We would use his chalkboard to announce birthdays and holidays or just proclaim our love for one another. The only rule was that every entry had to start with "Pig says:".As we began our in vitro journey we started noting significant numbers on Pig's board. Number of eggs, number of embryos, number transferred, blood HCG numbers. Pig eventually became a talisman to protect the pregnancy. That was in June of 2005.
We've since sold that first house and bought a new one and Pig came along, unchanged, to live in the window above the kitchen sink. I then had a baby and proceeded to raise him for 20 months before I felt safe enough to erase the numbers, which were barely even visible anymore.
There was an expected moment of bittersweet when I wiped the last number away, but I was truly surprised at the relief I felt, too. It had never really occurred to me that those numbers, though the best and luckiest numbers of our lives, were also a daily reminder of the desperate fear and pain of two years of infertility and loss.
I realize now that I was moved to erase those numbers because something rearranged itself in my heart and head to allow me to finally consider us a normal family--no longer a miracle of science, just a regular family of three.
Although I will never take for granted the gift that we've been given in Dash, I don't have to spend every dish-washing moment in remembrance of what almost never was.
So now we are, finally, blessedly, back to this:
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