Vacation I Couldn\'t Afford Not to Take

After their first IVF, Ashley and her husband went on a vacation to New York that they "couldn't afford not to take."  My 36-hour trip to New Hampshire this weekend was just like that.  Though I didn't go to the Great White Way, the state was plenty white with snow, and I ran straight into the warm embrace of my friend Lucy.   Lucy moved away from DC last fall, after having caught enough of my first IVF to have witnessed me sobbing in McDonalds and showing off my belly-shot-bruises.  Now she's settled back in New Hampshire where she grew up.  She's building a new life up there, and unlike a lot of my friends, reproducing does not factor highly in it.  She was the perfect person to visit, for a little Ladies & 'Eighties Nite fun, homemade lasagna, and a nap on her living room couch.  She's never been a long-distance friend before, and being with her was just like being at home.  Except we were in a diffent house.  So I had to explore. While Lucy was showering, I wandered around her house, looking in cabinets and looking at light fixtures and pictures up on the wall.  I wondered why I felt so at home in this foreign place.  I don't feel like that everywhere. My thoughts turned to the house of my Godsons.  Their parents went to college with James, so he knows them better than I do.  Well, except that I feel like I've known them my whole life.  Once when we went to visit our first Godson when he was a baby, when we got back to the airport to leave, I started to cry because I felt like I was leaving home -- even though it was their home.  They have done so much to make their home cozy and warm, artistic and relaxing, just very welcoming.  As I walked around Lucy's house with the same feeling, I wished that I could go see our Godchildren and their parents. But I couldn't.  Or I hadn't felt that I could for a long time.  About a year into our infertility, Carolynn got pregnant, and then four months ago, she had a baby.  Our second Godson.  And if we had been good Godparents, we would have gone to visit, gone to see the new little guy.  Gone to offer some solace to our first little Godson, who had just lost his starring role in the family.  But we didn't, because we thought it would make me sad.  As I isolated myself from pregnant friends and babies, I had to put up a wall between us.  We had talked about it ahead of time.  Carolynn understood.  But I still felt sad and guilty when we heard about the birth and did pretty much nothing.  I hated infertility for doing this to me, but still thought that self-protection was more important than reaching back to my friends. Lucy drove me back to the Boston airport yesterday afternoon, and that was when we found out that my plane to DC was seriously delayed.  Lucy had to start her long trek back to New Hampshire, so I thought of a place I could go in the meantime that wasn't the airport: Carolynn's house.  I called and she said, "COME OVER." When I walked in the door, I found Carolynn, our two Godsons, and the "second-string" guardians: the couple that would take care of the two little boys if all of the rest of us died.  The dad, I found out a long time into my visit, was at a conference for a week.  I'd assumed he was just in another room. Carolynn breast fed, the understudy Godmother got me a drink of water, the understudy Godfather studied a take-out menu, and we all had a grand time.  My two-year-old Godson had entered into a shy phase, so he was too timid to look at me except in the mirror (and then he stared with rapt attention).  I wished I'd be there long enough to have him get over his shyness, because I would love to have snuggled into a hug with him.  Meanwhile, the new baby was his spitting image.  I held him for quite a while and warmed my face on the soft top of his head.  In 45 minutes I was back in a cab to the airport. So how did I feel breaking through the bad-feelings barrier?  Really good.  I don't know if it would have gone this well last week, before the new clinic had re-infused me with positivity and hope.  I assumed I would cry at least after I left.  Maybe that's still coming (so much of my crying happens in grocery stores; maybe I have to go to one to let it out).  But getting to be with them, in spite of their luck, in spite of my sadness, in spite of my jealousy, was really, really nice. Maybe I should consider talking to my other friends.