Posts from — June 2011

I am emerging out of my Chekhovian mood, and I debated writing about this (and certainly about posting it).  But it was still on my mind, so one last bit of navel-gazing about aging.

This current round of my midlife crisis started when I was at an event, filled with what I think we’d all describe as fairly accomplished people.

I started to zone out at one point, staring at the person behind the podium, contemplating his skeleton. (Am I the only person who does this when they’re getting all angsty?  Imagine that people’s skeletons are suddenly visible externally and their disjointed mandible is wiggling up and down as they speak to you?)  All I could think of was how little everyone in the room had accomplished despite the fact that general society would describe the people in the room as fairly successful.

I mean, what do books and movies and theater even mean at the end of the day?  Most books — even very successful ones — go out of print and are forgotten within years.  Movies go in one eye and out the other.

“It sort of doesn’t matter how much we accomplish because we’re all going to die anyway,” the cheery skeleton man silently informed me in not so many words while his actual body spoke about the latest book he wrote.

Can you tell that I’ve read a lot of Scandinavian literature?

But really, it was a little freeing to stop worrying about whether I’ve accomplished enough.  Enough.  How can anyone ever measure enough?  All I know is that whatever amount of good things I have — love, children, books, possessions; it never feels like enough.  The freeing part came in recognizing that very few people ever reach the stage of “enough” in one aspect of their life much less in all aspects of their life.

I mean, how many people can say, “feh, hold the love, I have enough of it.”  Or “I don’t really need any more success at work; I’m all full-up.”

Once everyone’s skeleton reminded me that we’re all heading to the same destination despite whatever else we accomplish along the way, I stopped coveting one writer’s $500,000 advance and another writer’s movie rights sale.  I mean, it’s all well and good that they have this money and can slap an accomplishment on their biography — but it’s certainly not keeping them from death.  And who will care in the future whatever small feats they accomplished while on earth.  No one (okay, perhaps their descendents).

And again, even with those accomplishments, I’d hazard a guess that neither of those writers are saying, “it’s enough.  I’m done.  I can walk away from the game happy.”  Success breeds a desire for success.  Don’t you feel that way after you write a particularly fantastic blog post and you get an unusually high amount of comments?  You want to do it again.  You don’t know exactly how to do it again — that is the frustrating part since success usually requires external forces or people to cooperate.  But you really want to do it again.

But isn’t it a little freeing to think to yourself, what does it matter if I have enormous blog traffic or a small amount of blog traffic?  What does it matter if this post gets two comments or 20 comments (oh please, let it get 20 comments, let it get 20 comments)?  A year from now, who will remember?  A decade from now, who will care?  A century from now, we’ll all be ashes anyway.

This is not meant to sound depressing in any way — just the opposite; it is a confirmation of enjoying the journey since we all end up in the same place regardless of what we do (except for those who have the means to cryopreserve their body… or their head… or whatever one needs to do in order to extend life indefinitely).  Of enjoying your blog regardless of where it is going simply because it exists.  Of enjoying whatever love or happiness or comfort you can grab since isn’t it all fleeting?

Which is not to say that nothing we do or care about matters.  Again, just the opposite — of course it matters.  Of course I want the 20 comments and the enormous advance on my next book.  Of course I want to sell the film rights and get to see my book turned into a movie.*  Of course I want to walk down the street and have someone show me that they had a tattoo made of my name across their bicep (something understated and pretty).  But as I sat in that room, staring at the especially smug skeleton across from me (he was probably contemplating his book advance as I was contemplating his disembodied phalanges), I thought about dividing apart what I was being pressured to believe was important by society and what was personally worth chasing based on how I viewed the world.

What was worth worrying about the enoughness of it all?

I don’t have a clear answer, and to be honest, the answer has changed from moment to moment.  Love is always on the list — I think it’s worth my energy to chase love, to worry about love, to wonder if I have enough love, to fret if I’m giving enough love, to fear that I am about to suffocate the children with my enormous, pillow-like love.  Sometimes I think it’s worth my energy to chase artistic success.  Or to chase down additional family building success.

And sometimes I step back and say to myself, “it doesn’t matter, Melissa, because there will never be enough.  So don’t dismiss what you have, worrying about the size of it.  Just understand that you will never be full but that doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy this small, simple meal.”

At least, that is what I say to my own skeleton when it materializes externally, blotting out skin and hair and heart and blood.

