A Different Mindset

One of my favorite morning activities involves reading book related topics on NPR.  It’s fun to figure out what to look for at the library and discover new reads that might typically fall outside of my usual bailiwick.

The other morning, I clicked over to an author interview where the headline read “What It’s Like to be Held Hostage by Somali Pirates for 2 ½ Years” (I mean, how could I not click over with a headline like that?).  As I was reading, I came across this statement by the author of the book, Michael Scott Moore:

“On his line ‘Hope is like heroin to a hostage, and it can be just as destructive’

Hope was a cycle, and after a while, it became a destructive cycle. People say, “Well, how did you hang onto hope for two years and eight months?” And the fact is: I didn’t. I learned to live without hope. So having your hopes raised and then dashed every two weeks, which is what the guards tried to do — they would say, “Michael, don’t worry, you’re going to be out in two weeks, or a month” or something — was devastating. It was actually no way to live. And so I had to find a different level of existing. And it turns out you can live without hope. … Any Hallmark-like quotes to the contrary are wrong.

Well, hope and despair are just two ways of approaching the future. I don’t know which philosopher I’m paraphrasing, I think maybe Sartre, but — those are just two mindsets toward an uncertain future. And if you would recognize that, and simply don’t think forward toward the future, and don’t insist on a rosy outlook for the next couple of weeks or months or years, then you can live in the moment. And that’s what I had to learn to do. I would have snapped if I had done it any other way.”

It really spoke to me.  While infertility is, obviously, not the same thing as being kidnapped by pirates, what the author had to say there about hope made so much sense.  That cycle of having hopes raised, then dashed, then raised is a huge part of what makes infertility so tough to deal with emotionally.  I love the idea that, contrary to conventional ‘wisdom’, there’s another way to consider one’s circumstances.

This post is a part of Microblog Mondays.  If you want to read more, please head over to Stirrup Queens!  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.

Advertisements

Lucky Thirteen

“Well,” I told Arthur back in January.  “It’s official.  We’ve been us for 20 years.  Can you believe we started dating that long ago?”

He nodded.  We were thick in the midst of house things, redecorating, and moving.  It felt like that statement should be more climactic somehow, but, well, we’d just bought a house.

So it goes.  Another year, another mile marker.  Thirteen years ago today, we held the official launch party formalizing our partnership and starting our family.

Arthur let me sleep in an hour and a half this morning and that’s the kind of gesture that feels somehow more romantic than the “traditional” sorts of gifts for a day like today.  I’ll put away the dishes and then go a bit extra to do the laundry that is typically his responsibility and tonight we’ll go to dinner and despite our best efforts, wind up talking about the nuts and bolts of running a life together.

As far as creative and collaborative endeavors go, I think it’s a success so far, that we still wake up and wouldn’t want to do this with anyone else.

This post is a part of Microblog Mondays.  If you want to read more, head on over to Stirrup Queens!  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.  

The Cat Came Back

“Ahh!” I yelled as a furry, black streak bolted through my legs and out the door.

We had just finished viewing a house with our realtor that had gone uneventfully – until now.  Sh*t, I thought, we can’t lose someone’s pet!  Fortunately, the cat, once out, had run to the neighbor’s yard but then stopped to sit under a bush.  Arthur and the real estate agent successfully retrieved the cat and deposited it carefully back into the house.

We bought the house.

~*~

Friday morning, I was getting ready when E told me that there was a cat on the back porch.  I didn’t think much of it.  When I was growing up, it was common to see cats from around the neighborhood taking a stroll, probably after mice or birds.  The cat mewed for a few moments at the back door.  I wonder where he’s from, I thought.  We left to run an errand, and when I came back, the cat was gone.

~*~

Sunday, we saw the cat again.  This time, however, we were out in the yard, and the cat came up to us, rubbed against our legs, and purred.  It was obvious he wasn’t feral.  I thought about this for a moment and remembered the similar-looking cat that had escaped when we viewed the house.  I knew the former owner hadn’t moved too far away.  “I wonder if this is (former owner’s) cat,” I said to Arthur.  The neighbor who I knew kept in touch with the former owner didn’t seem to be home, though.  “I’ll call the real estate office on Monday.  Hopefully they can put me in touch with the former owner and I can find out if he’s missing a cat,” I decided.  We went indoors briefly, and when we came out again, the cat was gone.

