Deadlines
I don't care much for deadlines and yet the next one is looming, March 31st.
My wife and I have been married for ten years. It has been the best decade of my life. We both work 40 hours a week and even after so many years (relatively) we still love to spend time with each other. The weekends are our solace. She is my best friend and I love her dearly.
I work in the computer field. It's a desk job with a decent salary. I love my job and I am good at it. I like the people I work with one on one but, as a group they seem fairly elitist. I think ahead to the future, wonder and debate if I want to be in the same place 5, 10, 15 years from now, but I guess everyone does that. It seems that every industry today uses computers. From garbage collection to cash registers to the corporate world. But today, more than in the past, everyone thinks they know computers. Which can make my job very difficult. It can turn a 5 minute problem into a one hour problem in less than a minute.
My wife works in the accounting office for a local company. She is good at it and it pays her well. She is the kind of employee that myths and legends are made of. No one believes that they exist but, she does. The perfect employee. The kind of worker that management would clone just given the chance. She goes in to work. I mean she goes to work, work hard and only work, nothing else. She doesn't like to be interrupted by office gossip, she has work to be done. She is socially well excepted and everyone likes her but, she would rather be focused on the task at hand, for four hours straight. Then lunch. Then four more hours. She can type 120 wpm with no errors. She accomplishes the workload of several. Example: she was hired to alleviate the workload of a fellow employee. The fellow worker was adding new job responsibilities and was already loaded. After many months the fellow employee quit due to unrelated circumstances. At that point my wife said she could do both jobs. They were a bit skeptical at first but, they gave it a try and it worked out very well. With all that said, she doesn't really like her job. It's not the job in particular, it's the working part. She would rather quit and be a mom.
You see, by this point in our lives we both expected to have a family and be raising children. It hasn't turned out to be for us. For the first couple of years we used contraception. When we felt that we were ready for a family (is anyone really ever ready?) we stopped using. And then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Nothing happened. After two years, give or take, she went to be checked out, making sure that nothing was wrong. As it turned out, nothing was wrong, with her. So it became my turn to be checked out. I would make an appointment and go to the doctor...some day. I called once but, the doctor was out of town on vacation. Finally I made the decision to go in to the office, only to be fondled by an assistant who stated that everything looked in order but the doctor was out again that day. Much time passed before I went again but I did go again and visited with the doctor. They took a full run of blood tests, which turned out to be normal. Another time I completed a home version test and called to take in the results but, the doctor was moving offices that day. Thanks for playing but start over. Basically I'm down to the option of a biopsy procedure, first to make sure there are "boys" and then to see if they can swim (Seinfeld reference included) .
I can honestly say that I want a family. The thought of being a father fills me with warm desire. In fact, the older I become the more I want it. I am much more ready now than I ever was in my twenties. But. The idea of doctors and medical procedure being performed on "the region" fills me with dread. I just can't warm up to the idea. I'm sure that I'm just being silly and a baby. Other men have gone through similar things, right? I'm still manly even if I can't have children of my own. Maybe I have put it off for so long just hoping that ignoring it will make it all go away. Yet, here I am, still without a family. Men generally don't have to concern themselves with things kind of things. Women bare the children. I have so much respect for them for doing so. I wouldn't want to go through childbirth.
So here I am with a deadline. My loving wife has tried her best to nudge me in the right direction. She hasn't been too upset. She hasn't been blaming. She only wants what I want, which is a child of our own. To this end, she has finally begun to set deadlines. The real deadline was back in February, which I didn't make. Then it was moved to the end of this month, which I am not going to make either. It pains me to let her down. Things always seem to get in the way. I should make it a priority, a necessity to complete my tests. Not knowing is usually harder than knowing but, in this case not knowing means no finality. Maybe I could still have children. How's that for self-delusion?
This is my plight. This is my story. This consumes my life. Thanks for listening (reading).
posted by Shutter McGavin @ 4:23 PM
