Actually, to be more precise, I didn't take a stand - and after I finish my story, you'll understand why that's a very bad joke.
Every year for Mother's Day, the bishop gets flowers for all the women in the church who are over 18. At the end of Sacrament Meeting, he calls the little kids who are under 8 up to the front, and he has all of the adult women stand up, and then he instructs the kids to give a flower to every woman who is standing, so they dash around, handing out carnations wrapped in plastic and a pretty ribbon.
The first year we were in that ward, I felt silly standing up, because I wasn't a mom and I didn't have any thoughts of being a mom quite yet, but I stood and took my flower.
Yesterday was a different story. Yesterday I just Wasn't In The Mood. See, we've been trying to have a baby for 2 1/2 years. I think almost everyone we know in real life knows this by now, since we've been steadily answering "not yet, but we're trying" for at least a couple of years whenever anyone we know asks us about the whole kid thing.
The first Mother's Day after we started trying to have a baby, I just smiled sillily and I took the flower. Last year, I was feeling a little more down about it and I actually left the room right before, just figuring I would avoid the topic altogether. This year I had to conduct the music, so I was essentially trapped there until the bitter end of the meeting. And I just Wasn't In The Mood. So I stayed seated, and I grabbed some papers out of my bag and started pulling things together for the Sunday School lesson I would need to teach in 10 minutes.
Then a cherubic little boy thrust a fuchsia-colored carnation in my face despite the fact that I was not standing up, so of course I took it and I smiled at him brightly and I said thank you.
Sigh.
When we got home, I told Jason it was probably silly for me to stay seated. What was I taking a stand against exactly? A nice gesture?
(OK, there are also some vaguely feminist reasons rattling around in my head, but those are really just a strident cop-out because mainly it was the baby thing.)
As Jason said to me, "Sometimes a flower is just a flower."
I'm not going to go into the details here, but yes, we've been to doctors, and yes, we're working on solutions. Overall we're optimistic that it will happen, but time keeps passing, and we keep getting older.
On the upside, though, we've been able to save some money, we've been able to buy our house, and I've been able to really find my groove professionally. None of those things would have been so secure if I'd had a baby a couple of years ago, and I feel like every little bit of stability that I can give our future children and our future life is a plus.
