Loss

The night is full of laughter and orange lights and cars driving with slow care through our neighborhood.

Halloween.

Tiny fairies, and Batman, and a race car driver, and two bumblebees, and dinosaurs, and a pop star, and a flapper, and a tiny vampire all walk the streets, and the neighborhood feels alive.

But tonight my arms feel empty.

I think it's becoming pretty clear that husband and I will not be parents. We won't adopt, there won't be some late miracle in my body. We won't ever hold a baby and know it's ours. We won't watch that little one take its first steps. We won't help dress anyone for Halloween and walk the neighborhood as Mom and Dad.

Sometimes I'm really ok with all this. Sometimes it feels almost like a relief to know we won't have to walk that hard road. We won't have to do the hard work of discipline and training when we're already so tired we can hardly think. We won't have to listen to the screaming of tantrums when we have company over. We won't have to change dirty diapers until we can hardly stand the sight of little bottoms.

But other times my arms and heart ache with an emptiness that comes with the knowing: I won't be a mother. Other times I can hardly look at a child without envy and sorrow. Sometimes when my nephews turn to me and mistakenly call me "Mommy" my heart bursts in my chest and I can't catch my breath and tears leak into my eyes, but I quietly answer them anyway.

Tonight I'm sad. I'm sad and feel this loss deep in my belly. I'll drink my cup of hot tea, and maybe take something to help me sleep - perchance not to dream. No dreams, please. Not tonight. Just rest and calm and blank thoughts. So that tomorrow I can get up and keep on walking this road toward healing, toward a heart that can rejoice in someone else's gift of a child. Not to deny my sorrow, but to come to a place where it no longer so defines me, controls me, pulls me this way and that.

Because the goal is joy and peace. To grow and let our wounds heal. Insha'allah, someday.