Forget your troubles, come on get happy, you better chase all your cares away…

Okay, so perhaps a simple ritual cannot bring complete internal peace, but it’s worth jumping onto the happiness revolution and giving it a shot to make your world a slightly better place. Choose a simple action, one you can do at least once a week but preferably more, that brings you happiness. And make the time for it. Directions follow below if you want to join the list. I apologize if I missed you when I first made a call for the challenge–send it again by leaving a comment below:

1. Stirrup Queens (Melissa): Reading from 10:30–11 p.m. every night.
2. Clumsy Kisses (Rebecca): Write creatively in her journal every day and paint her nails once a week.
3. Flutter of Hope (Dianne): Morning coffee (and maybe another one)
4. Looking for 2 Lines (Lindsay): Ritual TBD
5. BagMomma (Shelli): Will keep a scented candle on her desk and light it once a day.
6. My Journey to Mommyhood (Courtney): Playing with her dogs.
7. Diagnosis Unexplained (Jenna Sais Quoi): Girls night out
8. Sticky Feet (Jamie): Eat breakfast every morning while she checks email and takes 15 minutes of “me” time before work.
9. Motherhood (Grad3): Ritual TBD
10. Road Blocks and Rollercoasters (Me): Reading a non-IF related book before bed.
11. Sticky Bean (Kirsten): Joined a gym and will be working out three times a week for at least 30 minutes.
12. Southern Infertility (Samantha): Going to get at least 7 and half hours of sleep a night for three nights during the workweek and 8 hours on the weekends.
13. Miss E’s Musings (Ellen): Going to the library once a week.
14. Vacant Womb (A B): Bible study every day for 30 minutes.
15. My Many Blessings (Tina): Will create a post once a week that is an ode to what she has–Chris–vs. what she doesn’t have. In other words, preserve happy memories. She is also going to do something special with Chris once a week.
16. All Things Deb (Deb): Will eat breakfast with her husband three times a week.
17. Waiting… (Sandra): Will play with her photography stuff at least one hour per week.
18. Creating Motherhood (Calliope): Will take herself out for coffee every Thursday.
19. A Someday Mom (Kim): Exercise every day for the entire month.
20. Reproductive Jeans (JJ): Going for a walk every day for the entire month.
21. Serenity Now (Serenity): Take a walk every day.
22. A Sibling for Celia (Shelby): Go for a walk 3 times a week and do something special with her daughter once a week.
23. Are We There Yet (Kami): Dancing a couple of times each week and taking a walk three times a week.
24. Dead Baby Jokes (Niobe): Ritual TBD
25. Are We There Yet (Teamwinks): Will take bubble baths.
26. Fortune Cookie Follies and Cats in the Cradle (Beagle): Communing with nature.
27. The Idle Mind of Beth (Beth): Knocking something off the to-do list before work (exercise, housework, bills, etc).
28. The Other Shoe (Joy Suzanne): Studying a new musical instrument and listening to one new song a day.
29. Taking the Statistical Bullet (Katie): Ritual TBD
30. TTC with DH… (Trying2007): Will have fresh flowers on her table all month.
31. Baby Step (Baby Step): Will walk her puppy every day (or take him to the dog park), swim or bike 4 times a week, and eat breakfast 3-4 times a week.
32. Baby Steps to Baby Shoes (BStBS): Will wear one of the many pairs of fabulously expensive and totally impractical designer shoes that she mostly just admires in the closet once a week.

Not on the list and want to join along? This is open to everyone in the infertility/pregnancy loss/adoption/assisted conception community–from first time readers to longstanding bloggers. Read the directions below and then send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) or leave a comment to join along.

Directions:

• Think of a daily/weekly ritual that would make you happy–a place you like to visit, an activity you like to do, a person you like to see, a food you like to eat. The idea is to choose something that can be sustained over time (in other words, going to Tahiti, while nice, is not the best choice unless you have thousands to burn. And if you have thousands to burn, consider sending some to me care of my clinic). It should be something that doesn’t create more problems for the future (for instance, eating sticks of butter even if butter-eating brings you joy). It should be something that you can do frequently–if not every day then at least three times a week.
• Schedule this new ritual into your day. Literally place it in your planner or write a reminder to stick on the refrigerator. If you can’t vacuum or prepare dinner one day, that’s fine. But don’t drop your ritual.
• Write and tell me your ritual for the Challenge Post and send a link for your blog. If you don’t have a blog, send me your name and the ritual. You don’t need a blog to do this–I can post your response for you in the Annex. You can either leave a comment or email me directly. You can join now and set your ritual later. It just needs to be chosen by September 1.
• Keep a running post about your ritual that you will publish on September 30th. Keep it in your draft folder, but add to it over time to talk about your ritual–how it makes you feel, whether or not it is bringing you happiness, whether you had to change your ritual mid-challenge, whether you’ll keep at it indefinitely. If you don’t have a blog, keep your thoughts on a Word document that you can send to me right before September 30th and I’ll post it for you.

