TRYING

Love, loss, and getting what you want.

Essayist and memoirist Caldwell reflects on the three years she spent undergoing intrauterine insemination when she was in her mid-30s, married to a musician she calls B. “I thought it would go like this,” she writes. “I’d tell people I was trying, and six months later I’d be pregnant, and everyone would see that I get what I want when I want it.” It didn’t go that way, though, and Caldwell faced repeated disappointments as she underwent tests and procedures, trips to the fertility clinic (with a happily anticipated stop at Trader Joe’s), and sometimes wacky advice. An acupuncturist, for example, tells her to make a shrine and bring it warm milk every morning. Meanwhile, she teaches writing, publishes, and on weekends works at a high-end boutique that offers “life-changing pants.” Her own life is satisfying, but not enough: “One of my friends understands, because she’s had experience with both books and babies. ‘A book is a small consolation when it’s a baby you want,’ she says.” Suddenly, though, infertility is not the only problem Caldwell faces: Her husband confesses that he has been abusing drugs and spending thousands of dollars on sex workers. Although he begs her to give him another chance, she ends the marriage and gives herself another chance, instead: to embrace her queer identity. “Was it that my approach toward getting pregnant, the intention and grueling effort, helped my queerness resurface?” she wonders. “Had I been approaching getting pregnant like a queer person?” Was infertility caused by her unconscious rejection of her philandering husband—and his sperm? This infertility memoir ends with rebirth: Caldwell’s new, energized sense of herself.

An intimate, engaging memoir.