Are you going to make me jump through this computer and kick your ass? Because here is the deal: you are a great writer. All of us are great writers. Some people write for a living and their blog reflects that. Some people write emotionally and their entries are raw. Some people write rationally and present their take on news articles. Some people chronicle a year in the life. Some people present their world in photographs.

The idea of the creme de la creme is not to put out there “the best” by someone else’s definition of “best.” It’s to put out the entry that means the most to you: the one that sums up a moment in time you want to remember forever, the one that shows us a sliver of who you are (as Manuela pointed out today about her post titled Tattoo), the one that changed another person’s point-of-view, or the one that served as a turning point in your own journey.

Everyone has a best entry from 2006. It’s the one you would cry about if it was ever eaten by your computer.

Don’t get hung up on the idea of blogs being “well-written” or entries being worthy of the “best” title. I promise you, if you’re in my side bar (and even if you’re not yet in my side bar because I haven’t found your blog yet), your writing is enjoyable and emotional and I have learned a great deal from reading your words (oh, and if for some reason you’re not in my side bar, let me know so I can add you).

If you’ve experienced infertility or pregnancy loss and written about it in your blog, you have an entry to contribute to the list. Send me your crying-on-the-bathroom-floor-after-a-negative posts. Your call from your RE with your first positive beta post. Your holy-fuck-why-didn’t-they-tell-me-that-HSG-hurt-so-much post. The day you received your referral. The day you were jealous of your surrogate. The day you wanted to marry your RE. The day you thought you’d never make it to the other side of infertility. The day you really mourned that loss and felt catharsis. The day you realized you had never mourned your losses. The day you came out to everyone about your infertility. The fight with your MIL. The fight with your husband or wife. The reason your husband or wife is the best person to have with you on this journey. The frustration you felt with yourself for feeling overwhelmed after your child was born. The sadness you felt over past losses when you held your newborn child.

Any messy, wonderful entry.

Whether you’re in the middle of treatments or finally pregnant or parenting your twins conceived through IVF.

Of course you can nominate others too. The entry you read that changed the way you viewed your own journey. The entry that helped you get through the day. Send them on over.

And here’s the idea behind this “best of” collection: it’s just another way you introduce someone to your blog. To give them a little taste of that world. This post will be on the side bar for the entire year (until we make a new list next year) and people can read down each entry, taking their time to savour all of these incredible posts. It’s a monument to what a sliver of the infertile world was experiencing in 2006.

So spread the word about this list and gather entries from your favourite blogs too. I’m compiling it as links are sent either via comment or email (and just so you know, many people are sending it via email so feel free to send it directly to thetowncriers@gmail.com). It will be up this Friday.
————————————————————————————————
Updated at 4:58 p.m.
I moved around icons and links on the side bar to make room for the new Creme de la Creme icon and listing. The picture is currently linked to today’s post, but I’ll link it to the actual list come Friday.

Keep sending them in! I have about 25 already listed in Friday’s post. But there are hundreds of blogs on my side bar. Spread the word and nominate links that changed the way you view the world (if it’s someone else’s blog) or that you loved writing (if it’s your blog).

2006 ended with a purge. The storage room in the basement was filled to capacity. It was time to throw out all of the college notebooks and graduate school papers. Phone bills from 1993. Items that had lost their sentimental meaning. Framed photos of the ex-boyfriend who shall not be named.

All of it bagged and pushed over the edge at the dump.

Josh and I were each going through boxes of important papers, deciding what to keep. At the same moment, we turned to each other and both said, “I’m holding what I said at my grandfather’s funeral.”

How creepy is that?

The fit of reorganization spread upstairs. We ended up at IKEA on the 31st and are now the proud owners of a Billy bookcase and Magiker unit. As well as seven new Swedish words added to my vocabulary including inkopslista. We moved the seven thousand books scattered across our kitchen floor onto the bookshelf. We filled the cabinet with toys. We moved all the piles of “stuff” to its new, proper place.

I’m still on a cleaners high.

And like a huge wave threatening to crash (but that we’re hopefully still riding), the reorganization will skip up the stairs in the next few days. Clutter will be eliminated from the bedroom. Our bathrooms will soon be void of expired medications. The clothes slung across the guest room bed will be taken to the dry cleaners.

It. Feels. So. Damn. Good.

I love to clean. Whenever I’m stressed, I love to clean. I had been waking up most mornings with my heart pounding from anxiety. This morning, for the first time in weeks–no pounding. Not even a dull thud. It was just a normal heartbeat. I needed to work out all of my anxiety from 2006 so I could enter 2007 breathing normally.

