Okay, so I totally fucked this up and did it the wrong way. I did it as 4 truths and 2 lies instead of 6 lies and 2 truths. But rather than start over, I present it in its very wrong state for this meme. When you do it (since everyone who reads this is tagged), you can do it the right way or my wrong way. Either way, read the list below and figure out which are the 4 truths and which are the 2 lies…

1. Prior to starting graduate school, I auditioned for the Real World on MTV and made it to the final round of cuts. It was between me and Montana and they took Montana. I ended up in Massachusetts anyway for graduate school.
2. Whenever there are decorative rocks anywhere, I make Josh steal one for me. I’ll never do it myself, but I always beg him to do my bidding.
3. I used to cut high school to hang out at other people’s high schools. I sat in on my friend’s French class for the whole year and sometimes even took their tests for the hell of it.
4. I was in navy ROTC my freshman year of college but I dropped out after one year.
5. I was once upgraded to business class when I had an anxiety attack on an airplane–this was after taking an Ativan.
6. I once had a private audience with the pope.

So, which two do you think are the lies? The right answers will be revealed later this weekend.

Can I just state for a moment that this was one of my favourite games back in college along with “I never…” I was such a terrible drinking game person. Can I also ask a really lame favour? If you do this meme, I really want to read it and I’m scared I’m going to miss it, but I’m having this work-heavy weekend and I’m not sure how many blogs I’m going to read during that but I don’t want to miss the post and have it buried under other posts once I stop working so if you do this meme, can I be really lame and ask you to email me and let me know or post the url in the comments section below so everyone else can enjoy your truths and lies too and find a mass of them to read at once? Yes, I know it was a run-on sentence.

Love is in the air in Playmobil Land and it’s time for a polyester bride Valentine’s Day post. For those who wish to skip the story portion, children and plastic weddings are mentioned in the beginning…

It’s a pretty fancy time right now at our house. Every morning, all of our Playmobil unicorns as well as some princesses line up in rows and my daughter solemnly marries them off like a miniature, Jewish Sun Myung Moon. There are the usual festivities that take place at all weddings or commitment ceremonies. Dancing. Passionate kisses. Sometimes, one of the princess brides falls down in a heap on the play table and moans, “I don’t want my wedding to be over. I still need to be a kallah*!” Who wouldn’t want to be eternally locked inside the ritual of the unicorn wedding?

The wedding is an affair compiled by three separate Playmobil sets. The princesses come from the Queen’s Court. A few brides as well as the carriage that brings them to the massive ceremony is from the Wedding Set. Of course, every wedding needs a good space–one that speaks to the love of the bride and the bride (as well as the other brides and unicorns all being married at the same time by the toddler rabbinate)–and the chosen space is a rustic farm with ducks and chickens and two cows–one who happens to be a “Daddy-Mommy” according to my daughter, a strange hybrid cow that is male but lactates–and a rabbit who shares the same name as my husband. Three sets, two hearts (times 12 additional Playmobil figures), one lavish affair.

I have to be honest, no matter how many times I sit through it, I still get a kick out of watching the wedding. I like listening to her tell the story of their love and watch the brides dance. When the ChickieNob gets excited, she does this thing where she jogs in place, gasping out the story. To be fair, the unicorns love each other so intensely.

Plus, I love that we have raised our kids to be Pat Robertson’s worst nightmare. It was a goal of mine to raise them with infinite possibilities and a healthy vision of diversity in the world. And I think the proof of our success is in the Daddy-Mommy-male-lactating cow as well as the mass wedding. Her world is really large right now and it will get smaller with time, but I’m glad she’s starting with an infinite space to whittle down rather than a small stump of creativity.

We were at the toy store and I offered to buy them each a new Playmobil set. New guests for the wedding. My son ditched the Playmobil to get himself a tiny model of a Mini Cooper–his favourite car of the week–adding that it could help drive guests to the wedding. My daughter latched onto the “housework” set, a smiling plastic woman with her hair back in a pony tail that comes with an ironing board, iron, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, and laundry basket. The ChickieNob rarely attaches herself to anything and usually walks through toy stores without asking to take anything home. But this time, she sat down on the floor, hugging the set to her chest and quietly insisted that she could. not. leave. without. it.

