Can I Get An Amen? Read Free

of existing. To imagine the life of a mother.
    “You need to get yourself to church,” my mother urged, her faded southern accent always becoming more pronounced when imbued with emotion.
    “I’m not going to church, Mom.” I was tired of this conversation, of her easy answer to everything.
    “Church is where you go when facing these things, Ellen. That’s what churches are for.” I could imagine her emphatic gestures as she spoke, her gray bob bouncing with every exaggerated shake of the head. “They are there to help you get your eyes on the Lord when you’re broken.”
    “So I sing songs and shake hands and tell my neighbor that God loves them; that’s going to help me in some way?”
    My mother paused. “Don’t let this make you bitter, Ellen. Your creator has a plan for you. He knows your future.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Church isn’t where I need to be right now, Mom.” Work was. Work was where I should be. It suddenly seemed so clear.
    During those first few weeks, I threw myself into my job more ferociously than I had in years. There had been too many late arrivals due to doctors’ appointments, too many hours spent perusing fertility Web sites that all offered the same advice and encouragement. I was newly rededicated to my job and the timing was perfect. The small advertising agency where I worked was facing tough times as clients’ wallets tightened and the unemployment rate continued to climb. The recession had been the media’s singular focus for months, but it had been almost background noise to me, as I was on a relentless quest to conceive. Month after month I thought that this was the time it was going to take; this time I would get pregnant. Then I would ride out my three trimesters and have the baby, and my career would go on an extended hiatus.
    I hadn’t told anyone at work that Gary and I had split up, so you really can’t blame them for the timing. When they laid me off, I took the news with absolutely no fluctuation of expression. I didn’t cry; I didn’t frown or smile. I sat stone-faced as my humorless boss ran through her boilerplate speech, about the economy and budgets and how it was all business, nothing personal. I nodded along, as if to hurry her up. Then I told her that I understood, got up, and left. I had simply run out of devastation.
Good decision,
she surely thought.
Less deadweight around here.
    My relative composure was quickly replaced with monumental fits of self-pity. Oh, it was biblical, my plight! It was something straight out of the Old Testament. Left by my husband and relieved of my duties at work in the matter of a month. Surely no one had faced such tragedy! To ensure my cocoon of misery was impenetrable, I studiously avoided stories sadder than my own. I didn’t want to hear about the six-year-old boy who was about tobegin treatment, yet again, to rid his body of cancer. Or the single father of three who recently became a paraplegic. Perspective, whether delivered by my mother or by
People
magazine, was entirely unwelcome.
    But our tragedies, no matter on which end of the spectrum they fall, often have a will of their own. And while I was myopically focused on my own recent blows to the gut, I had no idea that what I really needed to do was brace for the aftermath. Because it’s after you think the dust has settled that life really gets to have its way with you.

CHAPTER TWO
    “J ust look at it this way.” Luke grinned as he slammed shut the tailgate of my car. “At least you don’t ever have to worry about your thirty-one-year-old daughter moving back in with you.” I punched him in the stomach, which had a comforting layer of pudge despite his status as “single gay male.” Only my brother, Luke, could get away with making a joke about both my infertility and my imminent move to my parents’ house. Because only Luke would take three days off from work to help me pack up my things and make the drive back to New Jersey.
    Of course it felt like