children mentioned…

After four years of carefully keeping toy guns and visuals out of the house, my hard work was undone by the other children at school. It turns out that the Wolvog has learned to make a gun out of Legos and has been shooting at his sister which “hurts her feelings.” We had a lecture last weekend about why this isn’t acceptable.

“We are wholly anti-gun in this house. Your dad and I walked in the Million Mom March. If we weren’t such observant Jews, we’d be Quaker. Quaker! I am really really upset by this. We are pacifists in this house. Do you understand what this mean?” I asked them.

“Yes,” they both answered without pause.

“What does it mean?” I asked. “What does it mean to be a pacifist?”

“It means,” the ChickieNob told me coolly and confidently, “that we tease and annoy.”

“No,” said Josh. “That’s what it means to be a vegan. Pacifism is totally different.”

This is the 25th installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday-ish. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

So…early on in my IF blogging, I bonded with another blogger. We had a lot in common and lived in the same city. For a very long time we wrote each other every day, catching up on the trials and tribulations of our IF journey. Now she’s pregnant and I’m not. And I’m honestly thrilled for her. But she seems to be having issues with it. I understand the guilt that a successful pregnancy might bring up when those around you haven’t been successful but shouldn’t friendship transcend that? If I can deal with her success shouldn’t she? I’m not really sure how to bring this up with her without sounding clingy. I know that she has a lot on her mind right now but I’d love to share the positive parts of her journey with her just as I shared the hard times.

–Anonymous

I think most people are accustomed to seeing the inverse of that situation: the pregnant infertile forgets how difficult it can be to hear pregnancy news and the not-yet-pregnant infertile is grumbling about drowning in emailed sonogram pictures. It’s nice to hear the other side, except…er…you still have a problem on your hands. A problem that can be overcome with time if it falls into the first possibility or a problem that may not have a solution if it falls into the second possibility.

Here’s hoping that she has picked door #1!

The first possibility for her behaviour is survivor guilt. How the hell do you still communicate with someone who is back in the trenches when you’re in the comfort of your living room, away from the chaos of War of the Ovaries? Of course we know it can be done because friendships survive all the time. But still, it can be a bumpy transition from both being on the same side of the stirrups to having one person compiling layette items while the other is still spending their money on fertility drugs.

She may be worried that she’s inadvertently hurting your feelings simply by existing and unless you tell her otherwise, she will probably continue to assume this. Unless we help guide another person, they can only go with assumptions and perhaps that is what she thinks she would feel if the situation were reversed.

Behind door #2 is a very different possibility.

Her distance may not be sensitivity for you but could be a desire to distance herself from anything that came before this point–the disappointment, the depression, the physical pain, the financial choices. Just like the celebrities who claim they never had any help getting pregnant with their gorgeous fraternal twins, she may be looking to close the door on the infertile portion of her life and join with other pregnant women.

I once had a close friend from childhood that I drifted apart from once I moved back into town. I didn’t work hard to carve out time for her after awhile because all of our nights out had become a running monologue about her new boyfriend, though it was strange how she also pulled away from me at the same time. I was still the same and presented more of a salad approach to conversation–a little whining about my dating life here and a little whining about my apartment search there–whereas she was singing a single note–an aria of “Daaaaaaaaaaaaavid is wonderful and I am in loooooooooooooooove.”

I know why I pulled away (a girl can only look at so many pictures from a beach vacation that she didn’t attend), but my mother mused that my friend pulled away because I reminded her of the Laura she used to be. The Laura who never had a boyfriend (this was her first serious relationship), who never felt pretty, who never had things work out for her. With that thought in mind, I kept my distance and the few times we have reconnected since have supported my mother’s theory: she is happy to talk about the wonderful present, but never wants to remember the past. She pretends she doesn’t remember old friends we had in common and brushes off any talk of pre-2000 as unworthy of her attention. She isn’t on Facebook–a site that looks back probably a little too much for her tastes.

Your desire for friendship is rooted in soil that is very pure–the best dirt for friendships to grow. You truly love your friend when she’s down and you love her when she’s up and you never wanted her company solely because misery was screaming for it. If it had happened in the reverse order–if you were pregnant and she were still trying–you may see a very different behaviour just as my friend could be there for me until the thing she wished for most–a relationship–came true for her and suddenly, she didn’t want to be with me, not just because I didn’t have a boyfriend and therefore we had nothing in common, but because I reminded her of a time period that had been the source for a lot of emotional pain.

My advice is to remain rooted–to still be there as a support. Perhaps even point out the behaviour in case it is merely survivor guilt. You can help her get past the survivor guilt: tell her that you’ll guide the conversation so she’ll never worry that she’s talking about it too much or dumping information on you during a time that you’re unable emotionally to hear the details. If this isn’t helping the friendship and you still sense her straining away from you, let her go because that’s what a good friend does. Hopefully, she’ll miss you and return. And, if not, you know that you did your part as a good friend to let the other person do what they need to do in order to be happy.

