Before I met my husband, I was celebrating life as a single gal for all but one Valentines Day.
Mostly we celebrated in style, but one year a big group of us decided to head to the Desperate & Dateless singles event. The premise of the event was that you registered and were subsequently paired up with someone else who you met up with on the night. I made contact with Mr blind date, we arranged to meet …. but he stood me up. Yes I got stood up for a Desperate & Dateless Ball.
Slightly embarrassing but guaranteed I wasn’t the only one. After far too many cheap wines I spotted Mike Willisee junior doing interviews and a friend and I fabricated a story about us meeting that night and really hitting it off, all in the name of getting on tv. Only problem was, once the cameras were on, my friend froze. Not a word popped out of his mouth. Not wanting to miss my opportunity I pushed him aside and launched into a drunken rant about being stood up.
Well I was certainly successful in getting on tv. They used my rant in the ‘Coming up after the break’ tease in the following nights news broadcast giving everyone enough time to cue their VCR’s to record my exploits. There were numerous broadcasts of the session at work the next day. Hilarious!
I wish it ended there. Some 10 years later my Sunday afternoon is interrupted by a series of SMS messages alerting me to the fact that I’ve just appeared in an episode of Bert Newton’s “20 to 1″. This episodes theme was Australia’s best parties. I was mortified. I wasn’t that same drunken party girl. I was in a management role. I had earned the respect of my clients. How dare they! There was panic, lots of tears and even legal advice. I figured it wasn’t the kind of show that got repeated so I let it slide.
Skeletons in our closet always come back to haunt you. Apparently this is the kind of tv show that gets repeated on new years eve. And you would be surprised how many people adit to being home and watching tv on new ears eve. Second time around I didn’t find it quite as career threatening. We’re all young and stupid at some point in our lives. And I looked pretty good that night. This was in the early 90s before the days of YouTube. I’ve got a copy of the original news footage on a video tape and one I can track someone down with an operational VCR I’ll convert it to digital and give you a guaranteed giggle.
Heartbreak
Valentines Day 2007 is one my husband and I will never forget. On that day my GP told us that we couldn’t have children. While I fell apart right there in the doctors surgery, hubby fell silent and still. My GP started talk of adoption and alternatives, and my sobs just got more intense.
That day is the only time I have ever seen my husband shed a tear. We drove home in silence. We had no words of comfort for each other. Emptiness weighed upon us. By then we were numb. The tears had dried up. But so had our hopes and our dreams for the family we longed for. It was so unexpected.
Needing to brood but escape the silence and our suddenly empty home, we headed to a pub to drown our sorrows and consume a liquid lunch. After 4 hours of drinking straight vodka and losing on the pokies I decided I was too drunk, and hubby needed to take me home.
Instead of catching a taxi we decided we could use the walk home… and we just happened to stop off at every pub along the way. There were 9 pubs on the way home that day, and it was a 5 hour walk.
By this stage we were talking freely about our emotions. I have always been enormously stubborn, and like a child, the best way to get me to do something is to tell me that I can’t. So it was no great stretch that I had convinced both hubby and myself that we would conceive ourselves a baby one way or the other.
Happy endings
Fast forward two years to Valentines Day 2009 and it is the due date of our first child. With the expert consultation of an awesome fertility specialist we got there in the end. It was a bumpy and emotional ride.
We solved one problem at a time, only to find another challenge right around the corner. I’ve had friends run all kinds of tests only to be told nothing is wrong, and they still can’t fall pregnant. Every test we ran gave us bad news. But I’m grateful we had problems, because at least then we could formulate strategies for solutions.
Our daughter Madelyn wasn’t born on her due date in the end. But it was fitting that now we don’t look at the 14th February each year as the day our world came to an end. And I always seek a second opinion on matters of specialist health issues.
Valentines Day has again become a significant day for our family again this year. We had our first official obstetrician appointment and are delighted to be announcing that we are expecting baby number 2 due in August. We also received word that an offer we made on a house has been accepted. Is crazy exciting times around here!
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