This past weekend was Yom Kippur and strangely enough, despite the difficulties I have with fasting (please don’t tell anyone about the grapes I ended up sneaking at 12:30), it is one of my favourite holidays. There is little more magical than when Kol Nidre is sung, first as a whisper, then in a normal voice, and finally with the whole heart behind the words. There is little more humble than spending ten days thinking through all the times you’ve hurt people through the year and asking them for forgiveness.

I admonished Josh for driving like a maniac to Kol Nidre on Friday night, but in reality, it would have broken my heart to miss hearing that opening prayer. I had a lot of fears about switching shuls and one of the reasons was this Kol Nidre service. I wanted to return to our old shul for this single service. But Josh convinced me to move myself fully over to the new shul and I’m glad that I took that leap. This new shul does not end with a gorgeous, aching rendition of Adon Olam like my old shul (though perhaps, next year, the rabbi will allow me to lead it?), but it does begin with the simple prayer that names the service, Kol Nidre, that is sung in every synagogue across the world. My rabbi sang it with hope and longing and humility.

I love Yom Kippur because it is a holiday that focuses on mindfulness. It is about being aware of how our actions affect another person (and in kashrut, another animal). It is about being aware of how we treat community–not just what we get from our family and friends or what we give back, but how we do it and how those actions are perceived.

Josh and I practice sustainable Judaism, meaning that we’ve combined sustainable living with Judaism. Which means sustainability takes on many forms. We try to lead a sustainable life, meaning, anything we can do for ourselves we do. We bake our own bread, we sew our own blankets, and we mend our own clothes (except for the times when we send the kids over to my mother’s house in pants that are obviously too long with the hope that she will hem them…). In terms of sustaining the earth, we recycle and reuse. We purchase a certain percentage of our clothing and toys used. We take the kids to local farms weekly so they can see how their food is grown. We purchase local produce.

(in case you’re about to vomit from my piety, also remember that I would kill a cricket in a heartbeat. Actually, I would get someone else to do my bidding because I am NOT going near a cricket. And I pollute the world with bug killer. But enough about my hypocrisy…)

But sustainability also has an emotional component.

It is about sustaining community–not only gathering people near, but apologizing when we do something that fractures community. We are human and we are going to make promises and we are going to break them. We are going to say hurtful things and commit thoughtless actions. All these things are somewhat unavoidable–we aren’t mind readers and we can’t always predict how our actions will be perceived. But we can apologize.

And it is impossibly hard to apologize sometimes.

Other times, you’re not even aware that you need to apologize because the other person hasn’t shared with you how you have hurt them. Which is the hardest part about apologizing–when you sense that there is a problem, but the other person isn’t forthcoming with how you have hurt them and therefore, you can’t truly apologize for the transgression. You can only present a general apology–I’m sorry if I hurt you–and that’s not a true apology. Because implicit in the apology is the promise that you will attempt to change your behaviour and not commit the same transgression again. In order to truly apologize, you need to understand how you hurt the other person, accept responsibility for your actions, and then enter a state of mindfulness so that it doesn’t happen again.

Sometimes, it’s really fucking hard to pick up that phone and tell someone how they’ve hurt you. It’s just easier, less hurtful, less frustrating to not address it at all.

Prior to the Al Cheit prayer during the Kol Nidre service, my rabbi recited his own personalized apology to the congregation. It is a way to reach out to those that you inadvertently hurt during the year but didn’t tell you. If a person tells me that something I wrote or said hurt her, I can address that apology directly. But I am sure I have scratched someone emotionally and have had no clue that my words or actions have done damage. Therefore, my apology to you:

For the times that I wrote something that made you feel uncomfortable, angry, or hurt and for the times I linked to something that upset you.
For the times that I said something that disregarded your situation and for the times I put myself first.
For the times that you emailed me and I never wrote back and for the times when I emailed back, but I said the wrong thing.
For the times when I read your words and didn’t comment on your blog and for the times when I commented and said something that hurt you.
For the times when I missed reading your blog for days and for the times when I checked back way too often and nudged you to post.
For the times when I gave unsolicited advice and for the times when I remained silent even though I had knowledge to pass along.

For these times and for the times I didn’t know enough to include, pardon me and forgive me.

And it’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaack. Here is the master list for the seventh tour of the Barren Bitches Book Club. What is the Barren Bitches Book Club? It’s a book club from the comfort of your own living room. The book club is conducted entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way. And we tend to read books with IF or pg loss as a part of the book if not a major plot point. We alternate between fiction and non-fiction.

Book: Happiness Sold Separately
Author: Lolly Winston
Start Date: September 19
Question Due: October 24
Question List Sent Out: October 25
Post Dates: October 29 and 30
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Cool addition for this book tour: the author, Lolly Winston, is participating and accepting questions about her book!

