Some people were concerned over the ChickieNob wondering if she had ever seen Befana in a toy store, purchasing toys for other children and looking sad.* I’m not too concerned that she believes that all people without children live grey lives filled with continual sadness.  She has plenty of child-free adults in her life who show her a wide range of emotions.  And I think that yes, if we were to see Befana in a toy store, she’d probably be pretty sad.  She has been experiencing infertility for over 2000 years.  She is in a continuous state of trying to fix a wrong so she won’t have to endure another year of infertility.  She delivers presents not because it brings her endless joy like Santa Claus. (Does it bring him endless joy?  I’m just assuming that.)  She does it to try to find Jesus.  In other words, the message sent is that when Befana finds Jesus, she will finally be released from this cycle in the same way that Tantalus waits to be allowed to drink water or Sisyphus wants to stop rolling his stone.  If she had just gone with the three wise men in the first place, she would have never experienced infertility.  Doesn’t that suck?

Reading up on Befana, I’ve found other versions of her story, but these were the two that the palazzo owner’s daughter told me, so those are the ones we’ve told the ChickieNob and Wolvog.

While I don’t have any concern over the ChickieNob wondering if someone who has been battling infertility for 2000 years might feel sad purchasing toys for other people’s children when she is trying monthly to have her own (24,144 cycles later, give or take one or two depending on the length of her cycle), I am concerned with two messages that seem to pop up continuously in both stories and oral response which is that infertility (or cancer or take your pick of something that may affect one person and not another) is a punishment.

Befana in the first version of the story is most definitely punished.  She didn’t take the time to go see baby Jesus, and now she needs to wander the world trying to find him.  How many times have we seen the story of infertility pop up that could be construed as punishment?  Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, so Rachel was left barren as a punishment.  Michal scorned King David and was left infertile… as a punishment.  There are, of course, other explanations one could argue rather than punishment, but the simplistic interpretation is that they’re punished with infertility since G-d “hardens their wombs.”

How long do you think it will take for the ChickieNob to internalize that idea?  To come to see infertility (or cancer or any other disease or situation) as punishment for cosmic wrongdoing?  I know I certainly silently asked myself what the hell I had done to find myself in the throes of infertility.

And I find the inverse of that message just as dangerous: that parenthood becomes a reward.  In the Bible, Sarah finally gets her child.  Rebekah too.  And Rachel.  And Hannah.  We talk about ourselves as being blessed when we reach parenthood after infertility, but the hidden message in that for everyone else is one of worthiness.  Not chance but something we either actively did or someone actively choosing us begs the question — why one person over another?  Because they wanted it more?  Because they prayed harder?  Because they were a better person?  I am much more comfortable when people discuss the use of prayer as a coping mechanism, something that brought them peace of heart when life was out of their control.  Because finding peace of heart is something within our control; whereas our health (within reason) or our ability to reproduce is outside our control and subject to an enormous dose of chance coming from a multitude of factors.

My view of life (and yours may differ) is that there is no person more worthy nor less worthy, no punished or rewarded.  Just people.  Trying to get through life and fulfill themselves along the way.  And within that, shit happens to them, sometimes because of something they’ve done or someone else has consciously done, but more often by chance.

And arching over all of that is G-d, who perhaps is somewhat more like a therapist, listening and helping and guiding you to answers, but not necessarily judging or admonishing and certainly not punishing.  The perfect therapist who helps you to be a better you simply by letting you talk out your thoughts in the form of prayer and arrive at the answers you need to find.  Who wears long skirts and whose office smells vaguely of cats.  A therapist who has given us her direct cell phone number in case of an emergency and is always willing to listen, but who can’t necessarily fix things with magic as much as we’d like her to be our safety net, always catching us.  It’s up to us, as individuals, to do the hard work of living.

So I am more worried about the ChickieNob processing that withholding parenthood from someone is a perfectly reasonable punishment.  Or that if a person does reach parenthood after infertility that they have been blessed, given a reward.  I don’t want the ChickieNob to process her existence as either the outcome of a punishment (because she wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had all those other failed cycles; it would be another baby) nor that she is a prize gained because I did something “right.”

Just that she is on earth by chance, just as I am on earth by chance, and what a great chance it is to get to be alive and experience all of this.

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This was the first time I can remember that the ChickieNob expressed uneasiness with the idea that her great joy (receiving toys) might possibly bring someone else sadness.  That she is only rich in toys on this holiday due to someone else’s reproductive poverty.  I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing that she stopped for a moment to consider in her excitement that her happiness may not be shared by even the person giving her the present much less people outside that exchange.

I’ve spoken before about my favourite Naomi Shemer poem, “Al Kol Eleh,”

One of my favourite songs is a Naomi Shemer poem called “Al Kol Eleh.”  That link contains a fairly dreadful translation, but I do love the opening stanza: Over the honey and the sting / Over the bitter and the sweet / Over our daughter, our baby / My God, watch over what is good.”