~*~

This morning, I didn’t see the cat, but called and left a message with the real estate agent.  A couple hours later, running late, not having received a return call, I opened the garage door and as I was getting the car loaded, the cat came running from across the street, mewing frantically.  “Poor thing,” I said.  It was just too much to be coincidence.  I knew I needed to get in touch with the former owner as soon as possible.

Fortunately, the neighbor was home when I knocked and able to give me the former owner’s phone number.  I called him.  “Can you catch the cat?” he asked.  “I’ll be straight over.”

I picked up the cat, made sure I had him secured in the garage, and within five minutes, the former owner was there.  It turned out that the cat belonged to his adolescent daughter who had been worried and upset.  He was very glad to see the cat and looking forward to reuniting girl with her pet.

~*~

What can I say, I’m always excited to get an animal story with a happy ending.

This post is a part of Microblog Mondays.  If you want to read more, please head over to Stirrup Queens!  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.

Flipping The Script: Solidarity, not Pressure

When I was actively going through infertility and treatment, I heard a lot of stories.  I think everyone who goes through any sort of medical or social crisis hears stuff like this, you know, the “the doctors told them they’d never get pregnant/recover/etc., but they did!”  Sometimes this was helpful, particularly when related firsthand by the person the story had happened to, and often, those storytellers (whether in person or on blogs) would point out that while it had worked for them, they knew it wasn’t necessarily going to work that way for others.  It was solidarity, not inspiration.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t always the case.  Sometimes the stories were told more prescriptively (often by people that they hadn’t happened to), in the “if you just hang on, it will happen!” or “if you do _______, you’ll have a baby!”  Often, it occurred when I was already beating myself up and wondering what I could have done differently or when we were making painful decisions whether or not to continue treatment.  Those stories made me feel guilty, my decisions unaccepted, and left me second-guessing whether or not I’d done “enough”.

I’ve lurked this year for National Infertility Awareness Week, mostly because reading everyone else’s blog posts proved interesting and the topic – “Flip the Script” – is one I’ve had to mull over a bit.  Finally, though, I’ve realized the script I want to flip: be careful with stories.

A couple of years ago, I realized I’d become that cliché, walking urban legend of infertility stories: IVF works on the third embryo transfer after losses, rare, tragic complications, and out of that, a beautiful, healthy child.  Getting spontaneously pregnant with my second with no interventions or treatments only added to it.

I’m grateful for how things worked out.  But it is by the most bizarre circumstances and strange, against-the-odds events that I am where I am in life right now.  There is absolutely nothing that is able to be generalized to someone else struggling with infertility.

It’s not because of my hard work.  It’s not because of my persistence.  It’s not because I’m somehow “special”.  It’s not because of my good attitude or positive thinking (please, ask anyone in my life – I did not accept infertility/PCOS with any grace whatsoever, still dislike many pregnancy announcements/going to other people’s baby showers except under special circumstances, and hated pretty much every moment of treatment).  It’s not because of “baby dust”.  It’s not because I deserved it more than anyone else.

Truthfully, I have no idea why things worked out the way they did.  I’m grateful, but I really don’t have an answer to the “why/how”.  And I resent the idea that if things had not worked, I would have been any less worthy.

Basically, what I’m saying is this: I hope no one (including me) ever uses my story as a cudgel or as a prescription or as a “this could be you too if you just keep trying!”  Because anyone who is struggling with infertility, needs to take a break, or needs to consider their options (including resolving without children), does not need that pressure or guilt.  It’s great to tell our stories and truths.  But there’s a way to do it without generalizing out-of-the-ordinary happenings to others or giving false hope.

Let’s flip that script, straight up.

This post is a part of Microblog Mondays.  If you want to read more, please head over to Stirrup Queens!  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.  

DIY

About two weeks ago, I looked into the living room and decided I didn’t like the brick fireplace very much.  My room is starting to come together, first with a light, sky blue paint for the walls, then a salsa red couch, a painting that my maternal grandmother bought years ago and I inherited and re-framed, as well as the rugs and throw pillows.  It’s a north-facing room and I love the way the colors pull the limited outdoor light into the space.

