Laughter and Forgetting

The series of unf*rtunate events comes to the end.

It all started last week, when my husband was cleaning out the basement. He gets rid of toys and baby things when I’m not looking. Which is fine, because I told him that I couldn’t do it myself and it was up to him to do it. He brought up a toddler sized Adirondack chair that my stepmother had given to my son before he was born. We all thought it would be years before he could use it, but as soon as he could walk he used it all the time. He loved his chair. It was just his size and he could have his very own place. It became his special TV/movie watching chair and he used it daily until he was about five years old, when he started to outgrow it. I decided a long time ago, that if I kept nothing else from my son’s childhood (besides kid art, of course) I would keep this chair. It’s very sentimental for me.

So, last weekend, my husband came up from the basement holding the chair and said “Maybe we should give this to the next door neighbors (who have a one-year old.)” I know I overreacted. I looked at him like as if he had just suggested we hang one of cats from the window. “No,” I said very slowly and obstinately, “I am never getting rid of that chair, ever.” My husband is not sentimental like I am. He’s more of a pragmatic kind of guy. But when he suggests things like this, I realize there is nowhere, not in any corner of his brain, that he is considering the possibility of adding another child to our family.

Of course, this is what my husband said almost two years ago. He said he was tired of trying to grow our family. He was exhausted, he couldn’t take it any more. The idea of another pregnancy made him want to throw up. As I have discussed here before, I agreed to stop trying and to spend time healing; giving our relationship and our family some much-needed recovery time. Internally, I told myself I would try to come to peace with my miscarriage losses and the even bigger loss of the second child. But at that point I couldn’t give up completely on having another child. It was just not within the realm of my abilities at that point – just as much as it was not within the realm of my husband’s abilities to go through another pregnancy. I don’t think I was ever dishonest about the fact that I hoped that he would change his mind.

It took over a year for me to give up and put away my dream of having another biological child. Something I wrote about in this (post). Emotions are never completely clear cut, but there came a day when I could say to myself with complete honesty, “I am okay with never giving birth again. With all the horseshit that we went through, I am lucky that I have one beautiful child.” It didn’t mean I was happy about it, but the emotional roller coaster of my pregnancies became almost as unappealing to me as they had become to my husband. Not to mention my odds at the age of forty two were pretty crap, even before my miserable history factored in.

But I realized I still wanted to be a mother again. I used to say that I didn’t want my son to be an only child,I wanted him to have a sibling relationship. I wanted him to not be alone when my husband and I were gone. I realize now that none of that truly matters, only children do fine – at least there is nobody to fight with when the parents die and the estate is settled. Only children are statistically high achievers and usually have great self esteem (all that parental attention.) My son didn’t NEED a sibling. Frankly, sometimes I wish I had been an only child and didn’t have to deal with my brother. In the end, the desire to have another child is about me. Nothing has ever given me more unadulterated joy than my son. Nothing has better healed the injuries that the absence of mothering created in my own childhood. As I told my husband at one point, nothing makes me happier than making my son feel safe on a daily basis – something that was deficient in my early childhood and certainly totally lacking from mother during the entire time that I knew her.

With the death of my mother-in-law and my father, these feelings, which have never gone away, have become all the more acute. It’s not surprising that the loss of loved one makes you want more loved ones in your life. I’m sure it’s some kind of primal human instinct (for some of us anyway.) In my own experience, I have seen many people have a child, or one more child, after losing a loved one. And if there is one thing I realized, as I watched my father’s breath fade away in those last few weeks, it is that love is all that matters. Respect, affection, camaraderie – they all mix together to create love. I know it sounds corny. But in the end it doesn’t matter if you were a multi-millionaire entrepreneur or a journeyman plumber. What matters is the love that you gave – and the love that’s given back to you. What matters is holding a dying person’s hand and both of you deriving comfort from that simple action. Kahlil Gibran has said this shit much better than I, but observing and participating in a loved one’s death brought the lesson to me in a new and more sophisticated way.

So, getting back to the Adirondack chair incident. A few days after my husband had quietly tiptoed back to the basement with the chair, it came up again. I don’t remember exactly how. But as we talked my husband said “I don’t really understand, we are never going to have any more kids, so I figure getting rid of things that remind you of your miscarriages is the best thing to do, instead of having to look at them all the time.”

I realized then and there that any mention my husband had made of adoption in the last year, any cracking of the door on the issue, had been purely hypothetical. In my anger I accused him of being dishonest. Which he denied. And it’s true, he wasn’t being dishonest. When he mentioned the possibility of adopting, he was just talking. Like when you wonder what you would do if you won the lottery, or when you discuss the possibility of traveling around the world for a year. In the latter case it’s not like it’s without the realm of possibility that we would take a year off and travel, but mentioning it as a possibility is a far cry from actually quitting your jobs, subletting your house, and pulling your kid out of school for a year.

We talked/argued/debated for a couple of hours that night. He told me that he wants to make his life simpler, not more complicated. I told him that if I had one dream for the next decade it would be to raise another child. He told me that he would rather leave the marriage than do that – that if it really was such a big dream, he could move down the street and I could do it on my own.

Let’s just clarify my dream here. Following my dream does not entail destroying my marriage, creating a broken family for my son, and becoming a single mom. No. My dream is to adopt as a Family, mother, father and brother. My dream does not require that my husband have the same enthusiasm for having another child. My husband would never have gotten married and had kids if someone on the other side had not been pushing him to do so. He doesn’t like to commit to such big decisions. He had much more enthusiasm when children, our child, became a reality. And, while I can’t speak to his feelings about the marriage (particularly at the moment) I know that my son is a great, great joy in his life, and that my husband is a superb, loving and thoughtful father.

I’m pretty sure my husband knows that I will not leave him to become a single mother. Not only is it deeply unappealing to me on almost every level, but I’d love trying to explain that to my son later on. “You see honey, you weren’t enough for me, so I left your father.” Huh.

But here’s my problem, which I’m sure is self-evident: How do I deal with the emotions that are left behind? How do I reconcile that someone else is making the decision for me to give up my dream?

Several years ago my therapist said something to me that has always stayed with me. “You always need to ask yourself, ‘Do you really want to be the person who stands in the way of someone else’s dream?’” It doesn’t matter what the dream is – climbing Mount Everest, changing careers or - having another child.

One could argue that to fulfill my dream my husband must give up his dream. It just seems to me that it is not his “dream” to never have another child. It is his preference. And depending on the day, sometimes it is a very strong preference, other times not so strong. I may be perceiving it all very selfishly. I honestly don’t have any perspective on the issue.

The recent deaths in my family have made me realize that I have half my life left, at the very best. They have made me think “What do I really want to do with this time.” Adopting a child, with my husband, is what I wanted to do, and he does not want to do it.

Why does he not want to adopt? Let me count the ways :

1)It’s expensive – and not half as expensive as raising the damn thing.
2)It changes a pretty simple and nice family dynamic.
3)It takes us back to babyhood (even if we adopted a one year old) which was my husband’s (and mine) least favorite part of parenthood. Diapers, spitting up, sleep issues, food issues – nothing is simple. With an adopted child you can add attachment issues to the list.
4)Adoption is not a guarantee that there will be a healthy child at the end of it. And sometimes adoptions fall through altogether.
5)Stress for my son, and for our marriage.

And do I have a retort to any of this? No. It’s all true. And I think there is an even more complicated reason to add to the list. He has felt like he was manipulated into the decisions we have made to have children. I forced him into having the first child. I forced him into the second. Then I forced him two or three more times into having a second. And look where it got us. I have a big fat broken heart, and while I know my husband doesn’t feel the same way, I know he carries a lot of sadness about it. Sometimes I feel like he is determined to NOT GIVE INTO ME ANY MORE. He gave in to me so many times. This time he is not going to be duped into doing something so hard and fraught with pitfalls.

And there is even one more thing. My husband questions whether adopting a child will actually fill the “black hole” of my emotions. He feels that there will be something else I am lacking, something else I will convince him that I need. He worries that that my dissatisfaction and sense of loss will never end. He has to stop the buck here.

It gets very complicated doesn’t it? And it’s not really worth debating him on any of these points, because it’s his opinion, and none of it is black and white.

But I do have a list of reasons for wanting to adopt:

1) Love.
2) An emotionally (and probably culturally) educational experience for our family.
3) The possibility of my son having a sibling that he can be friends with at some point and share life experience with.
4) Giving a child that is alive a good and loving home. Of course that should never be THE reason to adopt, but there is no denying that there are children that are living in orphanages, without parents, that need parents.

If you didn’t notice – his list is longer than mine. But having children these days, in this country, is never a rational decision. For most of us we are not looking for cheap labor to run the farm, and we’re not looking to create enough offspring to out-survive the smallpox and cholera outbreaks. We are making families as a way to connect with each other, we are looking for some kind of normalcy and security and, at the expense of being redundant, we are looking for love.

So.

I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. I feel jaded and a little bitter. I have a goal that, due to the complications and commitments in my life, I will not be able to attain. When did life get so many limits? It remains to be seen whether my husband’s decision will lie there like a poison in our marriage that ten years down the road will put us on divergent paths. Can I forgive him? Would he forgive me for making him agree to adopt? I think it will be very difficult. I love my husband. I love my family. But I feel a little dead inside.

This will be my last post here. I will not be visiting other blogs much. It’s too much like hanging out with a bunch of drinkers when you just joined AA. It is too painful for me. I need to quit cold turkey and figure out what I am going to do next.

What the fuck is wrong with some people?

When I state that I am a misanthrope, my friends say that this is not true. I may have a low tolerance for morons, but I generally like people, they insist. But sometimes I wonder.

I am the kind of person who knew years before I even thought about being a mother, that I could not belong to a Cooperative pre-school. I knew that even if most of the parents were great, there would be one annoying parent that I would want to throttle every time they opened their mouth.

So despite peer pressure from friends, I have stayed true to myself. Although I have been occasionally tempted by cooperative schools because they seem so...nice, I chose an elementary school that was not cooperative but encourages lots of parent participation. My son's elementary school is particularly liberal and politically correct, the focus is on mixed age classrooms, with a particular "emphasis on diversity" and social and emotional development. (Let's just say there's a transgendered kid in his k-1 class.) It's a lovely place, very creative and inviting, but also academically challenging for my son. He has the most amazing teacher I've ever seen. I wish he could have her every year.

BUT. As you can imagine, this kind of school can attract a kind of over-thinking liberal parent. You know the type; the ones that never let their child play a game where the end result is that someone actually wins or loses (horrors!). The type of parent that if their child was tantrumming in the middle of a family party, would never send the child to their room to calm down because that would be "emotionally abandoning" their child. Instead this parent would spend 20 minutes talking with their child about their EMOTIONS in the middle of the living room, as family members were forced to look on.

Personally,I never spank my child, I don't think it's really productive, nor is it a good way to teach children to not express their anger physically. However, unlike the kind of parent I describe, I do not consider the occasional swat on the bottom to be some kind of physical and mental abuse.

To each his own, though. Whatever works. I just don't want to have to be on the same school committee as those parents.

Whenever you volunteer for committees at school, it's always a bit of a crap shoot. My first experience was great - coordinating the classroom art project for the auction. We were a great team and I made three new friends of the parents involved. And then there was the grandparents/seniors tea. Mostly good, although the woman who chaired the event was insanely particular. I swear to God, you couldn't move a napkin without her approval. For the same event, there was a woman who decided to bring her deviled egg fixings to the school and make them there. I should add here that the school's galley kitchen is apartment-sized, not mcmansion-sized. There were ten parent volunteers getting trays and teapots ready, and this woman with her mixer and bowls splattering hard-boiled eggs everywhere. I heard later from the school's director that the woman had made them at home last year, but that they had "gotten mushed" on the way to school. I just thought " Have you hear of that new-fangled invention called tupperware, lady?"

Which brings me to my latest committee. The fall festival committee. Everything was going great with the two other parents and myself, until the frizzy-haired granola woman showed up. Up to this point I had thought that fhgw was kind of cute. She had warmed my heart and tapped into my adoption radar because she has a biological daughter that is around six, and a clearly Chinese girl that looks to be about 18 months. But within minutes of her sitting down I knew we were in trouble. When I suggested a Halloween bingo game for the kids that used the letters G-H-O-S-T, instead of B-I-N-G-O. She scrunched up her face all funny and said, "I don't have much experience with Bingo. Is it just numbers??" I said, well yeah, it's Bingo, so instead of B4, it would be G4." Fhgw's confused looked remained, but was accentuated by slightly disturbed look. "I don't know...It's just numbers?" she said.
"pretty much," I said. "Well if YOU guys like that, but I'd much rather do something more cooperative."

I had actually wondered whether Bingo was appropriate anyways, because it's gambling, not because her 6 year would get bored. I could give a flip whether we played Bingo or not, but I guarantee you, if you have a roomful of people aged from 6 to 96, and you give everyone a Bingo card with the possibility that they can win something - anything - you will have roomful of avid Bingo players. I've seen it happen.

We dropped the Bingo idea and moved on to a variety of other activities, all of which had to be assessed though the prism of their educational, social and developmental merits. When a cake walk was suggested, fhgw was concerned about giving out cupcakes, because her daughter is wheat and glucose intolerant, in fact BOTH of her daughters, both the biological and adopted one, have a plethora of food allergies. Of course they do, fhgw. During the five minute conversation that followed I truly started to lose patience.

FHGW was also concerned that the potluck portion of the party was from 4pm-6pm, as that was right before dinner. She was very concerned about everyone's children filling up on junk. "For fuck's sake, lady," was all I could think, "Just bring your own damned food." What really sent me over the edge was when she suggested that everyone who brings food should also bring a label to put on their food containers that contained all of the ingredients within. I suggested putting out a general reminder to keep in mind that there are nut, wheat and glucose allergies at the school and if you have a good recipe that omits those ingredients it would be great to make it. She insisted, "No, I don't want people to limit themselves, if they can just write all (my italics) of the ingredients down and label their food.."

When the meeting came to it's merciful end, I was deeply, deeply relieved to distance myself from fhgw before I fucked up and said somehing snottily sarcastic.

Later in the evening, after I had vented to my husband, I happened to pick up the school roster. FHGW's daughter has a first name that is spelled traditionally, but has an unusual pronunciation. Almost everybody pronounces this name with the accent on the first syllable, but this family puts the accent on the second syllable. Every single day of her life this kid is going to correcting people on the pronunciation of her name. But as I looked closer at the roster, I noticed something else. The daughter's last name was an amalgamation of her parents last names. For example, if the mother's last name was Coleman, and the father's last name was Burton, the child's name was Coleburt. Coleburt, as well as this child's name probably exists somewhere, but again, is an unusual spelling. I mean if you heard the name Coleburt, wouldn't you instinctively spell it Colbert? Is it just me? This kid is going to be explaining her name over and over and over again. But if she's anything like her mom when she grows, rambling on about herself may be something that she delights in.

So now I'm worried, because fhgw is on the set-up committee. I don't know. What do you think, am I a misanthrope, or are some people just plain nuts?

