get out

If something really important happens to you in the next few weeks, blog-friends, and I don't get over to your place to comment - don't take it personally. I'm going on a trip!

After many, MANY months of planning, we're heading to Europe this Saturday, and coming back November 3rd. We're going with a group from my church, so I'm technically the leader (though we'll have a local guide, mercifully, since my language skills are rusty at best) - and all the preparations means there's been not much time for blogging lately. And who knows what internet connectivity will be like where we are, so I may be missing for awhile.

But we're really excited, and I'll give you a full report when we get back. If you're the praying sort, send up a few for our travels: I really hate flying, and ten hours in a plane is a LONG DAMN TIME for me, but on the other hand, it's ten hours away from the phone and email and any demands on me, so that's sounding better and better.

See you in a few weeks. Ciao!

start seeing motorcycles

You know how, when you're single and wanting to meet someone, every single freaking thing around you is all about marriage? It's as if the D.avid's Brid.al people have some kind of radar to track down the homes of single women and show bridal-gown-sale commercials every twenty-five seconds, just for the sheer torture value.

And then how, when you're trying to get pregnant, every single freaking thing is about pregnancy? Everybody's having a baby, every single celebrity on the face of the earth is on the cover of Pe.ople magazine with their smiling child, saying how they "thought that life was all about work, and then I had this baby, and now I know the whole purpose of my life, why doesn't everyone do this, it's so amazing"?

(Is it possible that the above paragraphs are really more about my perception than actual reality? No. Certainly not.)

Anyway. Lately, everything around me is about infertility. And this is unusual, though it does have its good points. I wrote just a little while ago about my lunch with a parishioner, during which we both confided our fertility struggles. A grandmother in my congregation told me about her granddaughter, pregnant by IVF with twins (very, very sadly, she lost the pregnancy and both children shortly afterward).

Then there was that article in Sunday's New York Times, which made want to run screaming out of the room (WARNING: DO NOT, under any circumstances, read the comments, because you will lose your faith in humanity). And that Padma Laskmi lady from the Fo.od Netw.ork who talked publicly about her endometriosis (I think I spelled your name incorrectly, Padma. My bad.). There was even in a hint in a story about healthcare reform that the Oba.ma's might have had some fertility problems themselves.

And then, on Sunday night, someone else confided in me about a year-long struggle to get pregnant, culminating in a really bad semen analysis and now the fight that lies ahead.

My brother.

There are three of us in my family: older sister and two younger brothers. My middle brother got married first. He and his wife tried for nearly six years to have a child - my sister-in-law, like me, has severe endo (though she knew it beforehand). We all know my story. And now, the trifecta: my youngest brother has joined our sad little club. Three kids, three separate reasons, three infertility battles. (It took my parents five months to conceive me, my mom told me when I first told her about our struggles. My brothers: both on month 1. My mother is the sort of fertility story I now hate. Ironic, no?)

The other day, I was driving down the road and noticed a bumper sticker on the car next to me: "Start seeing motorcycles." "Huh," I thought to myself, "I was unaware that I was not seeing motorcycles."

You know what happens after you see that bumper sticker? You see motorcycles everywhere. They're on TV, they're parked next to you at the grocery store, they're on the freeway, they're cutting you off downtown, they're waiting next to you at the light. THEY'RE EVERYWHERE. I suppose that's the point, really; that some motorcyclist who felt like nobody was really seeing him (or her) decided to remind us all that there are other vehicles on the road.

I feel like getting a bumper sticker that says, "start seeing infertility." Because one thing I have learned over the past four years is that this struggle is a lot more pervasive than I ever imagined.

This is what I tried to tell myself while I was reading the hateful comments on that Times story: that, right now, I see infertility everywhere. It's shot through my family like a virus. It's in my congregation. It's on TV and in the newspaper and in the lives of friends - but not everyone sees it. Lots of people push it away, cut it off in traffic, drive right past it on the side of the road, because it's not their problem - they drive cars, not motorcycles, why should they care? - and so they feel free to say horrible, cruel things, because they just don't see.

I used to get so fed up about that. I used to write comments back on news stories, letters to editors, blog posts of righteous anger - and now, for better or worse, I don't have the energy for it anymore. They just don't see us. And I can't make them.

Instead, I'm trying to ask myself who it is that I don't see. Who's sitting by the side of the road, trying to pick themselves up from an accident, with traffic flying by and nobody even taking a second look - who is it that I can try harder to see, really see, even if their great heartache is one I'll never know myself?

Maybe I'll get myself a motorcycle. We'll see.

bad plan.

Note to self:

Even though, when lovely sister-in-law invites self to "Girls Night Out" drinks and swears that said Girls will not, absolutely not, just talk about their children, remind self that said Girls met at a Parents' group and so "swear we will not talk about our kids" will probably last, oh, about two minutes. If self is lucky.

However, luckily, have drinks. So this is good.

Now will look for Infertile Girls to have night out with. Might be better than Cheerful Moms with Constant Cute, Well-Meaning, but Tiresome Anecdotes of Darling Children.

Sangria was yummy, though.

show and tell: hey, at least I can knit cute things for other people's children.

You'd think that the last thing an infertile girl would want to do is knit baby clothes. But you would be wrong. At least in this case. Because, despite any other emotional baggage they might carry with them, baby clothes have one distinct advantage: they're small. I can actually finish them. This is a huge bonus point in my world, where I have been working on two sweaters for myself for the past, oh, two years, but where I have managed to complete a number of baby items in the meantime.

So my niece, the official Cutest Baby in the World, is turning one in a few weeks. And the world's cutest baby needs a cute sweater, no? Seems about right to me. Thus, in spite of my normal dislike of showing off (I can hear my mother's voice now: "It's rude!" Damn Scandinavians.), I think it's cute enough for a little show and tell.

Witness, my victorious and extra cute baby sweater:

Yay, me!

On the not-so-good-news front, I think I might need a root canal. Which, to be erudite about it, sucks. Big time. I do however, promise not to create a show and tell opportunity out of that.

Now, I'm headed back to the Show and Tell class to see what other people have been up to. Go and check it out!