Last night I received a call from my brother. He wanted to know how my birthday turned out. I put on my game face, so used to doing so, it's pretty automatic now. So, I lied and said it was good. Don't get me wrong, my mom came to visit the day BEFORE my birthday and we did have a grand day together, shared in full with my husband, but my actual birthday...well, sucked. I missed my dad from the moment I woke, and didn't stop feeling his absence until sleep took me at day's end.
Besides pining for my dad, my new age this year comes with a caveat I'm not yet ready or willing to accept. You see, my doctor told me in February that at age 37 your chances to conceive plummet. I could have gone a lot longer not knowing that little nugget of information. And plummet? Couldn't she have done better than that? To make things worse, my period had just slapped me in the face with yet another failed fertility treatment. Happy birthday!
I felt blue, lost, lonely, and infertile. I sat down at the edge of the lake and looked out over what remained of Autumn's purply plum and burnt orange leaves. The last bit of warm evening light lit the trees on the opposite bank enhancing the dramatic reflection on the cool flat water, and I felt a panic in my chest. An intense desire to somehow be able to stop time gripped me. How desperately I wanted to hold onto to something that I knew I couldn't. And the fleeting evening light intensified all of those feelings of time unraveling. I wanted to hang on to my dad, my fertility, my hoped for pregnancy, and as the November light quickly faded I felt all those things being taken away from me, too. I'm fully aware that time marches on, that is all too real now.
I've tried to embrace change in the past and have even found comfort as I've watched the glorious beauty of nature cycle around me. But this day, my 37th birthday, beauty evaded me. My longing consumed me. I felt a sense of loss in a way I'd never felt before. And without being able to do anything about it, the last of the light disappeared.
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