Longing to Escape

A sunrise beach run ignites me

On Sunday I awoke before sunrise to the sound of wind gusts rattling the windows. I was not in my own bed, but in an Airbnb rental on Plum Island on the coast of Massachusetts. I had planned a last-minute getaway with my husband and parents so I could spend my 43rd birthday weekend watching waves crash against the sand.

I rolled over in the dark and looked at my phone. It was 6:30am and 30 degrees outside. I got up and peeked through the blinds and saw layers of gray clouds in the pre-dawn sky. Another wind gust shook the house, which was perched on a sand dune next to a marsh. I crawled back in bed and thought about it for a minute. There was no guarantee of seeing the sun rise over the ocean, but that was my goal, and I would not be deterred by this Arctic blast. It was the last official day of winter, and I would send off the season with sand in my socks.

According to my weather app, sunrise was scheduled for 6:48am. It was now or never. I rolled out of bed and pulled on layers of fleece running clothes and a face mask. Sensing my determination, Seth got up to get the dogs ready for me, putting on their leashes and harnesses and loading them into the back of my green Honda Element. I was only a few blocks from the beach, but if I spent five minutes running there, I might miss it. My car zipped around the corner and pulled into the parking lot at 6:49am. 

I wasn’t alone. Another SUV had pulled right up to the beach, waiting for the daily spectacle. But when 6:48 AM came and went without any hint of a glow on the horizon, they backed out and drove away. I dropped the tailgate to unload my dogs, clipped their leashes to my waist belt, braced myself against the wind, and jogged toward the ocean. 

The tide was rising, but still low enough that the beach and dunes blocked me from the brunt of the offshore wind. My running shoes sunk into moist sand with each step and I moved in slow motion, grateful that the weather gave me the beach all to myself. Baxter and Laney trotted ahead of me on their bungee leashes, and within a few minutes I was carrying two full poop bags, swinging one from each hand (this is why I go hands-free with the dog leashes). 

As I bent over to scoop up the second poop before the waves sucked it away, I noticed a ray of light through the clouds. It grew brighter as my gloved hands fiddled with the compostable poop bag, trying to tie it in a knot. I stared at the horizon in awe as the full glow of the sun emerged in a sliver between two layers of clouds, radiating rays of light toward the ocean, like one of those posters that have quotes about God on them. 

It made me feel like I should be thinking about God, or talking to God, or something to commemorate a moment so simple yet profound: the daily transition from darkness to light, and the first time this year that I’ve been there to witness it. 

But the God thought got overshadowed by something else—the familiar, urgent yearning I get every time I escape from my life to run the beach at sunrise or do something epic—I want this to be my life. I want to do this all the time. This is how I want to live.

It’s the yearning I indulged last fall when I planned a winter road trip from New Hampshire to Baja, Mexico. From October to December, I woke up every morning visualizing my trip, how I’d pack three months of camping and beach gear into my 2004 Element, what I’d have for breakfast and how I’d cook it, where I’d find the privacy to pee and poo and bathe while living out of my car, what route I’d travel and where I’d camp, how I’d balance an inflatable paddleboard with two 50-pound dogs on it, where I’d find groceries and what I’d put on my list, how I’d keep the solar battery charged for my refrigerated cooler, and what it would feel like falling asleep in the back of my car, stargazing through the moonroof with two dog butts in my face.

I committed nearly every detail of the trip to my mind before it ever happened, so that even after canceling my travels to pursue fertility treatments, I can almost feel like I was there. I remember it as if it were real, so vivid were my longings and so detailed were my plans.

This, I’ve learned, is exactly the level of detail I’m supposed to be visualizing about my future pregnancy and baby if I want to use the mind-body approach to boosting my fertility. Every day, according to my fertility apps, I should imagine my healthy egg joining with my husband’s sperm and being gently brushed down my Fallopian tube into my uterus. I should picture the fertilized egg finding a cozy spot to burrow into my lush uterine wall and start growing a baby. I should visualize the baby developing its head, arms, legs, and organs. I should imagine the moment its tiny heart starts beating. I should picture it growing bigger week by week, and then visualize a natural birth and the moment the child is laid against the skin on my chest. I should think about my days as a new mom, snuggling my little one, changing diapers, going for walks with the stroller, smelling that sweet baby hair. I should imagine my child growing and exploring, and all the things we will do together.

I’ve tried this a few times, but I will confess: these aren’t the visions that fill my dreams, that quicken my heart, that keep me awake at night. They aren’t the movie reel on a constant loop in the back of my mind. They aren’t the yearning tugging at my sleeve. They feel forced, conjured, scripted. They feel like someone else’s life that I’m trying to imagine. They aren’t mine.

Does this mean I don’t want motherhood badly enough to be admitted to the club? Or does it just mean that I suck at visualizing what I haven’t yet experienced? I may not have been to Baja yet, but I’ve spent months and years of my life camping and backpacking and road-tripping and running on beaches. It isn’t hard to imagine a trip I haven’t taken yet because I’ve taken so many like it before. But growing and birthing and raising a healthy baby is a sequence of events without precedent in my life, unless you count adopting Baxter from the animal shelter when she was 8 weeks old and cleaning up her pee off the floor and surviving her teething without getting my entire house chewed up.

I can’t seem to reconcile my longing for adventure with my longing for a family. They are two worlds as different as Mercury and Pluto (is Pluto still a planet?); the landscape of Adventure is one of freedom, independence, and solitude, while the landscape of Family is one of schedules, commitments, and community. Do they even make jogging strollers that you can push through sand on the beach at sunrise?

