It’s been about a month since the last drinkfest, so it felt like a good morning (because virtual drinks can be consumed before lunch without completely fucking up your work day) to set out a sign for drink specials: the current theme is “anywhere but here” and we’re serving big, tropical cocktails to go with the dreary winter weather.

So pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink and let everyone know what is happening in your life. Maybe you have good news to share and we’ll all toast you with a glass of wine. Or maybe you just need to vent about your RE. Or have a good, long cry. 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 like Watson 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 mug while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

And for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about right now, you can continue reading the paragraph below from the Friday Blog Roundup following the last open bar. Or click here to read the original post that kicked off the monthly drinkfest…

All the girl drink drunks in the house say “yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I have to say that pouring drinks for the last 48 hours has been as emotional and cathartic as the creme de la creme list. Just sitting down with a bunch of awesome women and hearing what was happening in everyone’s life. It was much better than a night out on the town because I didn’t even have to leave my own living room. The best part was when I’d go to someone’s blog and someone else would have been there before me saything that they read about how they were going through X and they were going through X too. And that’s the whole point of having a place where
everyone knows your name. Because everyone is comfortable reaching out to anyone else who comes through the door and you meet new people who you didn’t even know were going through the same shitty experience as you or thinking the same shitty thoughts as you. And suddenly, you’re not so alone. So I’m calling a monthly
drinkfest. My bar is always open, of course, but once a month, I’m running specials for 48-hours where everyone can come to my virtual bar and drink and bitch and comfort and cry and laugh. So there. That’s my new New Years Resolution–more imaginary alcohol and girl time (boys are welcome too, but you guys never show. Come on, Smarshy. Pull up a barstool and have a good vent). Another drinkfest to follow soon in February–remember to drink responsibly and such.

Yes, Smarshy–you’re still invited to become a girl drink drunk (and so is DI Dad, Dynamo Dad, and Richard–come on, where are the men?). So now that you’re caught up on the idea of a virtual bar, pull up a seat and tell me your order.

Sometimes you need a bit of sweetness, without high-allergens (if the high-allergens you’re trying to avoid are chocolate and nuts and not wheat, eggs, or dairy…). Sometimes, when the world is giving you crap, you need a golden gamonkey.

I am not sure what a golden gamonkey actually is. But once the kids named them, it seemed to fit these cookies perfectly. I am picturing a gamonkey as a dreamlike visitor like the werefox out of Chabon’s Summerland that takes you on this amazing adventure and makes you see infertility (or whatever your struggle may be in the moment) in an entirely new light. That’s a lot for a cookie or any inanimate object. Especially one that you consume. But that’s where I am with the golden gamonkey cookie.

I think I’m in a worn sweatshirt place. Not just because it is winter and freezing outside. More in a change-out-of-your-day-clothes-and-spend-the-night-in-a-worn-sweatshirt-watching-old-
movies-you-could-pretty-much-recite-by-heart place. I think it’s all connected–the need for wishes, the worn sweatshirt, curling up with a book. It’s a need for care. For someone to care for and for someone to care for me. A lack of surprises. Something comfortable. Knowing exactly what to expect and having those expectations fulfilled. As I said, a worn sweatshirt.

So…my recommendation, for what it’s worth, if you are also in a worn sweatshirt sort of a place in life right now. Make the cookies. Freeze half. Consume the others in bed. With a blanket pulled up. A book next to you. A cup of hot chocolate. Maybe spiked with some liquor–maybe not. And just breathe. And don’t feel guilty if the floor isn’t being vacuumed or the dishes aren’t being washed. Sometimes, you need to just embrace the worn sweatshirt and not fight your body into a little black dress.

You know what I mean?

I was going to write a whole post about this nightmare I had last night where this RE (who was not actually my RE. Sort of like one of those dreams where you know the other person in the dream is your husband, but he doesn’t look like your real husband) told me that I needed to start Follistim tonight and I couldn’t use the normal gauge of needles. I needed to use those motherfuckers that come attached to the syringe to use for drawing up the medication (before you switch to the smaller sub-cue needle).

I’m a nightmare-y sort of girl so it’s not that I’m surprised that I had one or need to unpack this dream to discover its deeper meaning. I think what is surprising me is how long it is sticking with me this morning. I feel panicked. I feel like I’m gearing up to start stimming this evening. I feel like I’m watching a clock and counting down to something. And none of these things are actually true. So why is the dream bothering me?

