Holidays On Our Terms

The holidays can be a really tough time. It used to be a lot harder, but this is a time when grief can jump up and twist my ear, bringing tears instantly. A couple years ago it was an unexpected stab from the movie A Christmas Story, yep, the "You'll shoot your eye out!" one, but that scene where they watch the kids come down the stairs and that magic... oof, it hollowed me right out. Even so many years later. A week or so ago I had a sudden hit of sadness, holiday-related, but I just couldn't put a finger on it. Just general "I'm sad we don't have kids" tied to this time of year, that isn't debilitating but does still pop in to say hi. 

Grief is like that -- you can think you're fine and healed and doing great and then just the right trigger reminds you of loss. But the great thing is, the more time that passes and the more acceptance of life as it is, not as it was hoped for...the less it ruins your day. 

Anyway, because we don't have kids, we can tweak our traditions. We can rearrange things to suit our needs. 

And so, we had our Christmas today. Like, full on breakfast/stockings/music/under-the-tree presents, the whole deal. Why today? Because tomorrow we will be on the phone with, on zooms with, and in person with family. This is a good thing -- but in the past we would open a present (we are very slow and appreciative of each one), then get a call, then get back to our thing, then get a call, and people always thought we should be done by the time they called. We never were. It made for a very interrupted experience.

So, when it's just you and your husband and the cat, you can say "Guess what? Christmas Eve is now OUR Christmas." No one calls, the day is totally ours, and we can draw out our traditions as much as we'd like. It is quite delightful. 

We also moved our big tree. God, that sounds bougie. We got a fake tree a year or two into being in this house, and we've never looked back. I think it's 7.5 feet tall, which is monstrous, and we usually rearrange furniture to put it in front of a big window in the living room. We also have a smaller tree that has moved around (sometimes in our bedroom, sometimes on the stairs landing in the window, sometimes in the first floor bedroom/guest room/Bryce's D&D room). It looks kind of like a cedar (particularly if you squint) and we hang an assortment of owls, gnomes, and wooden snowflakes on it. 

Well, we didn't like the idea of rearranging furniture, especially because we were behind on getting the tree up. We also really like the seating setup we have now. So...we put the cedar tree on a table in the living room, and put the big tree in the dining room. Because we can! We have a smattering of snow in the following pictures because we had a brief covering that promptly melted, but for a second we had a white pre-Christmas.

We keep some traditions just the same, like our photo card:

I loved the picture of Lucky on the back so much that I ordered a photo ornament so he can always be an angel on our tree. 

And, my annual Book Flood from Bryce that I am SO excited to crack into: 

Also, Eggi enjoyed the new tree locale (doesn't hurt that Bryce made the lowest ring of ornaments cat toys):

And we have some fun new ornaments: 

D&D ornament from me to Bryce

Annual Danforth Pewter ornament for us (I also get the annual Snowflake Bentley ornament)

Per Bryce's tag to me, a "literate sea unicorn"

And from the side, since it's so stinking cute! 

We love our traditions. We love that we can shake them up every once in a while to make them more us. We love our family of two (plus Eggi). 

Happy Holidays from our family to yours! 

Lightening the Load/Getting Rid of "Stuff"

I am finally on Winter Holiday Break! Wahoo, two weeks of rest and rejuvenation. 

But also, two weeks with space to do some work about the house that I tend to push to the back burner more often than not. 

Bryce and I are dedicated to getting rid of things. Going through, sorting, deciding, and letting go of things we do not need or are hanging on to out of obligation or "shoulds." 

Sometimes it's hard, though. 

In our craft/guest room (that now has a sign on it declaring it my best friend's "place"), we have a recliner. It's quite comfy, but HUGE. Mostly, because it's a recliner, yes, but also a glider. And it was originally bought for our nursery. By my mother-in-law. 

Technically, the nursery was too small for it, so it was in the nook outside the nursery.

Now, it's in a room where it takes up a ton of space, and with the futon taking over the daybed, we don't really need it.

Yep, that's a Jeff Goldblum mermaid sequin pillow. That's signed on the back.

Now that I've taken a picture of it, it doesn't look as abused as I feel it is. You can't see all the places the cats (mostly Lucky) have shredded the piping and the upholstery with tiny threads we keep snipping. I think we could give it to Goodwill (with a good vacuuming). It just holds a lot of emotional weight. 

There are a handful of things, mostly in that room, left over from the nursery. One is the dresser that I use to hold gift wrapping and packing things, and the other is the 6-cube shelf that butts up to the daybed and currently holds mostly my embarrassingly huge puzzle collection. I'm thinking of putting the dresser in the closet to make more space and to move things we don't use that often out of the main space. 

We'd like to put our musical instruments in this room, and figure out how to make it a bit more...cohesive. Maybe I should give a more honest picture of the current chaos (it is also the Wrapping Room currently!): 

It's also where my exercise bike lives, and the Puzzling Table/Wrapping Table that handily drops both leaves.

Good gracious this is a terrible view: dresser, cube, wrapping organizer, craft supplies, puzzles

Music stand, unmanaged detritus... 

See how easy it is to make things look different than reality with camera angles? Ha. 

I did take my violin out recently (I need to get new strings and have it tuned up/inspected). I was happy to learn that I haven't forgotten how to play (although man I have to build up callouses again, my poor fingers!) Bryce has several guitars, and he's more likely to play them if there's a dedicated, uncluttered space. It makes sense to move/get rid of stuff in that room.

This room has literally never been a child's room -- the people who lived here before us were flippers, and the people before that built the house and never had children. This was a craft room then too, but held a giant dollhouse (not creepy at all). It feels different than when we repurposed a room that was meant to house a child.