I knew we did not have the time or money to redo the masonry and I’m not a huge fan in most instances of opaque-painted brick (I’ve seen a few examples where it goes right but wasn’t comfortable with the high probability that it would go wrong).  Enter whitewashing: it lightens the brick but leaves the variation and texture intact.  I spent a lot of time browsing DIY and decor blogs and sites, figured out a general plan, and tried to figure out a time to complete the project.

Then, one day, I randomly decided to go ahead and prep the area with tape and tarps.  I’d planned to just do a test strip, but about two hours later, sent Arthur a text message with this picture:

I may have gotten a wee bit carried away.

So that evening, I finished the brick and painted the first coats on the mantel.  By the end, what had originally looked like this:

Instead looked like this:

I’m still figuring out how to arrange everything on the mantel and such, but it really does brighten the room considerably.

It’s weirdly therapeutic to create a space for myself after so many years living in apartments and rentals.  It’s also a huge change to start and finish a project where I have a fair amount of control over the outcome.  I hadn’t realized how much the randomness of infertility treatments and the NICU (and the corresponding lack of control) had messed with my mind over the years.

Taking joy in creation is a wonderful new feeling.

This post is a part of Microblog Mondays.  To read more or participate yourself, head over to Stirrup Queens!  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.

 

Home Improvement

Well, I certainly didn’t plan to abruptly disappear into cyberspace, but holy heck, that’s what happened.  The short version: we closed on the house and commenced on a huge round of cleaning, painting, flooring, packing, and moving starting in early January.  Having never owned property before, I did not realize that all of this is really a much bigger undertaking that I had thought.

In two months, we have:

• Replaced almost all of the upstairs flooring (it was ancient carpet, the previous owners had two large dogs and two cats, and we have allergies) and had professionals put in nice, water-resistant laminate
• Painted three of the bedrooms ourselves to a nice, neutral warm cream color
• Repainted a bunch of trim/doors in the upstairs ourselves
• Had the kitchen and living room professionally painted as there were a lot of nooks and crannies that were going to be tough to do well ourselves (both were gray to begin with, which I know is really trendy right now, but it felt depressing to me – so now the kitchen is a very pale creamy yellow and the living room is a light sky blue)
• Bought area rugs for bedrooms and the living room
• New sofa and benches for the living room.
• Installed various curtain rods
• Packed up our old place
• Hired and supervised movers for all the heavy furniture (we considered having friends/family help us, but we have a sleeper sofa that is horribly heavy plus a washer and dryer, and decided the risk of one of us throwing out a back was too high)
• Replaced the dining area chandelier
• Unpacked most of the bedrooms
• Bought a guest bed

I love all of it, though!  It’s the first place we’ve lived that actually has felt like mine/ours.  There are a few less “fun” things to get done, such as hiring a handyman to get a little bit of the wooden siding on the front repaired now that the weather allows for it, but we’re making headway on that as well.

These days, we’re in the tough sort of “in-between” phase where we’re living in the new house but still cleaning out bits and pieces from our old apartment (our lease is up at the end of March).  We’re also unpacking and having a lot of those “wait, where is (fill in the blank)?!” moments.

Other than the moving/house, I’ve been reading Sheryl Sandburg’s Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy.  I have mixed feelings about it.  On the one hand, she has some really good advice about coping with life’s truly horrible moments and shares a lot of her personal story that I found moving and relatable.  On the other hand, it’s also very rah-rah, you can move through this, and kid/parenting heavy.  I found a lot of the advice about coping with an unexpected death like my brother’s good, but I know if I’d read this during my fertility struggles or when I was in the hospital expecting to lose my older daughter any day, I would have found a lot of it really frustrating.  I guess like most advice books, I’m taking what applies to me and leaving the rest.

I’m also finishing up Eve Schaub’s book Year of No Clutter and thoroughly enjoying it so far (though, be warned, near the end there is a chapter on sorting out her daughters’ baby things).  Schaub writes about her “Hell Room” – the largest room in her house that is so cluttered and full of stuff that she can barely get into it and so just closes the door.  As someone who firmly falls on the ‘packrat’ side of the clutter/decluttering continuum, even though I have not reached the point Schaub has, I still can relate to quite a few of the feelings Schaub discusses about dealing with “stuff”.  Schaub’s story about keeping a mummified dead mouse (!) because she wrote about it and now feels attached to it, however, was definitely not one of those moments (I hate, loathe, despise, and otherwise cannot stand dead critters in my living space).  When she talked about craft projects that she saves and never gets to but can’t bear to throw out however…well, my mind went guiltily to my fabric drawer, stuffed with un-finished sewing projects.  Given that we’re in the stage of trying to figure out what to keep and what to toss, though, reading the book has been a bit of a companion in the stress of trying to deal with the “but I might NEED IT SOMEDAY!” moments.