These thoughts swirl through my mind as the God-light shines on me, and I wonder, if I were granted only one wish by the sunrise gods, would it be for a baby, or to wake up every morning watching the sun climb above a new horizon? Then I stop myself, because I’m afraid I’ll give the wrong answer.

I’ve devoted the past three years, and especially the past three months, to the baby project. During the first year of the pandemic there wasn’t much else to do anyway. But as the world opened back up and I longed to explore, it’s become more and more of a sacrifice to stay put for timed intercourse and fertility treatments scheduled at the whims of my ovaries. Three out of our four IUI procedures in the past few months have been canceled because my ovaries did not cooperate. My fertility diet has become more and more regimented, and my exercise options have become more and more limited as my doctors warn that vigorous activity (i.e. all the things I normally used to do every day, like hiking, biking, running, and cross-country skiing) could disrupt implantation. My 43rd birthday gift from my husband was a pink FitBit, so I can make sure I’m jogging slowly enough to keep my heart rate below 140 (which is barely a jog at all).

I don’t feel like myself. I am the most ME when I’m running up a mountain, paddle-surfing a wave, biking through wooded trails or on dirt roads. I am happiest when I have a new adventure planned every weekend, or better yet, weeks at a time on the road or on the trail with my dogs and my tent and meals that require only boiling water to cook. The sunrise unlocks this wanderlust in me, as if the sun itself is rising in my heart and burning through my chest with this longing for freedom. 

After standing with the dogs on the beach in the wind and watching the sun move past several layers of clouds, I started jogging again, determined to reach the jetty at the mouth of the Merrimack River and “bag” this section of Plum Island beach, just as I have “bagged” hundreds of mountains and thousands of miles of trail—collecting new places and experiences like a child hordes seashells in a bucket. The wind picked up and pelted sand and flotsam in our eyes, but we pressed on until we climbed the flat rocks of the jetty and stood where the river meets the ocean. The full force of the wind barreled down the river corridor and funneled directly to the point where we stood. I felt like I was on top of Mt. Washington in the middle of winter, or on the bow of the Titanic with my arms outstretched. I felt fully alive for the first time in a long time.

The next day, I woke up at home in my bed alone. The sky was gray and cold. There was no sunrise; no beach. A part of me still stood on Plum Island; that part of my heart that got so full and bright. All I could think about all day long was that I needed to go back for it and keep it burning and keep chasing the next sunrise. I cried twice, out of nowhere, loud and wailing, over nothing but my deep despair at being trapped in my house with only half of my heart. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t work. I could only obsess about how soon I can get back to the ocean, after I take care of this year’s taxes and get my cars inspected and have my annual physical exam and get my dogs their shots (all of these things were scheduled for the end of March because this is when I would have returned from Baja).

In the midst of my post-trip beach obsession, two important things happened. I got a phone call from the woman at the state agency that runs the foster care program, calling to set up the first of three home-study visits to get Seth and me approved as foster and adoptive parents. We have spent two months filling out paperwork and getting inspections and background checks and taking classes, and we’ve been eagerly awaiting this next phase where we get to talk to a real person about our dreams of growing a family. I scheduled the appointment with a heaviness in my chest, realizing that I’ll have to be available every two weeks for the next two months to complete this part of the process, and thinking that’s not enough time to get me to Newfoundland, or Miami, or any of the exotic locales I’m ready to hop in my car and drive toward. Will she sense my ambivalence when she asks why I want to become a parent?

The second big thing was that the donor egg coordinator from our fertility clinic sent me all the forms and schedules and timelines for moving forward with donor egg IVF, if we decide to give up on my 43-year-old eggs and borrow some from a younger woman. We had met with the coordinator last week and then I’d searched the database and found an egg donor who seemed like the perfect match: an Ivy-league grad student in a natural resources field who is athletic and outdoorsy and loves dogs, who has blond hair and blue eyes and her favorite color is teal (for those of you who don’t know me, this is exactly me 10 years ago). I had planned to give myself another year to get pregnant with my own eggs before finding a donor, but what if she’s not available then? Should I do it sooner?

I had decided to explore adoption and egg donation while still trying to get pregnant because I wanted to keep my options open, and because these processes take time (at least 6 months), and because I needed to wade into these new waters before I would know if I wanted to take a swim. My gut-check the day after my magical beach trip was like a red flag waving on the lifeguard stand: CAUTION! High surf and strong currents! Proceed at your own risk! Both processes feel scary and overwhelming and fraught with uncertainty, and once I get in over my head, the rip currents will pull me further away from my nomadic dreams. 

Maybe I need to dip my toes in the other pool for a while: the one that involves sunrises and sand and actual oceans. Maybe the morning beach runs will get old after a few weeks and I’ll head home with renewed enthusiasm for starting my family by any means necessary. Maybe taking a break from fertility treatments and sleeping under the stars will relax my body and mind enough that I’ll finally get pregnant on my own. Or maybe I’ll get in the car and keep driving till I make it to Baja, or my other dream: Alaska. (There is a reason why I called this blog Liz Explores!)

I need a few weeks to get through the taxes and the appointments and for it to get warm enough to sleep outside. But as soon as I can, I’m going back to find the other half of my heart, and hold it up to the sunrise, and see what it wants for me. 

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