It will probably feel uplifting to move out some of the repurposed nursery things. But also, we feel a tiny bit of guilt. Even all these years later, to get rid of something someone bought us for a baby that never was feels somehow ungrateful. Logically we know that's not a thing, but emotionally it feels icky. 

Still, getting rid of things we don't use/need and making space for the things that bring us joy is a priority right now. We joke that all our stuff is destined for Goodwill anyway (no kids to inherit), but there is sadness in that. Looking at people who are ahead of us in years, it will be so much easier if we chip away at things before we have to downsize. 

I think we'll reframe this task as a Lightening, rather than a loss. We are making sure that our home suits our purposes and doesn't become a burden of things. We are prioritizing what matters to us and jettisoning the rest. 

Bonus Day

Last week was rough. Honestly, this whole school year has been particularly punishing. I have been eating my lunch anywhere from 1:30 to after 3, I'm pretty sure I gave myself a UTI by not peeing enough during the day, and I feel like I'm flitting from one crisis to another. The kids are lovely -- sometimes there are dysregulated moments but it's nothing I can't handle. It's more my schedule, the two grade levels, the adults, and interesting choices made by upper administration. It becomes SO MUCH. I was at school until 7 multiple days last week and just fried when I got home. If teaching were solely about the kids it would be amazing, but there's all this other crap that bogs us down.

I made it to Friday morning despite the full moon and the lovely "do more with less" and "make it work" structural philosophy of modern public education. I was exhausted. I went to crawl out of bed around 6:30 (late for me) when my phone buzzed. 

It was a somewhat cryptic message from the school district -- "We are aware of the widespread power outages impacting our schools and families, please stay tuned for more updates."

Then, just a little bit later, "If your child is waiting for a bus outside, please bring them inside. If your child has already been picked up by their bus, they are warm and safe. If we close they will be returned to your home." 

Okay, that sounded super promising. I was faced with a dilemma -- get dressed or don't get dressed? I chose to get dressed, because reverse psychology of course. 

And then... the "we're closed" text and call came in. 

What a wonderful, wonderful time to teach in my district but NOT live there! I had power, and heat (it was 9 degrees F out). 

If you aren't a teacher (or don't live with one), there is no way to explain the utter joy of an unplanned bonus day off. Whenever we take time off, either a personal day (which are very limited) or a sick day, we have to make sure we have plans that cover every minute of every day. We have to take what often lives in our head and make it doable by someone who we may or may not know, depending on availability. It is sometimes a lot easier to just suck it up and go in. If we have planned days off, that's typically when we have doctor's appointments and obligations that we can't do during the school day. So a bonus day... it's nothing but freeeee! 

I didn't go back to bed, but I did sit on the couch with my book. I cocooned. I took two naps. I worked on a puzzle. I got back in pajamas. IT. WAS. GLORIOUS. 

It was exactly what I needed. 

I thought about my friends who also teach in my district but don't live there, and how the ones with kids would have some free time since their child/ren would be at school and they didn't have to be. 

I also thought about how lovely it is that I can just veg on the couch and not have to take care of anyone else. It was one of those "because I don't have kids" moments that make me smile. 

I am proud that I didn't fill my time with work. I am proud that I didn't open my laptop ONCE. I took the rest I needed. (And oh, did I need it.) 

What a lovely, lovely gift. 

Old Couches

My best friend did a fly-by visit last night -- she picked up her eldest from college for Thanksgiving, and stayed over since he's in school up here. It was short, but lovely (minus my alarm being on 10% volume and sleeping until 7:00 am, which is WAY LATE). 

Bryce cooked a delicious dinner for us and we had gluten free carrot cake for dessert. We ate it in the living room, and Bryce apologized profusely for the state of our couches. "They're so old and gross, it's like we have old man couches! So embarrassing!" 

They're a bit saggy and one is just hemorrhaging feathers from every cushiony surface, but they're not actually that old. 

My best friend asked, "when did you get them?" and Bryce said, "I'm not sure, a while ago?" and I said, "2017." 

Bryce is always freaked out by my creepy memory, and he was like HOW do you KNOW that? 

Well. 

I know that because we bought the white/oatmeal/ecru couches in 2017, as part of our "things we can have because we'll never have children" campaign. 2017 was when our parenting dream officially ended. And so 2017 is when we bought couches that would have been highly ill-advised with small humans. 

They just looked at me and were like, "Oh. That makes sense." 

Yeah. Sometimes my creepy memory can make me sad. But also, that was less than 9 years ago, really the couches should hold up better than that!  

Anniversary Ghoul 2025

Having our fun wedding anniversary on Halloween means that every year, I get an Anniversary Ghoul from Bryce. 

It's a tradition that's super important to both of us -- a hand-drawn ghoul that Bryce selects and executes in my Halloween card (we do an anniversary card on the "legal" date, and then a Halloween card on the fun one). Past ones include the Babdook, Mothman, Pennywise, Marianne (from the French Netflix horror show, so scary!), a spider, a chipmunk morphing into The Thing, a werewolf, the faceless lady in the pond from The Haunting of Bly Manor but instead of that pond it's our pond... I look forward to it every year. 

This year, it was something no one else will ever have. I may have to copyright it. 

The envelope gave me a clue: 

Pay no attention to the tiny smudge of guacamole in the upper left corner...

Any guesses? I looked at it and was like, whaaaa? But then, I burst out laughing. I knew exactly what it was going to be.

Ever seen one of these? It's a Cthulhu Walrus. With a vestigial fin. 

