'You live long enough, the people you love get old.'

The tooth cracked in labor, 11 years ago this last February.   With regards everything else happening in the room: Fang getting stuck on the exit ramp, the hemorrhaging, the emergency surgery, you would think I wouldn't have felt or heard the cracking of a tooth. I remember the shift change, the jolly hockey sticks obstetrician telling me to 'Put some welly into it,' the anaesthesiologist who looked like Stephen Fry and was from the Sudentenland. He made feel safe, strangely, reminded me of mulled wine and lebekuchen.

 Now the tooth is dying. Of course it is dying. 'Tis the season. And at 44, I am not immune to life's transitions. I wake up sometimes drenched in sweat from hormone changes, and I find myself inexplicably broody. Purely biological, I can feel the difference, but I am almost desperate for the change to happen. Take away the imperative, I want to scream. Just because I have hips doesn't mean I can handle another birth, another labor, another delivery. I have had 3, two of which very nearly killed me. I am both a mother and a Ronin, having lost my first Samurai, that beautiful lord liege. 

It's doubly ironic that there is a decade between these transitions, My first pregnancy I discovered the same week of 2000 that I was expecting. That pregnancy ended - as it needed to - in a termination, one of the most wrenching decisions I ever made. I was alone in the room, outside of the staff.  I drove myself home from the clinic. My friend C drove down from Dayton to hug me and rub my back whilst I prayed to feel anything.  

From the age of 13, I had been told I would struggle to conceive.  But it wasn't true, not really.  Miscarriages, babies, a termination, desperation as to 'why am I not pregnant?' I've sat on most sides of the debates and there is no one seat that is harder than the other. They are all covered in roses, all covered in thorns.

2021, I really would like to have words. Very. Specific. Words. 😂😂🤦🏼‍♀️ But I think Lori McKenna says it better and without the latent anger I would vent. I don't hate this year, but damn, Gina. It definitely has a bite.