The Road to Conception is Paved with Clomide, Candles, and Marias

I live in the midst of Marias, from the maternal to the eternal. My nonna, Maria Grazia, with whom I spent much of my childhood, lost three children before she had my uncle and my mom, Maria Gaetana. My days are bookended with calls to my mom: Seven in the morning, post coffee and yoga, and seven in the evening, as my day slows. After so many years, we need few words, as attuned to silence as to speech, reading volumes into the other’s “hello.” Cousins and friends named Maria. My chosen sister, Maria Joaquina. 

Maybe it was those countless Saturday mornings, sitting at Nonna’s kitchen table sipping caffè latte, listening to her stories about loss, about child-rearing, about the young mother in her Sicilian town who died falling on her newborn when the Allied bomb hit. Maybe it was the countless showers and baptisms I attended (see Italian-Catholic social calendar). Or, perhaps it was something more intrinsic. I felt motherhood my destiny, part of the “natural” course of things. However, when dates were as rare as lunar eclipses, my destiny grew doubtful. I longed to give birth, not only to new understandings of myself unearthed through my study of women’s literature, but also to a daughter, to a part of me—to another Maria.

When my husband, Booker, and I decided to start a family, reality body-slammed me: the natural course of things sometimes takes a detour. Conception would be a long, lonely, agonizing road.

Nature seemed to have had the last laugh. I tried home remedies, acupuncture, yoga, more exercise, less exercise, more leafy greens, meditation, and romantic getaways. After two years, we finally consulted a fertility specialist. The diagnosis: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).  The treatment: a regimen of expensive fertility drugs, frequent doctor visits and blood tests, and a seemingly endless cycle of cautious optimism followed by dashed hopes.  

My daily calls to my mom became longer. Nonna fretted that I always looked tired, that my eyes didn’t look right: “No mi piacciono gli’occhi,” she would repeat, as if her insistence could alter reality. Half-jokingly, I dubbed Clomide, my first fertility med, my Sylvia Plath drug, as it had me contemplating putting my head in the oven.  Not optimal conditions for baby-making. In addition to the depression which clung like a cold, damp sweater, I felt alien in my body: weight gain, muscle pain, acne, headaches. I avoided mirrors, avoided eye contact. 

I tried my best to maintain my daily rhythms: teaching, meeting, exercising, grocery shopping—because I knew no other way. Booker, my ever-steady New Englander, tried to keep things stable and hopeful, helping re-center me when my thoughts spiraled towards despair. When he held me, I felt calmer. Until fear resurfaced and self-doubt and self-loathing blanketed me. Although I thrive on schedule and routine, sex by charts and clocks left me dispirited. But, always the good student, I did as I was told, continuing the Clomide, until the oven joke became less of a joke. Time to try a new medication—more risks, but better payoffs. I took the gamble.  

Thankfully, needles don’t scare me. I became quite adept at injecting myself daily with Follistim, another drug designed to trigger ovulation. I remember being at O’Hare, late for a connecting flight. The restroom line was, per usual, never-ending. I began to panic. Thankfully, my inner Florence Nightingale kicked in: throwing modesty to the wind, I took the syringe from my purse, lifted my sweater, skipped the alcohol swab, and voilá, I made my flight with seconds to spare. Needles, however, unnerve Booker. Yet, always the stalwart, he injected me monthly in a place I could not reach—despite all the yoga. 

Marias are ever-present in my life. After the midday Mass crowd cleared, my friend, Gaston, and I—two lapsed Catholics—would slip into Newman Hall, light candles, and kneel in front of the statue of Mary and baby Jesus. Immigrant Catholics and candles—it’s a thing. Immigrant Catholics and Virgin Mary—also a thing. My favorite among the Catholic pantheon, Mary is more vulnerable and human than the lofty saints and apostles. And, being a Maria, familiar. I bargained, pleaded, and whispered the prayer I have been saying nightly since longer than I can remember, “Ave Maria, piena di grazia…”  Please let the drugs work, please let me conceive. Until Gaston would say, “Ok, pretty, let’s go get lunch.”  

After the doctor called and told me the latest drugs and costly IVF worked, I beelined down Telegraph Avenue to Dwight Way to Newman to Mary. Shaking with elation and fear, I lit a candle. What if all the drugs I had ingested and injected would harm the fragile life growing in me? What if I miscarried? I prayed for Siena Maria—for, from the moment my pregnancy test came back positive, I knew I was carrying a Maria.  

***

A letter to Siena Maria, twenty years later

The doctor told you to cultivate habits that soothe your anxiety, mitigate the sadness that thickens as night falls, to quiet your mind as it spirals from one imagined disaster to the next. I see you try: You’ve taken up yoga, meditation, journaling. Cooking and gardening, like the Marias before you. You’ve pulled out paint brushes, pens, and canvases from the back of your closet. Filled mason jars with water and mixed colors. You’ve painted your nightstand and door. Decorated ceramic pots, filled them with soil, planted peace plants, prayer plants, and succulents. Festooned your room with macramé hangers and diffused the air with lemongrass and lavender.

My sweet, twenty-year-old girl, if I could scoop you in my arms and cradle you, rock the bottomless sadness from your body, comb the fear from your long spiral curls, I would. I would. 

But I know I can’t. Instead, I crawl into your bed at night and embrace you, cry with you about the protests in Minneapolis and Atlanta and DC and Oakland. Grieve our forests. Try my best to reassure you that visiting Nonna and social-distancing in her backyard is not dangerous. You are not risking her health. Dad—although he takes long bike rides—will be safe, will come home. I always wear a mask when I go to the store or hike in Tilden. 

I can’t promise you, however, that our world won’t burn, that the fear, anxiety, and sadness will ever fully go away. 

You’ve begun to collage. Last week, you collected a pile of Gourmets and New Yorkers, greeting cards that I keep in a box in the top of the hall closet, and spread them out on your bedroom floor. “Want to collage with me?” you ask. I have the artistic ability of a pet rock, but collaging is one artistic endeavor we share, as evidenced by years of homemade Valentines. I got down on the floor and picked up a pair of scissors.  

I watch you sketch something on your canvas. Cut and plan, affix and position scraps and shapes. Words and worlds. Kaleidoscopic.  

Your collage left me astonished, speechless. I’ve been to my fair share of galleries and could easily see yours hanging in one, commanding attention. I’m not sure you believe me.

A naked woman—assembled in black and white--full-hips and round-breasts, emerging from worlds of color. Pale pink buds on her breast and a deep, indigo iris growing between her thighs.  

Siena Maria. Regathering, rebirthing.

-Luisa Maria Giulianetti

Luisa M. Giulianetti is Bay Area native who often incorporates Italian and Sicilian into her writing. She is published in Brilliant Corners, Feile-Festa, Mandala Journal, Ploughshares, riverbabble, Sediments Literary-Arts Journal, The Sun, and Tule Review. Luisa teaches writing courses and runs programs for transfer students at UC Berkeley.