Why is it so funny? 

It's based on something I drew for a student in my 7th grade Social Studies class, who was wailing during a review on the Arctic Native Americans "I don't even know what a walrus iiiiissss!" I assured her she did, and drew what I thought was a pretty good walrus on my board. I am famous for drawing very bizarre things in the name of education. You will see a slight difference between my drawing and Bryce's...

I had to take a picture and bring it home to show him, because it's frankly terrifying. Although, recognizable enough for the kids, who were indignant when I said in a slow, low voice, "Bye Buddy, hope you find your dad!" and one of the students yelled "that's not a walrus, that's a unicorn whale!!!" If you haven't seen Elf, this will all be gobbledygook to you, so go watch Elf and come back, haha.

This may be my favorite ghoul, as it is completely custom. And we have a little thing for Cthulhu (see fun picture of a crochet Baby Cthulhu our friend made Bryce below). As a childless couple, traditions are important. Marking the passage of time and celebrating those years is important. Celebrating the children in ourselves... important! 

Eggi is way into the cute little demon. And she went totally into that bag 2 seconds later. :)

Memorial Garden

This year sucked for gardening. Between my knee recovery and the very wet followed by insanely hot and dry summer... I let things atrophy a bit. 

One garden that does okay is my birdbath garden. I plant annuals around the birdbath, because I keep trying and failing to amend the soil and things struggle to grow. I have worked in so many bags of Bumper Crop soil conditioner and it seems like it goes right back to being compacted, root-y, rock-y, walnut-poisoned dirt.

Fun fact: walnuts give off a compound called juglone, which poisons the ground within the dripline of the tree AND anywhere walnuts fall or even parts of them are transported by asshole squirrels. This garden is full of walnut leavings. There are lists of juglone-resistant plants, but even those seem to struggle a bit. Things end up stunted and anemic.

Yesterday, I was putting up the rest of a decorative/hopefully somewhat practical fence border behind my birdbath garden (I'm embarrassed to say I first started putting it up in July and half of it was languishing on the mulch at the side of the house...). I'm hoping it lends separation from the weedy wilds behind the somewhat cultivated part in front.

While I was trimming the highly invasive Autumn Olive to the left, I made a realization. 

This garden is my memorial garden. I have two separate statue things that I didn't connect until now.

 

The first is my Jizo. Someone told me about the Japanese Buddhist figures that represent protectors of children, especially children gone before they're born. They can symbolize the loss from miscarriage. It spoke to me.

Bryce got us a beautiful statue of a little boy Buddha with an open book in his lap after I miscarried the last time I was pregnant. I love that statue, but we didn't want anything to happen to it so he became an indoor statue. We pass him every time we go down the stairs. 

He's perfect right there. I still wanted something in the garden though, especially the birdbath garden I can see from my office. And so I got a Jizo, made of volcanic something that makes it very outdoor friendly. 

The other statue in my garden is a memorial stone my co-workers got me when my Grandma Rosemary passed away. The butterfly is bleeding rust a bit, but it's lasted a long time. 

I read it for the first time in a long time yesterday, and it struck me... It applies to our losses, too. Here it is, bigger, for ease of reading: 

When I read it yesterday, it reminded me of my losses. My two babylings, one wayward and one that wouldn't stay. They were so loved in those brief moments where we thought we'd gotten our miracle, and they are always, always in my heart. 

My birdbath garden has always been a bit of a meditative place, and I feel at peace when I'm working or admiring there. I keep trying to get pollinator plants to survive there -- we'll see how the salvia and agastache do when they (hopefully) return in the spring. The irony of my memorial garden filled with infertile soil that no amending ever seems to fix isn't lost on me. But I keep trying, and restarting each year so there can be pretty flowers, butterflies, and hummingbirds in the summer. 

Sometimes My Filter Works

A week and change ago, we were doing the study-back days for when the majority of the 8th grade goes on the D.C. trip. I love being on the organizing team because it's important to make the days as fun as possible. There are a variety of reasons kids don't go, and thankfully not being able to afford it is increasingly not one of them due to better fundraising and scholarship opportunities. But, kids can be medically complex (physically and/or mentally), or quirky, or naughty, or do serious sports, or families have decided on a different trip. Probably loads more, too. Because we won't send kids to D.C. or pay for sports or lessons or anything, we typically offer to do a scholarship. But, this year it wasn't needed, which was a lovely change.

At the final day's field trip to the bowling alley, I think the adults had as much fun as the kids. I bowled two games simultaneously on neighboring lanes (I've with kids, one with teacher friends). To be clear, one lane had bumpers and while I didn't do terribly, I am not a good bowler. Once my ball slipped off my hand in the backswing and bounced backwards towards a student who, luckily, found my klutzy moment as hilarious as I found it mortifying. 

As we sat and rested our thumbs and forearms while the kids enjoyed the arcade, one of my administrators who is in Year Two at our school came over to compliment one of our co-worker's (and friend's) kids. Her son is very kind, and inclusive, and polite. 

She said, "He is just an angel. I mean, I'm sure your kids are angels too, but it's been so great to see _____ make new friends and have a great time." 

What she didn't know is that only one other person at our table has kids. My friend sitting next to me is single and childless (but with adorable guinea pigs and a satisfying hobbit-y existence), and me... You know. 

But, I am SO very proud of my functioning filter that day, which is often out of the office. Because I just smiled and nodded, and maybe tilted my head and raised an eyebrow a little snarkily, but I DID NOT say what came to the tip of my tongue:

She said, "He is just an angel. I mean, I'm sure your kids are angels too, but it's been so great to see _____make new friends and have a great time." 

