My best friend from high school—the one who was there with me through enormous pimples, ridiculous haircuts and butthole boyfriends—cannot get pregnant. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for her difficulty; nothing is blocked or twisted, scarred or otherwise obviously uninhabitable. Morally speaking, she’s pretty plain-Jane these days: being decent, hetero, and happily married. Not that any of that should matter; it shouldn’t. But I’mworking in pure theory here, just scrambling toward a why.
Or maybe it’s a why not that I should be searching for. As in, I’m a mom, so why not her? Or maybe it would be most helpful for me to focus on what I can do for her, although I fear that there’s very little. And I honestly wouldn’t know where to start.
In light of my friend’s infertility, the way that I was given a child seems utterly cavalier if not flat-out absurd. My husband had a mild concussion when we conceived our daughter, a situation that has grown into a less-than-private joke. Maybe that’s why she acts so crazy, we say. Maybe even his sperm couldn’t see straight! Ha ha, right? And still, we cherish our girl and the way that she slipped so simply into our lives. I mean, yes, we’re idiots, but we still understand about grace.
The thing is that I’m sure my friend understands about grace too. Probably better than I do. It was her life, after all, that was complicated by a parent’s addiction and infidelity. It was her childhood that was marked by instability, fear and abuse. She used to tell me that I was the strongest person she had ever known. That wasn’t true, though, and I knew it. I had nothing to be strong for, being as I was the spoiled child of happy parents. She was always the one in the midst of a fight. And now here she is again, fighting against what her doctor calls “inconclusive.”
That word—“inconclusive”—is bullshit, of course. It is as vacuous as it was crazily-expensive to hear. But my friend remains undeterred. Wish me luck, she e-mails, time and again, as one treatment fails and gives way to the next. I feel like crap because, like most lucky people, I’m not very good at wishing it on others. Oh, I have good intentions; I just have no idea where my luck came from, let alone how to call it forth. Yet I want this for her as hard and as deeply as anything, ever, which I think is something like wishing or praying. So I’m doing my sorry best from way too far away.
I met my friend in middle school when we both failed to register for an in-class mock election. They sat us together at a table and from then on, we were inseparable. It was like that all through my teens and into my early twenties, until I finally went away to school. For years, we lived some scant miles apart, with her on a winding dirt road and me on our town’s main drag. These days we barely manage to share one state, with her on the east side and me on the west. As a result, we are reduced to meeting on proper occasions—my baby shower, her wedding—with long years of disconnection spanning in between. This means that I don’t actually know her very well anymore, not at all like I used to. My old love’s still strong, though; it’s erstwhile, yet dear. I still want her to be a mom.
And while I can’t exactly empathize, I do understand her frustration. I’m sure that much of it stems from her natural expectation that an eager egg was in there, shaking, just waiting on her signal. Pretty much all of us active girls think that’s true. If not, then why would we “protect” ourselves—sometimes scrupulously—as if pregnancy was as easy to catch as a toddler’s snotty nose? I wonder if she feels duped by her body or time, or is just furious, as I would be; she wears such a positive face. I hope that she’s found time for peace, because the only thing more harrowing than treatments and surgery has to be motherhood. I should call her up and find a better way to say that.
Where’s the time, though? Beyond the literal distance that separates us along with the ten-plus years, we have become busy adult-type people. She works and has a husband; I’m at home with an asthmatic kid while my husband’s off at work. Plus, every now and then, feeling inspired, I sit and attempt to write with some coherence. And even if I did find a moment to call, my daughter would be there as the adorable elephant in the room. Mom becomes her favorite chant word whenever I’m on the phone: “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom…” My six-year-old can’t understand about grace or grief—not yet; she still brings up tears on a whim. So I’m not sure that a call would be right after all.
I should probably just wait for her next wish-me-luck e-mail. I will try to make it clear in my response that I am doing my best at wishing, praying, and doing whatever kind of hope dance she’d like me to do for her to become a mom—even though I’m a bad wisher, prayer, and dancer. Still, there may be some comfort in knowing that while I am a meager ally in many respects, I am also a very old one. Longtime love has to have some kind of pull in the universe, wouldn’t you think? I certainly feel the strength of it still between us, which just might be grace itself or at least a close relation. And surprisingly, I find myself good at believing that she still feels it too.
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Monica Crumback’s essays have appeared in numerous publications including Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers, Skirt!, and Hip Mama. She lives in Michigan with her husband and daughter.