Being the good wife, I waited until my husband came home at 8:30 p.m. to eat dinner last night. No problem–I’ll just tape Grey’s Anatomy. EXCEPT THE VCR BROKE! We only discovered this at 9:45–too late to discover Mark and Addison’s deep dark secret. If you watched, what happened last night?

I swear, knowing the indiscretions of Addison Shepherd will help me get the Friday Blog Roundup out sooner.

Apparently, it starts back around age two.

Two days ago, I’m looking out the window. It’s dark and damp and threatening to rain. When I comment that I don’t think we’ll be able to play outside today, my daughter glances outside and says, “it’s not dark out; it’s nice out. Not dark. It’s nice. It’s nice, Mommy. Okay, Mommy? It’s not dark; it’s nice.”

Really?

Last week, I sat down on the kitchen floor and started crying. My daughter came up and stared at me. Finally, after a minute of watching me cry, she tells me: “Mommy is happy! So happy!”

I know one thing that drives another person to minimize your pain or provide a new story about your emotions: when someone loves you, they don’t want to see you hurt. Rather than allowing the couple to mourn after a loss, they’re immediately told stories that are either comparative in nature (do you remember our neighbour back at the old house? Well, her daughter miscarried at 14 weeks) or minimizing in nature (at least it happened early. It’s not as bad as it could have been). You’re told to be thankful for what happened vs. what could have been. People want you to get through the mourning process as quickly as possible and seem surprised if you’re still speaking about the loss long after the fact.

I know another reason why we do it. Mourning is uncomfortable: not just for the couple experiencing the loss but for the people who need to comfort them. Msfitza had a post this week about seeing a woman she knows at Costco. The woman, who knew about her loss, did an I-can’t-see-you maneuver where she suddenly became deeply interested in a stack of books when their oversized shopping carts passed one another. I like to call this move the you-just-suffered-a-terrible-loss-and-I-don’t-know-what-to-say-so-I’ll-pretend-that-I-don’t-see-you (or a YJSATLAIDKWTSSIPTIDSY. Which shouldn’t be confused with the LBWWMTDASADFFIHAOTAC).

And it’s not just pregnancy loss–we do this to each other over anything that falls into a sad-inducing category. Divorce, break-ups, job loss, bankruptcy, death. There’s always someone there in your life who tries to convince you that it’s not that bad. That it could be worse. That you shouldn’t be feeling sad right now; or, if you have to feel sad, you shouldn’t feel that sad. Or if you have to feel that sad, you shouldn’t feel it for too long. Think back to any time in the past six months that you’ve been having a crappy day for no reason. I’m sure if you expressed that idea to someone, they gave you a sympathetic, “I’m so sorry” and then immediately changed the topic with the hope of changing your mood.

Because people don’t like to see other people sad. Sadness is just one of those emotions that needs fixing. Like anger. If you’re angry, you need to fix it. You need to get out of that emotion. And if you’re sad, you need to fix it. It seems like the only emotion that doesn’t need fixing is happy. No one tries to get you to stop being happy. Which would lead one to believe that we need to be happy 100% of the time or as close as we can get to that emotion in order for other people to be comfortable. People understand if you’re sad for a period of time after a loss, as long as they also know that you’re going to be working yourself back to that happy place. People who don’t work themselves back to that happy place tend to be shunned in our society.

There just isn’t a revered spot on the guest list for the party of life for the widow who has been in mourning for three years or the infertile woman who is miserable or the middle-aged man who suffers from depression. They’re invited to the party because they have to be invited to the party. But secretly, most of the other guests are hoping that they snap out of it. That they don’t bring them down. Because it’s an uphill battle, fighting to be happy all the time. Fixing all of those emotions to only read happy. And it’s hard to be around a person who still wants you to be mourning with them. Or who needs not to be cheered up, but be allowed to experience what they’re experiencing. It’s not that they don’t want to move away from mourning–but not everyone finds that door out of hell.

Which leads to my question–if we know how crappy it feels when someone is trying to change our emotions for us (through stories, through goading–I mean, what is it with people telling those who have just suffered a pregnancy loss that they need to try again?), why do we do it to other people? Why does this phenomenon exist at all if we truly understand that golden rule: do unto others as you would want done unto you?

Hmmm…sorry that I can’t muse on this any longer. I need to go convince some people that their feelings aren’t valid and they should just be happy by now…

Back to the quote I introduced a few days ago…

The funny thing is that when I wrote that down, I was in the first month of trying to conceive. We were near Deep Creek Lake and we passed a church on the way to dinner that had this quote from Alain de Botton. I wrote it down because the journey I thought I was on in that moment was the journey to motherhood. I thought I was going to get pregnant on the first try (I mean, seriously, how could you not believe that in the way they freaked us out in high school about practicing safe sex?). In fact, I had a pregnancy week-by-week book with me on the trip so I could look up what I would be feeling in the third week of pregnancy. Yes, I truly mean the third week as in before the implantation that never happened.

So what ultimately was my journey? Trying to conceive with infertility being an obstacle? Or was motherhood the journey with trying to conceive merely the turnstile at the start of the path?

Why did this quote stop me when I found it on my palm pilot? Certainly, I think we can all agree that there are thoughts that came from my journey. An entire blog full of thoughts. But de Botton was speaking literally about travel in this quote. His book is about “how we imagine places before we have seen them” (or…perhaps…babies before we’ve seen them?). And “the soothing effects of train travel and its ability to stimulate the imagination and help us work through problems.”

