Possibilities

I've been trying to move forward with what I want for my life, making dreams reality and believing that what I want most I can have. Kelly Rae Robers has been writing some fantastic posts about being a Possibilitarian and embracing all that's possible in the world.

All that's possible is super exciting and fantastic to try and embrace but not really true. First, you have to figure out what possibilities you want for yourself. Then you have to make decisions that make some possibilities real while others fade. As excited as I am about the plans we've got for the future, it's also time to let others go, the lives that won't be lived because that's a choice that was discarded.

One of the things I found to be true for me as we struggled with infertility was the long road of uncertainty. I had to look at all the possibilities including the idea that we might not ever have a baby. It wasn't a given and for my tender and battered heart I had to come to terms that it would likely not happen. It was just too painful to have hope strongly that it would happen. Truly, I worried most everyday I was pregnant that something would happen and it would all be taken away. I wished the other day I could go back and tell myself it would be okay. Breathe. Enjoy. Trust. Instead, I was fairly obsessive with every little pain and twinge. Mostly I kept it to myself and drove my husband nuts but he was patient and tolerant.

During those months of uncertainty and failed hopes, I would wonder what would our life look like then? Maybe we'd relocate? Serious city living. Lots more focus on career challenges. Develop more hobbies and become more entertaining at dinner parties - yeah, make more friends to have said dinner parties, sell everything and road trip/travel for a year, live abroad and become those people on House Hunters International that we always say "what the hell do they do for a living" that makes the 3 million euro apartment in Paris possible. Just to be clear, the house hunters thing was never likely but it was easy dreaming on Friday night laying on my heating pad after that night's shot. Obviously some things were more likely than others.

Luckily and thankfully, we did get pregnant and have been given the best baby in the world - I've done polls and it's true - and with our expanded little family our plans have shifted. City living was fun to see with the little guys walking sure and confident through the streets headed who knows where. I loved seeing the the very chic and urban mamas push the strollers and walk the kids to school in Soho. Fantastic schools with playgrounds in the middle of the city, kids at play while everyone else hurried to the office, appointments, yoga, well you get the idea. But that's not for us. I can't get beyond how to get a car seat in a taxi or deal with strollers on subways in the rain with Sophy screaming because she's hungry and tired. Airports every holiday to try and squeeze in some extended family time. Only seeing her cousin every couple of years. Not for us. And it means that possibility is fading away making room for other dreams.

But I've discovered it's still a little bittersweet and hard not to think of it as giving up. That it's too hard to try and make work so we're choosing the easier path. I mourn, just a little, for all those other roads that won't be taken. Could it have worked if I would've tried harder? What possibilities do I hold on to give them the energy that might make them someday realities? What's worth letting go of and discarding? What dreams do you keep for the future and what are dreams of childhood that finally get packed away? Some are easy - no toe shoes for this aged ballerina (who never took a dance class), no Olympic medals unless I start those archery or shooting lessons pronto, no more job hunting in major metropolitan areas where housing prices are closer to $1,000 a square foot instead of $100.

The someday of a pretty house on a fair amount of land, little girls in twirly dresses with puppies at their feet, Christmas mornings with family, playing in the fall leaves, summers at the lake, teaching little fingers how to play with paint and wire, Saturday morning doughnuts with Daddy, all of these see possible and worth working really hard to make come true.