Words going through my head. God used to love me. And kindness
I had been on a losing streak. At least that's the way it felt to me. Lost job. No baby. Lost pregnancies. It felt like that turned around this fall with new job right at the right time, an ivf that worked, a good cvs result. And finding the right house at the right time.
But now I wonder if the luck is evaporating. Bad daycare at first. Lost luggage. Weird pressure at the new job.
Lost luggage.
It's been a month since the move flight and I filed the claim today. It was as if I took all my most precious possessions and carried them
out to the curb on trash day or took them out to the middle of the pacific, stuck them in a lead box, dropped it into the ocean and watched as it disappeared down into the depths. But in a way that would be better because at least I would know where the stuff was.
I'm on the flight to las vegas now. There is a man on the flight who looks like the Dalai Lama. Except this guy has his maroon knit sweater tucked into his pants. And his pants are missing the button, instead held together with a black belt with a silver-colored buckle.
I saw a family at the airport. A blonde mom, two red headed sons and a Chinese daughter, the youngest. I wonder if it’s just we infertiles who conclude immediately that such a daughter is the result of infertility and subsequent adoption from China? I read those stories all the time. I wonder if there are non-infertiles who adopt from China.
I missed my original flight. The drive to the airport took 2 hours instead of 40 minutes. Construction plus baseball's opening day. Don't know what was more upsetting, missing my flight or nearly wetting myself because I had to pee so badly. So badly that my hands were shaking by the time I got out of the car.
Here's a good thing: people can tell I'm pregnant. Last time around at this time they just thought I was fat. At least that is my conclusion given the comments this time vs. last.
It was an emotional thing to say goodbye to Jack this morning, but he didn’t know it. Mommy wanted an extra big hug and Jack was happy to oblige with both that and the giant kiss with the Mmmmmm-WAAAAHHHH sound effect. Then daddy took Jack to daycare and mommy cried.
During my 4 hour wait in the airport for the next flight, any time I heard a toddler laughing or fussing or talking or breathing, I found myself drawn to that. I wonder if it’s a primal response. I never had it before.
I went to this jewelry store Fire and Ice in an effort to kill some time during my long wait at the airport, and to buy some earrings since I had none for my trip. (lost in the lost bag). I ended up telling the two sales ladies there about the move and the lost luggage. I must have repeated the lost luggage story to all the people I encountered today, in varying levels of detail. It just weighs on me and I wish I could let it go. Sometimes I do, but then I remember something else that was in there and it makes me want to cry. [i.e. my grandmother’s gold mesh hoop earrings that made me feel powerful on days when I felt like a washcloth.]
I bought two pairs of earrings, some silver and amethyst ones and some pearl ones. As I was leaving the store one of the sales women asked me when the baby was due, and it occurred to me that rather than feeling sorry for myself I should feel lucky that at 41 years old (and now 42) I had a successful IVF and now a healthy pregnancy. My ankles aren’t even swollen yet, and my hands aren’t even numb yet!
Not only that, I got a giant kiss and a hug from the cutest little boy in the world this morning. I need to hold onto that magic until I can get some more.
[ Note on a cute thing that Jack does: Jack’s old daycare in California must have taught him this, because it wasn’t David or me or his relatives. But sometimes when he drops something, or he crushes the Dixie cup in his pudgy little hands, he puts his hands to his cheeks and exclaims “OH NO!” like Macauley Culkin. I guess they thought he looked a little like that.
Also during my four hours of killing time at the airport: I went to one of those airport bookstores. This one was poorly organized – the authors in the mystery section were KIND-OF in alphabetical order, but not really. So I couldn’t find any of the books that I’ve wanted to read for the past three years but haven’t had time to. It was like looking at a refrigerator full of food and feeling overwhelmed by it that there was nothing to eat. I left the bookstore in disgust, walked the 7 miles to my gate and dozed for about a half hour. Then bored to tears I walked the 7 miles back to the book store to look again. I looked at the Tipping Point. I’d read so much about it and have been wanting to read it for a long time, but it seems pathetic to read a marketing book when I should be escaping into a novel. But I was at a loss to find one, and I wanted to read the Tipping Point. So I picked that one up.
Then I struck up a conversation with a woman who was also looking for something. She had moved from Yardley (near where we now live) to L.A. a year ago to be closer to her daughter and grandkids. She hated it there for the first six months but now she was doing ok with it. But she still loves Yardley. We looked there too, but couldn’t find as much house as we wanted for the money. We are so picky. It was beautiful there though, and much closer to the Trenton train station and NYC.
Meanwhile, this woman started suggesting books to me. She was reading Erica Jong’s How to Save Your Own Life, one of my faves from years past when I used to actually read novels. Now, I told the woman in the bookstore, since the web, I have trouble reading fiction. I have trouble losing myself in something that is long and not real. It’s a big commitment and one I don’t make lightly. And I already have so many commitments… But nonfiction you can read a little bit of it, put it down for three months, and then go back to where you were. While you lose some momentum it’s not like the total momentum kill there is when you put a novel down for that long and then try to pick it up again. You don’t know who the characters are anymore, or why they are doing what they are doing.
My bookstore friend agreed about the web and fiction. I wonder if that is something the publishing industry has found to be true.
But my new friend offered some other suggestions – the Nora Ephron one – her most recent -- was really for women 45 and over, she said. And I told her the new Joan Didion one about the year after the loss of her husband is one that I’ve been wanting to read but just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to read yet. (and may never be, honestly. I’m so hormonal right now I cry at very stupid TV shows. I know something like that will push me over the edge.)
Finally she mentioned another author, and showed me a book that she had yet to read by that author. Susan Isaac. I found the book, bought it and the Tipping Point, and was on my way. I am so mad at myself that I forgot to ask my bookstore friend’s name. I am clearly not a Connector (as described in the Tipping Point.)
I had another experience over the weekend. I found the early work of a writer I admire very much and was happy to discover that she wasn’t always as good as she is now. This is always inspiring to me because it makes me feel like there is hope for me yet. While my full time career has been to write about technology, I never felt like I was as good at it as so many other writers. I felt like I rushed through the writing part of it all. These days I feel like I am a better reporter and writer than I’ve ever been, but I’m not as creative as I used to be and I want to find that again. (If only I knew how. My life schedule doesn’t allow for very many uninterrupted brainstorming sessions. Except the stream of consciousness that happens as I wait four hours at the airport alone for a flight…)
A few years ago I started reading Janet Evanovich’s early mysteries starting with One for the Money. [another author my bookstore friend today recommended] I think that Four was my favorite. I was hooked on the series. When I ran through them all I found some of her early romance novels on ABE books and ordered them. And you know what? They weren’t nearly as good. And it made me think, hey, maybe I could get somewhere.
I started writing early in my life because it was the thing that I seemed to be able to do. People told me that I had a flare for it, and they didn’t tell me that about anything else. But there were so many people who were so much better than I was. And I used to think about it as if it were the lottery – I couldn’t personally know others who were successful writers because what would the odds be of so many successful writers knowing each other. How many million dollar lottery winners are related to each other or live down the block from each other? It’s only recently that I’ve considered that I was nuts to think such a thing.
Have you made it this far? Thank you for reading this airport delay and 5 hour flight stream of consciousness ramble. I’ve got to say, it was much easier to write this than to write the long feature article I turned in last Friday, and this is longer and required no research whatsoever.