Wednesday Night TV

Wednesday night is the only TV night of the week that I care about. I don't know what airs on all the other nights of the week. I certainly coudn't tell you what time any of those other programs air, except for shows like The Daily Show, because they are on every day. But on Wednesday's at 10pm, on Bravo, I watch Project Runway. I plan around Project Runway. I look forward to it.

Sometimes I grab my cup of tea and watch the 9pm rerun of Oprah, and then switch over to Bravo at ten. I love that, it's my definition of "me" time.
Last Wednesday Elizabeth Edwards was on Oprah. Here's her new book: http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Graces-Finding-Strength-Strangers/dp/0767925378/sr=8-1/qid=1159562755/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-1185054-6436110?ie=UTF8&s=books. I see it's number three on the amazon best seller list, so I guess a few of you know about. In brief, it's about the death of her son, who was killed in an auto accident when he was sixteen, about her breast cancer, and about loss. Ultimately the book is about how we cannot survive these things alone. It's about how we need to reach out to others, and to those that have been through similar experiences to help us heal. Since I bawled during half the show, I probably won't be reading it. But a lot of what she talked about, I feel like I have already been through. No, I haven't lost a child (if I was religious, this is where I would be fervently crossing myself), but recurrent miscarriage is it's own major grief. When she talked about finding support groups on the internet, I sure related to that. I used to think blogs were silly. I thought "Really? These Bloggers really write about all the details of their personal life? REALLY?" And then, in my big ol' sea of grief, I found lifeboats in Getup Grrl, Julie and Tertia. I needed so desperately to connect with another human being that understood what I was going through, and through the internet, I found a bunch of them. The relief was visceral. It was the beginning of healing for me.

Elizabeth also talked about how so many people say the wrong thing when such devastating things happen, and how a friend said to her "Remember, people will say the wrong thing, but they really are trying to say the right thing." This is an excellent thing to remember. It is worth noting, however, that there are occasional cases when people act like they are trying to say something nice, but underneath they are passive aggressively telling you to "quit your bitching." it can be a very fine line. I suppose in the end, it is not really worth out energy to get worked up about it though, which is maybe the best thing of all to remember.

She talked about how people are scared to mention the name of her dead son, when in fact most parents (and she qualifies that not everyone feels the same way) who lose a child long to hear the name of that child on other peoples' lips. They do not want their child to become invisible, just because she or he is no longer living. Much as my aunt, twenty years after my cousin's death, was anxious to hear anything I might remember about her son, Peter. My miscarriages did not have names. But I honestly am filled with a sense of gladness when people are not scared to mention my losses. In doing so they acknowledge my pain, and also make it clear that they do not pity me, but rather have some empathy for my grief. I do not want to have gone through all that I have, only to have my miscarraiges be something dark and secret that can only be mentioned shamefully. I don't want to pretend like they never happened

I felt like Eizabeth's husband, John Edwards, was speaking through me when Oprah asked him why they decided to have more children. He said " We knew couldn't replace our son, we never would have tried, but we also knew that children had brought us great joy, and we wanted more of that. Our daughter was going to leave home in a few years, and we didn't want it to end." Um, yeah. Bingo. Couldn't have said better myself.

There was one niggling thing about Elizabeth though. She had her third and fourth children at 48 and 50. If she's going to talk about tapping into the community and reaching out to one another, lightly mentioning the fact that she learned to "never give up hope" when it came to conceiving is vastly misleading. Of course we all know that there is virtually 100% chance that those babies did not come from her eggs. And it's none of our business how she came by her children. But if she's putting herself out there as someone who is trying to help others learn how to process their grief, and glossing over the hell of assisted reproductive techniques, simply saying "don't give up hope!" is pretty fucking alienating to those who have been through it. I'm just sayin'. But of course she's recovering from breast cancer too, so I should probably just give her a break.*

So after wiping my eyes dry, I moved on to Project Runway for completely tear free entertainment. I was so relieved that they kept all four designers for fashion week! I was worried about Michael's dress, it's not that it was bad, it just kind of looked like something compagnie express would knock off as an inappropriately sexy prom dress. I loved Laura's dress, and even though I wanted to rip an internal organ out of her when she announced her pregancy and said that she would throw her sixth child "on the pile, with the others" (She's 43 years old, people), I basically like her. Uli pulled it out in the end, I loved her dress. Jeffrey tanked on the "romantic" dress. Romantic my ass, he's as romantic as soppy french kiss with way too much tongue. What an asshole. I feel sorry for his girlfriend, who also happens to be the mother of his kid. The neck tattoo makes me want to puke. Can you imagine having to put your face in that? Can you tell I don't like him? BUT...You've got to admit, the guy has some talent. There is no fairness in life, as any infertile knows. That yellow haute couture dress was fabulous, and that recycled paper dress probably should have won. His jet setter outfit was good, but again, if made me nauseated, because it was so...Him.

Michael is the opposite of course, delightful in every way. I don't think he's said one bad thing about anyone during the whole show. You know he is going to be the audience favorite, how could he not be? Is he gay? Is the answer to that question old news? As much as I love that show, I don't follow much of the outside gossip. I think I have just wanted to believe he is the sweetest straight man ever. I hope he can pull off something good for the finale.

*Here is much better discussion of the topic: http://www.slate.com/id/2108863/

Purgatory

When I stopped trying to get pregnant, and when, in fact, my husband said he didn't want to have any more kids in any way shape or form, I tried to move away from talking about infertility on this blog. I tried to expand my horizons. And yet, after all this time, I still find that the majority of my posts relate to infertility or adoption in some way.

I don't write as often. And I certainly talk about that part of my life much less in my daily life. But the after effects of infertility, and the desire to have another child through adoption are still the issues that I most often need to get off my chest. And sometimes I hate that. I hate that it is still on my chest like a big, black bowling ball. A weight that I can't quite get out from under. Most of the time I have adapted to the extra weight, but every once in a while I feel like it sucks the breath right out of me again; constricting my lungs and chest and making me feel panicky.

I hate that of the twenty or thirty blogs that I read regularly when I started writing my own, are mostly blogs that now contain babies. I hated being in the less than 3% of women under forty that have had three or more miscarriages in a row. But even then, I never thought I would be in the minority of infertiles that do not go to having a child after infertility, either by birth or adoption. Lest anyone misunderstand, I do not hate those women in the tiniest bit, I still read many of their blogs. I just hate being a poster child for the not so happy ending. Or at least the ending that is wrapped up in a neat little story line.

Get up Grrrl, Julie, Tertia, Brooklyn Girl, Bindweed Heights, Cecily, Lost and Finding, Beaver Girl, Dead Bug, Menita, Barely Tenured, Horkin Ramblings, the Rabbit Lived, Missed Conceptions, Bermuda Triangle of Embryos, Marla, Just another Jen, Fertility Now!, the Infertile Gourmet, Uterine Wars (Soper), Pazel and of course Karen at the Naked Ovary are all new or not so new mothers. These are all blogs that I started reading a little over three years ago, or in several cases, some time later. (For fuck's sake, when I write it all out like that, it makes me feel even more pathetic.) There are several more bloggers that are currently pregnant, even some hard timers whom I shall not name so as to not call attention to them (and therefore affect their luck?), but they know who they are. Only Danae, Emily, Barren Mare, Donna and Julianna come to mind as co-bloggers that I read regularly that have not had a child since I've been around. Danae and Emily weren't really interested in being on the sad side of the statistics any more, and left the blog world, or at least this little corner of the blog world.

There is one thing that separates me from the latter women. I am a mother. And don't think there is a day that goes by that I am grateful for that. There is one other detail that separates me from a couple of them: It was not my choice to stop. (Barren Mare had similar but different issues.) I could have kept trying to get pregnant. It doesn't mean I ever would have carried a goddamn pregnancy to term, but maybe. Right? In my case, it was as a part of marital negotiations that I agreed to stop. I know many of you felt that was unfair. I certainly did at the time. How dare he?

But here's the thing about my husband: I knew when I met him that he was not going to bend to my will. He is independent. He does not like to be manipulated. He is opinionated. He is strong-willed. I made an intentional decision to not marry someone who would let me control him. I do not buy his clothes, I do not arrange our social agenda. I do not clean up after him (most of the time.) I am not his "mommy," in any way, shape or form. While there is lots of upside to that kind of personality, The downside is that I don't always get what I want, no matter how badly I want it.

And think about reversing the situation. If I had said to my husband, after the fourth (possibly fifth) miscarriage, "I cannot take this anymore, I'm tired, I'm depressed, I am insane, I do not want to try anymore," would anyone have judged me? One can always say, "Well the woman is the one that needs to deal with the pregnancy." Well, yeah...physically, that's true. But anyone that thinks that men don't get beaten up mentally by miscarriage and infertility are just plain fooling themselves. Yes, my husband didn't experience the losses in the same; he was not as attached. He doesn't remember any of their due dates. But trying so many times and failing again and again was inexpressibly taxing for him. He is a "can do" kind of guy. After the first miscarriage he got right back on the frequent fornication babymaking bandwagon. He thought he could fix it. If you can get pregnant, you can have a baby, right? The other thing that was even worse for him is that he lost his wife. Where did she go? Even though I experienced it, I can't even describe it, In my mind, It is just a black place, and it sucked the life blood out of me and anyone else that joined me there. It was filled with mean nurses, disappointing ultrasounds, condescending advice, and very, very dark moods. I didn't really have the stamina for infertility, and my husband even less so.

I don't really know where I am going with this post. I wanted to say that I feel like a loser sometimes. I wanted to say that I understand more every day where my husband was coming from. And I also wanted to say something else that I can't put my finger on. Maybe it's that something has to give here. I've got to be okay with one kid, or move towards "getting" another one. I can't seem to accomplish either task.

Sometimes I wonder if I am just innately an dissatisfied person. If one child is "not enough," will anything ever be enough? Will I always think that the grass is greener? But I don't think the question is whether it's enough. I hover between the two worlds of accepting one child and the desire to adopt because my heart was so clearly broken by infertility. That broken heart is having a really, really extended and arduous recovery period. I never knew that healing could take so long.

secrets

I was very moved and also had my thoughts quite provoked by Julia's (Hippogriffs) long post of last week. She has edited it to take out the part that I am going to talk about, so it's not worth going over there to take a look.

At the time she was feeling very dark. She was worried about another miscarriage and proceeded to talk why she and her husband have not investigated adoption. She talked about her husband's issues around his adoption, which was far from ideal.

I will not get too into what she said, because clearly she doesn't want everyone to read about it at this point. Everything looks much brighter this week for her and here's hoping that things will remain that way.

But what touched me about that post is that we all have secret dark thoughts that we bury inside of ourselves and protectively guard from the outside world. There are things that happened in all of our childhoods that become our Achilles Heels in adult life. Those sensitive spots in our personal history affect all kinds of decisions and become completely integrated into our grown-up personality. Consequently, there are decisions that we make and viewpoints that we have, that make sense to us but don't make sense to other people.

There is the adult woman who's father abandoned the family as a child, and she is now so fearful of being left that she sets substandard goals for the men in her life. She marries a man not because she knows he is the best partner for her but because she is convinced he will never, ever leave her. There is the man that was so smothered by his mother when he was young that he constantly pushes away the women in his life, which in the end is only detrimental to himself. Even the most emotionally healthy among us has something that has happened in our life that causes us to have odd opinions or behave irrationally later in life.

After all, we only have our own lives to live. We can't compare what it would feel like to have lived someone elses life. We are very myopic, and we think if something happened a certain way when we were six years old, it will always happen the same way.

One of my secrets, which I have touched on here, but never confessed outright, is that my brother, whom I am completely unrelated to biologically, does not feel like a brother. When we were young we played together a lot. We functioned as siblings, but I cannot say that we were ever particularly close. He was always an irritant to me. As an adult he has only become more frustrating. When my mom was off her rocker and my brother and I would go visit her, it was great that he was there with me. At least he was sane. When my mother started rambling about how the house was bugged with microphones, at least my brother and I could share that secret look that was half laughter and half fear. We were not alone. So I am thankful for that. But as an adult, my brother is a burden. He is a born again Christian that is not very bright or thoughtful. He is stubborn and overly literal. He drives me up the fucking wall. And I resent that I feel responsible for him. He is not unkind, he's just different. And I know a lot of the reason that he's different is genetics.

For a very long time I didn't want to adopt a child. I didn't want to replay my own life. I didn't want my son to have a sibling who he could never relate to, a sibling that he would never talk to in his adult life, if he could help it. I figured that with a biological sibling I could avoid that pitfall.

Ha.

Over a few years my perspective changed. I started to open my eyes up to a different possibility.

•I lost a baby with Down's Syndrome. If that baby had lived it never could have had a peer relationship with her brother. I'm not saying my son couldn't have benefited from having a sister with Down's, I'm just saying that it was not the relationship I was trying to engineer by having a second biological child.

•One of my best friends has two nephews, one Korean and one biological. There are 18 months apart and the best of friends.

•My husband said to me "Your brother is not just different from you, he is different from everyone."

I started to realize, when I truly listened, that there are plenty of biological siblings that can't stand each other. There are plent of siblings that are indifferent to one another. They love their sister "but only in small doses." I know of families where both siblings are adopted and they are extremely close or not close at all, and everything in the middle. I have an adopted friend that has two biological siblings and three adopted siblings and nobody would ever know which was which and they are all incredibly close. Within every family there is a large and nuanced spectrum of closeness and connectedness between each member of the family. Mothers may be close to sons, or vice versa, the oldest brother may be closest to the youngest brother - shutting out the middle sister. There are a million permutations, and you just can't predesign how someone is going to fit into your family.

I realized reading Julia's post that her husband worries about bonding with an adopted child because of his painful experience, and I worry about sibling relationships because of mine. I never did bond with my mother either, but I never took that personally because she was so mentally ill, I knew it was never about me. And I was so absolutely bonded with my father that I knew I could always love a child that came to me. I just wanted to have the best possible chance of a good family chemistry.

And I still worry about chemistry. If we were to adopt, would it be a huge mistake? Would it be divisive? Would it be lonely for the adopted chid? Would my son resent it? I don't know. Maybe. But I also know that a biological child carries the same risks. The negative possibilities are endless if you let your mind go there, autism, ADD, birth defects, or just a plain old super high maintenance child. It's always a huge gamble.

But here is another dark secret that I haven't talked about much here. As much as I believe in adoption, and as much as I find it entirely offensive when people dismiss it as something they could " never do" or say things like "blood is thicker than water," I also understand the power of a blood tie.
When I met my mother and my sister, I was blown away, really knocked down flat, by how much I looked like them, how much I talked like them, how much I was just like them. For a few weeks I wondered whether there was such thing as "nurture." We all three seem to have a similar rhythm in our brains. It was uncanny. And to this day, there is part of me that understands both of them innately.

But time passed, and I started to have some revelations. My bio sister can drive me nuts. She's over sensitive and lacks a sense of humor about herself. I understand her, but that doesn't make me like her all the time. My bio mother is cool and interesting but also emotionally repressed. My bio father, when I met him, was incredibly self absorbed and I really did not connect with him at all. No mind meld there. I haven't talked to my bio mom in four or five years. If I were to talk to her, I'm sure we would have a perfectly nice conversation. We don't have animosity, we just don't have history. I saw my sister for the first time in five years last December and haven't talked to her since. I really should send her an email one of these days. When I met my mother, I was a little angry, because my sister got a mom, and I just got this crazy woman who wore strange things strapped to her head to keep the voices out. There is a big fat loss there for me. And adoption is always partially about that loss. But in the end I can say with every bit of honesty I can muster that now I never wish that my life was different. I never wish that I grew up with that sister and that mother and father in Venice, CA.

