The Anchoress has tagged me. Now, I’m notoriously bad at ever finishing something that someone’s tagged me with, so if this is even up on my blog, well, it’s a small victory for my sense of “tag follow-through.”
All right. Here goes.
Ten Years Ago:
– We decided to start a family. And we were so excited, so sure. Because when you decide that, who isn’t excited, who isn’t sure? In that moment, who considers that God may have a road ahead that is completely bewildering and completely other? We rarely consider that Sorrow is a road with our name on it, so we are rarely prepared for the journey.
– Moved into a tiny rented house here in San Diego. It was a bungalow with wood floors and high ceilings and rough plaster walls. Oh, and it had a lush, protective hedge around the yard. We thought it was quaint and charming and quirky. And I think we thought we were British. Turns out, our vision had a distinctly rosy and delusional tint.
Because soon we realized that, no, it wasn’t our imagination — that the floors did have a decidedly downward slope, that the roof did leak when it rained, that the termites were chewing the house into crumbs all around us and that the only thing staving off the gluttonous homewreckers and holding the walls up was the layer upon layer of faux finish I brazenly applied, thumbing my paint-smeared nose at our creepy, unresponsive landlord. I rationalized my naughtiness because I do know my way around a faux finish, so it was an improvement, really, and because it was quite clear that Thee Landlorde was far too busy being brainwashed by his cult to grasp that houses of dust and slivers don’t stay standing too long.
And yet …. (sigh) …. I still love that dilapidated ol’ place.
I didn’t know everyone was laughing at us. I didn’t know my parents thought we were living in some kind of ruin. I didn’t know I was Charlie Brown with the ugliest, brownest, saddest Christmas tree. I do now.
My mission became to infuse that place with as much character and warmth as could be had from the end of a paintbrush or the drip of a glue gun. I decided a place so hopeless and forlorn deserved a fitting name — with even a hint of baronial grandeur, because it didn’t have anything remotely baronial or grand going for it. It may have been a homely baby, but it was my homely baby and even a homely baby deserves a bow in her homely hair. So I dubbed it “Shamblefield,†imagining myself to be Elinor Dashwood living her sensible, virtuous life at modest Barton Park cottage.
Five Years Ago:
Oh, five years ago. Must I remember?
Having undergone past fertility treatments, we began a new series, certain that these, after all, would work. They did not. Each month felt like a death that kept on dying. Hope and crushing, hope and crushing. I don’t even know the person I was then. I felt utterly lost to myself. My family never spoke of it to me; to them, it was too shameful to mention, so they simply didn’t. And the heavy, lingering sorrow that had stolen my hopes seemed to have taken my voice with it. I could not bring it up. I could not give voice to the shame, breathe out what was being carefully ignored. It’s inexplicable, really, this dynamic. And it’s unhealthy, but it’s there. My Beloved and I were bereft and crazy and hopeless.
In the midst of these failed treatments, my sister got pregnant. She had two boys already and had always longed for a girl. So had I, secretly.
And … a girl it was.
I remember the day my sister called to tell me the news. I heard her voice on the machine and somehow, I knew exactly why she was calling, knew exactly what she was going to say, and I could not bring myself to pick up the phone. I stood inches from it, with my hand dutifully out, but paused in midair. From where I was, far from her, I could see her joy; I could see it. The very air swirled pink and perfect with the news of a girl. And I, with my selfish sorrow and small heart, sunk to the floor and cried and cried, the ugly cry that no one but God ever sees you cry.
Around this time, my longtime bachelor brother finally got engaged. There were echoing choruses of “Hallelujah!†all around at this news. Even I managed that one. My family fairly exploded with the sheer elation of it all. It was like six months of Christmas where every gift is perfect; six months of birthday parties with everyone you like and no one you don’t.
But My Beloved and I still went, quietly, to our treatments. And still, quietly, they failed. I was breaking in two from the overwhelming weight of joy and sorrow.
One day that year, my dad called to invite me to lunch. We met at Marie Callendar’s because he likes Marie Callendar’s and when he’s at Marie Callendar’s, he likes to order soup.
As we chitchatted about this and that, I was growing more and more nervous. He was working up to say something, I could tell, but I hadn’t the faintest idea what it would be. He’s not the demonstrative type. Emotions are private, you see.
He cleared his throat several times, in that compulsive way he has. I knew then he was nervous, too. Finally, he looked at me with those dark, blue-grey eyes and said this:
“I know your brother’s and sister’s happiness must be breaking your heart.â€
I couldn’t breathe. I had ordered soup, too, in silent solidarity, and I saw my tears dropping onto its surface. Then with a choked voice I’d never quite heard before, he whispered:
“I’m so sorry, honey.â€
And I was gone. Tears streamed onto the table; heads around us turned. I was quiet, but I was just gone. My father, who had never, ever spoken to me about it, understood.
He understood.
And he had said all he could. I was no longer invisible; I was seen. I felt warm and alive and understood by someone I was sure did not, could not, understand.
I know they were just two sentences spoken softly over bowls of steaming soup, but they were among the best things my dad has ever said to me.
I was less broken for hearing them.