I didn't say, "oh yes, my kids are LITERAL angels, who made homes in Lake Ontario many years ago."

I didn't even say, "well, most of us don't actually have kids, but if we did, they'd be amazing." 

I thought how I don't really know two of the four people at the table, and did I really want to brandish my losses at the bowling Grand Hurrah? Was it necessary? Would it make life better for anyone? Nope.

So, I just let that filter work overtime.

Good For You!

A teacher friend of mine has a delightful student teacher this fall. She is full of energy, loves Halloween, and enjoys my borderline-inappropriate sense of humor (always a plus, haha). On Thursday, she was leaving and stopped by my room to chat. At one point, it went down this avenue: 

"So, do you have kids?" 

"No." 

"Oh, good for you!" 

Ummmmm that threw me for a loop. Like, I know younger people are choosing not to have kids more and more, but I don't think I've ever gotten that response from this age group (she's 22). 

"I did want them. It just didn't work out...in the most spectacular of ways." 

"I'm so sorry to hear that. BUT, from what I know of your life from your stories and what S___ tells me, you have a really awesome life!" 

"Oh yes! I worked hard to get here, but I do absolutely LOVE my life. I am very fortunate." 

Ummmm, how amazing is that? I AM so proud of the life I built. And, I am proud that I answered "no" to The Question, and only alluded to the why, and the rest of the conversation was overwhelmingly positive. 

I also said that I am grateful that I can give my love and patience and energy to my students, and I don't need to come home to more caretaking. I can come home and be a puddle on the couch if I want to. (Unless it's my Wednesday dinner date with my dad, and this past weekend that involved assembling a table with a tremendous amount of moving parts/leaves/hinges/interior shelves/ALL THE TINY SCREWS for 3.5 hours after dinner...) I can go out for a surprise dinner with my husband if I so choose. 

BUT, it doesn't mean that I don't also have stress. Go read Infertile Phoenix's post about Stress & Privilege -- the worst is when people think because you don't have kids somehow you are miraculously unstressed and any time you mention stress, you're reminded of all the things you DON'T have to do because of the hand life dealt you. I don't think it's true that you automatically have MORE stress if you have kids, you just have DIFFERENT stress. I have a lot of thoughts on this percolating, as there are ups and downs to both having kids and not, but one does not get to claim more stress than the other, particularly over a lifetime. 

Anyway, with that soapbox rant paused, I was overall overjoyed to have such a delightfully positive conversation about how I don't have kids. 

Pre-Anniversary Surprise

This year is our 16th wedding anniversary. We hadn't really planned anything. We were talking to someone about that, and Bryce said "well, unless Jess has a surprise" and I said, "you could do a surprise every once in a while." This isn't me being snarky. I do tons of little surprises throughout the year, and Bruce does a really great job with birthdays and Christmas, but random surprises? Not so much. 

So imagine my surprise when he booked us a weekend at the lovely fall B&B that we stayed in last year! There happened to be an opening this weekend, Saturday to Monday (which I had off for Indigenous People's Day), and he bagged a very swanky and private suite in an outbuilding! 

We had a delightful time with fun fall outings. It's only 25 minutes from our house but further into the Finger Lakes area, so we get to explore different places and not spend the whole time driving. 

This morning, though, at the delicious breakfast, the other two couples spent an insane amount of time competing over who had the most grandchildren. And children. I want to say one couple had 7 and the other had 8, but then there were 21 grandchildren or something and (snnnnnnooooorrrre). It went on for so long that Bryce poured me more coffee and aggressively stirred it, making quite the racket. 

They are totally entitled to talk about their kids and grandkids and homeschooling and not getting an autism diagnosis until high school (ummmmm because homeschooling won't do evaluations), but it was ad nauseum and no one gave a crap about anything we might offer as we weren't part of the Grandchildren Wars. Uggghhhh. 

It was a great time though, and we were super happy to have a lovely retreat all our own to escape to! 

Going out to dinner

The best little French restaurant we didn't realize was so close!

Canadice Lake

Great blue heron we spooked on our beach walk

The actual trail (the slate beach was NOT the trail we were looking for) 

Naples overlook above Canandaigua Lake

In an old cemetery 

When to Let Go

I was scrolling through my phone this morning when I came across an NPR comic: Signs It's Time to Quit. Obviously the title appealed to me, because there are so many cultural and societal road blocks to "quitting," or letting go of a dream, or moving on from something that's just not working. I love when there are thoughtful pieces about taking control of your life and letting go of something (even something everyone tells you is the MOST IMPORTANT thing you'll ever do) so that you can live your best life. 

The comic has 7 signs, and each one spoke to me in some sort of way. The signs were a combined effort from three experts: Annie Duke, a cognitive psychologist; Colin Rocker, a career educator; and Angela Duckworth, a psychologist and professor. I thought I'd share the signs with you (go to the link above to see the comic, I don't think I can share pieces of it here without copyright issues), because wow were they validating. And sometimes...painful. 

Sign #1: You're seriously thinking about quitting.

Annie Duke said, "Our culture is biased against quitting, so if the thought stays on your mind, it means it's clearly been weighing on you and it could be time to make a change." That is an understatement. We are told over and over to "never never never give up." To hang in for the long haul, because sometimes things take time. And that's true, but sometimes no matter how long you try to make something work that just...isn't, it won't come to pass. Sorry, refrigerator magnets, you're kind of lying.  When we were going through our quest to parent, I had thoughts all the time after a while of "I don't know how much longer I can do this," but I quashed them because there was so much pressure to not give up and not quit. I started to feel like if I had those thoughts, I couldn't possibly want parenthood enough, and so I would double down on magical realism (these orange underwear will get me pregnant!) to my health's detriment. 