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below on October 29 to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on October 24th. The list is currently open)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Melissa)
The Annex (Josh)
Twisted Ovaries (Vanessa)
Southern Infertility (Samantha)
Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
Sticky Bean (Kristen)
Weebles Wobblog (Lori)
The Dunn Family (Erica)
Candy’s Land (Candy)
Mommy Someday? (Michelle)
Blood Signs (Wordgirl)
Precious Little (Carrie)
Coming2Terms (Pamela Jeanne)
That Was The Plan (Ms. Planner)
A Little Sweetness (Meghan)
All Things Deb (Deb)
Waiting for…? (Amy)
Road Blocks and Rollercoasters (R&R)
Where is My Happiness? (Bean)
The Open Door (Deanna)
Baby Steps to Baby Shoes (Baby Steps)
Desperate to Multiply (Portia)
Fatty Pants (Fattypants)
Outlandish Notions (Sharah)
The Infertile Long and Winding Road (Ms. Infertile)
No Swimmers in the Tubes… (Noswimmers)
Fertilize Me (Farah)

Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. on October 24th.

How the book tour works:

(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you’re interested in participating.

(2) read Happiness Sold Separately by October 24th (or at least enough of it in order to ask a question to the group).

(3) at any point, you can email me questions directly for Lolly Winston and I will pass them along to her and then compile the answers in another post.

(4) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a “yes” or “no” answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on October 24th (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #4.

(5) on October 25th, I will send you a list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 3 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry. You will find out if you are posting on October 29th or 30th (you can choose).

(6) on October 29th, people will begin to post their entry. Each day, I will post a list of all the people putting up their entry that day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour–by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).

Josh wants to get me a t-shirt that says: “I gave my word to stop at third” and then tell our kids that the reason we used fertility treatments is because we took that vow so seriously that we didn’t even break it to conceive them.

Just say no…

Can I admit something really lame? Having blogger’s comments arriving in html this week literally made me unable to think when it came to email. Which, of course, is pathetic to admit. And I mean, every email–not just comments coming in from Blogger. My inbox just looked…wrong. I can become so weighed down in my internally nagging “this is the way it should be” that I’m unable to switch to any other system–even if it’s better. Receiving comments in html wasn’t a better system. But still.

Josh calls this tendency my wheat branniness. It is the same impulse that makes me ask him to do things right now. As in, I know it’s midnight, but let’s take apart the sink and clean out the filter right now because if we don’t do it right now you will leave this task on your to-do list for the next twelve weeks and it will never get done.

My wheat branniness.

Am I the only person who had trouble thinking in html? Am I the only person who was affected by this bizarre blogger event? No one else seemed to be talking about it in the blogosphere. Is it that you’re all over it and it’s Friday and you can’t believe I’m still thinking about this?

There is a new poll on the sidebar. Just look over to the right. See it? You can answer it too, if you’re so inclined. It’s for the book.

Speaking of the book, I am finally at the chapter on treatments since I’m writing all chapters out-of-order. Which means another round of online interviews. If you are currently undergoing treatments OR you have undergone treatments in the past–anything from IUI without injectibles to IVF with ICSI–and wouldn’t mind chatting about your experience with me (and, in turn, anonymously with anyone who reads the book), please email me at thetowncriers@gmail.com and I will send you the question sheet (or if it’s easier for you to leave a comment below, leave your email address in the comment). It’s not a lot of work on your part, you get to choose your own pseudonym for the book, and you get my eternal gratitude. Did I mention my eternal gratitude?

I want every single person’s story–the more point-of-views, the better the guide–and I want your voice heard. So please please please say you’ll let me interview you. Oh–and if I’ve already interviewed you for the pregnancy loss chapter or donor gamete chapter, this is a whole different set of questions, so please volunteer again. And I promise I’ll stop bothering you with requests for interviews for this chapter the moment I hit 100 interviews…

I still need more Clickers for the Lost and Found. What do Clickers do? They’re journalists for the 21st century (wait, we’re in the 21st century…right? I always get mixed up). Actually, you–the blogger–are the journalist. They are the collectors of information. Clickers go through a section of the blogroll once a week or so, clicking on and off blogs to see if there’s any information for the Lost and Found–pregnancy announcements, adoption news, needs for support. The blogroll just got too big to do this myself. So it has become a community effort and the point is that no one should feel alone in this journey. If you need support, you should get support from a group of individuals who have a sense of what you’re currently experiencing. And as a community, we should also celebrate together. I need a lot of Clickers because we’re creating many new categories (and some weren’t taken the first go-around and some just need an extra person or two because they’re large). So sign up for one or more of the following subsections of the blogroll (and multiple people can and should take the same category to lessen the workload):

• Clotting and Immunology
• Female Factor (PCOS and endo are about to be split out from this category into their own subsections, so whoever signs up for this today will probably be redirected to one of those new subcategories when it happens)
• Gay and Lesbian
• IUI/IVF (probably needs at least one more person to share the load)
• More on the Plate
• Parenting After DI/DE/Surrogacy
• Parenting After IF/Loss
• Pregnancy After IF/Loss
• Pregnant or Parenting Multiples After IF/Loss
• Single Parent By Choice
• Uterine Anomalies

I really ask a lot of you and I’m thankful any time someone pitches in. If you’ve ever felt the warm fuzzy glow of community–that feeling that you’re not alone in all of this even if you feel like the only SQ or SPJ in town–this is a way you can give back. And pay it forward. And stuff like that.

