Santa, baby

A friend of mine is on her last IVF — age, flagging endurance, and the constant buffeting of disappointment have brought her to the end of the line. 

(By "buffet" I mean "to hit or beat, especially repeatedly," but I suppose the other sense — "to snuffle hungrily around a long line of self-serve chafing dishes" — applies equally well.)

Her blood test is on Christmas day.  This morning her home test turned positive.

I've been saying to her, and making deals in my head with the God I don't believe in, that all I want for Christmas is a pregnancy for her.  But today I realized I'm leaving out all my other friends.  Now, I'm not a praying woman, but even I realize that from time to time I need to turn to a power greater than myself.

So I'm pulling out all the stops and calling on the big guy:

Santa Claus.

Picture me, if you will, perched precariously atop Santa's red velvet knee.  (Try not to think about how many full-to-overflowing diapers have perched there recently, if you please.)  Santa and I are long overdue for a good heart-to-heart. 

Santa.  Dude.

Because I'm here on serious business, I will overlook the Great Roller Skate Debacle of 1983 and cut straight to the chase.  (That, we will revisit at a more opportune time.)  I can't claim I've been good this year.  I've had way too many dirty fantasies about unsuitable strangers to deserve anything but the filthiest lump of coal.  But for once I'm not here about receiving.

I want to ask, humbly, that you shower my friends with gifts.  The good kind.

For all of my friends with children, I'd ask that you keep their families safe and happy in the coming year.  Look, I know the kids would be happier with something noisy and plastic, but at heart I am a socks-and-underwear kind of giver.

For all of my friends who are pregnant and healthy, I'd ask that you not intervene at all.  Don't rock the goddamn boat.  I am not kidding.  Fuck with them, Santa, and you and I will have a problem.  My wrath is mightier than any legion of camo-sporting elves you can muster.  Santa, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!

Now where was I?

Oh.  Yes.  My friends who are still trying to build the family they dream of.  I don't even know where to start with them.  I'll be straight with you, Santa: I don't know anymore whether anyone deserves to become a parent.  I can't quite believe deserving has much to do with anything at this point.  If we all got what we deserved, I think the world would be a very different place.  So I am asking not that you make my friends parents because they deserve it.  I am asking that you do it because it is their heart's desire.  Aren't you supposed to be in the wish-granting business?  Well, do it.  Please.

Now on to the specific bequests.

I want the adoption agencies to see Shelba's heart for what it truly is, and rush a child across her doorstep with indecent haste.  So hasty she doesn't have time for a preventative bikini wax.

For Mollie, I want for the other shoe not to drop.  I want her pregnancy to progress without incident.  Some of those pregnancy-related endorphins might be nice, too — send her a big goofy dose just when she's feeling her most anxious, wouldja?  Put it on my tab.  I'm feeling extravagant this year.

Eve is hard to buy for.  What do you get the woman who has everything?  Maybe you could just arrange for her astounding perceptiveness to continue unabated.  And her generosity in sharing her family with us.  And throw in a Salad Shooter.  I'm told no kitchen should be without one.

For Carrie, Robert, and Ethan, I was thinking maybe something valuable imported from Russia.  You know, something pink and squirmy, slightly bigger than a breadbox — check their dossier and work out the details.

And you know how we say in the infertility world, "It only takes one"?  (And by "we" I mean "they," as I abhor the phrase.)  Dawn only needs one, one parent who trusts in Dawn's goodness and sees the wisdom of trusting her newborn to Dawn's loving care.  As we say in the infertility world, "...yeah, the right one."  (And by "we" I mean "I," as I irritably retort in that vein when someone attempts to pacify me with clichés.  Yeah, yeah, naughty, not nice.  More coal.  Bring it on.)

Now let's talk about my friend getupgrrl.  There's simply not enough crap in that sack.  We'll start with a soulful gaze or two from Dr. Love, just enough to distract her for a minute while you put under the tree:

• a positive pregnancy test
• a billion rapidly dividing cells
• a firm uterine entrenchment
• a strong, unflagging heartbeat
• the swift, uneventful  passage of time
• one of those tear-jerking high resolution ultrasounds in a good way
• a textbook birth (and not those textbooks, for crying out loud), and
• a healthy infant for her to corrupt in every way that counts.

In short, I ask that you give her a goddamn break already.  Is that too much to ask?

Now if Santa thinks I'm paying those bogus felt-clad "helpers" five bucks for that Polaroid, he's been inhaling a little too much reindeer scat.