As I sit down to write this today I am looking at our suitcases on the floor, all four of them, and I thinking that I should be packing. I am thinking that I should be planning for my three-hour long class tonight, I am thinking that I should be doing laundry. I should be making my son’s bed. I should be emptying the dishwasher. But what I really want to do is take a nap. It’s been a long couple of weeks.

Last week Jerimiah and I met with our lovely doctor, who by the way, is beautiful and smart. She is kind. She is optimistic. She is matter-of-fact. She is humble. She sits behind her large desk, in her khaki-colored room, her degrees hanging on the wall, next to her plaques that say, “Charlotte’s Best of the Best”, “Voted Number One in Charlotte”, “Best Doctors of North Carolina” and she says things like, “I don’t know why people have a hard time getting an appointment with me!” And we laugh, knowingly. It took us four months to see her.

But what I love most about her is that she is thorough. This is new for us. Our PCP is the same. They take the time to listen. They want you to know everything. They want to give you all the answers so that you can make a very important decision. They don’t like it when a test comes up short. They don’t like to look at us and say, “I don’t know”. But that is what our OB said to us last week. “I don’t know”. She doesn’t know what the problem is. In fact, she doesn’t see a problem at all. By her account, and the tests we have both been through, there is no reason why we shouldn’t have three kids if we wanted them.  We are young-ish, 35 is no longer a death sentence (that was good to know), we are fairly healthy (we are both working on losing weight), and internally our bodies are doing exactly what they are supposed to be. His little swimmers are strong and many. My tubes are clear, my eggs are abundant; together we are a powerhouse of baby-making potential. So what the hell?

“Unexplained infertility,” that’s what she said with a cringe. She didn’t like to say it. It bothers her. She is a student of science. Of medicine. Of finding out why something works or doesn’t. She was as frustrated as we were. Then came the statistics. About 20% of couple suffer from this. There are various success rates for the various “help” you can get. There are three tiers of “help”.

Tier one is doing nothing different, just tracking on your own and keep trying. Keep a positive attitude. Don’t make sex a chore. Try to reduce your stress levels, y’all know I’m real good at that…

Tier two is “some help” by way of a medication taken daily that would help release eggs. Then we could choose to be monitored via ultrasound to make sure they are working. The sperm could be collected, cleaned up, then inserted to give us the best chance of conception.

Tier three is the mack-daddy of them all: IVF.

We had made it clear to our doctor early on, that because infertility is not covered by insurance, that IVF is out of the realm of possibilities for us. The cost is too crazy, the risks are too high. We felt we would be better served to take that kind of money and put it into the adoption process. Now I am not bashing anyone who has done IVF. If it were free or greatly reduced by insurance, I would have said sign me up! In fact, with the technologies they have now, they could all but guarantee that we would not have another child with a chromosomal disorder. We could choose how many eggs we wanted, I’m sure there is even a way to make your kid a rocket scientist during that embryo procedure. And for many it is the only way they can have a baby. But for us, knowing that we have been successful twice before at this, it doesn’t seem worth it. Besides, if nothing works we still have one amazing kid, so we are already lucky!

Tier two sounded appealing, I’ll tell you why. Tier two doesn’t ensure that we will get pregnant, none of the tiers do actually, but tier two makes it feel natural. It makes if feel holistic. Tier two makes you feel like it is possible and that the help is just that safety net under your high climb.

So we went with tier two. Kind of.

It isn’t a drastic step. We know this. And the pills that she put me on, Clomid, aren’t exactly magic. In fact, they have risks and side effects, but what pill doesn’t? The side effects, she explained, can last for up to three weeks a month, even though you only take five pills. The side effects can range from a little moodiness to full-out PMS symptoms. I think Jerimiah’s eyes got pretty wide when she said that. Who wants me to be PMS-ing for three weeks at a time?! I don’t want me to be that way. He certainly doesn’t want it. But you take the good with the bad in a situation like this.

She assured me that the worst that happens is I decide I don’t want to hang anymore and I quit. The risks are a little bigger. A normal couple has a 1% chance of having twins. On Clomid that number goes up to an 8% chance. Now some of you might be thinking, that is not a lot. And some of you might be thinking, well you want a baby, what is wrong with two? Nothing. Nothing is wrong with two and I would happily have twins and hug them and love them and spank them just like a singleton. What scares us, after having been through what we have, is two babies mean double the risk. Double the problems. Double the chance that they sit us in a darkened room one sunny afternoon and tell us that we lost one, or two babies. Two babies means anxiety.

So, we sat silent for a bit. We listened to our doctor say she was sorry. Say she wished, and didn’t wish, she would have seen a problem. And we agreed. Problems would have had different solutions. Or problems would have been bigger hurdles.

So we didn’t fully commit to the WHOLE tier, just the medicine now. I can only take it for three months, then we have to reevaluate. But she is confident. And we are optimistic. And somewhere, someone probably needs month-long PMS Missy in their life. Even if it is just my neighbor Dennis who needs an ass-kicking every now and then.

