Jaq and Michelle were having coffee one wet Saturday morning when Michelle found an opening and mentioned how, at dinner the night before, Jaq’s best friend had really nailed him on his need to be different. She knew Nicholai’s comment had gone past Jaq’s head and felt compelled to loop it into his orbit.
“What do you mean?” Jaq bristled a little, his curiosity piqued at the idea that Michelle had caught something from Nicholai that he had missed.
“When you were talking about the novelty of putting sugary breakfast cereal in your yogurt. He argued the ubiquity of yogurt and granola. Granola being…”
“Cereal,” they finished together.
“Yeah…” she waited.
“Right. But he was being annoying about it, right?”
“His point was valid, if not rigid, and he sort of sarcastically let you have it. He finally said, ‘Okay. You’re different,’ and you accepted it even though it was a placation.”
Jaq waited, knowing that Michelle had not made her final point.
“I think your compulsive need to feel different is a blind spot for you.”
It was a morning soft as butter, and Jaq had no armor against a look in the mirror over coffee. He leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and sank into the couch like a little boy.
“Yeah, I’m different, you’re different, we’re all different in different ways, so at least it’s an ordinary compulsion. And you know the spirit of the point I was making. Not everyone’s putting Cinnamon Toast Crunch in with their yogurt in the mornings, Miche.”
“Yes, he had no spirit about it, it’s true. And your cereal is something to be very proud of.”
They laughed; it was light.
The laze continued, and they made the rounds to cover the conversational classic-hits-these-days, including the potential idea of potential children. About once a month, in cadence with the end of her period and a looming fresh pack of pills, they would check in on the subject.
She was desperate in many ways, but not desperate for a baby. She was desperate for the question hanging in the air to be answered. She was desperate for a little bit of internal peace on the matter instead of emotional mayhem. She was desperate for the capacity to think about it without feeling like her heart was betraying her mind. Neither entity trusted the other - actual betrayal or not. This she was sure of. She felt like she would never be sure she’d want a child.
As they talked, she resented the way her lower abdomen fluttered when Jaq said, ‘Fall baby.’ She was wholly disgusted at the audacity of the lump that had arisen in her throat; the tears which sprang into her eyes might as well have been acid.
“Most of all,” she confessed on the phone with her mother later that evening, “I am afraid that in the end it’ll be the thing that makes me the most happy. Just like you.”
Eyes puffy when they hung up a little later, Michelle went to splash cold water on her face. She raised her wetted head to look herself in the eye and saw someone reflected whom so desperately needed to be different that she made herself desperate with pitiful obfuscations and doubt.
She chewed on her hypocrisy over a big bowl of cereal for dinner and went to bed without supper.
"It was a morning soft as butter" love this line. Also, very few today actually "want" children, that is, in my own estimation, as how could one want something truly so frightening, unless they were a bit deranged! And yet, I now have a young daughter, had her at age 35, which was perhaps a bit reckless, but now I can't imagine my life without her, and now I can also see how meaningless my life was before her. Now, I'm not saying, "go have that child," as it's the most terrifying and trying thing you'll ever encounter as a person, and that you'll probably fall out of love with your partner for the first few years or so, and that you'll never be so tired, broke, and full of selfish regret. But, that's what makes it so wonderful, as it brings a strength from within that you never could have imagined that you posses. And, in the end, the good always outweighs the bad. I guess what I'm trying to say is that those without children haven't a clue about what it's really like, not a damn clue, but they also haven't a clue about what they're missing out on.
This piece is so perfectly written - thank you for sharing the vulnerability of that strange, confusing and at times, utterly overwhelming swing between heart, head and destiny. Having been on an epic fertility journey myself that began when I was 30 and ended ultimately with relatively early menopause in my 40s, I can relate entirely.
I cannot say the journey was unsuccessful because that would be to suggest I know which of the three (heart, head or destiny) was right - and I don't. I can say I feel very much at peace now and have done since the decision was taken away by Mama Nature, because as you so poignantly suggest in your piece, choice, not necessarily outcome, is the disrupter in this scenario.
May you be blessed with clarity and the outcome that serves your highest good ♥