Bodies and babies, choice and control

[You will note by the wedding ring that this is clearly not a recent picture. No surprises, kittens, just an image to make this post look pretty. You may resume your reading.]

I meant to write about how my computer went crazy and then I did after being completely offline for two days. I meant to write about perfect little quiet spaces to escape the BlogHer mania while you are in Chicago. I meant to go on too much about something Star Wars-related or why in the world I didn't know Elton John and Billy Joel were playing just three miles west of me at Wrigley Field tonight. There was a list of a million little things I intended to put up on this screen.

And then my heart got all clenched up.

Perhaps it started weeks ago when I started watching "16 and Pregnant" on MTV. I couldn't help myself. I am compelled for some reason by teen pregnancy, by the girls and choices and stories attached to the young bodies we so easily judge, by where we are in this country with Bristol Palin and Jamie-Lynn Spears somehow (how again?) standing for so many young women standing in bathrooms and staring at their own pregnancy tests.

I watched week after week, drawn in by the profiled couples and their vulnerability, desperation, immaturity, hope and fear. Every episode, my heart broke a little.

Of course, all women have this choice to carry on or terminate a pregnancy, no matter our age or environment or family situation or socioeconomic status or prospects for continuing our education or getting a job that will support all of our own and our babies' needs. I believe wholeheartedly in that choice.

And still, I also know how much it takes to be pregnant, all counted in energy, attention, love, money, self-care. I can only imagine how high school and ended college dreams and a lack of parental support factors into that time and experience. How in the world do these girls make it through? I wondered that every time I watched them try to fit into a prom dress or study with a colicky baby screaming on their laps.

They just do it because they feel they have to, I thought in response to myself. They just do.

It could be that my heart started clenching up last night when I had dinner with an old friend over sangria and conversation much deeper than either of us intended. We talked about having babies at this age -- both of us are 37 -- and how that might happen.

Our heart-to-heart spilled over as we shared experiences of our own and of our other women friends, from fertility questions to infertility aching, abortion to adoption, choosing to parent with a partner to opting to go it alone. All of it came back to a teary, almost-whispered understanding of what it is to feel out of control, not just of whether to have a child or not, but of your body.

My friend's experiences and mine are not the same. Still, we had this tie between us -- we'd both been there, feeling the choice to mother or not had at some point slipped from our grasp.

It was powerful, hard and sweetly connecting to put all of that on the table, to share how two feminist, pro-choice, activist women had felt the pain of not feeling in control of our bodies.

Perhaps the clenching goes even further back, to the week before my marriage crash-landed, when I was obliviously and hopefully mapping out my ovulation, making sure our plans to try to conceive the next week were on track. Of course, that pregnancy never happened and there was great relief and grief followed.

There were also many months where I tried tried tried to get OK with the idea I may never have more children, holding fast to the deep understanding that Lil E is far more than enough to fill my life.The question still whispered, Would I ever have another chance? Would divorce make the choice for me or would I be able to choose if I had another child?

Maybe the heart clenching has simply crept in during small moments in passing on my maternity clothes, in the ovary flip of holding delicate handmade baby shoes, in watching a friend's baby clench his face in the most adorable scream, in fostering the fantasy that I can certainly slip a baby into a sling and work and live and thrive as a single mama to two children.

It's not that I am ready now -- no matter what you've read here that may lead you to believe that. I am definitely not ready to have another child right now. But what I do want is a stronger feeling that when I am, it will be possible, it will be a choice, it will be in my control.

It could also be that the tightest clenching came tonight during the season finale of "16 and Pregnant", when a high school junior and her boyfriend chose to give their daughter up for adoption. They did it with a sageness I've not yet seen on the show and despite their parents' awful and manipulative pressure to somehow raise the child in two highly dysfunctional, uproarious homes.

The high schoolers chose a married couple to raise their daughter, and there were the very real moments of hesitation, many reminders of why they made this choice and lots of tears. What gripped me was the boy, holding on to his girlfriend so she did not have to see the baby being pulled from her body, telling her over and over how he loved her, how they loved the baby, how they were all strong enough to let her have a happy life. More tears accompanied an awkward hand-off to the adoptive parents and then the parting words from this girl, who had only given birth and given away her baby days before as she spoke directly to the camera.

I hope one day to get to know her. I am at peace with my decision.

