Someone should award me a Golden Globe

Did I ever tell you I trained as an actor?   Well, I did.  Many years ago.  I never thought that my greatest performance would be in the living room managing my infertility status whilst singing “Happy Birthday” to my niece at her 1st birthday party.

That’s where I was at yesterday.  The first half of the afternoon was fine, although significantly, during that time the children were playing outside and their parents, (my SIL and brother), were mostly absent as well.  My brother was at the BBQ and I’m not quite sure where my SIL was…maybe watching the kids?  Anyway, point being, during the first hour and a half the DH and I were in the lounge room chatting with my sister and her fiance about their recent overseas trip and we were doing fine.  

At some stage the BBQ was ready and we all sat down to eat.  There was some chatter about kids but we managed to divert the conversation to other topics at regular intervals to give us a breather.  I remained calm and mostly consiously aware of what I was saying and I stuck to the plan of being quiet when things were getting a bit too intense.  In the past this has worked.

I should point out here that I don’t mean to imply that I’m usually an extrovert.  I’m not.  But sometimes, in situations where children and mothers dominate, I become ungrounded and start to respond enthusiastically, (and falsely) to conversations about babies and bringing up kids.  It’s as if I’m trying to over compensate for my deficit or reassure people that I’m really doing “O.K”.   Unfortunately this can lead to extended conversations that revolve around raising kids, and when I say extended I mean conversations that last for well over and hour or two.   During such conversations I am often wounded, but don’t feel the pain until much later when I realise that I should have excused myself politely after the 15 minute mark and gone to talk to someone else about the latest weather report.   Unfotunately such conversations are really hard to get away from when the group is small and you are all confined to one area, though really that’s no excuse.  I could always take a short walk or a long bathroom break.  No one would miss me.

So at lunch I began to “space out”.  I lost my bearings.  The kids were now with us and my Nephew, (who really is gorgeously cute), began to play with DH and I.  He was really taken with DH this time and even snuggled into him a bit.

Picture this.  We are seated on the couch and on one  side my Nephew is snuggling up to DH. On the other side my brother is holding the baby girl who’s gurgling and chuckling as he jogs her up and down on her knee while he, (my brother), grins at me, waits for my reaction and jogs her up and down again.  The scene is unbearably cute.

And so it goes on…and on.  I really couldn’t tell you the details of the next hour or so as I wasn’t really present.  Somehow I had disapeared inside myself and in my place was a relentlessly cheerful Aunt.

The cheerful Aunt was knocked out later when the sugary butterfly birthday cake was presented.  My brother’s young family clustered around the cake and it’s single lit candle while my sister took photos.  At one point my brother looked admiringly at his children and wife posing for the “1st birthday photo” and cooed “Oh, look at the little family”.  My heart stopped. It skipped a beat.  I have previously thought of that phrase as “just” an expression, but it really happens!  I felt my body lurch.   I’m sure no one noticed as I probably still had the ” cheerful aunt” smile plastered to my face, but inside I cracked and cried.

We had about an hour to go after that, during which time DH and I stuffed down our tears with pink frosted birthday cake.  We talked about kids movies and animation and my brother expressed amazement at us not having seen  “Kung Fu Panda”.   I was compelled to exclaim,  “We don’t have kids”.  The statement was a bit irrelevant and definitely halted the conversation  in an akward manner, but by that time I was just trying to find some ground to stand on. Some way of orientating myself.  Someplace to exist.  I claimed our infertility and gained some measure of safety.  We left soon after, thanking the hosts for a lovely day,  but not before being herded outside to watch the kids race their tricycles and applaud accordingly.

Now….I want that Golden Globe.

Tags: childlessness, infertility, infertility and family, relationships with mothers