And thus concludes the begging portion of this post.

A new list will be forthcoming next week (or, it will be created next week), but the first list is up. What list you ask? A massive project of distractions. There is a new icon on my sidebar called Distractions. If you click on it, it takes you to a menu that will house all the different lists. The first list, feel-good music, that we made two Friday’s ago is up. Next list will be compiled soon. All are welcome to distract. I know I am making a mix CD this weekend with songs from the list that I had forgotten about until people mentioned them (Traveling Wilburys!).

Last bit of business–candy exchange lists going out this weekend. Yum.

Now, the blogs:

Amy at Inconceivable has a gorgeous post about new motherhood. I’m having a hard time finding the right words to describe it, but “a must read” probably sums it up. It is the quintessential post covering all the highs and lows of new motherhood–the fear and the awe and the joy and the sadness. “I find myself stopping to watch him breathe a lot. Not because I’m worried he’s stopped doing it, but because it fascinates me that he started out as nothing more than a dream. Something we wanted so badly, and now he’s for real and I don’t want to miss a moment.” The writing made my heart ache and I’m so happy that she’s finally there.

Msfitza at Certainly Not Cool Enough to Blog has a post that made me cry this week about the aftermath of taking down a nursery. For over two years, her son’s baby items have been tucked into a corner of the basement. After this last loss, she has come to a feeling that she describes like this: “I found myself thinking more and more about the possibility of the days of baby making being behind me. Not because I want it to be that way, but because it probably is. No deci
sions have been made and no medical opinions are leading us in this direction. It just somehow feels like it’s over in a way I can’t exactly describe, but know I’ve never before felt.” For over two years, the containers holding Thomas’s baby items have been sealed and with the birth of her friend’s child, she opened the containers to face those baby items and give them a new home. She writes, “What was also surprising was how easy it was for me to separate Thomas from a pile of unused baby clothes. They were his, but they’re not him. Keeping them entombed in the basement won’t bring him back. ” It was the ending that made me bawl: “I hold him in my heart. That’s where the most important part of him lives. It always did, I just didn’t fully realize it until last week – until another little boy came into the world and helped me heal.” Tonight, when I was driving home, I was behind a truck that had a bumper sticker about organ donation. And somehow, even if Thomas’s clothes didn’t actually give life–even if they’re not necessary to sustain a person–somehow the passing of the clothing feels a little like that. The realization that we can part with these tangible items–the sweaters and onesies, the heart and liver–because they are not the person. Thomas will always reside in her heart. But his clothes will keep another baby warm. And this post moved me beyond belief. Please go over there and marvel at it.

Another sad post, brief and moving. KLTTX at Life in the Phisch Bowl speaks about her mother who died 3 1/2 years ago. The things that her mother is missing out on (knowing grandchildren) as well as the reasons KLTTX still needs her. The post is like a small, sad sigh.

Maybe I was drawn to the heavier posts this week. Carrie at Life in the Soupbowl has a great post this week about wanting another child. Which is not remarkable except that she conceived the first time with donor eggs and suddenly something that should be the right of any family is out of reach because of cost (not the raising of the child–the conception of the child). And it (1) breaks my heart and (2) makes me want to take action. Call up NIAW early and have everyone write a mass appeal to insurance agencies and clinics. It is a slap of unfairness. It isn’t just a matter of getting to have one child, it’s about getting to create the family you want. And that should be a right of all people.

And those are just some of the amazing things I read this week.

Wait, wait, before you click away to distant blogs, please let me interview you (thetowncriers@gmail.com and put “interview” in the subject line). And volunteer to be a Clicker. And take the poll. And…

Even though we do not actually celebrate Christmas, you may remember from last year ChickieNob and the Wolvog’s* fascination with sparkle lights. They made me drive around town like junkies, grunting with each sighting, “sparkle lights!” Followed immediately with “more sparkle lights.”

They have been heavily anticipating the advent of sparkle lights this year, reciting little monologues as we get in the car, “right now it is fall. The leaves fall down. And then it is winter. And out come the sparkle lights! Hello, sparkle lights!”

There is an office complex at a cross section of two major streets and they have wound around each tree in their parking lot a complex series of white lights. It is magical when you are driving down the hill towards this thin forest of light-encrusted trees. The first night the twins saw it last year, ChickieNob sucked in her breath and said, “we found it. This is the land where the bong trees grow.”

Sure enough, it looked exactly like the bong trees in the version we own of the Owl and the Pussycat.

And tonight, I am happy to report, the bong trees were lit. And the three Jews, preparing for Yom Kippur, smiled with excitement and said, “the sparkle lights have returned.”

It’s a good night.

*Michele and Jenna Sais Quoi are correct. ChickieNob and the Wolvog are from Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. The reason why these names fit perfectly is forthcoming.