The credits

The movie is over. You are sitting in a dark theater, filled with the smell of spilled popcorn, too little fresh air, and some musical score the composer felt you should be left with as your last memory. In a moment, you will be speaking to your friends, gathering outside the bathrooms about your experience, what you thought, who should have done what, and the errors in film editing. But the next couple of minutes are yours. The hero is gone; he will never speak another word, nor kiss another girl. There will never be another explanation for the things that happened and those that didn't, except for what you work out inside. Slowly, you pull out of the reality that had been temporarily constructed by the movie makers and are able to assess the story from the outside, now that you are no longer living it.
  
The credits are rolling for me today. There will be no baby. Never another addition to our little family, never a mind opening up to the wonders of reality, coming into consciousness for the first time. There will never be another first step, nor a first word or a first potty success. That part of our lives is over. What does that leave us with?

Well, actually, a pretty bright future filled with love and values.  We have two highly intelligent and wonderful children who are past the stage where every movement needs to be monitored, every basic need attended to. They walk, and play, and express themselves and (on a good day) brush their own teeth. They are now in school for half the day, allowing me a secondary focus in my life. This is also an end to one of the most difficult aspects of my situation: the forced loneliness and separation from humanity that was bearable due to the joy in the task of parenting, but nonetheless difficult for someone whose primary values surround people. I never did find real adult companionship, real partnership with other parents, and I lost the part of my life that used to make me happiest: the interaction with other minds in a creative process.


Today I am looking ahead at the years of watching Alex and Lily grow, turning into the individuals I will love, not as my children, but for who and what they are. Also, at the return of the values I had given up for the priority of bringing these kids into the world and giving them the start in life, full of joy, self-confidence and love. I see myself growing alongside them, still spending every waking moment that's possible in their presence, but gradually nourishing a separate me.

I would have loved another opportunity to go through a babyhood and watching a tiny infant grow into a reasoned person. We had decided, this was our last pregnancy, win or lose. And now that it is a loss, I am ok. I have a lot to look forward to and, though I am by no means emotionally over the experience, I can move on... and build the rest of my life.