this morning it was so cold that there was ice on the dark wood of the rail overpass. somebody had written a chalk-board sign - ‘IC on bridge go slow’. on the platform, all the people were shivering in their own personal clouds of steam that made visible the space they were taking up in the world - body plus breath. a more new-age person might say it was like they all had white auras (am i channeling my mother? i have been thinking about her a lot lately). there was just enough fog in the air to make all the trees and buildings soft against the sky, and the haze was lit by a huge orange sun that gave everything an illusion of warmth.
i am glad i can still see the small beauty in the world. lately i have been seeing so much ugliness everywhere. i have been feeling impotent in the face of its fucked-up-ness, and bean and i have been having those ‘my god why would you want to bring children into this world?’ type conversations. yesterday it was the front pages of the newspapers - always a reliable source of rage. how is it that one stupid man with too much money who wastes it on putting himself in a very dangerous situation is more important (to the tune of huge colour photos of his face) than over 5000 poor people who were just living their lives when they were suddenly shaken into death? could it be that one is white and the others are not? is it that simple? if that many people were killed in california would it be buried as deep within the pages of the papers as the java earthquake is? or maybe it is just about new(nes)s - we are so used to poor people dying that it barely registers, in the same way that domestic violence is barely news but a shark attack is front page material.
of course, the irony is not lost on me, as we white (comparatively) rich girls go through our own self-induced hell of IVF, left with only the energy to feel mad and impotent with the world but not motivated enough to act.
we are down to the last few frozen pips now, and the big debate of the last week has been whether to transfer one embryo or two, also known as the ‘for fuck’s sake i just want to get pregnant already’ vs ‘holy shit not twins!’ debate.
these have been delicate negotiations - when we are done with all this i think we should definitely apply for jobs as diplomats! and maybe all this practice in working out solutions for difficult issues that we don’t always agree on will stand us in good stead through all the other challenges that life (especially children) is likely to bring.
but in the face of the horror of the world and the difficulty of the process of ivf, the desire to have our own quirky family is still so strong it almost hurts. last night we watched a beautiful episode of australian story, with a gay man who has donated sperm to a bunch of women (both lesbian and straight). he knows about half the kids, and his relationship with them and their mums was just gorgeous. we both sobbed as we watched him talk about his kids and the two oldest of them (stunning young man and woman) talk lovingly about him. a photo of the eldest girl just after she was born with masses of black hair and a squished up face reduced us both to howls.
yes, we are a mess, but at least love and hope are so tangled up with anger and sadness that the whole has a kind of chaotic beauty about it…
