I have been on a Rent kick this week. The first time I saw it was actually not on Broadway. It was a traveling production and I heard a radio ad for the show. I got this very strong sense that if I went to the place and tried for those front row tickets that I would win them (for those who don’t know, the first two rows of Rent performances are set aside to be sold cheaply at last minute on a lottery system. The point is to give everyone a chance to see the show regardless of financial situation). I asked a friend if he would come and take the second ticket and he wouldn’t believe me when I kept telling him that I had a feeling I would win. He told me to call him if I got the tickets and he would drive over. Needless to say, he ate crow that night and enjoyed Rent from the front row. And Tom Collins accidentally sprayed me mid-song. It was wonderful.

A little while later, I was in NY and I had the same bout of intuition. I asked my friend if she wanted to go see Rent and she hemmed and hawed about buying Broadway tickets and I told her that I would win us the ones in the front row. She said she had tried for them dozens of times and had never won. But, of course, we won that day.

I went back and saw Rent like this five more times. Each time, I felt absolutely positive that I would win the tickets and each time I did. Then one day we went up to NY specifically to see Rent and to hang out in the city with my friend’s cousins. And I knew in my heart that I wasn’t going to win the tickets. I could feel it though my friend kept laughing it off, saying, “you always win the tickets.” Of course, we didn’t win and I was so crushed because it felt like this little candle that had been burning (would you light my candle?) had been snuffed out. I never got that feeling again and I never won them again. And now the show will be gone. It makes me so incredibly sad.

I am trying to convince Josh that we need to see it one last time (though we will have to buy tickets. I just know that I will not win them). Part of me wonders if I stopped winning the tickets because I got too old and crotchety. At first, when I was winning them, I was just out of grad school, poor, idealistic. Now I’m listening to the soundtrack and saying to Josh, “why should they get out of paying restaurant bills?”

What is the saying? If you’re under 30 and you’re not a Democrat, you have no heart and if you’re over 30 and you’re not a Republican, you have no head.

I am still firmly an open-minded Democrat, but damn, pay for your cup of tea, Mark.

Why the Rent kick? Because I am going to a wedding and I was thinking about a wedding I went to many years ago with a Rent theme. Which was…a little strange, no? Mostly because all of the songs they played were not the ones about love but the ones about the impermanence of life. Not very wedding but they loved the show and that’s what they wanted AND they paid for their wedding instead of trashing the hall and screaming, “we’re not going to pay!” But it was a little disconcerting to sit at the Mimi Table complete with handcuffs and a whip as the centerpiece (is she joking? Is she not joking?).

All weddings remind me of that wedding because it’s hard to forget a Rent-themed wedding. And while all wedding are–at their core–about love, this particular wedding that I’m about to go to is about Love. It’s about absolute true love and it’s an amazing story of twists and turns and two coasts and pure, undeniable love. It’s one of those weddings where all of the guests are just as happy as the couple–isn’t that rare? So, even though the groom has been a member of my family for years (at least in our hearts if not on paper), this weekend, I get a new brother. And we are figuratively turning cartwheels even if I don’t have the coordination to do them in actuality.

The wedding is also why I seem to have forgotten Mother’s Day. I would read a post and think, “oh! Wait! Mother’s Day is coming up.” And then I’d switch back to my to-do list about shaving through the leg forest (completed this morning–the legs are nude) and getting a pedicure and buying wedding cards and forget. And when it comes down to it, I don’t really know what to say about the holiday. It’s such a strange beast.

And it is simply easier to return to talking about love than unpack the complex feelings I have about this holiday. What was the best wedding/commitment ceremony you’ve ever been to? Obviously, if you are married, you probably have strong feelings (or not?) about your own ceremony and if you are not married or can’t get married, you may have some strong feelings (or not?) about weddings in general, but what was the best wedding/commitment ceremony you’ve ever attended or heard about? Best is however you wish to define it–happiest, craziest, most unforgettable. I have another wedding story beyond the Rent one, but I’ll share it in the comments section below since this post is getting too damn long. And if weddings are not your forte but you have a damn fine graduation ceremony story or a Bat Mitzvah that rocked the bimah, I’ll take that too.

So now, the blogs…

Gabrielle’s coverage on Fertility Notes of the death of Eight Belles brought me to tears. There was not only the infinite sadness in the loss of the horse, but the analogy she drew moved me too: “Isn’t it crazy how so many emotions can occupy and be caused by one single point in time? I think a lot of women who are trying to conceive are familiar with this polar tug. There always seems to be a friend or a family member who is pregnant, right when you should have been. There is always a child who is just about the same age of your child if only….” I especially loved her end thought about the contrast of celebration and grief. This post was brilliant.