She cared about it a lot so I bought her the set. This set came on the heels of the last Playmobil purchase, the mommy-and-baby set with changing table and stroller and tiny bottles and teddy bears. Her little mother walks her baby back and forth in front of the dollhouse, pausing only to feed her other child. It’s an idyllic 50’s life.

Josh was horrified when he came home and saw the second purchase. “This girl isn’t going to have a feminist bone in her body.”

These are the things my daughter loves without prompting: weddings, brides, flower girls, ball gowns, princesses, brooms, swifters, vacuums (as long as they’re not on), dresses, stockings, party shoes, high heels, nail polish, necklaces, and clean laundry.

It brought up the idea of feminism–what is feminism and is it anti-feminist to want to do laundry and iron and stay home with a child? Is thumbing your nose at the hard work of your female predecessors to choose the life they specifically fought to get you out of the ultimate anti-feminist statement?

And his admonishment brought up my own insecurities in the choices I made–things I have been thinking about since reading Peggy Orenstein’s brilliant Waiting for Daisy, which brings thoughts concerning feminism to a head. Am I setting a good example for my daughter in terms of being a powerful, positive woman? Am I working too much on one end? What does it say about me after all of my education and strong female role-models and women’s studies classes that my greatest desire was to be a stay-at-home mum and fold the laundry? I take such a large portion of my self-worth in the job I do within the home–cleaning, cooking, raising the kids.

But, at the same time, in keeping completely honest, when I left work to become a stay-at-home mum, I also missed the structure and purpose that work brought to my life. For someone who didn’t care about career, I became somewhat depressed when my day was exactly what I wished for–diapers, binkies, and bottles. I started setting up projects for myself. I purchased a culinary textbook and worked through all of the lessons. I planted a garden. I started volunteering and joined boards. And then I took on freelance work from home and started tutoring a few hours a week and wrote the blog and researched the book.

And somewhere along the way, all of these small things came together to essentially be a job. A career cobbled together from sustainable living and board functions, but a career nonetheless that gave structure to my day and gave me something to talk about with Josh that extended beyond the kids. Because when I talk about the book, I am talking about my ideas and my beliefs and how I see the world and when I only spoke about the kids, I was only speaking about others. If that makes any sense.

But, in the same breath, I have never worked as hard on my career as I have to reach motherhood. Nor have I had the commitment to career as I have had to motherhood. Walking away from my career brought about a modicum of discomfort, but death seemed like the only viable (hmmm…perhaps not the correct word to couple with death) option to a lack of motherhood. Motherhood–reaching a stage of parenting–was my career choice in a sense, even if this career does not bring with it the respect or acknowledgment that my other jobs bring.

There are writers and philosophers who believe the term anti-feminist is used solely to silence any debate within the topic and remove voices that may call into question a rigid view of feminism. There are others who would look at my life and scoff at calling myself a feminist, reminding me that the ability to choose is not the definition of feminism. But those latter people always make me feel as if choices are being taken away from me–except this time by women instead of by men. And the former group make me feel as if this argument works too broadly and dismisses the idea that there does need to be a definition or everything becomes feminism.

I was watching the Colbert Report this week and Eleanor Holmes Norton (I love this woman so much–she needs to run for president) was speaking about her support of Barack Obama. Colbert questioned why she wasn’t supporting Clinton and Norton said something to the effect of “I’m a feminist and I’m a civil rights activist…I went with the best candidate.” Meaning, the impulse is, as a feminist, that one should support women. Her pause in the middle of the sentence made me believe that she probably struggled with this decision as well as how the decision affects her own definition of feminism. Is she a f
eminist if she doesn’t give her vote to the woman?

Obviously, a person should support the best candidate, but is that one of the impulses of feminism–to elect a female president simply as support to women, getting women in office. Back in 1992, Dianne Feinstein had the famous quote: “Two percent may be good for fat in milk but it’s bad for women in the United States Senate.” And no, that was too big a discrepancy in terms of male to female senators. But at the same time, is it the best person for the job or are women expected to want to elect other women? Can a man represent a woman just as well as a woman? Is it anti-feminist to not support the first woman seriously being considered for president?

Can you tell that I struggled with this question myself?

What is feminism to you? Is it possible to want to be an eternal bride or mother and be a feminist? Is it possible to want to forgo career or does a woman need to be autonomous to be a feminist? Is motherhood a job or simply a default lack of position?

* The Hebrew word for bride.

