Awful But Functioning

Boxing it Up

2011-12-20T13:55:00.004-05:00

She handed me a familiar, sealed, white cardboard box across the counter. The absolute first thing that went through my mind was, "How can a cat's ashes possibly weigh more than a baby's?" And the second thing was, there is no better way to handle this transaction, is there.

We put Kirby down a few weeks ago.

He had been in decline over the past few years: He's 15, with a chronic heart problem, and a thyroid problem. And none of those unto themselves are anything to fret over really, but together they seemed to finally start taking a toll. Along with what I suspect was senility. Can cats go senile? I honestly have no idea. I'll spare you a lengthy cat behavior post because this could easily turn into that, but the one example that had us both wincing was when Mr. ABF walked down to the basement where we kept the cat food (so the dogs wouldn't get it) and found a mouse eating out of a cat bowl a mere foot or so away from Kirby who was also having a snack. There was the shaking, the holing up in Bella's closet for weeks while snuggled in his own damp pee stain, the vomiting accompanied by screaming and a loss of bladder control, and in the final weeks, a pattern that took him from the tree in our room to the second floor landing outside our door which he decided was a suitable litterbox, and then back again.

It was time.

We both miss him terribly; it's funny how I walked into the basement less than a week later, inhaled realizing how my house no longer stank of pee, and promptly burst into tears. We got him when he was a mere 8-10 weeks old, and in our cold Chicago apartment he used to curl up on the back of our old gas stove which was always a bit warm. Most of you would sense the danger in this and bring it to a stop, but he looked so damn cute curled up next to the tea kettle that I began calling him my little loaf.

I tore open the little white box when I walked in the door. The reason for the extra weight was not that he was big, although at 7-8 lbs he still beat Maddy. It was that they placed his ashes in a trim little wood box with his name etched in a plate on the top. His box is also currently residing on the family room bookshelf, a few shelves down from Maddy's, waiting for us to decide what to do with them.

I suppose one day we'll just know.

+++

We put Kirby down the Thursday before the Candlelight Ceremony that we go to every year at Children's, and hence, there was no post from me, no collection of names. And I felt low about it, and guilty as shit, because I always do that, and I like doing that, and I know there are people who look forward to it and new people for whom it would be meaningful and ugh. But off we went, bundled up, thrilled to arrive and see that finally! it was to be held outside in the winter chill with real candles, and not in a cramped and warm conference suite that smelled of sterilization where glow sticks hardly take the edge off the ambiance. I was so excited for the beauty of the evening, and Ale, apparently, was not. I'm sure he was warm enough save for his hands, which were little finger-cicles before long, but he decided the evening was ripe for yelling. (There are a lot of times ripe for yelling in his day.) Not wanting to disturb anyone else's evening, we whisked him to the back of the crowd where he could run around and jabber, but it meant no standing together as a family, and no paying firm attention to other people's dead children. I did manage to keep my candle lit the entire time, and keep my eye on the screen, plus Mr. ABF spelled me for a bit in the middle and took Ale off for a diaper change, but it was . . . . difficult.

At first I was frustrated. Deeply. Eye-roll-y frustrated. But as more names and pictures that filtered past, the frustration melted and I looked at my hot mess of a child, yelling while looking like he was making snow angels but in a grassy lawn, and realized I was lucky. I was so, so fucking lucky. We rode on the elevator in the parking garage after the event with a couple with no children with them. I felt embarrassed, standing there amid my jewels and riches.

This was my fifth service -- five services ago, I thought myself one of the most unlucky shmucks on the planet. This year, I scooped up my cold, yelly overtired treasures and basked. Fucking luck.

But perhaps very good that I didn't have your names with me, because I would've felt as guilty as all get out, wandering around as I was, distracted and not paying very close attention.

Maybe I can find another moment.

+++

There is a post, sitting here in edit, much like my holiday card -- which is sitting in edit on a card site, I suppose now waiting for a sale to hit because they're going to be late anyway -- catching up, explaining a bit of my crazy blogless fall. Hopefully I can throw that up here in the not too distant future, before it all becomes a moot point. If it's not already.

I hope you're all well. Happy holidays, whatever day or days or reasons you celebrate. I hope you can find some peace in there.

Where I save myself an hour and a C-note otherwise spent at my therapist's office

2011-08-31T08:02:00.000-04:00

I will be the better, the bigger person.

I will overcome.

I will forgive.

I will channel the general happiness and goodness that I feel most days into feeling better about these people.

~~These people.~~

~~His family.~~ Our family.

I will forgive.

I will find a way to sit with them, to be with them, to converse with them, without harboring ill will, without remembering all the insane ludicrous shit they've done to us, without remembering how they treated us like utter assholes.

I will forget it all, wipe the slate clean, and forgive.

I will forgive them, all of them, every last ~~motherfucking~~ one of them, for things they don't even know they did. For things they have no idea were wrong. For things they thought were the right things. For things they're probably silently or maybe vocally proud of doing.

For keeping information from us, for not talking to us, for ignoring it. For ignoring her. For ignoring our daughter, you know the one.

I will forgive.

I will find peace with this. I will let this wash over.

~~Until the next time.~~

I will forgive.

But oh, ohmygod, how it hurts. It makes my stomach clench, my blood pressure rise, and my eyes bleed. My fingernails dig ruts into my palms, my jaw aches, my face breaks out. I hate the feeling of hate, and I'm toeing that line. I want what's right, I want justice, I want everyone to recycle and I want peace in the Middle East. I want a middle daughter born without fatal birth defects. I want everything to be as it was, even those superficial cursory relationships that weren't horribly meaningful, but weren't horrible, either. I want to resist. I want to fight.

I am out of fight.

I will do this for him, for my husband, because he's tired of my aching jaw and steely eyes and silent demeanor in the car. I will do this because I love him. I will do this for my kids, who ~~I guess~~ deserve to know their family, for better and worse. ~~Especially the worse, I'm afraid they'll come to learn in the not-distant future.~~

I will forgive.

+++

Somewhere in the vicinity of late college-early graduate school, I made the philosophical decision to forgo hate. This wasn't so much a statement for positive thinking as much as it was for time management. I just didn't have the mental or physical space to hate. I was busy -- I had work, and school, and music, and sports, and a boyfriend, and friends -- and there was no time at the end of the day to busy my head with voodoo dolls and revenge. I saw the hate inevitably bestowed by academia tear up relationships and erode intellectual capacity and thought, dude, why? For the record, I still carry this philosophy today. I simply flat-out do not get those wackos who travel (on planes! and by car! for days!) to protest . . . well, I'm still trying to comprehend the rationale no matter how many articles I read: to protest people who are gay? At military funerals? This hate has clearly begun to diminish their linear thinking IMO, but my god, the time. Who are these people to have this space and time to travel and hate as much as they do when I don't have time to shower or do a crossword or run a load of laundry? If I had that time, those open days, I would paint my toenails and whisk my family to the beach and make elaborate cocktails for my neighbors. I'd harvest and pickle my rotting garden and weed and have a yard sale.

I would love. Even if that love were sand in my bathing suit and ears, and pickled beets and clean sheets, I would love with that time.

And here I am, loathing the idea of giving in, of caving, of forgiving. I have never held a grudge, I have never sought revenge (though I might on my husband who left me alone with two children during the first half of the Women's World Cup final while he went and had a beer with his softball team, goddammit). And the thought of forgiving this group of people makes me seethe.

So I wonder why. Why can't I let it go? Why can't I forgive?

I am, I think, at the core, a patient person. A person who takes criticism well. Someone who doesn't take things personally. I know when my daughter throws a tantrum every night the week she has hockey camp it's because she's exhausted, not because she hates me, "worst mommy in the world." So I am patient, and I quietly shepherd her to bed. I am not proud. I am not vain.

Even about my kids. Face it, my kids are loud. The one interrupts, the other yells. (The other, alas, is dead.) I am not one to defend my children in the face of criticism, because usually, I realize, it's true. I'm the one who walks into the parent/teacher conference and braces myself against the tiny desk for the onslaught of "Not listening!" and "Disruptive!" and "No focus!" and am met with a pleasant smile and an intro of, "This will be easy, she's a wonderful human being." And then I interrupt and hold up my hand and inform them that we're BELLA'S parents. You know, 1:15? Bella? And they nod and smile and I realize this crazy age-appropriate inappropriate behavior is saved for us, for testing us, in the comfort of our own home. I am not ashamed to admit this to the teacher, that my child is not an angel when she gets off the bus.

So why do I care what they think of Maddy?

I have boiled down the behavior: the telling us to hurry up and get over it already; the getting mad at us for not bubbling with joy at new babies; for not traveling to see new babies (and missing school in the process, just saying); for wrecking family plans involving fat grandbabies (not like we had plans or anything, just saying); for not going to the first memorial service with us because "it might rain;" for not returning calls, or not picking up the phone, and ignoring us when they didn't like when we pointed out this behavior; for continuing not to speak to us about Maddy, ever; for not sending me gifts at Christmas; for everyone not telling us a brother was expecting a baby -- until the baby was born because they "thought we knew," or "didn't know how" to tell us, even when everyone was here, in my house, drinking my wine and eating my food the week before said birth; for not communicating to us for years to even know that telling us about this birth wouldn't bother us; for assuming they knew how we felt (angry and bitter for years, apparently) without having the nuts to simply ask us how we were feeling. . . .

and it comes down to this: Maddy was an inconvenience to them. She busted plans and made people roll their eyes and have to watch what they say. Boo hoo. Maddy says, my bad.

But really, who cares? Why do I care?

Is my husband right, that they just didn't know what to say, or were too stupid to know what to do or say, or thought they were being nice by not bringing things up? This is hard business, it's hard to know what to say, it's hard to know what to say to the neighbor who just told us she's separated from her husband, or the cousin whose wife just found out she had breast cancer. Maybe we should cut them a break, maybe I should ease up.

Maybe it's because she's dead. Maybe it's because she can't speak for herself, she can't contradict the claim that she's either an angel or a demanding brat. Maybe it's because after the moment is past, I can't hold her and know tomorrow is another day, another exhausting day at camp where she'll laugh and joke and fall and laugh some more and come home in a mess and cry that she can't wait to go back the next day.

Maybe it's because other people knew exactly what to do, what to say. We didn't speak to a lot of people, and a lot of them gave us time and then circled back around and knew exactly how to re-enter the conversation. Many other friends got pregnant and told us and the sun didn't implode and our friendships are still intact. Many other family members talk about Maddy now without stammering or halting. How can some people get it so wrong when others get it so right?

Maybe it's because it's family, and I have this stupid notion that family should know better. That family should be there for you, that family should shoulder you and prop you up, and pack you in a cute tote and carry you until you can walk by yourself. As if family was ever all that to anyone. As if families were anything but places where children were procreated and where you lived until you went to college. So what that my family wasn't perfect, but treats me pretty damn well now. My husband says we need to forgive because they're family. I can't forgive, because they're family?

Maybe I can't because I need something to channel my anger toward and this is it. Because there is no other channel, because otherwise there is just sadness.

Maybe I am wasting valuable nail-polish and vegetable-jarring time sitting here spewing about this. I should just stop with the introspection and spit out the hairball of hate and forgive.

I will forgive.

I can do this.

Maybe.

I am Six(tween), Going on Seven(tween)

2011-07-29T06:33:00.000-04:00

This pretty much sums it up:

A week or so ago, I took Bella to a great sale for Fall clothing. Included in our purchases were a pair of boots (black, her choice), a very cute fall jacket (sort of softly military style), and a black tunic thing that she liked and I thought was ingenious because it could be worn as a dress, with leggings, with jeans, with a shirt under it, etc. I never intended these items to be put together apparently, because when she came home and did a fashion show for Mr. ABF and put them all on along with the impulse-buy zebra rimmed sunglasses, she suddenly looked like she was heading out for an evening with Selena and The Bieber.

"Are they too old for her? I didn't think they were when I bought them," I whispered to Mr. ABF, biting my lip.
"No, not separately, but together like that . . . "

And then not 48 hours later, she modeled her self-directed outfit for her week at my aunt's farm: Denim overalls with a short-sleeved red and white checkered shirt avec peter pan collar. Suddenly she looked Rockwell-esque, the likely recipient of Opie's first small crush.

She is growing up quickly, now stuck in that no-(wo)man's land between girl and GIRL. Not quite a tween, but too old, too big for the little girl's tastes and toys and music and activities. Not quite old enough for mom to allow painted fingernails and carte blanche downloading of Katy Perry tunes. Too old for picture books, onto chapters, but not quite ready to leave Eloise behind. Because she has always been verbally mature I find I often have to remind myself, "She's only six. She's only six."

Until this week.

:::

Bella has chosen to spend the last week of her seventh year at my aunt's farm, on a sleep-away camp adventure. She has been begging to do this since she was three, and we both thought this year the time was ripe. She is learning to ride with reins (she has been on a horse since she was 2.5; but always led), she is milking cows and will help take them to the county fair. She is mucking stalls, making smores, and sleeping in my aunt's guest room by herself. It is the first time Bella has been away from us like this, for this long, and it is odd. She is clearly over the moon and having the time of her life evidenced by the pictures and phone calls, so it's hard to be sad really, and yet.

(Yes, she did that herself, and yes, the horse's hair DOES in fact look more well-groomed than her own. This surprises you, why?)

She was practically bursting at the seems in the car on the way out, every time I checked the rear-view she was in a giddy grin of anticipation. And suddenly, halfway there, right in the middle of a pop tune that I was trying to bond with her with by singing at the top of my lungs ("'I smell like a minibar. . . ' Goodgravyonabiscuit, WHAT IN GOD'S NAME ARE WE LISTENING TO?"), she burst into tears.

"Honey, what's wrong?"
"I forgot Hobbes and Kaleo."

Her favorite stuffies, the ones she sleeps with every night (one for three years running), the ones I didn't even put on the checklist because I assumed they'd be in her sweaty hands on the way to the car.

Oof. Too late to turn around, now. I thought for a few seconds, and realized at this age, I too slept with something -- my blanket. My beaten and soft pastel hand-made blanket that I put between me and my pillow every night, through camps, until college. It's in my son's room now, folded on a window seat. I realized if it 'twere me, I would spend the entire day stressed out that I wouldn't be able to fall asleep that night. I knew she was going to be on a horse that afternoon, and did not want her remotely distracted. So it took about twenty seconds of silence from me and snuffling from the backseat:

"I'll drive them back out this afternoon. They'll be there by bedtime."
"Thanks, mom."

We join her today, on her birthday, for a family attended barbecue that she drew the menu up for, and a cake decorated with dogs that she designed. She will eat too much sugar, she will not want to come home.

She will be seven.

:::

Coincidentally, at my Aunt's farm, we will also be at the very spot where 11 years ago today Mr. ABF and I got married. Right there, under the tree in the meadow. It was beautiful, and more importantly, the food was outrageous. Little did we know.

I had this strange moment recently driving by the local IvyU on the freeway, where the touchline on the soccer field practically abuts the right shoulder. I drive by here all the time, but I had Bella in the car and we were en route to her first pro soccer game so it compelled me to say, "Bella, I played soccer there once. Right there, on that field." And I looked up and realized only then that the field is in the shadow of Children's. To think I played there, as a young woman, in the shade of a building that would someday come to house the most absurd and tragic moment. With that guy I was dating. It's these moments of hindsight foreshadowing that sometimes make me catch my breath: I mean obviously it wasn't, who knew, it was just fucking luck. Like the luck that conspired to place me and my future husband together at the same place, and the luck that held off the rainstorm right at 5:30 p.m. on the afternoon of our wedding (when it poured a mere two miles north). Just luck, good, bad, indifferent. Sometimes you can't even know when you're in it.

"For better or worse . . . "

We glossed over those words, figuring we had sorta met both obligations when Bella was born on our anniversary four years later. But no, not even close. Not even in the same universe.

I try not to play the game anymore when I wonder what a moment foreshadows. It's altogether too frightening. I'd rather sing bad pop music and look at wedding photos when I was smaller and wildly innocent.

:::

Today Janis is remembering Ferdinand from her new home. She is an entire country away from the place where Ferdinand left her, and came to her, and left her finally. (Although given the East coast heat wave, she may wonder how this is so different from the desert she left behind.) I had no way of knowing about Ferdinand four years ago today, when I struggled to keep my composure during a very thrown-together party for Bella. No way to know as sad as I was, scooping ice cream for hot children in bathing suits who would picturesquely strew themselves around my porch to eat, that someone else was sad, too. The deepest kind of sad. I couldn't have known, but now that I do, it seems obvious. Now I think of Janis and Ferdinand often on this day, while I flip through my own memory books of Bella growing bigger and us hinting at gray, because I know that story, too. Strangely enough, it fits right in with my life, perfectly.

Happy Birthday, Ferdinand.
Happy Birthday, Bella.
Happy Anniversary, Us.

Maybe Not So Much

2011-06-27T16:28:00.005-04:00

I remember sitting in my first support group with a bunch of parents whose children had died at Children's, and played the little game in my head. Maddy was still fresh in my mind, it was maybe only two months out. I listened to each of these parents say a bit about their children and how they died and I began a slow burn.

"Here's a picture of her junior prom. I'll never see her senior prom." At least you got to see a prom at all!

"She was really weak, but she called over everyone in the room and told us something, just a sentence each." My god, your child SPOKE?

"He turned two in the hospital. We had a party in his room." You had a BIRTHDAY PARTY?!

Within 10 minutes I thought I was the lowest of the low, the saddest of the sad. Scrape me up and put me out why don't you, y'all have no idea.

But I went back again, and again, and listened. And my mindset, after a few months, had changed considerably.

No way would I have been able to handle a year or two or more at Children's. No. Way.

I know my child felt no pain, I have no idea on earth how you could stand and watch your child feel that way.

Funny, I know your child died at 19, but I really related to what you just said.

It was in one of these meetings, in fact, where I first uttered the name of this blog. A number of conversations and a lapse of silence later and a quiet mom whose thirteen-year-old had died of cancer turned to me and said, "What was that you said again? "Awful but functioning?" Can I borrow that?"

Absolutely.

I know you've compared yourself to others before, it's human nature. It's ok. It's what you do with it and how the information changes with time that's important. I've got a post up today over on Glow in the Woods.

Right Where I Am: Four Years, Three Four Months

2011-06-05T21:21:00.000-04:00

(But Who's Counting.)

It's hot as Hades. I'm standing by the grill, monitoring the meat, and I look up and see that Ale has crawled into the (rusted, dirty) Radio Flyer. Mr. ABF picks up the handle and slowly starts pulling him around the yard. They quickly get to the spot in the grass, the exact spot under the chestnut kinda by the fence, where exactly four years ago right about now Bella did something cute. I honestly can't remember what it was, she was not yet three. But I do know it was a bright day like today, and I remember the ensuing conversation as if it happened five minutes ago:

Mr. ABF looked at me with a gentle, slightly sly smile and said, "How could you not want another one?" And I immediately burst into tears and practically shouted, "How could I lose another one?"

And through these ghosts, a silent dad slowly pulls a red wagon loaded with a fat baby gripping onto the sides for dear life as if he's plummeting downward through the hairy s-curves of a rickety roller-coaster.

I grin widely. I realize I have tears brimming over the corners of my eyes.

Must be my allergies.

+++

When I saw Angie was doing this project, I thought, "Great Idea!" That was a while ago. I absolutely couldn't think of what to write, how to say it.

Four-plus years out is . . . easy. No wait, it's complicated. It's . . . hard to explain. It's probably why I don't blog so much anymore truth be told -- it's just hard to find a metaphor or a story that encompasses how it is I feel about IT. I'm generally happy and go-lucky and "back to normal" (whateverthehell that is), and honestly I can go for some amount of time without even thinking about IT. (And this is while wearing a bracelet with her name on it. Duh people, I tell you.) I sat completely bewildered in front of the paper this week as I read about a three year old who drowned, and was so overwhelmed with sadness for the parents, and wondered how the younger sibling would grow up with this history, and it honestly took me a day or so to realize why this story was hitting me with the amount of detail that it was.

It's a part of me, it's in there, it's not "healed" or "done" or "closed." But nor is it open, bleeding, cutting, hurtful. It's just there. It happened.

It.

+++

I know subsequent kids aren't supposed to provide the salve that mends the wound but there is a significant way in which Ale's presence has changed my mindset.

Maddy was -- and is -- a medical mystery. No one knows what happened, only that it was on a grand scale and fatal and weird. We gave Children's our permission to send out her samples for testing and review whenever they saw fit, without having to notify us each individual time and only contacting us should they get a hit on something. I didn't see the point of the up/down endless stream of waiting by the phone, so other than the first round of information following her autopsy which included a run through the Genome project and slides sent to numerous specialists around the country and even the world, we have received no news. No news in this case is no news. (I know they still run tests; when I called to tell them I was considering getting pregnant in '09, my point person said, "Oh! We were just talking about Maddy. We're running two more tests at Baylor." Clearly, nothing came of them.)

In retrospect the radio silence consumed me. It's not that I needed a cause or something to blame, but I needed information in order to move forward. To accept that one of our family heritages contained something lethal. To let Bella know in due time. To wonder if we could now get pregnant and test for this killer DNA, or use donor gametes. Or, perhaps, it was infection/abruption -- for sure, less likely to happen again, a moment of terrible luck. While I knew deep down I would probably never know, it seemed cruel that so much of my life was tied up in the knowing.

