what you don't know

The older I get, the dumber I get.  I believe this is true - in a profoundly helpful way some of the time, and in an equally profoundly frustrating way the rest of the time.  

The good part is that you realize, with time, that all your well-meant youthful enthusiasm (read: arrogance) was largely misplaced.  All the things you ABSOLUTELY KNEW - like, for example, that your parents were the DUMBEST PEOPLE EVER - are not so certain any more.  If you are fortunate, you realize that your newfound ignorance is actually a gift, leading you to throw up your hands and end up with a little humility in them as a result.  This part is good.

On the other hand, you also have to come to terms with some of your just-plain-never-going-to-know-that problems.  I am never going to understand how a car works.  Mostly because I don't care.  I am also very unlikely to learn Spanish.  Or to be able to design a website.  You can only know so much stuff.  And this might also keep you humble, but it also gets pretty irritating.  

You'd think this would help you be more patient with other people's ignorance.  Like, for example, the fact that you never knew until the last few years that IVF is specifically NOT the way you end up with a litter of babies in your womb: you'd think that remembering your former ignorance on this topic would give you some patience with all the other people out there who still don't know this.  It doesn't seem to be working that way.

One of the great problems with infertility, I believe, is the secrecy which surrounds it most of the time.  I am contributing to that by maintaining only an anonymous blog.  Some of my reasons for that are very important.  Some are not.  

With secrecy comes ignorance.  You can't know everything.  But you can know some things.  And what I am trying to know, this year, is how to live with our infertility and remain patient when people say well-meant but equally dumb-ass things about fertility and children.

This will take some work.  That's the one thing I do know.