a great 2008

January 1, 2008
We greet the new year wrapped up in each other. We spent the last evening of the year just the two of us. Tipsy from champagne and stuffed with good food we are in each other’s arms. “This is the year we are going to marry; this is the year we are going to have children.” We whisper and laugh and make plans not knowing that one is much easier than the other. This particular night just a few hours passed midnight everything seems possible. Sun will shine on our wedding day and a September baby doesn’t seem all that far away.

• **

The beginning is light and crispy. I am, we are, happy and positive. What is one negative result? The sadness disappears quickly. I realise that our next shot is just perfect – we will conceive a baby while enjoying snow and skiing. As we sit around the table in the cabin eating dinner and people start talking about next year I smile. “Sure we’re going,” I say but inside I am thinking we’ll have a baby that’s just a couple of months old and skiing 2009 will be without us.

• **

J proposes in late February. It’s out of the blue even though we have already decided to get married in 2008. J wants the PhD out of the world before thinking about a wedding so I decide we won’t tell anyone – not yet.

• **

The negative results continue. I am getting more familiar with just one pink line than I would like to. I try not to google too much; I try not to check calendars too much. J is getting more and more wrapped up in finishing the PhD. Dinners are late, when they are eaten together, and we are worn out from our everyday life when we finally get under the covers.

• **

Summer lights things up a bit. J submits his PhD and defends it. We tell people we are getting married and send out the invitations (two months before the big day). I have a wedding dress made especially for me, J inherits my uncle’s old dress coat. We spent a handful of days by the ocean and I am sure that this is it. What baby would not want to be conceived in a body that’s healthy from sun and salt water and plenty of cherries and apricots? Not ours apparently.

August 23, 2008
It rains from morning to night. We wake up together and hear the pouring rain. Everything happens under umbrellas. During the day my mood lights up, I am after all marrying my sweetheart. At my parents I look up rain’s symbolic meaning. It symbolises fertility and wealth. When I tell people this they laugh and say we’ll have lots of children and I smile, but on the inside there’s an all too familiar sting.

“Don’t you worry. It often rains when the bride and her father arrives, but when the married couple exit the church the sun somehow always shine,” someone tells me minutes before the ceremony as I clutch my dad’s arm and feel rather nervous. It rains when we exit as husband and wife. We’re covered by an umbrella as our guests throw rice at us, another fertility symbol. We let them throw rice at us twice, can’t hurt.

J speaks as he has never spoken before. I have never heard anyone say such loving words about me, I have never heard myself described so beautifully before. He mentions the stock of butter I always keep in the fridge, my always checking people.com, my love of films and books, and he mentions that while others think that Paris is the city of love he and I know better: Lausanne is.

• **

We honeymoon in France. We eat baguette and goat’s cheese, drink red wine and relax. It is on this trip that I decide something about the coming autumn: I need a break, I can’t go on. We agree that we’ll get checked out at the doctor come the end of the next cycle. I want to know what is wrong, J wants confirmation we’re just fine. On bad days it feels like I am giving up the dream of becoming pregnant. On good days I am proud of myself for realising my body and mind need a break.

• **

I am terribly ill. I sleep the days away, my appetite is gone – I don’t even like tea and let alone the thought of toast is turning me off. I am waiting for my period. I won’t test. I won’t. I don’t want to have to test every month, to be faced with one pink line, in order to have my period. I wait and I wait. I am ill. I spent three days at home in bed.

October 16, 2008
On the fourth day I decide to test. I have one test at home which I decide to use. That will give me my period tomorrow, I think. As the second pink line appears I look at it and think to myself that something is wrong. Then I cry.

January 1, 2009
We celebrate the new year as a married couple with their first baby a mere five months away. It seems like forever before we get to meet the little thing. On one hand time is good. We have many things to decide in the upcoming months: Find out sex or not? Name the thing, agree on the surname combination that will inevitably have to happen, and for me alone: get much, much bigger. On the other hand time is annoying when all you want is to get to know this little thing and start real life with it.

