Obviously, wishes have been on my mind as of late.

At the same time, the kids have recently become obsessed with the Shel Silverstein book, The Giving Tree. Reading it reminds me of a tree back at camp called the Wishing Tree. The camp legend went that when lightning struck the tree, it split it down the middle and imbued it with the power to grant each child one wish every summer. You ran down the path, jumped through the tree, and kissed the air while you were traveling over the split trunk. All the while thinking about your wish.

When I was eight-years-old, I fell in love with a boy at camp. He was older–12–and he played trumpet. We were in the camp play together. I was a tree. A non-speaking role. He was the ecologist. He saved my life when the Queen’s men wanted to chop down the trees. We went on a camping trip together. We were an hour late leaving for the trip because the boy had to have his trumpet lesson. My sister told me that this made him a loser. She was pissed that the bus had to wait for him and that we had to wait on the hot steps until he finished his lesson. I used my wish on him anyway.

At the end of the summer, I wished that when I grew up, the boy would kiss me. After I made my wish, my friends and I were hanging out on the steps and someone took a photograph. We were talking about what we wished for that summer. When I told them that I had wished that the boy would kiss me, my friends all told me that I had wasted my wish. He was 12 and I was 8. A 12-year-old would never pay attention to an 8-year old. I still have that photograph of myself with my friends, looking a little sad as I processed that they were probably right. I should have used my wish on something else.

I continued to go to this camp for four more years because you could go to this camp until you were 12. I returned when I was 15 to be a CIT (counselor in training). I was stuck helping out in woodworking. No one wanted to work in woodworking because the counselor was a 50-something year old man who loved carpentry a little too much. And hated kids a little too much. In a strange twist of fate, this man would arrive to teach science at the same school where I taught a few years ago. The woodworking man pops up in my life at the strangest times–all unrelated.

My second summer, the headmistress of the camp decided I paid my dues in woodworking and moved me to the music and drama unit–which was considered the best unit. There was a new counselor there named Eric. He was very cute and he went to Oberlin, which was where I wanted to go to college. We hung out the first two days of camp getting the room ready for the campers and attending meetings. On the third day, he asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. We went down to the stream and jumped stones across until we were sitting in the center of the stream with the water passing around us.

When we were walking down to the stream, he referred to a patch of land as the alligator swamp. It was a nickname only campers around my age knew. When we sat down on the rock, I asked him how he knew it. He told me that he had been a camper at the camp. We played a long game of “oh…do you remember…” and he asked me if I remembered this camp play that Dan, the counselor, had written. I told him I had been in the play and I asked him which part he played. He told me he was the ecologist. I told him I had been one of the trees that he saved. He leaned over at that moment and kissed me.

Up until that moment, I didn’t know that he was the same little boy who had played the trumpet and made us late for the camping trip.

My wish came true albeit eight years later. We dated that summer and through the fall. After we broke up, we remained friends for years and worked together for many more summers. We still keep in touch from time to time. He lives in California and he composes music and teaches music lessons. But that’s not really the point of the story.

It doesn’t matter that many of my other wishes didn’t come true. The way I reason away some of those wishes is that fate KNEW that those wishes sucked. The tree knew that if I got what I wanted, I would actually be miserable. I just didn’t know it at the time. So the tree didn’t grant those wishes. He just let out a tree-like sigh and thought, “better luck with your wish next year, sweetie.” And I walked out of the woods none-the-wiser, thinking my wish may come true just like it did with Eric.

But you get the freakin’ power of this tree: eight years and the tree brought me together with this fantastic person that I still believe I was meant to know at that time in order to bring me to my current life. And it stands to reason that if it granted me one of my many wishes, it may grant me another.

Which means it’s time for a little trespassing.

I mean, if you lived only ten miles or so from this tree, wouldn’t you sneak onto the campus one weekend and go running through the split tree and kiss the air? Wouldn’t you go and wish for the ultimate wish–the one you know the tree would grant you because it’s a damn good wish? Would you risk having to explain to a security guard why you’re running around on a private campus and tell them the story about the wishing tree? Knowing, full well, that only a cruel security guard would hear this tale about delayed love (in so many forms. Truly. So. Many. Forms. Of. Delayed. Love) and not tell you to run, jump into the air, blow a kiss. And wish.

I’m being optimistic and calling this tour one…

Book: The Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Adoption
Author: Elizabeth Swire Falker
Post Date: January 10th
End Date: January 15th

The Barren Bitches Book Brigade List
(click on any of the links below on January 10th to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Falker’s new book. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on January 9th. The list is currently open)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Mel)
Serenity Now! (Serenity)
Are We There Yet? (TeamWinks)
Waiting for a Miracle (GLouise)
Baggage That Goes With Mine (Baggage)
Sticky Feet (Jamie)
Round is Funny (M)
My Reality (My Reality)
Still Passing Open Windows (Carlynn)

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 January 9th.