Amended (and added to yet again):

TTC, you worked for such a long time.

Trying-to-conceive, it’s a long phrase. And breaking it down to a staccato abbreviation made it sound giddy and happy–exactly as I felt when I accompanied my friend to the maternity store the first month TTC and walked out with an extremely cute ensemble that was fashionably outdated by the time I actually got to wear it.

Scratch that. I actually wore it one month when I was so bloated from stims that I didn’t fit into normal jeans and I didn’t want to wear sweatpants to work. But I’m working hard to forget that memory right now.

I realized when making the abbreviation list and then writing one of the opening chapters for the book that pastel pink and baby blue TTC doesn’t really work on the grand scale. All those months where I said I was TTC…well…I was conceiving. I just wasn’t holding onto the pregnancy for more than a few days. And I know, I know, you’re going to tell me that when we say we’re trying-to-conceive, we’re just talking about the first step. But it’s starting to sound like we’re aiming low.

I’d actually like to get past the conception stage.

And this term doesn’t take into account a gigantic portion of the community. Those pursing adoption–including those pursing adoption with or without first doing treatments–are trying for the same thing that those TTC (and those who are aiming beyond conception) are trying for–a child. To parent.

Therefore, since I don’t like the phrase trying-to-conceive, I have decided to get rid of it. Toss it out. Aim high.

TTP.

Trying-to-parent.

It works for primary and it works for secondary (TTPa for trying-to-parent-again). It works for pregnancy and it works for adoption. It’s stating the goal instead of a first step. Because, frankly, the term TTC saddens me like no other abbreviation in the whole IF lexicon when you consider how many of us simply never make it past conception. Every failed IVF cycle makes it to conception*. I’m really concerned with the world beyond. I’m taking back the abbreviation, taking back the phrase.

You with me?

*Amendment because I am such an asshole:

I’d like to blame a lack of food (see Chicklet’s blog for my food deprivation woes), but as Gumby pointed out in the comments below, not every failed IVF cycle makes it to conception. Only those where fertilization take place. So lack of fertilization, canceled cycles, all the events my feeble mind failed to take into account, never make it to that first rung. Mea culpa. And apologies to anyone who read that sentence and it was salt on a wound.

More debate and questions:

I love this discussion. Here are some more thoughts–bringing them out of the comments section and into the main post.

I told Nancy this last night; there is a problem with the TTP idea because it’s sort of like referring to living as “MTD”–moving towards death. That, of course, will be the end result to all of our lives (not to take us to a morbid place), but it’s not the reason we’re living. At the same time, the job of parenting is the goal at the end of all of these paths–treatments, trying naturally, adoption. And the point in the description is the goal, not what actually happens. When I was using TTC, I was trying to conceive, even when conception did not take place. And when I’m not actively trying to reach parenthood or I’ve gone through menopause, I would stop considering myself TTP. I would consider myself–in my current state–parenting. Or parenting after infertility/loss (PAI/L). And once we enter treatments again, I would consider myself TTP for the time period that we are actively trying to reach parenthood again.

The question then (and the answer doesn’t mean that everyone needs to use the same terms, but maybe we need to expand the abbreviation list so that people can use whichever terms suit them or feel right, but we can easily understand each other’s shorthand) is whether it’s better to have a single abbreviation to speak about the active state of trying to reach a goal or many abbreviations that speak about each milestone? Again, this is not an either/or situation. I could use a single term and you could use many terms and we could each understand each other. I’m just curious whether people would be more inclined to speak about each small goal on the way to the end goal or whether it’s more succinct and accurate to speak about the common end-goal.

TTP also takes the focus off of pregnancy and babyhood and focuses on the larger picture. It’s sort of the difference, in my mind, between saying “I want to get married” or “I want a wedding” and “I want the marriage.” The first two phrases look at a single step and the other phrase looks at the end goal.

And it’s true, in creating an active term for this one state, you also need a different active term for the other state which is either not actively trying, living after a loss, or living after leaving treatments/adoption. To which I’d suggest these: LAI/L or PAI/L–living after infertility/loss or parenting after infertility/loss. Your thoughts on that? Can I just reiterate that I love this discussion. I’ve been thinking about each comment all morning.

