Actually, I didn't cry as much as I thought I would. Blame it on Lexapro, or getting older, or the fact that I had spent so much time alone before meeting the Canadian that when I did finally find him, I was astonished to meet someone who was more of a man than me. They say nature abhors a vacuum, so, due to the prolonged absence of a man, (or perhaps the cause of it), I became the person I would lean on... and take shameless advantage of. I fixed cars, planted trees, hooked up routers, modems, killed insects and assembled furniture, including an outdoor restaurant heater that quite possibly weighed more than I did. I could still get pregnant. I just couldn't get arrested... romantically speaking.
After a two and a half year dry spell of absolutely zero sexual congress that involved another human being, I got myself some. It did take a village to get me laid. Friends advised me in almost Karl Rovian intensity and I finally sexed when I was well into 42. And I got pregnant, most likely the first time out of the gate. That's right, I broke a dry spell longer than JFK's entire presidency and scored a sperm touchdown that very same night. And the sperm was courtesy of a friend of some twenty years that I had entrusted my born again virginity to.
I miscarried before I even realized I was pregnant. And it was painful. And it was on the floor of my gay best friend's house during a predominantly gay male party. I was the hag curled up on the floor, trying to remain as charming and blithe as humanly possible while holding a bottle of icy vodka to my lower belly.
But that's another story. When it became increasingly clear to myself and my determined, devoted Canadian that our ovulation chart, thermometer and pre-natal vitamins were going to have all the in vitro impact of the African fertility statues my mother picked up in a tourist shop while on white-lady safari in Kenya, we grieved in degrees.
Sure, there was your average anger/frustration, your dime-store denial (which we still dabble in), the run of the mill bargaining and all those other registered trademarks of the Kubler-Ross death patent. We are still working on accepting that there will not be an adorable, impossibly pale and hopefully not too rashy smaller version of the two of us running our lives any time in the foreseeable or unforeseeable future. Perhaps it is a blessing- the Canadian is a recovering alcoholic while I still practice the art of drinking- we share eczema and psoriasis and a panoply of medications to make us bearable to ourselves and others... but if all these felons, teenagers, Palins and crack heads can procreate willy nilly, it just seems slightly unfair that we cannot.
But that is just how it is. So, we grieve while celebrating all our friends and their lovely, beautiful babies. I grieve seeing chic pregnant women hiking and sailing into pre-natal yoga, I grieve seeing them breastfeed, I gape in awe at how their hormones enrich their skin and hair and fashion sense. I grieve for what I cannot ever do, and in that letting go, I understand just how much of an every day sort of miracle a child truly is.
And so, the next step is adoption. There is an earthquake in Haiti, babies who need homes, and there are friends who find their children, and not as a result of their own genitals doing anything particularly smashing. So, that's what we plan to do next.
Yes. Oh, yes. I never really had the desire to be pregnant, especially after spending most of my childhood seeing my mother furiously, sweatily pregnant (7 times... and no glowing happiness for her). But when the possibility was taken from me overnight in illness and egg killing chemo, it was an unbelievable event. But the more time I've spent, the more I realize that this is the path I was always meant to follow - my pound dog who no one else wanted, the cat who was just barely saved as the rest of her family was killed by a pack of wild dogs, and I have formed a great little family, and one day we will find a child who someone else didn't want who will be the perfect addition...
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