Odds & ends

• Since writing my review of Prince Harry's memoir, this appeared in the Washington Post:  "Carolyn Hax’s advice for Prince Harry and the royal family." (It's transcribed highlights from a podcast conversation on the subject -- I haven't listened, but there's a link to that too!) 
• New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl -- who is about the same age I am -- writes so beautifully. Check out her latest, about grief & loss: "More and More I Talk to the Dead." 
• Also grief-related:  I was following links in a Substack and found this one, and then this specific post, about how we show up (or don't) for people in crisis. Sample passage: 

Whether it’s reading about it in a book, or just responding to the truth in live time, there are certain kinds of pain that a lot of us seem very resistant to fully acknowledging, as if that pain is contagious, as if the flame of it is too hot, as if it forces us to look at something we are unwilling to look at in our own lives, our own hearts, our own bodies.

and 

My hunch is that there are certain illnesses, like dementia, and certain ages/stages, like kids with cancer, or the sudden death of a younger parent or partner, that we struggle to face in friends’ lives because we are subconsciously unwilling to admit they are an ongoing possibility in our own. We essentially clench our eyes shut tight, put our fingers in our ears, and hum in hopes that it will go away. It’s like our silence and awkwardness are ways of praying to a god we may or may not even believe in, “Please not me not us not me not us not me not us.” 

• Unrelated to loss, infertility and/or childlessness, but I love this Facebook post from Rona Maynard (former editor of Chatelaine magazine, one of Canada's oldest and best-known women's magazines, and sister of American writer Joyce Maynard), about aging and writing.  
• This line especially:  "Age is knowing there are no boring days, only bored people."  Yes!!  
• Lyz Lenz's first Friday Substack of the month (she writes at "Men Yell at Me") is worth a read, if only for the first four paragraphs in which she deftly describes/destroys February (my least-favourite month). :)  
• In another Substack "In Pursuit of Clean Countertops," Sara Petersen recently chatted with author Jenni Quilter on "on IVF, nuclear family ideals, and motherhood as an 'automatic-meaning machine'." There's a lot here to chew on -- some really interesting points (and some horrifying bits of women's health history I was not aware of!) -- although, as usual, I found myself wishing they had pushed the envelope of their conversation just a *wee* bit further, and at least given a perfunctory nod to the fact that IVF does not work roughly 70% of the time -- and what happens to those of us who *don't* ultimately get to achieve "motherhood as an automatic-meaning machine"?  
• Still, Petersen admits that "Weeks after reading it, I’m still thinking about all the questions Jenni evokes, questions I had never thought to ask, and questions I’ll now, thanks to her book, never stop considering." So I guess that's something...??  
• Quilter's book, "Hatching," has been added to my "want to read" wishlist. (It's available in hardcover from Amazon & Chapters/Indigo, and on Kindle via Amazon, but strangely, it's only available in audiobook format from Kobo Canada??)  
• Worth a read: this article in the National Post about the "resurgence of pronatalism" in the face of falling birth rates -- and why this might not be a good idea (or at least not something to worry about).  
• Featured in the article: Nandita Bajaj, Executive Director of Population Balance, who recently took part in a panel discussion about  "Why is Policy Engagement Essential for People Without Children?" on the New Legacy Radio podcast. 
• I got a chuckle reading this New York Times article about the 50th anniversary (!) of Schoolhouse Rock. I was 12 in 1973, when the segments began running in between the cartoons on Saturday mornings. By then, I was starting to grow out of Saturday morning cartoons (albeit I still loved to watch American Bandstand at noon) -- and for the first few years it was on, I only ever got to watch it during summer vacations and other holidays at my grandparents' house in Minnesota. 
• (I know I've written about this before, but until I was about 13 years old, we lived far enough north that we were only able to get ONE -- count 'em!! -- TV channel! -- the CBC.  Then we moved closer to the border and were able to pull in TV signals from the States ourselves with a rotary TV antenna, as well as the other Canadian networks -- CTV, and a new one just starting up, Global. Cable TV came along a few years later, when I was in high school.) 
• But even though I was rapidly aging out of Schoolhouse Rock -- and even though I'm Canadian! -- like others mentioned in the article and in the comments, I too can still sing the preamble to the U.S. Constitution  ;)  (the opening lines, at least!) -- as well as some of the other Schoolhouse Rock jingles. (I'm especially partial to "My Hero Zero.")  
• These two lines from the article (below) gave me pause... and I'm not sure I could watch the video without tearing up -- even all these years later, post-loss. I had a flashback to a meeting of our pregnancy loss support group, talking about just why our losses hurt so badly. One of the bereaved dads there shrugged and sheepishly grinned as he said, "Hey -- three -- it's a magic number."  Indeed... 

The blissful “Three Is a Magic Number” isn’t just a primer on multiples; it’s a rumination on the triad foundations of the universe, from geometry to love. (If your voice does not break singing, “A man and a woman had a little baby,” you’re doing something wrong.)