When we decided to run with the specialists who were on the side of infection/abruption and get pregnant again, Maddy came to the fore: The medical conundrum, the fetus who showed no signs of trouble through 32 weeks. The girl who stayed in an extra week, most likely because my body was the only thing keeping her alive. Maddy's identity is largely medical because that's all she was when she was here, and for that year that I conceived and gestated her brother, she was on my lips constantly. Why I wasn't excited, why I needed that test, why I wasn't setting up a room, why I was seeing a high risk doctor. It felt good to speak of her so frequently, even though what I was talking about was liquefied white matter and fatal cardiovascular malformations. I recently read Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and I got -- I mean, I really got -- how easy it is to anthropomorphize body parts after a person is dead. It's not that the family members are dumb or don't get that tissue doesn't feel pain, it's that that's all they know. It's why I catch myself saying, "Maddy's going back to Baylor," when really Maddy is dead and her ashes are on my bookcase and tissue from her leg is somehow flying in the mail to Texas.

But it's her, and I get to say her name, and this is how it is.

Ale was born, he came home, and suddenly . . . it was as if this entire chunk of Maddy's being ceased to matter. Do I want to know what happened? Well I suppose on some philosophical plane it might be interesting, but it no longer consumes me or glues me to the spot unable to think about tomorrow or ten years from now.

But because this was so much of how I thought about her, now I . . . think about her less. And when I do think about her, it tends to be other stuff -- how she looked, how soft her hair was, how little I was able to hold her.

I don't think that's a bad thing actually, it's a bit freeing really. And it doesn't mean I still don't get walloped occasionally by the grief stick. Some night in the past week I went in to check on Bella who was lying in perfect profile, so peacefully. Mr. ABF and I have recently commented that with the adult teeth coming in and this latest growth spurt that has her looking more tween than child, that her facial features are providing a glimpse of how she'll look in the future rather than that extension of the baby photos. And yet, in the quick moment that I took her in, just so, I was suddenly transported back to the night Maddy died, when I limped into the dark house and went immediately to Bella's room and crawled into bed with her. It remains one of my more visceral memories.

+++

At some point during the week after Maddy died, Mr. ABF told me something (now VP) Joe Biden once said. He was on Meet the Press, and the subject of his first wife's and young daughter's deaths in a car accident came up. Tim Russert (may he RIP) asked if this was a "defining moment" in his life and Biden said defiantly (and I'm paraphrasing), "No. It was the worst time of my life to be sure, but it did not define me."

And we decided, Mr. ABF and I, that we wanted to get there, to be that, to believe that. To be able to tell people and have them say, "Ah, now I understand how you made it through," rather than, "Ah, now I understand you." (When I explained this to my therapist, it was more, "Ah, now I understand how you made it through," rather than, "Ah, now I get why you're holding that martini.") I did not want to become a parody for lost children, a bereft, emotionally unsound, alcoholic, vacant excuse for a mother like that dumb-ass caricature of a (still) grieving mother in The Time Traveler's Wife. I wanted to remember Maddy to be sure, but somehow do it without breaking down, without resorting to morbidity, without disturbing those around me. I didn't want to deny, but I wanted to memorialize.

And yet I didn't want it to define me. I wanted it to be a bad moment, but not shape my existence.

I had no fucking clue how.

I still don't. But I'm a lot closer to that idea than I ever in a million years thought I would be. I tell people now who don't know but know me a bit and they're surprised; they ask great questions, I don't fall apart, it's filed away in the "life is sometimes really fucking shitty" drawer. And we continue our conversation about the book of the month, or our kid's hockey practice, or why on earth spring seemed to last two minutes this year. To them I'm a mother (now I suppose of three), a historian, a reader, a sports fan, an old-house nut, a gardener, a baker, a cook, a gal who likes a good beer, who needs a new vet, a runner, a wife, a politically cynical harpy who loves a good sale.

It happened. And I'm still functioning.

A Pessimist is Never Disappointed

2011-05-24T11:38:00.001-04:00

Well, um, maybe sometimes.

I'm writing about optimism/pessimism, positive/negative thinking, and finding that silver lining in the shit storm. Today, over on Glow in the Woods.

One

2011-05-03T15:03:00.001-04:00

If there's one thing that reading around in this corner of the net taught me, it's that having a subsequent child after your loss doesn't mend your broken heart and make the sunhine come out. Since for the longest time I thought anyone who wanted another baby after a horrific loss was a bit wackadoo, it was kinda nice to see that I wasn't missing out on some big wonder drug. I wasn't jealous of the babies really, but I was a bit envious of everyone's decision making power. That drive everyone seemed to have -- must have another baby! -- was totally lacking in me. Figured it was some evolutionary maternal instinct thing that got dropped along the way with the Easter Bunny (we don't do that. I refuse.) and my penchance for swearing during televised sporting events in front of impressionable ears. I would make a poor wild animal mum having to teach my three week old to hunt and defend ("I'll get it later. Look! Shiny thing! Muthafuckin' shiny thing!").

But, well, eventually I did make that decision, and here I am a whole year later.

It's been . . . odd. Truly joyful, but odd.

Having spent the entirety of my pregnancy with Muffin Man not bonding (why bother?), I've spent the entirety of the last twelve months doing so. It's a long ramp up. It's a good ramp up, don't get me wrong, and I've never felt angst-y or depressed or even anxious, more a sense of sheer amazement that he's here. That it worked. And that this isn't some bizarro nightmare like the last time, where I'll wake up and realize it was a dream. But it's not. I put my feet on the floor in the morning -- usually, way, way too early in the morning -- and am hit with the sudden realization that I have a son. Two daughters, and a son.

So I can't really say things like "well it feels like he's been here forever!" because I think I'm still getting used to the idea. I like it. So far.

Bella is also still getting used to the idea. We didn't do much in the way of preparation because we honestly didn't know what to prepare her for: do we buy her a nice doll to dress up and burp, or a box of kleenex and another childhood tome on death? So she's ramping up too, and it too has been a slow haul. She's been forthright with her displeasure at the lack of immediate attention ("It's always in a minute, or not now, or I'm busy") and I think purposefully doesn't whisper when we ask her to. You can almost smell the slow burn when a stranger stops to chirp how cute the baby is. She's cute, too. No one seems to notice her anymore, poor invisible thing in the corner. Having said that, she knows full well that he doesn't smile at just anyone, and he reserves an outright full-blown squinty-eyed cheshire grin when she enters the kitchen first thing in the morning. (Not surprisingly, "Bella!" came very shortly after "dog" and "mom.") She pushes him around in his car, and picked out -- without assistance -- two really solid birthday gifts for him. The night she was chatting with us in his room before bathtime and he spider crawled his diapered self over to her with "Go Dog, Go!" in an outstretched hand, smiling and frantically jabbering "Da! Da!", about reduced me to a puddle.

I've also never been one to muse on "Well if x hadn't have happened, than y wouldn't have either." I'm not big into math like that. Not to mention, with the gaps between my problems, these chances of fate aren't really. There was a nineteen month spread between my miscarriage and just conceiving Bella, so I never really stopped to think about one working out and the other not happening. As far as I was concerned, one was an unfortunate lost opportunity, and the other a stroke of luck. And here with three plus years between Maddy and her brother -- not to mention the relative ridiculous ease with which he was conceived compared to his sisters -- it's not hard to think about an alternate universe where she's here, and he's here too. Or, conversely, she's not, and neither is he. Because so much time had elapsed after Maddy that we had gotten very used to our family of three, and the breeziness of a four/five year old (so easy to travel with! And find a sitter for!) and so it was a real honest-to-god fresh decision about whether to have another child or not.

In sum, he's not my replacement toaster. Not that any of your children are replacement appliances, but I'm now grateful for my own crummy circumstances. The silver lining in waiting around for some medical bombshell that never appeared was that time flowed under the bridge and allowed me to get to a new place. I was already moving forward again when the idea of him came into being. I may be an old fart, but I was ready. Really ready.

As for Ale-One: He's turned into quite the eater. Apparently dissing the pears wasn't so much dissing the pears (which he now loves on an adult portion of oatmeal with a bit of yogurt), but just saying no to mushy baby food. And bibs, and little cups, and high chairs, and baby utensils. Which for a while left me wondering what on earth to feed him, and then at a holiday party after he sailed through the cocktail-flauta, pumpkin bread, and crudite with dip food groups within a 20 minute span, I decided to just up and feed him our food. And it worked out fine. We started with fish tacos on the floor sans utensils or pretenses, and went from there. He so loves his father's Sicilian chicken with orzo (his birthday dinner) that I'm thinking when we potty train I could probably make that the reward instead of m&ms.

He's quiet and observational and laughs on a dime . . . unless he's pissed. And then he's LOUD. I mean, scary hold him away from your head loud. His first comprehensible babbles were "dog" and "cat" and they've progressed so now there's a hilarious "Kirby!" yelled from his room (think "kuhbeeeeee") when the cat isn't in his assigned chair in the corner. Just recently we've even added what sounds like an occasional "good" in front of "dog." A few more months and he'll have "Asshole!" down, I'm sure.

Today he's getting a big ol' slice of Applesauce cake, because wouldn't you know -- the kid who will eat Soba Noodles with Salmon and Beef Tortellini in Brodo spits out Banana. Hates it. Huh. Funny, I will eat pretty much anything and I don't care for banana much, either.

He's definitely mine. He's definitely here, at least for the moment. Does he bring me joy? You betcha. Sometimes it's tough to discern joy from tangible relief -- the exhale and smile are similar -- but I think it's there. I've been told by a few neighbors, "You've never looked this good!" and I don't want him to be known as "he who turned your mother around." Because 1) Bella? Hello? and 2) like he needs that set of luggage to drag around. He's not the reason for the joy although it must look that way from the outside -- I think after four years I had this coming, anyway. I'm just glad he's the willing producer and recipient. I'm glad this isn't all on him, and he's a victim of good timing. In the end, I guess I knew that all coming in. And it's all ok.

Happy Birthday, little guy. We're all so happy -- phew! -- that you're here.

Trade Winds

2011-04-07T21:28:00.003-04:00

I keep thinking I'm going to sit down and write. In fact, I *did* sit for a few brief moments somewhere in the vicinity of the 18th/19th of last month and started my annual birthday handwringing post, but my birthday (42, if you're keeping score) was a maelstrom of packing for a week's vacation beginning the next day. For the record, I got a potholder, two paperbacks, and a sandwich. No, I mean a sandwich. Clearly a banner year, 42.

Then I thought eh, I'll just type a quick birthday/post vacation summary when I get home. And then Ale-puke got a stomach bug on the second to last day of vacation, which found yours truly violently ill the last night of vacation. And let me tell you, there's nothing worse than a Norowhathaveyou bug making it's way through a family --- than if that family is sharing a v. small room. Wait, it could be worse: Small family-shared room plus the fact that departure was on the hottest day of the week in a tiny tin shed that passes for a Caribbean airport full of oversold planeloads of humanity. I decided not to eat to spare myself getting ill on the plane, which left me feeling close to passing out, holding a limpid baby who had ingested nothing other than pedialyte for the past 36 hours in an unairconditioned terminal. We made a nice looking family. Especially to the security guard who espied us half on the floor and herded us out of line and right to the front. Mr. ABF got a mild version, Bella kindly waited until Tuesday at 4 a.m., safely in our own home.

I'm sure with some distance I'll fondly remember the much-needed warmth, and the bright tropical colors, and the clear blue ocean.

The trip was actually timed extremely well; arriving guests would spot one of the kid's Philly's Jerseys or Mr. ABF's Flyer's cap and notify us -- usually while we were in the middle of re-applying sunscreen and deciding whose turn it was to run and get a bunch of frozen fruity drinks -- that they just left that morning and there were snow flurries. Our depressed bones warmed. There was snorkeling, there was someone else preparing food and cleaning it up, there was an extremely friendly stray cat, there were kid's activities, and there was even a space of nothing to do while the baby napped. Imagine! Reading or (gasp) napping while the baby naps. Children were good on the plane (Bella was nothing short of a dream traveller even during airport hell -- she was duly rewarded), Ale even kept his nap schedule and slept decently at night. Until the plague hit.

I may never leave the house again. I may even check into grocery delivery.

+++

The place where we stayed had photographers who would run around and follow you and your kids and then invite you to go purchase their pictures for some absurd price. But they also scheduled times to take pictures of families. And after being asked if we wanted this, and glimpsing a family decked out to the nines trudging off to the beach one evening with a photographer in tow, the idea took hold and I couldn't shake it. I'm not sure if it was a need to celebrate my family, or more of a need to cling to it -- to grab hold of this moment so in the future I can look back and remind myself that I wasn't crazy, we were all there, we were all (modestly, mostly) happy. In the middle of this photo shoot I realized we hadn't taken "family" photos since Bella was 9 months old. We skipped a few years of photographing altogether, and only recently slowly have gotten back in the habit of trying to keep the camera battery charged. There are only pictures of kids though -- it's as if the parents disappeared, like in a fantasy novel where the six year old must now charter the waters, un-gently tending to her infant brother, through a sea of picnics and zoo trips and Christmas mornings, sometimes with an anonymous adult hand or arm. We are slowly awakening to being parents again, not just older responsible humans along for the ride. We lost our jobs, and were rehired, and we're older now, and the cobwebs are thick and the job has changed a bit.

It's a bit funky, this family. But there we are.

+++

Did I mention I'm 42? My whole life, since my hair changed from blonde to dishwater brown around age four, the hair around my face goes blonde, especially in the summer. I've been charged with having faux highlights (one hairdresser was rather adamant that I give up my secret, not believing there was none to be had), and they're a saving grace on an otherwise tiresome flat and uninspiring head of hair. I noticed on vacation they no longer go blonde, they go bright silver. There are few but brilliant sharp silver ribbons running through the brown framing my face. There will be a decision this year whether to vainly reach for a bottle and have things as they once were, or let it go. People with infants should'nt have gray hairs, I've decided. A mindset that is obviously pointing me in a certain direction to try grimly to hang onto a former life. Good luck with that.

+++

The baby, he's eleven months. Bella's first year was an eternity it seemed, a endlessly stretching horizon of sleeplessness and unrequited love. (I really don't like that about babies. At least puppies lick you and wag their tails. I mean sure, he smiles at me and says mama, but he smiles when he poops, and smiles when Bella makes fart noises, and smiles when he sees his sister has jammed her barbie headfirst into his car garage.) This year has tracked very similarly to Bella's when it comes to sleep -- there was none, and there was a lot, and then it slowly whittled away and devolved until it was hell, and then boom, there was sleep again and now we're fine (except that he naps too where she didn't, which is such a bonus).

So it would seem that I would feel similarly at the end of this year (e.g., awakening from a coma) . . . except I don't. I feel pretty great. I feel, well, um, how to say this, happy. More or less content. Sure I could be getting more sleep (for some reason we were up at 4:00, then 5:00, and finally settled on 6:00 this morning), my midsection could be tightening up a bit more, I could have more hours for yard work, my floors could be mopped. But I'm ok. I feel rather lucky, which is a strange thing to feel anymore.

Anyway.

I hope you are well.

Pat on the Back

2011-03-17T21:17:00.003-04:00

I caught snippets of a discussion the other day on self-pity and self-compassion. 'Twas interesting, and made me think not only of Japan, but all of us. Me. This community. And that maybe this woman had a point about self-compassion and not feeling quite so alone. I have a post up on Glow in the Woods.

Makena: Or, How to Make-na Some Bucks from Women Who Have Already Paid the Highest Price

2011-03-10T20:06:00.004-05:00

So I'm putting today's soggy, largely unread newspaper (Good Lord, this suspended priest issue is upsetting) in the recycling bin this evening when a headline catches my eye:

"Cost of Drug Preventing Preterm Labor to Soar."

Oh, like I needed that kick in the crotch.

Here's the situation as I understand it having surfed around and found a few more articles:

Apparently there's a synthetic-progesterone-based injection that doctors have prescribed for years in order to prevent pre-term labor. It's generally given from about week 16 through the end of the pregnancy, and has shown to be quite effective. Generally, a pharmacy can mix up this concoction and charges somewhere in the neighborhood of $15-20 per dose. In sum, people know how to make it, it works, it's very cheap. Yay babies not being born early!

Then Big Pharm company KV Pharmaceutical comes along and requests FDA approval of this drug they're calling Makena. It's the same fucking thing as before, but now probably in fancy packaging. (I'm guessing a lovely gender neutral purple.) Zero dollars were spent doing R&D because everybody and their mother already knew about it and how to make it, but I'm sure some bucks went into marketing. The FDA approved it, which means KV has a lock on it for the next number of years, they're going to make pharmacies cease and desist making it, and they're going to charge . . . .

$1,500 per dose. Which comes out to about $30,000 per pregnancy.

Yeah.

Obviously the doctors and insurance companies are beyond alarmed. One doctor in the article is outraged, another "breathless." Everyone is worried sick that women who lack insurance, or whose insurance refuses to pay it (pre-existing condition anyone? Because obviously you need to experience a pre-labor catastrophe in order to conclude that you have a problem, and may need this drug), or who get government-assistance (the government is a bit cash strapped of late, in case you've been preoccupied) will not get it. (The company claims it will offer assistance. I'm not sure where that leaves people who are independently insured but whose insurance companies don't cover pregnancy. Like mine.) Insurance companies are dry-heaving because of course they want to cover this, but now they'll have to (big surprise) raise rates across the board in order to cover this. One Aetna rep in one of the articles I perused claimed that she knows of 1,000 people or so who get this drug per year in her system.

The drug company? They defend the outrageous price hike with the following statement:

KV Pharmaceutical chief executive Gregory J. Divis Jr. said the cost was justified to avoid the mental and physical disabilities that can come with very premature births. The cost of care for a preemie is estimated at $51,000 in the first year alone.

"Makena can help offset some of those costs," Divis said. "These moms deserve the opportunity to have the benefits of an FDA-approved Makena."

Let me get this straight. You're going to charge mothers $30,000 to offset a potential $51,000, thus saving the health care system $21,000 per child.

Aren't you so fucking sweet. Because until you came along, the cost of the drug per pregnancy was $400, making the savings $50,700.

And those are the "lucky" ones (not) (not remotely) whose children are born outrageously early who live. Who suffer some really awful consequences and life-long disabilities.

I guess the ones who die, since they don't cost $51,000 the first year, aren't costing the system anything. Which means KV is making $30,000 in pure profit, essentially putting a price on a live child (because we? were all wondering).

To employ new math: It's not about the OFFSET you asshole, it's about taking a child to term. It's about HAVING A CHILD WHO LIVES. These moms don't deserve some fancy-ass package that your marketing team spent precious power point time dreaming up, they deserve a chance at a full-term pregnancy. THEY DESERVE A BABY WHO LIVES. Regardless of their income, or their insurance situation.

And that's not factoring in what I anticipate to be a rise in premature labor in lower income groups and those with government or private insurance because they won't be able to afford the same-old-drug in your fancy ass box. You aren't offsetting, you're going to cost. You're going to cost a lot. According to the March of Dimes,

Preterm birth is the leading cause of death in the first month of life in the United States. The preterm birth rate has increased about 20 percent since 1990, and costs the nation more than $26 billion a year, according to the Institute of Medicine report issued in July 2006.

I'm honestly apoplectic and don't know where to dump this other than here. You can read more about this decision to screw pregnant women over on NPR and numerous blogs, such as Bizmology and Contentenique.

Reaching KV is more difficult; if you feel this is an "investor Relations" issue, you can email them at investorrelations@kvpharmaceutical.com. I'd be more inclined to see this as "an adverse event or side effect" in which case you can email them at drugsafety@kvph.com.

Show some outrage, if you have a few moments. Women who have gone into labor prematurely and lost children -- or are living with the consequences of a child born way, way too early -- have already paid enough, a few lifetimes over. They don't owe big pharm jack squat.

Incongruity

2011-02-28T21:18:00.002-05:00

Ale woke me up on the 14th, and I went through the usual paces of getting him out of his crib and trudging downstairs to the couch for our morning feed. On the staircase landing I glanced out the east-facing window and was awestruck by the most unbelievable sunrise. The sky was audaciously pink and orange, mixed with small shards of the most electric turquoise. It was not the stuff of poetry and postcards, but Vegas. Four years ago, at approximately this very hour, my daughter's heart failed and I was informed shortly thereafter that "we're there now." "There," the point of not saving, not doing heroic measures, but slowly somehow allowing her to die. Bizarre doesn't do justice to how I felt now, staring at this incredible jumble of color while holding a fat, hungry infant.

On the 18th, around 5:30 p.m., there was a small space of time between whatever and dinner, and so I went out in the yard with a baby on my hip to kick a soccer ball around with Bella. Who was in shorts. It was in the 60s.

Our game was interrupted by two over-the-fence conversations: One with the UPS guy about why he decided not to wear shorts, and one with a neighbor who was out walking the dog. From all corners lilted the sounds of children -- laughing, playing, whining and crying, no doubt because it couldn't possibly be time to go in for dinner yet, and no, I don't want to wear a jacket tonight, mommy, thank you.

