Thin Lines that Change Everything...

There are many in this life:

Birth

Death

Pregnancy

The moment before a diagnosis and the moment after

Graduation

Those are main ones I am coming up with today.  Really I was thinking about the thin line between being pregnant and not this morning because yesterday I took a friend for her third egg retrieval in her quest to become a mom.  As I sat waiting for her in the fertility clinic, I saw all the women (and some men) that were there in the hopes, prayers, that pregnancy will find them and that thin line between the two will fracture just enough to allow a not pregnant woman to become a pregnant one.

We never know how much we want something until we are told we can’t have it, or that it is going cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or that it is going to be so very difficult.  But as I looked around the waiting room, I was struck with the quiet, desperate hope that pervaded it.  I thought about all the women who leave that office elated and I thought about all the ones that leave that office devastated.  And that elation and devastation is separated by the thinest of lines (two actually) on a tiny stick you pee on.

I can remember when I crossed that line for the first time.  I walked into my OBGYN’s office, pregnant but not knowing I was.  I took a test and was magically delivered to the other side of that line.  A line that at the time seemed like it was rightfully mine to cross.  The arrogance of youth and entitlement.  It was many years later when I realized that, in fact, I was so very privileged to cross that line and to stay on the other side until the birth of both my children.

No matter what you are praying for that white plastic stick to tell you, you are never the same after those lines appear or don’t.  Your life as you were living it is forever changed.  You are lost to the person you were before, and now you are this other version of yourself.  And that is such an odd thing.  To be one thing, then just seconds later, be someone else completely.

I pray my friend is delivered to the other side of those pink lines.  I pray her life is changed, forever, this time.  I pray she gets what she so desperately wants.  She will be an excellent mother.  And she will fail herself and the child, because that too is a part of loving and motherhood.  Not because we want it to be, but because we are all human and that is just the way life goes.  We all want to never let anyone down, most especially our children.  But that isn’t realistic.  We fragile humans cannot rise to the level of saint.  So instead we fuck it up, and we try again, over and over again until we draw our last breath.

I have been so blessed to have crossed so many thin lines that have changed everything.  I pray my friend gets her chance, her rightful time.  Such a betrayal of your body to your spirit if you are denied access to the other side of those thin pink lines.  I am praying daily for her and those fucking lines.  But like anyone else, my prayers appear to go unanswered sometimes...but then again, they are answered with a resounding yes far more often.  I just sometimes have a hard time accepting that it isn’t on my terms, on my timeline.

For now, I am trying to stay in the miracle of the crossing over.  Thinking about that moment just before you gain access to the other side of the thin lines...thinking about all the thing you know, all the things you THINK you know, all the things you desperately want to be true and how very limited you are until you gain access to the other side of those thin lines...so much we don’t or can’t know.

And I suppose, this is as it should be.  There are things that will be asked of us, taken from us, demanded from us on the other side of those thin lines that we cannot fathom just before the crossing over.  And that is likely a good thing, because once you know, you might have decided to never cross in the first place.

None of us have a hold over destiny.  It comes for us all and meets us where we are and then delivers us to the other side which remains, until transfer, totally unknown and unknowable.  And I guess that is the blessing and curse of those thin lines...we cannot know until and unless we cross them...and that it isn't always within our power or control to cross.

Again, still...