Let’s see how long this lasts.

Anyway, Teamwinks had a great idea last Friday that I want to expand to cover the entire last year. As y’all know, I love writing a blog roundup each week to spark conversation, point out interesting things I read, and, overall, show the world all the posts that influence my train of thought. And using Teamwink’s idea as a jumping board, what if people nominated their own favourite post from the last year. Their best writing–the blog post that perfectly summed up a moment in time. A post that you feel best expresses how you felt in 2006. A post that helped other people understand something from an entirely unique point-of-view. You know the post I’m talking about. The one you would wear if you had to go on a first date this Friday.

Which means you can’t be modest this week. Between now and Friday, send me a link to the best post you wrote in 2006. I will create a list of them on Friday morning, the creme de la creme of the infertility and pregnancy loss blogging world for 2006. And who knows where this will lead. An award with a beautiful pot de creme graphic for your blog? A huge open discussion series using these posts as a jumping board for people? Just a new tradition of creating a best post roundup for the previous year each January? Anyway, either leave a comment here with link–just a link, no full posts–(and you can nominate someone else’s post too–though really, don’t be modest. Everyone has a perfect post) or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. And also leave your ideas on where this tradition should lead.

Lastly, I was told today that someone nominated me for a Bloggie. But because the only people who become finalists have multiple nominations, I just thought I’d (cough) put it out there (cough, cough) in case anyone (achem) wants to nominate me again. I would love to win an award. The nominations are open from now until January 10th.

Shameless self-promotion part is over. Now nominate your best post for my creme de la creme roundup. And keep them coming all week. And then check back on Friday to read the creme de la creme (and I’ll keep it linked in the sidebar for the rest of the year too).

And if anyone is reading this and it is beyond January 5th, send me your link anyway. I can keep adding links to the creme de la creme post.
————————————————————————————————
Updated at 10:36 p.m. If you have a link to your best posts in your side bar, still choose one and send it along. I sort of envision this post to be like one of those best short stories of 2006 collections. You’d have all the links in one post and you could jump off of it to the best posts on each person’s blog. And just to make it clear–send only the link or the post will get too long. And feel free to write a short description to go along with the link. Maybe two or three sentences tops?
————————————————————————————————
Updated again at 4:02 p.m. This is so much fun! I love all the posts that are being sent in and the list is really a pleasure to create. This is the format I’m using:

• On Changes (from Serenity Now!): a unique perspective on infertility and change.
• The Dark Side (from Well, Now That We’re Here…): pregnancy after infertility without the gestational naivete.

Just to give you a sense of what I’m doing. Keep the links coming–it’s any post you’re connected to emotionally. Any post that sums up a moment in 2006. Any post that could help others to read. From fertility treatments to loss to parenting after infertility (yes–send in parenting after IF posts too!), all of them are great.

Tonight we had an audience with The Queen. Ha, ha, ha, I’ve been saving that little joke for the entire time it took my computer to boot up. I have an affinity for the queen, mostly because we share the same title. She, the ruler of the United Kingdom. I, the tamer of the stirrups. Both of us, in thankless positions. Stiff upper lip (except when I start crying in the middle of the meeting with the RE). Love of hats. She enjoys a good walk. I enjoy a good walk. She likes tea and, by fuck, I like tea as well. She lives in a palace and owns several properties. I aspire to live in a palace and own several properties. The list of similarities is endless.

I loved the film not just because I am totally and completely in love (in LOVE) with Helen Mirren, but because it led to a very interesting conversation on the ride home about celebrity worship. There is a point in the film where Prince Philip looks at the video footage in disgust of the mourners crying and exclaims, “Sleeping in the streets and pulling out their hair for someone they never knew. And they think we’re mad!” The whole film made the concept of finger pointing seem so ridiculous in retrospect. The judgements we levy on people we don’t know. The assumptions we make based on a small amount of information.

I was thinking about it in the way people jump down one another’s throats based on a few words on the screen. When we have no concept what has shaped that person’s view of the world. Or what else they would say if we were to engage in conversation. Reading blogs is a privilege. Growing up, no one left their diary open to the world. Even if reading each other’s diaries could have saved most of us a great deal of heartache and angst during those middle school years.

