Looking up

The doorbell rang

The doorbell rang and Scooter scampered ahead of me to answer it. Standing there was our 9-year-old neighbor. He wanted to see if Scooter would like to play. He didn't have anything in particular in mind, so they started out riding bikes in the cul-de-sac.

I did my usual mom thing and went out front to keep an eye on Scooter, trying not to be so obvious as to embarrass him, but knowing that he still lacks some of the balance and awareness that the other kids possess. I chatted for a bit with Scooter's friend's mother and then looked over some plants when she went back inside.

After a bit, Scooter invited his friend to our house to play trains, something they've done a few times in the past couple weeks. I reminded Scooter of the protocol--I had to say it was OK (which I did) and his friend's mother had to be asked too. She has always said OK so far, but I want him to learn the proper steps.

She came out with her son, and the two boys headed in. She asked me about the bus schedule and my experiences. We moved on to gas prices and fuel efficiency. And daycare and errands and any number of things. Trillian came out and joined in the conversation.

And I thought about how nice it was to have that moment, friendly adult conversation outside, kids playing nearby.

I mentioned how much Scooter enjoys playing with her son, both as praise for her son reaching out to a younger kid and as thanks that she lets him come over.

When the neighbor headed back to his house before Scooter's bath, he said something about "maybe tomorrow again." Scooter happily named his neighborhood friends to me as he got ready for bed. It means the world to him--and to me--that the doorbell rang and it was for him.

Because this shouldn't make me cry?

The appointment with the fertility doctor was less than encouraging. The fact that I started crying when I realized that I was pretty much back at square one with him--and that he was truly baffled by my show of emotion (because most women who have had two miscarriages are usually cheery at the prospect of more tests and possibly no answers?)--only prolonged the awkwardness of the entire encounter. Another round of blood tests--12 vials. And waiting for two or three weeks to find out the results of the one that might bear out previous theories. Plus an internal ultrasound that, at least, ruled out the uterine polyp the ultrasound tech had insisted was present after my second miscarriage.

There's a lot for me to say about the specifics of the appointment, where things are, the continued waiting, the growing sense that I may not get any answers and so will have to make my own decision without any real help. (One huge frustration today was having the fertility doctor ask me, multiple times, "So what do you want me to do?" I don't know. Would presenting me with information, a sense of standard procedure, and your professional opinion be too much?)

But anyways, let me rant about one thing in particular. I need doctors--and that is doctors in the plural, he was only the most recent one--to stop asking, in the tone that announces its criticism, if maybe I would want to switch sperm donors. You know, given my son's issues.

There is a part of me, when I am out of the doctor's office, that can find a sort of humor in the question. Back when I was pregnant with Scooter, I joked with Trillian that I would be able to take all the credit for the good stuff and blame any negatives on the anonymous donor, some man we'll never meet. Of course now that I ascribe all of Scooter's quirks to my family's genetics, readily admit this, am not at all ashamed of this, now the doctors are trying to pass it off on the anonymous donor.

The doctor today returned to this topic multiple times. I don't think he even understands the implications of Asperger's over other forms of autism. He certainly couldn't pronounce it. He glommed on to my mention that while the exact causes are unknown, Asperger's is generally thought, perhaps more than other forms of autism, to have a strong genetic component. And so he kept pushing genetic testing. Even though I told him, no fewer than three times, that researchers have yet to trace Asperger's to any specific genetic variation and so a genetic counselor wouldn't know what to look for. I felt a bit like a high school biology teacher trying to explain the topic to a particularly dense student. Finally, he brought in the issue of other chromosomal abnormalities, but admitted that since I've had one live birth, the likelihood of a serious problem is less than 1%.

I did actually raise my voice when he brought up the fact that Scooter has not been officially diagnosed, suggested that perhaps we should be pursuing this. I think he meant more in terms of genetic testing (despite what I had already told him), but that really struck a nerve and I started to explain--loudly--that we've been trying for an evaluation and/or diagnosis for over three years now and that the wait list in our state is currently six months and we were only just able to work on initiating that process after our move (I have a stack of paperwork to wade through still). He did apologize for any perceived slight of my parenting, but still seemed generally clueless.

From my research, I do think that there is a chance that I might have more luck in staying pregnant with a different donor, if the previous miscarriages have been a result of immunologic factors. And so it is something I am allowing to live at the back of my mind right now. But I wonder why this is not something that has been mentioned to me by a medical professional. I would understand this. The science behind it makes sense to me, even if I'm not sure how I would proceed. However, this harping on my son's "issues" is wearing thin.

And for a doctor who deals exclusively with fertility, is it too much to expect him to be just a little sensitive?

Stopping to smell the roses...

and the other flowers too.

The lilacs have already bloomed, as have the fruit trees. But otherwise we're being treated to a real riot of color.

