The Scully Effect

There's something very strange going on recently. Everywhere I go, I see articles of discarded baby clothing. Walking to work, a small sock dropped in a frosty puddle by the side of the road. On the floor of the bus, a lost Winnie-the-Pooh bib with bright blue strings. Roaming in the country park with E. at the weekend- one little mitten randomly perched on top of a tree stump.

Part of me thinks it may be a form of Yellow Van Syndrome. Another part of me thinks it must be a sign! A sign that one day too I will be a mother who gets home to find a baby with one sock!

But mostly I think it's just coincidence. That it's just that there are a lot of kids out there, dropping stuff.

I don't know when I stopped fully believing in fate, or the divine plan, or that things are meant to happen for a reason. I suspect it was probably around the time that I became aware, primarily through my experience with infertility blogs, that some truly heartwrenching stuff happens to good people who certainly don't deserve it. That the framework of "meant to be", as this brilliant post by Marla so eloquently discusses, can create a very problematic paradigm for the infertile.

If I start to see the lost socks in the road as some sort of symbol or hidden message, then for me, that end up meaning that other events have secret import as well. That if I can just decipher the underlying meaning of the codes played out before me, I'll somehow unlock the reason why this is happening to us. That I will get an inside glimpse into this larger plan, the pattern that fate is weaving for us. That I will be able to see where we are going, where we will end up.

Well, my present frame of mind says "bugger that." I'll drive myself nuts, and besides, I am not too comfortable with the whole idea that I can or should ascribe any larger meaning to the large doses of crap infertility dishes out to me, and to those I care about, on a seemingly daily basis.

Instead, I aspire to something, which for me is much more soothing. I seek solace in the idea that if there is a reason for what is going on, it is based on some sort measurable, scientific fact. That it's hormones, not the cosmos lining up against me. That it's biology, not the whim of a mischievous or angry God.

I call this line of reasoning the "the Scully Effect".

I am, admittedly, not an X-Files aficionado as such. But a few years back, I enjoyed watching the odd episode while I was eating dinner, or late at night when we came home from the pub. I was always bemused by Agent Scully's take on the world. I mean, weird shit was going on, all the time. And no matter how glaringly obvious it was that there something downright unearthly happening, complete with screaming, goo and alien lifeforms, Scully always has a rational explanation for it.

She would say, "Oh no, Mulder, it's just swamp gas." "Oh, no, Mulder, that person claiming to have telekinetic powers is a known schizophrenic." "Oh, Mulder, trust me, I'm a medical doctor".

Her stance kind of irritated me at times. It's like, look, you have clearly just traveled back in time. There's no denying you have just seen a man spontaneously combust. Wake up and smell the mystical. But I was also strangely reassured by how this woman could take all the strange crap thrown at her, and could process it, totally unapologetically, in a way that made sense to her.

I know that as time worn on, things did change. Apart from an improvement in the clothes department, I mean. Poor Scully, before she picked up a few sleek little navy suits, can you believe she actually went to work dressed like this? No, I can't either. But I digress.

Anyway, maybe around the time she got cancer, but miraculously went into remission (either due insertion of microchip and/or prayer), I could see Scully's rock hard adherence to science starting to waver. Then I missed almost all the later episodes. Unfortunately, I never did see how it all turned out in the end. So all you X-files experts who may be rolling their eyes and saying, "Of COURSE, Scully went from skeptic to believer- that was the WHOLE point. The truth WAS out there"- I'm making a loose analogy here, OK? I'm talking about vintage, early X-Files brand Scully.

Vintage Scully, the woman who appeared relatively unfazed by the fact that at one point, she had all her ova removed by the bad guys, to be stored in a government lab, leaving her barren. A character who was able to coolly and dispassionately keep her head when everything around her was, quite literally, melting down. Who was able to retain some reasonable dialogue with God despite her core beliefs that the world is made up of elements which can, ultimately, be explained.

I sometimes wish I could be more like that. Apart from the bad suits. And having to maintain such bouncy yet perfectly coifed hair while fleeing from swarms of bees, or similar.

I'll start by walking past the discarded flotsam of other people's babies, without a second glance.