Trying to conceive happened in two stages: the regular trying to conceive, which didn’t work, and the earlier stage of trying to convince Daniel that we should try to conceive at all. That did work, but it took a very, very long time. I can’t think about how long too often, because I’m pretty sure that during that time my fertility expired, and it’s hard to manage that.
But all the time we were trying, Daniel was worried that it was a mistake. It was mistake because we might succeed, and the thought of another child was overwhelming to him. It was a mistake because we might fail, and there would be an eternal cloud over our marriage. Trying itself put a cloud over the marriage. Thus, to D the marriage was mostly cloudy.
Anyway, today Daniel said “I’m glad we tried. I think it would have been worse if we hadn’t tried at all. Then it would never have gone away.” It’s a lovely sentiment. It’s also what I was telling him for years and years and years — before trying, while trying. Whenever it came up (often!), I would say, however hard this was, not trying would have been worse. I could get over not having a second (right? I can, right? I am, right? I’d damn well better) but I might never have gotten over the resentment of not being allowed to make the effort, of D exercising a veto over something so important to me.
And for all those years, he wasn’t listening. I was talking and crying and urging and fighting and saying this all the time. And he didn’t hear it. So, and this is what breaks my heart, what else wasn’t he hearing during those years? Was he not hearing that I could be and was often being happy even when things were so hard and awful? Was he not hearing something that might have made him genuinely at ease with having a second child — and was that thing he didn’t hear the thing that might have made some cosmic-psychological-biological difference, and I’d be pregnant or holding my baby right now?
Another Door 