Instead, to kick off Bea’s FET cycle Down Under (she flies from Singapore back to her embryos in Australia tonight…or tomorrow…damn these time changes), I will counter her heartwarming story of a woman determined to fold a paper crane and feed a child with my less heartwarming story of a woman who fed someone a potato through a series of mishaps…

When I was 21, I was in Israel visiting family with one of my cousins when we went across the country to a small town named Safad to spend New Year’s Eve. We met up with a friend of mine from the U.S. who happened to be in Israel too at the time and we all toured the small-artist-colony-of-a-town. We were looking at a menu posted outside a restaurant when a man approached and asked if we had any money we could spare. I gave him whatever I had in my pocket at the time–a few shekels.

We were eating lunch and he came back to the table and asked again. I apologized and told him I gave him all that I had in my pocket and he responded, “aaah, well, you gave once so I thought you might give again.” He left and returned many times throughout the day. It’s a small town. He must have asked us again between fifteen and twenty times. Every time we’d bump into him in another spot, he would ask and remind us that we gave once so the chances were better that we’d give again.

Come nightfall, we couldn’t find a hostel that would allow us to share a room (we were two girls and one boy) so we caught a bus down the mountain to the resort town of Tiberias below. First, when we arrived, there was discarded backpack leaning against a street sign when we were standing on a corner, waiting to cross the street. The street was relatively deserted and because we noticed it, we felt this obligation over reporting the “hafetz hashud” (it may seem silly wherever you are living, but since bombers sometimes leave explosives in these unattended “suspicious objects” you’re under obligation to call the police), which took a bit of time and turned out to be just that–a discarded backpack.

Tiberias and tourism in general was hit hard in the months following the death of Rabin and a spate of bus bombs so restaurant owners were standing outside their restaurants as we walked down the promenade, trying to get customers to enter. We went into one where the owner was especially convincing and where it felt particularly sad–there were no other customers at any other table. We sat down and I ordered a potato boureka. The waiter brought me a baked potato. When I said, “but this wasn’t what I ordered” he admitted that he had given me the next best thing. They did not have potato bourekas at this moment in time and they had pared back the menu to its bare bones in order to keep the restaurant afloat.

When I explained that in America, the waiter would have told the customer this while they were ordering so they could order something actually on the menu, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “you’re not in America.” Which was true. But it felt like one of those rules that should be in place internationally. The international code of restaurants. He told me that regardless, since I had ordered and they had made the baked potato, I needed to pay for it and he was charging the same price as the potato boureka.

I followed him back into the kitchen, still arguing with him. I was not going to pay for a potato boureka that I never received and I didn’t want to eat a baked potato. The waiter and I finally haggled it down to this: I would pay half the price of the potato boureka and he would package my baked potato. He asked what I was going to do with it and I said that I would give it to someone hungry on the street.

When I sat back down at the table, my friend and cousin asked what had happened and I explained the plan. My cousin commented that it was too bad that this happened down the mountain because if it had happened in Safad, we could have given the potato to the man who had asked us for money throughout the day. We spent some time speaking about this man and by the time we left the table, we were considering the worth of going back up the mountain with this potato just to have a good New Year’s Eve story to tell in the future.

We stepped outside and who is standing there but the man from Safad. I ran over to him and threw my arms around him, saying, “we’ve been thinking about you all evening and please, take this potato. And I have more money now, so take this as well.” At that point, I hear my friend mutter, “aaah, Melissa?” and I step back to see that our man is currently surrounded by twelve police officers that I somehow hadn’t noticed because I was so happy to see the man. The police officers opened the “to-go” package, poked at the potato, shrugged their shoulders, and handed it back to the man. He smiled apologetically and tucked himself into a waiting police car. The police drove off with our man and the potato.

But at least he had dinner in the cell?

But…er…the blog roundup is sort of about the blogs…

So, a good trip, Bea. May it be an easy transfer and a successful cycle.

A from a Somewhat Ordinary Life turned 30 this week and had a post of how she pictured herself at 30 when she was 20. This paragraph deeply touched me: “Now I wish I could go back and tell that niave girl barely out of her teens to stop putting so much stock into planning out her life. To stop putting time frames and milestones on life events. I would tell her that sometimes circumstances beyond your control will rattle your plans and there isn’t anything you can do. I would tell her she needs to learn to be at peace with the great things she has so that the things she doesn’t don’t hurt so much. Life throws you curve balls sometimes and things don’t happen the way you expected them to. They don’t even come close sometimes.” I think we all wish we could go back in time and tell our younger selves something that would prepare us for the place we’re in now. Click here to read the whole post (no, really, click there because I’m only giving you a small taste of the greatness of this post).