I’m thankful for everyone who shares their blog with me. And while I take all with a grain of salt–on one hand, I don’t actually “know” you simply by reading your blog and on the other hand, what does it mean to truly “know” someone and do we ever really know another person–I can’t put a price tag on what I’ve learned in the last six months of blogging and reading blogs. Without the editing of a publisher, this raw material of first-hand information is invaluable. I love every typo–yours and mine–that show our humanness. I love the posts that are left up even though we have an impulse to take them back down after a response. I am eternally thankful for the people who admit to their jealousies and foibles and the hushed out side of humanity. You make me stop kicking myself so viciously. We all have our faults.

Helen Mirren admitted in an interview that I recently read (in People Magazine) that she was worried how the Queen would view her portrayal. “I had been invited to Buckingham Palace while I was making the film, but I turned them down because if the film became mortifying to the royal family, I didn’t want their mortification to be doubled by me turning up. If they invite me now, I’ll go. And if I get a steely stare, then that is what I get.” I don’t think she will get the steely stare that she fears–though I understand the impulse. We all want to be loved. We all want our work respected. Queen Elizabeth expresses that hurt over her unpopularity post-Diana’s death so eloquently in the film.

I think she did a wonderful job of showing the Queen as human. As a woman who argued with her former daughter-in-law. Who thought it was best to internalize emotions and not dump them on other people. While the world was mourning Diana, the Queen was concerned with her grandsons. And rising above the difficult relationships she had with her son and former daughter-in-law until the end. At the end of the day, she is simply another person whose car breaks down now and again. Who owns a cell phone and sleeps with clips in her hair to keep her curls crisp upon awakening. The movie showed her as a human, whereas the press portrays her as an entity. And I love humans. I love seeing their foibles and accomplishments.

I leave 2006 with a large thank you to everyone who had read the blog thus far. And a thank you to everyone who has commented and shared their point-of-view. I still have so many thoughts brewing to carry me through not only 2007, but well beyond. Can you imagine if your kids grow up to find themselves faced with infertility and I’m still yawning on about infertility. In my day, we didn’t have these fancy Follistim pens! We had to mix our own vials. In my day, we didn’t have implantation information the moment it happened! We had to wait two whole agonizing weeks to find out results.

A thank you to everyone who writes blogs–all the blogs in my blogroll and an advance thank you to the people who will be added this upcoming year as they begin their own blogs.

My New Year Resolution: To listen and read without judgement. When I feel judgement creeping into my mind, looking at the picture of Helen Mirren taped onto the refrigerator and remembering her portrayal of the Queen. Her stiff upper lip, yes. But the way her lips also trembled slightly when she admitted how hurt she was by the way she was judged. And with that lack of judgement, a sense of temperment when leaving comments or blogging about something I read in the newspaper that upsets me. Perhaps not when it comes to huge entities such as insurance companies, but certainly when it comes to individual people.

Happy New Year. May 2007 be a wonderful year.

Sunday to Monday seems like a huge step this upcoming week. It’s just a date on the calendar, yet we take the turning of the year so seriously. It’s a chance to reboot. It’s a chance to start over so to speak. To change something. When I was little, I used to write out the same poem every year on December 31st and slip it into an envelope. I liked to watch my handwriting change. I would make envelopes for myself to open in the future with far-off dates like 1996 listing everything I hoped to have accomplished by that year. By 1996 I wanted to have a harem of boyfriends. I coveted wall-to-wall carpeting. I believed my life would only be complete if I had a white bunny rabbit named Snowball. I wanted to be a mommy. A mommy at 22 somehow sounded right to an eight-year-old.

I have one husband. I prefer hardwood floors. If I ever had a rabbit, I doubt I would name it Snowball. The desire to be a mommy is the only thing that hasn’t changed (though it certainly didn’t happen in my twenties…).

I hope everyone closes out this year with peace. I hope that 2007 turns out to be the best year yet. I wish everyone ease in keeping resolutions who makes them.

And now the blogs.

My prize for best Christmas post goes to DrSpouse at What am I? She talks about viewing the service as a woman experiencing infertility and the thoughts flitting through her mind. She discusses the connection between birth and Christmas and ends with this thought: “But Christmas is also so much about birth – and I have to remind myself to skip ahead to other parts of the story, where we are adopted as children of God, who are equal with birth children. And also that Joseph, crucial in Christ’s lineage, was his adoptive father. Somewhere, tonight, a child is born. Maybe to us.” It was just a gorgeous post.