I have absolute empathy of for where Julia's husband comes from. I am battling my protective reactions all the time. My childhood experience set up parameters and concepts for me that I keep trying to question. The more time passes, I realize they don't really help me that much as a grown-up person.

life on the precipice

I have not dropped off the face of the earth, although I kind of felt like it for a while.

I don't have the time now to write a long post but one has been brewing for weeks.

The bottom line is that I am tired and sad. The dark cloud that has followed our family has not departed yet - the stress of getting laid off in the middle of kitchen remodel just about sent me over the edge, or maybe it almost sent my husband over the edge, which in turn, sent me to the precipice as well. Watching money drain out of savings at an alarming rate, with no money coming in, is a very sick feeling.

A very good friend's best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer recently, it looks like she has a good chance of recovery, but will have a mastectomy soon. This is the same friend that lost her best friend from childhood five years ago to lung cancer.

My stepmother broke her leg last Thursday, and is completely incapacitated. She's driving me crazy.

I miss my Dad, I miss him the way he was before dementia. And I miss the calming and evening presence of my Mother-in-law. My husband constantly worries about his Dad because he is so very, very lonely without his wife of 49 years and 9 months. Sometimes his Dad just calls my husband up and starts bawling. It's unbearably sad. And my husband gets put in the position of feeling like he needs to save his Dad's life.

On top of everything, almost two years later (in November) I am still feeling the anguish of my miscarriages. As my son begins first grade, I see all the younger siblings that my son could have had, the three year olds, the two year olds and the one year olds. I have progressed from my dark days, but I have not progressed that far. I am left with a vague feeling of sadness that I have come to believe will never go away. I no longer remember my due dates as they pass, but different things remind me of my losses. Almost all of my infertile friends have moved on. Two or three have left it altogether because they just can't take it. And I can't say as I blame them. Most of my infertile friends have or will have babies either through birth or adoption. I feel lonely where I once felt safe.

Getting laid off just postpones any hopes for adoption right now. Getting financially secure again feels very far away.

I guess sometimes things happen in threes, or in my case, tens. Can someone make it stop now, please?

scratch that

Remember what I said in my last post? That I had a"flexible and well-paid" job?

Scratch that. I got laid off today. My bosses couldn't have been nicer about it. They felt awful. They actually said "We love you." They also asked if I would stay on and complete the project that I am in the middle of. So I will get severance AND also get freelancing fees. Quite nice of them, really. They offered to write letters of recommendation, make calls, whatever they could do.

I just hadn't realize how bad the behind the scenes economics were. It had been slow, but we just won a substantial account that I thought would postpone any lay-offs, or at least minimize them. But five people were laid off today. In a company of 18 employees. And my boss tells me they will still be in the red. Ouch.

Lay-offs in the advertising world are as commonplace as copier breakdowns. Clients come and go. And consequently work flows come and go. Yet it still feels mighty shitty.

I am tired of feeling shitty. I'm tired of the stress. I am Burnt Out on bad shit.

nowhere land

I've been feeling a little sorry for myself this week. Sad and lonely. Which is kinda weird, given that I have such great friends, a wonderful and healthy husband and child, a well paid and flexible work situation, a nice home, and no serious financial pressures.

Nonetheless, even the privileged have the capacity to bemoan their situations, and feel alone in the world.

This is what echoed in my mind this week: I have no parents. I have no baby; no three year old, or two year old, or one year old. A friend sent me a note when my Dad died, and commented to me how comforting it was to have her newborn (her second child) when her mother had died. It was her way of saying "use the time with your son as solace," but of course it reminded me that I don't have that second baby that I thought I would have, that could comfort me now.

I also have no kitchen, it's been ripped out for two months now. And as all kitchen remodels seem to go, things have been delayed. The floors had to redone. Twice. That put us behind about ten days. And when the cabinets were installed this week it was discovered that two of the cabinets were mismeasured. And so the schedule pushes another week. Having no kitchen and workers in your home all the time is disorienting and discombobulating.

Three years ago we refinanced and took some cash specifically to remodel our ancient kitchen. We are finally doing it, and seeing the money flow out has made me a little ill. And I keep thinking about how I rather would be adopting than getting a new kitchen.

Don't get me wrong, I will love the new kitchen, and frankly it's been a nice thing to think about in the midst of all this sadness. Choosing paint colors is much more invigorating than choosing memorial locations for your parents.

I'm just sad. There has been so much loss in the last three and a half years. Four+ miscarriages, the deaths of my mother, my father, my husband's mother, my husband's uncle, my bio-father, and a good friend who died suddenly a year ago. One of my best friend's father died in a horrible accident less than 24 hours before my Dad passed away. I've been to four funerals and not one goddamned wedding this year.

And now that all the hubbub has died down, and all the mourners have gone home, my husband and I trying to find a new normal. In the midst of all the stress of the last few years, my husband left a very profitable partnership because the other partners were so highly dysfunctional that my husband was literally losing his mind. Note to self: Never go into a business with a manic and highly addictive personality. So now, after taking so much time off to be with his mom, he is starting all over again. Finding new ways to make a living. My husband is excellent at what he does and highly respected by his peers, but transition is always stressful. Between losing his mom, tending to his Dad, and worrying about Making Money, he doesn't have a lot of energy to worry about my issues right now.

I think the losses makes me want to adopt more than ever. An interesting thing has happened in the last several months. While I still feel pangs of jealousy over pregnant women, and notice them wherever I go, the idea of being pregnant myself has started to become less appealing. All the things that I would have to worry about with my history and age seem just too overwhelming. Spending anywhere from 2 to 9 months in constant anxiety doesn't sound so great. Don't get me wrong, every time I hear of a successful pregnancy in a 40 to 44 year old, the old desire creeps in to try - just one more time. But I seem to have crested the peak of that desire.

Adoption, on the other hand becomes ever more appealing. The fact that a baby will already exist in the world that needs a home has always seemed so great to me. Skipping the newborn phase, while it can have some serious negatives, is appealing on many levels. Having the whole family go through the adoption process seems like a great lesson and opportunity for all of us. For me it could be a chance to give something that I was not given as an adoptee; a (relatively) sane mother. For my son it could be a lesson in alternative family building, for my husband a chance to get a glimpse of what my life has been like. And of course the biggest appeal of all, experiencing another childhood.

But until my husband gets back into a work rhythym, which could take anywhere from two six months, we cannot even consider adoption. And even then, will he ever really be ready to commit to such a huge responsiblity?

So I wait, wondering if my desire will go away with time. And then I wonder if the desire will stay and time will just go away and it will get to the point where we just seem Too Old and it is all Too Hard, and I'll regret that we didn't try to adopt earlier. You just never know, do you?

The things people say

What Van Morrison said (from "The Mystery"):

Let go into the mystery
Let yourself go
There is no other place to be
Baby this I know
You've got to dance and sing
And be alive in the mystery
And be joyous and give thanks
And let yourself go

I saw us standing within reach
Of the sun
Let go into the mystery of life
Let go into the mystery
Let yourself go
You've got to open up your arms
To the sun
You know you've got so many charms
It's just begun
Trust what I say and do
What you're told
And surely all your dirt will turn into gold

What I said at my Dad's wake, with a glass of champagne in my hand:

As most of you know, I was adopted by my dad as a newborn. And when I was a little girl he used to tell my about how he knew, when he saw my big blue eyes, that he had found the perfect baby.

So As a little girl I always imagined my Dad wandering in this huge sea of bassinets, kind of a baby supermarket, and him finally, finally, finding and choosing me from the mass of infants. Saying, “yes, we’d like this one please.”

I was probably into my twenties before I realized that it probably didn’t really happen that way.

But Dad always made me feel that way – like he’d chosen the best possible child. He always made me feel safe and loved.

My Dad was a great role model for me of how to live one’s life. He taught me by example about being ethical and honest and fair and compassionate. He loved to laugh and also demonstrated the value of laughing at oneself.

He taught me not to take any wooden nickels, which I never understood, really.

He taught me that when things didn’t work out exactly as planned it was still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Most everything is better than that.

Another thing a lot you know is that my Dad was a loyal democrat and a bit of a news junkie. And for a man who liked most people and didn’t have any enemies, he seemed to save his animosity for political figures. He hated tricky Dick Nixon. And was horrified when my grandmother, his mother-in-law, taught my brother and I to chant “Nixon, Nixon, he’s our man, he’ll put Humphrey in the garbage can.” It must have been even worse for him when it turned out to be true.

Towards the end I truly knew he was failing when he stopped complaining about George W.

But I am thankful despite his ailments, he knew who I was until the very end, and that I could tell him how much I loved him, and he could tell me how much he loved me, which is certainly better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

What some other people said at my Dad's wake:

When Dad went to visit a dying friend, the friend asked my Dad to pour a nice bottle of Irish Whiskey on his grave after he was gone. My Dad reputedly responded "Sure I'll do that Bob, but do you mind if I pass it through my kidney's first?"

"He was compassionate and ethical, a wonderful mentor, and a friend for life."

"I'm a republican. (much laughter) D and I never talked politics. But we never fought about it."

"How many people in this room have had D's pancakes? (3/4 of the room raised their hands) I have the recipe. (It was the one thing my Dad knew how to make.)

"You didn't have to know D long before you knew that you really liked him."

"He loved to sing opera in the car." (also musicals)

"He was all of the brothers favorite brother." (He was the youngest of five boys)

"He was my favorite uncle. He cared about what I had to say."

"He was honest, almost to a fault."

"It was funnier to hear D telling the joke than to hear the punch line." (I think I wrote about this before, but I loved that someone else said it.)

And on another note altogether. things my son said this month:

L: Mom, do you know what's really cool about being a proton?

Me: No, what?

L: You can escape really easily from anything...You could even escape by moving THROUGH something.

Me: Wow. You're right. That is really cool.

and

L: Mom, what if aliens came to earth, and they had to wear human underwear, and they only had one leg? They would put one leg in one hole and then the other half of their underwear would just be hanging there? Wouldn't that be funny?

Funny, indeed.

Dad

My Dad died last Sunday.

It was time. He was ready to go. He won't suffer any longer. He wouldn't have wanted to live in that condition. He had a good life.

Nonetheless, my Dad died peacefully on Sunday, June 24, 2006.

He'd been on hospice since June 12. He'd only eaten ice cream since about June 15. He lived on ice cream for about 8 days until he stopped eating altogether in the middle of last week. It's very fitting that ice cream was the last real food to pass his lips as it was always his favorite.

I have many memories about my Dad and ice cream. Like when he took me to SuperSonics basketball games at the Seattle Coliseum. Afterwards he would take me to the Baskin and Robbins down on Elliott. He always ordered Orange Sherbert because he thought it was my favorite. While I liked Orange Sherbert well enough, there were actually other flavors I might have ordered, but it seemed to make him so happy to know what to order for me that I never asked for anything else.

I also remember going on several long vacations to Nantucket with my Dad. We would stay at the old family "cottage" (an old, rambling, six bedroom, 2 bath house that is only called a cottage because it was uninsulated. Those that know Nantucket know all about that.) It would be so much hotter on the east coast than it was at home, even on Nantucket. And in the evenings when it was just starting to cool down my dad and I would walk the half mile or so to the center of 'Sconset and get homemade peach ice cream from the little store there. I think we did that almost every day, of every vacation. Sometimes with my brother, but often just the two of us.

We had hundreds of hot fudge sundaes togther, which I thought about often those last weeks as I would feed him his breakfast, lunch or dinner of vanilla ice cream.

There is so much to say about my father that I don't know where to begin. He was an Irish storyteller, with loads of Irish Catholic guilt go with it. He drank too much and could be irritable, I think because he spent much too much of his life hung over. He was self-deprecating, and loved to laugh. And he loved to tell rambling jokes, that we would stretch out over five minutes. You were cracking up at the complicated details long before he got to the punchline, which was often anticlimactic.

Dad was a softy. He would sometimes cry at movies, but usually not sad movies, but movies that had happy endings. He was intensely compassionate, even empathic. And my Dad was one of the most fair and honest people that you could ever meet. If a restaurant bill was missing an entree my Dad would never have imagined not alerting the waitress. It never would have even occurred to him. And to this day whenever I am caught in those moral dilemmas, I feel my father's presence. It's not any one thing that he would say, but I just think "What would Dad do?" And then I think "damn it" and have to pay up.

When he got mad it was hard to take him seriously. He would hunch up his shoulders, cross his arms and stamp around a little. Maybe he would slam a door. It was scary because he didn't get mad like that very often, but it was kind of funny at the same time, much like when my son throws a temper tantrum.

Dad always loved to pull my leg. I remember the time he had loaner car that was a little lighter than our regular car and he had me convinced that the color had come off in the car wash. He had me convinced at one point that Adolf Hitler and I shared the same birthday. We don't.

My Dad loved to follow politics and became a democrat in his twenties despite his parents deep disgust of the Roosevelts. For a man that had no enemies, and in turn rarely had strong feelings of dislike for anyone, he saved his anger for the likes of Richard Nixon and George W. He also hated Barry Goldwater, and interestingly, Howard Cosell. My republican grandmother (his mother -in-law) taught us this little ditty: "Nixon, Nixon he's our man, he'll put Humphrey in the garbage can." My father was mortified, and became even more so when it became true. I remember watching that election with him. I was four years old, and it was the first presidential election I remember. I recall staying up late, bouncing on my Dad's knee, waiting to find out who would win the race. Finally, finally, I asked my Dad when the two candidates would finally run their "race." I remember the laughter, and that feeling that we have as children, when we don't understand why all the grown-ups are laughing at us.

But the most important thing about my father was that I always felt safe in his love. When my mother was off her rocker; imagining that the CIA was spying on us, and the FBI was poisoning our food, my father was a beacon. When he was away I couldn't wait to see him again, so that I could feel safe again. When my Dad finally left my mother after six years of battling mental illness, I remember grabbing onto my father's leg and not letting go. I whined and yowled for him not to leave us, not understanding that the ultimate outcome of divorce would be a great relief to me. I cannot imagine how difficult that must have been for my father.

Throughout his life I could always feel his pride and delight just to be with me. And he was so happy know my son. And it was never about his ego. I was not an extension of him; he always seemed to be amazed at the things I could do despite him. Many, many times he expressed his gratefulness that he and my mother had not been able to get pregnant, and how much joy I had brought him. And for me, I know how lucky I am to have had him. It's easy to say that I cannot imagine having any other father, because, of course, he is the only father I have ever known. But when I hear my friends talk about the complicatad relationships they have with their fathers, I know I struck the jackpot. Having met my birth father (a nice enough guy, really) and hearing about my birth sister's desultory relationship with him, I often think about how I dodged a bullet there.

I was grateful that Dad knew me until the last day. I think he was sometimes confused when I would come into the room, but I would say "Hi, Dad." And he would perk up and get out some semblance of my name. At the end, the last words he could get out of his mouth to me were "I love you." "I love you." "I love you." The last few days that he could still speak, he would just keep repeating it. And then he would purse his lips together as an indication that he wanted to give me a kiss. I would lean over the bed so his wasted lips could touch my cheek.

I love you too Dad. I will always love you, too.

Giving up half the dream

I will never be pregnant again. I never will hope and wish and pray for the health of my unborn child. I will never have to face the measuring and dating of another lifeless fetal sac. I will never have to hear that the baby's heart stopped beating 5 days ago. But I will also never again know the joy of a watching a healthy baby doing somersaults in my belly at a 16 week ultrasound.

I realize that this is old news to anyone that has read my blog for any length of time. My husband told me 16 months ago that he would never, ever, not in a million years, attempt to conceive another child with me. It was too painful and anxiety ridden. He could not take one more miscarriage, one more lost dream.

After briefly contemplating divorce (seriously, I didn't know if I could forgive him.) I realized it was stupid to give up ten years of marriage for something that I could probably never attain anyways. So I said "Fine. Done. I will not ask you again. I will give up my dreams of another child, if that is what needs to be done to preserve what we have."

And it was a good decision. We needed to stop. We needed to rest. We needed to become unpolarized and remember that we were a team, not adversaries.

But the thing is, even though I agreed to stop trying, I really wasn't willing to give up my dream. I was agreeing to give in. An important difference.

A couple does not try halfway to get pregnant, especially after four plus miscarriages and having recently reached the ripe old age of 40. You either are trying to conceive or not. Black or white. So I landed on the side of not trying. I still wished, but at that point my husband would have rather given up sex (at least until I was in menopause) than risk the heartache of another miscarriage. It was so much harder on him than I realized at the time.

But I hoped that he would change his mind, I hoped that with time maybe he could try one more time or that he would embrace adoption. Earlier this year, right before I turned 42, I broke my promise to him and asked him if he would ever consider trying again. He told me that he "just. couldn't imagine. it. " Last month he told me that he didn't want any part of miscarriage, ever again. Nothing has changed since last year, there is no going back.

We take what we can bear each day, and at that time I couldn't bear more than just "not trying." I knew that eventually I probably would have to face this reality, but as I creep ever closer to acceptance, it is still hard. I have given away a lot of baby things, but there are more things that I have not given away. I can't quite do it.

And I think it is because I still have hopes for adoption. Lately my husband has mentioned adoption on his own, without my prompting. But don't misinterpret that fact. He brings it up not out of any burning desire he has to adopt, but because he hopes it will heal the hole that my pregnancy losses have indeliby left on my psyche. It's not that he dislikes the idea of adoption, quite the contrary. But it's expensive, it's a hassle, it's almost as scary has having a biological baby, and, in some ways, even scarier. There are the financial implications of paying for two kids educations, and piano lessons, and soccer, and dance, and blah, blah, blah. Life is easier with one child. If someone handed my husband and me a healthy child, he would be delighted. He would love the child deeply and not regret its arrival. But for him, seeking a child out seems like more trouble than it's worth.

So it speaks to his kindness and heart that he is willing to bring up the subject of adoption up on his own. If I was going to put a percentage chance on our moving ahead with adoption (and my husband knows I like to do this kind of thing, don't ask me why.) I would place it at about 25%, up from about .5% fifteen months ago. It's not going to happen now. While my Mother-in-law was ill my husband was, for the most part, unemployed. We feel lucky that he was able to spend the time with her. But now we have to build up the bank account again. We need to get back on solid ground, if there is such a thing.

But, as I give up my hope of giving birth to a live child, I will cling to this dream for a while longer. And in the event that it does happen I thought I could use this time to do some anecdotal research. I have read several adoption books, and for chrissakes, am adopted myself, so I have a few ideas about what it is like. But I would love some advice.

I'd like to hear from friends and/or readers that have adopted internationally. I would love to receive personal emails about what agencies they used, how they came to their decisions to adopt internationally, and how they decided on a country. I would like to hear about outcomes. At what age did their children come to them, and how was attachment? I love the idea of adopting a 8 month to 15 month old (I never did like the newborn phase), but I worry about problems with attaching. How long did it take to bond? If you are a multiracial family - how is that going? Do you have biological and adopted children? I would love to hear from you especially.

Personally, I am very drawn to adopting from Vietnam. My husband and I travelled there together, and were extremely touched by the children living on the streets there. We wanted to take them home well before we were trying to have a child. My brother-in-law is married to a Japanese woman, and they live in Japan, so an asian child makes some sense. I am just past the age deadline for Korea, and China seems a little stopped up right now. So anyone that has adopted from Vietnam, or is currently adopting I would love to hear from. What was your agency? How did things go? Any information on the orphanages fostering systems there? I am particularly drawn to northern Vietnam for sentimental reasons. Please email any personal experience that you think may be valuable. Guatemala is also of interest to me, being geographically closer and with a native language that I have some knowledge of, and could certainly could become more proficient at speaking. Thanks in advance for anything you have to share. I am hopeful that it will become useful to me.

The Nails in the Coffin

How many times have I used the expression "the final nail in the coffin"? And how many times have I not thought about what that literally means?

My Mother-in-law's funeral service was last week. The service was okay. The first part which was a summary of her life and generosity and kindness was very nice. That part was accompanied by some of her favorite hymns and prayers. And the last part when people spoke about their personal remembrances was lovely. But the middle part of the service was basically a sales pitch for Jesus. Just remember, only those that believe that Jesus Christ is their personal savior will have eternal life, because everyone else is going down the shitter. It's a good thing that eternal life sounds like hell to me. My mother-in-law was a traditional Christian, but she never thought that what she believed had to be believed by everyone. There are a lot of bible thumpers in the family, and the minister wouldn't let us get out of that church without his opportunity to proselytize. Whatever, it's what happens at funerals, I guess. You can't please everyone.

The day before the funeral my Father-in-law decided that he wanted a "viewing." Yet another mortuary euphemism for "this is your very last chance to see the person you love." I have never seen a dead person. I've seen a couple of dead pets, and while that sounds pretty minor, I guarantee you finding my beloved black cat "Slick" after she had been hit by a car was plenty traumatic. But I didn't really know what to expect when we all went to the funeral home at the end of the day.

A neighbor and friend who is an expert finish carpenter had built my Mother-in-law a beautiful "pine box." Everything was perfectly proportioned. She was a tiny woman, made even tinier by her illness. There were three meticulously shaped handles on each side. It was unpretentious and (strangely) homey, just like she was. I expected her to look waxy and ill, but in fact she looked much better than the last time I had seen her, a few days before her death. She did look dead, but only just. She was covered by a homemade quilt, with her hands crossed in front. It seemed a slightly awkward pose, though undoubtedly the standard one for entering the grave.

After several minutes of tears streaming silently down my face, and the not-so-silent sobs of my sister-in-law, the time came to close the casket. The carpenter friend had brought a handful beautiful copper nails and had suggested beforehand that we all take turns putting nails in the coffin. The holes had all been pre-drilled, so our shaky hands did not have to be too accurate. The feeling of pounding those nails in the coffin ranks right up there as one of the most intense moments of my life. I thought about some complicated things at the time, like how removed our culture is from processing death on such an intimate level. And I also thought about mundane things, like how loud it must be in that coffin, and how weird it is was that it didn't matter. I was never going to wake her up. And I definitely, for sure, would never see her again.

After that experience the funeral was ant-climactic anyways. It was a lovely ritual, and I feel a little different after having gone through it; a grown-up rite of passage.

February 11, 1936 - May 15, 2006

My mother-in-law passed away on Monday morning, a little before 7am. She waited until the day after Mother's day, which was so very appropriate, as she was the consummate mother and grandmother.

I feel as if I have lost the mommy that could hug me and tell me that everything was all right in my darkest hours. Her heart hurt when mine was hurting. She treated me like a daughter in every possible way. I could tell her things that I could not tell other people, and I know that she sometimes talked to me about things she could not share with her family. She often praised me as a person, as a wife, and as a mother. Her loving support has bound my husband and me together in a way I could not have imagined thirteen years ago, when I first met her.

I feel lucky to have had her in my life. She will always be beloved by me, and by many, many others.

Dedicated to Cancer, Baby

I don't believe in God. At least not in the traditional "there is one higher power that sees all" kind of way. And if I did believe in a God, I wouldn't believe that God had a sex, that it would be a He or a She.

I do believe that Chaos affects our lives more than any other force, and that events in our life are not preordained. However, I believe there are things beyond my understanding, that there are forces of positivity and negativity that are too complex for me even to imagine. I believe some things happen that are beyond rational explanation. I think we have something like a soul, or a spirit, or an energy that has it's own force, although I do not know what that force is. It's that word "spirituality," that can be defined so broadly by so many different people that it is impossible to pin down. I also think that it borders on arrogance to think that we know what lies beyond. I mean how can Christians be more right than Buddhists? Or Buddhists more right than Muslims? But that's an entire conversation on its own.

Oddly enough, I believe in the power of, for want of a better word, prayer. Because I believe that the mind has great power, and if we can see a crack of light in the distance, we can be carried a very long way on those rays of light. I just don't believe, that if we pray hard enough, God will grant us our wishes.

I am often aware of the tininess of my existence. I feel like I am a minute cell in the workings of an infinite universe, a universe that is so large I cannot possibly step back and pretend to understand it, and its inner workings. Much like the cells in my own body, which merrily carry on with their duties, having no idea of their impact. And yet, as insignificant as I know I am, I take great comfort in the miraculousness of my own life. I feel that the fact that I can put one foot in front of the other, that I can put words on a page, is as difficult to comprehend as infinity.

I am deeply saddened by what is happening to Cancer Baby. If you haven't read her previous posts, please do it now. She is an amazing person and writer whose life is getting stolen from her by ovarian cancer.

Now, as I am experiencing the pending death, from cancer, of my very dear mother-in-law, I have been thinking a lot about my own spirituality. I know my mother-in-law wishes that I believed in God the way that she does. But I don't. However, I did share a story with her this weekend that was told to me by a good friend when my mother-in-law was diagnosed several months ago. That friend is one of the few people I know that read my blog - so I must apologize in advance to her for any details of the story that I get wrong. I hope I can communicate the essence of it.

My friend L lost her very best friend from childhood, Ann, to lung cancer, about five years ago. Ann was in her mid to late thirties, and had two very small children. She had never smoked. Ann fought for as long as she could, but it became evident, eventually, that this was not a battle she was going to win. A couple of weeks before Ann died, L went down to southern California to spend some time with her. She stayed at a nearby hotel so as not to be a burden. Some time during that trip Ann told her husband that when she was not there anymore, she was going to let her husband know that she was okay, that it was going to be okay. Her husband teased her, as he is a very pragmatic, non-religious man. He said, laughingly, something along the lines of "Alright, but don't pull any of that touchy feel crap, because I don't believe in it anyways, and it will just give me the creeps." His wife replied, "No, I will do something just for you, something that only you will understand."

Soon afterward, Ann died. Her time of death was 7:37pm. Her husband is an avid motorcyclist and he decided to have the memorial down the coast, about 45 minutes from their house, so he and his friends could ride their bikes down there together. He decided he should drive the car to the memorial site a couple of days before the service so that he could clock the exact mileage for the bikers. When he got in the car, the clock had stopped at 7:37pm.

When does your car clock ever stop, I ask you? Mine never has. Such a coincidence seems very hard to fathom. It seems much more likely that something happened there that we just cannot understand. Later, when Ann's husband told her friend L the story, she remembered that her hotel room number had been 737 while she was there for her visit. Say what you will, but it sends a shiver down my spine.

So I told this story to my mother-in-law, and I asked her to send us a message, when she is no longer here, that everything is okay. I told her I would tell her grandson about it, so that he can always have that story with him. She loved L's story and she said she would try. I don't know if it will happen or not, but I wish for it. And I wish it for those that love Cancer Baby, too.

Why recurrent miscarriage/secondary infertility sucks

Family update: Thank you for all your caring comments this week. My dad is recovered from his pneumonia scare and is out of the hospital back at the Alzheimer's care facility. My mother-in-law is also back home. Hospice has set her up in the main room downstairs and she is receiving nutrients and meds through a feeding tube. It's hard to say how long she has left. There's no predicting death, other than it will come sooner or later for all of us.

There have been many tears shed, and there are many more to come. But we, that is, my immediate family, are doing well. We feel lucky that we are physically close to our parents, and that my husband can take care of his mother (and father, who is completely overwhelmed by current events) without too much financial pressure. We feel lucky that I have a job that covers about 80% of our bills, and that we have been frugal enough in the past that we can afford to choose between family and work. We feel grateful that we are healthy, all three of us, and most especially our kid. In many ways my husband and I closer than we have every been, and it is strangely lovely to have someone with whom we can share our most traumatic life experiences. I think it's what we all hope for when we get married.

There has been so much going on and many transitions coming. And people have been so kind, offering to help in any way they can. There is so much sympathy to had, it one cares to reach out for it.

And I realize, not for the first time, that as hard as this is, what I went through with the miscarriages was worse. I felt more inconsolable sadness, more depression, more loneliness and more hopelessness. And here are the reasons why:

• Losing our parents is part of the "natural" order of life. Of course there is no such thing as a natural order, but us humans we like to comfort ourselves that such a thing exists. While it is sometimes hard to remember, we should all be so lucky as to bury our parents, rather than the other way around. And while taking care of them is often a burden, it is also a gift, both to our parents and to ourselves. And the vast majority of people will go through the experience of losing their parents, so it becomes a kind of collective human experience.

Alternately, not being able to the have a child, or children that we dreamed of and hoped for, is not "natural." Yes, infertility affects up to ten percent of couples, so technically, it's not uncommon. It is still not a common denominator. And in fact, a majority of that ten percent will eventually have children. That means that eighty to ninety percent of the population doesn't have a clue what you are going through, and in fact, has never even thought about it. And if they have thought about it, it's about "feeling sorry" for the random infertile couple that crosses their path. To most people, it's something that happens to other people, not to themselves. Of course there are lots of exceptions. Many people "get it" even though they have never experienced infertility themselves. But in my experience, it's definitely not the majority. So it gets lonely. Recurrent miscarriage is not a shared human experience.

• Miscarriage is something that happens when there is something "wrong" with you. Everyone wants to know why this is happening to you so they can look at their own lives and make sure it won't happen to them. There must be a hormone imbalance, or bad plumbing, or an age problem. I could see people feeling a little relieved when they found out that I have mild case of PCOS and was forty when I had my last miscarriage. There was something that put me in a different category than them.

People like to blame infertility on age, but here is something most people don't know: A hundred years ago (before birth control) the average age of a woman having her last child was 42. THE AVERAGE. Those women just started having kids at 23 and had 10 kids in between the first and the last (just maybe a bigger nightmare than infertility.) Yes, miscarriage happens more after the age thirty-six or thirty-seven, but every doctor I had believed that I could have a successful pregnancy if I could still get pregnant, because IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!

