Where all the bologna about fertility stops.

[showmyads] When someone raises the topic of fertility, my reflex is to either figuratively or literally cup my hands over my ears and say in an obnoxious sing-songy way, "LALA LALALA CANNOT HEAR YOU, HAVE NO INTEREST, LALALALA CHECK PLEASE." Because talking turkey about fertility, with anyone, at any time, generally falls into two buckets.

The first is the Hyper-Vigilant Bucket. Fertility talk in this bucket is usually about timing and regulating and monitoring and waking up to check temperatures and peeing on PH sticks and charting and doing all manner of things that make me nervous. I'm nervous talking about this vigilance about fertility because it seems competitive. Like a biology lab report on which one is trying to get an A. Yet, I understand that many, many men and women are forced to become hyper-vigilant about fertility because leaving it to chance has not netted the desired results. I get this and I am sensitive to it. But I wonder if all of our resources, online and otherwise, have not created a more vigilant than necessary monitoring of fertility and ovulation and ultimately serves to make us more nervous than we ought to be. By nature I am not a list maker, an organizer, someone who knows where to find a ruler, someone who refers to charts or maintains them unless forced to do so. Hyper-vigilant Fertility talk gives me agita because it is anathema to the way I choose to do things.

The second is the Hocus Pocus Bucket. Fertility talk in this bucket is based on nonsense. Old wives tales. Research conducted before electricity, before birth control pills. Fertility talk herein is treated as something that one can control by avoiding certain maladies, like sitting on a cold bench or floor, or eating too much cheese.

*** The day I turned 26, I cried the entire day. There were brief interludes where I stopped crying. I spent the day in fetal position convinced that I was going to have a very difficult road to getting pregnant.

The pathetic truth about my 26th birthday is that I had not even tried to get pregnant. I was just convinced, based on my health history, and based on the ninnies at church who looked askance at me, married for a whole year and not yet pregnant, that I was going to be an epic fertility fail.

Six months later I was pregnant. I do not wax boastfully about my fertility or good fortune. If anything, I grieve continuously with those whose fertility journeys have been challenged or anguished by very real struggles. I know the private pain they carry is often too heavy to bear, to face the cruelty of another day. Conception and pregnancy have not been complicated ordeals for me, except in my own head. I was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would be cursed. Based on what the Fertility Buckets had poured into me.

***

I have grappled with the nuances of Fertility Talk on my own until I read this article in this month's Atlantic Monthly. Absolutely everyone who is poised to have a baby or have a conversation about having a baby should read this article. The author goes to the raw source of data that has informed much of our fertility knowledge in the industrialized world. The data will astound you. After discussing the article with a friend who is in in her early thirties, she said, she felt so relieved and so much more peaceful about the future. And oddly, so did I. Even though my fertility journey feels over. At least for now. I felt more peaceful because of the truth of the article and because of the lack of competition it fostered. Fertility is not a sport or a magic trick. It is a blessing from which many more blessings may flow, and possibly for many more years than was once thought.

If you read the article, what did you think?

The Wonder Years

The wisdom of the sitcom series "The Wonder Years," now streaming on Netflix for my procrastination enjoyment, is the parallel between the main character Kevin Arnold's coming-of-age and the U.S. as a young nation navigating some tumultuous times. If this were a literary essay, I would generously bandy about the words bildungsroman and juxtapose so that I sound very proffy indeed.

But this is not for a grade.

[showmyads]

As I rewatch Kevin Arnold fumble as an adolescent, scored by his retrospective as an adult, I see how the opposite is mostly true for me. I was not a young person who stammered or who minced words. I look back at my younger life and I regret more the things I said than the things left unspoken. As Jane Austen writes in Sense and Sensibility (This is not a literary essay? Surrrre, Kennndra.), I didn't know how to govern my tongue. I was blunt and often biting. I thought sarcasm was a high shelf brand of humor, rather than the lowest form.

There was one time in high school, in particular, when there was a boy who was interested in me, and let's be honest, I think he was interested in getting some action, which--c'mon. Barking up the wrong tree, bro.

He dropped me off after taking me to a horror film (1-800-CLICHE) and I think he was expecting something from me. So, I said. "Yeah, I think I'm gonna go inside because I just put flannel sheets on my bed."

Which to him probably meant, Oh, you guys, I can't even imagine.

But I was just over here, YAAAY, I'll be warm and toasty in my flannels all night long!

That relationship sort of fizzled a couple weeks later. What I congratulate myself for that time was a resolve to just be true to myself.

This has not been the problem, however. Being true to who I am has not been my struggle. It is more the words that I have used to convey the truths that have been so troubling. There are so many words I wish I could catch with a butterfly net and cast back into the ocean. I trust that my God can do the work I am not able to do....

Take a wild guess --who am I? ***

Yesterday Baby Girl and I were talking to one of the high schoolers who works at the gym. After the high school gal passed, Baby Girl implored, "Mama? I notice some spots on her face. Why are they still there?" I asked if she meant freckles. "No, they're red." Ah. Those are called zits, I explained, and I said that sometimes people's skin gets them but then they go away.

That was probably a poor explanation. Seriously, it was all I could do not to say, OH honey. Mommy's skin is still an oilspill in her twirties. Do you SEE this? But one thing struck me. My girl asked me privately as to the blemishes of another. There was so much wisdom in that moment and I wanted to place my girl on a conveyer belt headed toward adulthood and say, Just stay on this track of judicious and well-timed words, my sweet one. And just step to the right if others need to get by.

But she's still has a few wonder years ahead of her to figure all that out. I just pray that those who stand in front of her continue to keep her on track. And I pray that she'll allow herself to look back every now and again from whence she came.

Dance of the flexible

She was the reigning limbo champion of many a 7th grade CARE dance. Lower the broom and watch girlfriend get her groove back. You're so flexible! her classmates cried.

So. Flexible.

But don't try to make her change her best-laid plans when she was fixing to not have to do bedtime for the kidlets tonight. Did no one take record of her being the chief conductor of bedtime the last two nights? In a row?

Flexible lady, that one.

But, again, did no one notice how longsuffering she was to do her job, not once but two nights? Back to back? And to live amidst this perpetual clusterfluffle of a house without bolting?

Partnering with this inflexible woman is not a 90 minute swedish massage. Partnership with a chronically inflexible partner--it requires a long patience.

But becoming more flexible is a frightening prospect for this inflexible wife. What if others take advantage? What if she is always expected to be flexible? What if flexibility paints her a doormat? Oh sure, that's fine, haha! Why don't you just go ahead and cancel my plans. I don't matter, haha....

The terms of flexibility can be daunting, especially for a woman who grew up with a sibling with autism. Dinner at six o'clock sharp, on the table, or an all-out Rain Man meltdown might ensue. There was rigidity in her upbringing. Trying to stay the course, stay on schedule, not make waves. Be a good big sister, a leader, upstanding. Don't compromise who you are.

But what if compromise is required in life, especially in marriage? What does that look like? Are there equal gains for everyone? Can you make her a guarantee?

The dance of the flexible is one that the woman is learning, first with her right foot and then with her left. She is wobbly, unsure, wanting so much to trust her partner. Slowly she finds...this dance is not all bad. She finds it is harder to bust out and do a solo dance, but together, with her partner, she is stronger and more graceful. Very graceful, the dance of the flexibile.

As she becomes more sure of the rhythm and the steps, the more she practices, the better she becomes. Way out there on the dance floor, she finds others, dancing the dance of the flexible.

Oh but have mercy because being a beginner is still, still so hard.

Anyone else a beginner out here with me?