Well, it's here. The open season for weddings and babies has arrived and everywhere you go, you can't swing a diaper bag without hitting some broad getting showered with gifts for some big event in her life. Showers are a beautiful thing. A gathering of the women who love you the very most, all coming together to celebrate a milestone in your life with tiny sandwiches and iced tea, games and presents. I'm at a point in my life where I really like attending showers. I enjoy seeing the decorations and eating chocolate dipped things. I love seeing my friends hit different milestones in their lives. But this point in my life was a long time coming...
In what seems like a lifetime ago, before my husband and
I were man and wife, we were Stacey and Jim. The
amazing-still-just-dating couple. We dated for six long years before
we finally got married. At that point in my life, I felt like if I
had to attend another bridal shower for a couple who had been dating
for all of a year and a half, I was going to shoot myself. Right in
the head with one of the miniature artificial doves that were strewn
all over every table.
I was so happy for my friends, but it just felt like it
was never going to be my turn and I wanted my turn so very badly. I
felt stagnant. Like I was in a weird rut where I was happy, but
definitely not moving forward in any meaningful way. Everybody else
made it look so easy. They seemed to just drift through their life
milestones effortlessly. Mine took so much freakin effort. And I
was exhausted of trying to drag another person through life
milestones with me. This concoction of various different emotions
made for sort of a salty guest at showers. I was happy for my
friends, but sort of bitterly so. It was weird. It took a lot of
wine to get through some of those events.
Baby showers are
even harder and when you are actively trying to conceive, it seems
like these joyous events occur weekly. During the two and a half
years that I was trying to get pregnant, it felt like I was
constantly either planning, shopping for or going to a baby shower
for someone. It was continuous. To be clear, and every woman knows
this... Showers under the very best circumstances are only minimally
fun. They are more obligatory than anything else. It's fun seeing
friends, but it sucks being stuck at a table with people you barely
know making small talk for three hours. The games are cute, but to
call them fun is sort of a stretch. Fun is drunk Monopoly
with your closest group of friends at one o'clock in the morning,
punchy and silly. Shower games are usually more like a pop quiz that
doesn't really effect your grade. How well do you know this person,
how well do you know their partner, how well can you complete a task?
I place them somewhere between homework and a crossword puzzle
played in the waiting room of a doctor's office while you are waiting
forever for your turn. Except that there are prizes. Prizes are
always fun.
Watching gifts be
opened is nice, but watching your own gift be opened is really the
only fun part, although I
personally find gift bingo with the chance to win a prize enjoyable.
If the prize is wine that equals a huge jump on my personal fun
meter. I believe this is largely everyone's experience with showers.
It is something that we are all happy to do, to celebrate a friend's
big life event, while not necessarily within the traditional bounds
of fun per se.
But when you are
celebrating the life event of another person that you want more than
life to celebrate for yourself, the sting is nearly unbearable. It
doesn't matter how close you are to the guest of honor, it still
hurts. In fact, I think the closer you are, the more it stings
because it is an experience that you wish you could really share with
that friend.
I would walk
through the baby isles at Target, printed registry in hand and my
heart would feel so heavy that I didn't know if I could continue to
carry it within my chest cavity. You know the routine. You want a
gift that's big enough to cover the amount that you intend to spend,
but small enough to carry gracefully and in a box so that it can be
easily wrapped. The shower gift check list, if you will. I would
touch the tiny baby blankets and I was always struck by how soft they
were. Designed for the delicate, precious skin of a little one. I
would tear up looking at tiny onesies and booties, silently praying
for my chance. When is it going to be my turn?
I spent my
Saturdays eating tiny salads and playing games where I had to name
baby items and guess their prices. I would joke about how little I
knew of babies and their needed items. I prayed for showers at
restaurants where I could order a glass of wine to help dull the
pain. I tried to embrace the positives of being childless. But to
be honest, by your mid 30's when you desperately want a child those
positives feel pretty pathetic. Not so if they were your choice and
you have made a conscious decision to refrain from reproducing. But
when you are an unwilling participant, many of those positives feel
very pretty empty. I can go out to clubs and bars at night... woo
hoo. I end up spending the whole evening wishing that I was home in
my jams instead of uncomfortable shoes and wearing pants, anyway. I
can spend my money on myself. Yay. All I see that I want to buy are
nursery decorations. We can travel. Yipee. I would love to show a
child what an amazing world we live in and watch his face as he sees
the ocean for the first time.
I stuffed myself
with bottle shaped cookies and rattle shaped cake pops and plastered
a smile across my face. I tried to remind myself that my turn would
come. But month after month, year after year, shower after shower my
ability to stay positive waned significantly.
I watched my friends as their bellies grew round and
beautiful, full of life. I imagined what it must be like to feel a
human being growing and thriving inside of you. What an amazing
accomplishment that must be; how proud they must feel of their
bodies. I sat at tables surrounded by other pregnant friends or
friends who already had babies and felt like I had absolutely nothing
to add to the conversation. It felt lonely. Sometimes someone would
ask if I planned to have kids and over the years my answer changed
from an excited “Absolutely! We are trying!” to a decidedly
less excited “Yeah, we have been trying.” Once I caught on that
that answer gave way to a flood of very personal questions and crappy
advice I altered my answer to a vague “Someday,” but as the years
ticked by I found myself lying, and bitterly snapping back with a
sharp, “I don't know. We may just use our money to travel.”
This was generally followed by a swig of wine and a conscious effort
to hold back hot tears. Fortunately, having little to add on topic I
was largely ignored in most conversations, which all surrounded
pregnancy and babies. I left these showers feeling emptier and more
depressed than when I arrived. It felt good to cry on the drive
home.
I think I enjoy showers so much now because I find such
relief in being able to attend without them being such a trigger for
sadness. Maybe that's selfish, but I'm at a point in my life now
where I don't really care. I recognize that my feelings and my pain
were valid and I look forward to celebrating the end of that phase in
my life while I shower with gifts and celebrate others.
I don't know why life milestones come so easily for some
people, while others like me struggle so much. I often think back to
that time in my life, however and it always crosses my mind as I am
sitting at various baby and bridal showers now. I wonder who else in
the room may be donning a plastered smile on her face and my heart
breaks for her. I wish that I could tell her that she isn't as alone
as she feels. That this time in her life is immensely difficult but
that it will pass. That her turn will come and that because of her
long wait, her own milestones will be that much sweeter. But it's
difficult to tell a plastered smile from a real one and we women can
be amazing actresses when we need to be, so she remains hidden in the
crowd. So instead I secretly hope for as easy a day as possible for
her and look forward to the day that the shower invitation in my
mailbox is for her.
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