JOURNAL, Sunday, April 14th

You are a child of the universe;
No less than the trees and the stars
You have a right to be here. (Desiderata)

Synchronicity is such a buzzword these days, describing how sometimes our lives seem to be scripted like a movie, operating in themes with parallel occurrences that seem too well coordinated to be possible in a random world. Yet there it is: things do sometimes come along and come together at exactly the right time.

On Friday afternoon, Susan, the Kindergarten teacher, had her kids with her at school because the family was leaving for a special weekend in Montreal right after class. This is Susan’s first year at our school so I don’t know her very well. I knew that she had four kids and that the oldest, ten-year old Tracy, had been disabled by a premature delivery and very difficult birth. I knew that Tracy had a nurse who tended to her needs on a daily basis, and a team of caregivers whose coordinating schedules seemed to occupy much of Susan’s spare time, but until Friday these were just words.

The handivan arrived at the front door of the school at noon. Tracy was wheeled off the bus and into the school in her very elaborate wheelchair. Susan ran to greet her with hugs and kisses. A large terrycloth bib lay draped over Tracy’s bright red Roots jacket. Beneath her unfaded jeans were tiny withered ankles in braces fitted into ironically clean running shoes. Her head lolled from side to side, her eyes rolled back in her head and she drooled from one corner of her mouth. Her long twisted fingers seemed fused into a folded posture and waved uselessly in the air.

From the library, I watched as Susan’s three other kids and some of her students came over to join them in the entrance. I was stunned when I first saw the degree of Tracy’s disability and realized the overwhelming role that she must play in all their lives. I was intrigued by my reaction: I noticed that Tracy’s brother, Paul, was about eight-years old, just two years younger than her. How could Susan have contemplated another pregnancy little more than a year after the shock of such a terrible birth and its consequences?

Susan removed Tracy’s hat, kissing her head as the locks tumbled to her shoulders. She undid the snaps on her coat, talking in animated tones about the school and the afternoon’s activities that she had planned for them. Paul wheeled Tracy to the Kindergarten room; Susan’s other two children followed, to play with some of the kids from her class. For the rest of the lunch period, Tracy was an honoured guest as Susan and Paul wheeled her around to show her the school and introduce her to the kids and staff that they met in the halls. When they arrived in the library, I was just getting things set up for the group that were to arrive after the bell. When Susan introduced us, I bent over to touch Tracy’s arm in a gesture of recognition and welcome. Tracy didn’t seem aware of what was going on as Susan brushed a few wisps of her blond hair from her forehead and spoke of the things that she liked to do at home: watch T.V., especially the music videos, and be with her grandmother when she came over to make cookies with Tracy every Tuesday morning. Susan spoke of Paul’s soccer team that would be starting up again soon, and of how the younger ones have been nagging for a PlayStation to play the new videogames.

In the few minutes that we spent together, I became more relaxed in their presence. It was obvious that Susan saw nothing heroic or even unusual about her family; they were simply as they were. I would have given anything to be so bold as to ask her of her fears, of the pain and discouragement that they must feel at times when thinking of the future that Tracy will never have, and of the courage that it must have taken to have contemplated other children. But to bring up such questions in the face of their obvious ease and happiness with each other would have been insulting. When they left the library and I went back to my arranging, I had much to ponder, most of it to do with Susan’s three “normal” children, and how they may not have had a chance at life but for her courage and willingness to take risks.

Watching Susan’s children at our school was just the latest in a series of occurrences this week that have had me thinking long and hard about questions of having children. Synchronicity seems to have dictated that that’s to be my theme for this week.

I’m never surprised when I see myself doing something completely unexpected. I’ve grown to trust the other aspects of myself, the Protector, the Observer, the Curious One who live within me, and who sometimes appear to operate independently of each other, but always seem to act for my good. A few months ago when I went to the doctor for a check up and to renew my prescription for the pill, without expecting it at all I heard myself explaining that before going on the pill my cycle was quite erratic, and asking for a referral to see a specialist about it.

As with any specialist, it took some time to get an appointment, and as synchronicity would have it, I got to see the gynecologist this very week, when I’ve been struggling with so many questions about the gene pool that I’ve been allotted, and all the risks involved in becoming a parent that have nothing to do with conception.

I didn’t really learn anything new at this appointment. He said that based on what I told him, he thought that pregnancy could be possible, but that it would probably take time and persistence, and that he’d know more with some tests. Without realizing what was happening, I was booked for blood work before leaving the office. I came away requisition in hand, feeling a little stunned, as if someone had shot a starter’s pistol in a race that I didn’t know I was running. His assumption that pregnancy was the obvious primary goal of my coming to see him was not surprising; no doubt that’s why most of the women with strange cycles would seek his help. I came away curiously challenged, as if a new goal had been laid before me, something to achieve.

It’s a characteristic of mine that I’ve always been swept up by the excitement of new challenges, intrigued to see if I can rise to their demands without questioning too seriously how much I really want to achieve this particular goal. This time, obviously, I’m afraid to let my enthusiasm get the better of me.

It’s hard to imagine a thirty-year old woman in a warm relationship with a great guy for the past eight years, having avoided questions of fertility, pregnancy and parenting for all this time. Yet that’s the situation in which I find myself. My fears about depression and my questionable fertility have happily coexisted in my mind, supporting each other and allowing me this fantasy life where I could pretend that issues of parenthood were no more within my purview than matters of flying to the moon. Yet, since my visit to the gynecologist and the course of medical investigation that he’s set before me, the possibility of pregnancy is nudging me to look at my fears, and to question how other people deal with the overwhelming issues of having children under any circumstances.

I’m not brave and I’m not wise but I am growing in strength. Watching Susan and her kids, and thinking of the families of so many of the children that I deal with each day, I know that for everyone life is one big risk. Control is an illusion that I’ve been clinging to for many years, to maintain the balance that I needed to keep myself on track. The irony is that when I look at how I’ve changed over the past few months, I realize that it’s this desperate clinging to control in my life that has made me most unbalanced. Through the writing I’ve come to trust life more; I believe in Danny and me, and I feel more peaceful and am able to move more with the flow of my life. Is that not the balance that I’ve always wanted?

And what of Danny in all of this? Perhaps he’s been too patient with me, never pushing the difficult questions that have settled themselves between us. One thing about Danny is that he never goes looking for trouble; he doesn’t want to upset what we have, so he’s always been willing to let me be with my idiosyncrasies and my demands. Maybe I needed to be challenged more, to be more aware of what he has wanted and hoped for all these years.

In our situation, this question of parenting is so much greater than the basic desire to have children that everyone faces at some point in their lives. For us, for me, it seems to be intimately tied to our relationship. For the first time I feel that I’m able to commit to examining painful questions that unite us. It’s no longer my pain and fear that I’m wrestling with but our pain, our confusion, our decisions when facing the possibility of infertility – or worse.

Danny’s an amazing person. Because there had been so much of myself that I’d kept inside, I was always under the illusion that I was a mystery to him; I never believed that he knew me very well. Did he know me well enough, I wonder, to know that I might someday be whole? I would never have suspected it myself.

Copyright 2003