Wind, blowing

Last week I wrote that our snow would never melt. And, of course, we had some warm days and some wind and it melted. 

It's weird, you know? Just like that, all gone. There are some muddy spots, and OK, sure, there's a little snow left. But not much. I could even go for a walk today with no worries about ice and slipping.

But instead the wind is blowing a million miles an hour, so I think I'll stay home. I did do some errands, but that's enough for the day. I keep thinking of that song, "Four strong winds that blow lonely..."

It was an OK week, with a few little weirdnesses thrown in, but isn't it always that way? My dentist appointment that I was DREADING got canceled at the last minute via text, and now I really need to find a new dentist. My dentist is losing it -- I already knew that. I've just been averting my eyes, hoping he'd get better. Clearly, he's not getting better, he's getting worse. My orthodontist's receptionist gave me three names of dentists who take our insurance. I haven't called any of them. But I will do it. Maybe even this coming week. Teen A is due for a cleaning -- he has an appointment with our flaky dentist on March 13th, two and a half weeks from now. Of course, *I* am due for a cleaning too, overdue now. Arrrggghhhh. Why can't this stuff be easier? My orthodontist's receptionist told me that almost no one in town takes our insurance anymore (Delta Dental) because they charge exorbitant fees. Why does the federal government provide insurance with a company that charges exorbitant fees?

OK. It's not a big deal. I'll work on those phone calls this week. 

Blow, wind, blow. Last night there was a little wildfire up by the second Flatiron. The Flatirons are large sandstone formations to the west of us. I don't know how to tell the Flatirons apart, which is first, which is second, which is third, but Rocket Boy can. "There's a light on the third Flatiron," he'll say, looking up at them. Yes, he can even tell them apart in the dark. I can't. Anyway, last night there was a fire, but apparently it was fully extinguished by 1:00 am. We are under a Red Flag Warning right now, which means huge fire danger due to winds. 

I do not like wind, but it is a fact of life out here. It makes me kind of antsy, though. Kind of agitated. (I think it does that to everyone, not just me.) You just have to hunker down and wait it out. Not a good day for a hike or anything else outdoors.

***

I wanted to write about something that happened last week -- the Alabama Supreme Court decision that frozen embryos are children. I have some opinions on that, having gone through IVF myself (with donor eggs). We ended up with frozen embryos after the cycle that produced Teen A and Teen B. I don't remember how many we ended up with -- four? six? I'm sure it's written down somewhere.

We kept them on ice for a few years. It was expensive. We knew we weren't going to try to have any more children. I got so sick at the end of my twin pregnancy -- preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome -- that it would have been really dumb to try again. Plus, two kids were all we felt we could handle. I couldn't go through another dangerous pregnancy when I was even older and had twin toddlers. Just wasn't happening. Also, we couldn't have afforded it.

But we still kept our embryos for a while.

We would have been happy to donate them to another couple, but that wasn't an option because of a genetic issue. Specifically, Rocket Boy's brother, who has schizophrenia. They told us right up front that we couldn't donate because of that. Another clinic might have had different rules, but that was our clinic's rule and we didn't argue.

So after a few years we figured it was time to do something about them. Our choices were to have them destroyed or allow them to be used for research. "Destroyed" sounded so awful, we went for research instead. Research sounded awful too, but I had this little glimmer of completely unreasonable hope that this "research" would result in the embryos getting to be born. I still, to this day, harbor a fantasy that our fertility clinic will call me and say oh, hey, about those frozen embryos that you donated to research? One of them recently become a baby girl (occasionally I imagine it's another baby boy). Sometimes I imagine that the birth mother died, sometimes I imagine that the baby has a lot of disabilities. But whatever, she's alive, she exists, and nobody wants her -- do you? 

I would say yes.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that, like Nikki Haley before she walked back her comments, I thought of our frozen embryos as our babies. I did. I still do. It's not a religious thing. It's just the way I feel.

This does not, however, mean that I think the Federal Government or the State Government or Any Government has the right to tell me what I can do with those embryos. They are MY embryos -- or were. I assume they've died by now. Note that I say they are mine even though they did not contain any of my genetic material. They were half Rocket Boy, and the fact that they existed at all was because we gave a nice young woman (who we never met) $5000 to give us some of her eggs and we gave the fertility clinic an enormous amount of money (I've forgotten how much) to put those eggs together with Rocket Boy's sperm and make embryos. And, voila, they became my babies (while still embryos). And I immediately loved them with all my heart. I still do.

Republicans don't like gray areas. They like black & white. Either an embryo is a baby or it's not. Except that, in fact, in reality, an embryo is both a baby and not a baby. It is the beginning of a baby. It is a tiny group of cells that may grow into a baby, given the right conditions (a womb, for starters). But just like a woman should have the right to choose to have an abortion, a woman -- or a couple -- should have the right to say no, we can't or don't want to make it possible for our embryos to grow into babies, and so we are going to let them go.

I'm glad we let our embryos go, even though it was heart-wrenching. Suppose they were still frozen now! I'm 63. I'm not going to be having any more babies. Those embryos would have no place to go, they would just have to stay frozen forever. It was better to let them go. What I would have liked, actually, was the chance to say goodbye to them. I would have liked to go to the clinic and watch as they were removed from the freezer. We wouldn't have been able to see them without a microscope, but we would have known they were there, and we could have said "goodbye, we love you, thank you for being with us a little while." And then we could have let them melt and die. And it still would have been sad, but it would have been OK.