I don't want to update too much about the maybe-could-be possibility until I communicate more with the donors, but no doors have been shut, and each day I think
this maybe-could-possibly happen without The Universe smacking me over the head with a big stick is a victory in my book.
I know you want more information. So let's say....
68%
My confidence level is right at 68%
...with a good possibility of rising. More updates soon, I promise (*and not Dramalish "soon," the real kind of "soon" that almost everyone else in the world operates under) just as soon as I talk more with our (possible!) donor.
J is coming along. We are different people. I live in the realm of fantasy much of the time. Theatre, Literature, Fairy Tales. The concept of possibilities is something I can fathom without too much frustration.
But for my husband it is hard. Abstracts are not his friends. He wants facts. Figures. Charts. Building Plans. Maps. He wants someone to tell us: Yes, this will work.
I keep telling him that even if the success rates were obnoxiously high (say, 85%)- there are still people who fall into the minority. Hell, the fact that we are dealing with azoospermia AND DOR/POF puts us in a very very small minority. No one would have ever laid money on the odds we would be put in a position of absolute sterility, but here we are.
So looking at the odds can guide us, but we can't treat them as gospel truths. And yet... he knows this. He goes back and forth with me every day- one second ready to write the cheques and take the plunge... the next second he's hesitant, with a million questions.
Finally, when he asked if I knew our donor's ethnic background, I responded, "Will the answer make a difference as to how ready you are to do this? I mean, if I say Irish and Swedish, will you be like, 'Oh, I had the credit card out, but I draw the line at those damned Swedes!'"
He laughed.
"No, I guess it won't."
You know, I think there are some situations in which you're never "ready," but you do it anyway. My memory flashes on
Being called for my first audition, and stuttering through a jittery, but successful cold read.
Kissing a boy for the first time, watching "Honeymoon in Vegas" in the theater. I was so friggin' scared when that boy put his arm over my shoulders and tilted my face towards his with his free hand.
Stepping into the classroom in the beginning of the year (the first time, and every time since) always feels a little terrifying... I'm perpetually wishing I had prepped more, hoping that this year's crop of kids will inspire me (they do).
Completing the registration for Pookey's preschool for the fall. I don't like admitting that she's a little girl and not a baby any more. I realize that I sound ridiculous when I ask my husband to go in her room and "check on
the baby" while she's playing with a neighbor girl. Even when I hold her in my arms and ask, "are you my baby?" she gives it to me straight: "No, Momma. I'm a
big girl."
So grow she must. And to that end, I made another trip today to the gently-used kids' store to sell some more of Pookey's old clothes and make some room in her closet. As I hauled the large tub of outfits to the car, J's eyes locked on a pair of overalls on the top of the pile.
"You're not giving *those* away, are you?"
No, darling. I like to add an outfit I plan on keeping to the stack. Just for kicks and giggles. Actually, I said:
"I was. Why?"
"Well..." and I could tell he was trying to be as nonchalant about it as possible, "it's just that she was wearing those overalls in the Mothers' Day pictures we took for you last year. I
like those overalls." Then, pulling back quickly, he added, "But you can give them away, it's cool. I don't really care..."
I put the tub in the back of the car, but wordlessly removed the overalls from the rest of the outfits. It will go in the storage bin with the other priceless treasures that are the un-relinquish-able outfits of our daughter's babyhood. One day I'm going to make a scrap quilt out of these things dresses, jumpers, and overalls and give it to her when she goes away to college.
Or maybe she'll think that scrap quilts are for grandmas, and I'll keep it for myself, so even when I'm eleventy-billion years old and my mind is beyond dementia, I'll always have a way to touch that precious time in my life.
But for now, I'm not ready to resign myself to quilting just yet. I'm keeping my heart open to the possibility that the casting for the star roles of Dramalish's Kids has not been set. That rewrites are in the process. That I still have some creative control of this story...
And now I'm off to email my possible donor. Or maybe I'll wait till the morning... I don't want her looking at a time stamp of 2am and wondering what sort of a woman writes email at that time. Heh. A little oversensitive, aren't I? Sigh.
Wish us all luck, won't you?
***If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility! -Soren Kierkegaard