2008 was great. Even though I didn’t start running and didn’t cook something to impress my brother and didn’t invite people over for our house warming. And even though I didn’t do a lot of all the other things I dreamed of doing there’s no denying that 2008 was indeed great. 2008 was the kind of year that will echo – not only in 2009, but also in the years to come after.

finally there

“Can we wait a little while longer?” I ask him. I am afraid of looking at him, knowing he’ll disapprove of my suggestion. “Why?” he asks me. I hesitate and don’t really want to tell. “I am just so afraid. Afraid something might happen. I just feel like waiting a couple of weeks,” I say. “I don’t want to hear that,” he says. “I don’t understand why you won’t tell people, but it’s okay to wait a couple of weeks. But you’ve got to stop thinking something might go wrong. I don’t want to hear you say that. You’ve got to stop saying that. Do you hear me?” I nod and know he’s right. I have been waiting so long for this and I am awfully silly not wanting people to share my joy and an awful idiot for constantly thinking something might go wrong.

I haven’t written much the past five-six weeks. I have been wanting to write, but I have wanted to write only one thing and I was too afraid of jinxing things to share my glorious news with anybody.

Five weeks ago today, I peed on a stick. And two lines showed up. At first I just looked at it and thought “something’s wrong” and then I started crying. I sat with my jeans around my ankles and started crying. I was ill and tired and it was 9am and I didn’t know how to wait a million hours before telling J. I texted him writing only “rain on your wedding day does really bring good luck”. He phoned me within 10 minutes. “Tell me this means what I think it means,” he said. “It does,” I said. “No, tell me in real words,” he demanded, so I told him: “You’re going to be a father.” I didn’t dare utter “I’m pregnant.” He bought me roses that night and for the past five weeks he’s (openly, he also did it secretly – hoping – before we found out) been padding my belly and talking to the tiny thing which grows inside of me.

Tuesday we saw the little thing. We saw the heart beating away. And I have got to be completely honest and say that until that tiny thing on the screen, until that heartbeat, I was afraid of someone telling me I wasn’t really pregnant. But it is in there (and it’s making its mother tired). Afterwards we called our parents with the news and for two days my parents have been phoning me asking how “we” are? I tell them fine and happy – so very happy.

On the 29th of September I crossed off “making a baby” from my list writing “I am crossing this one off. Not because we have accomplished making a baby, but because this is something that I have realised is so out of my hands and despite it still being something I would really love to do in 2008, having it on this list will not make me breathe any easier, will not make me put any less strain on myself. Baby will come when baby wants to come.” I wanted to believe so badly, but months and months and months of disappointment made me doubt it would ever happen. Little did I know…

I’m due on the 6th of June.

the difference a decade makes

1998: I am 19. I am single. I drink still water. I have been working a year after finishing school – starting at the local supermarket and moving on to a PR company. I spend August travelling in South Africa with my brother and his girlfriend. And when August says goodbye, I pack up my things and leave my parents to take a journalism course in another part of the country – a course I pay with my own hard-earned money.

University is my next step. I dream of doing literature and am unaware that I will end up choosing communication as my major. I am unaware of how many years I will be spending at university – this is a good thing, I think. I have yet to be in a serious relationship, have yet to be taken by surprise and fall in love with a friend.

I drink coffee like the typical 19 year old: Every sip is a reminder that I am concurring the world of the grownups. Every sip is, however much of it I like, prove I am no longer a kid.

I dream of a lot of different things. Plans and dreams and wishes changes on a daily basis and all that is constant is the “10 years from now” interviews with myself I play in my head as plans, dreams and wishes change. I feel as if the whole world is right in front of me and I have just to take the first bite – and if I don’t like it, I will be served something else, something with a different flavour, because naturally the world will fit my needs.

