Any May A Beautiful Change
(In honor of the release of my dear friend Katherine’s book Any Day a Beautiful Change, I’m participating in a blog carnival, Any May a Beautiful Change. Katherine’s book is about motherhood, so here’s a little May-themed motherhood post.)
My first baby, Zora, was easy in the begetting. (I’ll just leave it at that.) Number two: not so much.
Erik and I planned, in our not so infinite wisdom, to have kids a bit closer together. Maybe two years apart? But as Zora approached four years old, the plan wasn’t working out so well. Our first baby was old enough that she was verbally begging us for a sibling. We decided to get the medical people involved.
The short version of this is that we really only had to dip our toe into the world of fertility treatments. I hesitate to use the term “infertility” because I don’t want to demean the level of struggle and pain that a much longer sojourn toward a baby is for many people.
And, this post is not about what it took medically to get us pregnant. It’s about the day in May when I found out, for certain, that the beautiful change had taken hold.
The call from your clinic, when you are in the midst of this, is the monthly moment of truth. You might be in the car, driving off on a short road trip. Or at at your desk slogging through an e-mail inbox. Or in the grocery store. Chances are, you’re somewhere mundane, because the truth is that most of life is mundane.
But, in this case, for the call when the nurse said, “Yes!” I was somewhere perfect. It was a monday in May, and we drove the 45 minutes to my parents condo in a highrise that backs up onto a sandy beach on the North Side of Chicago. I had gone down to the beach alone.
I wanted some time. I had a strong suspicion, backed up by certain calendar-related physical evidence, that this month might be the month. So I was sitting alone on the beach. It was warm, but not too warm. There was barely anyone out there. The cars running on Lake Shore Drive, just south of the beach, blended in with the little waves. With your back to the city, Lake Michigan went on and on.
My phone rang.
The nurse said, “Congratulations…”
I don’t know what I said next, or what she said. I worried that I didn’t sound excited enough because I didn’t whoop or holler.
But I do remember the exact way that the sand by my toes looked. I remember the little bits and pieces of shell, mixed up with pebbles and flat beads of sea glass. I remember the lake smell, part life, part rot. I remember that the sun was only a little warm.
And I remember that I waited a few minutes to call my husband and then my Mom. Because for just a few minutes, it was just my news.
Abram is 15 months old now. He is, without question, beautiful. Strangers stop in their tracks when he smiles at them. His sister says he’s the thing she’s proudest of (although she hates the mess he makes of her stuff). Now that he’s walking, I’m going to make sure he gets as much time as possible on that beach, in the sand, in the water, with the city behind us and the big lake stretching out to forever.
This is lovely. Thanks for joining in. That Abram truly is a beauty. :)
9 May 2012 at 3:29 pm