Another piece of advice in this section: "Set a deadline to give yourself a fixed amount of time to deliberate on your decision and come up with an off-ramp plan." I was terrible with this. Bryce, however, was terrific. For as much as I masterminded our runaway train that went nowhere fast, Bryce took over when it was time to stop. He would initiate the conversations of how much longer we should attempt to transfer an embryo when my uterus wasn't cooperating, and eventually I would agree. It was Bryce who, after our time in adoption led to so much stress that it non-hyperbolically threatened my life, had us take a springtime walk through a flooded park full of soggy flowering trees, and laid out how we could take control by deciding ourselves on a stopping point. He convinced me that we could have a little buffer time to think through, but that it was actually empowering to proactively say ENOUGH. And so we began the off-ramp. 

Sign #2: It's just not what you want anymore.

This one doesn't quite line up, because I wanted to be a mother so very desperately. For the longest time it was hard for me to even entertain the idea that I could go through everything and NOT parent. I did reach the point where what I didn't want was the constant stress, feeling of a life put on pause, indeterminate uncertainty, physical pain, and emotional pain of years and years of loss. Whether it was a negative pregnancy test, a miscarriage, a profile opportunity where the expectant parents went with another couple in the final pass...all of it made life unbearable. That's what I didn't want. And now, we can honestly say that we're fine not being parents. But it took a lot to get there. For a long time, all I saw was motherhood and I could not see through that thick want to recognize just how futile and self-destructive that quest had become. 

Sign #3: You would quit, if it weren't for...

Oh, ouch. From the comic: "Sometimes we've spent so long on a path that we feel like we have to stick with it, even when it's not beneficial. It's a phenomenon called the sunk-cost fallacy, says Duke." 

I felt this so deeply when I read it. It resonated. I felt so much like we would disappoint so many people if we walked away. And in a way, I was right, because the initial reactions to our news was often "NOOO!" or "YOU CAN'T" or "BUT WHY? YOU'D MAKE A GREAT MOTHER!" To be fair, these people were super invested in our success, and it's not really a common story to go through nearly 8 years of seeking parenthood through multiple means and have nothing pan out. But this is also why we waited to tell people until we had definitively made our decision, put it into motion, and even donated everything in our nursery. We felt terrible about all the support and love and things that people had provided throughout the journey and at our baby shower, but at that point, our happiness and wellness far outweighed anyone else's disappointment. 

This also resonated not just with infertility, but with leaving an unhealthy relationship. (Also, clearly it applies to jobs and such, since one author was a career educator.) In my first marriage, so many people were incredibly upset that I was marrying the person. One time, I was dropped off in front of my best friend's house by my irate fiancé, who was screaming at me and even took off before I was fully out of the car. I stumbled to the curb, stunned, and then picked myself up, wiped my face with my hands, put my mask on my face (I had a lot of practice with pretending everything was okay loooong before infertility and adoption), and walked calmly to the walkway. I didn't know that my friend's mom was gardening out front where I couldn't see, and she had seen and heard EVERYTHING. There was no hiding. She was shaking and crying as she grabbed my arms and said, "You. Cannot. Marry. That. Man. You deserve so much more. You must think so little of yourself and it makes me so sad." I had validation! Someone had saw what I tried to hide, but I did not want it. My sad, broken response delivered with a smile? "But the wedding's in two weeks. I have my final dress fitting this week. It's too late. Besides, it's not always like this." 

Talk about sunk-cost fallacy. I felt that the expectation was that you marry the person you love no matter what, and calling off a wedding wasn't an option. How would I even do that? Where would I go? How could I face people? Better to adhere to what I said I would do. Even when I was married, and I knew that my relationship was dysfunctional and harmful, I didn't feel that I could leave just because I wanted a better life. I felt it would be shameful and stayed until there was what I thought was an acceptable reason -- rampant infidelity. So yes. I thought very little of myself, and all I could think of was that sunk-cost and all the what-ifs that paralyzed me until I had a concrete out. It was the inverse of the sunk-cost fallacy with infertility and adoption -- this time people wanted me to quit, but I felt a weird societal pressure to lie in the bed I had made and try to make the best of a situation. Good gracious am I grateful that I finally chose my own happiness, as hard as it was then, because it led me to the greatest happiness and joy of my life. 

Sign #4: Everything about it feels hard, like really hard. 

Ummmm, yes. That pretty much sums it up. Loss after loss after loss just took a cumulative toll, and after a while it felt delusional to think that things could work out. Although, man I kept trying, and bless Bryce, because he was willing to say NO! to me when I had "solutions" that would ultimately just make things harder. One of our very few big fights was when I suggested we sign on with a second adoption agency in our second year, that it might give us better odds, and he was just like, "NO. I can't do more than we're already doing, and honestly what we're doing is too hard on both of us, whether you see it or not." He was right. 

Sign #5: You don't love your chances of success. 