Even if doing so absolutely sucks for you and you lose the friendship in the moment. Good friends always seem to have a way of returning to your life when the door has been left open for their return.

No really, the beauty of a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely.

Leave a comment in the reaction box below–only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday’s installment of Barren Advice.

Where I should be: the Western Ball with my cousin wearing the turkey cutlet gown and a pair of 3 inch black satin slides.

Where I am: at home.

My cousin wanted me to go to the ball with her and I have to tell you that even though I am completely anti-dressing up (which goes along with the anti-shaving-my-legs and the how-the-hell-do-you-apply-eye-make-up side of me) and it would have easily taken five hours of standing in freezing cold temperatures wearing nothing but a skimpy dress and I probably would have had my breasts fall off from frost bite, I really really really wanted to go to the ball. Not for the actual party, but just to be close to everything.

Seeing it on television made me want to go rub my cheek on the Mall grass.

Back in college and grad school, we had this Capitol step my friends and I always parked ourselves on for the Fourth of July fireworks. It was a small group that included two of my cousins, including this one who worked for Obama in Florida and came down for the Inauguration and held an extra ticket to the ball. Josh ruined this tradition the first year he joined us and told us that sitting in direct sunlight for hours in high humidity was just plain stupid. That shade was “better.” Seeing our old fireworks-watching spot on television today made my heart swell. Because the last time I sat in that spot was the Fourth of July prior to Bush becoming president. Isn’t that strange to think?

Seeing Obama speaking several stories above our step made me feel like we had reclaimed the space. You better believe we’re parking ourselves in direct sunlight again this July.

The twins loved watching the coverage, screaming out the names of buildings they recognized on the Mall or along the parade route (and I was corrected as always when I said it was the Air and Space Museum and the ChickieNob told me that it was the “Outer Space” Museum. I think she often wishes I wasn’t quite so dense). They kept saying, “what if Daddy looked out his window and saw Barack Obama?” and I had to explain that he was actually six blocks away and that city blocks are actually much larger than Lego blocks.

I think this moment summed up the day for me: I burst into tears when I saw the First Family walk through the doors at the end of the parade, sobbed and sobbed, reassuring the twins for the 90th time that these were happy tears. I finally cleaned myself up and then they showed a replay of the moment and I cried all over again. I cannot wrap my mind around it, the enormity of the whole day. Of the next four years.

I spoke to my cousin before she left for the ball and she sent some pictures from the morning. I am so bummed that I wasn’t on the Mall and I’m so glad that I watched Obama become president from my nice warm house. I can’t imagine damp cheeks would feel too good in this weather.

Welcome to the sixteenth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Anyone can jump aboard–it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
Author: Elizabeth McCracken
Start Date: December 4
Post Dates: January 20
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about future tours.)

About Exact Replica: A gorgeous memoir of the loss of her son and the time period beyond.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. Each day, you’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Exact Replica.)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters
The Fertile Infertile
The Road Less Travelled
Slaying, Blogging, Whatever…
I Won’t Fear Love
An Unwanted Path
Awful But Functioning
So It Goes
Aurelia Ann
TandCookies
Raspberry Chip
Destined to be an Old Woman with No Regrets
Clio
Baby Smiling in Back Seat
Life From Here
A Little Sweetness

Even if haven’t read Exact Replica…, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The current group chooses the next book. The 17th tour will be Kazuo Ishiguro’s, Never Let Me Go. It is impossible to describe the book without ruining the surprise and hopefully, you will not Google it or look up information before starting to read it because it is best if you go in knowing nothing, but in case you need a reason to read it, it has won a lot of awards and pretty much rocked my world.

The Details: Tour #17 will start January 21st. Participants will read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. On or before March 4th, everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to me. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you by March 6th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on March 9th. I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #17, leave a comment below or send me an email. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. The participants on the Kazuo Ishiguro book tour will choose the book for tour # 18. Happy reading.

You know how tearing off a band-aid is supposed to make it hurt less? I think I employed a similar technique to reading this memoir, sitting with it for two straight days to finish it quickly. Because it was so damn painful. It was also beautiful and eye-opening and moving and even, once in a while, funny. I read a lot of passages aloud to Josh, which, to me is a sign of the quality of writing in the book. The words were meant to be released from the page, in fact, the reader could not help but read them aloud.

On pages 79-80, McCracken speaks of losing a friend after Pudding’s death. I was struck by the way she wrote this passage because it clearly expresses her feelings about the conflict and about her former friend, replacing the silence that she used to break off the friendship (I suspect the friend in question has read the book by now). Have you lost friends during or after your infertility/loss/adoption? If so, how much of the blame for the loss do you place on communication and/or miscommunication? Does your former friend know how you feel about him or her and the loss of his or her friendship?