•We are allowed to talk about our ailing parents, and about the sadness of Alzheimer's and dementia. And again, it is a shared experience, most people can chime in with a story about their parents or grandparents. But we are not allowed to talk about miscarriage. Many people don't want anyone to know that they have lost a pregnancy, because they are ashamed or do not want to be pitied. But are we ashamed when our parents die? Do people pity us? When I share that I have had recurrent miscarriages, some people look at me like I have just described my most recent bowel movement. I don't really care if I make people uncomfortable anymore. Usually my miscarriages come up when they are asking a question or making a comment that begs the answer, like telling me how spoiled only children are, or asking me why I didn't have more. I've never been offended by people asking me about why I only have one, so why should they be offended if I tell them the reason why? The bottom line is that it is not really acceptable as a topic of conversation; it makes people squirm. Which makes me feel sad and alienated. During my miscarriages, the losses dominated my thinking, yet there were very few venues in which I could talk about it.

• People think you're crazy. How can you grieve something the size of a peanut? I can't tell you how many times people have said to me "But your miscarriages were early, right?" Which could be translated as "Your miscarriages couldn't have meant much, since you were barely pregnant, and so why is it such a big deal?" So what is my problem? Why was I foolish enough to think that that little heartbeat was actually going to BE a child? That I was actually going to have BAYBEE? Silly me.

• I've heard before that miscarriages are the loss of a future. A future that we are just on the cusp of, and then that future gets snapped away. Psych. Usually miscarriers wil go on to have another child, but sometimes we do not. For me, I have this sense of being stuck on the edge. I know I can't move forward, but have a hard time turning all the back to where I was before. There is a sense of not finishing something that I started.

• Despite the fact that I think comparing pain is silly, in the end, I realize that having one fantastic child greatly eases my sadness. However, there is one thing about secondary infertility that sucks bigtime. If we are involved in our children's lives we are forced to be around other families constantly. We are forced to not only be around them but to talk to pregnant women about their second third and fourth children. Like everyone dealing with infertility, secondary infertiles have to watch as others easily attain their dreams of family. But in addition, while playing with our children at the park, or attending our kids soccer games, we are forced to listen dumbly to conversations about sibling rivalries and adjustments to the new baby. And we must look interested, or feel judged. By being a mother, other mothers include me, even though I do not relate to their situations. Secondary infertiles are subjected to women's angst ridden monologues about whether they should have "one more," while we are left wishing that it could be that easy. Some people feel that the fact that we have one child makes us open to their commentary about only children. We are also subject to their fertility suggestions - "have you tried one those thingamajigs for telling when you're ovulating?" I've always wanted to say, first of all, getting pregnant isn't my problem, dumbass, and second of all, they are called Ovulation Predictor Kits. Just in case you want to give any of your fantastic fertility advice to anyone else. But I could never say that because people would have thought that I had gone off my rocker. That I had just turned into an angry and bitter infertile pariah. And they might have been right.

It all boils down to loneliness. My miscarriages made me feel more different and detached from a "normal" life than ever before. Time heals wounds, it's true. Two steps forward, one step back. But this wound feels like a chronic condition. It crops up with periodic flair-ups that I just get better and better at managing.

Does it all have to happen on the same day?

The shit is officially hitting the proverbial fan.

I was going to write a whole post about checking my Dad into the Alzheimer's/Dementia care facility last week. But so much has happened since then.

The move actually went pretty well, and as depressing as it was, it was nice to know that he is with professional people that are well-trained to take care of him. I stayed for lunch and I will say that the old woman feeding clam chowder to her baby doll threw me off a little. Then there was the squabble at another table between two women over who should be sitting in which chair. It digressed into a shouting match of the "am not! are too!" variety. When the caregiver came over and asked one of the women if she would like to sit at another table, the lady said "No, I can put up with her." The other woman hurriedly responded by saying "But I can't put with you!!" Somehow, peace was made temporarily until another spat occurred. This one involved all four women at the table. One woman seemed to be the shit stirrer, and the other three started to gang up on her. The troublemaker complained that one of the other women walks around like "she owns the place." The response? "I don't have to act like I own the place - I DO own the place!" Well, there's no arguing about that, is there?

A bunch of eighty year olds turned into two-year-olds, and soon to be one-year-olds.

I was laughing out loud, but biting my fist to prevent a scene. I would have been more distressed about the whole thing if my Dad was addled by the arguing, but he seemed to focussing much more on the music that was playing, which happened to be the soundtrack from the musical "The Fantasticks." He loves that music and it was one of the first musicals he ever took me to, when I was probably about seven or eight years old. I know that Dad can only absorb a certain amount of stimuli, so I am glad his brain is choosing the stimuli he actually can still enjoy.

So that was Friday. On Sunday my husband made the two hour trip to see his mother who is paralyzed on one side of her face because the tumor is pressing on her nerves. These nerves are also connected to her swallowing mechanism, so soon she will be unable to swallow. On Monday night my husband and his Dad decided to admit her to the hospital for dehydration. She was taking morphine for the excruciating nerve pain, but it wasn't even working because there wasn't enough fluid in her body to spread it around. As I write, doctors are trying to put feeding tube in her, so that starvation doesn't kill her before the cancer does.

Also on Monday, my stepmom called to tell me that my Dad was in the ER. On Sunday night he had come down with nausea and vomiting, and by Monday the care facility thought he should be in the hospital. My Dad is prone to pneumonia, so they are pumping him full of antibiotics, and keeping him in the hospital for a couple of days. After my stepmom updated me on my Dad, she told that she had to put her dog to sleep that same morning because he had a brain tumor, something she had been worried about but hoping wasn't the case. Everyone loves their pets, but my stepmom is one of those people that has always related to animals better than people. She still can't talk about the day that her beloved German Schnauzer, Schnapps, died, and that was over twenty years ago. Her pets are just about the only thing I've ever seen her cry over, including my Dad. Needless to say, it blows.

I went to spend a couple of hours with my Dad at the hospital on Monday night, and had to take my son, because, as I mentioned, my husband is with his mother. We bought a couple of activity books and sat in my Dad's room. He was sleeping a lot of the time, but seemed to having be bad dreams, and was picking at his bedclothes a lot. It helped him when I held his hand and told him everything was okay, but the man looks like death. A vacant stare and his once six foot frame weighing in at 134 pounds. Not really something I wanted my six year old to have to deal with, but that's life, I guess.

The next day my son and I took the day off of school and work, and continued our tour of Pacific Northwest hospitals to visit his grandmother while she could still talk. It will only get worse from here, and we thought the sooner the better. Oddly, she looked like a picture of health compared to my Dad, though I think that is more related to the fact that she has her mental faculties, then her actual physical condition.

At the hospital there were some beautiful fish tanks. We stopped to look at one, examining the exotic fish. "Look at his one," I said. But no sooner had I said it than I realized it was as dead as a doornail, and appeared to have been in that condition for some time. A hole had rotted right through one side. For crying out loud, I thought, I know I need to teach my son that all living things will die, but does it all have to happen on the same day?

My father's decline has gained a horrible momentum in the last several months. There is a theory put forth by his doctors that he is suffering from numerous small strokes. They believe that it is not the Alzheimer's or dementia that is causing this crash into complete helplessness, but dementia aided and abetted by the lack of blood flow that causes strokes.

It doesn't really matter, the effect is the same. Last week he forgot how to walk. He moves his right foot but them does't know what to do with his left. You have to lean over and move it forward for him. he forgets more words daily, the exact opposite of a Toddler's language explosion. When I watched him for my stepmom last Sunday, he didn't know what yogurt was, even though he has it almost every day for lunch.

He is moving into a dementia/Alzheimer's care facility on Friday because my stepmother can no longer take care of him. Thank goodness, because I just don't think I have the stomach to help my Dad pull his pants up after going to the bathroom any more. Even though he is almost completely out of it, you can still sense his embarassment. He was a very modest man. I'm so glad he doesn't remember the feeling for long, because few things have made me feel worse than my father's shame.

When I got home from his house the other day, I talked to my husband about it. We talked about having a pact to put one another out of our misery if we ever get to that point. But what is that point? My Dad still knows who his wife is, and who I am. And he still occasionally gives a weak laugh. But I think he has passed "that" point. He can't walk, he can't really talk, he can't remember the words to ask what the score of the baseball game is. He loved baseball. He loved politics. He loved film. All gone.

I have a friend who has talked to her own father about what "that" point is. They agreed that when he no longer cares about the Washington Husky Football team, it was time. This is a friend who had to schedule her wedding around the Huskies away game schedule.

So it's gotten to the point where I really want my father to die. But I also don't want him to die. I know it will be so much harder when there is no longer a warm body there. It's strange, I've started to speak about him in the past tense, because he is no longer alive, really. And yet, and yet...

the long and winding road

Remember this post? Last week, Miyumi, the friend that I talk to more often, the one that grew up in Japan, and is exceedingly polite and avoids all conflict, called me and apologized profusely about that dinner. She said she was horribly uncomfortable during the whole meal and her meek comment about how hard the Alice's life was going to be "with three" was her lame, ineffective but polite, Japanese attempt to lead Alice to talk about her pregnancy. She had been sure that Alice had told me that she was about to give birth again, since Alce was the one that invited me to the dinner, and supposedly "caught up" with me at that time. But Miyumi realized early on in the meal that this was not the case. That I didn't have a frigging clue.

I really felt so much better that someone else had thought it horribly weird that Alice's pregnancy was never discussed. Miyumi knows I can handle other people's pregnancies, people get pregnant all the time, but that it's kind of nice to know in advance, so as to mentally prepare. She also understood that not talking about somebody else's pregnancy is alienating to the infertile one. She remembered, very thoughtfully, that Alice's second child was born when my first miscarriage was due. I thanked her profusely for saying something. It's one of the reasons that she has remained my friend. She gets it.

But just when that became then I got unexpectedly bowled over by some other news. A friend of my husband's wife is pregnant. We don't really do stuff with them as a couple, although we have once or twice. She miscarried last spring, and we both realized that we probably hadn't heard from them these last seven or eight months because she was pregnant again. So I knew this was coming. I thought I would be fine.

Let me give you little history. This couple had their first baby when the wife was 40. The baby had some very rare and complicated health problems that have led to major surgery structural surgery on the bones in his head. The most recent report is that the boy has lost some hearing , and is currently, at almost three, significantly speech delayed. As mentioned this woman had a miscarriage last year at ten or eleven weeks. She had another miscarriage before the birth of her first child. Life has not been easy and she deserves every happiness, and certainly a healthy baby (as we all do.)

I am not that keen on the wife. She is intelligent and articulate, but very uptight. Her house always must be spotless, everything is organized to the nth degree. She bought a new house when she was about five weeks pregnant last spring, and unfortunately lost that pregnancy, but still had a big ol' house. Interestingly, she bought that house without her husband ever seeing it. I know men that are pu--y whipped secretly want someone like that to run their lives, but it doesn't make the whipper any more attractive to the outside world. The woman has her husband on an incredibly tight leash, more like a choke chain, really. The poor man gets about an hour of "free time" allocated to him weekly. He always has to ask for the wife's permission for any recreational activities. And when I use the word permission, I don't mean he needs to check in to see if he has any other obligations, but rather he needs to get leave from his supervising officer. I actually heard his wife say before the first baby was born, that he couldn't "just go to baseball games anymore," that he would have to stay home most of the time for the baby. This couple gets free tickets to the games because her Dad works for the team, but I don't think he went to any baseball games that first year after his son was born.

Her husband is a huge flirt, so she is eternally suspicious of his activities. To the best of my knowledge he has never strayed in the thirteen years they've been together. But consequently, she doesn't like me much, because he flirts with me, too. As though that's my fault.

All of the above is neither here nor there. The wife is not evil, and certainly has not had things come easily.

So why, oh why, did I feel gut punched when I heard that she was due, with a baby girl, at the end of next month? A few minutes after my husband shared this news, I checked our home voice mail and there was a message from the husband. "Hi it's Bob, Mary, Aidan, and soon to be baby Emily!" Fuck. That was even worse. So happy, so hopeful, so optimistic.

It's so little and petty to feel the way I do. I know I have been extraordinarily lucky in having a child at all. The fact that he is healthy and intelligent and well-adjusted is a gift that so many parents wish for.

And yet I am so jealous. So jealous it makes me want to cry. I know her exact age because she has the same birthday as my husband, but she's older. She will be 43 and 8 months at the end of May, when she is due.

I can see that I'm an ungrateful wretch. And it feels wretched to be one.

What feels even worse, is that when I mentioned it to my best friend, I was being even more wretched, because she just turned forty-five, was unable to get pregnant in her forties (she married at 39), does not own a home, and does not have the money to adopt. She's a wonderful human being, and despite her situation has been a very good friend to me through my miscarriages. She is an amazing person, but even she can only take so much. She said to me, "Well, some people might just want to have what you have."

"Sorry. I am so sorry" I said. Because she is fantastic, she genuinely accepted my apology. And I was appreciative of the reminder that my pain can appear very selfish, and I told her that. You have to be able to count on your friends for that kind of thing, because someone who didn't care about me would have just gone off and bitched in their blog about what an insensitive cad I am.

I have friends that have no husband or partner despite only wishing for that. I have friends that cannot afford to buy their own homes, and may never be able to do so. I know a woman who only wanted just one child, and lost that baby at term. (I think she may be pregnant again, but I don't think she wants to tell anyone until that baby is nine and a half months old.) All they want is that one thing, and for right now, they can't have it.

So am I really selfish and greedy? Well, yeah. But I do appreciate what I have. Every day, all the time, I feel lucky. But when that miscarriage scab gets ripped off, it's the same old pain all over again. And it never feels finished. A lot of people have said to me, "I hope you can find some resolution in your struggle with miscarriages and infertility." Like there is a place that exists where I'll be grateful to never have had another child. Like the fact that I had one foot in the door to having a second baby so many times, only to have the door shut in my face, will feel like the path I always wanted.

I have started to realize that there is no resolution. There will never be a day that I fully embrace never having had another child. And that trying to get over it, is like trying to get to the end of a road that goes on and on. I don't believe it will work. I think the key is just accepting the pain will never go away, completely, it will just get smaller in the rear view mirror.

Grandma M.

NOTE: My father is sinking into dementia so quickly, and so inexorably, that I feel I need to start remembering everything he has ever told me. To get it down so that is stays real. And so that my son can have some family history, and some stories of his grandfather that don't involve forgetfulness and decrepitude. It's been one of my new goals for this blog, (because if it is in blog form, I will be psychologically forced to do it, instead of talk about it) and this is my first installment.

My Dad was born in 1928. He was the youngest of five boys that were born in a ten year span. His mother was born in 1882. This of course means that my grandmother was 46 when my Dad was born, and 36 when she had her first. She was almost 32 when she married my grandfather, who was two years her senior, in the summer of 1914. I've often thought it curious that she didn't have kids the first few years of her marriage and wondered what her medical diagnosis would have been, because she definitely wasn't practicing any form of birth control. But that's what years of miscarriage and infertility have done to my mindset. Calculating maternal ages, the age spans between children, and projecting possible fertility related health issues. God, I'm pathetic. Anyways, once my grandmother did conceive, all systems clearly became a go, as she started pumping the boys out at two year intervals.