Dianne at Flutter of Hope had a cycle end this week and the anger and sadness in these two posts (here and here) are emotions with which many will relate. I think for me, my feeling in those times is literally wanting to crawl out of my skin and leave my whole body behind for a few days. It’s not just the reproductive organs–it
‘s everything. It’s my heart wanting it so badly, my brain telling me about late implantation stories, my eyes seeing pregnant women. I wish I could grant you this wish, Dianne–just for a day so you could get back on your feet. Head over there and give your support.

K77 at Scarred Bellybutton had one of the greatest lines in her post called “He Said”: “For once I am crying because of GOOD news!” What is the good new, you ask? Well, you’ll just have to head over to the post to find out… Click here to read the whole post.

Elizabeth at My No Baby Blues has a recount of her interactions with that damn bitch, Hope, this month. She acts like your best friend and she convinces you that you may be pregnant. As Elizabeth writes: “I feel foolish. But then, hope pointed out that it might be a little early to test. It’s not that early, I told her, and all my symptoms have vanished. She’s still whispering in my ear. And I can’t quite block her out. So I am feeling (1) not pregnant, (2) hopeful that I might be anyway, and (3) stupid for clinging to that hope.” She’s gotten all of at one point or another. It’s a fantastic post–read the whole post here.

Lut C at Things Get Iffy had a successful transfer this week (and even has an embryo to freeze!). She also left a lovely wish to all of us at the end of her most recent post. Go over to read it and receive your wish as well as offer her congratulations… Click here.

Happy reading (no, really, go over and read the whole post and leave a comment) and a wonderful weekend. When I get a moment, I will put up the cookie recipe I made up yesterday morning that the twins have named “Golden Gamonkey Cookies.” What’s a Gamonkey, you ask? Seriously, you have to ask? I mean, doesn’t everyone know about gamonkeys?

First there were the begats where everybody created somebody while I could create nobody. Then there was Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel with her pleas for motherhood. Tucked into Haftorah (1) portions were Hannah and Michal. The endless “womb openings” and commandments to be fruitful and multiply.

I could not spend one more week hearing about barren Biblical women.

Two-and-a-half years ago, we took a break from shul (2) and the break ended a few weeks ago. We knew that we couldn’t return to our old shul–there was no way I was going to be able to pick up that red Etz Hayim (3) and not turn to Rachel’s story like a freakin’ fanatic if I was sitting in the same seat where I had sat for years, wishing for motherhood.

Trying on shuls is sort of like jeans. When it fits and makes your ass look good, you know it instantly. And when the shul feels wrong the moment you sit down for the service, it’s like standing in a dressing room at the Gap and thinking, “it’s me; isn’t it? If I just lost a few pounds, these jeans would look better. No; it’s them. Their clothes have gone to crap. Who the hell would fit into these? Fuck it. I wish I hadn’t even tried this on.”

We tried on many crappy pairs of jeans to find this fit.

We were pretty much on our final shul when it clicked. I can’t really put my finger on why this shul and not another. They have the same books, the same service, the same faceless congregants as all the other new shuls we considered. But this one felt good. It fit me. And instantly finding a new home made me realize how much I had longed to have a home for the last two-and-a-half years.

The only thing (and even things that fit perfectly can have an “only thing”) was that the service was so kid-centric. Next to the main ark (4) was a mini-ark filled with mini-Torah that the mini-children carried in their mini-arms behind the normal-sized rabbi to kick off the Torah service. The rabbi paused in the middle of the service to read a picture book to the kids who gathered in a small semi-circle next to the bimah (5). Lollipops were passed out to kids at the end of the service.

It was like entering a big, Jewy Willy Wonka factory without the river of chocolate. Or oompa loopas. With perhaps the only ties to Willy Wonka being the candy at the end of the service. But still.

And I get it. The future of the shul rests on the rabbi’s ability to include the kids in the service and commit them to continuing the traditions. If you don’t hook the kids, you’re looking at a congregation that will die out at the end of the current generation. So I get it–I understand why catering to parents and children is a good investment in an age where tradition has the possibility of falling by the wayside in favour of secularism.

But what about everyone else? What about the single guy I was talking to after the service? What about the widows or the single women? What about those who decided not to have children? What about those who can’t have children? Where do they fit into this bigger picture? Where is their lollipop?

This is what I was thinking as I was sitting through the service–how could the rabbi change it so that it was all inclusive? So that the children could be celebrated and made to feel like little kings and queens for the day with the Torah parade and quiet play area in the back of the shul while at the same time wrapping an infertile person in a much needed hug? Is it possible? Or are the two situations so diametrically opposed that it would be impossible to feel peace in a scene that brings you emotional pain?

