My Thanksgiving Challenge

Finding true gratitude in the midst of crashing sadness

Courtesy Substack Image Generator

It was already Thanksgiving when I felt it.

After midnight: one or two AM - somewhere in there. A hopeless night owl, I was lying on the living room couch, deep in research for a story my husband and I are working on. This particular book, the fifth one I'd slogged through for the assignment, was unusually interesting to me, and I lay stretched out on the couch, immersed in the story - with occasional breaks to sip the late-night mug of decaf I'd made with pumpkin-spice creamer.

I was trying not to think about missing the holiday with my family the following day. Holidays have been weird since I moved to California.

"Not being there means you didn't have to help clean the baseboards," I joked to myself, shuddering at memories of my undiagnosed ADHD teenage self, "helping" my mother prepare for hosting holiday gatherings, but actually adding to the stress.

Would I be the kind of mother who hosted family get-togethers, I wondered? It didn't seem likely.

But I bet I would be the kind of mother who ... I drifted away from my book, thinking of all the big things my own mother did just right and the few areas where our approaches might differ.

I shifted ever so slightly to move the book a few inches forward. But as I did, I suddenly felt a terrible kind of ripping, sagging drop - a pain that started in my lower abdomen, then changed into something else as it traveled down.

Everything went blurry as I careened toward the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, sat down, and was up to speed with one glance:

I had been pregnant, however briefly. And now I was not anymore.

Again.

I'm not alone, though. Early miscarriages are incredibly common. Chances are, you or your wife or your sister, or even your mother has had this happen, whether it was understood at the time or not: Something about an early pregnancy had not been viable - usually three months in, max - and the loss of it manifested as what can look like an especially heavy cycle.

But it isn't.

Instead, it's an "almost." It's "close, but no cigar." And, as they say, "close" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

That is what they say, but I think it's a dumb thing to say. Sure, it's satisfying, the rhythm of words you can almost chew, like "horseshoes and hand grenades," and the alliteration makes you feel a kind of rightness, a correctness - but it isn't actually there.

Because it feels like being "close" counts in other things. "The Price is Right," for instance: Your guess has to be as close as possible, without going over. Golf, too - aren't you trying to get as close as you can in very few strokes? Photography: If you're close, you can get the shot.

And journalism: It's very fortuitous, indeed, to be close enough to a story to recognize it as such and, in telling it, be able to do that story justice.

As I cleaned everything up and then, misty-eyed, swaddled myself up into my most comfortable oversized joggers, my thickest duster cardigan, and my warmest fleece socks, I thought about that last one.

My husband has been working on a theory. No, not a theory - a very complex map. No, not a map, even - a framing.

He has made a genius framing that, without saying too much, for now, shows how the world's premier, blue-chip investments are actually propped up by industries we think of as belonging only to the underworld.

There's this chart in my living room that lays it all out. Well, I say "chart" - in fact, it's a piece the size of a kitchen table. I'm begging him to take down one of our wall hangings, put it up there instead, and get it out of the middle of the living room.

Still flinching with stomach cramps, I squeezed past its flapping wings of taped-on notecards in the dark and came back to collapse on the couch.

This - this schema, this project, this thing has been taking over our days. At first I resented it: It held my husband's interest much better than I could. Then I started to feel that only a very similar stunt double of him was here with me: that my real husband was locked up somewhere - voluntarily, you understand, not imprisoned - perhaps in a moody Gothic tower, working on The Project.

But then I got it. It clicked one day.

And we joked about how he was just completely in thrall to this thing - he had to see it through, and he'd only feel better once it was out of him.

"It's like you're pregnant with this," I laughed, hoping he'd let out some tension. "You're just going to have to ... well, give birth to it! And then it will be out of you and it will take on a life of its own!" And he was really laughing, too - eyes closed, chest heaving up and down.

Every darn day for years now, my goal has been to make that man laugh. Lately, with The Project, it had been getting harder.

But while I was joking that my husband was giving literally all of his time, energy, and focus to The Project, that he'd made this thing with his whole being and he'd just have to "give birth" to it - and don't worry, I'd make sure he got an epidural in time - I was actually pregnant.

Again. Again and again, and always for a short while.

And not really with a baby, but rather, with a cluster of cells. A little bit of matter that certainly did not seem to contain whatever we may call the first flickers of humanity: the quickening, a spark, a soul. No, not yet. I don't believe that.

I believe the soul arrives last. As in, by the time the woman's in position and the man is realizing that complaining about how tired and uncomfortable he is could get him a black eye.

So that is some comfort: It wasn't a soul.

But it could have been, if only it were conceived by someone who isn't me - someone who doesn't have an "inhospitable environment" in her uterus due to a really bad car accident.

An "inhospitable environment?" Isn't there a way to, I don't know, go pick out some nice new throw pillows to put in there, a couple of blankets, make sure there's a nice, soft couch? Couldn't I find a nice canvas to put on the wall, or maybe add a ficus? Wouldn't that make it more "hospitable?"

I could put a Keurig in there and a little Longaberger basket with a selection of K-cups.

Because I would do that. If I had a baby, I would make sure it had all the pillows and blankets and K-cups it could ever possibly want.

You know - when it was old enough. No pillows or blankets go in cribs, I know that. And the coffee would have to wait until somewhat later, I realize.

But our baby could be 18 or 25 or 36 and if I ever had reason to suspect they might be low on K-cups, I would send them a big box full of them. To Indiana or California or Germany or ... or Saturn; wherever the cool thirtysomethings like to live by then.

Because our baby would be cool. I know it.

I know that because my husband's pretty cool, himself. No one thinks like he does. No one sees what he sees. No one makes the connections he makes. He's brilliant. Our baby would be, too, and for me, that's what cool is.

On Thanksgiving, I ate half a pumpkin pie and a strange portion of Marie Callender's frozen corn casserole - my favorite Thanksgiving food when homemade. This was more like grits. Jasmine helped me finish it.

I lay on the couch; I took a nap; I cried. I made a concerted effort to change into different joggers and a different duster cardigan.

Today I felt a little better.

Tomorrow I'll feel better than I did today, I bet, and within a week, I'll feel normal. Physically.

But this sucks. I just need it on the record that this sucks.

The other thing about being close is that it usually means that if you try again, you have a good chance of getting it. I don't. I continue to have, in fact, quite a poor chance of "getting it," and maybe I have some serious questions to ask myself.

What I also have, though, is loving friends and family to lean on, to let in, to accept help from, as difficult as that is for me. I've learned - rather late, but still - that there is no point in pretending I never need support.

Also, I believe this experience needs to be normalized. Miscarriage is a fact of life for many women. It's sad and messy, especially the further along the pregnancy was. There's no reason to keep this kind of event a secret, so I'm sharing this slightly edited journal entry to do my part to add to the conversation.

And I can give thanks for all of that! I may have something to feel sorry about - and what? Only one thing?! - but I have so much to be incredibly thankful for.

For instance, there's my handsome, brilliant, compassionate, loving husband. And our wonderful dog who is my biological child (Come tell me otherwise; I dare you). I even have a Project to ... midwife? Deliver? Anxiously await from somewhere down the hall, where I won't be underfoot, then pass out cigars to celebrate?

I'd better check my husband's birth plan.