There’s a positive pregnancy test sitting on my desk.
Pregnancy is something I’ve gotten used to. By this point, my wife and I have had two boys and ten pregnancies. Eight miscarriages that we know about. We both want a big family. As big as possible. But she’s forty and I’m thirty-eight. We had both decided to keep the goalie pulled but not get our hopes up.
Alison told me later that day that it feels different this time. She’s in-tune with her body. I guess that happens after so much loss. And emotion. And fluctuating hormones.
Then she felt ill. Really ill. Ill to the point of not being able to stand up for more than five minutes without throwing up, ill.
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On Sep 23, 2024, I sent my editor Tim Burgard an email with the subject “Too Early potential extension.”
Here’s what it said:
Writing is going well.
But my wife is extremely sick right now. She’s effectively been in bed for three days straight. If she stands up for more than 5-10 minutes, she needs to throw up. It’s nothing to worry about. She’s pregnant. But it’s quite early. We aren’t telling anybody.
What this also means though is that there’s a good chance it’ll be like this for a while. Weeks, or even months.
I’m only telling you this because I want to ask well in advance for a potential extension for the Too Early manuscript delivery.
There’s actually a few through lines with Too Early depending on how things play out here that might be a powerful story to tell, maybe in the epilogue. Or as an interlude.
Themes of resiliency, for example: If my cup was full, this would have tipped me over. Now it’s a challenge, nothing more.
Themes of family and community: Our decision to live close to my parents and investments into relationships with neighbors has led to a lot of support.
Themes of physical resiliency: Years of showing up to the gym on days I didn’t feel like it banked me a lot of fitness in reserve.
I’ve no idea what’s going to happen or how this will pan out. But I’ll take notes and try to make reflections ongoing. Then, when this period passes, I’ll write it up and maybe we can add it into the book somehow.
It’s a month later now. October 25th. My birthday.
Some days are better than others. But she’s been more or less bedridden for four weeks and counting. Looking at a screen makes her sick. So does reading. And eating. If she does something crazy like go for a short walk, she’ll have to lie down when she gets home. She can’t read to our boys. Instead, she opens a book so they can see the pictures and makes up a story.
Perhaps the hardest part is that there’s no defined end in sight. She’s ten and a half weeks pregnant. We’re hoping that the start of the second trimester will mark the end of her nausea. There’s no way to know. One day she might just feel better. Or maybe it’ll be this way the entire pregnancy. Six more months. We’ve no other option than to take it day-by-day.
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The question is not whether or not you will roll your ankle. It is whether or not rolling your ankle will injure you.
Awful things happen. Loved ones get sick; business deals go sour; strings of bad luck feel endless.
There’s a lot of talk about resiliency these days. About fortitude and strength. And about gaining the skills to navigate the unknown. All of that is great. But it’s just as important to expect the unexpected. Because the only thing you can expect to happen with any degree of certainty is that, at one point, the unexpected will come and kick you in the ass.
These few months were going to be busy regardless. In addition to writing this book, I’m deep into marketing my previous book, The Obvious Choice, keeping up with daily content on social media, and operating my two companies.
By my count, that’s four jobs. With Alison ill, I’ve added on caring for her, making meals, keeping the house tidy, and school pick-ups.
This wonderful, miraculous, incredible, indescribably moment in time where we anxiously await our third child, a child we’d both resigned to never having after so much heartbreak, could have been a terribly stressful affair.
On paper, the last month has been the busiest and most difficult of my life. And yet, I feel at ease.
I have a friend who works a busy job. So does his wife. Both make a lot of money; have a lot of professional responsibility.
They also have two kids. A few years older than ours. Both do extracurricular math tutoring and hockey many days a week. A full-time nanny helps around their house.
Their kids are orderly. They don’t question their parents and do as their told. My boys, well, my oldest, Calvin, at least, is like me: disagreeable. Rules to him (and me) are considered suggestions. He doesn’t fall into line just because some authority said that it’s how things are done here.
Alison asked me my opinion on the difference between how we’re raising our kids versus our friends. I don’t know which is better: enforcing rules with an iron first so that kids obey, or empowering children to talk back, find their way, screw up, break the rules, frustrate their parents, and find their way in a world where very little is black and white. I really don’t.