How the book tour works:

(1) let me know you want to participate by emailing me at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will add your blog to this list so other people know to head over there on January 10th.

(2) read Falker’s Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Adoption.

(3) write a review for the book–your reactions, your feelings, what you learned, etc.

(4) post it on your blog on January 10th (that gives you 6 weeks to read and write over the holidays). People can find your review via a link from this list.

(5) read everyone else’s post on their blog (oh–and this is why you can’t post before the 10th. I don’t want people influenced by what other people write. It should be your own reaction).

(6) Falker will read the reviews and answer comments and questions in an additional post that I’ll put up on my blog on January 15th. I’ll go all Barbara Walters and interview her, but without the crying. Since, you know, making people cry isn’t really my thing.

What? You’re reading this after January 15th and you missed the book tour? Weigh in with ideas for the next big book tour. If this one goes well, we’ll start another one soon.

So, I stole this idea from the great Ann Douglas. For her new sleep book, she invited people to read the book and then everyone posted a review on the same day. Get it–an online book tour! She could then post comments under the review to respond to points or questions and she posted about the book tour on her own blog. Serenity and I totally want to do this for Elizabeth Swire Falker’s new adoption book so I wrote her and proposed the idea and she said yes.

As you all know, I think her first book–the Infertility Survival Handbook–is just about the best all-inclusive, getting-you-started-with-infertility-information book out there. Great tone, great information, great writing. Falker has been through practically every test and procedure so her writing comes from her own experience. She also adopted her son, which leads us to her new book: The Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Adoption.

It’s subtitle is “everything you need to know about domestic and international adoption.” It begins with helping you decide which type of adoption you want to pursue and then walks you through every step of the process. And the best part? Not only is Falker an adoptive parent herself, but she’s an adoption lawyer. So she knows the whole system.

So who would benefit from reading this book right now and participating? Anyone who has considered adoption but wants more information, anyone who has adopted and can talk about their experience, and anyone who wants to be more informed about adoption to support their fellow stirrup queens and sperm palace jesters. Think about how nice it would be if you were doing treatments and an outsider took the time to read a book about infertility so they could read your blog with that background knowledge. And this is one last way you could get involved for National Adoption Awareness Month (November). Read a book, write a review, and comprehend adoption blogs on an entirely new level.

How the online book tour works: (1) let me know you want to participate by posting a comment on this post or emailing me at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will create a list of everyone who is participating so people will know to go over to your blog on the review day and read your review. (2) read Falker’s Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Adoption. (3) write a review for the book–your reactions, your feelings, what you learned, etc. (4) post it on your blog on January 10th (that gives you 6 weeks to read and write over the holidays). People can find your review via a link from the big book tour list post on my blog. (5) read everyone else’s post on their blog (oh–and this is why you can’t post before the 10th. I don’t want people influenced by what other people write. It should be your own reaction). (6) Falker will read the reviews and answer comments and questions in an additional post that I’ll put up on January 15th. I’ll go all Barbara Walters and interview her, but without the crying. Since, you know, making people cry isn’t really my thing.

So it’s sort of like a big, bloggity book club from the comfort of your own living room. With the author dropping in to answer questions and respond. And if this works, we can even work backwards and choose books from the book list that people love and try to set up something more regular that we do every other month or so.

Let me know if you’re interested in joining and I’ll create a book tour list of blogs where the reviews will appear.

I received an email from RESOLVE in September giving links to a study that is examining “general social attitudes among individuals who consider themselves childless and individuals who consider themselves childfree after infertility” for a doctoral dissertation. At first glance, I took the two words this way: childless meant that you were still searching for a child but were currently unsuccessful in that pursuit and child-free meant that you had consciously decided to exit infertility by not pursuing a child.

But this article* in the Washington Post today opened a new idea: child-free can also mean that it was a choice prior to any factor (infertility, family building when single, et al) and childless can mean that it is a loss of parenthood due to an extenuating factor.

Your thoughts on what these two words mean to you (as well as the article in general…)

Recently, I was speaking with an older woman who had never had children once she was diagnosed with infertility. She admitted that one of the side effects of living child-free after infertility was that she missed out on the strong female friendships that come hand-in-hand with motherhood.

And it was an interesting thought because I don’t necessarily feel close friendships with women due to motherhood (and I also thought, fan-fucking-tastic, yet another thing that I’m doing wrong in regards to things seemingly connected to my uterus). Beyond the fact that I had strong female friendships long before I even started tryign to conceive, my best friend is not yet a mother (nor is she currently trying). And I don’t feel very connected to the other random women on the playground who all seem to chat easily with one another while they push their kids on the swings. Perhaps it’s just because I have twins that my concentration is solely focused on the two children who are trying to run in opposite directions and I don’t have time to strike up a conversation about Huggies vs. Pampers. But I don’t think that’s quite the case either.

