Once you are in the rotating two-week cycle of trying to get pregnant, realizing you aren’t, and trying again for several months, you start to embody this strange breed of despair/hope. For us, the hope usually began its steady take-over of our lives just as we took into our possession the exalted sperm. For those of you who don’t know, the teeny-tiny vials of goods come encapsulated in a hulking metal tank. It is icy-cold to the touch and closely resembls a giant missile you might expect to find on a field during a World War II reenactment. For those of you who don’t know, thanks. I’m glad you don’t. That’s one less person we have to worry about catching site of the tank while we are lugging it down the street and knowing exactly what we’re up to.

This last cycle we did our gosh-darn best to get off on the right foot with our little hope missile. We made the hour trek to the sperm bank together, carried the tank to the car swinging gently between us, lovingly strapped it into the backseat of the car, and then covered it with a nest of coats and sweatshirts to prevent it from getting too much sun exposure. Then, we went on our only date that month, given our conflicting work schedules, seemingly endless series of doctor’s appointments, and the high percentage of our disposable income that went to purchase the vials.

Adjacent to our sperm bank is a fancy restaurant I’d always eyed curiously during my rushed trips to the bank between clients, and this time we splurged. We ordered decadent plates of steaming butternut squash soup and crab-melts piled high with the seafood Cari would soon have to swear-off if everything went as planned. Our air was celebratory, giddy even, and the waiter caught our enthusiasm, sneaking us glass after glass of raspberry lemonade despite the restaurant’s strict policy against free refills. When we got home that afternoon we tucked the tank into the back of our bedroom closest and sent it the very best energy and intentions we could muster. “Welcome home, little guy”, we told it fondly, “we hope you decide to stick around.”

A few days later, after our usual series of panicked phone calls to the sperm bank—Cari’s ovulation cycle was running late, did they think the dry ice would hold? Did we need to come back for a bigger tank? Was that zip tie supposed to be on our tank of had it been tampered with?—we were finally in the doctor’s office waiting room. It’s a narrow, congested space filled with little love seats large enough to hold two petite adults shoved shoulder to shoulder. If we weren’t lucky enough to find an empty love seat, I knew we’d be stuck again pressed up against someone’s husband, politely trying to pretend we didn’t know from our Kaiser fertility orientation that he had a vial of fresh sperm stuffed under his armpit to try and keep it at body temperature.

But lucky we were… it was a slow morning in ovulation land, and the nurses called us back before we’d even settled fully into a position that struck what I hoped was the appropriate balance between maternal affection for the cold metal tank that held the beginning of what could one day before our firstborn child, and the objective detachment that would allow us to embark upon this journey yet again if this wasn’t our month.

We were greeted in the examination room by Nurse Beasley, a sturdy, unsmiling woman who had accompanied us during each of our previous rounds of insemination. She had the air of someone who had done this a thousand times before, and each time her stern yet kind expression seemed to be trying to remind us that the odds weren’t in our favor, but we’d still eventually get where we were trying to go.

“Would you like to keep the vial?” she asked, pulling it from it’s little pot of steaming water with what looked like a petite Easter egg dipper. “Yes!” we replied unanimously. We’d declined the first few times, as it seemed to be the silly, sentimental stuff of hippies, but our distain had quickly faded. We’d take what we could get these days. The procedure itself took under a minute, anticlimactic in how poorly its ease of execution matched its significance for our future.

Our sperm were off and running, and we were finally alone in the room. I crawled onto the narrow bed where Cari had been instructed to lay, right ovary down, for at least 20 minutes. I splayed my hand across where I imagined her ovary would be and urged them on, towards the warmth of my hand. “Come on little guys, you can do it!”

With Cari’s I-phone tucked between us, I began to play the soundtrack of our first few months of dating. The songs were Ethereal, piano-driven melodies reminiscent of our first date and the seemingly endless series of late nights and long, lazy mornings that followed. The music filled our examination room and most likely the rest of the doctor’s office, and I imagine practical Nurse Beasley, whose office shared a wall with our room, shook her head in only mildly disapproving bemusement. “Soon, love, soon…” Vienna Teng’s voice promised,

Soon, love, soon                                                                                                               Soon, love, soon

There’ll be a fire burning in the temple of our peace
(Soon love soon)
There’ll be the soaring voice for a silent plea
(Soon love soon)
We will hold a broken circle and begin to pray
(Soon love soon)
We will find a black and white in the grey

And we will be as one god
And we will be as one people
And we will be as one god
And we will be as one people

(Soon love soon)
We will find illumination in unnatural light
(Soon love soon)
You will travel a thousand miles without leaving my sight
(Soon love soon)
We will find we never knew hatred ran so deep
(Soon love soon)
Such a wide, wide chasm of faith to leap

But we will be as one god
And we will be as one people
And we will be as one god
And we will be as one people
Yes we will be as one god
And we will be as one people

(Soon love soon)
There’ll be an evolution of the human soul
(Soon love soon)
We will know that to be a part is to be truly whole
(Soon love soon)
We will know the pattern of centuries’ rise and fall
(Soon love soon)
We will know that the fate of one is the fate of all

And we will be as one god
And we will be as one people

Through the years this song had been many things- a promise of our future together, a plea for a more peaceful future for the world, the closest we could come to praying. Now, we sent it up as all three- a promise, a plea, and a prayer that soon, love, soon, our baby would find its way to us.