Only stand and wait

I shouldn’t be a blogger. I’m not a blogger, really, in that I can’t be counted on for consistent content or its timely provision. I have nothing to give a reader except a glimpse into my day. This feels like a bad deal but I remind myself that I said up front I was here to vent, and of how much comfort I find in other people’s blogs about nothing, and that I feel in need but do not know of what and some of you lovely people often do know, or don’t but manage to find the right thing anyhow, accidentally on purpose.

My father in law died. It was awful. He waved to us as he slid away, instinctively straining to remain, insistently reclaiming hands that had momentarily left his. The window could only be opened a little; was it enough to set him free? I stood beside a grieving family and could offer nothing but my presence, which felt so inadequate because it was not mine they were craving. All I could do was stand and wait.

Then we went on holiday and tried to rest and read (a novel; how novel) and thereby managed to further scramble our kid, who needed predictability after witnessing turmoil. Never having attended a service before she now plays church, with singing and robes, and hospital with masks so her toys can breathe. She reports, “Opa died! Papa cried!”, smiling in triumph at her own understanding of the situation. She will no longer sleep with her door closed because the separation from us is more than she can handle. I dreamt that my brother in law was killed, and woke gasping at the realization that he is in fact holding that family together now without any one of them knowing it. It's like the Roadrunner after the road runs out: I dare not tell them the truth they cannot see, lest it fail.

As we take stock of where we find ourselves, I realise that our anniversary and my birthday are around the corner, the Midget will be 2 and a half soon, and our adoption plans are stalled so thoroughly that I can’t imagine a scenario that would get them going again.

Then I wonder if I’m just copping out because adoption is h.a.r.d.

Whether I should see it through just to quell that doubt by deliberately suppressing others.

Or whether standing beside the ones who really live this, rather than diluting a small part into my life, is the greater love.

And whether these doubts would shadow any child we bore.

The point is that right now it sounds nothing short of obscene; trite and offensive; a project to escape to; but: our life must go on. Pregnancy and its planning do take rather a long time. If we want the birth spacing we ideally would, and if the strategy of relying on the time-lags expected with adoption could evaporate, then I’m already late in starting physical preparations for pregnancy. I figure there’s no harm in a body tune-up* either way. Of course, all this – which is a lot of nested ifs – needs the partner green-light.  

*I’ve flunked Whole 30, I’m too chicken for GAPS intro, and I keep waiting for my naturopath to phone that the cleanse he prescribed had arrived when he is so obviously assuming I’ll drive that process. Even clean, whole, primal-style eating has withered under the strain of the past few weeks, to the point that I not only have no broth but no bones, no back-up butter and am scraping the bottom of the ghee jar, and I’ve used up my freezer vegetables and fish. So it’s more than a tune-up.

Half-drunkenly after a wonderful dinner, I laid out my plan. Throughout, but too late, I heard my sober reason cautioning against this, warning that the magnitude of comprehensible specifics would overwhelm his defences and shut him down. Soberly he denied my plan, each of us sliding down a sandy slope set loose by his shaking head. We retired to bed 2 hours apart.

When I put on my nightshirt I found that he had pre-heated my side with his body so I wouldn’t have to slide in to cold sheets.