Maddy is February, and February is Maddy, and both are marked by white (ranging from blinding to dirty) arctic chill. The morning her heart stopped framed by the horizontal sleet; the night we finally left Children's empty handed, exiting through the swishing doors into the dark frigid blast. The days following were clear but wretched, my Southwestern-based family wondering how to deal with single-digit windchill. Hell, hath frozen.

This? Outside my window this February? Was May.

It was as if the Universe was testing me, taunting me, daring me to remember -- daring me to conceive of a time and place so incredibly horrific and inextricably bound to the weather. It couldn't possibly have happened like that, it couldn't have been that cold, did it snow? Am I remembering this right? Did it happen at all? It couldn't possibly have, on a night bright enough to play soccer in the evening, warm enough that my neighbors set up tiki torches in the front yard in anticipation of the monthly party.

Bella and Mr. ABF went to the party, I put the baby to bed, lit Maddy's candle and huddled on the couch. And the winds came. The front came through carrying with it hurricane gales, extinguishing the tiki torches and driving the party inside. The next day, the gales continued, tree branches fell like rain, and the 45 degrees felt decidedly worse given the stinging wind.

She was here, after all.

I'm pretty sure of it.

+++

Midnight the 14th, possibly early early on the 15th we were awakened by . . . well, I believe now we were awakened by a crash and woke to the sound of an alarm, but as it was, we heard a deafening-close car alarm. Mr. ABF jumped out of bed, determined it wasn't our car, notified me that there were some people across the street but everyone seemed to have their cars sorted out, and we went back to sleep.

The next morning, at the same picture window where 24 hours earlier I stopped to gape at a sunrise, I was greeted by the sight of my neighbors' two cars, both smashed into awkward twisted shapes, one assuredly totaled. (Drunk driver. Thankfully, he got stuck on the second one allowing the police to get there and arrest him on the spot instead of driving off and killing someone.) I let loose a stream of profanity, followed quickly by a hosanna of thanks for our off-street parking, and then in wonderment, Wait, isn't this sort of shit supposed to happen to us this month?

February has not left us unscathed -- in the waning hours, Ale and I have succumbed to some horrible cold virus avec fever which dropped me in the fetal position, unable to breathe, shaking from chills, wondering about that promise I made to myself about not being a breast-feeding martyr this time around. (I could just go chug a mugfull of cold-n-flu with a chaser of sudafed, rim-lined with crushed painkiller!) Neither of us has slept in days, but the fevers have broken so now I presume comes the discharge of snot and the hope that it will not fell Bella and Mr. ABF. At least quite as badly.

In like a Lion? The Lion, she's been lurking here all along. Waiting, waiting, blowing my nose impatiently, for March.

Matter of Taste

2011-02-15T10:14:00.002-05:00

When I was deep in mourning, I often felt I was mourning far more than my daughter. I lost so, so much it seemed. Near the top of the list, probably because it was so mind-blowingly obvious to me, was my sense of taste. I lost the ability to taste my food.

I have a post up at Glow in the Woods. Won't you come let us know what else you lost and if you've found it yet?

Birth Day, IV

2011-02-12T13:02:00.001-05:00

There's something so bizarre about four years. It's close enough that it's surprising -- I'm startled by how much I remember about that week. The smells, the food left on trays, the name of the nice nurse at delivery hospital whose name I remembered because she was a character in Little Women. The ice machine, the sound of jackhammers outside my window (what could they have possibly been working on in a snow storm?), the un-smart phone I was using in those days. I remember how to buzz into the back at Children's, the freezer where I banked my milk, the out-of-the-way restroom that the nurse pointed out to me, the cafeteria bowl of oatmeal I ate for breakfast the day she died. I don't know whether to be thankful or not for these memories; mostly not, truth be known, because it's like reliving a nightmare. The memories still have a way of making me feel as though someone just punched me in the solar plexus. I still pine for a lobotomy, a way to forget those six days and the nine months prior and the whole mess frankly. A way to look at my family and my life without the bright orange traffic cone warning everyone of the chasm that lies beneath ready to swallow you whole should you veer too close.

And yet. It is at the same time so out of body, so other-worldly at this point, that I often wonder if it indeed happened to me at all. At times I can take out the whole week like a foggy movie in a crystal ball, and just stare at it in wonderment that such shit actually occurs to anyone. Maybe it was just something I read in the New Yorker.

+++

I've had a few nightmares and dayscares this week -- of horrible, lethal things happening to the two living children under my roof. Wayward knives, shallow diving boards, rip tides, broadsides . . . the words "be careful" are uttered more frequently than profanity -- which says a lot. I understand why; why the anxiety ratchets up this week when my brain is sated with images of tubes and wires and oxygen meters and those cataclismic conversations about removing my baby from life support. I know exactly why these feelings are here, and I know they'll ebb once the week is past. It doesn't make it much easier, though.

+++

When I went into labor last May, in addition to spending (apparently too much) time folding laundry and packing Bella a lunch, I meticulously removed my Maddy bracelet and put on in it's stead the blue plastic one. I worried it would get caught on an IV drip, or snagged on bedding, or someone would tell me to take it off -- and people, that bracelet doesn't come off -- or lost or stolen or wouldn't feel terrific while holding a newborn (should it come to pass) or otherwise get in the way.

Crazy how sometimes life hands you the metaphor, huh.

I had realized around 30w that I was quickly approaching a place where I could no longer wear my wedding ring. Which drove me up a tree. Rather on a whim I decided to order tiny id tags from here for Bella and Maddy and wear them on a chain with my wedding ring. Dead or alive, I'd add another tag in a few weeks I figured. I had a choice as to whether to put hands or feet on one side of the tag, and I opted for hands for Bella, feet for Maddy. When Ale showed up I got him a tag with hands on it as well.

I can wear my ring again, but since I'm still carting around and feeding a baby I've kept on the rubber bracelet and only wear the other one if I'm going out. I wear the necklace with the tags on occasion, and more often, more recently.

The other night Bella was looking at it and reading everyone's statistics and turned them all over.

"Why did you put hands on mine and Ale's?" she asked.

"Because I can touch you," I replied, and burst into tears.

+++

I realize now that remembering and missing are really two different things for me. Remembering comes with a host of ugliness and terror. Remembering comes at a cost; remembering makes me want desperately to forget.

Missing though, is something else. Because underneath the strata of hospital smells and medical personnel and the the cruel twist of fate that today will always signify for me followed by years of profound grief lies, quite literally, the most beautiful little girl. It's hard to say I miss her because it means I must miss all that other bullshit, but I don't. I don't want to go back there. You couldn't pay me enough to go back. I want only today to miss the being at the center of the medical mystery, her wispy hair, her button nose, her clenched fist. I've known four years now that her fist is a sign of seizure, and I still decide to view it as a sign of defiance. Now that I'm plodding through the infant stage(s) and phase(s) again, I miss that -- I miss not feeding her, not holding her nearly enough, not bathing her except right before she died. I miss having another girl. I miss the middle of my family where puddles still form. I miss saying her name. I miss her.

Somewhere in this nightmare was a small girl who was mine, and I was hers, and we were all we had.

I love you so incredibly much Maddy, and always, always will.

Walking in My Shoes

2011-02-06T11:19:00.001-05:00

It sounds extremely sacrilegious to start a grief post with a good, nail-biting super sale story, but, um, er, I'm gonna go there.

Buckle up.

A neighbor and I and Ale-Crawl bundled up last Saturday and ventured out to a "clearance" "tent" "sale" (please add your own word that expresses "Really fucking cheap! Practically Free! Throwing these out unless you take them!") thingy for a catalog company that I don't want to print out here because I get enough spam as it is. Let's just say, super cute, a bit wacky, British, caters to women and kids, and if you're like me, you rarely buy unless you can get a sale. odenBay for my friends who speak fluent BaconLatin.

In any event, the kids selection was massively picked over by the time we got there (sadness), but there were still deals to be had in women's -- if you fit into their clothes. (Those Brits are NARROW! I tried on a shirt that I couldn't fit my shoulders into. Ah well, try the next size up, I'm not proud: just as narrow, but with more fabric from front to back. Huh? Do they simply grow potbellies and boobies as they grow taller? Am I really that wide?) I found a couple steals, neighbor had a pile of cute things to try on, so I told her I'd meet her by shoes.

And there they were.

The color grabbed me first: bright green. Bright green, knee-high boots. In my size. I picked them up and all but wept, surprised that the buttery leather didn't melt away in my warm grubby paws. Tried them on, perfect. Perfect! And I stood there thinking, "Oh my god, bright green boots, HOW FUN! How alarmingly FUN! Whee!" I may have clapped. It may have been the baby. A stranger walked by me with her stash and said, "I paid retail for those. They're my favorite pair of shoes, and I get compliments every time I wear them." I smiled at her and I think managed to get out a coherent sentence, the upshot of which was "FUN!" I was so getting those boots. And then I looked at the table again and . . .

there they were.

The same exact creamy, beautiful, use-as-a-pillow soft pair of boots . . . in purple. Also in my size.

Now I had a decision to make. They were extremely well-priced ($50) but not so well priced that I felt like taking them both. Which color? Fun and safe-r, or FUN? The kids sitting against the wall bored out of their minds weighed in: it was a tie. The stranger woman passed me again and said, "Green." Another woman chimed in "that purple would go with anything." Ale was grabbing at the purple. I set off to find my neighbor and showed them to her. And midway through our debate she noticed something: the purple pair? Was marked $25.

We made sure the zippers worked and they were the size as posted and turned them all over and they were perfect. "If you don't get both for yourself, I'm buying you the purple pair for your birthday," said my neighbor.

I came home with two pairs of boots, both fun, one FUN. (My crazy-ass neighbor managed to jam $25 into the side of my bag when I wasn't looking, so I need to do a reverse pickpocket and deposit the cash back in her possession.) I mentally put together a few outfits (lord knows, no creamy dreamy leather of mine is going out in 15" of melty dirty ice-shellacked snow) and went to bed.

At some point the next day, I wandered into the closet to check out my Fun! boots. And it hit me like a dropped piano:

I just did something because I thought it would be fun. Fun. Because they made me smile. Because the outfits I envisioned, on me, made me smile. I haven't bought or frankly thought fun in . . . years. I haven't wanted to look happy or fun because god knows I wasn't feeling it (see: closet full of black and gray clothing). What on earth possessed me to do this? Am I ready for this?

Perhaps it's like the rule of yuk: You know how after the bad shit happened that Big Bad Things rolled off your back and tiny bullshit problems made you rock and cry and tear your hair out? Maybe there's a Joy Corollary? That it's hard to wrap your arms around one big ball of joy (say, a holiday) and really feel it, but the little things kinda work their way in under the sill and make you giggle? And possibly even clap? And before you realize what it is you're smelling, you're feeling pretty awesome?

Want to clap more? These retailed in the ballpark of $270. Joy Indeed.

***

I suppose my new found sense of Fun! was surprising not only in the aggregate, but because well hey looky here, it's February. It's cold. There's some mix of snowy rainy sleety shit blowing sideways out my window every five days or so. Tomorrow's to-do list includes "order flowers," which I do every year for her and me. Her name gets dropped a bit more frequently, my jaw gets clenched for long periods of time. There's a little tension ache right in the center of my back and my shoulders feel the weight of world. That could be because the Steelers' center is out with a broken ankle for the Super Bowl, but I kinda doubt it.

I'm on the verge of four . . . four! years and as Julia so simply and succinctly put it, four years ago today I was just another pregnant woman. Green shoes on deep discount probably would've made my heart go pitty pat, but I certainly wouldn't have had the introspective couch session with myself afterwards. I would be nonplussed to feel joy and express it through footwear. I suppose if anything marks four it's that crazy sense that I'm ok in that crazy sort of way, tinged with the disbelief that those flashbacks still appear and sting as much and as clearly as they do. There's more oscillating I suppose, because the highs are getting a bit higher -- which all things considered is better than the alternative of stumbling a few inches off the curb and straight into hell which is where I felt I was just a few years back.

It does get better, I realize now. I will have fun (sorry, Fun!) again. I will also still feel pretty down come February. And I suppose the truth is in reconciling those emotions and realizing that's ok. That's just how it is.

We'll call it: Mourning, with Fun Boots.

I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

2011-01-18T07:15:00.002-05:00

Have some pent-up rage? Or maybe just festering incivility? Simmering uncomfortable-ness? Wish you could address that person in a letter?

I often do. I often just put the "Wish I had the stones to send this" missive here on my blog so we can all have a laugh about it. I'm talking about words we wish we could write to others (and apparently, some of you do! Good for you!) today on Glow In The Woods.

2010 Wrap Up

2011-01-13T09:52:00.000-05:00

I didn't mean to leave you hanging. December is notoriously crazy, a swirl of emotions and etail as it were, and this one no different, really.

It starts the second Sunday, with the candlelight ceremony. This year: a chilly pouring rain, and putting the lot of us in yet another new venue, this time the lobby of the brand new research center at Children's. In some respects, this was the best of indoor services we attended -- it was large so we didn't feel crowded and hence overly-warmish and claustraphobic. The bad news was we were divided by partitions (which I think could have been moved? Like for a conference? But were weren't? Why?) so the live part was taking place a few sections over and our sound wasn't the best so our room decided to get up and leave once the names had been read which really isn't the end of the ceremony. Bug. The good news was the one on the far left had no seats set up in it so the people with strollers and kids tended to go in there and plop on the floor. We sat next to a gaggle of tweens who were there to remember someone ("Do you think you'll cry?"), and were extraordinarily well behaved, and I remember at one point hearing them gasp and one say, "He only lived one day." A rough lesson to be learned on top of their reason for being there, I'm sure.

I have a missive in my head about how Ale-drool chewed on the memory book, and Bella didn't want to go but then behaved like it was second nature, which is both refreshing and depressing as shit. Every year there is something about the ceremony that grabs me, and this year it was the pictures of kids who looked . . . perfect. Healthy. Like my live ones. And I wondered in dumfounded curious silence what on earth struck them down -- the eight year old in the soccer uniform, the two teen brothers standing by a car (with different birth and death dates), the cherubic smiling one year old. The kids with no hair and tubes and wires and physical deformaties all get me too, believe me, mine is among them. But I suppose I could see those and figure the parents knew by the time the picture was taken that something was up, no matter how surprising the time right before the picture had been. But these other kids? I wanted to know what happened -- was it meningitis? house fire? Unknown heart defects? Were the two brothers felled by something genetic or something external? Gun fire? Car crash? Cancer?

I'm tired of surprises, in this month of nothing but whispers and lists and sly glances. I looked around the room and realized nothing was surprising to anyone, perhaps save the tweens next to us, and even them -- I imagined- had received a bad one last calendar year.

Your names came with, and thought of them all along with the beautiful children and babies on the screen ahead of me. None of us alone. All of them remembered.

:::

I feel like I have a ton of stuff to write about and no time to do it. Take this picture for example. I came downstairs one morning in December to find this mack-out on my end table:

Once I picked myself off the floor and took a picture, I waited until Bella was in the room and asked her, "Soooo, does Barbie have a new boyfriend?" and she turned a delicious shade of purple and stammered, "Mommy, I was just acting out the Nutcracker!"

"Hmm, I don't remember that part," I said eyeing the two still liplocked in the midst of my Nutcracker Tableau. But really, I should: The Nutcracker is, let's face it, the coming of age story of a girl who gets a crush at a Christmas party, ingests way too much sugar, and has some fantastic sugar-high hallucinations that night in dreamland. If anything, someone needs to sex up that ballet and take it where it really needs to go. Though maybe not in my living room.

:::

The second Sunday is followed in extraordinarily quick succession by the third Friday, where we host the annual neighborhood holiday party. This is our fifth one, and irregardless of my physical condition (pregnant, depressed, pregnant) the week prior is the same: I am a stress monkey leading up to the party, manage to enjoy myself immeasurably, wake up Saturday and announce: "That was great! Let's do it again!" It's a week of ignoring Christmas while I clean and clean and decorate and clean some more and run errands (and this year spending precious me time churning out some writing for something else I signed up for that came due that week, gah). On Friday, in the midst of errand running, setting out wine and cocktail glasses for 100, and a baby who wouldn't nap, I turned to my husband, looked at my watch and said, "Bella's school Christmas program sing-a-long thingy starts in 10 minutes. I'm going." And hustled off with the baby to go sing carols next to my daughter. It was the best thing I could have done.

The party was great, the baby wouldn't go to sleep and stayed up until 1:00 a.m., there was left-over cake for breakfast.

And then I started in on Christmas, with a week to go, madly pouring through lists and finding shipping deals in my inbox.

All of this while Bella and the baby went through what had to be congestion/cough round five (V) since November 1. I am so tired of snot. Tired. You'd think we'd be immune to whatever it is that keeps creeping up in here. Caveat: One top tooth poked through a day or two after Christmas, ergo for one child some of the snot may not be cold-related. But it hardly matters when the kid can't sleep.

I took Bella to the Nutcracker (the G-rated version), and then we ran pel-mel into Christmas week which ended with me up late, wrapping furiously to the sound of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir while Mr. ABF held a snotty draining baby upright who couldn't lie down. I left my husband with a pile of presents and instructions to "go stage that!" and grabbed the baby -- without a shower or toothbrush -- and went and lay down with him propped up in the crook of my arm, desperate for sugarplum fairies and hopes that St. Nick would soon be here.

And now the crazy is over, and I'm boxing everything up again for next year and it's hitting me that the next major thing on the calendar is: Maddy. Maddy's birthday, Maddy's week. It's out there, looming, crowding my wintery fireside snuggling and blizzard waffle breakfasts with grisly flashbacks.

:::

I'm never one for ruminating on the past year (with the exception of 2007, which I think I unceremoniously took the curb, kicked a few times while screaming profanity, then gave the finger before walking away) or hoping the next year will be better, because . . . . you just never know. I've come a long way, but I'm still hesitant to expect anything or god forbid, plan anything (resolutions, shmesolutions). Why set myself up like that? I realize while sitting on the verge of a new calendar that years have stopped being "Bella's 7th" or "My 40-somethingthholdycrap" and never were "Baby's First": they're always counted up from '07, hence four -- four years since. Four years since something completely horrible happened, four years of healing, four years of remembering, four years without. Out of nowhere during Christmas week Bella announced, "If Maddy were alive, she'd be three right now." It's hard to entertain that notion, the idea of having an almost four year old running around the house -- especially since I never really climbed on board that whole "if she had lived" train. It's almost as hard as imagining she was ever here at all.

:::

Like I said, so much to write about, so little time. Did you know that Bella had stitches in her elbow at some point this fall? No? See? Three stitches. It's long gone, the moment's over, she's playing ice hockey now. All the baby milestones are funny and word-worthy: crawling, eating (or not, or only eating what's on mom's plate as the case may be because high chairs, bibs, and baby food is apparently for babies), the devolution of sleep habits, baby-proofing a 100-year old house (people, the baby has a fireplace in his room. We decided the safest way to "proof" was to set up a series of jails; a holding cell in the kitchen, Gitmo in the family room), his slowly evolving mental abilities which I find hilarious. They are also, all rife with metaphor I'm realizing -- all making me wonder if what I'm feeling and how I'm reacting is "normal" and normal in what capacity. Normal for the second child in the house? Normal for the second child in the house who's really my third? What is normal anyway and who needs it?

But they'll all have to wait until I have two seconds to rub together. Because right now I need my two seconds to pour another cuppa and run through the shower. I hope you all are well. And warm.

Blue, Jeans

2010-12-11T12:21:00.002-05:00

Thursday, I stepped out of the shower and into a pair of jeans I hadn't worn in five years.

I'm not sure if I expected a parade and confetti, but needless to say, that didn't happen.

I have a post up at Glow In the Woods.

(Sorry it's a few days late; this time of year is all shades of crazy.)

Good Bye to a Grieving Mom

2010-12-07T20:44:00.002-05:00

Before I start that story: This Sunday, 12/12, is the International Worldwide Candlelighting sponsored by Compassionate Friends. Per usual, Familia Awful will sojourn to Philly Children's where they will read the names of children who have died there over the years.

When I first considered going to this event in 2007, I was petrified that I would turn into a blubbering puddle making a spectacle of myself and causing great alarm to my family and Bella who was then three. I decided it would make me feel a bit more edified if I took along the names of all the children I knew from my friends in the computer -- written down on scraps of paper in my pocket. They would balance my load, remind me I wasn't alone.

And they did.

Every year I ask if there is a name I can carry with me, and so here I am asking once again: If you would like me to carry your child's name with my own and my now rather modest stack of names in my pocket to my event, please leave it here in the comments. If you don't want to print your child's name here, feel free to email me at tashabf at gmail and I'll take it from there. If you've responded in the past, I still have your child's name. But please go ahead and double check and make sure. Please note that these names are not read out loud nor are they really a part of the ceremony I attend. I write your child's name on a scrap of paper, and the scraps go into a bag which gets put in my pocket. When I'm there listening to all of the other names and watching the flickering candlelight, I know your names are close to my hand and heart, keeping me company. When I come home, they go into a bowl next to a candle for a few nights until they get overrun by Christmas -- and then I make sure to safely put them away until next year lest a neighbor accidentally place a dip and some pita chips by the bowl thinking the tableau was set up for something else entirely.

