True North

Chapter 6 Switchback is a hiking term used to describe the process of zigzagging up a steep incline as opposed to walking straight up; this makes a steep incline or difficult challenge more manageable. Allison I wanted to give up my practice as a veterinarian to home school our children when they were ready for public kindergarten. I was too worried about how other children would treat them, even at the bus stop. Some kids are mean, and I have terrible memories of having to run through the woods to avoid neighborhood bullies, and I came from a “normal” family. What could possibly happen to our little guys? These formerly little beings who have been at risk ever since we even allowed ourselves to dream that we could be parents after all. Doctors told me my eggs were too old after a number of different scans and blood tests, and Jessie had too much scar tissue around her ovaries and a strangely shaped uterus, which we learned made getting pregnant very difficult even through in utero or in vitro fertilization. I remember learning about this on the farm with animals while growing up in Vermont. This farm background is probably what helped to motivate me to learn more about helping animals. They were always around us and always part of the family. If we weren’t going to use Jessie’s or my eggs, then we were advised to adopt someone’s embryos as opposed to going through both an egg and sperm donor search. These embryos had been frozen after some other family was finished creating their family. They only needed the right conditions, and they could become our children, our own potential for life. We spent hours pouring through the binders of possible donor parents looking for the right combination of education, mental health, and wellness. We didn’t really care what physical features our children would have because obviously, by the sheer nature of us not being able to reproduce on our own, someone would be left out. Although oddly enough, Brian looks a little like Jessie’s side of the family, and Caroline definitely favors mine with her lighter hair, freckles and green eyes. Brian’s almost black hair and brown eyes often leave people questioning the likeliness of their twin relationship. The first time we tried, no pregnancy resulted and not the second time either. So, we were down to our last three frozen embryos from the ten we adopted. Having agreed that if this time didn’t work, we would try to adopt an actual child as opposed to continue to spend thousands of dollars to only be frustrated often. There are hundreds of kids even in New Hampshire needing a good home, and I was happy to adopt. However, Jessie was weirded out by adopting. Too many unknowns she always said, but here we chose our embryos based on the fact that this other couple simply wanted to help another family to have children. Talk about unknown. The mom was a professor, and the dad was disabled, and from their application they loved to be outside and actively participating in life. One of their children was blond and blue-eyed, and the other brunette and brown eyed; yet, this had little bearing on what our children ultimately would look like. These are the things I learned not to argue over especially since the result would be actual children in either case. There are some advantages to not having our own genetic offspring, especially with some serious mental health problems on my side of the family. It doesn’t mean that we would be destined to have a child born with depression or anxiety or personality disorder, but because my brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 17 putting a tremendous strain on my parents. They remained married, but just when he started to feel better, he would stop taking his medication and fall into a bad place. This kind of cycle meant that Mom and Dad were forever moving him in and out of halfway houses, hospitals, and shelters. Name it and he lived in one at one point or another somewhere in Vermont. Jess and I were lucky. Each time the fertility team defrosted 2 or 3 embryos to be transferred, and the first two rounds did not work. We were on our last chance embryos. Third time was the charm, and we ended up with Brian and Caroline. Once their personalities started to develop, I remembered breathing tremendous relief when they made eye contact and smiled as these were physical affirmations that they be less likely to have cognitive delays, speech problems or autistic tendencies; they would be regular kids leading regular lives. Even as toddlers, Brian was the optimist, the one living in the moment, taking every opportunity to make a memory; little issues did not frustrate him, and we worried, he might actually be a pushover since he hardly ever fought with his sister. I remember him saying at five or six years old, “Well, Caroline must need it more than me right now.” He had a far better sense of life perspective than either Jessie or me. Some teacher in sixth or seventh grade told him about Henry David Thoreau leaving his life and all of society to find simplicity in nature. He said to Jessie one night across the dinner table, “Can we go find his cabin on Walden Pond? It is educational since Henry was a transcendentalist.” Pretending to look up something else on the computer, we quickly googled “transcendentalist” since neither one of us were English majors or even really had interest in that period of history. We decided it would be a fun family field trip and scheduled a trip to Lexington and MA, in the month. For weeks it seemed, he would come home with some new fun fact about Henry David Thoreau. “Moms, did you know that Henry wanted to suck the marrow from his life? Do you know what that means? It meant that when he came to the end of his life, he did not want to discover that he not lived. He was really smart. Moms, did you know that?” What we did know is that we were really getting our money’s worth out of Mrs. Nelson that year. So the weekend of Walden Pond arrived, and Caroline was more than slightly irritated to be brought along because she had “other things going on.” Then only ten- years old, I’m not sure what her plans included, but we thought she would like the trip. Upon parking in the small lot next to the recreation of Thoreau’s cabin, Caroline asked, “What is that awful smell?” Followed shortly behind with, “Is that a high way over there? A man nearby acting as a tour guide for the historical Thoreau Lyceum, which we learned was a museum, told the kids a waste treatment plant was right down the street. Caroline’s response was something like, “Oh, that’s nice. Way to keep the memory of the world class transcendentalist alive by letting a dump and a highway be built close by. In comparison, Brian responded, “Well, Caroline, I’m sure this was beautiful when Thoreau was here, and who knows, it could be beautiful here again one day,” as if his ten year old mind had the uncanny ability to see into the future. None of us will forget our day at Walden Pond. Brian had us take pictures of him pretending to carry arm loads of wood as Thoreau would have done from the trees to the little cabin. I thought to myself, whoever gets this kid in class as a teenager will always be entertained; there is no doubt of that.