I don’t know that I have ever been so happy to see a season
breathe its last breath- so I could finally take one. I blessed the airplane
for taking us away and I blessed the sky for supporting its wings, and I just
about kissed the ground beneath my feet as we stepped into the terminal of the
Sacramento airport, with cat in tow.
I was exhausted and I wanted to brush my teeth and the
recycled cabin air had parched my skin but I smiled ear to ear as we walked
along side the other travelers to retrieve our luggage squealing “we're home!
We’re home!”
At that time I didn’t know if California was our home or
just the place that housed our dearest loves and oldest memories, but I knew
where home was no longer; Staten Island, New York, and that was enough for me.
The air smelled of new and we were buzzing.
These last two months here in my hometown have been SO good.
My skin has been drunk off UV rays, my heart full of love, and a peace NYC did
not afford me has settled over my soul. There have been bumps, days of missing
my husband who is off training in S. Carolina, an unexpectedly emotional Mother’s
Day, and family tension that thousands of miles and selective hearing has
guarded me from these last few years, but I’m enamored with this place of my
youth. I am settling into the comfort and familiarity here, the streets flooded
with memories, and the ease that comes with life in a small town.
Getting the call that the Coast Guard was sending us to San
Francisco confirmed what I already knew in my heart, we were moving home. Ryan
and I chatted for as long as the time difference between us afforded, about all
the things we wanted to do and see. We could have a backyard, get a dog, go to
family BBQ’s, take day trips to Santa Cruz and spend weekends in Yosemite. We
could plant some roots.
The last few months we spent in New York, our lives were submerged
in fertility related matters. I did nothing else. Surgery and pokes a prods,
hormones, and well-worn paths to and from the fertility clinic. We were
swimming upstream hard and fast being pushed by a promise, great love, and a
primal instinct to reproduce. And when I wasn’t going I was thinking. Because I
am not a visionary, thinking about
our baby and connecting what I was going through emotionally and physically to
an actual human being known only to God, was difficult for me. But I had to
try. Otherwise I would lose sight of why I was voluntarily subjecting myself to
so much pain, and it just felt like pain,
not a sacrifice. I would have moments of bitterness thinking of the people who,
out of ignorance, have said to me, well
at least you don’t have to go through pregnancy, as if because I didn’t
bear a rounded tummy under my shirt or endure the sting of labor that I was
made exempt from the pangs of bringing a child fourth. My body and heart have endured much
and I would choose a pregnancy over what I had experienced any day of the week,
but I didn’t get to choose. Not that. I do get to choose to constantly keep my
eye on the prize, a baby to mother and sweet redemption. To respond with grace
to those who speak out of turn, and to remain faithful and expectant as we
wait.
A woman giving birth
to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she
forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world-
John 16:21
My anguish has an expiration date, our child’s birthday.
In California it’s different. No doctor’s appointments or
fertility injections, no scheduling visits with lawyers or muddling with state
surrogacy laws. Here my mind is busied with work and school and lunch plans,
and I just get to be me for a while, not in pursuit of anything, just content
and present, and its been really nice. The scar across my pelvis reminds me
that it was real, that it all actually happened in that far away land, and
that in a lab, what feels like a million miles away, our future baby rests.
For all of you that have checked in these last few months
inquiring about where we are in this journey, thank you for thinking of us :) I have been silent on
this space for a while, partly because there is not much new to report and
mostly because I’ve been busy swimming :) The timeline on when our gestational carrier will get the IVF (which is our
next and most exciting step so far) is still a little fuzzy, and I don’t want
to speak prematurely about this, so let’s just say things will be getting real
around here kinda soon :)
xx Christina