Bri at Unwellness has a post called “Happy. Weird.” She begins, “It has been hard for me to write lately. I know everyone has one of these obligatory posts, apologizing, as it were, for success and happiness. Once an Infertile always an Infertile and all that, but not really, right? I mean, surely you think of me as I think of me, judging and ranking.” She goes on to explain why she writes the complaints–because we do a disservice to each other when we paint parenthood as all sunshine and roses. But also why she doesn’t write more of the happiness–because she doesn’t want to gloat. Because it’s a fine line: what is talking about that happiness and what is “admitting that I am happy and seeming to not remember what it is like to be without the thing you want most.” I loved this post because it was so honest and smart and raw. Personally, I want to hear the bad AND the good. Only hearing the bad doesn’t give a realistic view and only hearing the good isn’t helpful either. The middle is a nice place to be.

517Butterfly at A Ne
w Kind of Normal has a post that brought me to tears. Very brief, very moving. Click over and just sit with it for a moment.

Lastly, Sharah at Outlandish Notions has a post about living child-free. It is the most gorgeous analogy and I love this part: “More time passes, and memories grower paler and the pain grows duller and then one day you wake up and it hits you: you are happy. Not just faking it, not just the absence of pain, but true and real joy in the life you have instead of longing for a life that might have been. And that is a wonderful day.” Did I love it because it’s the happy ending or because peace is good? I don’t know. But it’s a post that fills me with hope about a plethora of situations.

Roundup to the Roundup: tell me your greatest ceremony story (one you attended or one you merely heard about–since mine is a “heard about” but damn, I wish I had been there) and drag at least three bloggers to the NaComLeavMo list. “Give me your commentless, your feedback whore, your thoughtful writers struggling for affirmation; send these, the casual journaler, to me; I hit my ctrl-v and place them on the list.” Even if I may be a bit slow this weekend. You know…wedding stuff.

We have a title for the book:

I love the play on IF–all the what ifs inherent in infertility, the iffiness of treatments or adoption, the online abbreviation for infertility.

I am about halfway through the writing of the book–I have ten chapters complete and about seven more to write, but three of those seven are huge, worrisome. I know that the chapter on treatments also felt unwieldy until I tamed it into order. But right now, those three chapters look like a huge jangle of knots that I have to painstakingly work apart.

Emotionally, it feels a little like the end of spring break. Maybe only another teacher will understand this analogy (or someone who loved school as much as I loved school), but that period of time after spring break was always a little bittersweet. There was definitely still time left to the school year, though summer vacation was close at hand. Vacation meant a break from waking up early and grading papers and lesson plans. But it also meant a loss of structure and it had a “what next” quality to it. With school, there was always the knowledge that fall brought a new class. With writing, who knows what happens after this manuscript is turned in. Will the next book sell? Will I continue to freelance? Is this it with the writing–is it on to something else? I know it will all unfold in due time, but I’m the sort who always likes to know the next step. Just throwing that out there since it’s in my head.

So…back to writing right now–untangling those knots–but I wanted everyone to know that the title had been set. What do you think? Can we have a little celebration?

This is the third installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

How do you think the experience of infertility would be different if our entire society basically was infertile? Let’s say, for political reasons or medical reasons (environmental pollution perhaps?), it just wasn’t possible to get pregnant naturally. Let’s say you grew up with the expectation that parenthood was not necessarily a given. That you would have to possibly meet a set of criteria to have public approval & funding to reproduce – or at least, that you and almost every other person out there would need treatment. How would the experience be different personally? How would it change our society?

–blogless Andie

Well, if the whole world were infertile, the media would finally learn the difference between transfer and implant.

It’s an interesting question that looks at whether we truly want to have children or whether we feel we should want to have children. Because we can never undo societal pressure (not to mention the expectations placed on us by anxious family members), it’s impossible to untangle our feelings–to know if we want children simply because it is a deep-rooted desire (something encoded in our DNA like all survival impulses) or if it’s an expectation placed on us that we follow without knowing that the impulse comes from somewhere other than ourselves.

It’s hard to predict. The first generation would definitely still be fueled by societal pressure. But later generations could start playing an enormous game of “not it.” Certainly, once you place the pain and embarrassment of fertility treatments into the mix, reaching parenthood becomes less enticing for some people.

Except the infertility community now can be seen as a tiny microcosm for this scenario. We all need assistance to reach parenthood. Some opt for treatments or adoption because the emotional and physical pain is outweighed by the chance at emotional and physical joy. And some opt to live child-free after infertility. It isn’t that the impulse to parent isn’t as strong–it definitely is–but the weight balances differently and the chance at emotional and physical joy doesn’t balance out the emotional and physical pain.

