Decrepitude

I still haven’t recovered from the virus that struck me down two weeks ago.  I am exhausted from coughing, struggling to breathe deeply, and suffering from a general malaise.  I don’t even feel like getting out on this sunny day, although I’m pretty sure the Vitamin D would do me good.  Once again I think, “imagine how tired I would be if I had children.”

But you know, if I had had children, they would now be old enough to look after themselves, do the dishes, tidy the house, amuse themselves by reading or playing on their own, or walk down the street to the playground.  It wouldn’t matter so much that their mother was sick.  I say this because if I imagine what it would be like to have a toddler at my age, I feel totally decrepit.  Feeling sick is making me feel old enough.  And also, I don’t see why I should feel guilty about moaning about feeling sick.  Even not having children, surely I’m allowed to moan about feeling sick.  Haven’t felt this bad for this long since I had dengue fever.

So apologies for the uninspired posting.  Hopefully I’ll be back with some deeper thoughts in a few days.  Cough.  Splutter.

Traditions, old and new

Mel wrote a lovely post last week about taking a tradition she learned about when travelling in Italy, and bringing it into her family.  It made me think about what I might have done if I had had children, what parts of my life in Thailand would have become part of their life in New Zealand.  I know they’d have grown up eating Thai food, taking their shoes off at the door, and being told to “jai yen yen.”  (Literally, it means cool heart, in practice, it means “calm down,” and my husband and I use it on each other frequently.  It doesn't always work!)   They might have learned all about Songkran, the Thai New Year water festival.  It is celebrated in Thailand in April, the hottest part of the year there, and being soaked with water isn’t necessarily a bad thing then.  April in New Zealand on the other hand is autumn, sometimes lovely Indian summer days, other times freezing temperatures and time to dig out the winter clothes.  It would be hit and miss.

I also loved the Loy Krathong festival in Thailand.  A November festival, again a bit weather dependent but less so, this one only requires some relatively calm water.  Krathongs are little banana-leaf boats with a  candle, that you float off into some water.   It symbolises letting go of all your grudges, anger and negativity.  Time to start afresh.  I like that idea.  I could do with starting afresh occasionally; holding on to negativity and grudges is not a healthy practice, but one I can find myself doing.  I do find though that usually I am able to force myself to let them go (mostly) from time to time.  I like to think I would have introduced the idea to my children. 

Oddly, these thoughts don’t give me much sadness.  Instead, it’s kind of nice to know my children’s lives would have been interesting and full, and perhaps a wee bit different, because of me.

Why I Write

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. — Gustave Flaubert

I found this quote.  Actually, Wordpress found it for me, giving me the quote as I uploaded my latest post on A Separate Life.  And it made me stop, and smile.  This has been my exact experience.

I always loved writing.  As a teenager I wrote for fun, but then university and work, and writing theses and papers and emails and project reports and proposals used up all my writing energy for many years.  But when I had my first ectopic pregnancy, and joined the EPT forums, I discovered the only way I was going to get support was if I wrote.  I wrote my own posts, pouring out my heart as I went through another ectopic pregnancy and failed IVFs and reached the end of my fertility. 

And being a part of the community, of course I read what others wrote, and responded to them, seeking to find what might comfort me and therefore them, and in the process, figuring out what my own thoughts were.  The other wonderful women who were there with me at the time helped me enormously.  They were funny, insightful, each with a unique way with words.  Some of them were further on in the healing process than I was, many had taken different routes, but we all talked together, working things out together.  As one of my friends said, we got to know each other inside out.  And as I wrote I thought deeply about what I felt, what I was trying to say, and what that meant.  I would frequently say, "I've only just figured this out" or "that's the first time I've realised this."  As Gustave Flaubert said would happen, as I wrote I really did learn what I believed. 

As the years past, fortified and comforted with what I'd already learnt, and knowing I was nowhere near finished learning, I started exploring the ALI blogs, found Pamela and Lisa and Loribeth.  What a trio to find at the outset!  And reading them, I realised that I wanted to say more; that the self-therapy of writing would only work for me if I was in fact actually writing.  Hence, this blog.  And just as importantly, perhaps more so, commenting on other blogs so often prompts me to think again.  Writing as therapy.  Learning what I believe.  It’s not over yet.  I’m glad.

Trying to look on the bright side

Just as I was ready to get back to the gym, exercise, attack my 2012 Summer To-Do List, lose weight, enjoy the warmish weather etc etc etc, and - believe it or not - was feeling motivated about all this, I get hit with a nasty cold.

On the bright side, with no kids, I was able to sleep late and my my husband made me lunch and I felt no guilt whatsoever.

Give me a break!

Our local newspaper is putting together a summer series of articles, which seem to be themed around the idea of a worst summer ever.  I either haven’t read all these articles, or they’re only in the paper every few days.  The first was a moving story by a woman of the loss of her brother just before Christmas a few years ago.   It was a beautiful item, written with warmth and humour and love. 

The second article was an insulting and self-indulgent piece, still subtitled Worst Summer Ever, about a woman’s pregnancy.  No, nothing went wrong.  Well, nothing beyond a waiter saying to her “are you sure you’re not having twins?” and her baby not arriving for a week or so after his due date.  I don’t get very angry very often, and I hate to start off 2012 with an angry post.  But this made me very angry.   Not because she didn't like being uncomfortable - I can understand that.  No, I lost it when she said there is a “special kind of hell” waiting to have your baby, not knowing when they are going to arrive, dealing with days and weeks of uncertainty.

A special kind of hell?  Give me a break!  This is a just-gotta-get-through this-to-get-exactly-what-I-wanted kind of hell – perhaps similar to a long economy class flight on your once-in-a-lifetime vacation.  The kind of hell we all wish we could have.

 

I thought of other, far worse summers.  Those of :

A friend breaking up with her husband of 20 years.

The family and friends of those who have died on the roads (or otherwise) since Christmas.

Those living in Christchurch’s eastern suburbs (the most earthquake damaged).

Those living alone - the sick, the frightened, the elderly.

Those who lost their jobs before Christmas.

Parents with sick or dying children.

Those who are trying and are unable to conceive.

Or even, my own worst summer ever was spent losing my second and last ever pregnancy (my previous worst summer ever had been the year before, losing my first pregnancy).  As you know, I had weeks of uncertainty, then months before it was resolved, with more hospital stays, surgery and procedures.  And of course, there was no baby at the end.  

So many of us - not just in the infertility community - would consider the writer’s worst summer ever to be our best.  I felt insulted that this woman – and perhaps even more so her sub-editors at the newspaper – were so self-centred and insensitive that they could subtitle this article Worst Summer Ever without breaking into hysterical laughter.  Or perhaps they did?  

The next article in the series was written by another pregnant-at-the-time writer, who had just moved to Wellington with her husband and daughter from South Africa.  She was alone, depressed, in a strange land where they knew no-one, with a degree of culture-shock, but still positive.  She reflected on her joys, and what she had, even whilst admitting how difficult it was to make the adjustment.  She subtitled her article, My Best, and Hardest, Summer Ever.  She doesn’t know that she redeemed my faith in women, journalists, and pregnant women.  I might write a Letter to the Editor, and tell her.