Happy

I think, when I was fifteen, I was really happy. I had made it through three years at a new school and had made a small but tight set of friends there who understood and loved me for the quirky little weirdo I was. I had found my way to dance and theatre. That year I played Judah in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, one of the best theatrical experiences I have had to date. I finally convinced Mom and Dad to send me to arts camp and spent a blissful, independent summer singing and dancing and acting my little heart out at Carnegie Mellon pre-college program. And that same summer I finally grew my hair out, and discovered, By George, I actually had the kind of hair I was coveting in others. I was far enough away from college not to worry about it yet, far enough away from childhood to start to call my own shots. I felt pretty and powerful and, well, happy.

I think I may have also been very happy when I was 22 or so. I had launched out of college, finally given in to my artistic soul and moved to NYC to pursue a life of debauchery and sin. I had made a deal with my parents: I give them a major in something other than theatre and they would give me a year of "grad school" in NYC. I had done my research, picked my voice teachers, dance classes, acting studios, clowning and Peking Opera workshops (can't you just feel my parents rolling their eyes), and was in the middle of my funded year, living with three thirty-something roommates in their railroad style apartment on the Upper West Side. I was a terrible roommate: I left my dishes in the sink and had loud visitors, and I don't even think I knew where they kept the broom or mop. And I didn't care. I joined an improv troupe and got paid to make things up in front of live audiences twice a week, and I was beginning to pick up a nasty tutoring habit that I still haven't kicked to this day. Happy.

I mention these times, because they stand in stark contrast to my life right now. It is not that I am miserable all the time, but I live with the constant weight of unfulfilled yearning and of failure. Even on vacation, Bruno and I felt the heaviness of our missing sons and our failure to continue our family. We watch people all around us, with varying degrees of ease, get pregnant, have children. And we carry, all the time, the pain of not knowing whether that grace will ever be bestowed on us again. We exist with the buzz of that worry and our loss always in the background, like a computer doing some task behind the scenes and making everything else happen more slowly, with more glitches. Hobbled, drained of power. Unhappy.

My guess is that the trick of life is finding happiness, or at least peace, in the in betweens. I am terribly weak at this. I am an achiever. So is Bruno. We are beside ourselves trying to figure out how to go on in this arena in which we have no control whatsoever. I have no answers here, no solutions, but it does feel nice to remember times in my life when I was really happy, and try to imagine that there will be times like that again.