From the comic: "Calculate how likely you are to reach your goal by doing research....then find out how comfortable you are with your chances." This was so hard, thanks to society's cult of "never give up" and "miracle babies" that aren't evenly distributed. It always felt like, "if we just do it one more time it will work!" or "this next profile opportunity could be the one!" -- so I had to be the complete mess physically and mentally in order to accept that it was just too hard, and pretty much our odds were slimmer than slim. In IVF, people at the clinic or support group seemed to always get pregnant on their last try, with some wacky protocol that was experimental, or with a 13th cycle. I did do a 13th cycle (although several were cancelled just before transfer, my body still went through so much with the injectibles and ultrasounds that I count them), and it left me feeling utterly broken. Other people had profile opportunities all the time, or had a one in a million connection, or had "the call" right when they were going to walk away. It just didn't work for us. Even when a friend was chosen out of two final couples by expectant parents right after we left the process, I just knew... we would have been the other couple who, for whatever reason, were told "it just isn't your time." The agency used to say it was "worth the wait," but when the wait went on for years and was a death of a thousand cuts, we had to say our sanity and health were worth more. Again, kudos to Bryce, because he got to that point a LOT faster than me, but was still supportive until it was just too much.

 

Sign #6: Your loved ones say it might be time to let go.

This was a two-headed beast for our parenting journey. People were very supportive of us ceasing IVF, because the impact was so clearly evident on my body and our well-being. The financial cost was a known entity. People were willing to say to our faces, "how much longer are you going to do this to yourself?" and mean it out of love and care. 

But with adoption, the impact was mostly emotional (and also murkily financial, and most definitely ethical). The reality of domestic infant adoption is very, very different than the sanitized version presented in movies, books, magazines, religious organizations. It allows for very well-meaning people to see through incredibly rose-colored glasses that block out all kinds of ethical issues, inequities, and dehumanization of birth mothers. So there were very few people who thought we should leave adoption. It led to questions like, "what about international?" or "what about foster?" when the type of adoption we chose was deliberate based on many factors and we had our emotional reserves pretty well tapped already. There was a sense that the system should be there to MAKE US PARENTS, instead of what it truly is, to provide a loving and safe home for a child, who has to experience the loss of their first family in order to be welcomed into their adopted family. Even with open adoption, it's not a small loss. And, so often (but not always), the situations that resulted in placing a baby were based in inequality, poverty, and lack of services. That was very hard to wrap our heads around, and so many people have deeply ingrained beliefs on who "deserves" babies. Including, at the start, us. 

Sign #7: Your goal is costing you...a lot.

Not much to say about this one because I think by this point, you know just how much our goal was costing us. But there are two lovely quotes that really spoke to me from the comic that encapsulate what "giving up" can do for you: 

"Duckworth suggests looking at the opportunity cost: Is the time you're spending on this goal keeping you from investing in other things that might make you happier?" and "Think about what quitting could free you up to do." 

I wanted to be a mother. We wanted to be parents. We would have made EXCELLENT parents (at least we think so). But at some point, you have to stop beating the bloody pulp that used to be a dead horse. We chose to live the life we have, instead of constantly fighting every last thing to attain the life we originally wanted. It was not easy. It was saying goodbye to a dream that was central to our lives for so long...so we could say hello to a life where we were free to be happy, to live in the now. 

I am so glad that pieces like the comic are out there, to remind people that there ARE choices if things aren't working out. But also, that it IS NOT an easy button. It is hard. It is a huge loss. Everyone's ENOUGH is different -- but how lovely that there are explicit explorations of how you can evaluate your off-ramp. 

Still Here

Oh hi... This is the time of year where I disappear for a little while. Summer was short, and after I got back from vacation in August it was pretty much go time for back to school. I was so crazed in August that, and I am so embarrassed and saddened to admit this, I missed the submission deadline for World Childless Week. I will participate in the goodies, September 15-21, but I am so bummed that I forgot to get a piece in.

But now, my classroom is all set up (minus the things we co-create as a class), the first week is under my belt, Open House has come and gone, and this is the first FULL week. (Oh man, Open House -- where now I know some of the parents because I knew them when they had their kids...which is weird on SO many levels. Strange to think I could have had a middle schooler had things gone differently.)

I am enjoying my new schedule of 7th grade in the morning and 8th grade in the afternoon. I am getting to know my new kids and they are certainly realizing that I am a wackadoodle. Case in point, today in co-taught social studies a student was writing her own definition of "state of nature," and wanted to add more than "people do whatever they want." I asked her what it feels like to be in a state of nature, and she said "chaos" which is awesome, and I said "oh yeah, it's downright bananapants." She wrote that in her packet and insisted on sharing with the whole class, so I had to explain "bananapants" to everyone. "You know, bonkers, wackadoodle, kookoobananas..." Tee hee. 

I have some challenging kiddos, but I am enjoying getting to know them and figuring out ways to connect and push (but warmly) and make the growth happen. 

Before school starts, I panic. Every. Single. Year. Do I know what I'm doing? What if I forgot? How will I ever possibly get everything done? And then this week gets going and I remember -- I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING. AND I LOOOOOOOVE IT. Everything eventually gets done. 

I set up some systems since my schedule is a bit...bananapants: 

1st period I teach 12:1+1 (self-contained) Social Studies 7.

3rd period I teach 12:1+1 English 7.

5th period I teach Integrated Co-Taught Social Studies 8 on the Red team. 

7th period I teach Integrated Co-Taught Social Studies 8 on the Blue team. 

9th period I teach Resource Room 8 with my caseload of kids, which is half the 8th grade 12:1+1. 

The day goes by SUPER fast. I have to be super disciplined to get things done in those even periods, and figure out how to manage co-planning, coordinating with other case managers, coordinating with a zillion service providers, setting up systems to manage goals and progress monitoring, team meetings, meetings with mental health staff... No wonder I'm tired. 

I am eternally grateful that I can come home to a quiet house and take a nap on the couch if I need to. I am super grateful that Bryce tends to pitch in the first month and do most dinner/dishes during the week. I don't have to take young humans to sports or lessons or help with homework. When I leave, the evening is mine. 