No nipples were shown at the polls today. I had considered dressing the Wolvog in a full-body snowsuit both due to the cold and due to the promise that no nipples would therefore be shown. But this is America, damn it, and a man has to have choices–to show your nipples to other voters or not show your nipples to other voters, so he wore his shorter winter coat and chose to keep his chest geography to himself.

We also may have had a talk before we entered about appropriate behaviour.

My morning was as American as apple pie, if the apple pie happened to be baked by a vaguely-Middle-Eastern-looking-maybe-Latina-or-somewhere-
in-Eastern-Europe woman. Senior citizens worked the polls, informing me that my husband voted earlier that morning and did I know that? They said it in the same voice used by someone who had seen your husband getting out of the car of a prostitute. I smiled and said, “yes, sometimes I let him out of the house. You know, for really important things like voting.”

A former student showed me to my booth and taught me how to work the touch-screen computer, reminding me that I probably wanted to check off that I needed my ballot in English. Let no one say that this boy learned nothing in my class.

I allowed the Wolvog and ChickieNob to check off each vote for me by touching the screen. I whispered in their ear, “check off the box next to Harak Oblinton” (a lady never tells!) to which they would scream out to the room, “you’re voting for Harak Oblinton!” And every head would turn and we’d go through the same 30-second lecture about whispering and privacy and how maybe I didn’t want all of our neighbours to know who I was voting for because some of these people were the same people who annoyed me with constant phone calls about the candidates.

The whole thing made me proud to be an American, proud that I had done my civic duty even if I hadn’t pulled my shit together today to get the rear view mirror in my car fixed. We walked through the food store afterwards with that same self-satisfied expression of those who give blood or help little old ladies cross the street. We did our part to save America, to vote for the person who we think has the best chance of being a figurative transfusion or a arm to grip as you dodge fast-moving cars. And everyone at my polling place knows who I think that person is; thanks to the Wolvog and ChickieNob who exercised free speech and told the room my voting record.

Or how is a camping trip like infertility?

Back when I was a camp counselor, I went on the camping trip from hell. A child began vomiting while we were on the bus going to the camp site. We thought it was motion sickness, but when it wasn’t stopping long after we had reached the camp site, another counselor and myself hitchhiked with the boy to the nearest hospital. It took three hours for his parents to drive out to West Virginia. We were planning on only having the head counselor stay with him, but the boy asked if I could stay too. So I did all the things a Mommy would do: I stroked his head until he fell asleep, I didn’t become too squeamish about being covered in vomit, I worried.

The vomiting boy was just the tip of the iceberg. We returned to the site to find out that a child who couldn’t swim had gone out wading in the river and panicked, tripping and falling face down in the water while he tried to scramble out. I spent my first half hour back at the site holding this crying child (what’s a little snot when your shirt is already coated with dried vomit?). It rained while we were hiking one day, filling the food tent with water and swelling the hamburger buns into waterlogged pancakes. An electrical storm broke out while we were canoeing and we had to pull to the bank and walk back to the site with the kids–through two miles of wild cow manure. In the rain.

Someone was filming us exiting the bus when we returned a few days later to the day camp. On the video tape, you see the first kid get off the bus and shout, “it was awful!” The next kid appears on the screen staring mournfully at the camera before disappearing off-screen. Then you see me. I hop down the steps beaming and say, “this was the best trip I’ve ever been on. The best. Ever!”

I couldn’t really describe this experience to anyone except the facts: “I went to the hospital with the boy” was easy enough to say. But I couldn’t convey what it felt like to know that for three hours, I essentially mothered that boy. I could tell people that we exited the river and walked through cow manure, but I couldn’t really convey how it felt to turn around in my canoe and lock eyes with another counselor and know from my head nod that I was temporarily parenting these kids. Bringing them to safety. Despite the fact that I was about to make them walk through poop.

It’s not every trip you take, but sometimes there are hours, days, maybe weeks where your mind is still back in that life changing experience but you know that you’ll never be able to bring someone else there with you in the figurative sense. It’s the Wonderland Phenomenon that Alice experienced when she returned home and it’s the Wandingland Phenomenon experienced by those undergoing treatments or pursing adoption.

It’s that sensation that comes when the experience you are having is forever separating you from everyone else in your world. You’ll return from the experience, but you’ll be changed and that change cannot be explained to anyone who did not experience it with you.

Which is what happened to poor Alice.