It’s this reminder; that you can’t have the honey without the bee, and with the bee comes the sting.  You can’t have the intense love you feel for a child without realizing the fragility of life; that death is just as much a possibility as living.

This idea is reflected in a Jewish wedding when the groom stamps (and breaks) a glass at the end of the ceremony.  It’s destruction amid a moment of great happiness.  It’s a reminder that the joy you’re feeling isn’t necessarily the bliss felt by everyone else around you, and there is still work to be done to end pain and suffering in the world.  It’s a reminder to not become blind in your happiness so that you stop noticing what is happening all around you.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to realize that even when we’re enjoying our happiness, it’s a good thing to pause for a moment and still notice and react to everything happening around you.  Not to temper your feeling of joy, but to be mindful of everyone else’s journey at the same time as you feel your joy.

* I love No Kidding in NZ’s post about it, musing on the defining of “a regular woman” and when did certain situations get marked irregular?  Though in the case of the ChickieNob, I believe what she meant by “regular” was the idea that Befana could be anyone around us, not looking magical per se but instead looking ordinary, since other questions were in regards to how one tells a magical being from a non-magical being.  She is very excited by the idea that she could be interacting with wizards and witches and just not know it.

It’s International Blog Delurking Week, which comes each year on the second week of January (or the first full week of the month).  It runs this year from the 6th until the 13th, so you have seven days to slither out of the reading closet and check in with an “I’m here” comment.

It is fairly easy. Leave a comment in the comment section below admitting that you’re here. You can simply raise your hand and meekly admit that you’re here with a simple, one-word “here” comment; or you can proudly raise your hand and tell us all a bit about yourself (my preferred method); or… in honour of all the Harry Potter posts lately, you can tell us which character you’re most like (see, I’m trying to make it easy for you by even providing a comment prompt).

The point is that I want to know about the people who read me, since there is a huge discrepancy between the number of readers in actuality and the number of readers I actually know are reading. Or a tongue-twister like that.

And that’s all you have to do to celebrate.

So (clears throat to nudge you along), who is here?

And just to answer my own question, I am a mix of three characters: Tonks, Mad-Eye Moody, and Narcissa.  Tonks because she’s a punk rock wizard in a pop music Ministry, Mad-Eye for the constant vigilance, and Narcissa because of the intensity she feels for her child.

But if I had to choose a book character I am really most like, it would be Bilbo Baggins: a reluctant adventurer who is happiest at home with her books and tea.

* I make a badge every year to mark the occasion, and I give you full permission to right click and grab it for your very own.

I am such a helicopter parent that I’m making antidotes for common poisons on each of my kids’ Pottermore accounts since they didn’t log out.  You know, just in case they encounter some tampered with mead in Book Six.  I like to be THAT careful.

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Every time the kids leave out the game Cariboo, I walk by it thinking, “he loves me; he loves my caribou.”  Who knows the origin of that WITHOUT Googling?  I’ll give you a hint: tight black turtleneck sweaters.

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The twins are having a slumber party tonight (as they do most weekends… and sometimes weeknights… we’re pretty lax about that).  They can’t sleep.  They’re waiting for Befana to come and bring them a present and candy.  They’ve written her a long note full of questions and left it on top of the picture of their shoes (instead of setting out our actual shoes, our family draws ornate pictures of shoes and places those pictures in the hallway, giving Befana more space to work with).

The ChickieNob said very quietly this afternoon, “It must be very hard for Befana to go into the toy stores to buy children presents when she can’t have a child of her own.  We may have even seen her in disguise when we’ve been in a toy store, pretending that she is just a regular woman and looking very sad.”

*******

The twins held a meeting by themselves to decide which questions should go on their list. They don’t want to annoy Befana, so they wanted to be conservative, asking only the most important questions to ensure that she’ll take the time to answer them. Namely, do all the magical folks chillax someplace together? There are many magical celebrities — Arwen, Hermione, Lucy — has she met any of them? Maybe at a party? Or just in passing when they’re off doing magical things?

*******

I love quiet Saturday nights.

The Russian adoption ban has obviously gotten a lot of posts in our community in the last few days, but I really want to highlight an op-ed that appeared in the Chicago Tribune this week.  Hopefully you’ll be able to read “To Russia, With Love” (because it seems to keep appearing and disappearing behind a paywall).  It is not about Americans adopting insomuch as it is about the inverse; that a problem exists that needs addressing and shutting off solutions is not solving the problem.

I started crying near the beginning:

Since the news of the ban on intercountry adoption of Russian orphans by American citizens, there have been many stories about Russian adoptees who grew up to be Eagle Scouts, National Merit Scholars and even a Paralympian. Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law banning the adoption of Russian orphans by American families, I’d like to share a different kind of a story, one that I assume is much more common. Mine is a story about lost mittens and sticky kisses and bicycle tires that seem to always need air. Nothing spectacular. Nothing newsworthy. Just the everyday life of an ordinary 5-year-old. But perhaps, given the circumstances of his early life, the life we have together is nothing short of extraordinary.