This post is part of Microblog Mondays – if you want to read more posts from other bloggers, head on over to Stirrup Queens!  Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.

A Little Overwhelmed

Christmas was a study in contrasts.  The day itself was quite lovely, restful, and calm.  Spending the day at home with my parents, we opened presents.  We relaxed.  I cooked a beef tenderloin and made a chocolate cheesecake that actually turned out beautifully.

The next day, I had plans to go to Arthur’s family in the morning (they live about an hour away from us) so the girls could play with their cousins, then Arthur would join us in the evening after work for gift exchange and time with family.  I arrived at the house, got the girls ushered in, and started talking with the adults.

Arthur’s middle sister MC recently got engaged with a wedding scheduled for the summer.  I knew MC was – naturally – excited about the wedding.  To make conversation, I asked her how things were going and about plans, etc.

I did not expect to be asked to be a bridesmaid.  MC and I have had some conflicts on and off over the last year or two, and I figured that she’d have friends and Arthur’s two other sisters to round out the bridal party.  MC asked if I would sing and if E would be a flower girl.  I told her yes, of course, and then asked if she had picked bridesmaids’ dresses and such.

Socially awkward introverts’ worst nightmare ensued: a smooth sailing, seemingly shallow conversation suddenly pitched into unexpectedly deep waters.  “Well,” MC told me, “SC [Arthur’s oldest sister] is my maid of honor, LC [Arthur’s youngest sister] is going to be a bridesmaid, my friend V, and, well, F.”

F, for the record, is married to Arthur’s brother D, so an in-law like me.  I sucked in a deep breath and tried not to react.  While I hadn’t been expecting to be asked to be a bridesmaid, I also hadn’t expected to be the only female in my generation to be left out of the wedding party.  I smiled, tried to be polite, and left the room a few minutes later with the baby to calm down.

MC followed me.  “Look,” she said, “I hope you’re not too upset about the bridesmaid thing.  I didn’t ask F just because she’s a sister-in-law.”

Ouch.

I’ve been with Arthur for around 20 years at this point, engaged or married for 15 of those years.  I’ve attended MC’s band concerts, events, graduations, and sent things to her at college.  It’s true that we’ve had a few moments in the last couple years – which I fully acknowledge to be partly on me – but to be told, essentially, “well, F is a friend and you…are just my sister in law” felt absolutely devastating.

It’s not even so much not being a bridesmaid.  It’s being close enough to hear all the inside jokes and far enough away to be left out of them.  It’s being the only female of my generation in the family photos that will be dressed differently and obviously not part of the group.  It’s that in Arthur’s family culture, this is a huge, huge slap in the face.

I spent the day trying not to cry.  When Arthur arrived, however, I lost it.  Seven hours of sitting on strong feelings was too much.  Instead of doing what I had planned, which was keeping things quiet and working it out later, I just felt the sobs pouring out of me and I could not bear to cry in front of everyone.  I ran out of the house and drove home, leaving Arthur and the girls to do the gift exchange and come home later.

Sh*t ensued.

It came out that at least three people had known about MC’s plans and had advised her that she would hurt me by making those choices.  Everyone is still insisting that MC didn’t mean to hurt me, that she’s stubborn and not as emotionally aware, but I’m having a hard time believing it.  I mean, MC is absolutely entitled to have whoever she wants in her wedding party, but she needs to own her decisions and not hide behind “oh, I asked you to sing and I never thought you’d be hurt”.

At this point, I’m just trying to take a step back and calm down a little.  There’s a lot of pressure on me to forgive, reconcile, and sing.  Truthfully, while that might be possible eventually, it’s hard to do when it’s all so fresh.

We closed on the house yesterday.  And it is glorious.  I am so, so excited about starting to paint and moving in.  A little overwhelmed, too, honestly.  To add to all of this, a driver rear-ended us yesterday as well, so creating another task.

So that’s how 2017 ended and 2018 is starting.  Lots of good, but plenty of delicate, difficult circumstances thrown in.