Once Upon A Time

Not so long ago, I knew my life story and I loved it.  I was the spunky, resourceful heroine, who got her heart broken a time or two, and worried the freak out far more than was actually necessary, but managed to stay married, finish grad school, and get pregnant all before I turned 30.  Then came the fun part--I'd teach part time and hang out with the kid(s), David would get a principal job, we'd budget carefully and buy used cars so we could take our kids on really great vacations.  We'd have a vegetable garden and two dogs and when we had a bigger house with a laundry room/mud room where we could put a litterbox, maybe we'd get a cat, too.

Many of our friends were all having babies at the same time, so our nights out would seamlessly shift to nights in and family-friendly parties.  I'd take the baby to mommy & me yoga, wear a baby sling to the farmer's market, and fill our house with children's books.  Also, I'd learn to cook.  We'd have another baby, or maybe adopt another baby--I'd been coveting a Korean baby since our visit to Seoul last summer.  So we'd probably have two kids, maybe three, depending on how things shook out.  We'd send adorable Christmas cards every year, but they'd be just a little snarky, not too obnoxious.  I would keep a journal (or blog) of all the brilliant, funny things our kids said.  And I'd keep teaching classes and reading novels and occasionally publishing articles on Victorian literature in scholarly journals that no one reads.  Our kids would graduate from high school and go on to great liberal arts schools and do things that made us proud. Eventually we'd would retire and live on a golf course and travel frequently to visit friends and see new places and return to some of our favorites.

I really believed we could make all that happen.  I mean, I know it wouldn't really be a fairy tale.  And I probably won't ever be a really great cook (that's what I keep David around for).  But still.  It all felt so possible.

I can't see my future anymore.  I have no idea what it looks like or whether we'll have kids.  It just seems empty and scary.

There are moments when I feel certain that I am healing, that David and I will survive this, that we will go on to have a family and that our first daughter will forever be a tender part of our hearts that will remind us to show our love everyday and treat everyone we meet with compassion and generosity.

But for every moment like that, there's another when I can't see how I will ever be anything more than this sad, sad story--a cautionary tale against counting chickens and misplacing carts before horses, a name never to be uttered in the presence of a pregnant woman, an urban legend about the girl who thought that if she worked hard enough and played by the rules, she could get what she deserved, only to get a big huge smack down from the random chaos of the universe.  No matter what happens next, my life will always be a tragedy.  This pain will haunt me forever because whatever we do, Eliza will always be the missing piece.

I imagine the truth lies somewhere between those two scenarios.  I KNOW that, intellectually.  But it doesn't FEEL that way.  It FEELS like a raging battle between the glowing perfection of the life I should have had--I thought I almost had--and the dark, twistiness of the present reality.


The story of my life will never be what I wanted it to be.  Will it be unavoidably worse because Eliza isn't with us?  Will it be better, richer, in some ways, because of what we have learned from her short life?

I don't know the answer to that.  And you guys, I don't WANT to wonder about these kinds of questions.  I just want my old life story back.  I just want my baby.