Last weekend, the humans from my dog’s play group threw a baby shower for one of the (human) members who is expecting. Yes, I realize “my dog’s play group” sounds ridiculous, but here in Port City we take our canine responsibilities very seriously. My dog also goes to day care (but it is “unaffiliated”–neither gay nor straight, nor funded by Head Start). I have also been to more than one dog birthday party.

Anyway, the shower was lovely — great food, good conversation, attractive gifts. It was a small crowd, just the play group members, two spouses, and three dogs. By the end of the evening, we were all saying, “We should do this more often,” which is not something you often hear at a baby shower. The next day, one of the attendees even told my husband (who had been babysitting so I could go) that he missed a good time.

Too often, rite-of-passage parties (weddings, showers, birthdays, graduations and the like) are horribly dull. I think that people tend to focus on the ritual aspect entirely at the expense of the party. There are too many toasts at a rehearsal dinner, for example, or it takes hours to open bridal shower presents. Sometimes too many of the guests don’t know anyone else and have nothing in common, leading to knots of couples standing uncomfortably around the perimeter of the function hall. A few years ago, Husband and I attended a spate of weddings that seemed to follow the same formula: a long Mass at a church in the city, followed by a reception at a suburban hotel an hour’s drive away, but with a two-hour delay in between so that the wedding party could take pictures– not enough time to do anything productive, but too much time to sit around a hotel in the middle of nowhere. You can’t eliminate all traditions during these kinds of events, but if most of the guests are wishing themselves dead, it might be good to cut back on the shower games or the chicken dance.

So, this delightful shower, along with a recent posts on Chez Miscarriage and The Naked Ovary, have got me thinking about what it means to be the non-fertile Myrtle at the fertility rite. These bloggers and so many people commenting on their posts wrote so eloquently of how painful it can be for those experiencing infertility to deal with other people’s pregnancies — even “recovering infertiles” like some adoptive moms. I had commented that I was one of the weird few who was not bothered at all.

I’m not sure why this is. It may be because we jumped off the fertility treatment merry-go-round the minute it looked like things were getting tough. It may be because I got pregnant pretty easily, and didn’t “feel” infertile, even though I couldn’t sustain the pregnancy. It may be because you can’t swing a used pregnancy test stick in this town without hitting someone experiencing one type of fertility issue or another–mid-life’s grand infertility pageant, right here. It may be because so many of our friends who did get pregnant suffered so many frightening complications, that just as they were eyeing the expense and hassle of our adoption preparations and thinking, “Wow, I’m glad this last IVF worked or we’d be in their shoes,” we were looking on in horror at their bed rest orders and hospitalizations and NICU stays and telling each other,”Wow, I’m really glad we’re adopting!”

As I read the new comments on getupgrrl’s follow-up, though, especially Tira’s post about needing to be there for your friends, I remembered a baptism party about two years ago where I felt like the bad fairy at Aurora’s christening. It wasn’t that I was upset about my friend’s successful pregnancy, but I felt that my own bad luck and unhappiness was almost palpable, poisoning the goodwill of the assembly and cursing the baby in question to a Sleeping Beauty fate. “You will prick your finger on a spindle and suffer unexplained recurrent miscarriage until you suddenly wake up and discover you are almost too old to adopt!” It was not a pretty feeling.

It’s wonderful when you can really, fully celebrate with an expectant mother, and the shower host facilitates that by providing delicious food and lots of alcohol and does not insist on making a hat out of the bows and a paper plate. Congratulations to our friends who are awaiting the birth of their child. The dogs can’t wait to have another playmate.