Like bringing flowers to a knife fight *

In which a questionable creative endeavour leads to conflagration between our Hero and his lady

Ironically, it all went south about something we both agreed was just dreadful. Nocturne had turned up an article about clever crafty things to reuse/retask things around the house. Some were genius, like using a tissue box for plastic bag storage and dispensing. Some were ridiculous, like using a wine box for a shoe rack. And one was remarkably weird.

Use, the article suggested, paint chip cards as nameplates for dinner. I’m not really sure how this was selected as a good idea, as it seems like the height of misappropriation to me. How many cards do people actually bring home? And do you really want your dinner that’s formal enough to require nameplates to be branded to your local home improvement store? Do you use these before you paint, to indicate how lovely you’re home will be once your guests are gone and you can get on with it? Or after you paint, when you’re very obviously recycling the detritus of a home improvement project?

So I cracked a joke, about calling home to ask what colour dinner was going to be so I could pick up the right colours to match the foods. And Nocturne teased back, complaining about my imaginary thoughtlessness and lack of taste in picking colours that did not fit our meal or decor at all.

And I tried to defend myself, but as we went further through the slideshow of suggestions, in between being excited or talking about our own tastes, the running (mock) argument continued, as we made each other laugh harder and harder with stranger and stranger complaints about the paintcard nameplates.

Probably our best fight ever.

Other people’s grief is having a weirdly resonant affect on me. A favourite here lost a spouse, and in the course of empathizing, my brain cheerfully heads over to the rubbish heap to pull out a can of memories labeled “Dumped” and says, take that feeling and scale it up a few orders of magnitude. Thanks Brain. Aside from it not being about me anyway, why do I need to think of that to sympathize? Why does someone else’s true tragedy bring me back to my stupid kerfuffle. I wouldn’t mention it at all, but honestly, it gives me a measure of comfort to see other favourites respond, to see the connections between people. So I’ll make a little mark here.

Likewise, long filed under old business, I tripped across this… latent memory landmine. I stumbled across a blog post by a guy who lost his baby in a home birth, and detailed his experience and where their particular choices around home births turned out to have been uninformed or involved risk. There were a number of things that hindsight reveals they could have done to reduce the risk. There were things they just didn’t know that my medical friends have recognized immediately as a risk factor. And he closes with a very simple statement, that nobody ever says, “If only we’d done it at home, my baby would have lived.” (I do realize that there are likely people who have said exactly that, but the hyperbole does not negate the idea he’s putting forward.)

And I was devastated by the post. I can justify hurting for my favourite, because their people become my people by proxy but here I was almost in pain over a complete and utter stranger. And not knowing what else to do with the feeling, I talked to Nocturne about it and that was a brilliant move on my part because she could see what I couldn’t and point it out to me. Which is that it was my own old emotions tripping me up.

Let me be clear. I’m not going to debate the merits of home birth. I am going to talk about it, and the article, and how it connects to my experiences. I claim nothing beyond being right for me. You do what’s right for you, Gentle Reader, and I wish you luck and health.

The ex was very vocal about wanting a home birth. Me… well…

I understand the distaste for the “factory” atmosphere of hospital birthing, and I’ve seen the arguments about the advantages of home birthing, and I don’t really disagree with any of them. At a superficial level, it’s no different that going to a fast food place and ordering a combo number 7 or a number 1 with extra pickles, it’s an optimization decision, a trade-off to maximize perceived benefit. And to me, the logical, engineering man who does not bear in any way the emotional, physical and biological burden of gestating and delivering a child, I don’t get how the other factors trump “immediate access to comprehensive medical experience and technology in the event of any possible or wildly improbable complications that can arise in the process.”

But as I just said, in this particular I’d be the junior partner in the undertaking. And I just don’t think I have the right to really press my view on the person actually doing the gestating and extruding if it comes down to a direct disagreement.

Which, all summed up, means that I was not very happy with the home birth situation, but I was seeing all the “movement” stuff and the people talking about the good things about it, and this is what she fervently wanted and childbirth is fundamentally a natural process that’s been happening for millenia… (Of course, there’s the mortality rate from millenia ago, and hey leprosy and syphilis are natural too, right?)

So yeah, I have a pretty strong opinion on the subject. One reinforced in an empirical and reasoned way by what I read

Anyway… the point is that I was not at all happy about this particular judgement call, but without any feeling of authority from which to defend my point of view, and I had to swallow that all because couples compromise and where to compromise seemed pretty clear and I guess I never really thought about all my discomfort and upset with having to assume that position till some other poor joe strikes that precise nerve in me and suddenly a whole wave of emotion I’d never even thought about comes pouring out of me.

I was upset, and angry and I wished I’d had this guy’s post and a time machine to go back and slap it down in front of her and ask her to at least answer the issues he was raising. And in the midst of the negative emotion, I was frustrated to feel anything about the ex at all. I’d erase her wholesale if I could.

*EDIT*

To avoid confusion: Any and all reproductive issues relating to my ex were theoretical considerations. The emotional trauma, however, is real.

For all that the ex is the black-hearted scoundrel as our mutual story ended, for all the angst, discovered and remembered, I still had a moment of wondering if she’d actually agree with that portrayal. Am I the bad guy when, if ever, she tells our sad tale?

Hardly seems fair.

Dammit.

So Nocturne starts making fun of me for not being Netflix (which is too funny this way to ruin by explaining) and I say, “I’m so sorry, pardon me while I eviscerate myself.”

And I pause.

She doesn’t say anything.

And I’m trying not to smile.

She still doesn’t say anything.

“You didn’t even try to stop me!” I complain.

“Stop you? I’m trying to encourage you!”

Can youfeel the love tonight…. Oh wait, of course, I’m not Netflix, I actually have that movie available to stream