:::

After Maddy died, a friend of ours sent us Elizabeth Edwards "Saving Graces." It sat on my coffee table for months, Edwards' flawless skin and slight smile staring up at me from the cover. When I finally had the strength to pick it up, I did not start at the beginning -- I skipped right to the chapter "Raleigh," which begins,

I've now come to a chapter that I knew I would have to write.

I knew I had the right one. I read about how the policeman came to their driveway and told them their son was dead. I was awestruck at their ability to celebrate his next birthday. I breathed a most enormous sigh of relief when I read that Elizabeth Edwards, somewhat famous person, had also collapsed into a teary heap at the grocery store. Following this chapter was a chapter -- an entire chapter -- on how the internet helped her through her grief. I had only started blogging, but I thought maybe, just maybe, this lady is onto something. She seems pretty together now. I could only hope that the invisible legions within the computer could help me as well.

Barely three months after starting a blog, I wrote a post about presidents who had lost children. I began by pointing out that a few of the people currently running for president -- including John Edwards -- had lost children. I had heard through the grapevine that Elizabeth Edwards was internet savvy, but clearly that was an understatement: Apparently she must have had a search set up to sift through anything that popped out the name of her family and her son that notified her immediately because shortly after hitting post, I got a comment.

From Elizabeth Edwards.

She wrote a beautiful metaphor about how life is like a blackboard, and when your child dies, the blackboard is erased and it seems as if nothing will ever be important enough ever again to expend chalk and space upon a square. I got that. She claimed over a decade later her board was filling again, and that she still grieved, but it wasn't all the time, and not as painful as in the beginning. It was hard to fathom the metaphor; in part because I was still so, so far away from realizing it, and in large part because I was so moved that she used Maddy's name. She typed out her name.

I was still so blinded and rubbed raw and my blank chalkboard was in pieces at my feet, so it was all I could do to try and respond without resorting to profanity (although from what I hear, she would've been ok with that). She seemed so . . . hopeful. So . . . . ok. Would I ever be? That woman on the book jacket seemed a million light years from where I stood.

It is three years to the week of that post, and I already see what she means. All I need to do is glance at my real calendar to see that even trivial things like bookclub are once again making me feel, well, alright about life. (It's this Friday, and we're selecting next year's books, and I'm just atwitter.) And even where it's not filled, metaphorically speaking, I'm holding that chalk just above the surface wanting to write something. I'm ready. I'm ready to put something down, dammit. I think.

A week or so after that post I went to my first candlelight ceremony at Children's, and perhaps it was presumptuous of me, but on one of my scraps I wrote "Wade." Elizabeth Edwards would never know, but I figured she took time to write my daughter's name, the least I could do was the act of writing out her son's. It came with me that year, and will again on Sunday. Just because his parents are kinda famous, I thought, doesn't mean he's any less missed. And I'm sure his parents fought to keep his memory alive as much as any of us.

I'll always remember Wade. And you too, Elizabeth. And you too.

Please let's all raise our chalk to a woman who suffered way more in her life than any woman should, and did so with staggering grace and dignity. She was a champion to many women for many reasons, but for me she'll always be the woman who took time out of a campaign schedule to write my daughter's name.

Progress

2010-11-15T16:29:00.000-05:00

He is dragging us forward, kicking and screaming. Literally.

Nothing screams "your dead baby is frozen at six days" like a live baby. Used to be when walking him around, trying to get him to sleep, I could sidle up to a picture of Maddy sitting on a shelf and do a quick back/forth to see if they resembled one another. I became convinced that Maddy's hair was indeed of a reddish tint like her siblings, and finally steeled myself and and brought up all her pictures. And there, in a particularly grim one, with her head just tilted so, with the god-awful light shining just right, so that the wisps of hair on the side of head were visible over a white cot blanket: red. I imagined were we able to take her outside and hold her in the bright winter sun after a snow, that her hair would've been evidently red especially in relation to what would've been her father's days-old tired, unshaven red beard.

But.

Ale-Muffin is progressing forward, so fast at times I need to back up and study him to remember last week.

He has two tiny (motherfuckin' sharp) pearly white teeth on the bottom.

The teeth have changed his facial structure somewhat.

He loves zucchini.

He hated Smitten Kitchen's vanilla pears -- which initially broke my heart. (It was the only food so far where he has scrunched his face and stuck out his tongue, and practically shouted, "Are you trying to fucking poison me?") My son will not be a foodie! Until I tasted them. And then sat completely unashamed and finished the bowl with the baby spoon and then licked it clean while my baby and dogs watched in silent alarm. The only thing that could be better, I decided, was to have them warm over ice cream, and now at least I don't have to share the remaining frozen squares. Heart mended.

His favorite book is "Dog." This is really the only one he will sit and ponder and poke at the pictures and make excited noises and not deign to grab out of my hands and eat in the middle of the climax. (Micky does not get baked! Please let me finish!)

He is not even like Bella anymore --

Everyone studies him to figure out who he looks like, and the jury is still out: sometimes me with the double dimples and round face; sometimes dad with the brow line and chin; sometimes just a bundle of cute like my brother was. He is his own person now.

He sleeps better than Bella did, but cries more and more loudly -- ironically, when it's naptime.

He is a giggler, a smiler, and a belly-gut laugher. His sister can get him going so hard I worry about aneurysm.

He is not a drama queen. We're all suffering from that dry nose/throat/crusty eye crap in the morning since turning on our heat coupled with our concomitant slow-ass ability to get the humidifiers up and running. Two weeks ago, Bella woke in the night with her eye crusted over and after dealing with a warm cloth, she moaned and groaned for a solid two hours. "Mmmmmooommmmm, Mmmmoooommmm, my eyyyyyyye." Oh go to bed already, it needs to be closed. We'll deal with it in the morning. (She was fine by the next morning, incidentally.) So a few nights ago, after stupidly getting Ale's congestion moving with a bath in a steamy bathroom (note to self: try and do this earlier in the day), he awoke in the middle of the night with snot drippings and a crusty eye. I used the snot bulb (which he likes, for some reason) and started to deal with the eye. Which I hate, because involuntarily closed eyes take me right back to the NICU and Maddy's tightly shut lids, which never opened. So there I was, bent over the baby, strings of mucus streaking across his cheeks that I had hadn't wiped up yet, holding a warm washcloth over his eye, trying desperately not to have a flashback, and he . . .

began to giggle. Until we were both a booger-covered giggly wreck in the lamplight.

Thank you, I murmured holding him close. One dramaturge in the family is plenty.

He is almost as heavy as Bella was at this point, his big head already making it tricky to pull on 9m necklines; but not as long as Bella.

And I realize through this emerging person, this person unlike no other, that he is drifting farther away from Maddy.

I walk him by her picture now and I can't see him in her anymore, or her in him.

I actually have half a mind to send out holiday cards this year, for the first time in four years. And I wonder how or if to include Maddy in this, and she appears as some sort of Macabre Flat-Stanley, existing in two dimensions, quietly radiating that one-week baby look while Bella and her brother are seemingly captured in three dimensions, the voice and drool palpable.

He is not six days, he is not frozen. (Although his room can get a bit chilly at times.) He is no longer that generic baby, the one that looks like Yoda. He is doing that lunging thing when he sits, putting down his hands and then propelling his feet and upper body and throwing himself forward. He will realize soon, too soon I think, that by gently moving forward onto his knees he can indeed move ahead less violently.

He is pulling us all forward with him, in fits and starts, for better or worse.

I need to be pulled there, even head first into a basket of toys. But as healthy as it is -- and oh jeez, what a relief not to be stuck anymore -- it makes me sad to know she will always be stuck, there. I'm moving on, Love, and you're frozen. Beautiful, but frozen. And getting more solidified by the day.

It's a sad thing, this.

And yet, it's altogether wonderful.

Sizing Up

2010-09-30T14:02:00.001-04:00

I knew there would be tough conversations. But I figured with death already in the rear-view mirror, how hard could boys, sex, alcohol, drugs and rock and roll be? At least those are sorta fun things, yes? And if I threaten death in any one of those conversations, she knows I mean it and that it's not some abstract notion -- like in the classic Victorian novel where the protagonist meets a boy and then symbolically cuts her hair and listens to Elvis and winds up face down in the pond at the end.

I forgot all about the body image conversations, largely (no pun intended) because I didn't think they'd come up until she was 22 16 12. But no, here they are already.

Bella grew two sizes since last fall. She is by no means overweight, or remotely what I'd classify as "chunky" or "hefty" or any of the nice synonyms that kids clothing makers use these days like "plus" or "husky." Good lord, to a six-year old, a husky is a DOG, people. And this isn't mom talking out of her ass; I asked her doctor to please spare me the percentages and go straight to the BMI and tell me if I need to be worried: No. She's fine. Pefect even. So far.

But like any human being, she is not constructed exactly like every other human being. And so it came to be that she opened a box for her birthday and was presented with a pair of jeans. I cringed.

Before she tried them, I had a discussion with her: Sweetie, they make different kinds of jeans for different sized people. "But I wear a 7, and these are size 7!"

(Gulp.) "Right, but there are different size 7's. For example, some girls don't really have butts."

"Do I have a butt?" she asks turning around to check her backside.

"Yes, you do, and it's lovely, and believe me, girls who don't eventually want them. It's a good thing."

She smiles.

"But some girls, even though they're the same height, have different sized legs. Or different size thighs. So they make different kinds of size 7's, and if these don't fit you, we'll go and find a pair that does, ok?"

Bella proceeds to do the classic 1980s move where she lies down, shimmies herself into the jeans, stands up to button them, and stands there immobile unable to bend or move.

"Perfect!"

"Sweetie, you can't even sit down in those."

"Yes I can!" She says, leaning against the window seat like a paper doll.

"No, you can't, and they're uncomfortable, and jeans shouldn't be uncomfortable. We'll go and find another size 7 that fits."

"Ok."

And she seems incredibly cool with this and not remotely upset and I think I've done my job pretty well, thank you. And then I get a look at the tag:

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?? Just how many things do you find wrong with this descriptor? (Leaving aside for the moment that our classic American company jeans seem to be made in the country hiding terrorists.) I was fuming. It's one thing to bitch about the obesity crisis and how kids are getting bigger thanks to high fructose corn syrup; it's another to tell my six-year-old, medically sanctioned proportional daughter that "Super Skinny" is "Regular." Skinny is not even "Super" in my opinion. It is not. (And last I checked, "Super Skinny" got one checked into a clinic.)

:::

As much as I'm trying to have these level-headed conversations with Bella so she doesn't turn into an eight-year old with an eating disorder, I'm struggling with the same debates in my own head. I know kids pick up on parental signals, and so I try -- I really do, much harder than I try and monitor my salty language (just yesterday, my husband yelled up the stairs during the baby's naptime, which led me to give him a loud and bewildered, "What the Fuck?") -- and keep my own self-image in check. Actually, this hasn't been too too much of a problem given that for some reason (well, breastfeeding plus cutting dairy and the fortunate ability to run, who am I kidding) I've managed to lose a chunk of weight. I'm ahead of where I'd thought I'd be when I had that chit-chat with myself about realistically losing weight following this pregnancy.

So I've been fairly cool on the "Jeez I'm huge, nothing fits" talk (done with huffs and eye rolls and yes, occasionally tears) and have been wearing stuff that causes Bella to ask, "Is that new?" and me to reply that no, it's pretty damn old but I just fit in it again, thanks.

And I really thought in my wildest dreams if I ever got my weight back down to something within the realm of sanity (I'm not an underwear model; I still have weight to lose, it's just much much less than what I had anticipated) that I'd be over the moon and my troubles would be over.

Turns out they're not.

I took Muffin Man in the powder room the other day to check out his studly self in the mirror, and checked out myself while I was at it.

People, I am old. I don't have crow's feet. I have aviary feet. The tell-tale footprints of crows, cardinals, jays, finches, pigeons, robins, and a woodpecker, like they all stood in a circle and lunched on my eyeballs. The streaks in my hair that usually turn blonde in the summer are considerably less blonde than I remember.

I was always one of those gals that got carded far beyond legal, and looked late 20s for quite some time. Until Maddy. I think I've aged a decade in the last three years. My neck skin is doing this weird thing making me hope turtlenecks and scarves are in for fall, and I'm pretty sure a 41-year-old body should not have this particular set of hormones running through it. I'm hot all the time despite my central air, my bones creak when I bend down to pick up a certain somebody despite the fact that I'm running.

What is particularly ironic is that the wrinkles and turkey clucker are especially apparent when I smile. Which I guess I'm doing more of these days than staring somberly into the mirror and wondering how on earth I got this many decades into my life. I guess to look better I'll just cut it with the happy. And wear a fetching wrap around my neck.

I'm not a particularly vain person, and I'm not going to be running out to shoot botulism in my eye creases. But looking at this person holding a baby is reminding me of just how long this process took, and how long I waited, and what I went through (those lines there? the NICU. And those? Family treating us like shit. And those? the months I couldn't stop crying). And, well, how thankful I am.

Because I am.

I'm just not sure about getting photographed with the baby.

:::

Speaking of photographing and baby:

What is it with subsequent kids that we can't seem to drag out the good camera? Where is the good camera, anyway? Is it charged? Eh, moment over. While Bella has umpteen-zillion magazine-worthy photos of her by four months of age, this guy has shit like this, taken on my phone, with his carseat as background. Nice, huh. Put that in a frame on the family wall. And really I took it because he's cute and he was just so happy to be shopping at TJ's! (Don't know why; here they discontinued my bar, after discontinuing Bella's about six months ago. Apparently we are not to snack, or in my case, eat lunch.)

I digress: Here's Muffin wearing green in honor of Ale-Jet:

And that my friends, is the clue to his name. And a load of probable nicknames to use here, like Ale-Cute and Ale-Poop. (And if you're pronouncing Ale like the drink, you're wrong. But I like the way you think.) PLEASE don't go blabbing the full name in the comments and save my anonymity from my family. We use either side of the name as a nickname, in case you were wondering.

Footnote

2010-09-03T10:54:00.002-04:00

Who knew a footnote could cause such a ruckus? Apparently in the drafted edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V (also known as DSM V, replacing DSM IV, natch) the Powers That Be decided to remove a footnote that made grief an exclusion to depression. Ergo, in V, for all intents and purposes, they propose absorbing grief into the definition of depression. Which has some positive features, and some negative ones. I link to some articles and opinions and invite your reactions today, at Glow in the Woods.

Yikes, I didn't mean to cease posting here which given my last entry, I apparently did. It's been a rough summer. Hopefully next week my life will cease to be quite the fire-drill it is now. One can hope.

On Ashes, Boxes, and Stones

2010-08-04T07:15:00.004-04:00

I love writing for GITW, but truly one of the most incongruous things I've had to write was the recent article on "funeral planning for a baby" while looking at and listening to the little fat fusspot in the seat beside me.

I'm not sure whether I was tempting fate or that dirty diaper was a big ol' F-you sign to the reaper and his minions.

In any case, we thought it would be helpful for those who find us from the hospital (and many do, sadly) to have a permanent article up on Funeral Planning. I know this is one of those painful memory kinda things for many of you, but if you get time and have the inclination, could you please go add your experience over there, too? Someone will surely come along and read it, and read your words, and think, "Well there, her. That's me exactly." And someone will feel less alone in this whole ugly process.

We have a new permanent article up today at Glow In The Woods.

Now We Are Six

2010-07-29T16:27:00.001-04:00

Wherever I am there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:
"Well that's very odd 'cos I was too.
"Let's go together," says Pooh, says he.
"Let's go together," says Pooh.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, we were at some social gathering recently and the subject of potty training came up. "Bella was easy," shrugged Mr. ABF. Which elicited one of those "Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" stares from me.

"HA!" I snorted. And I took a swig of whatever was in my hand and got my lips all ready to humorously and graphically detail what an extracted affair it was getting Bella to use the toilet when I suddenly realized . . .

I forget. I forget it all. I have absolutely no idea. I have this vague sense that it was horrible and miserable, and I really do remember hitting the wall at some point and deciding: you know what? Just buy new undies and throw those out. I recall an accident at the zoo where I dutifully pulled out the lysol wipes and sanitized the seat she had been on and then hustled her to the car where from she rode home naked. I have a vague recollection of awarding stickers, but not prizes. I think the stickers were the prizes. I know by the time she ran into preschool (at age 3 years and one month) ahead of me without nary a backward glance she was in underwear.

I don't know what I did, I don't know how I started, I don't know why I started when I did. Was it quick? Slow? Usual?

Is forgetting a hellish childhood period (filled with excrement nonetheless) a typical parental quirk?

Bella potty trained while I was in my fog of grief. I remember so much pain, and yet I remember very little about her. There's about a year there where I'm also without the help of photographic evidence (thank god for the blog or Christmas would be a blur as well).

I missed a year of short six year life. Almost a whole year, because I was distracted by another child. A child who isn't even earthbound and lives only in photos and in my imagination and heart. I'm not big on regrets, but I am sorry -- truly sorry -- that I missed a year of Bella's life. It's probably why I'm overcompensating this year, with another child at my breast, by hosting a tie-dye party. What in god's name was I thinking, not outsourcing a party when I'm barely alert and feel a bit like a bobblehead most days? I thought enough in advance to hire her baby sitter to join us and help us out. And ordered a barbie cake where the cake is her skirt -- tie dye, of course. I'm more excited about it than she is. I'm not missing anything this time around, and am going to photograph and remember every technicolor detail.

:::

Bella, self portrait.

The baby is bringing Bella into relief. Bella is LOUD. Bella is not subtle. At all. Bella isn't horribly gentle with fragile things (this trait is backed up by watching her with neighbor's kittens). She is ready to roughhouse, now.

Bella is big. She has a toothless, slightly crooked grin now that makes her look like a Norman Rockwell. I noticed on Memorial Day that her tummy was pooching out in her swim suit and thought, "here it comes, a growth spurt." Three weeks later she seemed three inches taller. The pooch was gone, and her legs shot out spindly like from her now too-short shorts. Her hair is long (and unwashed and uncombed. Thus starts a post for September which hopefully ends with me taking her screaming and kicking to the salon for a crop).

And I look at the baby and it all floods back -- her crooked smile, her brilliant blue eyes, her intense silence. Geez, remember that? (And for the record, I'll take a screamer who sleeps over a silent non-sleeper any day of the week.)

A few moments with the baby can set off my internal photo album. I can remember things Bella wore when she was an infant -- in fact, when she asked me a bit about our neighbors in our old 'hood, I could not remember her babysitter's name but I could remember in staggering grotesque detail the pink outfit that the babysitter's mother gave her when she was born. It helps that her little brother is wearing a fair amount of hand-me downs (though not the pepto-bismol outfit), but there are other glimpses of past seeping through. The Christmas we all got violently ill and it was warm as heck out. The adorable velvet handme-down dress. The first week in December '04 when she didn't even cat nap for five straight days. Actually going to one of those pre-Christmas sales at 5 a.m. because we were up.

And then the album stops. And it picks up again and here we are, dissing the Hanna Anderssen catalog as "boring," and capturing her mother's heart by reading mystery chapter books. Her interest in sewing puts me to shame, and she can mix a batch of cookies while I hold a baby and give instructions. She can roll her eyes and huff like the best thirteen-year old (causing me to sternly use all three of her names), and linger in a pre-off-to-camp hug. She wants a(nother) dog, she wants a stuffed animal marketed to a two-year old. She wants a DS, an iPhone and a laptop. (Spoiler: She is not getting any of those.) She can bat a ball better than I ever could at any age, and just got her deep water badge at the pool. She whines way, way too much.

I'm half-wondering what happens when the baby turns two; do I get to experience that year in all it's glory, sans mind-altering prescription drugs? (Will I decide I liked it better the other way?) Will I remember anything about Bella that was previously lost?

:::

'What's twice eleven?' I said to Pooh,
('Twice what?' said Pooh to Me)
' I think it ought to be twenty-two.'
'Just what I think my self,' said Pooh.
'It wasn't an easy sum to do,
But that's what it is,' said Pooh, said he.
'That's what it is,' said Pooh.

Mr. ABF and I lengthened our extremely brief wedding ceremony (which we purposefully wrote so as not to say anything more than "I do") in order to add a couple of readings, one of which was "Us Two" by A. A. Milne. There was something so primal, so fundamental about that feeling of finding another that goes with you everywhere, including dragged down the stairs feet first. The other whose mere existence helps you solve problems, and reaffirms your very being.

Ten years ago today we listened to this poem, and the silly short words we wrote, and then we went forth as a couple to hunt dragons. Little did we know the dragons were real, and breathed fire and almost burned down the toybox. But we continued on, always reaching out for that soft, stubby, love-worn hand in hopes it would still be there.

So far, so good.

'Let's look for dragons,' I said to Pooh.
'Yes, let's,' said Pooh to Me.
We crossed the river and found a few--
'Yes, these are dragons all right,' said Pooh.
'As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.
That's what they are,' said Pooh, said he.
'That's what they are,' said Pooh.