My grandmother's maiden name was Galvin. She grew up a devout Catholic in Brookline, Massachusetts, and her father was a florist who owned several stores in the Boston area. At some point before my grandmother and grandfather married and she moved away to Cleveland, the family that was soon to become the most famous Catholic family in America, Joe and Rose Kennedy, also moved to Brookline, next door to the Galvins. (This is according to my father. For all I know it could have been kitty corner, or three houses down. At any rate it was nearby.)

My grandfather was from Cleveland, OH and he was most decidedly not Catholic. In fact, he tended toward thinking that religion was a lot of BS. The horror that the Galvin's must have experienced when their daughter wanted to marry outside of the faith must have shook the family's religious roots. I can only assume that given the fact that my grandmother was already thirty-one, they pragmatically realized that a procreating Catholic was better than an old maid. Part of the deal clearly was that "the issue of the union" would be raised in the Catholic faith. And my grandmother took that task on with great enthusiasm. My Dad had so much Catholic guilt running through his veins that he has always found a way to make things his fault, one way or another.

My grandparents were married on Nantucket Island. Both families had "summered" there, and it is where the two had met. They were of the first generation that would transform the Island from a former whaling colony that had fallen into depression after the whales were hunted to near extinction and other fuels had replaced whaling oil, to a rustic and quaint summer retreat. As you may know, the Island today has some of the most expensive real estate in the country, and while it remains quaint, rustic is no longer applicable. I still find it charming to think of my grandparents marrying there on a warm August on the eve of World War I, with the scent of rose hips thick in the air. If you have ever been to Nantucket in the summertime, you know it is a very intoxicating aroma. It seems a very romantic wedding evening for two people that never exuded much romance, at least not to the outside world.

Even though my Dad grew up in the thirties and forties, in some ways he seemed to come from an earlier era. I mean, when his mother, my grandmother, was four years old in 1886, a womens' suffrage amendment reached the US Senate floor, only to be defeated two to one. Hardly surprising since no women could vote on it. The following year, Utah women LOST the right to vote. It wasn't until my grandmother was almost 38 that she could legally vote. And knowing what I know about her, I am sure she simply asked my grandfather who she was supposed to vote for. That is the era she was from; as a young girl it never would have occurred to her that she could have even a tiny voice in national politics, or that she could be non-dependent on a man to speak for her. And it was from this view of the world that she became a parent. She was uber traditional and proper. She was in her middle age during the roaring twenties. I can only imagine her horror at rising hemlines and speakeasies.

After her children were born, My grandmother relied on nannies and housekeepers to help her raise her children. Again, she was of the pre-WWI era and the Belle Epoque - where art and innovation fluorished, and Europe was at peace. The class system was very much in place and even aspired to, as the sinking of the Titanic so clearly demonstrated in 1912. My Grandmother turned thirty the same year that epic disaster occurred. I am unclear on how the depression affected the family. I think they may have been rich before, and not so rich afterwards, but my grandfather was a lawyer, and they lost neither their home nor their servants after the crash in 1929.

There was no judgment in that era on not being your childrens' main caregiver. You had has many kids as you could, and if could afford to not let them muck up your life, so much the better. Even so, my grandmother was close to her children, in a way. While I am certain my father never talked about anything remotely personal with his mom, he seems to have fond memories of her, even though she rarely paid attention to his activities. She turned a blind eye to the boys chaos and let them beat each other to a pulp, as boys will do. From what I've heard from my Dad, raising a fuss at the dinner table was a cardinal sin compared to throwing a roller skate at your brother's front teeth. You could always go to confession for that. But she was there, she was consistent, and clearly fond of her boys.

Later, during World War II when all of her sons were or became of legal age to enlist in the military, my grandmother was proud to be a Blue Star Mother. She had four stars in her window, for the four older boys, and my father often joked that she kept haranguing him to join the military so she could get that fifth star up there. And in fact my Dad did becomea WWII veteran, technically speaking, even though he didn't join the Army until after D-Day and never made it through basic training. But that's a story for another day.

adoption, again

I am somewhat surprised that I am compelled to talk about adoption...again. While I have always had opinions on the matter, it have spent a lot more time thinking and writing about it since I started this blog almost two years ago.

This weekend I read a book called Love in the Driest Season. At it's heart, this book is about adoption and parental love, but it is also about how Robert Mugabe has fucked up Zimbabwe, about the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and about man's twisted cruelty towards other men. It's about how unfair life is. I couldn't put it down.

The author, a journalist for the Detroit Free Press, and his wife were volunteering at an orphanage in Harare, Zimbabwe as the AIDS crisis created thousands upon thousands of orphans. The infant that eventually becomes the couple's daughter was left abandoned by her mother at birth in the high grass in a nearby small village. The tiny girl is not found for a day, and when she is, ants have crawled into every possible orifice. The baby weighed a little over four pounds. By the time she was discovered, the mother was long gone. We never find out whether the mother had AIDS, or had been left a widow by AIDS, or was beset by any number of other problems that are rampant all over Africa.

To summarize very briefly, The baby girl almost dies multiple times, and then finally starts to thrive under the care of the journalist and his wife. During the time that the couple is fostering the very sick baby, something like 18 infants die in the orphanage where she was originally taken. It is crystal clear that the girl would have died had she remained in the orphanage and not been moved to a fostering situation.

Adoptions by non-blood relatives are extremely rare on Zimbabwe, and it is only by luck and the advocacy of an ethical adoption coordinator amidst an otherwise bureaucratic morass, that the family is able to get out of the country before Mugabe made foreign journalists full-on enemies of the state. It is worth noting that if the political climate had not been going to hell in a handcart, the family would have stayed indefinitely in Zimbabwe.

You cannot read this book and feel grateful that this adoption was possible - that among a sea of dying, orphaned children, the love of the two parents triumphed over petty prejudices and lazy bureaucrats.

Before I read the book, I was surfing some anti-adoption blogs and websites last week. After a while I just asked myself why I was doing this to myself, I was getting so frustrated. So I just stopped reading them.

Here is the wall that I run into; How can you be AGAINST adoption? I understand that you can be against your own adoption experience. I can understand that you felt unfairly coerced and manipulated into giving up a child, or that you had a negative adoptee experience because your parents did most things wrong. I can understand that you don't want to personally take on the complications of adoption. But how can you be against adoption philosophically? There are children that need homes, there are parents that will adore them. Not all of those parents will be good, and all will be flawed. But there are a lot of mediocre parents out there, most of them biological. Adoptive parents are no different than anybody else, except they are usually not hardened criminals due to the screening that they have to go through. And as we know, a lot of hardened criminals do have children biologically.

Being against adoption is kind of like saying that what is wrong for you is wrong for everyone else. Everyone is unique, every parent and every child. Every adoption will have it's own unique outcome, as does every parent-child relationship.

It's my biggest beef about the Christian Right. We must accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour, or else we are wrong. And the Christian Right believes that their views on abortion, or gay marriage, or prayer in schools is what should be the law of the land, whether we believe in it or not.

But I digress.

It's not that I am a Pollyanna about adoption. I do believe in adoptee rights and the rights of biological parents. I believe adoptees have the right to any available information that exists. I believe that totally closed adoptions are wrong, but I also believe that there is a huge area in the middle.

In my own case, I do not believe that I was adopted into the best possible family. My mother was flat-out crazy for God's sake. I know that my biological mom was not coerced into giving me up. She was being pragmatic. She was getting rid of a problem; She was a good girl and abortion was illegal. She once told me (in a very kindly way, mind you) that she would have had an abortion, had they been legal. I don't know that my bio-mom made the right decision. She did end up later marrying my birth father for eighteen years, and had another daughter with him. I do know that that my adoption has been intensely painful and complicated for her. But it is the decision that she made at the time, with the information that she had. And that decision made my life what it is. The burden of a nutso mother and the gift of a kind, caring and gentle father. It is my life, and I am who I am because of it. I suppose that it is because I am happy with who I am that I have no issues with my adoption, nor with adoption in general.

I believe that people can blame too much on their parents. I believe that adoptees can idealize what blood ties mean. I know I did. I will not deny that knowing my biological family was undeniably a watershed event in my life. But I am not my parents; not my biological parents, nor my adoptive parents. No matter how much we identify with family, we are our own miraculously unique collection of cells, and we will have different experiences and different beliefs and different relationships than they did.

I believe that blood ties can be strong. I believe that love ties are many times stronger. I believe it is better to focus on what can be done, rather than errors that have been made.(And I'm not talking about suppressing or ignoring the past, just putting it into perspective and context.) I believe that we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness. I believe that adoption is imperfect, like all things in life.
But I also believe that adoption has it's own special mysteries and gifts. And fortunately for me, I know about some of them.

Adoption is not a yes or no issue. It's a reality that can be negative, positive, complicated, imperfect, intense and beautiful. Usually all of the above in equal measure, as "Love in the Driest Season" describes so well. So I will never understand how it can be distilled down to "anti-adoption", as though it is ONE WRONG THING. It just doesn't make sense.

I've had some pleasant, non-bitchy, anecdotal posts that I've been thinking about. But I don't feel like like writing them today. My husband and son have been in bad moods this week, and so have I. My son's had a cold, I've been premenstrual, and my husband, well... it seems he's been premenstrual too.It didn't take much to push me over the edge today.

I go to a pilates class on Tuesday's when my work schedule allows for an extra long lunch. It's a small, semi-private class, with a maximum of four women.

One woman is an OB nurse in her mid-thirties. Another woman is a 44 year old who had a baby through IVF 17 months ago.

The third woman is an unemployed 26 year old, who has been married for a year and half to a lawyer who is twelve years older than she is. They travel a lot, she's dressed really well, and they remodel expensive houses.

I've tried not to judge this woman. I've said to myself. Just because she fell in love with a rich(er) guy doesn't mean she's superficial, doesn't mean she's not interesting, or not thoughtful. And in fact, I do not think she is a gold digger, I think she is appreciative that she doesn't have to work (except to supervise remodels), She is not loud or garish.

HOWEVER, there a few things that have been red flags for me. First of all she wanted to move out of her urban neighborhood to the the full-on suburbs, because "everyone stared at me around here" (The Pilates studio is in the same neighborhood as her old house.) I wanted to suggest that it was perhaps that she is gorgeous, twenty five years old, and has a huge, beautiful, and clearly natural set of breasts.

I should also point out, that even though she lived in a very exclusive neighborhood, it did adjoin the mostly black and immigrant part of the city. Frankly, I think she was getting some appreciative comments from the brothers in the neighborhood and couldn't handle it.

I do think it entirely possible that the suburbs boast more fake boobs per capita, so maybe she won't stand out as much there. Whatever. I am just suspicious of young urbanites that want to move to the 'burbs without any specific reason (other than looks on the street.) I hate the suburbs, but at least I can understand reasons like "better school districts", "community pools", or "lots of families" for moving there.

She grumbled a little when she and her husband had to lower the price of their house from 825k to 795k. She whined about realtors coming by unexpectedly. She just seemed a little...spoiled. But still, she is pretty down to earth, and she doesn't have any irritating mannerisms, or an obnoxious voice. I'm really working on not being judgmental.

Okay, so she's never heard of Roxy Music. She was a toddler when Avalon came out.

I'm just so effing PMS crabby today it wasn't going to take much to send me over the edge.

When I got to class today, she was talking about her in-laws who were in town last week. I asked if she got along with them. She said "it's weird, they are just so much older that they feel more like grandparents." How old were they you may ask? In their mid to late fifties. I laughed and said, "For crying out loud, I'm practically in my mid-fifties." She looked shocked. I said, "I'm kind of kidding, but I'm not THAT far away, I'm old, I just turned 42." She said "Well, you're younger than my mom!" I responded with way more volume than I intended to when I spluttered out, "Jeezis, I sure hope so. I would have been about twelve if I was your mom." (It turns out that I would have been fifteen after I did the math. But who's doing the math?)The OB nurse was cracking up behind her. I must admit that it was pretty funny that she actually thought this was a compliment. It's a new one for me, who usually gets "You're kidding! I thought you were about 35!"

So then she says, "Well my mom was young. She's 46. And she has a THREE YEAR OLD!!" Her eyes started rolling and she couldn't contain her snickering. I said, "Your mom has a three year old? (Yet another 43 year old success story to mock me.) "Yes," she said through her snickers "You CAN get pregnant in your forties!" Yeah, no shit. I HAVE been pregnant in my forties. I told her that too, and didn't bother to explain what happened to that pregnancy. Let her wonder. I doubt miscarriage occurred to her. She probably thinks I had an abortion.

I know what you're thinking. She's only twenty-six, and everyone is like that when they are twenty-six. But I wasn't, truly. I remember meeting a 42 year old when I was about that age that recently had given birth to a baby through what seemed like heavy-duty infertility treatments that I was not well-versed in at the time. I do remember thinking that she seemed old to me, and I do remember thinking that I didn't want to be "that old." But I also distinctly remember thinking, "Good for her! It's great that she was able to have a child with her second husband, I'm glad that fertility resources were available for her." I know I didn't think it ridiculous, or humorous in any way.

This twenty-six year old has just been coddled and protected and not well-educated either emotionally or academically. She's oblivious, and she's bugging me. Trophy wife.

Nothing but positivity over in this corner of the world.

sneak attack

I am so not okay. One would think after all this time I could be okay. That I could be even blase, that the sneak pregnancy attack would be like flies against my infertility armor.

So why does it hurt so much? I had dinner with some friends last night, mom neighbors and a couple of women from my original newborn group. They invite me to these things and I go, but I don't really have that much fun. It's a little boring. Most of them don't drink, which sadly, is a little bit of an issue for me. I'm a moderate drinker, but having a "girl party' without a glass of wine or two is just not as much fun.

So I didn't think about it when I was the only one that ordered a beer. Fortunately, another friend showed up a half hour later and ordered a glass of wine so I didn't feel like a complete pariah. I did think that one of the women, Alice, looked pregnant, but she was sitting down, with a table in front of her and she tends towards a rubenesque figure normally. In passing, and almost inaudibly, one of the other women commented that keeping the kids occupied this summer was going to be difficult "with three." Not "with a newborn" or "with no sleep." I looked at Alice and thought that she must be pregnant. But Alice didn't respond to the "with three" comment. And nobody else said a word about it. No one asked her about her pregnancy, not once did she comment on weeks or due dates, or how much harder having three might be. So I thought, "Well, maybe Alice is just getting chubbier." I hadn't seen her in three or four months. I thought I had misheard the previous comment, or perhaps a cousin was coming to stay for a while this summer.

It wasn't until almost two hours into the dinner that Alice mentioned that she couldn't eat any ice cream because of the diabetes. Gestational diabetes. She's due in less than three fucking months.

How much of an ass did I feel like now? Everybody had been dancing around the elephant in the room and I didn't even know it. I blurted out that I hadn't realized that she was pregnant and sheepish reddened faces cropped up around the table.

How come it's so much worse to be treated like a child? Yeah, it hurts. And this one hurts especially because Alice's middle son was born a month before my first miscarriage was due. I remember how hard it had been to see her expanding belly and thinking, "I should be that pregnant." With that first miscarriage those pregnant bellies were the most excruciating. And now Alice, who turned 40 a month after she got pregnant is having a third. A girl. She's a year older than when I had my first miscarriage and the same age as when I had miscarriages two and three.