Nica at Life as a Sandwich has a very funny post lamenting all the baby showers she has attended and calls for someone to throw her an infertility shower. Why do we only shower people with love and attention for celebratory life events such as weddings or impending motherhood? Where are the infertility showers where friends provide the couple in need with money for fertility drugs or adoption? Where are the friends giving the couple a day of relaxation to escape all the stress of infertility? Nica may be on to something… Why are we only gathering to celebrate or mourn? There are too many in-between times, the stressful times where we could benefit from people gathering around and comforting the couple. It’s food for thought.

Shlomit at You’re Still Young! had a funny thought that she passed along to her husband, Sariel, during their last insemination. It was a question that we probably all have asked at some point in our life. We’re going on a date tonight and returning to the restaurant of our first date in honour of Shlomit’s question… (hint: you need to click on over to see the question and laugh).

Lastly, Stacie at the Twinkies cleared up a lot of confusion this week and put my idea of natural is nice to shame. In case you were vying for the title, Stacie has revealed that she is the most natural mother. Ever. I am fairly certain that she also hums as she cleans the house (both babies in tow) and deers and rabbits smile at her kitchen window a la Snow White. It’s a very funny post reminding us of the crappiness of the Mommy Wars.

Happy New Year!

We have a word in Hebrew–b’shert–and what it literally means is that it was fate. It was meant to be. People usually use it to discuss their soul mate–the person they were meant to marry–but read enough infertility or adoption blogs and you’ll see the same thought popping up when it comes to children. The child you ultimately parent is the child you were meant to have.

And I love this idea. I love the idea that the waiting was worth it. That it was all a process to bring you to the child you were meant to have in your life. It makes the whole journey worth it because it was all part of the whole–you had to go through that heartbreak, you had to go through those treatments, you had to go through those anxious nights waiting to get your referral, you had to go through all the failed cycles before you realized third party reproduction was the path you needed to take. All those things led you to the person you were meant to hold at night after a bad dream and put bandaids on her knees after a fall. To quote Ben Folds: “Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls brought me here.” The child who made you a parent is the child you needed to wait for in order to become a parent.

You can’t hurry love.

No, you just have to wait.

She said, Love don’t come easy.

It’s a game of give and take.

The only place where I begin to trip over this idea concerns loss. How does loss fit into the bigger picture? When a spouse dies and a person remarries, no one dismisses that first husband or wife by saying, “their death needed to happen in order to bring this person to their b’shert.” And no one would even say that about a child who had lived for a short period of time: “oh, sweetie, it had to happen in order to bring you to your new child.” Somehow, we know this would not be appropriate or helpful. But people often use this idea to explain pregnancy loss.

“If you hadn’t gone through all of that (pregnancy loss is usually reduced to the word “that” in these cases), you never would have met this child that you were meant to have.” And I can’t accept that. I see the two events as completely unconnected because I must in order to not reduce the loss. Am I grateful for the children I have? Of course. I could not imagine my world without them. But I also miss and mourn the children who weren’t born without believing that they needed to die in order to bring me to the twins. Their lives are completely separate–not small stepping stones to bring me to my b’sherts. They are like the first spouse who dies–b’shert in and of himself/herself. Death and the loss of a b’shert creates a space for fate to step in once again and create destiny.

You can’t hurry love.

No, you just have to wait.

You got to trust, give it time.

No matter how long it takes.

To paraphrase Eytan Fox, I’m trying to convince the convinced. You all know that words like “it was meant to happen” do not comfort when it comes to loss. They prickle and they stick in your mind like a cactus needle even months after they’re spoken. It is impossible to see how a person’s death–whether they were born yet or not–was necessary in order to bring about another step on your journey. It’s a very self-focused point of view: that others only exist insofar as how they affect my path. But how to convince the unconvinced that these words hurt terribly? That while you are either still waiting or are eternally grateful for the children you have, you miss the others along the way: the IVF cycles that didn’t take, the miscarriages, the late losses, the adoption reversals, the surrogates who fell through.

How long must I wait?

How much more can I take?

Before loneliness will cause my heart;

Heart to break?

No, I can’t bear to live my life alone.

I grow impatient for a love to call my own.

But when I feel that I, I can’t go on

These precious words keeps me hangin on.

And back to the original thought: b’shert. If it is truly destiny, I can accept that I can’t hurry it along. It will happen when it is meant to happen and the only thing I can do is to keep plugging away so that I’m keeping all paths open to chance. And it’s that part of the idea that things are meant to be that I love. That makes the waiting bearable even when it feels so heavy that it may crush me beneath its weight. Beneath its wait.

With help from the great Diana Ross (and Mr. Ben Folds)