Heavy Heart

It's a down day here on the roller coaster of my life. Not one of the steep plunges, but a pretty-good-sized dip.

Here's the thing: W's sperm was zapped by radiation following cancer. He was 28. I was 25. We'd been trying to have kids since the minister pronounced us "man and wife." (I was too naive to ask for the equality of "husband and wife." Not that it would have mattered much.)

W got well. We signed up for adoption and began waiting. I filled the time by having every test or procedure known to medical science. I charted my temperature before raising my head from the pillow every morning, took fertility drugs, had my insides reamed out with rotary blades. Had artificial insemination. 

Whatever I might have imagined about conceiving a child, it was not that. No love. No joy. No warmth. Especially no warmth. For one January cycle, my own beloved doctor was out of town, but the temperature chart said it was time so one of his colleagues was doing the honors. I was lying on the exam table covered by a paper sheet, feet in stirrups, legs spread wide. The doctor came in, looked out the windows, turned around and walked back out. The nurses followed.

For 45 minutes I laid there like a Thanksgiving turkey waiting to be stuffed, splayed naked and covered with goosepimples. The doctor returned and got to work without a word. When he reached into my insides, I recoiled. His hands inside me were the single coldest thing I have ever felt. The nurse grabbed my arm to keep me from falling off the table.

"Sorry," he said. "When I came in before, I saw that one of my tires was flat. It's 20 below out there. Darn cold day to be changing a tire, I tell you."

Writing this, I feel like the Saturday Night Live skit--Really? You left me there like that to change a tire? Really? Really? And I didn't walk out or at least protest? Really?

But I was 26 years old and alone in that place, negotiating the rapids 500 miles from my family with a husband whose ego was too fragile to acknowledge the rough waters, let alone help me steer the raft.

I got pregnant that cycle but miscarried a little more than three months later. Three days after the loss, even before the D&C that was required, W came home from work and found me crying. He stormed out ("You act like you're the only person this ever happened to, Jerri!") and did not come home for two days. I never cried about it in front of him again.

Evan arrived three years later and then Katie after five more: my dreams come true. And all this time I have believed them to be the children God intended for me all along. The signs seemed unmistakable: Evan was born on my birthday and Katie on her grandmother's, the one for whom she is named.

Now, reading books on adoption and reunion, I am told over and over that one mother cannot replace another, just as adopted children cannot fill the void of infertility. I did not set out to replace a mother, simply to be a mother. But according to a book often referred to as the "bible on adoption," separation from one's natural mother—even in early infancy—creates a wound that can never be healed.
 
My children were relinquished before I knew of their existence. I had no hand in separating them from their families of origin. Or, so I have always believed. Now I'm finding many who believe that by participating in the adoption system, infertile couples drive a demand, create a market for babies.

Perhaps for once, the answer is to stop reading. I cannot change history, cannot make us anything other than what we are—imperfect human beings, doing the imperfect best we can.

I'm trying to believe—just this once—that my best will be good enough. It has to be. It's all I've got.