But would I rather have known and have it be a topic of conversation at dinner? Yes, yes, yes. It's much better to included than to be protected. To be treated as an object of pity immediately puts one on the outside. This is group I don't even particularly want to be a part of, and I still felt like shit.

I was particularly annoyed with the one woman in the group whom I see regularly. She's from Japan, and consequently excruciatingly polite. I know with 100% certainty that she has consciously avoided mentioning this little fact to me. If she only knew how much better us infertiles and habitual miscarriers do with a little warning. It gives us time to adjust and put on our game faces. Having a six-month fetus crop up suddenly in the middle of dinner is inordinately worse.

I came home and cried like I haven't cried in a long time. Everything seemed so dark. My husband hugged me and said "I'm sorry" and "I wish I could make it better," and I wanted to scream "You could let me try one more time! We could start adopting! It takes a long time!" But I didn't. Because there really is no magic pill. I don't know if I could get pregnant. I know that if I could I would likely miscarry. I know that if we adopted, this kind of pain would not evaporate. But Chris (at barefoot and... - I'm too lazy to link) is right when she says that it can be more depressing to not try, then to try and fail.

Yes, on some days, I am not okay at all.

42

I turned 42 yesterday at 11:28pm. The time period before my birthday has been hard these last few years, as the fertility window gets increasingly painted shut, until it cannot be budged open ever again.

This time in my life has been filled with all kinds of illness and sadness. There is of course, the four miscarriages that I can't seem to shut up about, augmented by my mother-in-law's two bouts of cancer, the second of which will be almost inevitably fatal. She turned 70 last month. There was also my dear father's less serious bout with cancer (if cancer can be less serious). He came close to death due to pneumonia from his low white blood count, which was then followed by his ever-escalating Alzheimer's/dementia. He is 77 now. More peripherally, was the death of my (estranged) mother due to breast cancer the day after her 73rd birthday, and the death of my biological father last year, a week after his 62nd birthday due to lymphoma. I hardly knew the man, but he was so young, and I will never meet him again. Unless my sister told him, I don't even think he knew that I had a son.

But things could have been a lot worse. So much worse. For that I am thankful.

The strange thing that has happened to me lately is that all of the above has made me appreciate how much time I have left, rather than how little time could be left. I COULD die tomorrow or next year or in ten years, but I could also live to be 90. Old age is entirely possible, even likely for me because every single female in bio family has made it to their late eighties, and many have made it well into their nineties. My life may not even be half over. Or it may. But since I don't know I might as well keep setting new goals for myself, and not sit back and feel "safe." Because safe is a crock. The best laid plans can end in a train wreck - and my reproductive history is a testament to that.

So my goals for the near and not so near future are as follows:

•Get healthier. Eat better, practice yoga more, be stronger. I actually am in okay good shape now and am by no means overweight, but I want to be one of those 60 year old women that people always point as a role model for taking care of yourself.
• Have another career. I actually like my job right now. I work for a good company, I'm paid well, and my bosses appreciate my work. But I am not passionate about it. It's advertising for God's sake. I'm not exactly making a positive mark on the world. If I started a new career at fifty, I could have and eighteen or twenty year career, which is not even as long as I've been doing my current work.
• Have another kid. Okay, so it's a goal. You don't attain all your goals. When I told my husband this, he shook his head sadly and said that he couldn't go there again, the fear and anguish of trying again - IF I could still get pregnant. It has been over a year since my last miscarriage. But I would adopt, and he is more willing to talk about that possibility now, although only in the most theoretical terms. Unfortunately, this is a horrible time to adopt. My husband is unemployed, and while that is temporary, he is also reevaluating his career and looking for new direction. His mother is battling terminal cancer. His father will need a lot of help if his wife is gone. I am making this a goal because I still want it as much as I did three and a half years ago, when my nightmare began. And I don't care what anyone thinks anymore. I don't care about the age difference with my son. I don't care about being an older parent. If I've said it once, I've said it 100 times, my grandmother was 46 when my dad was born. I figure that gives me until at least 44 or 45. These days you're not a REALLY old mom until your over 50 (see Geena Davis and Angela Bassett.) I just like kids and being a mom. And I like the idea of adopting. So, there it is.

As part of my new view on life. I've realized I need to change my perspective on this blog. I cannot be a full fledged member of a club that is filled with those struggling with infertility and recovering infertiles. I am neither these days, and the isolation I feel when I read some blogs now is totally contrary to the feeling of relief when I first found this little corner of the world. And frankly, my readership has continued to diminish, along with the drama in my life. I will still write about infertility and adoption, because those are issues that are close to my heart. But I am going to change my contacts list to "old" friends and the few blogs that I read on a regular basis. Please do not take it personally if you are no longer on my contacts list. This is about me Moving On.

(By the way, Heidi (Lost and Found) if you read this I would love to get a password to your blog! I could email you, but I thought I would put it out there, while I was thinking about it.)

I am also going to incorporate some memoir stuff into the blog. Memoir sounds so pretentious, it's really more like rambling on about myself, mostly for my son. I always thought it would be great to have in writing my Dad's childhood and personal history. He was always such a great storyteller, and now that he can tell stories no longer, I feel that lack of something written more acutely. So interspersed with my rantings, I'm going to start writing some essays about my life. I figure that the sheer threat of an audience will make stick to my task.

So, um, see you around, I guess.

ode to the kid

On Monday afternoons my son has short, one on one swimming lessons.

Last week the lesson fell on one of the colder days of the year, and the interior room where the swimming pool is felt strangely hot and humid. I helped L get out of all his layers and put on his swimming trunks. Then we took his goggles off and put on his new goggles with the the special farsighted lenses. They are not exactly his prescription, but finally, he does not have to become legally blind every time he gets into the swimming pool. It was a big development, as it has been very disconcerting to try to learn to swim while simultaneously not being able to see.

Then I sat and watched him for the next fifteen minutes, the length of the lesson. And it was lovely. L has become long and lanky in the last year. He is 95th percentile in height, but only 55th percentile in weight. From a distance I could watch his perfect skinny body poised to leap into the pool. His pointy shoulder blades sticking out like little chicken wings. The winter sunlight came streaming throught the window and gave the scene the feeling of a pristine memory; an idealized flashback from a movie.

L is not tremendously coordinated and tends to be tentative, so his jumps into the pool felt gangly and awkward. But he was so proud of himself. "Mom, look at me float all by myself!" "Watch me swim underwater." When he would pop out of the water he would concentrate so hard on blowing air out of his mouth and nose. I could see his confidence growing. His positivity warmed me and removed me from every other worry that I had.

Even watching L talk with his instructor was so beautiful. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but he was so sincere and animated. Their conversations were frequently peppered with high fives as each new miniscule milestone was passed.

As I sat there the word "elegiac" came to me. As though the scene was simultaneously a bittersweet ode to childhood and parenthood. But the definition of that word is more about sadness or death or loss. So elegiac is not quite right. But it's close.

******

I think this is why it's hard for me when people give up on having kids due to infertility and because "adoption is just not for them." Adoption is more complicated and it's harder (which is why the "just adopt" contingent drives me mad. Tell those people people that they'll need to shell out 20k plus, and have their entire lives scrutinized and then wait in limbo with no guaranteed time frame, and see how they feel about "just" doing anything.) As an adoptee I know that adoptive parents take on a special challenge. But so do parents with dyslexic kids, or ADD kids. Lots of kids present special challenges.

But to give up on being a parent (IF that's what you really want), to miss this opportunity to watch a child grow, to never have a child look to you with delight at their accomplishments - I can't stand that people will miss that experience. I realize this is very self-indulgent, because I am assuming that my view and my experience of parenthood is somehow universal. I realize everyone's experience is very different. . So I'll shut up soon. But I do want to say one more thing. When I delight in my son; in his mannerisms, his expressions, his joy and his pride, it has nothing whatsover to do with the fact that he is genetically related to me. I can't even see myself in him anymore, although on occcasion I do see my husband. But that is not where my love comes from. Instead it comes from enjoying the uniqueness of this little person, with his own character, and his own features, and his own personal experiences. He is himself, and that is what is perfect to me.

the other faith

Someone knocked on the door this morning at 7:45am. I was just out of the shower getting dressed. I was simultaneously helping my so-not-a-morning-person son get dressed. Then the doorbell rang. What the fuck? We weren't expecting anyone.

We hurried down to the door, and opened it to find two clean cut young men looking at me expectantly.

When I looked confused the guy in the forefront asked "Do you have faith?" huh? They did kind of look like mormon missionaries. I said "You guys are coming at this time of the morning to ask me that?!" They nodded simultaneously, with vague smiles on their faces and said "Yes." I turned to open the shades (It was very dark in our living room) and said, "You guys better get out of here, before I start cursing at you."

But when I came back to the doorway they were still standing there. I said "I'm serious..." and was just about to launch into a major tirade, when the looks on their faces stopped me. Instead I said, "Wait a second, who are you guys with?"

The first guy said, "Didn't you want a bid for your tile?"

Oops. They were LOOKING for Faith. Faith Johnson who lives one block over. The addresses are kind of screwed up in our neighborhood, and one block away there is a woman who has an almost identical address. Except that her address is a "North" address, ours is a "Northwest" address. This is not the first time that this confusion has occurred. The thing is, I totally forgot that her name is Faith. Even though we have uncannily similar addresses we don't talk much. In fact Faith and her partner, or roommate, or whatever that other woman that lives there is, are not very friendly. They make us pick up the mail that accidentally gets delivered there. Even though it would take less than two minutes to deliver it to our house. When Amazon.com had the wrong address for us for a while, Faith and co. sent us a nasty note, as though it was our fault that Amazon had dropped the W off of NW. As though we were intentionally trying to irritate her by purposefully supplying Amazon with the wrong address.

After apologizing profusely to the tile guys, I explained the situation and sent them on their merry way. I'm sure they'll tell Faith what a psycho neighbor she has. I'm just really glad I didn't say "You can shove your faith up your ass." Because I almost did.

Irritation. It sounds so much like what it is. Prickly and unsmooth.

When you're dealing with cancer and all that it brings, it seems reasonable to be irritable. Tensions are high, people are thrown together for unnaturally extended periods. The patient feels crappy. The family is worried and sad and trying not to show it. Yet it feels so WRONG to be crabby. It feels so petty.

So I thought I'd vent a little, and maybe I'll get it off my chest and then I won't be so pissy anymore.

My husband took his parents to Colorado for that high-tech treatment last week, and that was really hard. Much harder than anything I did at home. He made the reservations, did all the driving, scoped out the restaurants and found good food. He made sure his Dad had enough beer every evening. Basically, he was the tour guide for the Deluxe Cancer Care Package Tour.

By the time he got home he was understandably burnt out. And a little irritable.

It is not any exaggeration to say that my husband's parents grew up dirt poor during the depression and war years. They have some really sad but gory "when I was a kid" stories. Like going out to the countryside to dig up coal for heat. Or sharing half a can of Tuna between four kids for dinner. Or starting to work at twelve to help support the family. Due to their personal histories, they are incapable of throwing anything away. In their home refrigerator you find lots of rotten vegetables, because when they were near rotting they decided they might still be good. You also find things like multiple bowls topped with saran wrap that might have about two table spoons of yogurt or apple sauce, because dammit, you might want that yogurt tomorrow morning. You can find one slice of tomato, a sixteenth of a pepper, and a leaf of lettuce all mushed together in one plastic baggy.

It's not so much that they save everything. It's that their refrigerator and their counters are so filled with crap that you can't find anything and there is no counter space left to work on.

So when my in-laws came back from Colorado, they brought the depression food plan to our house for a few days. Much to my husband's dismay, his parents packed every single item that had been in their hotel room's mini-fridge. Including, but not limited to, the following: Soon to be totally rotted bananas, a half eaten turkey sandwich with horseradish on it that was loosely wrapped in plastic, (You can imagine how that smelled and how easily it could have and did spread onto other luggage items.) mini-cans of orange juice copped from the hotel's continental breakfast, packages of saltines, and, of course, a six-pack of beer - something that is always easily transportable.

Guess where all that shit ended up. Yep, in OUR fridge. The beer alone takes up a significant percentage of available space.

In no time there was so much shit on the counter that we had about 20 square inches left to cook anything. We have an old kitchen already, we NEED the counter space. I started to feel that the world was closing in on me. And it doesn't help that my husband really, really needed a break and was not getting it. It makes for an irritable husband and wife team. Not good.

Here's another thing. My mother-in-law is only one cancer patient, but she's a cancer patient with an entourage. Taking care of her is the easy part. It's my father-in-law, who, although I really love him, talks at twice the necessary volume at all times, and who never, ever cooks anything more sophisticated than toast. My brother-in-law, whom I also love and about whom I have very little negative to say, always goes where my mother-in-law goes since she's been really ill. This means that he sleeps in my son's room while his mom and dad are in the guestroom, and my son sleeps upstairs. However, my son's clothes and toys are still in his room, so I am constantly sneaking in there for a pair of clean socks or his warm winter jacket. Last week my sister-in-law (his wife) flew in from Japan, so we had yet another body in the house. Although, I will say that she is the most self-sufficient of the bunch, and is a fantastic cook. It's just a lot of people in the house, when were used to our compact family of three. It seems like we're running the dishwasher all the time. And, of course, emptying it all the time as well. My husband's sister periodically visits as well, usually bringing one of her two children.

Along with the family entourage, there are the daily, and nightly, calls from my mother-in-law's "projects." (This is the word that the rest of the family uses when referring to these women.) My mother- in-law has always been a magnet for those people, particularly elderly women, that are alone in the world. She seems to have a built-in sensor for those that are looking for a little human kindness and compassion. She takes these people to their doctors appointments, visits them, and most importantly, just listens. Oftentimes, you used to hear her on the phone, murmuring soothing and empathetic phrases to her little old ladies. "You poor thing." She would say, "Well, you have every right to be upset." "That darn doctor." "I'm sorry." "Well, thanks for calling, you made my day." My mother-in-law is a saint. A martyr too, but definitely a saint as well.

One or two of these projects call every day. They just want to hear that she will be cured. They want to know that the treatment "worked." I don't want to be the one to say that the doctors were pretty definitive about the fact that this is a palliative treatment. That this will not get rid of the cancer, but, we hope, shrink the size of the tumor so that she can eat solids again, so that she can speak without sounding like she has a frog, excuse me, a tumor, in her throat. So every night, I (or my husband) say the same thing. "We won't know for some time the effects of the treatment." "Well she's really tired and feels pretty crummy. She has a sore throat, so wait a day or two to call her." I know I can't wait to get off the phone every time, but I try to be patient and not sound like it. I don't think I am always successful, but I figure it's the least I can do for my mother-in-law.

I guess that's it for now. Writing a bitchy blog is probably better than taking it out on one's family.

The entourage went home to my in-law's house for few days, but the doctors would really like my mother-in-law to be closer to a hospital and medical facilities, so that the doctors can keep in eye on how the tumor is sluffing off. It is possible it could sluff into her throat and choke her. That would be very bad.

Okay. It's time to get recharged for the next round.