Well, once I get the September exhaustion under control. But I have space to be an exhausted puddle on the floor or couch. Eventually I will either conquer the exhaustion or learn to live with it. :) 

Cheers to a new school year! 

Vacation Firsts

We came back from our vacation in Vermont and Maine, and it was glorious! There were absolutely zero isolated cabins on islands you have to canoe to that have no electricity. We did familiar things, but also experienced a few firsts. 

First #1: 

We went out on a sailboat! It was a sailboat tour, so we didn't actually have to do anything. No rope pulling or boom-swinging. 

This is a big deal because I am terrified of sailboats. We had originally booked a tour on a bigger boat that went out to the outer islands of Boothbay Harbor, but that boat needed repairs and so it was cancelled. So we had a choice between a mailboat for an hour that went to Squirrel Island and back, or the Bay Lady sloop for 1.5 hours that tooled around the bay, not quite in open ocean. Fun fact that we learned on the ghost walk tour, which was delightfully kitschy: most tours will tell you Squirrel Island is named because it is shaped like a squirrel holding a nut to munch on, but ACTUALLY, it is named after the ship The Squirrel that disastrously wrecked upon its shores. That's not why I didn't want to do the mailboat, though. It was more that a one hour ferry trip sounded kind of boring. 

What I didn't realize is that the word "sloop" means it's a SMALL boat. Like, a 12 person sailboat that's 31 feet long. That sounded terrifying. I have been on a sailboat only one other time, in the Long Island Sound when I was maybe 8, and I remember feeling like we were totally sideways in the water and I was going to die. Or it was a speedboat and I am misremembering, but I did associate doom with sailboats. Additionally, see sailboat disasters in Sleeping With the Enemy and the very upsetting White Squall. Although in Sleeping With the Enemy the sailboat disaster is also an escape hatch of sorts, the idea of tipping over into the sea wasn't exactly part of my vacation dreams. Oh! And Dead Calm, although the sailboat in that one isn't so much the problem as is the the weird water hitchhiker dude. 

Anyway, I was scared but I booked it anyway. I can do things that scare me! 

I did feel loads better when the captain (if that's what you call the head sailor guy at the wheel) said that the keel was 500 pounds or something, and so there was no way we would tip over. Tilt, yes, but we wouldn't flip. With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed every tilt and bouncy wake that we hit. It was delightful! 

First #2: 

The ENTIRE time we were away, not one person asked us if we had kids. Not. One. We stay at an inn in Boothbay Harbor, and breakfast is very bed-and-breakfast-y. Which can be delightful when you meet fun new people, and painful when you meet people that you wouldn't necessarily choose to hang out with (that happened a lot last year). This year, it was a lot of older couples or families, and some talked about their children in passing, but NO ONE asked us if we had kids. It was AMAZING! 

I can't tell if this is people realizing that asking people if they have kids is a mixed bag, or we've reached an age where kids aren't central to your daily existence so it's not like when people had toddlers or school-age children and it's literally EVERYTHING everyone talks about. Or maybe we're also looking older ourselves and that has something to do with it? We had 4 breakfasts there, and only one was just us because everyone else was an early bird. Lots of opportunities for the dreaded question. Not to mention dinners out, and when we were in Vermont (also an inn, but less B&B-y...you get your own table at breakfast). I sure hope this is the wave of the future! 

It was a delightful vacation, lots of reading and walking (good job, new knees!), visiting new spaces and activities, and truly relaxing. Here are a few more pictures -- it was sunny (but HOT) and just gorgeous. 

In a garden in Grafton, Vermont

Reading on the rocks in a cove

The cove

Full moon...best picture of a full moon I've ever taken! 

Reading a book about friends on the rocky coast of Maine while actually on the rocky coast of Maine

Braving the icy water in Hendrick's Head, although the shallow water wasn't bad

View from Hendrick's Head

Cozy Harbor

Shortly before we left for home, that hammock was the best!

Embryo Adoption in the News

A friend in the bloggy community sent me this article, about the baby born recently whose embryo was frozen 30 years ago. I'd seen it in my feed, but didn't click until she sent it to me. She sent it to me because the article mentions Snowflakes, the embryo adoption program through Nightlight Christian Adoptions, and I have a history with them. 

When we had embryos in storage, and knew we weren't going to use them, we were faced with a choice. I wrote about that in this post on My Path to Mommyhood: Embryo Adoption...Beginning the Process. It was very strange, because we were simultaneously waiting in adoption to become adoptive parents of an infant (you know how that turned out) AND placing our embryos with prospective adoptive parents. 

We hadn't chosen a Christian adoption agency because...we aren't Christian. So why, when we had a choice of what to do with our frozen embryos, did we choose the Snowflakes program through Nightlight Christian Adoptions? 

Well, because the ideology, while not ours, supports giving embryos chances to become babies. Even those that are a long shot, like our 6 2PNs from the donor egg cycle (still not sure why they were frozen at that early stage) and the 2 blastocysts from the donor sperm cycle. Those embryos were tricky for multiple reasons: 

1. They were each half donor material, and not the same half in both cases
2. The 2PNs were frozen wicked early and there was no guarantee that they'd survive thawing (Spoiler alert: they didn't)
3. Unlike what it says on the website link above, we were not successful in our treatments and dealing with extra embryos after having successful pregnancies. Neither of the cycles these embryos came from resulted in a pregnancy or birth. 

