Today is the day we've been waiting for. 2 PM in a doctor's office dotted with Pointsettas and last year's issues of People Magazine. We're meeting with an endocrinologist to pin point our fertility issues and figure out a plan. The wait isn't long and soon we're rehashing our history- medical and relational to a nurse who looks quite a bit like my mother. I answer for both of us, always giving an excess of information. Rich is silent and after she leaves he accuses me of steamrolling over him. I answer too quickly, he says. I talk right over him. And I'm not even the patient. This is true, so I gather our coats in my lap and listen quietly as the doctor reviews, in emotional detail, every experience from his childhood. From the days before there was me. He goes over drug use and my husbands past addition to pain killers. It's hard to talk about these things. The alleged pregnancy that ended in abortion; a past girlfriend from college. I think this girl made the whole thing up, but it's not my turn to speak, so I squeeze our coats tighter on my lap and listen.
Rich is twisting his winter hat in his hand as he talks- folding and stretching and wrapping his shaking fingers around the yarn I knit last winter. To keep him warm. Because he's mine to keep warm. But right now it doesn't feel like he's mine, it feels like he's a sum of deeds done in his early years. The cancer that claimed his father's life when Rich was fourteen years old and all the turmoil that followed. His voice shakes when he speaks and I run my fingertips along his sleeve- it's the most comfort I can offer.
We meet with the doctor and talk about possibilities. I have a thousand questions but there aren't many answers. He schedules more tests, talks about an MRI, but in the end we're shuffled through paperwork and secretaries and more appointments to take blood. To study the genetics of it all. And I feel like an idiot for believing today would be a new beginning. A place to start. That we would know something real. Instead we're all stirred up. They say that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, but for us it's just a lot of uncertainty and a touch of hope.
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OK - so I saw Diane posted something on your facebook page which let me to realize you had a blog! So I started snooping, found it and fell in love with all you write... But today I'm sitting hear crying. Crying because... well - you know how to write with emotion. I was going to say that I feel your pain - but I don't, really, quite like I thought I did. We're having a huge struggle to have a second child, but I know that's different. I'm praying for you as I write and hope with all my heart that God will answer your prayers with a huge resounding "YES!" I'm so sorry for the pain your both have been through.
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