We have three rose bushes in various shades of pink. Our neighbors have pale yellow. Today, as I walked down to pick Scooter up from daycare, I stopped to enjoy two bushes, one in a bright yellow, the other a dark red that reminded me of a rose bush we had at our previous house.

Purple penstemon bloom everywhere I turn. White peonies are nodding open their heavy heads. The lamb's ear is putting up dusky green spikes with tiny purple flowers. Wisteria twists itself over a fence and around a tree. Various white and yellow flowers greet the sun each day, their names still a mystery to me.

Each day I take a tour of our backyard, lingering especially over the fruit trees. Little green cherries dot their trees, but now the occasional red one appears. I am attempting a silent truce with birds and insects--they can have all of the cherries high up if they'll leave me those that are within reach of a short ladder.

The apple tree is a bit behind the cherry trees, dotted with tiny green balls of fruit. I do not yet know if they will be green or red when ripe, but look forward to sharing them with Scooter.

I'm a bit in love with the flora here. The fauna too. Bees buzz around the flowers, and lizards of various sizes scurry about as I pass by.

I am enjoying the slower pace of summer in a quiet town.

Bringing a darkness to light

There is a long, self-pitying post that has been rattling around in my head for weeks now. I suspect it has been a significant part of the writer's block I've been suffering for several weeks now.

Today was one of those days when several things came together in such a way as to tell me it is time to write this. I had a plan of how I would present this, all the background and context I would give. But the more intricate a plan I create in my head, the further away the heart of the matter recedes. So I'm just going to dive in. I don't know exactly where I'm going with this and am not sure how long it will take to get there, so feel free to move on to the next post in your queue.

It is supposed to be some sort of comfort, apparently, to tell a woman who has miscarried that there was probably a chromosomal abnormality in the fetus. Therefore, it was for the best. Which, for me personally, felt like the science version of "It's all part of God's plan."

I also, as much as I might have wanted to believe the above, never fully believed it. Again I feel the need to emphasize that I approach most aspects of my life through logic and science. But I do reserve a special place for dreams, particularly during pregnancy. Not as a form of prophecy, but more as an opportunity to get in touch with my subconscious and body and to figure out what exactly is going on in there. And so it meant something to me when I had a dream in which I held my little girl. I believed so much more strongly in that little girl than a potential chromosomal abnormality.

The second miscarriage happened so quickly that I had not quite settled into the idea of being pregnant. But that very fact, the decreasing amount of time my body could hold onto the baby, just convinced me that there was something outside of the random, inexplicable chance event my medical providers tried to assure me was the cause.

It was a moment of confirmation, therefore, when I began to unravel some of what might have happened. I was elated to know that my suspicions were probably correct and that there was someone who was not going to make me go through the process again without any additional support.

But there's a dark side to this new knowledge. And this is what has been eating at me.

There was nothing wrong with my little girl. Or the second baby I never got to know. Either one would have been a beautiful, healthy baby. With me now.

It was not the babies' chromosomes that failed. It was my body. More specifically, my body attacked my babies, treated them as cancerous growths, worked to flush them out as quickly as possible.

My body killed my little girl.

And this is the origin of my recent discontent with my body, the sense that the physical me and the mental me are not in harmony. Because if I had not created that separation, I would have to replace "my body" with "I."

I can write all of this now, because I have started to heal that rift. I recently increased the frequency, length, and intensity of my workouts, spending more time simply existing in my body.

I'm headed to a fertility clinic soon and hope to be trying again in another 6 weeks. Even though I have been displeased with how many times my start date has been pushed back, I am starting to think that this may be a good thing for my mental state; perhaps I will be more at peace with my body by the time I ask it to undertake this task again.

I do not regret the knowledge I have collected in the past few months, even with the twist of pain it has brought. I also recognize the shimmer of stress that attends all my considerations of future pregnancy, restraining my excitement, not allowing me to think beyond the step immediately ahead of me. It constantly whispers, "But what if there's a third time? How will you recover?" And the truth is, I might not; I fear that a third miscarriage would break me.

I am not, perhaps, quite as pessimistic as this might all sound. There is enough hope that I will press on. But it is always with a glance backward, aware of the weight I am bearing.

Global Warming Wednesday: Reducing our auto footprint

I was just about to write a post on our recent reduction in car use when I saw that the BlogHers Act Canada June Challenge is about reducing one's auto footprint.

When we first got to Springfield, we found ourselves driving a lot more than we had in Toronto. Not a big surprise. We had walked a lot of places in Toronto. When we had the time, two miles was a fairly standard range. Although Springfield is a small town population-wise, it is spread out. Scooter's school is close by, as are a couple playgrounds, but two miles gets us nothing more than more houses and playgrounds.