:::

It's amazing how much can be encapsulated in a day. Here we thought on our wedding day, listening about a stuffed bear, that today would always be ours. (Ours and Princess Di & Prince Charles'. And Brad and Jennifer's. Auspicious, huh.) And four years later in a delivery room, we realized today would forever cease to be about us, just as our lives would cease to be about "us two" from this moment forward.

Ferdinand's day is today too, and he reminds us that it's not even "us three" (or five as the case may be), but Us here and there, those we can touch and those we grasp for in our mind's eye and in our dreams.

To say sharing this day with Ferdinand makes me more appreciative of the life today celebrates (the life which is currently screaming and throwing a ball around with her new lacrosse stick, jeebus watch that window) is a gross understatement: it makes me touch it, and hold it, and inhale it and her chlorine-scented hair, and find some small, quiet amount of thanks for that which I am blessed with.

Every snarled, dirty-faced, leave-socks-on-the-coffee-table, remind-she's-too-young-to-paint-her-fingernails inch of it.

Here's to remembering, and looking forward. Looking forwards and backwards, all at once, all in the same day.

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
'What would I do?' I said to Pooh,
'If it wasn't for you,' and Pooh said:
'True,
it isn't much fun for One, but Two
Can stick together,' says Pooh, says he.
'That's how it is,' says Pooh.

:::

Happy Birthday, Ferdinand.

Happy Birthday, Bella.

Happy Anniversary, Us.

Dream Weaver

2010-07-05T08:58:00.000-04:00

Recently I wondered why my bouts of indigestion and gas seem to be worse now that I'm no longer pregnant. I wondered this out loud, standing at the kitchen counter, while sucking down my lunch in 90 seconds next to a screaming baby. I then chugged an ice-cold glass of water. I further pondered my bloatedness while scarfing a hamburger on the one minute walk home from a neighborhood barbecue with a screaming baby in a sling. Hmm.

***

Had a dream last week where I was in the airport with the baby and my flight was delayed for something crazy like six hours. And I looked at the baby and said to myself, well, you're comfortable and cool here (we're going through a heatwave here on the east coast) and you're past security so I'm sure you'll be safe, so I'm going to leave a go home for a few. And I did. Without the baby.

Analysis and Interpretation: a) HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, because isn't that just so sensical and typical -- leaving the fussy kid to fend for himself in the international wing while mommy cools her heels in the quiet comfort of home with a martini? Funny stuff. b) ZOMFG, WHAT THE HELL? FOR SERIOUS, SUBCONSCIOUS? I remember while dreaming this that my sub-sub conscious was sorta uncomfy watching dream self mill about the house, but really what the fuck? As if I would purposefully leave my child behind somewhere! (Note purposefully. I know of many wonderful, sane, competent moms who have accidentally left stores and realized once in the parking lot that they came to said store with more than what they were leaving with. I haven't done this yet, for the record.) c) Ok, deep breaths, this isn't really about leaving my cherubic fusspot behind somewhere, is it. Oh no. Let's go Jungian, shall we, where everyone in the dream is really me and what the dream is trying to say on some level is that *I* feel abandoned. I feel abandoned? Because of the baby? Am I in some way abandoning myself on this journey? (Dum dum dum!) Is the baby to blame for this self-identity abandonment? What am I really trying to say about airport coffee?

Hey, at least the baby appeared in my dream! I took that as serious progress that I'm accepting that he's here.

:::

Had a dream last night that we -- Me, Mr. ABF, Bella, and Baby -- were at Children's. And I couldn't figure out why, because both kids looked healthy. Something to do with Maddy? (In a footnote, Charlie Sheen wandered through this dream. I don't even like Charlie Sheen.) This was followed by a dream where after just putting down a happy infant, my mother came carrying him to me asking where the baby aspirin was because his temperature was 108.

This is more like it.

:::

I was invited to a baby shower for one of the umpteen babies arrived/set to arrive in my neighborhood. Which is nice, not feeling like the neighborhood vampire at which pregnant people shake garlic in front of to ward off my cloud of evil and doom. But it's my first since Maddy and I must confess I find the whole thing so fucking weird.

My lovely neighbors just threw me a baby shower a few weeks ago and it was kinda awkward and kinda awesome and really overwhelming. All these women who were apparently dying (no pun intended) to bestow their good wishes and future funtime projections and take bets on size and birthdays and do silly things with toilet paper had to stifle their optimism while I pursed my lips and reminded everyone that there were no guarantees here. And like a geyser, emotions were released in a cloud of adorable onesies, homemade burp cloths, and beautiful books (many of my neighbors are graphic design people which I discovered makes for an incredibly tasteful and beautiful shower).

But to acknowledge something that's not done yet? Oddly, I'm able to see positive outcomes for other people, just not myself. While still pregnant I got news that a family member was expecting this fall, and I immediately could see their wonderful outcome, but still not my own.

Putting me in the situation, however, to congratulate and celebrate something still undone is really anathema to me. It's like throwing a victory parade while the game is in the 5th inning; awarding the prize money before the experiment is run. The horse isn't out of the gate, and here we're hanging the wreath of roses. You get the point.

I don't count chickens. I'm very squeamy about attending and pasting on a smile and handing out a bag of our favorite baby goodies. Because . . .

well, I won't go there. I know the if. I know what happens. I'm not into bad mojo or jinxing or hexing and lordy, if this bunch was they certainly wouldn't have invited me. And yet I'm just so uneasy. What's an appropriate gift from the hesitant and realistic pessimist?

:::

We've settled into a rhythm, which involves a fair amount of nighttime sleep for me so I'm not complaining! Just stating! And a whole ton of up time in the day, which over the course of the day devolves as someone gets more and more tired and refuses to nap for more than 20 minutes at a time. Until he's purple with tears, or maybe it's me who's purple, and then we take a bath which he just loves and settles down, and we eat and read with big sister and fall asleep and do it all over again. But it means for much of the day, he-who-shall-not-be-put-down-or-away-from-paternal-contact is in our arms or in a sling and while this enables us to have some mobility, it does not allow for much. And when the heat index is 100 and you have a little heater pasted to your front and hormones raging through your body? It does not feel so very nice come 5 p.m. We have eaten cold cereal as a dinnertime main course.

But we do it, and I can make him giggle now, and he's got a double chin and knee folds, and hey -- he's here.

You know what's weird, I realized while emailing back and forth with Angie, is that I don't use his name much. And I'd like to blame the blog (damn you for making me anonymous! And suspicious! And paranoid!) but geez, I've only posted a handful of times so I really don't think that's it. No, I think it's something else. I love his name, I love hearing other people use it and the plethora of nicknames that break from it, but I don't use it much. When I write or talk I tend to stick with "baby," or the universal "Him/He," and when I'm talking to him directly I find myself splurting out something a bit stupid like "Muffin Man" or similar.

I'm thinking this is all part of the accepting process. You know how most normal people get excited when they're pregnant? And they start planning and thinking and anticipating so when the baby actual arrives they're already kinda in full swing with those emotions? And part of this is rolling baby names off the tongue, and maybe sheepishly out-loud when you're home alone, just to get a feel for them? It's like I'm in the first trimester here, just sorta feeling my way around the general idea. Like he's here, but not really, and hey -- wouldn't that be a great name?

:::

I was on a run yesterday . . . wait, back up: Kids, I'm Running! Have been, actually. This time around I'm being overly cautious and ramping up incrementally slowly using interval training so as not to blow out my foot again. So far, so good.

So anyway, running. Or wishing I could. I actually feel like I'm in good shape -- I ran through about 32w until I had to move to the elliptical and kept that up through about 36w -- but I put the Maserati in 1st gear and just take my time because I don't want a repeat of therapy and cortisone. Yesterday was just a delicious day, with a morning in the 60s. I had my tunes plugged in and my running app keeping count of my intervals. I was humming along to whomever . . . Cake? The Killers?, feeling pretty fucking happy about my weight loss and the cute red-headed dude waiting for me at home, and

Bam.

The grief cloud hit with a sudden rage, and within a second I was brushing off tears.

I was happy. And I was sad. I was sad because I was happy. How fucked is that.

I'm not a "I feel guilty because I feel happy and I should feel sad" or "Happiness means I'm forgetting Maddy" person; no, I'm much more of a "Well it's about fucking time I feel happy" person, but I think what got me was the odd sense of deja vu.

Because I was right here, right here on this square of sidewalk, before. With my tunes in, and the sun shining, trying to shed some baby weight.

And it was so unbelievably, cosmically different. Like Freak Deja Vu, where it's the exact same except everything that was scorching blinding white is now filled in with cool black lines. Everything upside down to the point it made me nauseous, is now right-side up. The Poseidon Adventure, except now standing on your head so in some peculiar way it makes sense. All the songs that made me sob are replaced with tunes that make me run faster. The running wasn't desperate. The sidewalk doesn't lead to a gaping empty hole, it takes me back to where I want to be.

It's upsetting, for some reason. I suppose because all stories should be like this, not like that. And because it's not a peculiar otherworldly sense I'm picking up on, some eerie rustle through the trees. Uh uh. It happened. It's still there, scarred into my brain, and a faint ache in my foot.

And she'll never be there when I come home in need of a shower.

One big huge slurpy sniff at the traffic light, and it was past. The thundercloud moved on.

It sill always be like this, won't it.

More (Extremely) Random Thoughts

2010-06-09T09:21:00.000-04:00

I've come to rely heavily on the effectiveness of breath mints.

:::

Bella is, for the most part, doing ok with all of this. We have some extremely typical behavior: when people come over to see the baby (or hell, to drop off the mail or fix the gutter) she all but pulls out a microphone, cues the spotlight, and starts crooning "Don't You . . . Forget About Me." She started talking in baby talk. Which was at first, was so completely psychologically appropriate as to be hilarious; then it was annoying; and now it's downright rude and unbearable. We had a talk last week after she started in with her violin teacher using high pitched monosyllables. We've had a few more outbursts than usual, a few more efforts to stall moments when she has our attention. These are, however, interspersed with excitement and interest and outright love for her brother. She loves holding him (and is very good (anal?) about making sure you have his head steady before she lets go). She's helped with diaper changes. She kisses him on the head at bedtime. She is desperate for him to start talking ("I'm pretty sure he just said 'Yeah'!") She's starting to take it in stride when we read the comics at breakfast or I read her book at bedtime with a baby attached to my breast. She's taken to calling him by a nickname I was aware of but didn't think we'd use and it's just so effin' cute that I've caught myself saying it too.

We're all getting used to the new being.

This is, frankly, the area where I feel the least amount of good. I miss my unscripted Bella time. She is presently sporting a wide gap where her two top teeth used to be, and when she puts in ponytails and dons her t-ball outfit it's all I can do not to eat her up. I haven't taken nearly enough pictures of her in this place, and her adult teeth are already punching through. I try -- but sadly, some of my limited one-on-one time comes at bad opportunities. Like violin practice, which may in fact be a victim of this whole little brother experiment. We practiced juggling a soccer ball yesterday while I held a milk-drunk infant (it can be done!). And I tell her as often as I can, for my sake as much as hers, that it won't always be like this. Yes, now there will always be another family member to coordinate around, but he won't always be glued to my breast, my patience won't always be so thin, I won't always be such a tired bitch. I don't want this point to be the nascent beginnings of that mommy/daughter conflict that runs through history. I tell her as often as I can that I love her. I spend as much alone time as I can afford with her, even it means giving up my shower (or worse, taking my unshowered self to pick her up at school or take her to ballet).

And I realize, I felt all this before, but couldn't articulate it, couldn't bear to let the words leave my lips lest I burst into tears (again), and she most likely wouldn't have understood anyway. We weathered a massive maternal distraction before, and by gum, we'll do it again.

:::

Dude, I LURVE having the new baby around, why do you ask?

:::

I am not fond of this stage. And let me say up front, I also don't believe that infertility or a deadbaby precludes one from complaining a bit about how hard live babies can be. I believe you need to vent that steam valve, people, or else the guilt and the hang-ups just build until you're one weirded-out mama. Motherhood is complicated, what with the cute and torturous sleep-dep, the cuddling and the stench of 72 hours sans shower, the first smiles and the shrug when he cries because you really just need to go the bathroom. NOW. Yes, you can be grateful and happy and at the end of your rope and fucking bitchy all at once! Come, let me show you!

My point was . . . oh right. This stage is not my favorite. So. Going through old clothes, I saw that someone had bought Bella a onesie that said something to the effect of "If they could just stay little." No. Just, no. I like my kids walking, talking, and using the toilet. Dressing themselves is also a big bonus. I gave the onesie and a diaper to Bella so she could practice dressing her bear.

The fussiness reached fever peak last week with a long scream session and I was convinced that we were dealing with reflux and decided right then and there to chuck dairy. Which is taking a few days to thoroughly wean from my diet (and I guess takes a week for my system to axe anyway) and yet boom, everything normalized within 12 hours and baby is fine (going on day four of fine), showing moments of happiness during awake time even. I was actually able to get a picture of him smiling, and not from gas. So now I'm thinking probably not the dairy, but I'm going to go ahead and ditch it anyway and slowly intro back in just to see if it helps. He's also that mystery age where "colic" (boy, that's a loose term if ever there was) begins to dissipate. Who the fuck knows. Babies cry.

Having said that, he still refuses to be put down to go to sleep and ergo is spending inordinate amounts of time in the carseat (the preferred hands-free place of recline), the front facing sling, and on my chest. And before you start the chants of "Swaddle!" I just re-read an email I sent to someone my second night in the hospital where I pointed out that even in his super-industrial hospital swaddle enforced with duct tape that he began to fuss and cry the millisecond someone set him down horizontally in his bassinet. I'm thinking he's just a fusspot who likes his parental contact.

Which means I could be in serious trouble here.

:::

I must have been HIGH (HIGH!) to think I could've dealt with an infant and a 2.5 year-old. (HIGH!) That age gap (two and a half) was not really my preferred choice, but Bella was so late in coming (two years) that I figured we'd better start in with the second before my already slow-to-eject eggs became scrambled. Mr. ABF wasn't a huge fan of the close age gap either; he and his brother never really clicked (and woo boy, look at 'em now) and I remember some testy conversations about making sure the kids got their space and weren't forced to do activities together and share friends and whatnot.

And look how that turned out.

So now we're dealing with a 5.5 year gap and it's STILL really hard, but ohmygod, how nice that she can get ready for school by herself, and feed herself, and brush her own teeth, and GO TO SCHOOL and leave me with a few hours to deal with Mr. Fussybritches. It's a dream to know she can get in/out of her carseat without help. She can get her own drink at dinnertime, help set the table (albeit with a sidetrack of whine), and help water the garden, and what was I thinking that I could've done this when she was a toddler? A toddler who still couldn't use the toilet and didn't go to school? A toddler who DIDN'T NAP?!

I shudder. I realize that part of my zen about this era of sleeplessness is that I've been through it before and know it will end, but also that I can often deal with baby one-on-one. And I feel . . . well, not sure how I feel. I'm not big into counterfactual history and sitting around wondering what would have happened if the South had won or JFK survived, so I'm also not big on wondering what would have happened had a terminally ill child somehow been born healthy or otherwise have lived. It didn't happen that way. It happened this way. So I guess I go forward, thankful for the small things time has afforded me.

I wish it afforded me a shower more often, though.

:::

Mr. ABF pointed out that there are two types of congratulations; there are the ones from people who know the backstory, which are met with exhales and smiles when I proclaim myself to be "tired yet relieved." And there are those where we simply say "thank you," and the other person has absolutely no idea what mental gymnastics we went through to get here. To them we are simply another couple who had another baby which is obviously the most normal routine thing in the universe.

I have been invited to join a new and soon-to-be parents group on the street in back of my house seeing as come fall there will be six new babies including my own. While I rejoice in the ease of future playgroups and playdates, I admit to being a bit nauseated when faced with the prospect of frequent brunches with a group of parents -- some who know, some who don't -- who want to chat baby exclusively.

Truth is, I'm still really squeamy about babies even though I have one.

I'm not sure what it is -- like I said above, I don't deny parents the right to bitch and moan a bit about sleeplessness or their birth experience or the pros/cons of cloth diapers, regardless of their live/dead baby ratio. I can't really go through life with the mindset that I will only ever be comfortable around other parents who've experienced similar -- hell I've already become great friends with parents who haven't, and I'm not going to deny my child friendships because I've got a hang-up. Maybe it's a bit that I don't want to rain on the parade, maybe it's the whole optimism of new life that I can't relate to.

Maybe it's that they're firmly here, on this side, able to move forward through the maze of first-year issues while I'm still getting banged on the head with a frying pan of reality: it worked. He made it. He's here. I'm not here yet, but he is. Breathe. Just breathe.

I also think it's the tricky ability to see the future. I have no idea how a pregnant woman can join this group (and a few have). I have no idea how you now look at an infant and think, "He could be drafted by the Phillies someday!" when I'm reluctant to buy clothes for him six months in advance. I think I'm ok with older kids, it's the babies. Babies don't do much, and they certainly don't reciprocate the love and attention dished upon them; parents instead do this themselves by projecting into that future where the baby smiles when s/he sees you, and hugs you, and presents you with hand-drawn artwork, and signs a major league contract. I'm having trouble projecting, I'm very firmly in the now having only just committed myself to coaching soccer again this fall -- the most forward planning thing I've done in over three years.

I'm having to drag myself kicking and screaming to this side. It's not that I don't want to be here, I just can't possibly think it will turn out ok. I got burned last time, and I've learned not to touch the hot pot. It's hard to deaden the nerves and go ahead and pick it up and splatter soup on the walls while laughing and screaming, "Who gives a Fart!"

Not there yet. But he is.

Voices Carry

2010-05-29T14:52:00.002-04:00

I know my voice has changed over the years somewhat. And yet I feel as though the foundation of my voice is still visible, and it's what's getting me through the roughest patch of my life.

I have a post up today at Glow In the Woods.

It's a few days late. Sue me.

(And for Pete's sake, INDOOR VOICE, please!)

(Extremely) Random Thoughts

2010-05-23T08:30:00.000-04:00

(mostly typed with one hand)

(over the space of about three weeks)

I only just called Children's to let them know. Part of this was because I was tired and busy, part because I didn't want to jinx anything by calling with good news -- and then have to call back the next day with a problem. I waited over a week, and through the second pediatric appointment.

:::

Last week, at some point in a 45-90 minute stretch of heavy sleep, I had a dream that Bella was obnoxiously and very purposefully keeping me up at night. He's here, and he's still not in my dreams.

:::

File under signs that my IRL personality is not so different from blog voice -- in case you were wondering:

(Midwife waves off anesthisiologist who apparently poked his head in the room too late to do anything, and says to no-one in particular but looking in the direction of my husband, "It's too late.")

Mr. ABF: YOU tell her.

(At some point following my involuntarily unmedicated labor and delivery)

Mr. ABF: I'm so proud of you . . . you didn't swear out a single person! You didn't even drop an F-bomb! I can't believe you made it through that without profanity. There is no way I could've done that without dropping an F-bomb.

:::

Why yes, he does nap fairly consistently every day at 10:00 a.m. Whaddaya know.

:::

My neighbors were overwhelmingly amazing after Maddy died, I think especially since we had only lived here six months. And so it is extremely satisfying to see just how happy they are for us now. The woman who brought us chicken dinners and dedicated a church service to Maddy, last week brought us dinner and begged me to now let her throw us a party. Another neighbor who wasn't here during the Maddy debacle but knows the whole mess, took a pajama-clad Bella at 6:00 a.m. last Monday brought me chocolate and visited me in the hospital (and then followed up with a dinner as well). The UPS man set down packages yesterday to hug Mr. ABF . . . twice. My fridge is full, there are homemade muffins by the coffee pot, but coming from people who not only provided for us once before but put up with my emotional distance then and for the last nine months . . . well, it's just all-consuming how lovely this place is. It takes a village, and I live in one of the best.

:::

I wondered if I would be a hypochondriac and to some degree I suppose I am; we're far more nervous about his swaddle encroaching on his mouth, and we both randomly wake and check him -- I caught Mr. ABF holding an iPhone for light over him the other night, just checking. And yet . . . perhaps after a healthy baby and a NICU stint gone to hell, we've seen it all. I caught myself the other day quickly strolling through the kitchen to let the dog in the back door with a six day old infant on my breast. Last night he suffered his first two hour crying jag and we both reminisced about Bella's first where we were sent into a full-blown panic. Last night we simply turned up the sound on the movie and took turns walking around so the other wouldn't get too tired. It passed, I'm sure it was gas.

:::

And yet. I was ordering summertime PJ's for Bella on an online sale, and promptly added a hoodie for the little guy a size or two up so it will be good for Fall. And I was flooded with that forboding, what if . . . should I really do this? Plan ahead like this? Jeebus, here I am introducing him to all these people, what if something happens . . . My finger hovered above the "Put In Cart!" button, as if it was Death himself standing there with his scythe proclaiming judgment right next to the "You Might Also Like" pictures of little swimsuits and sunhats.

No, not over it yet. It will be a while.

:::

I think I got breast milk on my iPhone.

