Sometimes no matter how hard you try, or wish, or work, and
pray, dreams don’t come true. So what do
you do then? You pick yourself back
up. You fix your lipstick, you put a
comb through your hair and you move on to something new... a new dream, a new
project, a new task. You keep walking
and climbing and falling and standing back up and trooping on. It doesn’t
mean you don’t cry, or that your heart didn’t break, or that you aren’t
angry or frustrated, it doesn’t mean that you don’t hurt…it just means that you
pick up and you keep trying…sometimes leaving what was behind, and looking for
what may be instead.
This is what it feels like with my 18 year dream for a
family full of children. It is
compounded by the well meaning and the nosy who have been asking…all…these…long…years…”Sooooo…do
you have kids?”, “Are you going to have kids?”, “Are you sure you tried
everything?”, “That must be so hard for you?”, “I couldn’t do that, I would
want to die if I didn’t have my kids.”, “You’re not really a whole woman if you’ve
never had children.”, “Oh, that’s so sad for you. I don’t know what I’d do if I hadn’t had my
children.”, “Are you sure you’ve done everything you can?”, “Are you pregnant
yet?” And any number of other things. What
they don’t understand is that from the kindest questions to the rudest
statements, it’s still probing an open wound and it still stings and throbs every
time they want you to talk about it and give the vaginal-uterine update. There’s so much they don’t know and so much
they don’t understand.
They don’t know about the crate that sits in the space under
the house full of little clothes that you have bought and saved over the years
as you wished and hoped and dreamed. They
don’t know about the little dresses, and feetie pajamas, and hair ribbons, and
basketball shorts that sit unused and with their tags still on them. They don’t know about the little blankets and
quilts covered in baby animals and tiny flowers, washed and waiting for a
little body that never came.
They don’t know that sometimes you open the crate and you
take those little things out, and that in the beginning you imagined a little
person of your own in them and that you could picture their sweet little face
with their tiny nose and rosebud lips and kissing them and singing to them and
loving them, or that in the middle of this journey that you hoped so hard for a
little person for them, and that most recently, now towards the end of this
time, of this dream, you wonder if you should just get rid of them all…but even
though you almost do, you can’t quite bear to part with them because there
still is the tiniest chance. And so you
put them back in, and you close the crate and you tell yourself that you have
other things to do like cleaning the bathroom and making dinner and that you
don’t need to be looking through the trappings of dreams that have almost
vanished.
They don’t know about the crafting nights with other women
and friends when you made file folder quiet games for church for when you hoped
you would sit together in a pew as a family, with quiet books and cheerios to
help shush and pass the time. They don’t
know about the family activity board for chores and assignments, or the flannel
board you made and all of the Bible stories to go with it. They don’t see the cheap little photo albums
that you turned into books with pictures of Jesus and animals and children to
teach them about God’s love for them and the importance of family and love and
obedience.
They don’t know about the little toys and the teething rings
or the few little stuffed animals that you just couldn’t pass by. They don’t know about the children’s book
collection that you started with thoughts of reading out loud to a lapful of
little warm children that were yours, or that you disguise it as something that
is just for the nieces and nephews…because that is what it slowly turned into.
They don’t know that you saw an advertisement for a series
of porcelain plates with little children painted on them as angels…and that
thinking you would have angels of your own…you bought the series and that they
came to you in foam and light and are signed by the artist and have
certificates of authenticity. They don’t
know that when you looked at the one with twins, a boy and a girl, that you
thought that could be you, you wished it would be you, and that you knew it
would be you and you smiled every time you took out that plate and looked at it…excited
to hang it, with the rest of them, in a nursery someday soon. The box sits quiet now, closed, dusty and you
don’t look at those plates anymore. You’ve
thought about giving them away but can’t think of anyone who would dream with
them the way you did and so you leave them be in the quiet of the garage. They are remainders of you from the past.
They don’t know about all of the research and reading and
studying you did about breastfeeding, healthy eating, disciplining and training
children. They don’t know that you thought about public school vs. private
school vs. homeschooling and that you went to conferences to learn more. They don’t know how you thought about
education and enrichment and college and grandchildren and growing old with
little children hugging your legs while you made a giant Thanksgiving dinner,
or watched their faces as they opened Christmas presents, or ran in sprinklers.
They don’t know about the name books and the lists you made
to the point that you thought “I love all of these names!! I’m going to need to
have 25 kids just to use them all.” And that you laughed at yourself and that
you were having fun in the dreaming and the learning and the growing. They don’t know that you sometimes still look
at those names in old journals and notebooks and that when friends and family
talk about not knowing what to name a baby or that they are stuck for names for
a newbie that has already arrive, that you quietly suggest some of your second
tier favorites…but never the first tier because maybe…maybe.