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* And even more than that, in the immediate moment, I want very badly for people to help me spread word that my book, Life from Scratch, is one of the Sunshine Deals on Amazon and help me get it to #1 on the Kindle List.  $2.99, people, it will never be that low again!  Please help me send my kids to college by either reading my book or telling someone else to read it.  It seems worth my energy stressing about that this moment while also trying to enjoy the small good thing that is being chosen by Amazon at all.

Last week, The Today Show featured a new book called Forty Beads: The Simple, Sexy Secret for Transforming Your Marriage.  It’s the sex book of the moment.

The backstory is that this couple had gotten to a terrible place in their marriage, and the woman’s SIL gave her the advice that they should have sex daily. (I’m really hoping that the SIL is her brother’s wife and not her husband’s sister.  Because nothing says creepy like a woman who eagerly tells her SIL, “please screw my brother nightly!”)

She tried it and it worked.  Time passed again and their marriage unraveled again.  Now it was a few days before her husband’s 40th birthday.  She remembered — according to The Today Show — that her parents also enjoyed a nightly porking session:

Every year, at least for as long as I’ve been aware of it, my mom has given my dad an entire month of sex for his birthday. I hadn’t really given their steamy Septembers much thought until then.

Do you know this much about your parent’s sex life?  No?  Me neither.

So for her husband’s 40th birthday, she promised him 40 nights of sex.  At first, the nights were supposed to be consecutive, but in the end, the idea Carolyn Evans proposes (and what you need to do to become a Beader) is to give her husband a jar of 40 beads.  When he wants sex, he drops one in her bead catcher, a bowl she keeps by the side of the bed.

The reason I find this book so incredibly disturbing is not because it takes the act of sex — which can range from a spontaneous satiation of the intense feelings you have for another person to the obligatory romp that occurs around ovulation — and reduces it to a chore to be demanded by one person in the partnership.

I find this book disturbing because the point of the book is to use sex to fix a marriage.

That’s not only a lot of pressure to put on an act, but it takes the focus away from the actual problem and places it on this physical act that should be one of the tangential arms to a marriage, not the sole body of a marriage.

It’s like saying that my weight problem has nothing to do with the fact that I eat out of anxiety or sadness and instead I should focus on sitting down while eating my meals and that would solve! my! problem!

I obviously think I should focus on why the fuck I turn to food when I’m anxious or sad rather than something else.  I think I should focus on why I’m anxious or sad.

By making sex the “body” of the marriage, by giving it that amount of power, you relegate other parts of marriage that need to be in balance to the outer limbs.

Whereas all of those items on the limbs should actually be in the body and sex should become an extension of having a strong core.  Just one of the fun things a couple does together along with whatever else floats your boat.  If not, sex becomes the end-all-and-be-all, the judge of the strength of the marriage, and when that happens — and if your sex life isn’t perfect — it throws all those other, more important things out of whack when they may have been fine if you had a different way of viewing your partnership.  In other words, making sex the focus has more potential to break things than fix things.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t think a sex life is important.  I’m a big fan of sex — perhaps Josh should be giving me the jar if we did this instead of keeping to Evan’s heterosexual caricature of sexual desires.  I enjoy sex frequently.

But I think anyone infertile knows that sex takes on a very different meaning if you entered into your relationship believing you’d be able to use sex to procreate (and I’m sure that someone will inform me that it’s also true for those who go into family building with known problems, but I only know based on my experience).

Sex becomes this physical act that stands as the gatekeeper for what you can’t do — make a child.  It becomes this act that you need to do regardless of how you’re feeling in the moment when you’re ovulating, which makes sex as appealing as Brussels sprouts.  It can be a huge relief not to need to have sex anymore if you’re doing treatments.  It can be a reminder of loss — it’s the act that brought you to your  emotional pain.  It’s frustrating.  It’s painful.  It’s saddening.  I have yet to meet an infertile couple who said, “I am so thrilled we’re infertile because it means we get to have lots of sex” despite what dumb-asses think is one of the benefits of being unable to procreate.

Unlike other marital problems, sex is at the core of infertility.  And I don’t think bringing back a desire to have sex is as simple as placing a bead in a bowl.

I think you do need to at some point come back to a place of wanting to be physical, though that physicality shouldn’t be this one-sided, small-minded idea that a physical relationship = missionary-position, woman-submitting sex (you have hands, you have a mouth, you have an imagination — use them!).  But it takes time to get there and there aren’t shortcuts.  Rebuilding a sex life that has taken a hit due to infertility is more of a math equation than a self-help book:

time + commitment on both people’s parts to address the issue + leniency and understanding when the other person isn’t working on your time line = better sex life.