We formally only lost one friend and I always thought it was due to infertility–it was certainly their insensitivity that broke the camel’s back–but in speaking with them in passing this year, I wonder if we were just looking for an excuse to break ties with them. The husband is a cruel person in general and his wife is unfortunately sucked into his orbit.

Our former friend doesn’t know how we feel at all and I’ve often wondered why she hasn’t asked or pushed it. We are obviously still friends with other mutual friends (we saw them, for instance, at a mutual friend’s house) which should give them some indication that it’s them and not circumstances. In other words, there are people that we don’t see often not for any reason other than time and distance. But these people still see us with our mutual friends.

I wonder if she doesn’t ask because she secretly knows the answer.

I understand the author’s need to let us know at the beginning of the book that she had another (live) child. Generally, I liked her matter of fact tone and writing style. However, I sometimes felt like I was missing some of her raw emotions about the loss. She rushed over the first few months after the loss and hurried towards the second pregnancy, writing about the affect that the loss had on their lives through that second pregnancy. This could be because she did not want to dwell on it, or because she did get pregnant again so fast (within a year). I wondered what it would have been like to read the book not knowing about her successful second pregnancy (if that was even possible to separate out from the loss). Did you find that it took something away from the way you took her loss or took her book as a whole?

We’ve had a question similar to this with other books we’ve read: did knowing the final outcome make you read the book differently. Infertility and loss books tend to be written by those who are in a different emotional space–usually holding a child. I think some of that is because when you’re in the middle of the crisis, you’re not using your energy to try to understand the experience or explain it to others. You’re using your energy to breathe, put one foot in front of the other, keep moving. It’s only when you’re out of the crisis that you can begin to process what happened, set it down in words.

Of course, being out of the crisis of loss or infertility doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re holding a child. Joan Didion wrote a gorgeous book about loss (albeit a spouse) that is simply about loss. She isn’t in a different space in terms of situation though she was in a different space emotionally when she began writing the book.

I think the big difference is that time and resolution gives you the ability to look at the world with distance And books so seeped in emotions, the hurt of the experience, are difficult to read because they’re not accessible to the reader. They’re too personal. They’re too narrow. I think if she tried to write it while she was in the first days of grief, we would have a book about her grief. But, with that distance, she was able to write a book about her grief and have it speak in a larger sense to all grief.

So how to blogs differ? I think it’s mostly due to the brevity of the post. A book drags you in and keeps you in for a long period of time and if the author doesn’t speak outwardly towards the audience, they keep the reader ensconced in their own story rather than allowing their story to be a springboard to the reader exploring their own thoughts. With a blog post, the writing can be inward but length provides a cliff for the reader to run and jump off. Does that make any sense?

There are obviously books out there (Didion’s, for instance) where there isn’t a “happy ending.” I think McCracken could have written a book without having a baby. But she would have needed a level of resolution and perspective to convince the publisher that it was about the author and reader simultaneously rather than being just about the author. Unfortunately, I think publishers–like so much of the greater public–equate a baby with closure and a lack of baby with a lack of closure. Which isn’t the case.

Have you ever wished that someone wrote the book on the “lighter side of losing a child” (or IF, loss, insert your situation here)? Have you ever found that book? Have you found it in a blog? How have you used humor to work through times of grief?

Humour is such a hard line to walk. Of course it helps with the processing of the experience. For instance, I read A Little Pregnant, which I think of as one of the most humourous blogs out there and I think it walks on the same side of the line that McCracken successfully walks: it is funny without losing the weight of the experience. You do not think either author is making fun or dismissing emotions, but instead, there is a wistfulness; a feeling that if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry; a head nod to the ridiculousness of life.

On the other hand, I have read a book that was presented as a “lighter side of infertility and loss” book and it crossed that line from laughing with me to feeling like it was laughing at me. I felt like the author was completely dismissing the range of emotions inherent in infertility and pushing this one note. If you’re in the mood for that one note, it can be interesting to hear. For a bit. If you’re not in the mood for that one note, it can be grating and insensitive. The whole message I took from that book was “it’s no big deal.”

I think the point is that humour only works when the person isn’t trying. When humour is a natural extension of their being. Julie’s wryness and McCracken’s humourous moments can’t be borrowed. Either you express yourself well and can use humour to add depth or it becomes the opposite–a painful exercise that ends up pushing away the reader. McCracken does lightness very well because it is always balanced on the other side with the weight of the situation. I wouldn’t necessarily want to see someone without that level of skill try to balance the subject matter.

Jump along to other blogs discussing An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by scrolling up to the post above this one. Join along for our next book: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.