I do have many friends who are mothers just due to the simple fact that many women in their thirties are mothers. I often feel closest with those who have been through infertility and pursued a path similar to mine that resulted in a child whether it was through straightforward treatments, third-party reproduction, or adoption. I also feel close with mothers of twins, but, again, it is usually women who have twins due to fertility drugs more than women who have naturally-occurring multiples. BUT I also have many friends who don’t have children at all. Either because they’re still pursuing treatments or because they haven’t started trying.

At the end of the day, I think there is definitely a line drawn in the sand–and I say sand because I think it is something that is shifting and impermanent; something that sometimes seems to be washed away and then reappears again–between those with children and those who do not. And perhaps it becomes even stronger later in life when those who are going to have children have had children and it is clear who will not be directly parenting a child in this life time. But truly, is motherhood the key to strong female friendships? Or reaping the support of the community by consciously living child-free? What happens to the women who don’t align themselves with any community and choose instead to simply live life without looking back on the roads not taken? Is this woman correct–are the bonds of female friendship loosened to slack until they fall away completely?

Her story gave me a lot to think about. About how we go about forming friendships: whether we look for people similar to ourselves, whether it’s just random circumstance, whether it’s other factors: socio-economic similarities, education similarities, marital similarities. And what are my strongest friendships–and why.

* Warning about the article–the author is child-free after the stillbirth of her daughter. I wanted those who have lost a child to know this before being confronted with the information inside the article.

The same google search keeps showing up on my sitemeter: is IVF selfish? I wish there was a way to respond to those people directly–just send them a quick note to set the record straight.

An Open Note to People Who Search About the Selfishness of IVF:

Hey, my name is Melissa, and I just wanted to let you know that IVF isn’t selfish. Why? Um…because at the end of the day, you’re doing it entirely for another person. Yes, you get to be a parent, but being a parent can go in many different directions. You can become someone’s mother and they can grow up and move away and never speak to you again. Motherhood does not guarantee that a child is going to remain with you forever. So…yes, IVF isn’t selfish because the person who benefits the most is the child. Who is being born. Instead of being just another unfertilized egg or a school of sperm.

What? That’s not good enough? You think that it’s selfish to ask other people to help you while you put your body through hell so you can have this child? Do you think people who go through cancer are selfish? Or people who lose a limb in an accident? They go through a period of time when they need help. That’s the beauty of the human race–we can reach out to one another and ease each other’s journey by working together. And infertility is a disease that cannot be cured–it can only be treated. And while it may not be “life threatening” in the same way that cancer is life threatening, it is certainly life-style threatening. And it causes depression. And beyond all that, at a most basic level: it’s okay to need help. There, I said it. And the people who help you will in turn rely on you one day–they just don’t know it yet. But that’s what happens: things happen that you can’t predict. So take the help. And give it back later. It will all come full circle.

What? Are you kidding? You’re still not convinced? Well…IVF isn’t selfish because you’re not wasting money. You’re spending it to (1) treat a disease and (2) raise a child. It’s just that the cost of your child is sky-high before the child is even born. So just consider it an additional child-related expense. It’s the only way to rationalize it or you’ll go crazy thinking about the cost.

IVF isn’t selfish if your partner doesn’t want to try it and you do. It’s not selfish to want to be a mother (or, if you’re male, to be a father). And IVF isn’t selfish if you’re male and you want to do it, but your wife is drawing the line at needles. It isn’t selfish to want to be a father. And it isn’t selfish of her to want to try other routes to parenthood. You both need to be on the same page to get through IVF. Because it is hard. Emotionally and physically. But at the end of the day, it all goes back to your original question: selfishness. And none of these things are selfish–either doing IVF or choosing not to do IVF.

Listen, in a perfect world, you two would go into the bedroom and have some sex and be cuddling a newborn nine months later. But that’s not the way it’s going to go for you and it’s not the way it’s going for me. And you deal. Using some form of ART isn’t selfish–it’s just the path you have to take in order to get what everyone else gets easily.

At the end of the day, no one else is going to be able to convince you. I have a feeling that you know this. But you’re googling it because someone has scattered some seeds of self doubt in your mind. And that’s really crappy of them. And I’m sorry that you’re going through that. But IVF isn’t selfish. It’s actually one of (because there are a bunch of equally unselfish and highly wonderful paths you could take) the ultimate gifts a mother can give: life. And going through hell to give that life. That takes a bold woman. And a strong woman. And a kick-ass woman. Not a selfish woman. There are no selfish women in the infertility world.

So ignore anything that people are telling you and get yourself in the stirrups. You can head over to my side bar and read a bunch of write ups about IVF and how to give yourself a sub-cue or an IM injection. And stop searching the Web for proof to back-up an idiot’s words (choose the correct apology: (1) oh…the idiot was your husband? I’m sorry. All due respect. (2) oh…the idiot was your wife? I’m sorry. All due respect. (3) you’re the idiot who is questioning whether it is selfish? I’m sorry. Maybe go back to the top and read again?). You need to save your strength for the cycle.

Good luck!

Check back and let us know how it goes!

Love,
Mel