Flotsam

I don’t know what is the matter with me, but I am having a horrible time writing anything. Perhaps all the NaBloPoMo toiling short-circuited a vital piece of my brain? I suppose it could just be my deep-seated laziness…but no. Surely it is some sort of organic cerebral malfunction.

I am not generally a Christmas-y sort. My feelings towards the season were further complicated two years ago when at the very beginning of December I discovered I was pregnant, and just before New Year’s had an ultrasound showing no heartbeat. I miscarried on New Year’s Day.
It made last year…unfestive. It’s hard to deck the halls when you’d rather deck one of the 800 or so pregnant women shuffling in front of you at the mall. Not that I have anything against pregnant women—after all, I hope to be one some day. But last year I was angry, and sad, and combative. If asked about my plans for New Year’s, I was likely to say “Well, I won’t be passing fetal tissue, so whatever I do will be an improvement over last year!”
Nothing charms a person like the phrase “fetal tissue.” I was a hit at parties, believe you me.

It didn’t help that last Christmas was a disaster, what with my Mother’s unruly appendix and the child-chaperoning fiasco. And to be honest, I expected this year to be much of the same. But instead I am feeling upbeat—jolly even. For one thing, it will be the first Christmas I have spent with the Actually. This may sound odd, as we have lived together for three years, but it’s true.

On Christmas Day I will be roasting a chicken. The last time I roasted a chicken I forgot to make sure it was fully thawed first, so this should be something of an adventure. The Actually and I even got a tree. It is a small false tree that lights up and changes color, a tree that fairly screams “CHRISTMAS IN VEGAS!” but we were certain the cats would bother a real tree, and I tend to think that if you are going to have a false tree you should go all the way, and get one that is proud to be false, that doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. The Actually has put two large wrapped packages under it—well, more like “beside,” as the tree is too small to have much of an “under”—and I am amusing myself by doing as much investigative poking as I can before the Actually swats me away and mutters darkly about coal. We are not religious, so the holiday isn’t cluttered up with contemplative moments and church services, and is instead focused entirely on the things that matter: family and presents.

The other night I had an extremely grisly dream in which I discovered I was pregnant and then miscarried a tiny sac the size of a pea. I spent the rest of the dream frantically trying to reach my RE’s office to arrange for genetic testing of the embryo, which I had saved in a plastic Easter egg. But in my waking hours, I have given the subject of miscarriage and my lack of pregnancy surprisingly little thought. If you had told me after my last miscarriage that two years later I would still not be pregnant—would, in fact, have ovulated only twice in all that time—I believe my face would have melted from the sheer heat of my anguish. I could never have predicted the twists my life would take in these two years. A year ago in January, the Actually and I nearly separated over the issue of fertility treatments, and yet last week he asked whether we couldn’t start IVF earlier, the month before the wedding.* I would never have thought I would be here, where I am, but I am surprised to find it a very good place to be.

*No.