Ostrich

 

I hid this last weekend...

well, I didn't plan to, but hiding under the remote control and a bowl of hummus

ended up feeling like the safest place to be.

 

Let me explain.

I attended my goddaughters first communion, I got a new dress and The Barren and I met her at the church with her parents and family. We had taken godparent classes at this same church 9years ago so we "as non-catholics" could learn the important role we were undertaking.

We take pride in being her back up team...

though we never really were called to service, well so far at least.

I took some photos of our girl, who was mortified at all the attention and parceled out who could take photos with her, and fought the waterfall of tears that were welling in her eyes from people looking at her. She was clearly stressed, but did really well under the circumstances.

Her mom and dad were respectful of her feelings and space and nothing was forced on her.

She went through the paces of the service, even told her older tween sister to "be less grumpy, because I wasn't grumpy on your first communion day". We were proud and watched her and the parade of squirming and fidgety kids line up and take the wafers.

Then when mass was over, but before we all left, the pastor asked all the mothers to rise...

I have read about this situation in many other blogs and I guess because I was in church for a totally different reason I was totally taken off guard.

When they called for all the mothers to rise, it was like a fortress suddenly popped up all around me.

Like these bodies all suddenly formed deep thick walls; I was shaken, physically and began to fight back a swell of tears, I felt so ostracized.

 

 

The Barren noticing this started to touch my back and the tears fell in two streams down my face, I was angry and so hurt. The pastor was blessing these woman, telling them how important they were and how they were special and had magical powers and could fly and make milk and shit rainbows.

I stopped hearing stuff, and instead tried to hide my tears, and curse my suddenly swelling eyelids.

Then I leaned over to The Barren and told him I was leaving out the back door, there were less people in that direction and I wanted to run...fast and far.

Once outside I wanted to tackle the pastor and priests and tell them how they made me feel, and how they had excluded a non-catholic even further! I thought about the "open letter to the pastors" I had read online and wanted to give them a piece of my mind....but on reflection decided this day was not about me, it was about our goddaughter

and I needed to save these tears for a safe place,

this place was not safe.

 

I proceeded to tell The Barren to treat me like I just had an epileptic seizure and

regain normalcy post hast, that it would help me.

We met the others out front and no one was the wiser to my knowledge.

The like magic, our goddaughter walked up to us to thank us for coming and said she would like to take a picture with us, queue internal tears.

We took a photo and moved onto lunch

I had not stepped three paces into the place when our goddaughters Aunt turned to me and said:

" when you posted that thing on facebook about infertility,

I have a friend that says he has a cure for fertility."

I said: "everyone does"

and walked away into the dining room.

I was cooked; I had a drink at lunch, ate greasy noodles and then went home

and hid through Monday morning.

 

No calls on Sunday, no check-ins to friends...just me, the cats and the TV

I look forward to a day when it hurts less or just doesn't appear to be so obvious.

How I sometimes am envious of that ostrich, it can run so fast!