beauty, meaning and openness

With my camera, I open a new, different window to the world. I love travel photography, and find the camera opens me to new ways of looking and observing and offers new and deeper ways of understanding the people I meet.

I started photography innocently. I said I wanted to photograph “beauty”. Then, I wanted to photograph “meaning.” Now, I just try to be open. I’ve let go of searching for beauty, realizing it’s only one of so many interesting and revealing facets of life.

When I reviewed some of my recent photos I had to laugh. I now see how photography is also a window into my soul. I told my husband, “I think I’m in my dark period.” hmmm, I guess there's no denying the miscarriage must have had an effect.

Today, I am drawn to the lone tree, to light and shapes of what emerges out of the darkness. I am drawn to rootedness, which sometimes feels elusive. I love the quietness of the night, and photographing while others sleep – and then seeing the same places in the brightness and busyness of the day.

Today is my birthday, and I am good. I am happy to have an amazing husband and a group of friends who celebrate life, make me laugh and are basically really, really good people. As my blue t-shirt says: life is good.

it's official.

So, it's true. We finally bought our own home. EEKS! I mean YEAH!

I wanted to share with you what my friend M said to me because she says it so beautifully:

"I see how this new home = a new start = receiving what was called for even if other gifts have been denied to you your loving heart and womb, but here are some beautiful things, inspired and welcomed things coming into your life; hooray for new starts... and I send you my fullest capacity to give blessing, to you and your loving B, a blessing on this day when a new home will be yours soon. May you welcome many wonderful things and people, ideas and dreams through your door."

Holy
Holy
Holy

tease, tenacious

So I've been not-pregnant pregnant for longer than I've been pregnant. Yes, I'm still testing positive for pregnancy, though it's been almost two months since the miscarriage. Tenacious cells, they are not giving up. It's comforting in some silly way that they are fighters, but the fight was lost weeks ago.

"BEDREST" "BE STILL" "NO EXERCISE, NONE!"

That's what women friends who've had babies say I should have done. The doc says no, we needed blood flow through your body, we wanted you to live normally, just don't run a marathon. (important subtext: it wasn't your fault)

I am running a marathon, but not the regular kind. The fertility marathon keeps you running and striving and working towards a goal, towards a new life. But the training has been tough; the lost battles leave me tired but still amazingly functional. But it's harder and harder to believe in the goal.

I have a secret to tell you. I'm wondering what it would be like to stop. I'm not saying I want to. I"m just imagining a life without this struggle.

All I know is this: it's time for a clearing. A tossing, a freshness, a space for good stuff, for change, for me, for us. Room for friends on a deck in the sun. Room for a dog. Room for leaving behind the bad habits. Room for deep breathing, summer berries, bar stools, magazines and a chaise lounge.

I am a flat-bellied woman
who wants fullness
in life
I am ridiculously tenacious
trying to believe
in life
unfolding
messy,
wet
beautiful

give

B and I had our first "real" talk since the miscarriage this past Sunday. As we think about possibly moving, the place we are now seems more appealing. The tree-lined streets, the great neighbors, the park behind the house, the coffee shop, the walking path. We went around the corner to the local greasy spoon we've never been to, and talked about our fear of moving to, and becoming invisible in, suburbia. "You don't seem that excited," he says. "We should be more excited." Maybe. Maybe not. The feeling underfoot is slippery and dangerous, like quicksand. I'm too scared this new thing, this house, will also be taken away. I'm just holding tight, and these days dreaming big is elusive. I see in my mind's eye just the forearm and hand of a young one simultaneously reaching for me and slipping away. The miscarriage, the drama with the house loan, my mom's health insurance being taken away out of the blue... I am untethered, and in a storm, and in a place I rarely am: untrusting of the world.

"I want to give this to you", he says. I forget how it is for a man, to want to give to his wife. He wants to give me a home, our home. I was already moved, when he said, "But I can't give you babies. I wish I could give you babies." Just then, the 2-year old girl at the booth next to us with her Elmo shirt on wants to say hello. She comes around the side of the leatherette booth, and she flirts, she giggles. I cry. We cry.

This infertility journey asks SO much of you. We ask so much of ourselves, and our bodies. And it's all because we want to give --we want to give SO much, to a person we have not met. To a person who may not even become alive in this world. These almost babies are loved before they even exist. They are named before they exist. Space is created for them -- in minds, in hearts, in 2nd bedrooms across this country and the world.

Vegas, baby.

My infertility is like a trip to Las Vegas. Whenever I start a cycle I can't help but hope... "this is the one!" or the ever popular "I feel lucky" (especially when the embryo transfer is on 9/9/09, a VERY lucky day... in China). But each subsequent trip to infertility/Vegas means higher stakes. And for me, disappointment. Followed by I-can-do-it rallying and thumbs-upness. Move from IUI to IVF with donor eggs? More money, more invasive, but it will work. IVF/Donor eggs to Gestational carrier? Way more money, farther from my own body, but worth it. Adoption? (you get the idea). It's hard to know when to stop gambling.. oops, I mean hoping. But I keep going back, the eternal optimist.

harsh and exciting

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver