This Will Be an Everlasting Love, Blah Blah Blah

I recently tried to convince a friend of mine, whom I'll call "Alisa," to find a mate using the Internet. Everyone does it, I told her. (Even though secretly those eHarmony commercials make me want to vomit when ever I see them.) There's no shame in it, I said. But still, she begged off, and seemed a bit hurt by the suggestion.

Cut to a few weeks later. My husband and I have started the process of adopting a baby. The law firm we're probably going to go through posts the profiles of adopting couples on its website to attract birthmothers. I thought it was a great idea, until I checked out said website. Most of the couples were adorable. Possibly cuter than my husband and me. A lot of them were more athletic than we are. Virtually all of them were super-duper Christian. I felt insecure and frustrated looking at these profiles.

But most of all, I felt angry. Why did I have to pimp myself as a parent, when all it seems everyone else just has to do is just think about getting pregnant and they become a parent? Why do I have to beg to become a mother?

So now I get it: Why "Alisa" is hurt at the suggestion of looking for a guy on the Internet. Because why should she have to advertise herself like a car for sale to find a date?

But the brutal truth is, I do have to use the Internet to become a mother. Fair or not, endometriosis has turned my reproductive organs to mush. And Alisa hasn't been able to meet a man worthy of her beauty and charm. Maybe the Internet is God's way of evening things out. If you believe in God. The jury's still out for me.

Sorting through the past

My sister Tara and her husband Mike drove up to my mother's house this past weekend to sort through my mom's personal stuff. It's been four months since my mom died, but it felt like it happened just last week knowing my sister was in my mother's house. Some small part of my brain still believed my mom was there, in that house, and Tara arriving there to report the house was empty was just further proof that my mom is really, truly gone. As weird as that may sound, my sister Sheila was going through the exact same thing. Like, there had been some huge mistake and my mother was still alive, still in her beloved little condo watching Perry Mason re-runs with her giant cat on her lap.

My mom kept everything. Well, everything that pertained to my sisters and me. Every drawing we made in school. Every story I wrote as a child. Our baby clothes. Tara sorted things into boxes to take back to Sheila and me, and some things went into a group box that the three of us will sort through together later.

I always knew my mother loved me. I never once doubted that. But it's only now that she's gone that I realize no one will ever love me like that again.