:::

Mr. ABF wondered the other day if he, this little screaming creature (we got us a fussy one), changed how I thought about Maddy. That is to say, are the two children under our roof now the 3:4 roulette winners? Or was Maddy just doomed by something else shitty from the get-go? This guy's pregnancy tracked almost in every way with Bella's, which is to say: Normal. Maddy's was a trauma from the get go, with me bleeding out thinking I had miscarried about one week in. It went south from there. This healthy boy has been added to the file at Children's, no doubt a cute little male symbol extending downward from the symbols that represent us, right next to the female symbol with the line through it. He has been recorded on her tree, Children's will continue to look into it if opportunities present themselves, and we? Will likely never know.

:::

Sitting outside on a warm spring afternoon, Mr. ABF had just finished mowing the grass -- it smelled like early summer, and our house looked divine surrounded by late-blooming iris and dark purple veronica and the new shoots of lavender and the seedlings that finally got placed in the planter beds last week. The neighbor's drive was filled with contractors (new kitchen), cars puttered down the street, the dog went ape-shit over a squirrel.

It was perfect.

But it wasn't.

It was as if I had entered a time-warp -- this was the scene I dreamed of three years ago, new to my neighborhood but already loving the surroundings, sitting outside with a baby on my chest. It finally happened! The time was here!

But oh, what a cost.

I wonder if one could accordion those three years, not just the horror and grief and ashes in a box and depression and heartbreak, but the loss of hope and expectations, the year I zombie-walked through Bella's life, the destruction of relationships red-flagged by the people who have not contacted us, nor us them. Is it possible to fold this up, and imagine a smooth time line leading me here? Unlikely. I'll have to take what I can get.

:::

I owe you pictures, and I'm frequently too wasted to get them and then transfer them from camera to computer. We've been doing a lot of phone pictures, which I suppose is the degradation that befalls the subsequent child along with hand-me-downs and a casual attitude toward just about everything baby. Also? This child is a fuss-pot: His channels are: Sleep, eat, and cry. (Thank goodness for Bella, because most mornings I look at her eating breakfast at the counter after having dressed herself and think, well it won't always be like this. Except for yesterday morning when she pitched a fit because I made her use the toilet before heading off to T-ball. "I always have to do EVERYTHING!" she scream-cried. Phases people, phases.) Ergo, I haven't been terrific about pictures, and especially pictures when his eyes are open and he's not asking to be picked up and held by someone who directly contributed to his DNA. But here's a nice eyes closed one (he is alive, trust me on this) that we've been using to figure out who he looks like, exactly.

We've decided he looks like Harold, you know, of the Purple Crayon.

I also still owe you a name. Which isn't so much me being squeamish over internet privacy, but me being squeamish about certain relatives wondering if we've hidden a cache of pictures somewhere online without telling them and entering my children's names into google and winding up here in the land of cynicism and bitch-slapping. I am still pondering. I will tell you that it is Italian, and lovely.

Arrival

2010-05-07T11:36:00.000-04:00

You'd think the picture in my head that I'd take away from all of this would be one of the classics: Baby swadled and lying sweetly (and may I just say I'm now a bit weirded out by pictures of live babies with their eyes closed. They look dead. And this has nothing to do squeamishness over looking at deceased children -- I just now assume any baby with closed eyes is dead. I recently looked at a bunch of Bella's infant photos and got a little unsettled); baby being placed on my stomach after delivery; mom holding baby in delivery room while midwife looks on proudly.

Instead the image that resonates in my head is passing through the hospital's revolving door into a bright, warm day with a baby in my arms. I didn't leave anyone behind. This time, we escaped.

:::

Early Monday morning, on the way to the hospital in a torrential thundershower, I told Mr. ABF I was glad I was in labor and wouldn't be induced. Turns out I had been a bit nervous about birth -- not the actual activity thereof, but the deja vu element. The whole waking up and calling the hospital early to check the induction schedule, saying goodbye to Bella, the anticipation of the first contractions, the probable wait through stages where my anxiety about the outcome could only increase. Instead, here I was timing contractions that had only just dropped from 20 to 15 minutes about two hours after a small leak of water.

Except they weren't. Turns out they were four to five minutes apart, but my body -- so used to giving birth by now -- wasn't even registering the tremors between the earthquakes. Until I got there, and perhaps psychosomatically after being told, they began to ramp up in speed, quantity, and intensity.

And suddenly . . . well, suddenly. It was as if a bizarre dream I had lingered over for nine months quickly morphed into a nightmare complete with dark skies and buckets from the heavens. Everything went so fast, there was nothing left but panic and sheer terror -- and honestly, for a number of moments, enough to distract me from what lay ahead. There was enough fear in the present tense to keep me well occupied from anxiety over the near future.

And maybe that's a good thing, that his entrance was so rushed, that nine months of anticipation boiled down to a horrific space of what turned out to be less than an hour. Suddenly, the nightmare stopped and the silence was punctuated by a baby's cry.

He was immediately plopped on my chest and under the small weight I did not feel love, or joy. I did not cry. I did however let go the mightiest exhale of unadulterated relief, for present and future and all the spaces in between.

:::

I've been having a tough go of getting the concept of time back under my feet this week. He was born 37w6d, a week and a day in advance of his planned induction, and two weeks ahead of his due date. I thought this week would be spent throwing things into the garden, making one last grocery run, and doing one last load of laundry.

I've been living a fair amount on Maddy time. Even right after delivery, there came a point when Mr. ABF and I looked at each other, looked at the clock, and said, by this point they knew something was wrong, that she would not be rooming with me. And here he was, still in our arms breathing room air, not yet taken away for his obligatory testing. It wasn't until Monday night when I decided to turn on "24" to keep me awake and occupied for half and hour until I knew someone was coming to run a few more tests that it hit me -- Maddy was also born on a Monday, and that Monday night I also turned on "24" in my hospital room for a distraction. We've done a walk through the week: Wednesday, the morning of Maddy's heart failure, I was this time instead discharged into a beautiful spring day. Today, I ambled around the yard with the baby in my arms, inspecting the iris that bloomed this week and contemplating how it was today, Friday, that Maddy was bundled up into her tin-foil microwave and transfered to Children's. Undoubtedly my checks on his breathing and temperature will only increase as we approach Sunday.

:::

The senior pediatrician came to give him one last check early Wednesday morning as she does with all the babies, and after reviewing his file asked about Maddy -- specifically, she used the term "etiology." I launched into the clinical story, stripped of emotion and full of medical terminology, for what seemed the thousandth time in just the hospital stay alone (nothing like a dead baby in your records to launch the "10 signs of depression" checklist discussion) and suddenly, in the middle of the spiel, grew weary.

I was finished with this. Not with Maddy mind you, but with this part of her. The medical is really her identity and though I'm happy to discuss it, I feel as though I've done nothing but for nine-plus months. And right now, what I want is to simply think of her as my daughter. I want to revel in her beauty, her strength, her promise. I wanted in that moment, talking with that doctor, to simply go home and study her pictures to see if her brother had her nose. If their hair was the same color. If what I remembered about their chins was indeed the same.

I want right now to bathe in all that is lovely and ugly, joyful and sorrowful, of being a mother to three.

Three.

:::

We do have a name for the little guy and I'm trying to decide if I want to nickname him obviously or not so very on the blog. We are home, he is under my roof and this morning after eyeballing Bella as she left for school, we went to inspect Maddy's lilac -- which needs deadheaded this week.

Schrodinger

2010-04-26T20:56:00.000-04:00

From Wikipedia:

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, often described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The thought experiment presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event. In the course of developing this experiment, he coined the term Verschränkung — literally, entanglement.

Schrödinger's Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.

Back in High School, my boyfriend's cat had kittens and being the bleeding-heart animal people that we were, my family took one of them in. We named him Schrodinger. Which people in-the-know (quite a few, given my dad's job) thought was absolutely hilarious, and people who didn't probably figured it was a high-falutin literary reference or a little-known German composer. Schrodinger was big, fat, long-haired, entirely black, and very sweet but with chronic medical conditions involving his bladder and kidneys. Which often led us to perhaps wish he would undergo some demise in a box, just not by our accord. He survived a heart attack during an attempt to put him under for a medical procedure, and the decision was made to simply make him comfortable until he finally couldn't get up any more to go check out the birds in the yard. At which point my mom (I had long since moved out) determined it was time. Strangely, as much angst as this cat had given us, we were all quite sad at his passing.

Little did I know the significance of this theorem in my life.

I now see my womb as the box, the baby (Maddy or current resident or any baby for that matter) as the cat, with a random occurrence standing between the baby being alive or dead, none to know until it is removed. Of course the fun of the theorem is that you don't open the box, which turns a quantum mechanics principle into a philosophical one to some degree. Because while the box is closed, things can be either -- they can be both. But this box will be opened, the truth will out, and the world shall see the results.

I should name this child Schrodinger.

:::

I just got back from grocery shopping and I noticed putting a few things away that they had expiration dates beyond when this baby will be born. Which is just a really odd thing. I'm staring at a yogurt container as though it was an oracle: You must know something. You will still be here! Tell me what happens, yogurt!

But it's that odd sensation that so many of us got after the ugly: time stops for us, but continues on for everyone else, including my yogurt. Except now I can see it coming -- the seedlings that have sprouted will be put in the garden. Bella will attend a few summer camps, which will be good for her regardless. My house that I'm not preparing will look exactly the same. People who have offered to help will do so regardless of outcome, and they will still go to work and school and pick up kids and eat dinner per usual. Sure, if things go well I'm expecting a few "Well Finally!" Happy-Mongerers to jump out of the woodwork, but let's face it -- there are a good handful whom we've lost over the past three years that will remain silent, no matter what. The dogs will still need walked, the grass will still need mown, dinner will still need made. This yogurt will, according the stamp, still be good.

It dawned on me last night reading to Bella that unless I expire during this process too, I will be exactly where I am now in a few Sunday evenings. A few weeks from now, I will be right here, reading a story to her, or listening to her read one to me. Her room will be lighter thanks to the arrival of summer, but everything will be in it's place -- the fishtank, the bookshelf, the bed, the rug, the curtains . . . and what will we be like, us two?

It's what happens to us internally, that which will change us permanently -- again -- that makes me cringe. And I hate that something out there might know something that I do not. I'm tired of waiting. I want to know. But I fear opening the box -- because while the box is closed, things are alive and dead and I've grown quite comfortable with that 50/50 proposition. Entanglement has become my raison d'etre, and it suits me fine. For perhaps the first time in this pregnancy, I'm a bit afraid and am longing to be one of those things that will remain unaltered in the upcoming weeks. Oh, to be someone else, or a bookshelf, or a towel, or a container of yogurt.

Oh, to not have to open the box.

:::

Last week I was in the enormous store -- you know the one where you buy things by the metric ton? -- in large part because they always have nice (read: appropriate for actually swimming in) girls' swimsuits at ridiculously low prices. And there as I trotted down the kid's clothing aisle, was a table spread thick with Nice-Swedish brand-name organic baby sleepers for about 60-70% off what I know they retail for. Any other normal nine-month pregnant woman would undoubtedly pick one of each pattern and throw them into her cart. I would count well within the bounds of normalcy making scary claw gestures and cat noises at anyone who dared venture close to the table while she sorted through sizes. I held up a tiny 0-6m sleeper covered with animals and stared blankly at it, unable to fathom what could possibly go into that thing. I set it down, and walked away.

Sometimes, It's Time

2010-04-19T09:03:00.002-04:00

The lovely and enormously talented Kate is stepping down (back?) from Glow In the Woods. SweetSalty Kate had a big-hearted vision to start that site, and did an unbelievable amount of background work to get it off the ground, keep it running, and keep it running smoothly. She's kept the hecklers at bay, and the love pouring forth. And sometimes, you need to respond to the inner voice that says, "It's time to put the snakes in braids and view this get-together from the outside looking in, because the walls aren't comforting anymore." And I get that completely.

She also brought me on board in the original group of writers, and for that I'm forever grateful. Glow has been a lifeline-turned-confidence builder for me, in the writing and the reading and the commenting.

Please say goodbye to her over there, and make sure to keep reading her when she writes in her other space. Oh, and we now need a new writer or two at Glow. If you or someone you know is interested, please check out the submission details over there. We have a few ideas, but we'd love to hear yours.

How Not to Expect When You're Expecting

2010-04-14T20:06:00.001-04:00

I can't tell you just how fucking liberating it is not to worry about being prepared for a baby. The annoying question de jour is "Are you ready?" and I shrug my shoulders -- I mean, I'll never be ready for delivering a baby that may or may not live, right? Who's ready for THAT? What exactly can you do to prepare? Put a casserole in the freezer? I suppose that covers you either way.

Oh right, I suppose there is one thing: I've called Children's back because my OB would like a 24/7 contact number in my file because he kinda made a funny face when I suggested that Hospital-Next-Door-NICU would promptly move a sick kid over. I think his underlying motivation was actually sparing Mr. ABF and me from rummaging through our wallets and cell-phone caller id's (in a sea of exhaustion after delivering said baby) to find names and corresponding numbers which -- Nice. Thank you. So I now have emergency contact information to load up into my file regarding how to get all the peculiar specialty fellows who are on call in the middle of the night. What, that's not in your birth plan?

This has left April free for doing what should be done in April: Finding summer camps for Bella. Oh, and we hosted a big neighborhood fundraiser last week which was an enormous time-suck but really tons of fun. And getting Max to rehab -- jeez, talk about one step forward three back. Every time I think he's looking great he wipes out on the hardwood or bolts off leash and pulls up gimpy for a day. And getting indoor seeds sowed and monitored for garden planting. All of which is super crazy when you're planning around two NST's and one OB appointment per week.

But in terms of the other stuff? The stuff that people think you should be doing? I'm ready, completely. Hell I was ready last September. Which is to say, I've done absolutely nothing and nor will I. I like to think of it as Un-nesting.

Here's a game I like to play: You know the whole "In Bed" add-on funtime feature for fortune cookies? When someone delivers a typical pregnancy declaration, I always add on "If He Lives." Usually in my head, but sometimes it slips. For example:

May is such a nice time to have a baby! If He Lives.

Haha, boy you'd better get ready for not sleeping for two years! If He Lives.

Bella must be over the moon. If He Lives.

Gosh, you guys must be going crazy trying to get everything done. We will. If He Lives.

Wow, summer is going to be nuts! If He Lives. Wait a minute . . . . .

:::

Ok, to say I've done nothing is a wee stretch of the truth. I have ordered precisely one thing: A "Carry On My Wayward Son" sling from C's old outfit. I figured at the very least it's a great donation to a wonderful cause in memory of someone I care deeply about. And if the sling goes to an anonymous mom at a shelter here in town, well, so be it -- that's not such a terrible thing in the big karma wheel.

I've also organized precisely one thing. An online DBM who I'll keep anonymous for the moment in the event that she doesn't want people to know (if she'd like to out herself in the comments, that's fine -- or if she's ok I'll out her in a future post) sent me "a few things" that she had purchased for her son who never wore them. She said she'd like me to have them, and I was so humbled and honored and touched I really couldn't say no even though the whole thought of fingering baby clothes kinda gave me the willies.

I was expecting a few things in a padded envelope and received an enormous box with a wardrobe for a boy through about age two. It was so wonderful and heartbreaking to see all of these tiny clothes with the tags still on them. It was also really the only way I could receive baby clothes into my home. I wouldn't dare buy anything myself, and I think getting clothes from people who haven't been through the same would set me on edge. (I could see myself waving a onesie at some poor, unassuming person screaming, "What the fuck are you thinking?!") This for some reason seemed right. Or as right as it can be, touching soft clothing covered with puppies that were never worn by the intended. I like to think I'm remembering this baby because certainly if I have something live to put in them, I won't need reminded of my own. And I think that's lovely.

Bella and I went down to the basement and pulled up the bins with her things through the same era (for some reason I didn't have a downstream for hand-me-downs at that point) and we sorted everything by size and then by gender neutrality. Since we didn't know what Bella would be, there's a fair amount a boy can wear. I bought only a few things for Maddy, and I'm pretty sure I crammed them into a box of clothes a friend had loaned me when I sent them back seeing as she was now pregnant. I really only recognized two things that were expressly bought for her.

We repacked everything back into the bins including the lovely new boy's clothes; donated the girl's clothing; saved a few nice Bella items for some baby girls who might enjoy them; labeled everything; and then stashed the bins away again.

We'll pull them out next month If He Lives.

If not, all clothes, bins and all, will take a trip in the truck to the shelter.

I suppose that's something, but honestly that's where I'm stopping. There will be no painting, no changing table set up, no car seat purchase or even diapers. I plan on just going full-tilt boogie until delivery and dealing with the consequences afterwards.

:::

And the ultimate date of those consequences just got very tangible: At yesterday's OB appointment, I had a lovely midwife whom I've seen a few times before. She's now familiar with my past and my way of talking about it and like my high-risk guy, I appreciate her ability to balance affability and kindness without blowing sunshine and roses up my rear. She saw in my chart that a doc had marked "Patient will Not Go Beyond Due Date." And she gently segued into how I feel about induction (like all things birth now I could care less if they deliver this child through my left nostril), and then said look: why don't we pick a date the week before your due date? That way you'll know, we'll get it scheduled to make sure you're on the books, and you can even maybe pick your doctor. I asked when she was on (strangely, my High Risk guy doesn't deliver I found out recently; I guess he's all about the getting-you-there danger, and then hands off the ball. Which seems very modest to me), and it turns out she is with another hot-doc from the practice during the penultimate week. We put it in the computer.

Obviously this is one of those deals where I call in the morning to make sure they're not slammed and have room so it could drift a day or two, but we have a birthday. After trying to forget my due date (fairly successfully I might add) this one is much harder to blank out. I've told a few people and am equally relieved and nauseated, so I think I'll wait to set it down in print here. So you're going to have to wait. Mid May. Maybe a bit early-Mid-May.

:::

Baby's been cooperating with my attempts to change his schedule and I've been trying to ramp down what it is that wakes him up. Sugar does nothing apparently. And before you roll your eyes and assume that I'm some donut-eating-juice-swishing-fructose inhaler for whom a handful of chocolate-chip-studded trail mix and a frappucino has zero effect, I really don't have much sugar in my diet nor have I since Bella. If anything, I'm especially careful during pregnancies. So much so that an OJ and a banana should be like an electric shock to both of our systems and keep us humming for 36 hours, but not so much. Caffeine seems to do the trick, and although my high-risk guy gave me permission to drink a cup a day, I admit to doing a fair amount of half-caf and de-caf and even milking that down into au lait's which are barely brown. The first time I went to an NST after "my usual," the baby napped per usual. So I'm now trying to scale up the caffeine a bit on NST mornings but not so much his poor heart goes off like a racehorse.

This is my life.

In the fluid check yesterday he was sucking his thumb, and you could see his lips and cheeks moving and my head immediately filled with the Maggie Simpson sound-track. And I forbade my brain from taking the next step, which was . . . certainly a baby with a fried neurological system wouldn't be sucking his thumb, would he?

If He Lives. If He Lives.

Oh Boy

2010-04-07T17:05:00.000-04:00

After Stress Test #1 Fail, I decided to go prepared to Test #2: a half-caf loaded with ice, milk, and a ton of enda-Splay. Normally just one of these things (something caf, something cold, something sweet) gets him going but I wasn't taking chances. And the poor kid's heartrate went off like a racehorse and they made me move on my side. But we did pass within 20 minutes, so, um, yay? Oh and also? It was 9 a.m. This is important. So yesterday, Test #3, I tried the middle ground: decaf iced tea with sweetner. On the way down in the car he was gyrating and kicking so much I had to grip the steering wheel and focus. We got there, got settled in the comfy chair, and . . . out. Naptime. 10 a.m. is naptime. It has been historically since I've been feeling movement, and I'm guessing it's because 10 a.m. is usually my most active time of the day and normally not paying attention so he zips out. He wakes up around lunch, and goes pretty much nonstop until I fall asleep. A few kicks and turns in the a.m., and then out for the pre-luncheon siesta. Sadly, every goddamn NST I have scheduled is at 10 a.m. and we can't reschedule unless I'm interested in July.

We are screwed.

Anyway, we failed again (though not as badly, I got him to kick a few times at the end) and were sent to the biophysical u/s where we also sat around and poked and waited until he felt like moving.

Lo and behold, Dr. Hotshit was reading the NST results, and we had a nice little chat in the hallway. She told me even though I didn't likely buy it, what she saw today was passing, normal, fine. We went over his overall movement, how he compares to Bella in the "moves most of the time" department, except more uncomfortable. (Monday night watching basketball half asleep, it felt someone was rearranging my organs ("This would look much better over HERE,") and occasionally giving my lower rib a swift chop. I kept wincing and repeating "Movement is good. Movement is good.") She said schedules were good things, and he's clearly on one as evidenced by last Tuesday. She concluded that this last bit of the pregnancy was going to be the most stressful and was very sympathetic to my angst.

At which point the baby shifted his ass from my right side to my left while kicking a leg up and she saw the whole thing through my t-shirt and said, "See! He's moving now!"

I told Mr. ABF my concern is that subconsciously perhaps I want this child so much that I'm making this shit up. Is that even possible? I feel my rational self is overly -concerned with movement, but maybe the wee voice in my head is telling me everything is fine when it's not? Maybe these are contractions, not movements? (As if that appendage sticking out a good 1.5" from my side the other night was a contraction; and the NST's show absolutely nothing in that department). I guess what I want is a health professional to confirm and validate the extraordinary kick-boxing routine that happens daily.