This Challenge runs from September 1–30 (there will be a new challenge running for the month of October and another for November), but if it’s still bringing you h
appiness on September 30th, keep doing it indefinitely!

Updated at the bottom:

homage to Wallace Stevens

I.
I am six years old, standing in the pumpkin fields on a school field trip. I ask the teacher if there’s a bathroom and she says, “not out here.” Thus begins my penchant for asking a question the wrong way and not being able to ask it again without looking like an idiot. I pee in my pants in the pumpkin field. I tell all the other kids that I sat down in the field in some water. They believe me, but I ride home on the bus humiliated and lock myself in the classroom bathroom when we return to school.

II.
I am around ten. We’ve returned many times since that field trip to this particular farm. On this day, my family is picking pumpkins again for Halloween. I will get to carve them with my father. In my heart, I really really really want a tiny pumpkin. But I know my sister will point out that a tiny pumpkin cannot be carved and I am an idiot for wasting my pumpkin choice on a tiny pumpkin. So I choose one that is bigger than I really want just so I can be like her and maybe we can be pumpkin twins when it comes to carving them that night.

III.
I just turned twenty and I am at the farm with the boy I love. We are picking vegetables for a dinner party that we are throwing for all of his friends. I like being with this group of boys because they make me feel as if I am Wendy from Peter Pan and they are the Lost Boys. Everything I do is rewarded with such awe and affection. As the car bumps over the dirt road, I am rocked into a feeling of contentment.

IV.
I am at the farm again, now twenty-one. Twenty was a terrible year. An extremely painful and difficult year and the source of most of the pain is sitting next to me in the car–the boy from the summer before. We are bumping along the dirt road again and this time the rear view mirror falls off from its perch and cracks. We stop the car when we get to the fields and I pick up the mirror and say, “we fuck up everything.”

V.
My cousin and I meet a man in a small town near West Virginia. He owns a canoe, we want a canoe. We work out a deal where we pay him $15 each time we go out there and use his canoe. He tells us one day as he drives us 22 miles up river that his dream is to open his own canoe-rental-and-bait shop. We continue to meet him throughout the summer, stopping off at the farm to grab vegetables and fruit for lunch–pickling cucumbers, carrots that we peel with my swiss arm knife, nectarines. The next summer, we call him in June to let him know that we’re coming out that weekend. He tells us proudly that he’ll have to charge us $30 for a two hour ride because he now owns his own canoe-rental-and-bait shop. His gain is our loss. We only go a few times that summer and I miss being on the water with my cousin.

VI.
I am dating Josh and I bring him to the farm because it is one of my favourite places in the world. The trees bend over the road as you drive onto the farm–a mile of shaded road through a small forest. I wish we could get married on that road. Each time we visit the farm, I picture myself walking down that road in a long white dress.

VII.
I cannot get pregnant. We have our first appointment with the RE during strawberry season. Back in college, I tried to make jam and I ended up ruining a pot and a spoon in the process. I have this strong need to right all my past failures. We end up pickings pounds and pounds of strawberries and turn them all into preserves. I don’t even particularly like strawberry jam, but I want to do something right when everything feels so wrong.

VIII.
I take some students to the farm that fall for a field trip. All through the lecture, the only thing I can think about is that class trip to the pumpkin patch in first grade when I peed in my pants. All through the ride to the field, the only thing I can think about is how I worry that I’ll never have a child. All through the time in the field, I think about how I probably shouldn’t be lifting heavy pumpkins while on stims. But how the hell do I explain why I’m not participating to a bunch of eighth graders?

IX.
I am finally pregnant and know that I am about to be put on modified bed rest. I go to the field to pick some strawberries not because I particularly want strawberries but because I am emotional and it is a place where I am happy. It is difficult to bend over and I start gasping from the exertion as well as the contractions. The man picking in the row next to me smiles and says, “I know; I’m out of breath too. We really need to get to a gym.”

