Listening to: Everybody Knows – John Legend
I finally braved the doctor today for the first time since my last miscarriage. A new doctor in a different office.
Because a lot of my work deals with medical records, I found myself sort of step outside of my body and take a seat on the counter to swing my legs back and forth while the attorney part of me took over to answer questions about the patient’s history.
I was good. Professional. Thorough.
An accurate historian. Technical and precise.
She asked me about every disease that ever affected my parents or grandparents and with every question, I could see them and how their condition manifested itself.
Any family history of diabetes? – And I saw my grandmother after her amputation.
Any heart disease? – my grandfather after his quintuple bi-pass
Arthritis – my grandmother, holding her hands, no longer able to quilt or play the piano.
And so on.
And with every detail, I thought about all of the traumas that their bodies went through.
And then I had to list mine.
It’s amazing what the body remembers.
And through all of the questions, I was fine.
I remembered dates.
I knew answers.
Lots of questions about the miscarriages. Check.
Very professional.
I was fine.
Until she asked me about other children by saying, “Have you given up?”
And something about that question pulled the chair out from under me, because I don’t have an answer. The girl version of me was no longer sitting on the counter watching. She had jumped back in and was asking me questions now.
I’ll be okay.
There are days when I’m so thankful for my daughter who I wanted for so long that it seems greedy to ever think of more. And there are others when it feels like we’re a table with three legs that keeps toppling over, with a hole there where the fourth would have been.
I’ll be okay.
Sailors know there are times when the wind just suddenly dies and your sails luff sleepily. You stare at the sails and beg them to move, but you are stuck there in the middle of the lake or ocean and it is just still. It was like that for me in that moment and all day afterward. I couldn’t get much momentum. I worked. I did my jobs, but all from a place of very little movement.
So, I put it here so that I can let. it. go.
