When I lived in the West several years ago, my aunt and grandmother once came for a visit. My grandmother travelled on a mini side trip to Denver for a couple of days while my aunt stayed behind. We hadn’t been alone like this since I used to visit her in San Francisco. Although we had had very few heart-to-heart talks once I reached adulthood, we must have shared a mutual vulnerability at the time because we had some very good conversation in those few, short days.
My aunt has never been married. That has its own set of complicated issues, which she had dealt with and gotten over. I was mid-testing for infertility and we both admitted to being on the receiving end of the particular kind of merciless pity only Mormons can toss out to each other. But she shared a wonderfully epiphanic thought with me that I have never forgotten.
The same kind of person, she said, who asks you when you are finally going to get married is the same person who asks when you are finally going to have your first kid after you’re married. It’s the same kind of person who will ask when you’re going to have your second kid, or your third, or when your kids are going to go to BYU and when are your kids going to get married. It’s an et cetera that will not end. You can come up with whatever honest or flippant answer you like, but there will always be that kind of person around. And they will always confront you with questions like that, at which you could possibly take offense.
Once she realized that those questions weren’t actually about her, she laughed it off and ignored those kinds of people. She did exactly what she had done before: live. She got on with her life.
I loved her wisdom. I had worked through most of my initial bitterness at being infertile by the time she cemented what I had gradually been realizing—that I had been in power the entire time, and that the choices I was left with could be enacted by only one person… me. It didn’t matter how wide my realm of action was. I would stretch myself to the very edges of it.
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3 comments:
Julie, I regret that I didn't spend more time with you when we were in VA. I could have learned so much from you... But I was too balled up in my own sorrow to be in tune with that thought. Well, I'm glad that you're apart of this infertility diary. I can learn from you NOW! You inspire me, and I'm anxious to know more about your story.
Amy, you cutie. Don't you worry about being balled up in sadness. It's totally a necessary step in your growth in being human and toward eventual motherhood. You will be much more empathetic because of it, and will be able to comfort those around you because you will have understood what true loss is. Bitterness and sadness have to run their courses so you can heal. You're right--this has been a journey for me (and all of us here), and mine is a continuing journey... which subsequent blog posts will bear out. :)
That is so true! Those types of comments are just never-ending. And it's a good lesson on how we should live our lives, too. If we are always waiting for the next great thing instead of enjoying what we have, we will never be happy.
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