News

I don’t call my mother enough.  Since I don’t call as often as I should she thinks I’m pregnant every time she sees my name on her phone.  She answers with the  light of excitement in her voice that I hate having to extinguish.

“Y-e-e-e-e-s?”

“Hi Mama!”

“Hi! Do you have news for me?” 

“I sure do!”

Okay, that last bit is kinda mean because I am purposely teasing her about a thing I’d hate to be teased about …  but sometimes I do have news- good news, even- than has nothing to do with that.

There’s a lot going on in my life right now.  I recently decided I want to start college this fall.  I never went, and I’m 38 now… so that’s a big deal.  When I called to tell my mother she was excited for me… but I could also hear the disappointment in her voice that it wasn’t that news.   My husband got laid off about a year and a half ago,   and just a few months back he finally landed his dream job.  I called to tell my mother about it, and again she was excited but disappointed.    Now I have been the one job-hunting recently, and this past week I think I found a gig I’m going to be really happy with.  I didn’t call Mama this time.

Any good news I have gets a little deflated by the big expectations of other people.   I can’t use the words “Guess What?” anymore… EVER.   (“Hey, guess what?”   “Yeah??”  “We’re getting a new car!”   “Oh. is that all?”)

So yesterday the tables were turned on me in the worst way.   As I’ve mentioned before,  this past month I had my first IUI,  and yesterday was the blood test to see if it took.   You should be very proud of me by the way:  I never peed on a single stick.   I wanted to wait for “The Call.”    I rushed out to have my blood drawn first thing in the morning.    About an hour later I sent an email to the nurse assigned to me to let her know I had taken the test and wondered how long before they’d know anything.  She emailed back, “Did you go to LabCorp?”  I wrote back that I did, and then actually managed to busy myself enough that I forgot about the conversation for a while.   A couple hours later when I checked my email again she had responded.    You know how you can see the first bit on an email message before you open it all the way?   Her first words were  “Guess what?”    

Now,  when a nurse at the fertility clinic where you got inseminated two  weeks ago sends you an email starting with the words “Guess what,”   two things happen:   First,  your heart explodes.  Second,  you decide what kind of refreshments you will serve at your baby shower in exactly 8 months.   Both of those things happened… and then I opened the email and kept reading.    “Guess what?  The testing equipment at the Austin LabCorp went down today and all the labs had to be sent to San Antonio.  So Sorry!  Someone will call you around 6 this evening.”    Oof.   Keep in mind this was before noon.  So then it was bugging me.  What was this news that was so important that fate was teasing me with it?  Was this how it was going to go down?  Would this be part of the funny story I would tell about “How I found out?”  I wouldn’t mind the scavenger hunt if there was actually treasure to find.  Okay Fate,  I’ll play along for a few more hours.

The hours dragged on.  It made me whine a lot.  I watched the minutes pass. 6:00 came and went.  6:30.  7:00.  I tried to talk myself down from the needlessly elevated anticipation.   But my temperature had gone up yesterday morning… and I had zits in places that zits shouldn’t even know about.   After a while I decided that maybe they just don’t call if there’s no news…  then the thought of that made me mad.   I thought about breaking my moratorium on pee-sticks and running to the drug store.  I thought about how I would surprise Husband with the news.   I always imagine that I will know first and then make a huge production of telling him,  like a wedding proposal.   I thought about what that production would be.  I thought about how much I deserve good news… that good news.   While I was thinking all of this,  I was rubbing the low dull cramps that were forming in my lower abdomen.   I sent all the love I could muster through my hand and into that strange little cramp…just in case.     Finally, around 7 freakin’ 30 pm, the phone rang.

The nurse on the other end of the line apologized for the delay, and she apologized for the strange equipment failure.  She apologized for the lack of communication and she apologized for keeping me waiting for so long.   Then she apologized for the other thing.   “I’m so sorry,”  she said… a little too heavy on the “sorry” actually,  like someone had died.     I absorbed all that sorry and started to feel sorry for myself.   Don’t cry… don’t cry… don’t cry  I told myself.

I sulked into Husband’s home office where he was working and said dramatically,  “Well,  they called.”

“Who called, honey?”

“The nurse from the clinic that I’ve been waiting to hear from all day.  It’s a no.”

He looked at me and smiled “Okay. It’s alright. You kinda knew that anyway, right?”

I scrunched my face at him and went out for a walk.