It’s all any of us want: to raise a child so that another human being can learn how to hug and pet a dog and sing a song and send more love into this world.  To replicate not ourselves but our hearts: our goodness (which is not to say that we don’t inadvertently also replicate our badness as humans; we shouldn’t be pollyannaish about this).  I know Toby, and she’s a good person.  And good people can teach goodness.  I am glad she wrote about the ordinary, which, as we know, is sometimes just in its mere existence extraordinary.

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The 2012 Creme de la Creme is up.  Obviously.  Since it’s after January 1st.  I really enjoyed writing it this year, and I’m sad that I’m not continuing to update it for a month, but I have to say that it’s a huge weight off my chest to have the whole thing up and done at the beginning of the month.  I will definitely do it again like this next year, so look for the list opening in October 2013 if you missed it this time.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “This is…” (Mrs. Spit)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Donating Hope has a great post about a conversation that took her by surprise.  It’s a tiny, quiet, unexpected moment that made me smile.

The Road Less Travelled has a moving post from New Year’s Eve.  Life is barreling by, moving at warp speed, and then suddenly, a moment is captured in a snapshot.  A game of tag around a car, which started out as laughter as she observed turned to tears as she realized “So much that we’ve missed out on.”  It’s a moment that takes the reader’s breath away.

Hope Floats Among the Cherry Blossoms has a reflection on her former self during a conversation, the one who was prepared to take the world by storm and was giddily plotting out a new life with her then-husband.  It’s a bittersweet reminder of how much we don’t know of what lies ahead at times, but it’s also a measure of her quiet strength.  I especially love these lines: “I know I am in a place of transition once again.  I just need to be patient.  It is okay to grieve what was lost, honor it and put it down again.”

Lastly, FrozenOJ’s Concentrated Life has a post about a failed cycle (as well as looking ahead to the next one) that manages to capture that internal monologue that runs through every treatment cycle.  The symptoms that get your hopes up and picking yourself up once they’re dashed, navigating a vacation and treatments (as well as laughing over the idea of relaxing on a vacation when infertility is nipping at your heels), the idea of taking off a cycle and all the problems that brings.  The post winds and turns like a conversation inside one’s head.

The roundup to the Roundup: Chicago Tribune op-ed about the closing of Russia’s international adoption program.  The Creme de la Creme is up.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 28th and January 4th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

8 times.  Which translates into 8 hours.  That’s how many times I tried making the Swelling Solution on Pottermore.  The first part would go fine.  Then I would leave it to brew for AN HOUR (yes, you read that correctly, a game that has an hour long lag time built into it, you know, to make it feel as if you’re really making a potion by raising the stakes).  I’d come back and try to do the second part, but Pottermore would tell me that I hadn’t stirred properly. (Or one time I got through the stirring only to be told that I didn’t heat it properly when I hadn’t even touched the temperature yet.)

There is a simple solution: click “come back later.”

In other words, do not leave the potion brewing up on the screen.  I did that 7 times.  Then I read on a message board that it’s a glitch and if I simply click “come back later,” I will be able to continue with the potion.

So I did this.  I clicked “come back later,” I went into the Great Hall for a bit, I dueled.  I came back when my phone timer went off, needed to wait another minute (and also figure out how open the potion again.  Click on the “potions” tab at the top, scroll down the potion you’re making, and click “brewing” to get back to the potion screen.), and then continued with the task.  I did the same thing I had done now 7 other times.  Only this time it allowed me to continue to the heating portion.  I completed that, waved my wand, and was awarded my points and my completed potion.  I was able to return to Chapter 5, enter Snape’s office, zoom in twice to get into the closet, and take the other ingredients.

At that point I realized that I had to do this all over again with the Polyjuice Potion, and I decided that I would cry if I had to spend any more time on Pottermore tonight.

I promise that I am going to stop talking about this site soon — the allure of it has definitely worn off since it is so damn glitchy — but I feel like I owe you this solution since I inadvertently led so many of you into the site, which feels as if I’ve led you to your doom at this point.  I definitely owe A, who had to listen to me grunt my way through the first three or four tries.  I definitely owe the lovely ladies of Twitter who responded to my hysterical pleas for help in the afternoon, especially @JackilynCBrown and @KarenMohler (who seriously has the loveliest daughter in the world).  I definitely owe the good people of Facebook who similarly tried to help me brainstorm how the hell one gets through this glitch.

So.

You will get to this point in Book Two.  You will need to brew a potion in order to get the ingredients out of Snape’s office (unless you’re in Slytherin.  By horrible coincidence, all Slytherins do not need to make the Polyjuice Potion since they can get into their own Commons Room.  The rest of us have to go through these additional steps.  Oh cruel world!).  And now you will know that all you need to do is close the potion while it brews and do something else.  Do not be like me and leave it open 7 times while it brews.

Please.

Don’t be like me.