Now Springfield does have a bus system, but my initial consultations of the schedule showed that it wouldn't do much for those "quick" dashes downtown to the stores (15 minutes each way to most places). But as we headed to summer and a more open schedule, not to mention more expensive gas, I began to think that maybe I should take another look.

So Scooter and I took the bus a couple times for discretionary adventures--the library, the coffeeshop, fun like that. But trips that were very open-ended in terms of time. As in Toronto, Scooter enjoyed riding in public transit. And I discovered that the Springfield bus system is actually quite pleasant. (Plus, at least for the time being, it's free. Relatively speaking. The system was recently revamped and tax money funds some part of it for now. The powers-that-be want to keep it that way, though they'll probably have to add a surcharge to local utilities.)

I looked more closely at the schedule and determined that I could use the bus system to get Scooter to and from his daycare this summer. The one dead spot was after dropping him off; I had generally been planning to head downtown and work there for a few hours, as I tend to have more productive bursts in the morning, away from the house. But in order to get there via bus, I would have to wait over 30 minutes. So I tend to walk the 2+ miles and count it as part of my exercise program.

So far, most of the trips have gone rather smoothly, with the exception of two legs from the daycare back home. I made it by bus to the daycare in each instance, but ended up calling Trillian to come get us. The first time, I called her from the bus as hail fell thickly upon the bus. It did end by the time I got out of the bus a few blocks later, but it turned out that we were still under a severe weather warning. The second time was a bit more frustrating. The bus passed us by. Even though I was in a pick-up location, even though I flagged it down (first with a smile, then increasingly more frantically). Scooter took it quite personally, so I was relieved when he was willing to take the bus again afterwards. (I also registered a complaint online and was informed by a very apologetic woman of the number for the service that picks up disabled and elderly riders--which would also be immediately dispatched if we get passed again).

We're not the only people in Springfield who have decided the bus might be a good way to go. Even on the neighborhood leg of my trips, I'm sometimes surprised by just how full the bus can get. And the popularity is a good thing--there's talk of increasing the frequency of some routes.

Using the bus extensively definitely means keeping my schedule more open, being willing to adjust my expectations to their timetable, spending a little more time in transit. Starting when we're on summer hours has made this a bit easier. But I figure that if I can switch my thinking over the next few months, this will become habit. I want this to become my default, primarily because of the environmental benefits. But whenever I start to waver, it won't take more than a little math to get me back on the bus.

More than a card

Somehow June has snuck up on me and with it another Blogging for LGBT Families Day. A list of this year's posts is over at Mombian.

I expected that the card from my grandmother would contain congratulations. We had just spread the news among our families that I was pregnant. My grandmother had no computer and much preferred writing over phoning, so it wasn't a surprise to see her shaky handwriting and the return address I'd memorized long ago.

But she wrote much more than a simple note of congratulations.

My grandmother wrote that the combination of my recent announcement and a cousin's upcoming wedding had led her to think a lot about life and relationships. She hoped and expected that I already knew she considered my relationship with Trillian to be as committed as any of the married couples in our family, but she had felt compelled to tell me this explicitly. She also wrote that she wanted to mark our commitment, albeit belatedly, in a way commensurate with how she had and would celebrate the weddings of her other grandchildren.

Hers was the first "wedding" gift we ever received.

Now this particular grandmother lived in Massachusetts. Same-sex marriage became a reality there before her death. The congregation to which she belonged, a very important part of her daily life, went through a difficult time in deciding whether or not they would officiate for the weddings of same-sex couples. I heard about this second-hand, from one of my aunts; she told me that my grandmother had been a vocal proponent of their participation in these ceremonies.

A few months after my grandmother's death, I received a packet of papers and pictures. The aunt who had been given the position of "family historian" had gone through the papers from my grandmother's house and sent relevant items to each family member. I flipped through my items: my senior portrait, letters I had written to my grandparents, a picture of Scooter, a newspaper clipping from when I won some prizes in a math contest, and copies of two letters my grandmother had written. One to her local newspaper, one to her congregation. Both about how ridiculous it was to fear same-sex marriage, that nothing could take away from the marriage she'd had with my grandfather, that her granddaughter's family deserved all of the same protections.

Scooter only got to meet her once, and he probably remembers nothing of the visit. Luckily, there are moments from that time that I will never forget. One of the things I requested when it came time to divide the material goods from her house was a set of wooden nesting blocks. We had all played with them whenever we visited their house, but they gained special meaning for me. I remember my grandmother sitting in a chair as Scooter played with them. He had another wooden toy and the different blocks with their open sides facing up. He would knock the first toy around inside each block in turn, obviously paying attention to how the quality of the sound changed, depending on the size of the block. My grandmother was enraptured and exclaimed emphatically over how smart he was.

Those blocks, those letters, that card--I've kept them all. I have pictures and other things from my grandmother, but those are the items that bring back the strongest memories and make me feel a connection with her.