And then I received this note this week from a woman who is writing a sermon specifically to reach out to infertile congregants in her church:

I am due to write [a sermon for Lent] on an Old Testament Woman and the theme is “being still and finding G-d in the storms of life.” I remember a post from a friend struggling with infertility about how hard church was on Mother’s Day and am sure it can be a painful reminder. I was thinking about preaching on Hannah or Sarah or one of the “barren” women that God gave a child to. Knowing so many people struggling daily with IUIs, IVF, miscarriages, etc I have been touched quite a bit about this real struggle in our society even if I’m not at a TTC point in my life yet. So a few questions for you (and your readers if you would be willing to post them?)

1. How has dealing with IF changed your view of God (if you had one?)
2. Would it cause more pain to hear it talked about in church or be a comfort to open a dialogue?
3. For those who have succeeded in having children, has that also changed your view of God?
4. How does the Bible stories of Hannah, Sarah and the other “barren” women in the Bible relate to your own IF journey?

I’m also open to other thoughts and comments. My biggest concern is that I don’t want to do this if it would be more painful to hear for people. I don’t know who might be hearing it and I don’t want to be insensitive or seem like I have easy answers. I would like to be true to the experience and the emotions even though I have just been an IF supporter thus far.

For me, the second question brought out the most internal debate. To give some background, there is a short sermon-like speech given after the Torah portion called a “d’var Torah”. In some shuls, the rabbi gives this speech, but in my old shul, a congregant (who was chosen beforehand) prepared the commentary on that particular passage in the Torah–perhaps providing more information to help the listener understand the passage or connecting it to current events. Which meant that people tended to choose a passage that they could speak about comfortably. The burden wasn’t on the rabbi (we didn’t have a rabbi–the service was community-led) to be everything for everyone.

So would it be a pain or a comfort to hear a d’var Torah on the desperation of Rachel, let’s say? I started debating this in my head. How would I feel if it was brought up, but not done justice? Would I just be happy that someone was recognizing me as a part of the community and giving me a voice even if it wasn’t perfect? How would I feel if it was a woman with seven kids giving the d’var Torah and I knew that she conceived each one on the first try because she’s always talking about that fact? Would it matter if it was a really rockin’ d’var Torah that somehow truly captured the infertile experience?

The best d’var Torah I ever heard was on Leviticus 18:22. It’s a hot-button portion and I’ve heard some pretty crappy divrei Torah (6) in the past. But one year, the d’var Torah was delivered by J, a gay congregant. Rather than tiptoeing around the history of offensiveness over this passage, he said the words that made everyone cringed–the ones people like to sweep under the rug and pretend aren’t a big old pile of hot-buttons “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is abomination.” And then he paused and said something along the lines of this (though far more eloquently): “it’s true–I cannot lie with a man as I could with a woman. The hardware is too different. Therefore, I see this statement as fact: I cannot lie with a man as I would with a woman. I lie with him in a different way.” The d’var Torah was about homophobia and how it tears apart community. It was a brilliant, honest, raw account of his own experience as a gay man sitting in a heterocentric shul listening to Leviticus 18:22 come around every year.

Which brings back the question: can someone outside the experience ever speak as honestly and as eloquently as someone inside the experience? Is it the speaker or the personal experience that truly ha
s the power?

On one hand, I don’t know if a straight man could have delivered the same emotion even if he was speaking the same words. On the other, as a writer, I don’t believe that one has to go through the experience to speak eloquently on the topic. Think of all the books with a believable female protagonist written by a male author. All the stories written that speak to the emotions at the core of an experience that could not possibly have been experienced by the author.

But…I keep coming back to the word “but.” I don’t know how I would feel–would it be the best moment ever in shul if my rabbi marched in this week with a d’var Torah about infertility or should I just sit in the shul, understanding that we’re not living in a perfect world and in this world, the kids get the lollipops and I get to simply watch them.

Now with a glossary of all my Jewlicious terms…

(1) You’ve heard of the Torah, but what the hell is a Haftorah? A long time ago, when Jews were forbidden to read the Torah, the rabbis got around the edict by substituting portions from the Prophets in lieu of reading the Torah. They tried to find portions from the Prophets that matched the message of the portion of the Torah they were forbidden to read. Even though Jews can now read the Torah, they still read the corresponding Haftorah portions each week. And that’s one to grow on… (Back)

(2) What is shul? It’s just another way of saying synagogue. (Back)

(3) The book favoured by the Conservative Movement in Judaism. It contains the Torah–or Bible–and all the Haftorah portions along with commentary.
(Back)

(4) The ark is where the Torah is kept. (Back)

(5) The bimah is the little stage where the rabbi (or whoever is reading the Torah) stands (Back)

(6) The plural of d’var Torah (Back)