So, I have this thing, this Thing about myself. Its a Thing I hate, and I mean indignantly loathe. Its such a major Thing in my life that it gets to have it's very own capital T, making it a proper noun even though it is the pinnacle definition of an impropriety.
The Thing is, the Thing is, I have facial hair. Now, okay. I know. Everyone has hair on their face; cute little peach fuzzy hairs that aren't any big deal. Yeah, I know about this, and I got those. But this ain't what my Thing is. I have whiskers I tell you. Uncute, unfuzzy, stubbly, darkish hairs that loiter en mass on my face in a few places and give me such grief. We're talking pluckable, shavable, sand-blastable hairs. (I have to move on already from these kinds of gritty details because if I stop to reread this paragraph I will erase it and never tell this story and the Thing will have taken over again.)
I know why I've got the Thing. Well, I mean I can't explain it on a molecular level, but I know the medical reason for it: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Its a long name to say that my ovaries don't do what "normal" ovaries do, nor do my hormones which leads to a potential litany of symptoms and side effects. I lucked out and got the Thing, facial hair.
Did I say already how much I hate this? Besides the thousand other things a woman thinks about when she looks in the mirror and so desires to be at very least presentable to other human beings, I have days, plenty of them, where I have to take into consideration and fit into my schedule time for checking the prone areas for excess hair. If its there, its got to come off. Maybe the Thing can hang out on some people's faces, but I can't be that person. I've seen that kind of woman at the Piggly Wiggly Express in illustrious Statham, the woman who long ago quit attempting to "fight the fur" and now looks like some sort of derelict. Hey, I've no stones to throw at the woman, but I would like to hand her a pair of tweezers and a mirror. I digress...
I could tell you a million stories of the millions of ways this Thing has invaded my life. Whether it be in my thought life, my self-esteem, my level of comfort even letting Anthony hold my face in his hands or look at me for too long (really, people...what is better than having the man you love hold your face in his hands?), standing too close to a person in conversation, wondering if I can wear my hair up on a particular day without it being glaringly obvious; the Thing is never far. I hate it. It makes me mad, or sad, or embarrassed, or irritated. Sometimes I even feel ashamed. I am a flipping woman, doggone it! Enough with rivaling my 17-year-old nephew for the most facial hair! Again, moving on...
I was driving down the road this week, kids settled in the backseat, radio playing (actually probably a CD because, let's face it, the radio sucks), and not really thinking about anything, or any Thing. I glanced up into the mirror on my car visor and noticed some of the Thing that I must have missed in that day's removal process. I growled to myself. It was the end of the day, the ONLY day I work outside of the home. My mind is recalling the interactions with people I had had during the day and trying to remember if a safe distance had been maintained to avert their seeing the Thing on my face. I growled again. This Thing. This foolish Thing. This Thing that completely confounds me. This Thing that in all my knowledge, wisdom, and efforts I can't nip in the bud once and for all.
At the very same time I'm making this observation Ava, my baby-in-utero, does one of her very impressive rolls in my tummy which are now so impressive that they can't be mistaken or ignored. It stopped me in my tracks. Now, she is a constant mover and shaker so this wasn't something new. It wasn't painful. It wasn't a blissful Mommy/Baby bonding moment. I'll tell you what it was; profound. Most amazingly profound. I am feeling the movement of the life that God so omnisciently placed in my womb, and staring at the face of a woman with PCOS. I got it. Right then, I got it. Another technicolor, long-time-coming, never would've put that together myself kind of lesson.
You see silly ole hair isn't the biggest worry of PCOS. Its the infertility. Its the noticing your body is doing some things it shouldn't and not doing some things it most definitely should. Its the pursuit of figuring out what the heck is wrong with you that would cause these symptoms in this combination. Its the appointment where a doctor gives it a name, but not a lot of hope. Its the appointments where he tells you he can't know why you have it, or what the root of it is, or if you can do anything to change it's course. The appointments where he tells you you could try fertility drugs. The appointments where he tells you without MAJOR intervention you likely will not have children because of the severity of the syndrome.
I got this diagnosis. I had these appointments. I wore a repulsive label of "infertile" for a long time, having it reapplied time again even when I would try to take it off. And driving in my car this week, while staring at a residual symptom of PCOS, a stupid Thing, I feel Ava boldly making her presence known. I glance in the mirror again, this time to see Isabella and Jack, as real as real can be, sitting in the backseat without a care in their world. My kids. Mine. People that I carried in my broken down body, sustained for nine months, and raised to where they are now. My firstborn, my first boy, and my baby on the way.
That glance in the mirror, that roll of the baby, that view of my kids, changed something huge. The Thing is a Thing, but its just a thing. It is a foolish thing. And it does confound me. But it is more confounding to know that in the midst of the very real evidence that my body has misalignments so great that I "can not have children" and might've run the risk of being billed as the bearded lady in a circus sideshow during the 1920s, I feel my third child move in my womb, and see my first and second children sitting right behind me. We never needed a drug or a fertility treatment. These kids were just placed in my body.
So now there is the epiphany of the coexistence of this Thing I desperately hate and wish I could eradicate, and these beautiful, irreplaceable, wished-for children. The Thing I should have because it is to be expected in the world of PCOS, and the Three I shouldn't have because the PCOS won't allow it.
The Thing, or the thing (it's now been downgraded), looks different to me now. I mean, its still unsightly and unpleasant and blah, blah, blah. But it is also the parodoxical reminder that there are Ways higher than my ways. That foolish things are used all the time to confound the wise.
I will pluck. I will tweeze. I may even growl to myself about it. But I will see it differently, with a new dimension to it. I'll let it remind me of it's ironic presence on my face. I'll remember what could've been, and what could've not been.
Its just a thing.
P.S. Ava - from the Hebrew "Chava"; meaning "life".