What I said to Alison was that our friends don’t have a choice. Their cups are full. No room for anything unexpected. Of course their kids have to obey the rules and rituals of the household. There is no other way that their household can operate. Which is fine, until it isn’t.
“You never know what you need until you need it. By then it’s very often too late.” I said to Alison.
Admittedly, we have an ideal situation for navigating Alison’s illness.
Our family support is amazing. My parents live around the corner. Mom comes over almost every day to help with the kids.
We love our neighbors. Last night, for example, Calvin and Jaden had dinner at one of their houses while I cleaned our place, helped Alison, and prepped for the week.
And my work is flexible.
Some would say we’re lucky. And we are. But it’s not just luck. Only seems like it.
The quality of your life is downstream of the decisions that you make. Decisions made long ago. Decisions made without fully knowing whether they’ll pay off. How they’ll pay off. And, if they do, in what capacity. Decisions whose ramifications are only possible to appreciate in retrospect. Or, most often, attributed to luck and fortune.
Years back, I decided not to move to New York City to fast-track my career. I traded opportunity for professional flexibility.
Alison and I could live anywhere in the world. Hawaii; Thailand; Panama. Pick your paradise. Enjoy year-round warmth. Get richer in tax-havens. You name it. Instead, we bought a home in a place with high taxes where it’s cold half of the year that just so happens to be a six minute and forty-nine second walk from my parents.
We don’t enroll Calvin in math tutoring after school. Maybe he won’t get into as good a college. But because he isn’t overloaded with after-school extracurriculars, the little dude runs around the neighborhood knocking on doors, asking friends to play, becoming comfortable around their families.
We didn’t expect Alison to get pregnant. Well, that’s not quite true. We expected her to get pregnant. We didn’t expect her to stay pregnant. And we definitely didn’t expect her to get as ill as she got.
We also didn’t expect one of our dearest friends, a close neighbor, to get diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer two weeks ago. A house cleaner with two young daughters and no benefits who can’t work for the foreseeable future.
It’s Monday the 28th, her first chemotherapy session. For two days after each treatment, she’ll be sweating out the chemicals and shouldn’t be around her kids. We love our friend’s kids. They might sleep over at our house tonight. We don’t know yet. I’ll pick them up from school and they’ll have dinner at our place either way.
Real life happens. You can prepare yourself to go along for the ride. Or you can get hit by the car as it passes by.
Building resiliency is about getting strong when times are good, so you can stand tall when they aren’t.
Don’t fill your cup. Not because you can’t. But because there’s going to be something that will happen to you. Or to somebody you love. And when it does, you’re going to be happy that you’ve left space.
“How to build resiliency to manage hardship.” The article titles read. The promote reactive care solutions like yoga, guided meditation, or prayer. All useful things. But there’s too much emphasis on reaction, not enough on prevention and preparedness.
People talk about work/life balance. I’ve never liked that. Balance is binary. Too precarious. If you’re in balance, it means that you can also be in imbalance. I prefer the term work/life harmony. A flowing state where you roll with the punches.
Expect the unexpected. Become tolerant to life’s intolerances. The best way to deal with something unhealthy is to first become as healthy as possible. Make decisions today that your future self will thank you for when shit hits the fan. Because, it will.
It’s likely that you will notice others who have decided to fill their cups to the brim win professional accolades, make more money, or even have better behaved children. You might question your life’s decisions to leave your cup half-empty.
Until one day your wife gets pregnant and becomes bedridden ill. And then your neighbor gets cancer. And you’re somehow not stressed and miserable. Instead, challenged. Grateful that you’re able to enjoy the miracle of a pregnancy you never thought would happen. Grateful to be able to help a friend in need.
—
On October 31, Alison made it to her second trimester. She’s not great, but feeling better.
The next day, she went to get an imaging ultrasound and sent me a text message soon after. “We could hardly see the heartbeat. Baby wouldn’t stop moving! ❤” It read.
So that’s why, this morning, at 6am on Saturday November 2nd, I’m sitting in my cold office crying––finally letting myself feel all of the emotions I’ve been holding in for the past month and a half while I was trying to be strong for my family, for my boys, and mostly, for Alison, who just taught me what being strong really means. Writing up our story. Grateful our cup was half-empty because we just needed every ounce of that space.
There’s going to be bunk beds!