The story of six years of infertility, 2 antral follicles, way too many rounds of Clomid, two failed IUIs, a ridiculous number of needles, eight years of mortgage payments brought back to square one, one last chance IVF procedure with donor eggs, and one amazing little boy.
I slipped out of the house around 7pm, and drove to Mark and Janine's. I spent quality time with Janine in the bathroom, doing make-up and putting purple streaks in my pig-tails. (I couldn't do that at home because I didn't want to explain to Moe why Mommy could colour on her hair but he couldn't.) It felt like high school, but without the angst.
Mark graciously drove us to the Byward Market, where we miraculously found parking. (That alone warranted furious happiness.)
Then we wandered. Our first stop was the Clarendon Courtyard, where I watched small children dance in pools of light. We also met a whole herd of adorable clay pachyderms, and got to sit down and make our own. It has been so long since I've been able to sit down and create something leisurely. It was wonderful. Once our elephants were complete, we set them up on a courtyard stone, peering longingly into the dining room of Mamma Grazzi's.
We saw innovative photography conversations. We wandered through someone's memory scape. We dressed up in costumes and posed at photo booths. We painted. We met a couple of really sweet dogs. We watched Marie Antoinette stand in a cake and sing La Marseillaise, which, you have to admit, is pretty ironic. We turned a light post on and off. We listened to ourselves hug. We indulged ourselves gastronomically and artistically. It was fantastic.
I was initially determined not to make a single compromise and be unapologetically selfish. (My friends were aware of this, and embraced it.) But then I realized that I didn't want to be. It was enough to wander with good friends, laugh, even sing a little, and watch the people and the city around us come to life. If one of them had said, "I can't leave until we walk 15 blocks east to see something in which you have absolutely no interest," I would have said, "Sure!"
I have not felt that young or carefree in a long time. It made me furiously happy. It was a magical evening.
Making elephants.
And when I came home, my darling husband hugged me and told me, "I'm so glad you had a good time." And then my cup ran over.
Some of you may have noticed (or will notice soon) that I'm using the term "furiously happy". If you aren't familiar with Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess), first of all, you don't know what you are missing, and second of all, you will not have seen this video. Humour me and watch it. It's less than 10 minutes and I swear, it can change the world.
As the days get shorter (this is a really untruthful expression, actually, because the days are still 24 hours long, and I still have 8.33 hours of work to do during the day and however much shit to get done around the house in the evening, but I'm having to do it all with seasonal affected disorder and a hormonal imbalance and OMG it's getting dark so early and can you tell from my writing style that I've been reading a lot by Jenny Lawson lately?), I will start struggling. I do every year. For the past few years, since Moe was born, it hasn't been as bad for one reason: I can't afford to let it be bad. I don't have the time or resources to curl up in a ball and hide from the world, no matter how much I may want to, because there's a little boy who is depending on me to be there for and with him. And I refuse to let him down. And so this year, as the dark gets longer (I think that works much better than "as the days get shorter," don't you?) I am resolved to be furiously happy about at least one thing a day. Yesterday, it was the fact that Moe was standing in the living room, naked from the waist down (but wearing glow-in-the-dark Lightning McQueen fuzzy Crocs) wearing a styrofoam crown that we had made and decorated together from packaging from a box of wine glasses. This made me furiously happy. Every day, I will find one moment where I can embrace the present and let joy fill me up. And I will be furiously happy. Because let's face it. Despite chemical imbalances, seasonal affected disorders, wading through the murk of being a working mom and trying to find the right equation of being a mom, a wife, an employee, a woman and my own sweet selfish self, I have an awful lot of things in my life that I can be furiously happy about.