When she returns from Wonderland, she tells her sister about the White Rabbit and the March Hare and the trial over the tarts. After Alice runs off to tea, her sister continues to sit under the tree, trying to place herself inside the story:

So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality–the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds–the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep- bells, and the Queen’s shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy–and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all thy other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard–while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle’s heavy sobs.

Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.

The reality is that with so many experiences, if you haven’t been to the place or met the people, you can’t truly understand. You can hear the story, but you can’t feel the intensity of the moment or the connection. Even Alice’s sister admits that the moment she opens her eyes, she’ll be out of Wonderland, while Alice will forever carry the memory of that dream (or was it a dream?) with her. I think this is true for many many crises in life as well as emotionally-intense events.

Infertility, of course, is the ultimate example of the Wandingland Phenomenon. Treatments are like falling into a different land where everyone speaks a different language of abbreviations and holds an obsession over numbers. Though I haven’t adopted, I’m fairly certain that the adoption world has a similar feel of a Wonderland experience especially when you return home with your child and you can’t explain to anyone the enormous feelings you are holding in your heart from the trip. And on the other end of the spectrum, how can another person ever understand what you went through in regards to loss?

Going through treatments made me feel like I was leading two lives–this normal surface one that everyone saw and the secret one down the rabbit hole where my RE was the White Rabbit and my sonographer was the March Hare and the insurance people were like the White Queen chanting, “jam tomorrow and jam yesterday–but never jam today.”

It didn’t help that my clinic had an office on the campus where I worked in the summer. Every once in a while, when I didn’t have time to make it to the main office for blood work, I would walk past the student union where I ate lunch and turn the corner and be facing the building that held the clinic. How trippy is that? I would drop in for blood work, race back to my building to lecture about the Amish for an hour and a half, slip into the hallway to hear my test results and then jump into another hour and a half discussion on etymology.

Unlike trips to distant places that remain distant, going through infertility is like walking through life with Wandingland in a fifth dimension that only you can see. It’s like a sci fi movie where the protagonist can see through the looking glass into Wandingland on every surface, but everyone else is clueless about this other land. And the worst part is that you can’t really explain anything about Wandingland and have a person who is firmly in the real world understand the depth of those experiences.

Infertility is this bizarre adventure that is mostly terrifying and partly empowering. And like all travel, trying to conceive or adopt is not a state where you live permanently. Which means you “come home.” While coming home means that you’re on the road to resolving childlessness and perhaps infertility, you return changed. You can never explain the White Rabbit or the Red Queen to anyone and have them understand exactly how it felt to meet them and you sure as hell can’t really explain what was running through yo
ur head each time you waited to be wanded. Who can understand except someone who was there why a moment was so incredibly poignant since these experiences defy words?

If infertility feels like a giant trip, it is because you put your life on hold when you’re down the rabbit hole. You can’t help it no matter how hard you try to wrest back control of your cycle, you need to take that into consideration when making plans. You end up in this land that you really didn’t want to visit. But along the way, you meet these other people on the journey. And you find yourself writing these long posts about finding this community because you’re so grateful to have someone else to talk to about what you’re seeing and feeling. Even though the whole time, you’re longing for home, you also know that once this trip ends, you’ll return home and find that you can’t put the experience into words. At least not words that anyone else will be able to use to understand the depth of the emotions. Sad doesn’t really capture the despair of a failed cycle. Regret doesn’t really capture the anger that accompanies a late diagnosis. Even ecstasy can’t really capture the feeling of seeing two lines after you’ve waited so long to see them.

In time, the Wandingland Phenomenon fades a bit. I’m sure Alice felt this strange sensation of discordance when she tried to explain Wonderland to everyone else and was met with glazed expressions and a bunch of head nods. She probably went through a period of frustration. While she didn’t want everyone she loved to go through the fear she felt when falling down into the rabbit hole and not knowing how she’d get out, there is a human need to connect with other people. Feeling that wall between those who have been to Wandingland and those who have not can be painful.

Finally, I’m sure Alice got to a space where she could look back at Wonderland, accept that she had this adventure that changed her, and know that others would get there after her and she’d be there to talk about the White Rabbit when they returned.

And my apologies that Wandingland so blatantly draws its name from treatments even if I’m trying to speak about loss and adoption too. But damn…it’s just too good. Wonderland. Wandingland. Popping my head out of the rabbit hole.