Fuck the middle ground, big guy: Friday I'm freebasing coffee grounds and popping easter candy in the car on the way down. You're gonna hafta deal.

:::

At a therapy appointment within a month or two of Maddy dying, I remember walking through my progression of rationalization regarding no more kids. I would have another, but I would be bereft if I didn't have a girl. If I had a girl, I don't know what I'd name her, because I felt like the best names were gone. And bam, lightbulb, what I really want is Maddy back, not another baby.

I felt that way for quite some time.

When we finally decided to give this one more go, I was rather torn as to what I wanted. On the one hand, prior to Maddy, I think I always wanted a boy. Stranger boy babies roaming around public spaces used to just jump into my heart and rend it into a thousand shreds; girls never. They did nothing for me. I honestly never encountered a girl baby that made me want to procreate like the boys did. One sweet boy on a jogging path who accidentally turned and called me "Mommy" transformed me into a veritable pile of goo -- I may have flushed my pills upon my return home. I thought both Bella and Maddy were boys prior to birth (they were surprises).

And I thought now a boy would be nice: it would be different, it would signal the difference. This was a completely separate decision, a totally distinct child. There would be no "replacement" bullshit talk. I would never accidentally refer to him as "Maddy."

On the other hand, the second they said "Girl!" after Maddy was born, I knew that's what I wanted all along. It felt so right to have two girls. It felt complete. I now loved girls, I longed to raise them. And for 20 minutes, my family as it was felt absolutely perfect and I couldn't imagine that I had ever thought of any other arrangement.

And to lose that perfect moment and not be able to get it back, or fix it, or recreate it in another form kinda bugs. I had my family, it had two girls. That's what I wanted, again.

So it was with some disappointment that we received the news back shortly after week 12 that the chromosomes proclaimed XY.

I stared into space. I told Mr. ABF. He stared into space. Out loud, we both admitted our disappointment.

A boy. A boy.

It took about a week for me, and then I was fully on board. I would be fine for all the reasons I had already stated, and knew that in fact, it might turn out better this way -- less deja vu, less pressure on us all including him should he live beyond birth. I remembered the jog trail incident and thought I'd be ok if this turned out. I'd be more than ok. Mr. ABF took less time to climb on board, he was fine with it by nightfall.

Bella was another matter.

Bella claims to miss her sister, and this is obviously more the idea of a sister than Maddy exactly, but I concede her point. And whenever she talked of another sibling, she always used a feminine pronoun, despite my telling her that you can't choose what the baby will be, it just happens. (We're saving PGD for another conversation, clearly.) I think in her head she misses what she could do with this mythical, mystical sister that slipped through her fingers: she imagines, I'm sure, sharing clothing and toys, having a playmate who is interested in the exact same things (the rainforest; Wii; climbing trees), and a sibling with whom she would never, ever fight or disagree with because they'd be having way too much fun discussing stuffed animals or The Killers or whatever.

So when I was still a bit vulnerable about the whole boy thing, we told her we were having a baby.

"Another baby sister!" she exclaimed, and her face lit up.

(Gulp.) "A baby brother," I said quietly with a smile. "It's a boy."

And her face collapsed. Her lip trembled, and big fat hot tears began to roll.

And I almost crawled under the table.

It turns out the only little brother with whom she's intimately familiar belongs to her best friend from pre-school. And people, that child is Damien. He is undoubtedly possessed. How a sweet family can consist of two wonderful fun parents and an adorable girl and somehow claim to be related to this devil-child is simply beyond me. Clearly a case for bizarro nature, not nurture, or something.

And Bella began to wail about how horrible this particular little brother was.

I'm not big into hiding my emotions in front of her anymore (see: Me calling another driver an asshole this afternoon) but I seriously bit my tongue and held it together when all I really felt like doing was crying with her. We gently explained that she would be much older than her little brother than her friend was, and ergo the relationship would be much different. He would get away with far less, things that probably bothered her friend wouldn't bother her because she would be mature. Besides, we'd make sure (gulp, again) that he wouldn't behave like that.

"Ok," Bella said sniffling.

And by bathtime, she was on board team Baby B. (B for Brother, that is. And what he's called in our house.)

Once and awhile she pats my stomach and says, "I wish he was a sister," and all I can do is validate that feeling with a carefully pronounced and un-elaborated, "I know."

And she more than counterbalances those moments when she's with someone she hasn't yet informed, and pats my stomach and says to them with a sly smile and a low conspiratorial voice, "I'm getting a baby brother!"

We're to the point now where I'm starting to get worried . . . for her. For my husband. I feel as though I've steeled myself the best I can, and having made it through once, I'll likely find my way out of the rabbit hole again. But them? I realized last night, watching them goof around on the playset swings while I futzed with dinner, that this is what's going to break my heart -- their crushed dreams, not my own. I still can't imagine this boy. I can't pretend excitement I don't have and won't until he crosses my threshold in a carseat and not a box. I can't force myself to hope. I can only be, and hope if it does turn out, that he's not a pincher.

Like Any of Us Need this News Now

2010-04-05T22:28:00.002-04:00

I scanned headlines for distractions today: Was there a lone (brave?) asshole who yelled at Tiger? Some advance scoop to tonight's basketball game? Did Obama's pitch made it across home plate? Instead I found an article about a study that links babyloss to divorce.

Sigh.

I've got a post up over at Glow In the Woods.

Stress. Test.

2010-03-30T12:22:00.002-04:00

I figured it was about time to call Children's and let them know It's Alive (still) and what plan of action they'd suggest, if any. They mused on it for a few days, and my point-guy called me back. I wish I could remember the exact phrasing because it was priceless, but in a nutshell he said they'd conferred, and I should deliver at the hospital next door without the teams of Children's specialists standing around because they'd like me to have as normal a birth experience as possible. At which point I burst out laughing.

"C," I said, because we're on a first-name basis by this point, my genetics guy and I, "You know this whole experience is going to be so fuc . . . er, messed up that another 10-20 people milling about really won't throw me."

"I know, " he said sheepishly, and I could see the grin on his face. "I know."

So there it is, the birth plan: I will give birth next door. The NICU is staffed with people from Children's anyhoo, and they will be informed that if something looks off do not spend precious time trying to figure it out yourself because trust me, you won't be able to. Put the kid on oxygen, dial the numbers we're going to provide you, and get him next door.

Oh, and the OB said they are not, repeat NOT, letting me go beyond my due date. I will have a baby by some day in Mid May.

:::

Today was my supposed to be my 32w ultrasound, but due to me walking out of the MFM's office after being kept there for over two hours at my 28w appointment, and then having my rescheduled appointment cancelled and again rescheduled due to snow, it sorta turned into my 33w ultrasound.

And I was a nervous wreck.

My last ultrasound with Maddy was around 32 weeks. They checked her growth (by now it had slowed down, she was falling into the previous week and people were double checking my LMP wondering if I had that right and making those blow-off-ish comments about "well, you're small, your babies are small"), her heartrate (within normal limits, but on the low end), they noted that the bright spots on her bowel were gone, and sent me on my way. It was the last I saw Maddy until birth. Between this ultrasound and birth, I notified my OB on at least two occasions that she was moving very slowly. I actually had to do kick counts, and she was making them, but barely. No one seemed concerned. I don't blame them.

I'm now at 33w and am fully expecting to be greeted by horrible news at these growth scans: the baby's heart looks big, his legs are crossed (a sign of neurological damage, it turns out), his growth has stopped. After having umpteen ultrasounds this pregnancy during which I kept my fingers lightly on my rip cord, today my fist was clenched around the ring and the wind was rushing through my ears. All "looked fine" to the doctor and the baby is just about out of breach (where he's been camped out for about three weeks, spinning around, standing up, but always head up) in a funny c-shape. (Does the shape signify something?) His growth is still measuring consistently ahead about a week, his heart-rate is normal in the mid-high range, where Bella's was.

And then I had my first Non-Stress Test.

And the baby, who moves constantly, spinning, twisting, kicking, punching -- he only just moved out of breach last week -- keeping me up at night, making kick counts a moot point because he's seemingly in constant motion -- fell asleep.

I gamely tried to paste on a smile when the nurses poked and said "This always happens, cheeky things!" and so forth with the light "Nothing Bad Ever Happens!" banter, but all I could think as I tried not to cry was, This was it. This is the beginning of the end, the start of the bad news, the first sign. Maybe this is the first day where I think, huh, he's slowed down. Maybe he'll still be slow next week, and the week after.

And what happens when you have Epic Fail on the NST is they take you to a room for yet another ultrasound to check movement and heartrate. And the second the ultrasound probe hit my stomach for the second time that morning, he moved. Not just moved, twisted. Kicked, punched his hands, Yawned. He was fine.

I was a fucking basket case.

By the time I hit the parking lot, he had shifted a bit out of his C so his ass was more in the middle of my stomach, and by the time I sat down for lunch he was doing a circus routine. My fingernails are still cutting into my hand where my fist is still in a tight ball around the ring, and my opposite thumb is desperately trying to feel out the outline of the Eject button. I can't believe I have to do this twice weekly. Has anyone ever stroked out because of an NST? Isn't this what they're supposed to prevent?

I have, believe it or not, still refused to let myself think about what might happen some day in Mid May, either good or bad. I figure that thinking about either outcome is a waste of time. I don't do this to spare me then -- there is no way that not thinking about it will make it hurt less -- but to spare me now. Do I want this? I think that goes without saying. But I'm not succumbing to hope or gut feelings or depression.

We'll all know, soon enough.

You Know Your Face is All Covered with Your Birthday Cake

2010-03-19T09:36:00.000-04:00

Bella's class has rotating weekly jobs -- you know, line leader, bell ringer, conflict resolution manager (remind me to tell you about that one some time, bless these Quaker schools!) -- and this week she's on calendar/date detail. Which means, oh, right about now, she's informing her class of 20-something kids and two teachers that today is her mom's birthday and she's turning 41. This after a somewhat serious conversation where I told her that not all adults like to talk about how old they are, so it's not always polite to ask them or announce it if she knows. But in Bella's world, birthdays are for cake! and celebrating and presents! and cake! and seriously Mom, what's the big deal?

:::

I've always been fairly low key about my birthday, save maybe for grad school where for some reason everybody loved birthdays and really got into them. There were big elaborate dinner parties and cake and shitloads of presents (how on earth did we afford all that stuff? I mean, they weren't big things, but somewhere out there is a picture of me a few sheets away wearing a brand new raquetball glove and holding a Sting CD) and maybe we just needed the excuse -- especially in winter, and March in Wisconsin was still winter, don't be fooled -- to drink and eat and have an evening off. I've always requested a locale where I can watch basketball because I'm riveted to the tournament, and in fact I'm now remembering that six years ago, pregnant with Bella, at my direction, I met a bunch of people at a sports bar for my birthday dinner.

My brithday fell almost a month to the day after Maddy's death and did nothing but remind me of time passing and how I had experienced massive fail at building a family in my thirties. I remember I made a cake, but requested no presents, and I'm pretty sure I ate said cake at the counter, like the song says. I also had this memory of telling my therapist that I made a cake and her eyebrows shooting up, as if to say, "Well hey now, that's impressive! Not bad, you grieving mom, you!" The following year was more or less the same, staring the big one in the eye and wondering if I'd ever get my life back.

Last year was bad. I spent the day -- a chilly, damp one -- moving my grandmother into a home. (She died five months later.) I think I passed on the presents again, but there was chocolate stout cake (or as Bella calls it, "Beer Cake"). I then sunk into a few weeks of 40-Funk. I remember going to New York shortly after my birthday and having our friend ask me at dinner how I was doing, and replying -- with a big nasty grin -- "Horrible!" And then having to explain to myself. Nothing like feeling an entire decade has slipped out from under your feet with very little to show for it. And my husband chimes in, wait a fucking minute, how about that little PhD thing? Or the, you know, getting married thing? Or buying a house thing? (And buying another?) Or having Bella thing? And I nod, but it all seems to get swallowed by the big ugly on the eve of 38. I guess I thought if that turned out ok, I'd have two years to get a great job and visit the pyramids and make up for it all. Or something.

Sometimes you need to hit bottom to give your feet something firm to rest on while you bend your knees and push upwards.

It's almost as if once 40 was in the rear-view mirror, and the mourning period was over, I felt like the monkey was off my back, without the big date looming over me. And a month or two later, I had this crazy idea that maybe we should try this project one more time. I think just the trying was good enough for me, because now I could use 40 as an excuse if it didn't work. I could try everything, but if it all failed and they came back and shrugged their shoulders and sadly mouthed, "Forty," I could shrug mine and say, "Well that's ok, I expected it." And go home knowing I tried but it was just too late. In retrospect, I really may have expected that to happen. Because I was a bit shocked and caught off guard when it didn't.

Today, in a departure from years past, my husband and daughter are taking me out to dinner at a very lovely restaurant (where we will all pray that my daughter behaves and finds something on the menu that she will eat). Again, I am making my own cake, but I love to bake and birthdays are great excuses so no pity there. And I know because I've seen the amazon boxes arrive that there are two gifts -- an electronic gizmo that you set on your counter and throw meat and vegetables in and by the next evening it has made your dinner and mopped your floors and weeded your garden; and a game for the Wii that starts with FIFA and ends with 2010 and makes me all giggly. There will be craploads of basketball in the interim. And it's absolutely beautiful outside, with an expected high of 72.

:::

A few years ago Niobe introduced me to Bishop Allen's The News From Your Bed. It became my song. It still is my song, especially today. In fact, back when you could make your own ringtones, I spliced this song so that my ringtone started with the verse "When Your Family Calls, You Make Nice to them all/Assure them you're fine and you're great." And then because every mac product melts into a pile of worthless dung when I touch it, I synced my phone and lost my ringtone along with a ton of notes and other stuff, and I can't recreate it. Just writing about it now makes my blood pressure skyrocket and my eyes brim, I get so angry. (My ringtone is now the tornado music from the "Wizard of Oz," which when you think about it is appropriate for just about any call I could possibly receive on my cell phone.) But it's still in my music mix, and I still cling to it like a security blanket. I may not have a lot of friends anymore to go crazy with, and I can pour my own cakes (and drinks) but I've got a few people still looking out after me, and that? Will do.

Blather

2010-03-11T22:09:00.002-05:00

I know I have less to say these days, and I'm not sure if it's because I don't have much to say about what's happening (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) or because I don't have much to say about grief. I'm not sure it's either, frankly, but some kind of realignment of mindspace and priorities and wordsmithery.

I have a post up on Glow In The Woods about being online -- and why I'm still here, though not as frequently as I once was. Hopefully it makes a bit of sense.

Wishes and Worries

2010-03-08T09:30:00.000-05:00

Bella: Mom, what happens if Baby B[rother] comes home from the hospital?

Me: Then we'll be very happy.

Bella: What if he doesn't?

Me: Then we'll be very sad.

Bella: (after a pause) Is there another thing that can happen? Or is that it?

Me: Great question. At this point it's one or the other, I'm afraid. He could stay in the hospital for a bit, I suppose, but eventually even then he'd have to come home or not.

Bella: Oh.

:::

At some point since returning to school from Christmas break (I need to label it as such because we've had a plethora of mini holidays -- one consisting of a whole damn week -- since due to snow and previously scheduled days off) Bella's class made "wish clouds." I'm not sure what the impetus was here, but up they went hanging on a clothesline -- puffy clouds bearing the children's names and from each dangling a few smaller clouds with wishes, handprinted and designed by the students. I finally had a moment to check hers out last week, and found it illuminating. One stated, "I wish I could meet you" and had a picture of the big dipper on it. Huh. From what I gather, this is quite literal -- she would like to travel to space (she really doesn't know about constructs of heaven so I'm not alarmed. Yet). Another said, "I wish my campus was more beautiful," which I found a wee bit disturbing because for an urban campus, I do find hers quite beautiful. We had a longer discussion about this where I explained right now, sans leaves and green which only exposes trash and blocks of dirt-colored unmelted snow, her 19th century enclave replete with two graveyards isn't horribly attractive. But that I'm sure come spring, the same space will be exploding in bulbs and flowering trees and green and will look like a small oasis. I'm not sure I sold her on this point.

The third cloud said, "I hope my brother doesn't pinch me." Which is part of a long, long story that involves our collective family's initial disappointment with the sex of the current fetus in residence. Which I should probably expand upon some time. Which I also should -- at the very least -- note we've all gotten over and are fully on board with team baby brother. But -- cute I suppose. And a bit forward looking, even for her.

And dangling there was a fourth cloud, without a wish at all. It said, "I miss my baby sister." And it damn near brought me to my knees in the middle of a screaming, crazed bunch of five and six year olds.

***

Bella's class is currently in the midst of learning about the world wherein parents come in and explain some fun things about a certain country, and then they make the flag and locate the country on a map and partake in said "fun things" -- food, dances, more food, crafts, and food. Nothing says globalization like food. Last week she came tripping home excited to show me a very small box. "They're Worry Dolls, from Guatemala," she said lining up the matchstick figures on the counter from small to big. In her best lecture voice, she explained that you tell the doll a worry before going to bed, put the doll under your pillow, and in the morning your worry will be gone.

Where on earth have these been for the last three years of my life? I could use a whole fucking city of these things!

"Do you want one mom?"
"YES!" I practically shouted while (almost) grabbing one off the counter.
"What worry do you have?" asked Bella curiously, to which I stupidly responded, "Hahaha, I have so many! What will I choose?"

And then I noticed the slight look of alarm on her face. Maybe that wasn't a great thing to tell your five-year-old, that mom is worried about Haiti and Chile and global warming and whether her brother will live beyond May. "I mean, I worry that the alarm won't go off in the morning!" She seemed to relax at that.

That night she whispered her worry to her doll, and I missed it (slightly intentionally) only catching the last word: "Florida." Where, it turns out, she is headed for a mini-vacation over spring break with Mr. ABF and MIL while I bask in the glory of an empty house with loads of sleep-in and movie time for moi punctuated by ungodly early mandatory parents' meetings for things like spring t-ball. I digress: I wonder what on earth she's worried about? That Disney will inexplicably shut down?

I walked in this morning and cheerily said, "So! Did the worry doll work?"

"NO! I'm still thinking about it," she said rather pissed-off-edly, while pulling the doll unceremoniously from under her pillow. "Did yours go away?"

"Yes!" I said. (I didn't really play along. Way too tempting.) "I'm using your doll tonight," she decided.

Oh, if only there were enough dolls for all the worries. I think I'd resemble the Princess and the Pea, with a pillow stacked high on wee matchsticks.

But she's growing up, my little girl: some things you can't wish for, and some worries linger 'til morning.

:::

If there were enough dolls: I have somehow ticked up to the eve of "30w." I'm amazingly still balancing on that tightrope with the shark-infested "fear" tank on the one side, and the molten-hot acidic pot of "hope" on the other, my toes dipping in neither.

I've come to realize that a lot of people use the term "expecting," as in "Oh! Are you expecting?" (Which superficially is quite hilarious, seeing as I look as though I'm due next week. To hell, people.) And which I internalize as, "No. We're actually not expecting much of anything. I am pregnant, though." And usually leads to some awkward conversation that I try and shut down fairly quickly. I think a lot of parents from Bella's class either know the whole story or are really picking up on the vibe, because they've been remarkably and blessedly silent and free from dumb chit-chat and stupid questions . . . so far. Phew. But I'm wondering, when exactly did this turn of phrase come to enter the pregnancy lexicon? For some reason I find it hard to imagine that centuries ago they were using a similar turn of phrase when infant and maternal mortality was more norm than I'd care to consider, but they were big on euphemism. Maybe they were all expecting the other very bad scenario, so it was a pleasant surprise when it didn't happen.

The appointments are now going by in a blur, and I'm already up to every-other-week at the OB, and am on the cusp of my bi-weekly visits to the MFM. The theme of the last month has been "Spatial Movement," and while some days I don't feel kicking per se, I do feel as though someone is sitting on a desk chair and swiveling around in my midsection, occasionally tipping feet up or stretching up hands or falling out of the chair completely (not realizing that copy machine he thinks he's putting his ass on is really my bladder).

I have yet to purchase anything, nor will I. I learned from Bella that one really needs nothing, and from Maddy that one really doesn't want much to clean up should things go south. Diapers and a car seat do come in handy with live infants, and there's a big box store between our house and the hospital. If Baby comes home, Mr. ABF can stop on the way and pick them up. Sadly, I'm not very long for the name-game either -- it usually disintegrates fairly rapidly into "Haha, let's name him [fill in the blank name that sounds like something from Hobbit/Star Wars/generic WWII film/bad contemporary teen drama program]!" or finding alternative ethnic-sounding names for the dogs. After swearing up and down on a stack that I would not consider the boy names from either Bella or (especially) Maddy, they're back on the list because, well, we really don't have a list. I'm sure like the girls he'll be "Baby Boy" for 48 hours and then we'll land on something and hopefully it won't be too crazy. Like Angie said, it's very hard to imagine this guy. I can't see him, I can't fathom that he'll ever come home and be anything other than a pipe dream.

