Judgment Day

It is judgment day, at least for me.

I've got a 12:15 appointment with my OB to start figuring out why, after two very successful and easy pregnancies, I can't get pregnant with my third baby.  We've been trying for a year now and it is weighing heavier and heavier on me each day.  I can feel the weight sitting on my sternum, sometimes it is so crushing I can barely draw a breath.  Each week that slips by erodes my confidence further, taking with it a glimmer of hope and the last vestiges of my personality.  I feel so helpless and completely responsible all at the same time.  I am stifled by my overwhelming despair, it has begun spilling into places in my life where it shouldn't go, like work and play.

I am buoyed by my children, their sweet pink-cheeked faces bring a cascade of joy.  But it seems unfair for them to carry the burden of my happiness, so I do my best to just love them.  To encourage and guide them, to lift them and hold them and inspire them.  They are both so very happy right now -- living one moment to the next, seeking the new life of spring, cradling it in their inquisitive minds.

They have discovered that our apple tree is a perfect climbing tree, it's lowest sturdy branches fanning away from the trunk nearly parallel to the sodden turf.  They have been pruned for climbing, each fashioned into a cradle for children small and large.  Scott has hung a swing in one of the boughs, it hangs straight without needing much shimming, swinging in a graceful arc as a squealing blonde babe whooshes by, her golden ringlets dancing in the wind.

I have ordered seeds and plants for the garden, I wait excitedly for fresh strawberries, green beans, carrots, peas, potatoes, and raspberries.  I pored over the Gurney catalog, trying to figure out which varieties would best serve us, novice gardeners.  I ordered three varieties of pumpkins for my Halloween-loving hubby.  Broccoli for Milo.  Blue potatoes for Violet.  And two different kinds of raspberry bushes for me.  I picked the sampler pack of carrots for their novelty: orange, yellow, white, purple, and red.  A rainbow of carrots.  We will freeze and I will learn to can and, hopefully, the $100.00 spent on seeds and plants will at least pay for itself in produce.

We face another judgment this evening: Milo's first parent-teacher conference.  I wonder what the teachers will say about him...  Will they notice his aptitude for math?  He counts to 100, to 100 by twos, and 1000 by tens.  He recognizes all of the letters and knows their sounds.  He's starting to read.  He listens carefully to directions and figures so many things out all on his own.  Will they see that?  Or will his performance anxiety give them pause to recommend he not enter kindergarten this fall.  I think he's ready, but then again, I'm not impartial nor fair when it comes to him. 

And so I wait, anxious and occasionally dizzy, my fingertips buzzing.  I fear that bad news will send me diving off a precipice into a lake of sorrow.  I fear that I may be drowning already.