Is it that simple; just hop on a train and you’ll be able to see your entire world an an entirely new light? You’ll find the solution to whether it’s more sensible to adopt or try one more IVF cycle. Or whether you should try the testicular biopsy or move to donor sperm. I think too many times, we take our troubles with us to a new location. All we’ve done is move places with our baggage–we haven’t actually unpacked it. And if we were to open the bag and unpack it, we would see the same damn sweaters and jeans that we had worn back home–just now in a new space. Folded into a new, temporary drawer.

Do I think that I have come up with new ideas while on a journey? Of course. I can think of plenty of times when I’ve had the luxury just to stare out the car window for a solid hour, not distracted by doing anything other than thinking. And I’ve come up with story ideas or ways to word a letter or job prospects. But I’ve never made the big decisions that way. A good long cry is the midwife of those thoughts. And when a solution to a problem has been discovered on a trip, I’ve never felt like it was the act of traveling that created it. When a new understanding has occurred while I’m away from home, it’s simply because it was the right time. My mind was finally able to accept the answer that had been buried in those twisty coils of tissue for probably months without recognition.

I’m hearing de Botton’s smarmy voice in my head saying, “uh uh Melissa. You are too simple. Think back to your travels. The first Clomid was taken on the road. The first Follistim injection was given in a hotel room. All the turning points have been away from home. I am…how do you Americans say….correct.”

Maybe dear Alain has a point.

This is also the point where you add in your favourite church signs…

Though we were supposed to light the candle at 7 p.m., we went an hour early so the kids could be involved in the process. I spent an hour of the afternoon trying to find a small candle holder. In the end, we wrapped one of our Shabbat candlesticks in foil and placed a single candle on the counter.

“Shabbat!” my daughter exclaimed, even though it was Sunday night. “Challah! Eat challah. Light candles. Two candles. Shabbat!”

“Actually,” I told her, “it’s not Shabbat. We’re going to light one candle. It’s a different day where we remember something…different.”

Thus began an APM–an awkward parenting moment. One of those conversations that you wished would go in a certain way, but you have no idea how to take it there. You wish the words would magically come into your mouth. Or that your children would just understand without speaking the difficult ideas you need to impart. The birds and the bees. Why bad things happen to good people. Death.

“Sometimes,” I said, putting on my lightest voice so that I didn’t do grave psychological damage to her two-year-old mind, “babies aren’t born. You know how you came out of Mommy’s tummy? Well, sometimes there are kids who don’t come out of the tummy.”

“Shabbat!” she called out again.

“And…” I said, turning towards my husband and realizing as he sat there staring at me that I was probably going to be the one doing the sex talk down the line, “we’re lighting this candle for those babies. And giving them a voice. What do you think the babies would say if they were born?”

“Waaaah,” my daughter informed me.

I looked at my son who nodded seriously. “Waaaah.”

“Well, there are Mommies and Daddies who miss hearing their baby cry. And they wish their baby was here like you are so that their baby could cry.”

“I say, ‘don’t cry babies!’,” my daughter told me. “Don’t cry Mommies. Don’t cry Daddies.”

“Sometimes Mommies and Daddies need to cry,” my husband reminded her. “It’s okay if they cry.”

“Before we had you,” I told them, feeling both like this moment was not going in any direction I wanted it to go AND feeling like this was exactly what needed to happen as my daughter serenaded us with Baa Baa Black Sheep apropo of nothing, “we had other babies who weren’t born, so we’re going to light this candle for them. And for all the other babies in this world who weren’t born. So we’re lighting this candle for Zoe. And for the babies who we never named but were lost in the months of November, February, and March. And for the blighted ovum who was supposed to be your triplet.”

And that’s when I felt my voice started to break. I’m so grateful that we have these children. And I’m grateful that they act like two-year-olds. And I’m grateful that they have each other. But how can you not miss the kids who could have been when you see what was in front of you? Our losses were so early; too early to be named. And, for me, too early to be missed. I was always focused on next, next, next and trying again and figuring out what was wrong. And I was so sad in the moment. I once threw my glasses on the floor because I was so surprised to see the blood on my panties. But after a day or two of mourning, I was thinking about what we were going to do different that cycle. And lighting that candle made me think about those babies that never happened. That never implanted or never stayed implanted or never grew.

After they were in bed, my husband and I were lying on our bed, his head on my chest. “Were you sad tonight?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he answered quietly.

I’m glad there is this day on the calendar that forces you to remember. Because sometimes, we get so goal focused that we forget the people we passed on the path. And I loved remembering them tonight–not the sad moments when everything was over, but the heart-racing excitement I felt when I thought something was finally starting.

Last night, I was scrolling back through old notes in my palm pilot (didn’t that just make me sound like a businesswoman? A smart, sassy businesswoman? Instead of a woman with a stain on her shirt?) and I found the usual–old shopping lists, reminders to look up something on the Web, and lessons learned from reading church signs. Don’t we all write them down when we get to the next traffic light? Please don’t tell me that I’m the only person with a palm pilot full of pithy sayings from billboards.

But this one felt very fitting and I wanted to throw it out there: Journeys are the midwives of thought (by Alain de Botton).

What does that mean to you and your personal journey?

P.S. There is money involved for the first person who finds two midwives named Journey and names their child “Thought.” I’m just throwing it out there.