I think you need to come at it with the understanding that it takes time — and some “times” are more right than others.  I think it takes a commitment and flexibility on the part of both people to say they are willing to do what the other person needs them to do within reason.  And when that doesn’t mesh because the needs are in direct opposition, to take that third part of the equation.  Leniency.  Not taking your frustrations out on the person.  That leniency has to flow in two directions; and both people need to feel safe that they can express themselves.  They can push themselves without having the other person push them.

The way I mentally approach the idea of sex in a marriage is that the action is not a given.  There are plenty of life situations (including old age) where sex might not be possible.  Not where it’s being withheld as a weapon, but where it is simply impossible for physical or emotional reasons.  And is it possible to still have a happy, healthy marriage sans sex — yes, I believe it is.  Therefore, it’s a limb; it’s not the body of the marriage.  Is it possible to have a happy, healthy marriage sans understanding or support — no, I don’t believe you can have that.  Do you see the skewed focus of the 40 beads?

For a book to place it in that position of importance is to create more pressure, creating more problems.

So that’s how I feel about the concept of the 40 beads.  If you’re using the book as a sex game because sex games rocks your boat, let it rock your boat.  But to use it to fix a marriage is no better than having a child or buying a house or starting a new business venture to fix what is broken in the marriage.  Those things are all gimmicks.  To fix a marriage, you need to get to the heart.  Which is located in the body.

As I was writing this, I went outside to see two squirrels fucking under my car only to chase them away and have them return for a three-way.  Sex seems to be on everyone’s mind.  So if you’ll excuse me… cough.

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes.  My Chekhovian mood stretched through the whole week.  Josh asked if I wanted to go see a production of Uncle Vanya and I just stared at him for a long time until I finally said, “do you think that’s a good idea?”  And he had to admit that it probably wasn’t.

I am still feeling Prufrock-y, still wearing my trousers rolled, but I did spend an hour trying out electric guitars.  And then, in true form, walked out of the store without my birthday present and told the man that I needed to sleep on it.  I will most likely go back and buy it tonight — a simple, blue Fender Squier.  Nothing fancy, but a first electric guitar probably shouldn’t have too many bells and whistles.

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But the best birthday gift came from Amazon.  On Thursday I learned that Life from Scratch had been chosen for their sunshine deals program.  They picked 600 books that were already bestsellers or had won awards, temporarily dropped the price, and are featuring them for two weeks to kick off summer reading.

It’s a fairly eclectic list: Sophie’s Choice, Slaughterhouse Five, and… Life from Scratch.  There’s Chelsea Handler and short stories by Andre Dubus and the writings of Martin Luther King Jr.  See — eclectic.

By Thursday night, it was down to #316 on the Paid Kindle list.  Which is awesome.  I mean, it’s very cool to think of new people reading my book, but it also was an injection of energy into writing the sequel.  Stuff was just quietly going on with the first book and I was just quietly writing the second book, and this was like a huge yelp in the middle of a sea of words that woke me up, made me sit up straighter, and actually smile through my Chekhovian mood as I typed.

So.

Life from Scratch is down to $2.99 on Kindle for the next two weeks for this promotion.  It’s the perfect time (hint, hint) to get a copy if you don’t already have one (I don’t personally have a Kindle, but you can read Kindle books on the computer, the iPad, and the blackberry, etc).

And I’m telling you this because I’m going to beg you — as a birthday present to me? — to spread word.  Tell friends and family that this would be a great beach read, some good summer fun.  That it’s the perfect time to get it — it will never be this low in price.  It’s less than a frappuccino!  Tweet it, Facebook it, blog about it.  Pretty please?

My goal, since everyone should have a goal, is to get to #1 on the Kindle List.  Will you help me do that?

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And speaking of birthday fun… the winners of the giveaway (and seriously, I can’t believe 257 entries for a box of baked goods and only 28 for the best games I’ve ever played?):

1. Rush Hour (winner: JustHeather)
2. What’s Gnu (winner: Kristin)
3. Rush Hour iPhone/iPad app (winner: Magpie)
4. Solitaire Chess iPhone/iPad app (winner: Baby Smiling in Back Seat)

Congratulations!