2008: I am 29. I am married. I now choose sparkling water over still. I am on my second job after finishing university. I have colleagues and a mortgage and six weeks of vacation a year – and I have a living room that may look nicer than it did three years ago, but still look nothing like I dreamed it would when we bought the place.

I am on my second journalism course. This time it is paid by work. I don’t have a next step. I don’t go somewhere new from here, I go back to work. I like my job, but I am sometimes frightened by the idea that I will stay there until I find something else, that I can stay there until I am old if nothing else comes along.

I drink less coffee. I have gone from drinking anything as long as it’s called coffee to being picky. My home has an espresso machine and I entertain.

I still dream of a lot of different things, but I have narrowed it down. More than nothing else I want a baby. I fight with myself daily to avoid planning my life around a baby I can’t be sure I will ever have. I remind myself that I also want to explore places, read books, stay up late and watch crappy TV shows.

My focus has changed. I have learned that if you don’t like the flavour of the world, you can’t necessarily expect to be served something else – sometimes you’re not even offered a bite.

And yet, however much has changed and even if it is not as often as it used to be, I still find myself interviewing the future me. I still find myself needing to go over plans and dreams and wishes in my head as much as I did a decade ago.

i never came to you in white

Dear J,

Two weeks and a little ago I became your wife. You texted me a little before three. “Am at church. Can’t wait.” Neither could I. Up until three o’clock the day was a mishmash of moods. We woke up together and heard the rain immediately. I turned sour and you did your best to cheer me up. We parted, but kept track of each other’s every move by texting. The rain continued pouring.

As I walked around in my childhood home drinking instant coffee, I began smiling. The rain was still pouring. I showered, found my dress, the shoes. My aunt finished off the bouquet your mother had made for me the previous day and I did my make-up and got dressed. Just days before our wedding I had regretted choosing not to wear white, but as I looked in the mirror I realised that I would have looked lovely in white, no doubt, but that I did the right thing in choosing to wear colour. Everywhere I walked – to the car, to the church – someone was holding an umbrella above my head.

My dad and I stood in the church waiting for the doors to open. I was anxious – anxious to see you, to kiss you, to take your hand. The church was filled. The guests smiled. My dad walked me down the aisle and as we said our hellos, you whispered “you look lovely” to me.

We said “I do”, there was a personal speech by the priest, songs we had chosen, kisses we had waited for. I thought I would cry through the whole thing, but despite wet eyes more than once, I think I did remarkably well.

It rained when we walked out of the church as husband and wife. It didn’t matter. Guarded by an umbrella, we let friends throw rice on us as is tradition – we even let them do it twice.

The evening is a mix of memories and is nowhere near complete yet. Memories keep coming to me – from pictures, from friends, from out of the blue. I remember drinking champagne, I remember a lot of toasts, I remember sitting next to you. I remember my dad speaking and your dad and you.

I remember you speaking. No one has ever said so many nice and loving words about me. No one has ever known me better and has ever made me sound like a sweeter person than you did that very night when you spoke to your new bride. I laughed when you talked about me and my addiction to people.com. I nodded and agreed when you talked of Lausanne as the city of love. I felt loved when you talked about loving the sound of me typing away at the keyboard and my afternoon dancing on the living room floor to Gnarls Barkley. Towards the end all I wanted was to kiss you and whisper how much I love you, how much I want you, how much you are mine. I listened to every word you said, but still I find myself lacking memories of certain passages and am ever grateful for the other night when you whispered the beginning of the speech to me as we lay in bed ready to sleep. I am still waiting for an occasion to ask for the next part.

Five minutes before midnight we danced our first dance as husband and wife. The rain stopped. We kissed and people cheered. Five hours later we went  to bed exhausted and tired. The warmth from your body seemed different. That is the way it is. Things feel different though in reality not much in our everyday life has changed. You are still you and I am still me, but we are husband and wife. Husband and wife – I like the sound of it. A lot.

Much, much love (yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever)

Your wife

husband and wife…

…as of right about now.

acknowledged

We have been talking about the acknowledgement from the very beginning. We have laughed at other people’s acknowledgements and made up our own – often in silly accents.

