Ultra-concentrated Joy

At the sink in my office kitchen, there’s a commercial-sized bottle of dishwashing liquid, “ultra-concentrated Joy.”  That’s what having only one child is : ultra-concentrated joy.

I think a lot about the joys I’m missing by having only one.  There’s all the joy that another individual would bring — the cute comments, the hand on my face, the whispered, “I love you, Mommy.”  Then there’s all the joy of seeing Milo with a sibling, overhearing their conversations, seeing them grow up together.  I will never look into two faces, never hold two bodies, and have them both be a child of mine.  Never, never, never, never.  I will never have that joy.

And then I got to thinking about the patterns of pain and joy in my life.  A snapshot of joys experienced: staying up all night and seeing the sunrise with someone with whom I was giddily in love; being giddily in love more than once;  a full sukkah; a thousand moments of Milo’s childhood — and that’s just so far.

Joys I’ll never experience: see above; having a sister; being part of a big family, either coming from one or creating one;  a whole bunch of things that don’t even occur to me, but whose absence might  crush other people who have experienced them — I just don’t know any better, and I don’t even know that I don’t know any better.

Pain I’ll never experience: my parents’ divorce (it’s technically possible, but they’ve been married 42 years and seem to be doing quite well); the death of a parent before I was grown; fear I’ll never have any children; fear I’ll never find someone to love and live with; miscarriage; deep and scarring illnesses or losses in childhood.

There’s more I could add in every category, although I’m a little wary of filling up the “never experience” boxes, good or bad.   And when I look at this, I see how much of it is absolute luck and happenstance.  These things weren’t in my control, or subject to my wishes — particularly those in the “never experience” category, come to think of it.  I didn’t choose for or against any of those things.  Nor did I necessarily choose the joys.  I lucked into most of them.

Here’s the unsettling truth: I can’t reliably choose my joys and pains.  I can move in directions that I hope will bring more of one and less of the other, and usually I’m right.  But so much is not ours to control.  Infertility brings that home, but then all the medicines and treatment — which often work — subverts it.

I take this to mean that I don’t need to keep being befuddled about what went wrong, cosmically, with my quest to have another child.  There’s no solution to why I won’t ever, ever have that deeply longed-for joy.  It’s not Daniel’s fault, really.  It’s a thing that has happened to me.   Other things haven’t happened to me, and I’m grateful for that.   But at the same time, I have to understand that it’s only by chance or accident — and other chances and accidents could bring unbearable pain or extraordinary joy.   (I confess, I have a much easier time seeing the former, the pain, the cancer, the diagnosis, the accident, the loss, than the latter — what could it possibly be if it’s not my new baby, who will never find me?)

It’s a sign of how fantastically lucky my life has been so far that this has only just now occurred to me.  It’s so obvious — but so much of middle and upper class American life is devoted to frantically working around the obvious.  It also means (hello Oprah) that joy is pretty random, too, so I should be crazy aggressive in finding it, welcoming it, holding on to it.  That’s harder than it sounds, actually.  How can I compare the goodness or joy of a really great yoga class, or eventually even being a yoga teacher, to a child?  Children are supposed to be the transcendent, all-trumping, joy.  What’s a good day at work, or a beautiful sky, or a great meal, compared to that?  But you know what?  I don’t have that second child and all that joy.  I do have the chance to eat a great meal on occasion, and go to yoga, and do good work.  So those have to be my joys.