When egg and cheese English muffins make you cry

/ Poignancy / , , /

web-eliza-eating-veggies.jpgSo yesterday at the grocery store I saw the frozen breakfast sandwiches I used to eat on sale. I got burned out of them somewhere around Christmas, and stopped buying them. I figured enough time had passed that I could try them again.

I didn’t anticipate when I bit into it this morning that I’d have a flashback so visceral that it would actually bring me to tears.

Back when I was still eating these, we were trying to get pregnant. Kurt and I were just a couple months out on the wedding, my cycle charts were looking really good, and my doctor was still saying things like, “Don’t call me until there’s a line on the stick!”

We never really know what will take us back in time faster than a DeLorean at 88 miles per hour. Sometimes it’s a season change. Going into a restaurant long avoided. Shrugging on last winter’s coat. The smell of apple pie.

For me, that sandwich was the taste of anticipation and hope, something I lost many months ago, when the sticks never produced a line. I finally gave up last spring and scheduled a long-pushed-off surgery, one that required me to have my tubes tied. No babies for us, not anymore.

I didn’t finish the muffin.

Adoption is in our future, and we’re hopeful there too. It’s a daunting process, and one we’re doing our best to rearrange our lives for. We still have many months to wait, as unlike with your own babies, when you can get started any time you like, most adoption agencies require us to be married two years.

I hope this next year finds us in a better place on the family front, and maybe by the next time fall rolls around, I’ll be able to eat egg and cheese sandwiches again.