Introducing, Tallulah!

I rarely blog about this stuff, but I just HAD to kitten blog today because on Friday, the day after we learned our first attempt at IVF didn’t work, Marco and I brought home the sweetest little cat.

Our loved ones’ reactions to our news ran the gamut.  “Maybe you should have started sooner,” said a loving but disappointed mother-in-law.   Little did she know, bless her expectant heart, we did.  My mother responded with sympathetic tears.  The woman knows a thing or two about fertility woes (cue my book Only Child).  My friends responded with the requisite “oh shit,” “am so sorry,” and “there’s always next time.”  That’s what we Chicagoans used to say about the Cubs.

Marco and I mourned, each in our own way, taking a break from our 24/7 fixation on the election.  I miss those 12 cells, said my sentimental husband, who mourns a little each time he leaves a place he knows he won’t see again soon.  What happens to the embryo? he asked.  It gets reabsorbed into my tissue, goes back to the Mother Ship, I joked.  He found that reassuring.  I want a kitten, I said.

And after two days of sadness, we headed to Kitty Kind adoption center after work.  It was Halloween, and I happened to fall in love with the first black cat I saw.  Cliché, I know, but I felt uplifted by that purring ball of fur.  Its bear-shaped face and kittenish exuberance melt me, make it hard to feel self-pity.  Marco and I passed the adoption test with flying colors (thank you, Davy!) and brought the kitten home.

It’s not exactly a baby, but it’s ours.

I’m sad.  But we’ll keep trying.  I am a Chicagoan after all.  I’m grateful for the deep happiness I’ve found with Marco, for an incredibly satisfying career as a working writer, and for being born at a time in history where technology can sometimes work miracles–even if it can’t turn back the clock.

To all you other mid-to-late-30somethings-pushing-and-just-over-40-women-trying-to-have-a-child: solidarity.  Don’t doubt your choices.  There are good reasons we’ve lived non-linear lives.

Like Tallulah, to whom the world still seems new each day, I have little truck for regret.

And now, back to the election, and MSNBC.