The Store is Closed, but I Can't Find the Right Lock

The Queenpin's store is closed, and by store I mean uterus. Owning such a fine, upscale establishment has been a blast. I have produced two beautiful and planned children, and had plenty of scares that the store has been broken into and eggs fertilized, but, shew-wee, (imagine me wiping sweat from my brow) they were just scares. After littlest beastie was born my maternal instinct kicked in so big, I thought I would open the store up like Mother Ducker and just use my lady parts like a revolving door to have babies, but then the wusband left and my mind began to change.

Year one of being single I could imagine myself with new husband and possibly new babes, but then year two came and my beasties got older, then year three and they became even older, and with age came independence. There is nothing like hitting that time in your kids' lives when they can open a pack of crackers by themselves and turn on the t.v. so you can read your book in bed for another hour. By year three the store was closed for good, at least in my mind, but unfortunately thoughts cannot keep you from becoming pregnant. Aint' it a bitch how those things work?

I'm into holistic healing, I would love to go all natural and just count my days and time my body, but my doctor calls people who do that "parents" and suggests I choose another method. I can't do the pill because cigarrettes and I are still having our frenemy relationship. I have tried one of the IUDs and sheesh, that has hurt my uterus' feelings so much all she does is give me hell about it. The other IUD choice is one that two women I know, who live in a one block radius, both got pregnant on. Then there are condoms (good for the beginning before you make that man go get the test), and a diaphram (can you just give me an hour to get this thing in?) Don't forget the shots, and patches, and HORMONES, HORMONES, HORMONES. Does this estrogen/progesterone mix make me look fat?

What's a Queenpin to do? My doctor was all for tying my tubes, putting me under and clipping my sweet little fallopian tubes with metal clips, but I freaked out and canceled the appointment. Metal clips inside me? Forever? I had thoughts of infection, blocked chi (remember Queenpin is in acupuncture school), and hysterectomy. But then I had an experience that gave me perspective...

A few weeks ago, I drove a friend to another state, we pulled into a sketchy part of town. In a parking lot behind a tire store and a Japanese restaurant, hidden far from the road we entered a clinic where 5 women of all walks of life sat, wishing they had had better birth control. Wishing that thinking could control the uterus into not being pregnant. It made me deeply feel the burden of women, and not in that dish washing, floor mopping, working, and kid raising way. It made me think about the deep burden that women carry because we have a uterus and because in the end we make the choices about birth control. We are often left holding the bag, which happens to be a muscle that can carry a child for 9 months. A child you then also have to raise, or choose not to, and then you have that burden too. (I know it is a burden and a gift)

A man in one of my acupuncture classes swears that there was a clinical trial for a birth control pill for men. He said the trial didn't last long because the men in the trial complained that while taking the pill they had weight gain, moodiness, and headaches. They just couldn't take the side effects. Really. I don't even know what else to say about that, except, What the hell??????? But then would I do that to me if I had no bag to hold? No baby to carry, no child to raise, no choice to make? Nope, not in a million years would I do that to me and my body.

Yet here the Queenpin sits. Knowing at some point I'm gonna have sex again (abstinence is the only 100% form of birth control), and knowing that to do that I'm gonna have to make some choices that may go against what I think is right for my body. I'll be holding the bag, but the sign on the outside will say loud and clear, "QUEENPIN IS CLOSED FOR BUSINESS, but for pleasure, appointments necessary."