As we lie next to each other in bed Tuesday night, he asks me what I expect him to write in the acknowledgement. I tell him to write what is on his mind and I stress how important I think it is that he writes something he is comfortable writing. He tells me that he has already written it and that he just wanted to know.

He leaves another chapter for me to proof read on the table Tuesday night. I find it this morning, see the word “Preface” on the first page and leave for work thinking I will look at it later. When I come home in the afternoon and sit at my desk, I wonder when or if I will get to read the acknowledgement.

I glance at the preface and have already decided to do the proof reading later when I suddenly see the words “thanks to” repeated several times on the first page. As I read through it I realise that the preface contains the acknowledgements and that I must be there.

I am the last paragraph of the preface. I read through his words; One by one I gulp them down. They leave me teary-eyed at my desk. They are simple and lovely – they are so him. They are words I could not have put together myself. I end up crying and when I talk to him on the phone a little later I pretend not having read anything yet because I am still dizzy from his beautiful words and gratitude. When finally admitting – hours later – that I have read the words, the only thing I am able to whisper is: Thank you.

scenes

It’s not you, it’s me // I think you misunderstood, I just want to be friends // You know what? This is just not working // I’m breaking up with you // I never felt for you that way.

It’s a collection of sentences belonging to the late teen years and early twenties. It’s a collection of words which has made me shed many, many tears. It’s a collection of words that was once so present and is now tucked away in the past.

They make me feel old. I remember when they were part of everyday life. When you expected to get roses on your one month anniversary. When lasting six months was huge. When people who’d been together for a year were “married couples. Whhaaa!” I look back and wonder why relationships were so important, when looking back now you clearly see breaking up was there from the beginning.

***

I’m 16. I have just realised that my love is not returned. It’s a Saturday morning. It’s winter. I wake up early – tired and slightly hung-over. I toss and turn in bed, but can’t find rest. I get up, sit in front of my parents’ fireplace. I cry. All hope seems out. I’m never to love again. My Mum comes to see me. She strokes my hair and hugs me. “There will be other boys,” she says. How does she know why I’m sad? How does she know there will be other boys?

***

I have friends still searching for someone to be with, friends who still occasionally bump into the sentences. I rarely know what to say to them. As I’m getting older, talking about it gets more difficult. “At least you have a boyfriend,” a friend of mine told me recently, when we talked about approaching 30. For a second I felt as if she blamed me, as if I was the culprit because I’m with someone.

***

It’s summer. Mid-twenties. I phone one of my friends to hear how she’s doing. “Not too well,” she answers. “We were supposed to do something on Friday, but he called and told me he was sick. I told him to get better soon. The girls called me and asked me if I wanted to join them. We go out, we have fun. And then I see him. On the dance floor. With another girl. And I go up to him and I ask ‘feeling better?’ He looks at me, shrugs his shoulders, smile. ‘You knew we were heading this way,’ he tells me.” My friend doesn’t cry, she’s angry. I try my best to reassure her. “There will be other boys,” I tell her. But honestly – I don’t know.

***

I think back to when 3 months, 6 months, every month was important to me. It’s strange. It seems you stop counting when you realise it’s serious. Why count if this is it? If this is it, it’s going to go on.

***

I’m not even 10 yet. For some time I have been fancying a boy in my class. I haven’t told anybody. I don’t want him knowing. I want it to be “distance liking”. Still I’m finding it hard not telling anybody. Opportunity shows up when a girl in my class confesses she’s in love too. We spent a happy afternoon talking and giggling; we imagine ourselves in 20 years with new surnames and husbands by our sides. I make her promise not to tell. She promises. A couple of days later everyone knows. I’m confronted with being in love. I’m expected to consider the whole girlfriend/boyfriend thing, kisses, going out. I don’t know where to look. Everyone shows an interest in something that’s so private to me.