Just as we all have a certain amount of money in the bank, we all have a certain amount of emotional capital in the heart. We can try to withdraw more than we have at hand–but that usually leads to a crisis later on when our emotional account is depleted and we’re overdrawn. Some simply have a different amount of emotional capital–due to outlook, due to circumstance, due to resources. There are things we can do such as therapy that can earn a person more emotional capital, but there are also limits. Just as I couldn’t turn a six figure salary as a school teacher, we can’t earn unlimited emotional capital. We can wish we were richer and we can wish we had larger emotional reserves, but we have to work with what we have. Sometimes, we have enough emotional capital to pay for treatments or adoption. And sometimes, we simply don’t regardless of how much we want to reach parenthood. And it’s a healthy person who can recognize their limits and respect them.

Which is a long way of saying that I think the impulse to have children is taught to us AND it is imprinted in our genetic code. Therefore, I think the drive would still be there, even if everyone in the world required assistance in order to reproduce. There would also be those who choose to live child-free without the desire to have children. And there would still be a group–as there is today–who wish with all of their heart that they could become parents, but the roads to reach parenthood simply contain obstacles that are insurmountable if one is to remain true to their heart.

Turning this over to the blogosphere at large–what do you think would happen?

Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday’s installment of Barren Advice.

1. I’ll start with the obvious: why not? NaComLeavMo will be fun at the very least and will definitely introduce you to a few new blogs and perhaps even get you a few new regular readers. Josh says, “it might get you laid! Well, it might.” I can see where he may have a point.

2. I’ll admit that I’ve never done NaBloWriMo even though I’ve considered it each fall. The reason is that even though I seem to post almost daily, I never know whether or not I’m going to post. If I have something to say, I post. If I don’t, I don’t post. But I can always read regardless of the mood that I’m in. I’ve never had reader’s block in the same way that I’ve had writer’s block.

3. And reading is a creative process–responding to blogs is just as much a creative outlet as writing a blog. I think it’s important to respond to a post when I can, not just to let the person know that someone out there is reading, but because blogging is a conversation. It’s my job to hold up the other end: respond to the idea, answer a question, give support, let them know I laughed (since they’re not in my living room and privy to the fact that I snorted coffee into the screen).

4. And it’s great that we all have these amazing conversation going on within small groups, but sometimes people feel like they can’t break into a group. NaComLeavMo is an invitation–join in the conversation; please comment. Anyone on this list is literally opening the door to their mind and allowing you to read and laugh and cry and learn something. And sing a little kumbaya.

5. And I don’t know about you, but I tend to comment mostly on blogs that are similar in content to mine. I read lots of other blogs–I’ll admit it: I read the Brothers & Sisters fan blog. I read cooking blogs and knitting blogs and random political blogs and even mommybloggers. But until we start having cross-blog conversations–having the IF bloggers talking with the mommybloggers and the political bloggers talking with…who do they need to speak with?…well, you know what I mean–the conversations need to be happening not just within the community, but between communities too. So bring your non-IF friends to NaComLeavMo, admit to your favourite book blogger that you want them to join along too, call out to all the fashionistas and ask them to get on the list so we can find out whether mesh tops will ever come back.

And that’s why you should join NaComLeavMo and leave lots of comments in a 30-day period. Because of all those reasons and because you just might get laid. I’m not saying it’s a promise. But it’s a possibility.

Sunday morning, we rolled out of bed and headed over to the walk site for the March for Babies.

forgive the bandana sloppiness–my excuse is that I didn’t sleep the night before and had no energy for a pre-walk shower

Allison said it perfectly when she described the walk as bittersweet. We were incredibly grateful for everyone’s generosity and support. There was a festive atmosphere with balloons and face painters. And then, underneath it all, it felt a little like the NICU Reunion, this mixture of sadness and fear and gratitude and mournfulness. You can stick balloons on anything and call it a party, but it’s hard to mask the intent beneath that pokes at your heart the entire walk.

We met up with Karen from My Perky Ovaries at the walk and were terrible influences on each other. And, once again, I have to admit this to you–I cheated. I took two definite shortcuts and another small tweak of the route to try to catch up with Josh at one point. I know that is going to sound quite pathetic considering the walk was only 4.2 miles, but in toddler distance, that is like a marathon. And the Wolvog and ChickieNob rode their tricycles the entire route. It gives us a larger goal to shoot for next year: finish all 4.2 miles instead of trimming off the .2.

Some enormous thank yous are in order. Words fail to express how grateful I am for all of the donations. All in all, we raised $2272.