Before loading the car with the Ina Garten potatoes and the mini-ham sandwich appetizers, I found myself in tears in the bathroom. Preparing to leave for our dear friends’ home for Christmas, I just didn’t want to go. Didn’t have the energy to flat iron the hair and find an outfit, especially one that would both look festive and allow for me to walk around with a hot water bottle in my pants due to my terrible cramps from not being pregnant, again. Didn’t think I could find a way to dial up my energy for the day, to find gratitude, to play with their kids, (whom I adore), to be away from home, to celebrate. It just felt like too much.

Growing up, all of my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents came to our house for Christmas. Overnight. It was a ball. Some of my best family memories. The cooking started a couple of days before – my grandparents would be the first to arrive. I had a classic grumpy grandfather who was old before he was old. I have fond memories of him chopping vegetables pretty cheerfully, at the kitchen island. And of everyone sneaking bites of grandmother’s homemade pecan topping for the desserts. The windows would steam up and the room was warm from all the cooking and baking.

There was great excitement when the next carload of family came up the driveway. My mother always exclaimed that our Christmas turkey was bigger than the smallest family member, and it was. Our turkeys were as big as 38 pounds sometimes. That’s some kind of enormous. One year, my cousins and I got inside sleeping bags and rode down the attic stairs – crashing into the wall and laughing hysterically. Another year the garbage disposal overflowed and potato peelings erupted from the sink like a volcano. There was a multi-generational family quiz hosted by my dad, the “quiz-bastard” and throughout the day various clumps of family would be quietly scribbling answers on mini legal notepads and accusing others of cheating. Everyone wanted to sit at the kid’s table.

I don’t go home anymore for Christmas. And hardly anyone is at my parent’s house anymore either. Just my aunt, who makes the mini-ham sandwiches, and uncle, and my parents this year.My cousins & siblings have their own family celebrations. My grandparents are gone. And because, for the last 5 years, we’ve had something to do related to fertility treatments, we’ve had to stay home too. Or even if we didn’t, we didn’t know until it was too late that we could travel. So we’ve spent many a Christmas, just the two of us. As newlyweds, the first year – it was sort of novel and cozy. I thought it was temporary. I went from store to store finding the old- school colored lights for our tree, that are harder to come by. I cooked filets and made my mother’s (Julia Child’s) béarnaise sauce. I hung garland from the dining room mirror and made a wreath with a glue gun and feathers. A city Christmas. We enjoyed the quiet streets as everyone else seemed to be somewhere else.

I thought I would look back on this one simple Christmas we had together happily, like a movie montage of “When we were young,” because things would be different soon. After a couple of years, it’s started to feel too regular, too isolated, too quiet. I don’t have the same, truthfully much of any, motivation to prepare a Christmas Eve meal and set a beautiful table – when it’s just us. It’s all wrong to be alone in a kitchen and putting out Santa’s cookies with no child’s wonder to behold. And saying grace with a bunch of empty chairs, feels like putting on a play or like we are in a sad black and white movie or something. Before the luck turns around and there’s a happy ending or a lesson to be learned.

We haven’t gone public about our lack of holiday plans either. Usually by the time I let it come up in conversation that we don’t have plans, it’s too late to be included in other people’s. And truthfully, I do it that way on purpose. I don’t want to “join” another family’s holidays – with their traditions and favorite dishes and children’s table. We made one exception this last year though, with these friends from my home state who live out here now. I think they felt the most safe, the most like home – but also, they are just great people. They are so easy to be with and I happen to adore their kids. But I still didn’t want to go. I worried this would happen.

The tears and the words came pouring out to my husband while trying to put on my moisturizer and mascara. I was afraid to share my sadness and apprehension with him and have my feelings rub off. It might be too much to ask of us to rally if we both feel so ambivalent. I fear that this fear often keeps us isolated from each other in our own thoughts, not wanting to multiply them, and turn us into complete shut-ins.

My tears were because of this: I’m heartbroken that we still aren’t having our own Christmas. I have such a clear image of what it means to be a mom hosting Christmas. I witnessed and learned from my own mother for years. The apron strings moments we learn to cherish. My vision of what this holiday should be is in my own home (the one we have yet to buy because of all the money spent on fertility), with my own children setting the table, with my parents as the grandparents chopping vegetables and making pies. Cousins putting on plays for the adults and adults fighting for the one extra seat at the kid’s table. And as the years click by, the reality sets in – it’s too late, it’s not going to happen. Everyone is too old. My father has Alzheimer’s now. My nieces and nephews are already too much older to have the kind of camaraderie I had with my cousins, if we even could ever have kids, which it’s looking like we can’t. And mostly, everyone already has their own Christmas traditions now.

It occurred to me that I’ve missed the boat, and probably permanently. This is one of the deepest pockets of the grief of infertility. The temporary placeholder behaviors and held-off plans, you make, while you are waiting for “it to happen.” You tell yourself, “This is only a holding pattern.” Until it’s not. And then one day, you have to face that this might actually be your life.Just like it is. The Christmases for two.

After six years of unsuccessful fertility treatments, and a lot of loss, especially of a daughter at 24 weeks, it’s so hard to accept that it may never happen for us. I told myself I could keep going and keep putting off my dreams and plans because the next time, it would work. And these sad days would fade into our memories – that time “before” our babies were born. Those difficult days that were “all worth it in the end.”

And with this fear and sadness, the more routine losses get bigger and loom larger, as I realize, there’s no “home” for us for Christmas. There’s no where I want to be or to go. Not only that, on the hour long drive to my friends’ house, for the first time I realized, we might not be the best guests either, if this is who we are, just the two of us, with no kids. When I see other holiday celebrations on Facebook and Instagram – the kids tables have a lot of spots. Adults gather with other people who have families so its fun for everyone. For the first time, without children, I realized, maybe people won’t want to invite us either? I have spent the last several years trying not to be invited, assuming we were the ones deciding. But as a childless future looks more realistic, it occurs to me that “our” people – the ones like us, are an ever shrinking group. Many people do get their happy endings on the quest to have a family, one way or another – even if it isn’t their first, or eighth choice how they get there. But if we don’t, we can’t, then maybe we don’t really belong anywhere. It’s a lonely realization. We just don’t have a home.

I watch home decorating shows (and they are getting harder to watch, as “growing families looking for a bigger home” is often the theme). Ninety percent of the time, the wife says about a living room with a fireplace, or a bay window with room for the tree – “this will be great for the holidays.” Though they are only a few days a year, they are the days that become a symbol of our happiness and connectedness. Where we strive to live the lives we hope we can live year ‘round. Or at least take stock and have gratitude for all we have.

What happens when the best day of the year, the one that actually celebrates the birth of a child, is one you cannot obtain, is out of your reach? When you don’t feel gratitude but despair? What happens if you have to opt out to protect your heart? How many dreams must we let go of if we can’t have a child? When is it time to let go of this hope? And how long will it hurt?

Though we had a nice day with our friends and got to experience and share some of their traditions (no one makes a twice-baked potato like these two) – and we DO feel very grateful they are a part of our lives, I worry. Will I say yes next year? It’s getting harder, not easier. As the reality of living childless sinks in, the horizon looks ever scarier. The facade of “this is temporary” gives way to “this is permanent” and all the grief I’ve ever felt before seems like it also, was temporary, a placeholder. I held off on it too – thinking it would pass. Now it feels like it’s here to stay – that it’s making a home in my heart where my Christmas fantasies once lived. Sometimes, all I can find to be grateful for – is that there are others out here who know exactly how this feels, who share the grief and the struggle and find a way to carry on. Wishing us all hope, comfort and lasting peace this holiday season.

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