X.
The twins are born in the middle of the summer. They are in the NICU until late August. We bring them home on heart monitors and strict instructions not to take them into crowds that first year. No trips to the grocery store, no strolls around the mall. But we bring them to the farm on a warm day because we reason that it’s outdoors. We unplug the heart monitors for the pictures because I am extremely sensitive about its presence in all of their early pictures even though I don’t really know why. We hold the babies next to pumpkins in the field. I introduce them to the farm.

XI.
We bring the twins back in the spring to pick peas. We have photos of ourselves sitting next to neat rows of English peas, the babies facing outward in Baby Bjorns. I bring them home and shell them and steam them and puree them. The twins love these peas and it somehow makes up slightly for the fact that I couldn’t breastfeed them. What could be more natural than hand-picking and steaming your own English peas?

XII.
The twins are in running mode. They enjoy running for the sake of running. They like to run in two different directions. We try bringing them with us when we go to pick blueberries. They want to be held so we pick one-handed. They want to run up and down the aisles so we take turns picking and watching them. They discover hayrides and are thrilled to ride on a continual loop through the farm. I can’t get anything accomplished, but they’re so happy to be on the tractor bed that it doesn’t really matter.

XIII.
They are now almost three. I am in the mood for blueberry muffins. We wake up in the morning and I ask them if they want to go to the farm. We haven’t been yet this summer. We drive out to the farm and we pass a house that we’ve always called “Mommy’s Dream House.” It’s a tiny farm house with a lake on the property. They have been talking about this house all winter. We ride the tractor out to the field and when we get to the blueberry bushes, I tell the kids to run up and down the row while I pick. After a minute of standing there watching me, my son says, “I want to help.” I’m flustered and say, “this is really hard to explain and you need to know the right ones to pick and…” I pick up a branch and say, “you only want to pick the really blue ones. You want to leave the baby ones alone.” My son plucks off the dark ones and waves his hand at the others, “I leave them alone.” The two of them crawl and pluck and jostle the plants, searching down the berries that I never would have found if I was picking alone. They gently put them in the bucket and my daughter takes care to pluck out any small stem or leaf that gets mixed in with the fruit. We celebrate their hard work with a tractor ride around the farm.

They are both sitting on my lap, chirping on about the size of the tractor wheels and blueberries and the port-a-potty I used before we hit the fields (if nothing else, the farm has an uncanny way of reminding me to use the bathroom before I’m stuck in the fields). I bend my head over theirs and say into their ears: “I never thought you’d be here. You are two of my favourite people and this is my favourite place. And I’ve always wanted to br
ing you here.”

“You waited a long time for me!” my son says proudly as if his delay were a good thing.

I don’t know. Maybe it was.

Update:
Thank you to everyone who has been writing such kind words about this piece. I wrote it a few weeks ago and first submitted it to Washingtonian Magazine, but they said they didn’t have a slot for a piece of this length. So I posted it here because it meant a lot to me. But I’m happy to offer up reprint rights if you feel like emailing Washingtonian and telling them that they missed out on something great. And the world should be hearing about infertility not from the sensational stories, but the human emotions involved in the hard choices of lifting pumpkins when you’re on stims so you don’t have to admit to your problem. Also feel free to badger This American Life, Washington Post, et al… Hell, it can’t hurt to beg for a freelance infertility writing campaign, can it? Present the other side–the real side–rather than the stories about sextuplets from Clomid and adoption scams.

I don’t think we’ve spent enough time toasting the alcoholic drink. Or, more importantly, the mixed drink.

I’m a girl-drink sort of girl. I throw like a girl and I drink like a girl. I like umbrellas in my straw. I like my drink to be an odd colour. I don’t like to taste the alcohol.

Back in college, there was a wonderful bar called the Barber’s Closet that burned down my senior year. It was an old-fashioned speakeasy that was turned into a real bar after the prohibition. You entered via a secret panel and it was a rite of passage, the day you entered the Barber’s Closet for the first time. And it was when I was 21 (I put that in for my mother).

They had this incredible drink menu of girly mixed drinks. And my favourite was the Blue Angel. It was served in an ice cream glass filled with ice and it was 3/4 ounce of Blue Curaco, 3/4 ounce of Triple Sec, and sour mix to 1/4th of an inch under the rim of the glass. And that is the drink I would like to use to toast alcohol this month at the open bar. A blue angel for the toast and then whatever you need to drink to celebrate or forget.

