Full Circle

Yesterday was a long day for us. First we went to the Bat Mitzvah of a young woman I tutored. I was very proud of her, and very emotionally overcome at the power of passing on old traditions. I got teary when the rabbi and cantor said/sang the priestly blessing. The thought of Embryo-O joining in all this definitely chokes me up.

Then we jumped in the car to attend a baby naming several hours away. This is a long-awaited adoptive son of dear friends, and it was lovely to see him and help welcome him into their community.

Also notable is that at this event, we finally met The Wife of our PKD from back in February 2006. We really liked him, but then back in March 2006 he said that while he was interested in donating, his wife said she could never be comfortable with it. We were annoyed with her not because she had an issue -- that's understandable -- but because she let him talk about donation, let him meet us and like us and talk about wanting to really do it, and only then did she nix the plan. We would rather not have been strung along.

We'd been dreading having to meet her someday, since she is the friend of friends, but really it was under the best of circumstances. We were all happy about Baby Z., and as Co put it, since we have this pregnancy-secret we're carrying around (she more literally than I), we could think "I don't want your guy's sperm anyway, lady!" In fact, Co chatted with her for quite some time. Co is definitely a better person than I am. I was perfectly friendly, but I will never like her, and inwardly I had some snarky thoughts about her ostentatiously shouting comments and commands to her children in a different language.

We saw PKD again too, of course, and seeing him made me realize/remember that we went from hoping for him, a biologist with his own children, to our frozen donor, a biologist with his own child. Heh. (We do like the nerdy.)

I still feel a sadness about PKD, just because he represents a whole alternate reality I had created in my head, and now it can never exist; even though Co, and I, and PKD were all game to give it a try. But I couldn't be happier about Embryo-O, so the story doesn't end sadly. "Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches." (Italo Calvino)