictable. It's the reason why I started on the Pill in the first place, so I could expect and control what was so natural for everyone else.

Fast-forward what feels like a million years, and we got The Call about The Placement of The Cupcake. Our lives have been so ordinary since then, and yet so extraordinary in so many ways. We have been given the most awesome gift ever: OUR BABY. Not in the way either of us expected, perhaps, but nonetheless, she is ours now, for as long as she will have us.

But in the meantime, real life has happened to other people. I never said this before, and I never talked about it before, but I almost died a thousand deaths when I found out, right around Christmas last year, that my sister had been pregnant before her car accident. I don't know that I ever adequately expressed my condolences to her, because I was dealing with grief of my own.

How could she do this to me? How? Why couldn't she just wait? Just a little longer? What was her hurry? She's only married two years, she's only 30, what's the rush? Why? How? Didn't she know what a great betrayal this was to me? Why did she always have to be first in everything? When was I going to get a chance to be Number One for a change?

It was all about me, of course, which is stupid and selfish and plain wrong. So, so wrong. And I know she is reading this, and -- I am so much more than sorry. But I was angry, and if I learned anything in my 20-odd years of on-again-off-again therapy, it is that anger comes from pain. I was feeling such pain then. We had just been denied a foster placement, and I felt we were running out of time and hope and opportunities.

Of course we now know how this story ends, or at least where it goes from there. We have the Cupcake, and she has Joey, who is the second most awesome and delicious baby in the whole wide world. There hasn't been much time in the last nine months for us to worry about what isn't -- we are far too busy enjoying what is, what is ours, right there, right now.

I shouldn't be surprised that I have been changed by this whole Great Parenting Experiment. Lots of people have told me that being a mother makes you a better version of yourself. Maybe that isn't what astonishes me so much. Maybe it is something else, something I never really thought about before, because I was too busy being a cynical, self-absorbed wretch:

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find that you get what you need.

OH HELL YES

We got The Call around 10:00 on Wednesday morning. Our case worker was on the phone: a child is available, a little girl, 10½ months old, were we interested?

It's been so long since we started this process, and G and I will both admit that we never thought we'd get anywhere. There's only so much patience a person can have, especially when it concerns something that you want so very much, something that you need and desire so much that it hurts to think about it sometimes, an ache down to the very center of your heart.

Recently we started talking again about going back to the infertility specialists, going back on the hormones and the ultrasounds and the bloodwork and the agony. We want to be parents, and we were starting to believe that we were running out of time and options. Of course we held out hope for a miracle, but you reach a point where you start to accept that miracles only happen for someone else.

So that call came on Wednesday, and it was followed by another on Friday, and that was followed by a meeting yesterday, and now suddenly, out of the blue, we are Someone's Parents. Zero to mommy in ten seconds. She isn't ours yet, not entirely, but already she has stolen our hearts. The absolute most joy that I have ever felt, ever, was when I heard the current foster mom refer to us as the baby's "new mom and dad."

Are you there God? It's me, rockle. We've had our issues in the past. I'd lost my hope and I'd lost my faith, but you never did. Thank you for this fantastic opportunity to have a dream come true. Are we interested?

OH HELL YES.

Um. So. On my way home from work today I was sort of planning this whole long post about how on the day before Thanksgiving, November 21, a day that shall live in infamy forever and ever, amen, G and I had this interview for a potential adoption placement and we finally got an answer and the response was, basically, FUCK NO YOU CRAZY GODDAMNED LUNATIC AND WE'RE SORRY MR. G BUT DO YOU KNOW YOUR WIFE IS INSANE AND UNFIT?, quote-unquote, and how now I'm all spiralling out of control because the whole entire world and parts of Mars are conspiring to commit this whole nuclear complete annihilation of my soul and all that rot, but ... well, I'm just not really prepared to deal with it right now, so I won't.

I mean, don't get me wrong: I'm hurt and angry and pissed off and tired and I want to rend my garments, hypothetically speaking, but then again I just bought this sweater on Friday and it really reminds me of this sweater I had back in the day from the United Colors of Bennetton but then my boobs and my ass got too big to fit into it any more and now I don't know where it is, somewhere in the black hole of my mother's house, I think, but anyway this particular sweater is new and I just wore it once and I only have the one stain on it so far, so maybe I'll rend something else later, OK? Not right now.

It's tiring being told over and over again that things just aren't going to work out for you. Never in my life, not seriously, have I ever had to take "No" for an answer, and something just does not compute. Now matter how many negative pregnancy tests I take, no matter how many times different counties or caseworkers tell us that we are denied, no matter how much blood and hormones and money and sweat and tears and actual tiny little pieces of my heart the doctors take month after month, week after week, day after day, even two years after I've stopped giving myself shots in the stomach literally one day before I'm supposed to get on the plane for my sister's wedding, no matter how many times and how many days and how may tries and how many ways, I just can't figure out how to let it go.

Some people, they keep telling me, are just not meant to be parents. Their purpose is broader or wider or higher or different, but I just can't wrap my head around that. I don't care. Even though I know, somewhere deep down there where all my primordial feelings live and breathe, that this thing I want so much is just not going to happen for me, I can't give it up. And it is killing me. I am killing myself, and I can't stop it. It makes me ridiulous, irrational, irritable, eleventy kinds of crazy, and I just can't shut it off.

And I am just not prepared to talk about it. Not right now.