As always, it has been a little under a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. There are many, many exciting pregnancy announcements to toast, new paths to parenthood to cheer, and, unfortunately, losses to grieve. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while, sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation.

Happy Drinking.

Albeit a little late. We were on the road today…

I’ve been stressing about coming up with my ritual–not really the point of the ritual since it is supposed to bring happiness. But as I started to list things, I started to find a problem with each one. Eat chocolate once a day. Sort of counter-productive to the whole watching-your-cholesterol-and-trying-to-eat-healthy thing. Plus, I’m not really a one piece of chocolate sort of girl. I’m an entire chocolate bar sort of girl. I think limiting the intake would be frustrating.

I could go for a nightly massage, and I mostly get a nightly massage from Josh. But that’s something that (1) isn’t a guarantee and (2) depends on someone else for my happiness. I wanted to do something a little more self-sufficient.

The ones I’m kicking around now are reading time from 10:30–11 (I go to bed insanely late. Like past midnight late because I am one half of the two stupidest people in the world). Starbucks Mondays to kick off the morning (not totally feasible). Yoga at home three times a week via a video tape. We already have a standing date-night-in on Thursday nights, so I felt lame putting that down as my ritual. I’m supposed to be adding something, not pointing at something I already do. Reading is my forerunner. Meditation or vertical time for 15 minutes mid-day is a close second.

Which is to say, if you’re still thinking about your ritual, you can add it any time between now and September 1st. Which is next Friday. You can also put your name in the ring before you’ve thought up your ritual. All I need is a commitment to happiness and the url for your blog (or, if you are blogless, your name).

I’ve also started a post that chronicles all of the happiness posts–both on my blog and on yours–so people walking into the discussion can go back and read all the posts. So if you’re posting about happiness or using one of the questions/challenges as a jumping board for your own post, let me know so I can add it to the page. I’m going to start putting a link to the archives at the bottom of each “Come On Get Happy” post. But I’ve been sucky about email for the past few days so forgive me if it takes a day or two to get a link on the list.

And now, the blogs:

Jitters at Relaxing in the Parlor has a gorgeous post this week called “The Word.” It is about receiving the call from the clinic telling her that the cycle had failed and forcing herself to go to a baby boutique–not because she needed something at the baby boutique, but because she needed to face that site. As she walks around the store, swallowing hard and trying to mourn, she realizes that there is something for her on the shelves. “I started to leave. At least I looked at baby stuff without crying I told myself. I was proud. As I made my way toward the door I noticed the CD’s. One in particular caught my attention because of the replicated African fabric on the cover. African Dreams: Lullabies and Cradle Songs from the Motherland was the title. I picked it up and hugged it. There was something for me at the baby store after all. I flipped it over and noticed that #13 is a traditional african lullaby titled ‘Eshururu’, which I believe (don’t quote me) translates into ‘my child’.” As she says so beautifully at the end of the post, it’s about letting go and making room for love. Please go over and read the entire post.

Rebecca at Which Way to Baby has a heartbreaking post about her D&C. It is not her first loss. It is hard to read about loss, but Rebecca writes in a way that is so moving, capturing those fleeting thoughts that burn and disappear: “The last time we would get to hug while I was still carrying our baby.” The part where I lost it was when she is about to go under for the procedure: “I remember thinking, ‘When I wake up, my baby’s going to be gone, and I’m not going to be pregnant any more.’ And I remember trying to keep quiet and still as I cried. Then I woke up. The oxygen mask was still over my nose and mouth, and I couldn’t open my eyes yet, but I realized I was sobbing. The hysterical, heaving, uncontrollable sobs you cry when a brief moment in time has just permanently, gut-wrenchingly altered your life forever. A moment as brief as the flicker of a tiny little heartbeat.” Go to her blog, not only to be moved beyond belief, but to give her support as well.

