Landslide

I've never been in a real landslide, but I imagine that first a few pebbles roll out from under your shoe as you're climbing up the path. Then you slip and fall, pushing a few rocks down the trail behind you. Perhaps you reach out and grab a branch to try to steady yourself, and the bush uproots and you and it go rolling downhill. Before you know it, the mountain seems to be eroding underneath you and rolling downhill.

I did, however, experience a virtual landslide of my own life last year. After years of talking about having a baby on my own, and months of planning, and weeks of watching the 'easy' methods (natural, clomid) fail, I underwent weeks of injections and an insemination to begin the journey on my own. The process was emotionally and physically draining --- many invasive procedures, furtive visits to the doctor's office at 7:30am before work, and the painful release of how I always dreamed of starting a family. But I did it. I had arrived. And the day after this monumental insemination, I was traveling to my childhood home to celebrate my parents' 40th wedding anniversary and to rest for a week. The promised land was in sight.

I drove 5 hours home the next day and thought about the week ahead: An anniversary party. Time with my high school friends. Time with my family. Rest. What a wonderful way to launch the new life I hoped was growing inside of me. I arrived in the late afternoon to the open arms of my parents. My father, in typical fashion, immediately took my car to the shop to be fitted for new tires. I sat down on the couch with my mother and had a terrible feeling. I asked her what was wrong and she tried to punt. I wasn't going for it. She dodged, she swerved, and finally she told me: it appeared that my parents' marriage was disintegrating.

I immediately doubted her. It couldn't be, shouldn't be, can't be. And then I listened to the facts, as hard as they were to believe. Those were the pebbles.

We held the already planned anniversary party and I looked around at the faces of family and friends. Could this really be the end? I pulled my sister into another room and, ironically, told her at the anniversary celebration that the marriage was crumbling. We were both numb.

I confronted my father during the week while, also ironically, we were hiking. The path disintegrated underneath our feet. Our family was tumbling downhill and picking up speed. I grasped for every branch I could - reminding him what he had, what we had, what we would lose - but the branches uprooted and only added to the downhill trajectory.

A few days later I pulled out of the driveway and waved to my parents, as I always do when leaving home. But this time I wondered if it would be the last time I would leave my home. And it was. My reflections of my life on the drive back were 180 degrees different than they had been just one week before --- how was this possible? I had already given up the dream of falling in love, engagement, wedding, natural pregnancy, happily ever after. Would I now give up grandparents, joint birthdays, and family vacations? Boulders came flying by.

I stopped at a rest station to buy some lunch and started to eat it in the car as I drove; but, quite suddenly I became sickened by the smell of the food. I stopped again to throw everything out -- the smell was overpowering. Little did I know I was pregnant. Or that the biggest boulders were still to come.