Thursday, October 7, 2010

Hope, everlasting

I got a notice today that a parcel has arrived for me at the post office.  I had been meaning to go pick it up at lunch, which would have been a great idea if I actually had a lunch break.  I have been so busy at work that the "no lunch for me" diet has been the norm this whole week.  Finally, after work, hungry (ravenous), MrH and I went to the local food store/post office building to pick up the parcel and buy some mushrooms and cornmeal for dinner (if anybody wants to know how to combine the two ingredients, ask me, we had a fabulous dinner of sauteed mushrooms and polenta).  While waiting in line to pay for the items, I took a look at the square airmail package, and read the label.  It said "clothing," and I remembered that I had ordered some stuff on ebay just after my last IVF, when I had gotten the positive pregnancy test.  I started sweating thinking that it might be maternity clothing, yet more maternity clothing that I keep thinking I will use but never get to.

I showed MrH and told him my suspicions, and he asked me why I chose to ignore our previous experience,  why I did not learn to take any positive pregnancy tests with a grain of salt (heck, with a salt shaker).  I tried to think about that tonight, and I honestly don't know.  I don't know why I continue to name the blastocysts that get transferred, why I calculate my due date the moment I get a positive pregnancy test (ok, let's be honest, I calculate it even before that, in fact every time I do a transfer I know when my due date would be if I got pregnant), and why I start a new journal with each cycle, telling the potential baby about every day of his/her embryonic life, just in case...

In a nutshell, it is hard to understand why I choose to believe.  This hope that transcends any logic, where is it coming from?  Why am I such a helpless sucker for even the faintest glimmer of promise?  Perhaps I live in a child's mind, believing in happy endings, in a fair outcome that avenges the hero's trials.  Perhaps I just need to believe in order to stay alive.  Perhaps I am so very naive as to consider that God might decide that I have had enough and give me the baby I so desperately want.

Feel free to crawl on the floor laughing.  I would if my incision didn't hurt.  I am one insane, hopeful woman.  Oh, in the end, I opened the package.  It was a slim top from BCBG.  Maybe I did have some sense during my last ebay shopping spree after all.

2 comments:

  1. I'm going to say because you are wise enough to understand that hope always wins out over despair.

    There's this great line from Anne of Green Gables about being lifted up on the wings of hope and crashing into despair, and how the lifting up part is always worth the crash.

    I've learned, as an adult, sometimes it takes me some time to learn that.

    I wish God would give you a baby too.

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  2. Hope gives us strength, motivates us to go on, to try again, to do better, to push ourselves beyond our limits. We are so lucky to be capable of it.

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