***

Past relationships still haunt me, I have to admit. I still find myself needing to tell J stories from past relationships in order to make him understand my reactions in certain situations. I doubt it will ever change. I tell him stories about friends and family as well. It’s part of who I am. But there’s been a change, because even if they were my ghosts from the beginning, my bringing them into our relationship means they can no longer just be mine. I have to accept second opinions and that isn’t always bad.

***

We’re outside a bar. We’re laughing, having fun. I pass one of the windows and for some reason I look inside. The place is crowded. Close to the bar I see a silhouette. I stop. My heart is beating faster and faster – not in a good way. I slow down. The others go ahead. I wonder how to tell J I’m not going in. “Come on,” he tells me and reaches out for me. “What’s wrong?” he asks seeing my pale face. “He’s in there,” I say. He looks at me. “I don’t get you. You’re going in! Who cares if he’s in there? It is ages ago. We’re together now – you and me. Come on.” His hand reaches for mine, I grab it and follow him inside the bar. Within seconds I see the silhouette wasn’t who I thought it was.

not what i had planned

We’re two people short at the office at the moment so it’s been hectic lately. It’s me and my boss to get four people’s work done. Last week and so far this week I’ve been running around like crazy trying to get things done. I’ve been putting in extra hours and working from home in the evenings. Right now working a lot is fine. It gets my mind of other things. Contrary to what I would have thought last year, a job doesn’t make everything pink and glossy. Thoughts still pop up. By working I try to keep them down. I’m not dissatisfied with my life. It’s just that 30 is ahead (29 in a month but I tend to forget that) and I used to think I would be somewhere else. I have so many things I never dreamed of back when I “planned” my life, but I tend to forget that and only focus on the things absent in my life.

As a child I used to think being an adult would be so much better. And now I think being a child was much easier. Sure there was waiting (Only birthday and Christmas once a year? Soon? Soon?), but so many decisions were left to others. Or maybe I just think being a child was easier. Maybe it wasn’t. I’m guessing I won’t ever find out.

I used to think that the autumn of 2001 would be a great one. I would be at university – I’d take a semester off. I would have found the right man by then. We would fly to New England, get a car and drive around enjoying the “fall colours” (which I guess they’re be called over there) and being in love. I wasn’t with the right man back then. He came along in the summer of 2002. Instead I struggled with my Dad going through (his first) heart surgery, and I got broken up with on the night before my Dad’s surgery (“Sorry, I’ve got to do this now. Can’t really do it later if anything happens to your dad tomorrow. But you know, it’s me, it’s not you”). And as we all know the world change dramatically in the autumn of 2001.

Six years later than originally planned I finally got to go to America. If only for five days and only New York it was still an adventure. I might have thought about driving around New England – heck, I probably had the soundtrack ready – but visiting New York was a trip I hadn’t planned in my mind ages before. I don’t think I could have ever planned the holiday we ended up having. I was with the perfect man in a less then perfect shocking pink hotel room (the memory of which only makes me smile). Central Park was beyond what I had ever imagined. The weather was perfect. There was no soundtrack – just great books and laughing and buying “Little C” (the camera) and eating at great places and not so great places and experiencing the alarm going off constantly at the airport while waiting (in the worst weather ever) to go home. One of the great things about that holiday – that I could have never planned – was that I got my first job just weeks before going. After months of crying and feeling worthless, I arrived in New York with a smile on my face and the ability to just relax. And my boyfriend, who arrived from a conference that had gone really well, was able to do just the same.

Under no circumstances would I have been able to dream of that holiday 10-15 years ago when I sat in my teenage room and planned my life while waiting for the next episode of Beverly Hills 90210 to air. I try to tell myself to relax and take things one step at a time. Things aren’t always supposed to be like you dreamed they would. And though dreams are nice and offer great consolation in tough times, I think it quite often turns out that real life is better. Real life sometimes – sometimes often – suck, but the good moments are precious and worth so much more than any old dream.