But, like a 30 year old embryo that was frozen using very old technology, Snowflakes believes that every embryo deserves a shot, and they have a program for "hard to place" embryos. Which I'm sure ours were. 

Despite our heathen status, Snowflakes was delightful to work with. There was zero judgment on our spiritual beliefs or lack thereof. We stated that we wanted our embryos to be available to LGBTQ+ recipients and/or single recipients, and religion was not a factor. They said they do occasionally have people seeking embryo adoption who fit those categories (but I bet it was a very small number). 

We were successfully matched with a couple in the Midwest, who seemed delightful and had a very nice profile book. Yup, we were reviewing profile books while our own profile book was getting very little traction. I don't remember their book mentioning religion at all, which is usually a bit of a tell (most religious couples mention their faith in their books pretty prominently). 

I'm pretty sure our lack of mentioning religion or church or prayer hurt us in our own adoption journey. Adoption seems to be a pretty religion-heavy process, even if you don't have an agency rooted in faith. Not hard to see, given that in the article above, the woman who donated the embryos said "[her] preference was for a married Caucasian, Christian couple living in the US. 'I didn’t want them to go out of the country,' [she said]. 'And being Christian is very important to me, because I am.'” 

I really loved working with Snowflakes and didn't feel othered at all for not being in the fold. 

What sucked was that eventually, all of the embryos crapped out. The 2PNs didn't survive thawing. The blasts thawed, but only one survived, and it resulted in a negative pregnancy test. We were so very sad, mostly for the couple who had taken a chance on very, very long shot embryos (we were so super transparent that our journey was a clusterfuck), but also for us. Had they been successful, we would have gotten updates, we would have gotten pictures if there was a birth, and we would have possibly been able to meet someone else's baby with my genetics. Which would have been real weird, but also, in a way, amazing. Especially because by the time that news came, it was September 2017 and our own journey to become parents had come to an end.

It also gave us an answer in a sense to whether or not a gestational carrier would have made a difference. Which was, in a way, also very sad -- there wasn't a piece of us that could have worked. 

It was interesting that in the article, they mention that many clinics don't take adopted embryos for transfer, particularly the hard-to-place ones. The couple we matched with had to travel over several states to get to their clinic, which I only recently realized was probably not because there wasn't a fertility clinic in their metropolitan area, but there wasn't one willing to do the transfer. You know the reason... the almighty success rates. 

Our doctor that we followed from one clinic to another was very down on embryo adoption as a concept -- he felt that it was a slippery slope and contributed to the "personhood" argument that continues to threaten IVF today. If you regard every embryo, every fertilized egg, as a human baby with rights, then IVF becomes a very risky business. That case where the couples sued the clinic for wrongful death (and then dropped it) over destroyed embryos is one example. But, for us, the choice to engage in embryo adoption made sense. 

Not because we are pro-life -- I believe in the right to choose because every situation is individual, it's not my business, and I don't enjoy the policing of women's bodies. And as people who believe in the right to choose, we also chose to try to give these embryos a shot -- not because we saw them as "extrauterine children" as the courts in Alabama decided, but because we saw them as having potential. Additionally, we created them on purpose, with a lot of love and effort, so why not give them a second chance elsewhere? 

I mean, couldn't there be secular embryo adoption programs, based on the Second Chance idea? (Per the hospital-based clinics we worked with... um no.)

I am grateful that Snowflakes was inclusive and nonjudgmental. I am grateful that they were behind open adoption practices. And, I am grateful that they were incredibly compassionate to everyone involved when our embryos didn't work for anyone. It was a wild chapter in our journey, that's for sure.  

What The Body Knows

I had a dream two nights ago that we were trying to get pregnant. It got real weird, and at the end my wonky subconscious was like, "you've been pregnant with twins this whole time!" I woke up unsettled. 

Later, in the evening, I was telling Bryce about it (even the weird parts), and he said, "is it some kind of anniversary, maybe?" 

Huh. I don't hold anniversaries in my memory. I have the blog record to tell me if I want to know, and frankly, most of the time I don't. But Bryce's question made me curious. 

Holy crap. THIRTEEN YEARS AGO (how is that even possible?) from when I had the dream, I was pregnant. Thirteen years ago yesterday, I was pregnant. And thirteen years ago today, I started to miscarry. 

That's just freaky. 

The summers were terrible in 2011 and 2012. I had two losses two years in a row, and because I tried to time cycles during my big chunk of time off, they were always around that July/August timeframe. It really sucked when people asked "how was your summer?" and I was like, "well, I thought I was finally going to be able to say I was expecting my first child, but um, nope, just more personal tragedy. How 'bout you?" 

I found the post, Hello/Goodbye, in My Path to Mommyhood, where I'd very helpfully put a timeline of my short-lived happiness and then devastation (maybe skip the photo if a timeline of someone's miscarriage is distressing): 

It brought me right back. It put a shadow over the evening yesterday, but I was already feeling inexplicably "off." 

I am so grateful that that part of my life is over. It was just one trainwreck after another. It's insane that the 7th graders I'll have next year will be the age that baby would have been. The 8th graders are the age my ectopic would have been. It's a weird feeling. Also weird -- with people retiring and lots of new people in the building, there aren't that many people who know about my saga. I'm coteaching with someone new who is a younger teacher Bonus: no kids on the About Me slideshow! No "as a mother" nonsense! No waxing poetic on the joys of grandchildren! Danger: she's been married for two years and bought a house last year, so it's not out of the realm of possibilities that she could be in that stage of family building relatively soon. Or not. Only time will tell. 

How odd that the body has memory, and will remind you of anniversaries even if you are trying not to hang on to that dark time.