So as we embark on this fabulous, fun, family vacation this week I just have to carry an extra pill bottle with me. But it is fine, my Xanax won’t be lonely! I will start popping them on the cruise ship and then I may or may not commit mass murder two days later when someone looks at me wrong at the breakfast buffet. I mean, I dunno, I will keep y’all posted.

M.

I read a status that a woman posted today about receiving free lunch as a child and it took me back. Way back. To my own free lunches. There are things about our lives, irrevocable things, things we wish weren’t there. Things that make us ashamed and embarrassed, and for years, free lunch was mine. “Free” in this case, is a misnomer. Free means that something is given at no cost. Receiving “free” lunch may fill up a hungry child’s tummy, but there is so much more to it than that.

I was the child of a single mother. A bastard child. The result of a love affair years in the making. Unfortunately, my father was married to another women. Had other children at home to take care of, so I was not on his list to care for. Which means all the responsibility rested solely on my mother, and she did her best.

She was a housekeeper, a bartender, a babysitter, she was even a “lunch lady” working in several of the lunchrooms around the district, going in early in the morning to bake those soft buns we all enjoyed with our chili on cold November afternoons, and staying until the last child brought their tray back to be washed.

Now my mother’s job barely afforded us a place to live and electricity. So I could wish all I wanted for a cool, new, sparkling lunchbox every year and yummy named-brand treats to fill it up, but I never knew that kind of life. I was the recipient, instead, of a “hot lunch”. Day-in and day-out I walked through the line, picked up my plastic trays, grabbed my carb, my vegetable, my protein, and my chocolate milk. I walked slowly to the woman at the desk and gave my name, or my number, or my bright yellow punch card that signified my difference in the line. That set me apart from all the kids behind me.

A free lunch kid. Free means something good, something fun. A surprise! Free to my son means he gets to have a good time on someone else’s dime, or finds a surprise in a bag of cereal. Free means that he doesn’t have to save up his own money, it means someone treated him to something. Free is good at our house! Free is exciting.

But when I walked into the lunch room every day “free” was not fun. And it wasn’t fun for the people paying for my “free” lunch. It wasn’t fun for the cafeteria workers and the teachers whose salary depends on how many “free” lunches were given away. It wasn’t fun for the people arguing in our town about cutting taxes. And it certainly isn’t fun now. Because like most programs that helped people like my mom and me back then, it was a short-term solution to a problem that is not short-term. It was a half-assed attempt to help “needy” people. And after a while, it doesn’t seem to matter how big your heart is, some people get tired of helping needy people.

Now please don’t mistake my morose words for ungratefulness. I am grateful. I am grateful for the government, the State of Kansas, the school district, the teachers and staff, and the people in the town I grew up in who may have been financially burdened because of my “free” lunch. I am now far enough removed to realize that the burden it lifted off my mother’s shoulders outweighed my adolescent embarrassment. But it was tough for a bit. Really tough.

Middle school is tough. I don’t need to tell y’all that. Anyone who has spent a day in a public middle school knows what I mean. There were days that I didn’t go through the lunch line. I instead told my friends that I wasn’t hungry and sat at the end of the table and watched them laugh and eat their Pop-Tarts, PB and J sandwiches, and deli sliced turkey. I would watch them read the cute notes their mom’s would pack in their lunch boxes. I watched them poke the straws through their Capri Suns and unwrap their Oreo’s. They would ask of I wanted a bite. No, I would lie. Say may stomach hurt.

But the reality was, as a nervous and anxious kid, I sometimes just couldn’t deal with walking through the line and punching my card. I could feel the anger, the condemnation, the uproar that having a “free lunch” meant in my community. I couldn’t see the woman working the desk look at me with that knowing smile. The one that says, I know you don’t have any money. I know your mom can’t pay for your lunch. Go ahead, take an extra milk. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take the pity.

Now I am not sharing my story today to make you look at me in a different light. I am no longer that kid of the single mom who couldn’t afford lunch. I am now the kid of the single mom who found a way, against many odds, to care for her child in all aspects of life. From free lunch, to borrowing money for field trips, to going to the Christian Associates for school supplies. I am the kid of a mom who knew how to care, whose heart is the biggest part of her body. I am the kid of a mom who put everything she could into her baby, and I hope she is proud of whom and what I have become.

But I am also a kid straight out of “the system”. I am also that kid who didn’t always have news shoes when I needed them. Who had to say no to party invites because we couldn’t afford a gift. I am the kid who almost slipped through the cracks in second grade because my teacher was concerned about the kids whose parents had the time to spend in the classroom or who volunteered more or who gave more money to the school, then the quiet girl in the back with a 6th grade reading level and a mother who cleaned houses for a living.

I am simply sharing my story with those of you who didn’t know that life. In hopes that the next time you talk about, or read about, or argue or complain about “free lunch”, that you realize it may not be exactly what you think it is.

It may not be exactly who you think it is.

Instead of passing judgement. Instead of complaining about tax dollars, instead of moaning about people taking care of their kids, just know that they are taking care of them. The best they can. And for some kids this “free lunch”, well it is the only thing they will ever know of free. It may haunt them. It may help them. But in the end, most of them will strive to never have to be looked at with that kind of pity and blame ever again.

M.