What blows

You know what really blows? That when this horrific tragedy occurred last week, AP news felt it was relevant to put the word "adopted" in the headline. I will agree that that particular information is somewhat newsworthy, it is unusual that a family might adopt that many children, and the information does add interest to the story. But this should have been listed as an aside later in the story. By shouting it out in the headline it is demeaning to the family and to the children, as though they're worth is somehow different because of their adoption.

Many will argue that I am too sensitive. That the reporters didn't mean anything by it. And I'm sure they didn't. But subconsciously this headline enforces the values that so many in society put on adoption. That adopted children are different - it's not the same thing as losing "your own." If the headline was "Seven African American Children..." you can bet that there would be quite the uproar about them being singled out. Children are children, the critics would say, what does their race have to do with anything? I know most newspapers in the country try to avoid using racial descriptions unless it is relevant to the story. These children being adopted was not relevant to the fact that this whole family was wiped out in the blink of an eye.

Later I read this article, which explains that only four of the children were adopted (or about to be adopted) that the driver was a biological child, and two of the children were cousins. Nicky, the biological daughter, is depicted as a saintly caregiver who doted on her "adopted" siblings. Somehow it seems that she was that much more special because her siblings weren't biological.

In a totally different venue, it also blows that Us Weekly is reporting that an "expert" (I never said that I only read Harpers) has explained that Brad and Angelina may bond better with their own biological child than with their adoptive children; inferring that genes is the overriding force in parental love.

I know many people that have both adopted children and biological children, and I have read about dozens of others. Every single one of them has assured me that there is no difference in how they love their children. And it sucks that society at large chooses to believe that they are a. lying or b. saints who have abnormal capacities for love and generosity.

I have a coworker that is currently adopting a baby from Guatemala. Another well educated, intelligent and liberal coworker told me about it and said that "they are still planning on having their own children, but just want to do this now." I didn't say anything the first time, but by the third time I heard her explain to someone that the couple will also have "their own children," I interjected, "Mary, this child WILL be their own child. It may not be their genes, but it will be their child." Startled, she acknowledged that I was right, and apologized. I know people aren't malicious, that they don't realize the subtle prejudices that they reinforce, but when will they start to learn? When will "adopted" not have be a label that means "not real." When will it be okay to leave out the word "adopted in magazine and newspaper articles about families, whether they are celebrity families or families touched by tragedy?

I know a lot of people think I'm a whiney ass. "But you know what she meant," people say. Yes I know what she meant, but as an adoptee, if I am not my parents "own" child, then whose child am I? I am certainly not my biological parents child, and although I have met them, and like them, they are not my family. So when I hear people talk about "their own" children versus adopted children, I feel like they are dismissing who I am, that they are negating my personal history.

It sucks that during and after the miscarriages, I was slow to come to adoption for that very reason. I think it's the reason that more adoptive children don't embrace adoption. Yes, they want a biological connection that they missed as a child. I know I wanted that. But the main reason I resisted it is because I didn't want people to feel sorry for me, or my child. I didn't want my child to have to go through her life feeling that her family wasn't recognized by society. The turning point for me was when I realized that these children would be adopted by someone. By not adopting I was not going to save any child from going through the complicated emotions of adoption. I realized it might as well be me doing the adopting, that there are a lot worse parents than me for adoptees.

It blows that people criticize adoption as the buying of babies. I'm not saying black market adoptions haven't happened, I know they happen to this day. But the reality is that the alternative for most of these babies is a life in an orphanage or with multiple foster care providers. And the vast majority of mothers aren't selling the babies. They have made a decision that they cannot care for their child. It's a lovely thing that there exists a system where babies need good homes, and parents are more than eager to provide them. And another reality is that we buy our biological babies too. If I hadn't had health insurance I could have paid up to 20k for my c-section and extended hospital stay. People pay for their babies, it's just on the long term payment plan.

It blows that a year after putting the screeching brakes on our aspirations for a second child, that I still think about having a child, adopted or otherwise, almost every day. It's hard to imagine going back to babyhood when I have my independent six year old in the house. But I would do it. Because infancy and toddlerhood passes, and we're all just a few years older. What the hell would I be doing anyways?

I don't know if it blows that I'll never get the chance to find out. There are so many good things, lucky things, about where we are. But some days it makes me sad. Still.

cancer

My mother-in-law has quite the cancer record. Twelve years ago she was diagnosed with agressive naso-pharyngeal carcinoma. She did heavy duty chemo and radiation and went into remission. In the U.S., 3600 people a year get nasopharyngeal cancer, and it comprises one percent of head and neck cancers.

A year ago she had gallbladder cancer. Only 1000 Americans get this kind of cancer every year. It was totally unrelated to her previous bout of cancer. She appears to have beaten that cancer as well.

Now she has another tumor in her sinuses (naso-pharyngeal again). But this time it is a a sarcoma, almost certainly caused by the radiation that she received a dozen years ago. only 5% of cancer patients will actually have a recurrence of cancer due to their radiation treatments.

From the Cancer Care Alliance:

"Sarcomas are rare (only about 1 percent of all cancer cases annually), and they can be difficult to diagnose. The best place to go for diagnosis and treatment of these rare cancers is an academic medical center where our doctors provide the most up-to-date treatments to hundreds of people with sarcoma every year.

'We see people who are diagnostic challenges,' says Dr. Conrad, director of SCCA's Sarcoma Service."

That's my mother-in-law, the chronic diagnostic challenge.

All this just validates my opinion that statistics are strictly for doctors and insurance companies. Despite odds that seem overwhelming for or against one individual, when it happens to you, it's 100%. The numbers are just averages, and mean nothing, absolutely nothing, to the individual.

Unfortunately for my mother-in-law, this sarcoma has about a 99.9% of killing her. It is an incredibly fast growing cancer that has completely blocked her nasal passages and is spreading out it's killer tentacles with the abandon of a noxious weed. It's took a month to nail down a diagnoses and half the doctors have said, in so many words, "go home and make yourself comfortable, because it won't be long now."

A couple of other doctors have been more proactive, and pushed for treatment. Chemo is usually ineffective against sarcomas, so the more common treatment is radiation and surgery. My mother-in-law's tumor is inoperable due to it's proximity to the brain, and she cannot receive radiation because she already received her maximum radiation with her previous head and neck cancer. However, there is a brand new treatment, called a Cyber Knife (which, interestingly is radio-wave based), that is so precise it would not touch her surrounding tissue, only the tumor. Her radiologist here is pushing for using it, but the only operable machine is in Colorado, and the doctors there would need to agree to do it. On Friday, the Colorado doctor called and said he had concerns about doing the treatment. Again, in so many words, he expressed that he felt that the treatment would not be helpful. It would not do any good. It is her only option.

While we knew the treatment would probably not cure her, we thought it might give us more time. More time with her. and also more time to explore other options, and work with naturopathic doctors that might help slow the cancer. While I understand the position of the doctor in Colorado, he doesn't realize he is taking away all hope. And lack of hope will kill her that much faster.

As it is, my mother-in-law has recently turned to morphine for her pain. This from a woman who never has more than a half a glass of champagne, and who can't take codeine because it makes her nauseated. This woman is a martyr, if she is taking morphine she is in excruciating, take your breath away pain. She can hardly swallow, and breathing is an effort. She is in misery.

When my husband saw the most recent MRI, he described it as a "tumor the size of Texas" growing in her head.

So now, intermixed with discussions about doctors, and treatments and trying to get in to yet someone else, we are having talks about death. Immediate, in your face talks about what will happen next. What will happen to my father-in-law, who, although he is only 69 and in great health, cannot make a long distance phone call, because his wife does it for him. He doesn't pay the bills, or make anything more sophisticated than coffee. He has led a coddled life. We need a Do Not Resuscitate Directive. We need to buy a burial plot. You would think some of this would have been done before. But my in-laws like to live in denial, and frankly, up to now, it has worked for them.

Do you take your six your old to a funeral? We have determined yes, but explain the situation thoroughly before you go. How do you keep the memory of the favorite grandparent alive? Do we have the right recipe for her world renowned pie? How will we deal with the loss of a mother's unconditional love? How do we keep her close?

My mother-in-law takes care of people. That is her whole life; repressing her own needs for those of others. She cannot bear to stop taking care of people. My husband and I have both let her know that we will take care of the people she leaves behind. We will. And perhaps in that way we will get through this.

Family Circus

CHAPTER ONE, CHRISTMAS EVE

The characters:

The father: Sweet but confused 77 year old man, descending into the hell of Alzheimers

The stepmother: She used to be irritating, but now that she is the only other sane one in the family, she's like an island of peace among the madness.

The son: Evidently he lives on another planet. I wish I knew which one. I would describe his personality as mentally slow, with hints of autism and just plain cluelessness thrown.

The daughter: That would be me. I think you know me already.

The daughter's husband: All I can say is I thank my lucky stars for him, because without him I might just might lose my mind.

The grandson: Ditto what I said about the husband.

We arrive at my parents house. The evening opens with my father expressing his delighted surprise that we are there. On Christmas Eve. Yes, shocking that we are there, since we are there every single Christmas Eve. He repeats this comment no less than 22 times during the four hours we are at the house. "What a pleasant surprise it is to have you all here."

Before dinner we listen to Christmas carols. We put on the Elizabeth Schwarzkopf Christmas album. Ms. Schwarzkopf is my Dad's all-time favorite soprano. Although this woman has been dead for God knows how long, she lives on at our home every Christmas. I've heard this woman sing Silent Night at least 200 times. Dad can't remember who Elizabeth Schwarzkopf is anymore, although he comments at three minute intervals throughout the entire album that this singer "Sure has a lovely voice!" "Yes Dad, she certainly does," I say.

My husband mentions that Elizabeth Schwarzkopf was Hitler's favorite soprano as well. A fact that my Dad has mentioned every Christmas for the last thirty years. My husband's comment spurred this conversation.

Dad: Now, he's not alive any more, is he?

Husband: Uhh, no, no he's not, and that's a good thing.

Dad: Oh...was he a dirty player?

Husband: What? (Thinking fast)

Dad: Was he a dirty player?

Husband: Oh yes, I would definitely say he was a very dirty player.

Dad: Oh.

Later, my oblivious brother tries to engage my Dad with questions like "Gee Dad, do you still make that Caesar salad dressing with raw egg?" Of course my Dad responds with the blankest of blank looks. HELLO! This man can't remember what he said two minutes ago. Do you think he even remembers that he EVER made Caesar salad? The answer is no, an absolute and resounding NO, you moron. (Okay, I realize he's not a moron, he's just mentally slow, but I forget sometimes.)

Later still, while opening presents, I note that my brother has given my Dad a book to read. And it's not just any book, it's a book about the nautical tactics of pirates. My Dad used to be a sailor, but that feels like a million years ago. That book should get some good use...as a doorstop.

At the dinner table my stepmother places my Dad at the far end of the table, away from where their two yappy dogs usually sit, so that Dad can't give them food from the dinner table. For the most part my stepmother accepts the gravity of my Father's situation, but every once in a while she tries to pretend that life is still normal. She desperately wants to think if she tells my Dad not to feed the dogs at the table, he will actually remember not do it. Alas, she is always disappointed. Midway through dinner, as my Dad is shuffling food down to the dogs, my stepmother snaps. "Denny!! WE DO NOT FEED THE DOGS AT THE TABLE!!" My Dad looks up, shocked, and snarls back "WHAT?!" As his wife gathers the dogs and pulls them back to their "stay" spot, my Dad hunches his shoulders up and gives her the finger. Good times.

At the end of the evening my Dad proclaims he is going to bed, and gives me a hug and kiss good night. He goes into the kitchen and says good night to his wife. Then he comes back into the living room and gives me a hug and a kiss goodnight and goes upstairs. Five minutes later he comes back downstairs to give me a hug and a kiss goodnight. We left before he had a fourth opportunity.

On the way home my husband commented on what a circus my family has become. Yes, circus is the right word.

Stay tuned for chapter two: Christmas weekend and the husband's side of the family. In which three biopsies fail to reveal exactly what kind of cancer is growing like Morning Glory in my mother-in-law's nasal cavities.

Are you sure you don't work in a fertility clinic?

Here we go. Almost two weeks ago, my mother in law was diagnosed with cancer again. This time it is a tumor in her sinus. We don't know if it is a recurrence of the nasopharyngeal cancer that she had twelve years ago (to the week) or simply a phenomenonally agressive lymphoma. We will find out about the pathology today. Either way it is a huge tumor in her sinus that is growing so fast that there has been a visible change in size in the last week.

The doctors have very grim looks on their faces. There's lots of talk about putting "her affairs in order." They are not giving out any hope except for a possible delay of the inevitable.

Over the course of this most recent diagnosis I spoke with a guy who works in the office next to one of my best friends. Seven years ago, a week before his son was born, he was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma. There were tumors all over his body and he was given three months to live. "Make sure your life insurance is in order," the doctors said to him. Meanwhile, he found a doctor that knew about a new drug trial. He took that new cancer drug, and fought his lymphoma into remission. Since then he has had a recurrence of lymphoma in his head and neck. He told me about a doctor that he believes saved his life from both cancers. He told me that many, many doctors will just say that there is nothing they can do, because they don't know about what's out there and it's too hard to find out.

I thought, what the heck? I might as well give it a try. So I call the illustrious doctor's office. I know scheduling is going to be an issue, I know I am going to have to plead my case. I am prepared for that.
I leave a message for the scheduler indicating the gravity of my mother-in-law's situation, and the need for urgency.

The scheduler calls me back and says that the first appointment with the doctor is January 24.

I call the scheduler back. Her name is Maria. (Her name is not being changed, as she does not deserve any anonymity.) I actually get her on the phone and I say, "I received your message, but perhaps I did not express myself very well. My mother-in-law could be DEAD in five weeks."

Maria says "mm-hmm, well does she want to make an appointment?"

Three beats go by. Very slowly I replied, "Did you hear what I just. said?" "Well, yes," says Maria. "Well, her primary care doctor can call the doctor directly, because I cannot schedule her earlier without that."

"Well okay," I thought. Why didn't she just say that in the first place, for crying out loud. If we need to get the doctor to call, we'll get the doctor to call. But then Maria adds, for good measure, "Because her primary care physician is the ONLY one that can determine whether she needs to seen right away."

She says this as though I may be lying about my mother-in-law's desperate straits as a ploy to get past her, the all-powerful gate keeper. It was bad enough in fertility clinics, but this is life or death stuff. Come on.

Maria is the scheduler for this doctor only. He has his own special scheduler. He probably thought is was a good idea to get someone special, since he's an ONCOLOGIST and all of his patients are dealing with a potentially lethal disease. I can only hope there is a hell for Maria, perhaps where she herself is continually diagnosed with new cancers, but can never get in to see the oncologist.

When I started this post a couple of days ago, I thought we would have the pathology report by now, but the first report was inconclusive, and despite the rush on the second biopsy we still don't know exactly what kind of cancer she has. Aaargh.

This is going to be really, really hard, and not just because of all the obvious emotional earthquakes that are occurring daily, but because I'll need to resist the temptation to commit homicide on some gate-keeping, self-mportant, burned out, clueless, health "care" worker.