I watched, my palm subconsciously pressed to my chest, the tears falling on to my fingers. I wondered once again how this girl did this, how she made it through. Before the answer came to me, a voice over from the birth mother answered.

I just did what was in my heart.

In all its complexity and simplicity, there it was. In all of its heartbreak and heart healing, she just followed the answer she found there.

My own heart is still all tangled up. And this wisdom certainly doesn't answer the million questions about if and when and how I might ever have another baby.

But what I love, what I am going to cling to, what did help my own heart unclench just enough was the thought that followed, the feeling that filled me and made all the other things I was going to write about quickly slip away.

I may not have complete control over my body. But I can seek out peace with all that has come before  and what might happen with my fertility in the future.

Peace, peace. That might be the most critical and most difficult, most painful and most empowering thing to choose. Even as -- especially as -- a woman, a mother so adamantly pro-choice.

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In which I pretend this Fourth of July post is right on time

I won't pretend to be totally Zen as holidays approach, nor as I pack Lil E's bag full of clothes, stuffed animal babies, Star Wars figures, light sabers of both plastic and homemade from wrapping paper tubes, gray rocks picked up on walks, pennies, cardboard tags from every toy he's gotten in the last six months, and sometimes even a bracelet or two of mine so (as he says) "we can think of each other" (apparently, over a not-so-secret love of bling).

I get clenched up and sometimes, in a panic, make too many plans for any of the hours I have (supposedly) to myself. The good thing is, that all that fades, usually within minutes of saying goodbye to the boy and ascending the stairs to a quiet house while he skips off to the car with his dad. In the big picture, we're still new at this, I know. But I am breathing deeper and it is getting better. We've come a long way since those first, very tough holidays (was it only a year ago that we were dealing with night dryness?) when I felt like I was releasing my little boy to the entire universe, not just for a day or weekend with his father.

This Fourth of July, my day with Lil E was actually the third.  Here, in Chicago, the third is when the good stuff happens. There are fireworks downtown to an audience of more than a million people, and it is all beautiful chaos that echoes and reflects off of our amazing skyline. Since I've been working so hard on enjoying -- not just surviving -- my time without Lil E, I also know how important it is that we do the same when we are together. So we took the train right into the epicenter of it all, met up with fun friends and soaked up the best of the holiday.

                                        

Leaving downtown was exhausting -- everyone leaving at once and many of them packing into El cars along with us, our umbrella stroller and giant bag of snacks. Even as I breathed a little deeper and harder than I'd been practicing while carrying a heavily half-asleep child with everything else up steep stairs from the train platform to the sidewalk, I was happy to hold on to the holiday for just a little bit longer.

                                        

I fell asleep for a few minutes, snuggled up to Lil E, as I put him to bed that night. The sound of much smaller fireworks sounded off outside the window to his bedroom giving way to the steady waves of his breathing. The chaos crowds and the calm as he clung to me when we left it, the bright flashes of light and stillness of the dark, his squeals and the silence at home, our time together and our time apart -- all of it was in balance.

This holiday, this year, it worked out just fine. It was exactly as it should be.

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What is this thing you call blogging?

Yeah, there's been a lot going on with the Sassafam.  There was the visitation dance, passing Lil E back and forth between parents, over the holiday. Then my brother and his wife came into town. Then I got all hell-bent on a crazy little idea called "cleaning the house."  Plus, there's been all kinds of avoiding online grocery shopping (yet to happen) and debating whether spending $80 on sandals can be rationalized in a recession (apparently, yes). With all these high-priority happenings laced with much more that is mundane and time-wasting, you'd think I'd still be able to take 5 minutes to throw up a little two-fingered hello over the Sassafrass steering wheel. But, nooooo.

In fact, I wrote more when I was riddled with bronchitis. I've blogged through bouts of crabbiness, raging PMS, desperate shoe cravings and years' worth of sexual droughts. But throw a flag, some firecracker pops and a 57-item grocery list in front of me and I avoid blogging like I'm dodging the bouquet toss at a wedding.

Not to worry, though. The house is (relatively) clean, the overpriced (but well worth ignoring that price tag part) shoes have been shipped and my brother and sister-in-law are packing up to head home. That means I can no longer ignore the whimpers of the blank screen.

So I'm back, y'all. Thank Blog Llmighty, I'm back.

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