They don’t know that you’ve imagined yourself in the
hospital going through the end game experience with your husband and that in
this dream you are both so happy and can’t believe that the miracle actually
happened and that everything finally came true.
They don’t see what you see as you hold your new baby together as a new
little family, laughing and weeping at the same time in disbelief. They don’t know the life that you know you’ve
missed, and that you don’t know how to make it right because it is beyond your
control. They don’t see it turn to mist
and fade to black. They don’t know that
you have woken up weeping. They don’t
know that you have dreamt of countless babies and small children through the
years that you found and saved and thought were yours but ultimately realized
in the dream that they were not yours to keep but just to care for and that you
woke up and got ready for work and went on with a day because what else can you
do?
They don’t know about all of the exams and the probing and
the medicine and the calendaring and tracking and timing and the science of
trying everything you can to create a human being. They don’t know about the naked humiliation
of having person after person after person looking and probing and shining
giant lights and injecting fluids and taking x-rays and ultrasounds of your
most intimate parts. They don’t know
that you come away some days feeling like a test rat from all of the touching
and probing, with needle marks in your arms from all of the blood drawing, or
feeling sick because of months and months of medicinal treatment that try to
trick your body into all kinds of performance. There is no magic to it because it becomes formulas and routines and
schedules but you don’t care because you have become a maniac. You are a crazy woman. You know every nuance of your body and you
track every difference, every change, and every twinge because maybe it means
something.
You find in the end that maybe it did mean something…but it
also meant nothing because here you are…changed but the same childless woman
that you started out as with an empty uterus and no warmth or wiggling in your
arms from a little creature that is yours and ours and pink and alive. You have not propagated the species. You have given your husband no children to love
and to carry on his name. There is no
one to teach or to train, to love and to make you laugh, to make you scold and put
in time out, or to be proud of as they grow into fine human beings. You remain two where you wished for so much
more.
You learn to tolerate it, to smile, to be thoughtful and
kind, and to not snap back at people because they don’t know, and they won’t
ever know…because this is your cross that you carry. It’s your cross with the heartache, with the
pain, with the regret, with the frustration, with the sadness, with the
loneliness, with the personal blame of a broken body that should work but doesn’t. You carry all of it, and you cry in your
closet so that no one else will see your sorrow and your sobbing despair…because
there is nothing to be done about it.
And so you step up from the dark at the back and the bottom
of your closet and out of your shoes you knocked off of their rack when you
fell to your knees in crying despair calling out to God to provide a balm to
your broken and battered heart, and out from under your dresses and blouses and
pants and coats that are in your hair and on your face where you rocked against
them in your heartbroken weeping, out from the comforting embrace of the smell
of your own perfume all around you, and back into the light of the room.
You unfold yourself and stand back up. You wipe your tears and blow your nose, and
fix your makeup, cooling off the pinked eyelids and brows, fix your mascara
streaks, powder your face, brushing your birds nest out of your hair. You look at yourself in the mirror, at the
sad, sad face that looks back at you, and you choke back your last sobbing at
the broken heart that you see in your own eyes, and you tell yourself to get a
grip, to get a handle on it, to be glad that you are alive, to be glad that you
can breathe, that you have love, that you are healthy and that you have
opportunity. You tell yourself that you are
grateful for flowers, and trees, and birds.
You’re thankful for oranges, and limes, and strawberries and
bananas. You tell yourself that you are
thankful that your butt is chunky because it means that you have food in your
home and in your belly. You tell
yourself that you are grateful for a husband that is your best and dearest
friend, and that he loves you and wants you and appreciates you and doesn’t
care that you can’t have babies because this thing doesn’t define who you are,
because you are bigger and more than the things your body can or cannot do, and
that this thing has never changed his love for you.
And then you realize that even though your dreams of being a
mother of many children…or at this point…even of just one little human…didn’t
come true…and that the window is closing…that you are happy, and loved, and
warm and that you’re going to be o.k. even if your plans didn’t work out the
way you thought they would.
You realize that you have a bigger love in your heart than
you did because of your own suffering and struggling, and that it helps you to love
the other humans on the planet all the more.
It helps you to understand heartbreak and sadness in all of its guises more
poignantly, which in turn helps you understand how to be a greater comfort to
others, how to love them more, how to give and embrace with greater sincerity
and light. It teaches you that even with
regret and unrealized dreams, even with tragedy and surprise, life marches on,
that it is spectacular, and glorious and full of color and light.
Sometimes dreams don’t come true, but without the bitter
there can be no sweet, and so you walk on embracing the good and the bad, the
happy and the sad, the ups and the downs of this human life, of this human
experience and you learn to love yourself for all the things you are, and for all
the things that you aren’t, and that you are a good woman and that this is
enough even though you wanted so much more not realizing or knowing that you
already are so much more.