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “What the Heck is Wrong with Me…” [Part One] and “What the Heck is Wrong with Me…” [Part Two] (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “Little Warrior” (Three Times the Fun)
• “To Taryn, at Graduation” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Mice and Cheese” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Right Where I Am Project” (Still Life with Circles)
• “Rape is Not an Appliance” (Oh, Noa)
• “Forgiveness” (Expired Eggs… ?)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Kate, Uncensored has a wistful little post about wishing for a wedding.  On one hand, she doesn’t need the ceremony, the paper or the ring.  But on the other, it’s this little thing that is missing.  It made me think about all the things we can talk ourselves into living without, but how they always are like a little sigh in the back of our heart.

The Port of Indecision has a post about perspective.  She juxtaposes her experience with recurrent loss with her friend’s reaction to her own miscarriage.  At first the comparison makes her feel badly, but she comes to realize how her perspective has changed with each loss.  She explains: “And how by the fifth time I was simply resigned to the reality that this was the only thing that could possibly happen. And how it’s gone from, ‘Why not me?’ to, ‘Why me, again?’ It’s all a matter of perspective.”

Grit and Patience has a post about donor eggs and the cuckoo bird.  I love this passage: “I’d love whatever kid I had, of course.  I guess it’s just a visceral illustration of that baby or child being foreign, different, not OF ME, us not “fitting”. My reaction to the cuckoo image isn’t as strong now as it used to be.  Maybe it’s the passage of time, maybe it’s the Zoloft.  Who knows?”  But you’re going to want to read the whole post for this line: “It’s the love that makes you ‘fit,’ not the genes.”

Lastly, Write Mind Open Heart has a post about summer, specifically, summer vacations as a kid.  You will mentally go back in time.  Our neighbourhood wasn’t big on fort building, but we played all house hide-and-go-seek (meaning, you could be outside or in any of the houses on our street with only one tree designated as the “safe” zone).  We biked and explored.  We went to day camp for six weeks.  Go tell her what you did.

The roundup to the Roundup: I survived my birthday.  Please help me make Life from Scratch #1 on the Kindle list.  Winners from the giveaway.  And lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 27 and June 3) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

We interrupt my existential crisis to reflect on the actual birthday celebrating festivities and eat figurative cake and put up streamers and all of those sorts of things tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Since my birthday falls between two weekends this year, I decided to claim both for my own.  This past weekend, we went to the aquarium sans kids and contemplated the jellyfish.  They just float through the water trailing gossamer tentacles, not concerned about paying the mortgage or procreating or growing old.  As far as I understand, based on information from the elderly aquarium volunteer, jellyfish do not have midlife crises.

They don’t check themselves in the mirror, fretting about grey tentacles.

Josh gave me the best birthday gift of all.  I’ve had a burning question that I’ve always wanted to ask, but didn’t want to be the one doing the asking.  On this visit, Josh allowed me to save face and took one for the team in honour of my birthday.  He marched up to the information desk and inquired if anyone had ever fallen or jumped into the stingray pool.

“No,” the aquarium volunteer informed him.  “I mean, there have been other things that have fallen in — cameras, cell phones.  But never a person.”

I’ve got to say that not only was the answer anti-climatic (I was assuming that the aquarium averages 2 or 3 stingray- or shark-inflicted deaths per year), but I didn’t really believe him.  People die every so often at the zoo when they climb into the lion enclosure and that takes actual skill to scale the wall.  Falling into the stingray pool is so simple that I contemplated showing him just how simple it would be by taking a running leap over the low railing (until I remembered that the pool is filled with stingrays and sharks).

Please don’t get me wrong — I’m thrilled that everyone is exiting the aquarium alive.  The answer just seemed suspect.

On that dark note, let’s go back to celebrating my birthday!  With cake!  And streamers!  And fish!

And more fish!

And turtles!

Josh took a picture of me by the bubble chambers.  He told me that I didn’t look happy.

Perhaps I looked a bit wan.

This was the picture that he told me was perfect; squinty eyes and all.

That is perhaps closer to how I feel despite my existential crisis.  That underneath all those layers of angst, there is a girl with an enormous fork, about to dive into a chocolate cake with birthday candles on it.

I am trying to come up with something fabulous for this upcoming weekend since I get a second birthday weekend.  Ice cream — definitely.  And force the family to listen to Green Day on continual play.  And perhaps purchase my first electric guitar.  And a splash park if it’s hot enough.  I’m open to any other ideas as well.

Perhaps we’ll just take a long drive, make a wrong turn, and see where it takes us.