The room
If you’ve been on the journey towards parenthood for any amount of time you probably know what I mean when I say, “the room”. It’s the room in your home that has many names; spare room, multi use, future nursery, room of requirement. My husband and I have lived in three houses together and even before he and I met I had planned out a space for my future baby.
When we bought our first home together Adam was working from home so “the room” was his office, but we always knew that it would one day be the nursery. So, when we started trying in earnest we made plans for moving his office into the basement (don’t worry it was finished). We figured we might as well get ahead of things because I certainly wouldn’t want to move heavy furniture down our narrow basement stairs when pregnant, and I wouldn’t be able to help paint! As much as I love my husband watching him paint a room is like watching an elephant painting a picture of a coconut tree with it’s trunk. He’s just not good at it, and I’ve told him so. All that to say, it was going to be on me to get the room painted before the arrival of our future child.
We moved the furniture, rearranged the basement, and picked out paint colors. Then we got the news that we would likely need to start fertility treatments. So we held off on buying the paint and the room stayed empty. Those fertility treatments got more and more invasive and intense and time ticked on. My husband called the empty room the nursery, I insisted on calling it the office. In the middle of our first IVF attempt I lost my job and we had to move. Another delay, another house, another room.
This time we were cautious and nothing was planned for the third bedroom, it became a catch all room, a glorified storage closet. I kept the door closed. I’d say it was to keep the cats out of all the stuff, which was sort of true, but I just couldn’t look at the messy, box filled, empty, useless room. Again, my husband called it the nursery. I called it “the room.”
After our second IVF attempt failed I couldn’t take having an empty womb and an empty room. So, the frantic reorganizing and rearranging began. The cardboard boxes got broken down and thrown out. The Tupperware boxes we hadn’t unpacked yet were unpacked and sorted, my husband’s unfinished lego sets, finished or tossed. The room and its closet were truly empty, ready for a purpose. I wasn’t able to set it up for the child I so desperately hoped for, but I would be damn if it stayed empty. So, it became my workout room. The stationary bike that occupied a corner of our bedroom became the center piece of the cavernous spare bedroom on the other side of the house. It still felt too empty. I found every free weight, random yoga mat, anything that could be considered a piece of exercise equipment and staged the room like a Peloton studio. It still echoed. A woman from my congregation was giving away an old tredmil, I took it. The room is filled with the sounds of pounding feet, hyped up Peloton instructors, grunts and spinning wheels. It was supposed to be filled with soft lamp light, a cozy rug, the white noise machine that also played lullabies, baby snores and giggles, and a breast pump at all hours of the night. But, it’s my workout room.
Today, I painted it. This weekend my husband and I decided to finally pick a color and buy paint for “the room”. We put our choices in a hat and drew out a light blueish/ gray. The kind of color excited parents might pick when expecting a boy. We picked it because we could agree on it. Anything would be better than the charcoal gray from the previous owners, with its chips, nail holes and proof of a tv once being mounted to the drywall. I patched the holes, taped off all the edges, and started to paint. It was obvious very quickly it would need multiple coats.
Usually I love a project, I’m a handy woman, a day spent on a project is a day well spent. Even a day covered in paint with the 20 degree air coming through the cracked window. I didn’t love this project. This project sucked. As I painted “the room” all I thought about was the exercise equipment that would come back in. My husband wouldn’t be putting together a crib to put in the corner. We weren’t picking out cute pieces of art or fun toys. My bike was going back in its corner, my exercise ball and free weights back by the closet. I once again found myself preparing for something that might never happen. Would I still love this color when this room is still home to my stationary bike? Or would it mock me in the coming years, reminding me of what could have been? Do I dare let myself hope that one day I will come from this room, monitor in hand and whisper to my husband, “she’s finally asleep.”? Am I allowed to picture this room being home to a teenager who wants to paint it neon green? After four years of heartbreak even cautious optimism feels too positive.
While I painted through my tears I realized that there was something within me that has been changed forever. Blind hope doesn’t exist anymore. It can never be “when” we have a baby, it only feels like “if”. No matter how this journey ends it has changed me forever. It has made painting “the room” a traumatic event. My husband came home and said, “the nursery looks great!” But to me, its just “the room”.
