Race you

@James.T.Murray

Back to 'I Wish' after a year away! There were postponements and jobs and travels and health battles won for some of our team! And in the end? What a joy to gather together once more and celebrate at 54 Below. I feel so especially grateful to gather together in health and wellness in the presence of Drew Wutke post-liver-transplant-miracle-man, and post-4th-bowel-surgery me. We are here!

 

This being our 10th I Wish (since the first one in 2018), I struggled a little with what to sing. So many of my "wish" moments have been realized-- in true productions, or within this glorious series. I had to think outside-the-box. And that often requires me to dig a little deeper...

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In truth, what's been on my mind lately has been personal (and I hate that it currently feels political as well...). I don't discuss it here. At least I never have. It feels like a phantom, a shadow of shame and sorrow too tender to give credence to. Merely thinking about it, let alone giving it shape in any kind of language feels too dangerous, too unwieldy, too fully formed for a phantom. Best let it haunt me, not unexplored but certainly un-uttered. And what is this? Well. It is the fact that I will possibly never raise children, and certainly not give birth to them, biologically. 

It's been on my mind since roughly 2015, when I was first diagnosed. At the time I was 32, chronically-sick-as-a-dog with no solutions in sight, not dating anyone seriously, and I hadn't even thought about kids. Then one day after a few failed attempts at remission, I was presented with a very intense drug that promised to help quell my ulcerative colitis. It was essentially chemotherapy in pill form. It could be magic bullet. It works for thousands of people, they said. It would forever compromise my fertility but the options were slim and growing slimmer. I went for it.

 

And in the end? the drug didn't even work for me. 

 

 

I'm not usually lost for words, but the sense of loss was palpable. This was one of the many things I didn't cry tears about. Who had the time? I cried no tears for the children I'd never have—after all, they were a figment, a not-to-be-hoped-for addition. And I was focusing on the "lucky-to-be-alive" part. At the time I had no partner to raise them with (something I insisted upon, when my imaginative musings drifted toward parenting), a chaotic schedule as an actor, with a volatile income, distant family infrastructure geographically far away. None of it seemed reasonable. Possible. Or above all: like something I was even "allowed to want."

 

By 2021 my surgery further solidified the story of a life without biological children. The scar tissue from the surgery would settle around my reproductive organs, and would mean IVF was the only option for pregnancy with anyone's eggs.  

 

My surgeon was compassionate. 

All his fellow associates and nurses too. 

I signed 100 consents forms. 

They checked and asked me over and over again-- including moments before the surgery itself-- if I was "sure." 

And when I said I was, my wonderful surgeon reminded me that I had grown up with a sick parent, and it had been a source of tremendous pain not just in his death, but in his illness. He wanted me to know he felt my choice to get well set me up to be the best I could be for everyone currently in my life, and anyone i welcome in to my family in any manner, going forward. 

I knew he was right.

 

 

Still. The sense of grief has been unutterable. What began as a vibration became a whisper which became a roar, and over time it has only grown louder.

Over the years the feelings have evolved. I met Alec—younger than I and likely not even courting the concept of children when we started dating. The greatest tragedy feels like robbing him of being a father, biologically so, without a lot of say in the matter. But we both understood what we were walking in to as we continued to commit to one another.  

Then JD V*ance started going on and on about childless cat ladies. About "biological responsibility" and the selfishness of a woman who does not bear her own children for the generations to come. Again, there just weren't words to describe the experience of hearing that from an elected official, after everything. 

I don't know that I'll ever have the words. But there are a few, to start.

[insert: complete, abject, unfathomable silence]

 

*

So with all this at the top of my mind in recent days, I turn to the best discussion of grief, parents and children and healing I know: The Secret Garden.

  

The story is about a family ravaged by illness and grief, that discover the ultimate healing exists within nature—all symbolized by a dead garden returning to life. 

It’s also a story about parents and children…
 

In this song, Archibald Craven— unable to parent his son Colin because of the enormity of his grief, visits him as he sleeps and tells him an ongoing, bedtime fairy-story.
 

I know a lot about the themes of this story. (I once wrote about them, here)  In so many ways I identify with the children— growing up with parents, lost— to death and to grief.  But as I age I come to see myself in the adults too. And as so many parents are quick to remind me— I am not a parent. Yes, believe it or not, I am keenly aware that I don’t have first hand experience with raising children because I don’t have any of my own.

 

But sometimes? 

Dear Gd. 

How I wish, I did.