I missed this nugget last week, and since it’s my roundup, I’m breaking the rules and adding in a post from last Thursday, 6 hours out of bounds. Me at Road Blocks and Rollercoasters has a post about being quiet when the conversation turns toward children. She begins by admitting that she has been doing a lot of thinking lately–mostly at lunch. It is a time when everyone at work pulls out their stories from the night before, and since Me doesn’t have children yet, she doesn’t know what to say. The post is extremely bittersweet, moving from funny to heartbreaking with each word: “I’m not sure they would appreciate me bringing up my conjoined twins which I miscarried as a topic of discussion. That would go over like a turd in the punch bowl: ‘You know when I was pregnant with my conjoined twins they did they craziest things before they died and all…’ I could see the utter looks of horror on their faces just as I think about it. There is a part of me that would like to do something like that. Mix things up to the point where they can feel JUST as uncomfortable as I do when they are talking about their children.“

Lastly, Joyous Melancholy at Let’s Make a Baby! has a post that I found extremely touching. On the eve of Clomid, she writes about how she felt before finding her husband. She describes her heart: “I felt like my heart was a vessel filled to overflowing, and I needed to find a second vessel to contain what was spilling over. I knew I could love, I *wanted* to love, but there was no one for me to love.” Once she finds her husband, she tells herself that she’ll never feel this emptiness again. “The day we got married, I thought to myself, ‘I will never feel that void again. I will never again have to face that ache of loneliness and longing for someone else to help me contain all this love I have inside, ready to give’.” But there is that void again. And if you are far down the line, you may scoff at the idea of Clomid. But I still remember the night I took my first pills. And stepping over that line, not knowing how far you’ll go into the other side, it’s a scary step. And I hope JM fills her void soon.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone and get ready for some heavy imaginary drinking come Sunday or Monday.

Grace Paley died today. Josh called me from work to tell me the news and his voice was cracking as he said it. It was like a favourite great aunt who had always been at Thanksgiving dinner was suddenly gone.

I met her once when we were trying to conceive. I went to a reading where she read the essay “Traveling”. It begins with her mother and sister taking a bus from New York to Virginia in 1927. When the bus got to D.C., every African-American got up and moved to the back of the bus. Paley’s mother and sister were sitting in the back and when the driver asked them to move to the front of the bus, her mother refused. She refused three times and remained in the back of the bus until they got to Richmond.

The story switches to Paley’s ride from New York to Miami Beach in 1943. Paley is sitting in the last seat in the white section. An African-American woman gets on the bus, holding a sleeping child. All of the white men in the white section let this woman and child stand. Paley offers the woman her seat but the woman demurs. Finally, Paley tells her that she’ll hold the baby. And the woman, from sheer exhaustion, gives Paley her child and continues to stand next to her.

Paley read this story when we were a few months into starting treatments. And I couldn’t breathe when she talked about holding this child. “I liked holding him, aligning him along my twenty-year-old young woman’s shape. I thought ahead to that holding, that breathing together that would happen in my life if this war would ever end.”

As she held the baby, one of the white men leans forward and says, “Lady, I wouldn’t of touched that thing with a meat hook.”

And I started sobbing, not just from disgust, but from this idea that I didn’t know how I could live in a world where someone couldn’t appreciate a child. Where I wanted to parent so badly and would have done anything to hold any child. And this man would speak about that child like that. And I can’t put this well into words tonight, but I believe many of you probably understand.

Grace Paley stared at the man. Without breaking eye contact, she held the boy closer and kissed the top of his head.

Fifty years later, in 1993, she remembers this story as she holds her grandson. She writes: “But [now] the child that I’m holding, his little face as he turns toward me, is the brown face of my own grandson, my daughter’s boy, the open mouth of the sleeper, the full lips, the thick little body of a child who runs wildly from one end of the yard to the other…” When she remembers this story, she tells it to her siblings. This African-American boy that she held, the one who made her dream about having her own children, strongly resembles her daughter’s son so many years later. She writes: “How it happened on just such a journey, when I was still quite young, that I first knew my grandson, first held him close, but could protect him for only about twenty minutes fifty years ago.”

After the reading, I went to meet her. And when I got there, I just stood in front of her, trying to fight back tears from having all of these worlds collide–one of the greatest story writers of all time, standing back where I got my MFA, and her story about when she started dreaming about having her own children, and my own heart knowing how hard it was for me to have a child and wondering if my dream child would ever get there.

I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there and finally said, “you mean so much to me.”

And she just hugged me. She gave me the longest hug and squeezed me so tightly. It felt like I had always known her. She let me hug her until I was ready to let go.

Thank you, Grace Paley, for being you. For being such an incredible writer. And compassionate woman. And for putting into action what other people only think about putting into words. Thank you for hugging me on that day. Rest easy.