These Grapes Are Sour

On openly grieving our losses

Photo by Howard Bouchevereau on Unsplash

A few years ago, I learned the actual meaning of the phrase “sour grapes.” I thought it just meant a person was being a poor sport about something. When I read the fable behind it, I realized it was quite a bit more nuanced than that.

Essentially, a fox is trying to reach some grapes in the tree and he can’t. (I could be wrong, guys. Was it a fox? Do foxes climb trees? Just go with it and please don’t correct me; I’m totally not going to Google this story.) The point is, he can’t reach them and then complains, “Those grapes are sour; I didn’t want them anyway.”

It kind of blew my mind. Because I had just finished writing a piece called “Maiden, Mother, Bitch,” that was about making peace with the fact that I was done having babies and trying to adjust to this undefined stage of life between mother and crone with a semblance of grace. (I was failing.)

Part of the story that I didn’t include in the essay—for length, and also, because it felt pretty raw still—was that I low-key tried to have a third baby for nearly seven years. Maybe the key wasn’t all that “low;” it involved frenetic, yet laid-back cycle tracking (a feat that only a control freak in sheep’s clothing can pull off), pregnancy tests laced with relentless hope, and even fertility doctors who essentially threw up their hands and said, “We don’t know.”

There really was no reason it didn’t happen (except that perhaps there is some divine order to the madness of the universe). And all the while, I continued to proclaim the mantra of uptight women who are trying to conceive but don’t want anyone to know how badly they want a baby: “We’re not trying. . . but we’re not not trying!” Perhaps there really is a laid-back type of woman who actually could “take or leave” getting pregnant, but I don’t know any of them.

So here’s how I coped: It’s for the best; I didn’t really want a third baby.

These grapes are sour, anyway.

I mean, I just “got my body back,” and “I’m really focused on my writing now,” and “If it’s meant to be it will be,” and “It would really be awful to go back to the beginning and do all this again.”

When inside my head, I recalled thinking, “I can’t wait to do that again,” after my second daughter took her first breaths. I remember my plan that if the timing worked out, by the time my third baby left the house, I’d be a grandmother! Let the oxytocin circle be unbroken!

Subtext: Please kindly keep your eyes on the prize of falling in love with a hypothetical inhabitant of your uterus, and pay no attention to the red flags decorating the rest of your family dynamic.

I didn’t really want another baby, anyway.

These grapes are sour: I don’t think working that full-time copywriting position is the right thing for me anyway; I didn’t really want that publication / relationship / literary agent / job anyway.

There is deep vulnerability in letting people know that you didn’t get something you really, really fucking wanted. It is painful to acknowledge to the world, “I am grieving. I am hurt. I am disappointed. I really wanted that, and I didn’t get it.”

To admit such things is tantamount to diving into a pool of shame and rejection and humiliation. Is there anything worse than people feeling sorry for you? Imagining the whispers of, “Poor Stephanie, she really wanted another baby. She tried so hard to publish that piece, and nobody accepted it. I feel so bad for her—look how long she waited, and this is how it turned out.”

The pity is of course tinged with smugness and relief and a touch of schadenfreude. Don’t we all feel a little better, in some dark part of ourselves, when someone else doesn’t get something they want?

I’m going to try to stop lying to protect myself. Those grapes were not sour. They were so fucking sweet, and they weren’t for me. I wanted them, and I didn’t get them.

Perhaps there is strength in allowing for vulnerability, for permitting others to witness us in our fragility and heartbreak. Maybe that is strength. Because it is the brave heart—the one that keeps longing and keeps trying and keeps risking—that breaks, and I would rather live—so fully, in both grief and joy—than tell myself lies and hide.

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And then there is hindsight. Sometimes, the grapes really were sour Or there was a deeper meaning, a silver lining, a hidden gift in not getting them (third baby, anyone?). And sometimes, if you climb higher or wait quietly, or seek another branch, the sweetest grapes of all might just fall into your mouth.

XOXO,
Steph

**I am offering another $30 annual subscription sale this week, instead of the usual $80 price! As I prepare to launch my “book baby” into the world, if you have the means, I would love your support.

**Join us for a July session of Writing our Eras, a prompt-based creative writing workshop incorporating Taylor Swift’s music and lyrics.