And I'm not so far gone that I'm going to wish for anything.

:::

Because February usually sucks in toto: We had a million snow days. February was an educational loss, unless there's something to be learned from Mario and please tell me what that might be. Max had ACL surgery. He's going great and his recovery is ahead of schedule. I had to do the Heimlich on Mr. ABF. For real. Please refresh yourself on this -- we were both calm as cucumbers and it worked like a charm (even with me very pregnant, and him quite a bit taller to begin with) and neither of us freaked out . . . until the next day. When we went through all the stupid things that could've happened, but didn't. Anyway, go look it up and remember. You never know. And finally, after experiencing some bizarro drops in heartrate and blood pressure (for someone with historically low HR/BP) my father is getting a pacemaker next week. I'll take whatever wishes/prayers you have to give, but really our main concern is hospital-induced infection because that seems to be going around and is likely what could go wrong with a minor, more-or-less "outpatient" procedure.

Hope you're well.

Birth Day, III

2010-02-12T10:40:00.000-05:00

This year was odd. There was very little of that anticipatory stress and lockjaw. This year I kept forgetting . . . . and then remembering at the oddest times. I'd be going to the bathroom late at night when suddenly, right there on the loo, bam -- tears. Uncontrollable tears. Flashbacks to holding her and being unable to; memories of leaving Children's on a frigid evening with the doors swishing closed behind me knowing I'd never see her again. And I'd cry for a few, and pull myself together and splash water on my face and open the bathroom door and go back to worrying about snow, and more snow, and rearranging schedules, and thinking of activities to occupy a five-year-old. Back to my television program, or the computer, or the dogs. Back to my book, my workout, dinner.

It's not unlike being pregnant. I can go hours -- literally hours -- and not think about it and suddenly realize that the jabbing sensation around my midsection means the baby is moving. And I have to catch my breath and remember that this crazy messed up shit is my life.

:::

Rather out of nowhere -- I think we were discussing what to bake on Snowpocolypse Returns: IceMan vs. SnowZilla (versus this week's Snowpocolypse III: Hell Freezes) -- Bella asked from the backseat,

When is Maddy's birthday?

Next Friday.

I want to bake a cake. A cake with a heart on it, since it's so close to Valentine's.

And I'm not remotely, even close to one of those people who bake cakes for their dead children but I realized this is what she needs to do. I need to cry in the bathroom (apparently), and order some flowers for me and Maddy, and light a candle at the time of her birth, and spend some time with my husband who can confirm that we did indeed have a second daughter for the briefest of times and Bella needs to bake and eat a cake. And I need to respect that, and honor that, and recognize that she's got one of the toughest big sister gigs around. If she needs to go crafty with the frosting and consume (more, lord this snowbound week has been awful on the all-around diet) sugar in order to remember and mourn on her terms, than that's what she needs to do.

The flour will come out today.

We had another conversation in the car about a month ago where she asked if we could visit Maddy's grave on her birthday, which of course prompted me to say rather chippily, "She doesn't have a grave. We cremated her. We need to figure out where to put the ashes and maybe you could help us." She was pretty adamant on internment, and while sometimes I concede her point -- it does seem nice to have a set place to visit -- I think I'd rather visit a forest or river or soccer field or sunset. I answered like I do when she asks for something wretchedly horrible for her for dessert before discovering I'm about to give her something drastic for dinner: "We'll see, Love. We'll see."

:::

I have spoken more about Maddy to strangers in the past few months than I have the last three years. Just last week I coughed up my history at the gym to a total stranger (hey, she asked) and tears welled up in her eyes and here she was a NICU nurse. We had a lovely, sane, germane conversation while a few people around us looked down and away, clearly wishing they could sink through the floor. It was one of the first times I realized that others were uncomfortable, and I was truly, remarkably, not.

:::

I'm amazed that three years later I'm still stunned by who remembers, and who does not. I'm still brought to tears of gratitude by my SIL who remembers and sends the sweetest note, and by a distant cousin of Mr. ABF's who gives money to Children's every year on Maddy's birthday, in her memory. I'm still perplexed that the phone sits quietly while certain other family members avoid the phone call and hence the discussion and the memory altogether. You'd think I'd be used to this by now.

:::

I am not angry today. I don't think I'm tired anymore, either. And yet today hurts like hell, the cruelest of days on the calender followed closely and only by Valentine's Day, when her heart stopped and we realized that the roller coaster had screeched to a halt and the worst was indeed here. The anniversary of her death seems quiet in comparison to these two points that still burn.

Mostly really I'm just sad. Sad that it ever happened. Sad for her, sad for her sister, sad for us.

You'd think three years in I'd have a game plan of sorts to get through today, but today is odd -- it's the third snow day this week so Bella is home for the first time on this day, and I realized making waffles this morning it's the first February 12 morning I've spent with her since '06. Three years ago I pulled away in the car in the dark of morning, sobbing, Bella still asleep to be greeted by my parents upon awakening. Sobbing that I missed her, crying because I was worried about how this new child would impact our lives, tears of absolute relief that this hellacious pregnancy would be over by nightfall.

Little did I know.

Today has begun in a crazy normal snow-day kind of way: waffles, video games, monitoring my injured dog (Max appears to have torn something in his leg -- canine orthopedist appointment on tap for next week), getting out my recycling. Mr. ABF's business trip has blessedly been put off until at least tomorrow. The usual walk my husband and I take on this morning is undoubtedly off; the place where we walk is assuredly closed and I'm not sure I want to risk the roads to get there even if it is open. I'm hoping I can navigate the slush in order to pick up some flowers. Tonight I'll mosey off to book club. I don't want her day forgotten just because we're in some abstract kind of schedule and the roads are impassable.

Perhaps the cake is a good idea, after all.

Today however will find me like I always am: sad. It's the day to be that, regardless of where the hours find me, and what they find me doing. Baking a cake, making a snowman, doing yet another load of soggy dirty laundry, walking Max on a leash around my arctic lawn, overseeing neighbor children in front of video games or the craft table, making umpteen servings of cocoa or grilled cheese. Or just staring out the window, remembering that day and how everything I ever imagined today would be went sailing over a ledge pulling me over with it.

I miss and love her so terribly much.

Maddy is Where?

2010-01-28T08:59:00.003-05:00

(Scene: Me, in What-used-to-be-a-nice-department-store-back-in-the-day, but is now a store-spread-way-too-thin-that-always-looks-like-a-bomb-went-off-and-it's-quiet-as-a-church-and-impossible-to-find-people-to-give-your-money-to. But they were having an insane sale on something I needed for $20, so there I was looking imploringly at the saleslady who was helping someone else.)

Saleslady: I'm going to be a while. Why don't you go to Housewares? Maddalena is in Housewares.

Me: (out loud) That's Auspicious!

And I practically ran to housewares to see . . . her. Maddalena. This is the first time in almost three years I have ever, ever encountered another person face to face with her name. Sure, I've faced a boatload of Maddy's and Maddie's but none of them were derived from the whole which I carry around. I had a million questions: What did she look like? Was she Italian? Was someone in her background Italian? Or did the name come from elsewhere and if so where? Was she smart? Nice? Pretty? Intelligent? Old? Young? . . . .

She was . . . . Asian. Which brought up at least 20 more questions to add to my million. She was young, in her twenties, pretty enough but . . . .

Ohmygod, grumpy. Sour. Looked pissed off. My eyes bore a hole through her nametag (spelled with one "d", huh, how about that), and I wanted desperately to simply say,

"I love your name."

And couldn't bring myself to do it, because the look on her face said that she may very well respond with "I fucking hate it," and then where would I be?

I don't blame her remotely -- hell, I'd be a cranky beyotch if I worked in that place even for limited hours, and lord only knows what else she has on her plate (boy trouble? School to study for? Up late? Sick?), but I felt as though my opportunity to know a Maddy -- a real one, a live one -- was slipping through my fingers. Definitely not a person on which to lay my connection to her name. I fought the impulse to rip off my bracelet and show her the name engraved inside.

All within about 90 seconds.

"I'll put your receipt in the bag."

:::

Have you ever met someone in real life -- in a surprise sort of situation -- bearing your dead child's name? Did you say anything? Was it what you expected? Or kinda like something out of "Twin Peaks"?

Noneventful

2010-01-26T15:28:00.002-05:00

Bella: (in what could only be described as gay, sing-songy voice) I'm having a Baby Brother! I'm having a Baby Brother!

(5 second pause)

Mom, I want to go to the hospital to see my brother when he's born, even if he's going to die. I really want to go see him, ok?

Me: But of course!

And that's how I made yet another promise that I'm not sure I can fulfill, here after being so fucking careful on this whole baby business for months now. I read recently on Missing One's (who's home with the baby! Yay!) blog that her hospital is not allowing siblings in due to Teh Flu. I'm fairly confident that's not the policy here -- in fact, many of my appointments are in the hospital proper, and I see little kids all the time, albeit much of the time wearing masks. I'm not sure if that's to protect them from us, or vice versa, but in any event, there they are. And Children's seemed mighty willing to let Bella in the last time despite her hacking cough, so perhaps that's a point I need to consider before the big Where Do I Deliver Conversation.

Sighs all around.

:::

I'm not sure this qualifies for the "Mind Fuck" portion of the entertainment (tm Julia), but here's what's going on: I really only have Maddy's pregnancy to relate this one to. I cannot for the life of me remember boo about Bella's, other than it was "uneventful," and "she was a kicker." Ergo: This present kid has been kicking me to the point of waking me up since around 21 weeks, which I thought was rather unusual. At a 23w appointment, he kicked the Doppler off my stomach. Which is well and good, I suppose.

The downside to gestating a kickboxer is that eventually even he needs a break, and I'll go through two rather mellow days, where I definitely feel stuff but no kicking and think, "Well that's that." Because this is around the time things in Maddy really began to head downhill according to pathology (even if she had been born predisposed; her spleen, for example, only measured 25w or so and shortly thereafter is when they discovered the echogenic bowel). The problem is, there is no reassurance here: I know he's alive, so a Doppler does me nothing (I've decided not to do that this time around. It was nice during Maddy when I started bleeding so I could decide whether it warranted a trip to the ER or not; here it's rather useless information) nor does an ultrasound. We'll know if it's meaningful or significant when he's born. So all I can do is add to the record for the future, when we look back and figure out what was an important sign post, and what was just a slow day at the gym.

And shortly after announcing this potential downshift to my husband, just so he knows what's going on, I get a signature Chuck Norris Roundhouse move that about sends me off my feet to the left. And it continues another hour. Bella never needed kick counts; she was in constant motion. I mentioned to the doctors that Maddy -- although she met her kick counts -- was much, much slower than Bella, and they thought it unusual. One even said that subsequent children tend to be more mobile, not less. And after the fact, we all determined that it was a sign of neurological damage, and probably a lot of the sporadic "kicking" I felt from 32w forward were actually seizures.

No way to know.

I sigh and resign myself to a May outcome, yet again. Not much I can do in the meantime. I have not yet succumbed to either the Hope Train or the Fear Parade, and I consider that an outstanding feat. Remarkably, I feel fine. I'm still running three times a week, still pulling on oversized t-shirts and my husband's fleece, and getting through my days.

:::

Today was my 24w scan, which puzzled the tech a bit because apparently there really is no good reason to be wasting their precious imaging machinery around 24w so we told her. Ahhhhh. And Dr. Hotshit apparently was not in the office, because in walked an associate trailing a neonatology resident behind and they were a bit perplexed too until we told them. Ohhhhh. And it suddenly became a very Maddy moment -- not in a bad way mind you, just in a weird way, what with her brother impressing everyone by opening and closing his mouth on the screen in the corner. ("Pay attention to ME!")

I told Mr. ABF on the way back to the car that these appointments used to be reassuring, pauses where we used to catch our breath, moments that let us relax briefly before careening toward the next milestone. And now it's . . . . it's . . . . it's . . .

Mr. ABF: A Nonevent.

That's it exactly.

:::

Today only reiterated how amazed I am at how central a role Maddy has played in this pregnancy, and how much she comes up in conversation. If nothing else, this pregnancy has afforded me a milieu in which I can finally -- Finally! -- talk about her without it seeming incongruent. I told my hairdresser. Mr. ABF even told his. Even though my initial doc said I wouldn't have to repeat the story every time I go in even if I see another doctor, it comes up, and it's just easier to refer to pregnancies by name than number. There she is, in the room, and I'm not crying and my blood pressure isn't up. I even blurted out "third" to a sales lady who couldn't believe I was buying maternity sweaters for me ("Ohhh, you're one of those who carry high and in front." If by "high and in front" she means "all over my ass and thighs and boobs" then I concede her point. Who cares what pregnancy this is anyway?) People who have found out sideways, who have found out in conjunction with our past and have come to me bearing both pieces of news and have been remarkable -- some have asked pertinent and compassionate questions about Bella, others have held long discussions about what the birth process will likely be like this time around. One guys' guy sans children even asked about my recent testing and I thought he was being polite, but it turns out no -- he really was interested in details. Nice that someone is concerned and interested, I suppose.

I have not relocated joy or hope or any sense of contentment I didn't have coming into this, but I am surprised and grateful that my current condition has afforded me the comfort of speaking about my second child. I didn't expect it. If this is what I gain from this experience, so be it.

:::

It's that time of year where I can be sitting at the counter and completely out of the blue, suddenly see myself in my old kitchen, hunched and sobbing on the floor in front of the old refrigerator (now an open doorway), and wonder why . . . why . . . oh yeah. The tension begins to mount a bit, made no less easy this time around as Mr. ABF will be away on business for a good portion of that week, including Maddy's birthday. I'm wondering how I'll do without the other person who can single-handedly assure me that that she happened, she was here, I gave birth three years ago to a child. A child! With my only witness gone, it will be up to me to do something -- anything -- to celebrate and grieve what might have been. A real If a Tree Falls in the Woods sort of moment, where I'm left holding the axe.

'Splaining

2010-01-21T13:02:00.002-05:00

Biojen, a relative newcomer to these parts, asked a salient question at the end of the last post, which was essentially: How did I decide to try and have another? After all that crappy news and no answers, how on earth is it that I find myself pregnant again? Spoiler: It was NOT an accident. Well, not really.

I have a post up about deciding to try again today on Glow in the Woods. Like any post there, your comments and contributions would be extremely helpful to others who now find themselves on this path.

Great Expectations

2009-12-30T08:33:00.001-05:00

At some point a few weeks ago, Bella sat at the kitchen counter, grabbed a sheet of my grocery list paper, and intently started writing a missive.

Mom, how do you spell 'Christmas'?

When she was done, she read it out loud:

Dear Santa, I want a Poni [sic]. Merry Christmas. I love you. [Bella]

She then announced that she was putting it in the Day 24 slot of her advent calendar so as not to forget, and I reminded her, gently, that Santa does not bring live animals. That animals are a family decision, not a Santa decision, and can you imagine his sled and bag with live puppies and kittens and ponies? The crazy! I also reminded her that she has a pony, for all intents and purposes (it's my aunt's), 45 minutes due west of here that she can ride anytime.

Bella stared at me blankly and went and dutifully (defiantly?) put her note in her calendar.

It's that time of year, where I suppose children and normal people wish and hope and make lists and expect. And as a person with a major holiday party the week before Christmas, preceded by two days of standing on my feet awkwardly hunched over a munchkin table in a Kindergarten class making gingerbread, and still lacking the complete incentive to spread Joy! and Peace!, I remind myself that she won't miss what she doesn't know about. If I don't say anything, and don't make promises, and remind her that Santa uses the list as a guide, not a constitutional legal checklist, she'll be happy with what I can do.

And she was.

And I also reminded myself of the same. I don't make "wish lists" anymore, the whole conceit seems so, well, ripe for disappointment. Not to mention that I can't wish for what I really want. And everything else seems so very trivial in comparison. ("Um, some jelly roll pans would be nice. You know, if you can't raise the dead and perform a miracle of Biblical proportions.") I did what I could, and this year I relinquished a lot of what used to make me happy either to the "Don't Worry About It" pile, or to Bella's To-Do list. And I found that alone made me very happy, very peaceful, very content. Gone were my Martha Stewart pretensions of having perfectly glazed confections, and I scheduled a playdate and had Bella and her companion frost and decorate a full batch of Italian Wedding cookies. They looked wonderful, and lo, still tasted great. Bella did most of the tree decorating, I decided again to forgo sending cards. A wise choice.

:::

We've told Bella about the other pending engagement on the calendar, and in full disclosure told her this was not a promise. We would likely have to wait for the baby to be born in order to know if he was healthy and could be brought home from the hospital. Interestingly, I've found that her conversations have Mid May as a boundary. She's told a few people, but seems to wait for a segue instead of just blurting it out, she likes coming up with names, she talks about the hospital a bit. She has never had a conversation with us about a baby coming home, what will happen, where the baby will go, where it will live, what it will eat, how it will change her life. Lord knows, we certainly haven't either. My internal schedule still only goes two weeks in advance, and the only way I know where I am in this escapade is based on appointments scheduled around significant dates. May is a distant mirage on my horizon, and any discussion of what comes after usually has nothing to do with a baby, but with pool memberships and third floor renovations and if it comes up, the caveat, "If he lives." Or sometimes, "Even if he dies, we'll want to . . . . " And you know, we will.

Bella's baby brother name list is as follows:

EGGPLANT (what I tell her when she asks me what we should name him)
IAN (Olivia the Pig's little brother, and the only reasonable little brother she is familiar with)
BUDDY (Our Dog)
HAREE
LAREE (I believe two names she feels she can spell without help. Don't laugh, "Bob" and "Car Wash" were on my list for my little brother)

There are moments though, where even though I am still as distant from this experience as one can get with an alien life form growing inside them, that Bella does something to show that not all of us are completely tuned out. When we were decorating gingerbread at home, after making sure she had decorated a unicorn, cookies for the dogs, gingerbread people that (theoretically) resembled Mom, Dad, and Bella, she proclaimed, "And this one is Baby Brother."

(There is a clear resemblance to those blurry ultrasound pictures where everything seems blurry and unreadable and the eyes and mouth are a bit spooky. Tell me you can't see the kidneys in this.)

We can try and tamp down those expectations, but we can only do our best. No promises. I will spare you the profane and macabre joking that this pastry elicited from me and Mr. ABF, but I suppose deep down we were a bit touched. I'm glad someone here is looking after him a little, at least as much as frosting will allow.

:::

I had my twenty week scan yesterday, and all looks fine. Which is not remotely a relief as much as it is a lack of surprise. A few weeks ago, I had a "slightly elevated" marker (and by slightly, .1 above what the cut-off is, and only noticeable because it's one of those "soft" things that they jam into an equation wherein x=my age (40) and n (as in 10ⁿ) goes up a factor of a few 100 because of the 40 part, and then odds start to look a bit scarier than it would if I were a respectable 35 or something, but who's paying attention to odds?) so Dr. Hotshit paid extra attention to the spine in addition to all the Maddy pathology goodness and is hereby "not worried." Well that makes one of us. She then scheduled me for a full bank of scans through weeks 20-30 and warned me of the impending weekly fluid checks/NSTs to start around week 30, so I think the "not worried" thing was perhaps a wee bit of an oversell.

Everyone on this side of the ugly warns me that there will come a day when this will become "real" -- like the Velveteen Rabbit, I imagine, perhaps the ultrasound photos become a bit frayed around the edges and lose their luster? -- and will start "being a mindfuck" (tm, Julia), but I'm certainly not there yet, nor do I really foresee being there, frankly. Because my "real" comes a few moments after birth (whenever that may be), there really isn't a milestone along the way where I think "Phew!" or "Viability!" or "Lung maturity up!" or whatever. There is this creature on a screen which is apparently inside my body which may or may not be hosting a time bomb, whose brain though clearly visible may or may not be composed of mush, and then I ask about the next appointment and start worrying about what to have for dinner. Maybe that day will come, who knows. Maybe it will be years from now.

I still run (well, did until we got 16" of snow and entered a deep freeze during which my five-year old is home all. the. time.), still shun maternity clothing (god, I hate that stuff. I hate even typing those words) as much possible, still cover up and try and avoid conversation with people who don't know. All the neighbors know, and those in the know have said . . . . nothing. And you don't know how much I appreciate that. There have been some quiet asides to Mr. ABF about "Let me know if I can do anything, you know, cooking, whatever" and even a nice aside to him (over the keg at the Christmas party) from a newish-neighbor physician-type who works at Children's who apparently "just found out" (and I mean, about everything) to make sure we were comfortable with who we were seeing and that he would do anything he could. Anyone who enters into conversation with me gets met with a gentle yet terse "We're saving congratulations until May," and "We're not talking much about this one." And things get shut down pretty quickly and we start up with how erratic the Steelers are this year.

Perhaps because I expected nothing, I was surprised and giddy with my (stress, MY) Beatles Rockband on Christmas morning, and have been enjoying (probably way more than is healthy) Mario Kart racing. And I didn't say anything at dinner with the relatives, and no one says anything to me, and, well, we wait. I'm not optimistic, but I'm not pessimistic either. I'm just not expecting.

I came home yesterday, showed Bella the pictures ("Is the baby healthy today?" she asked, which I considered remarkably in the moment) and told her that her gingerbread man was a far more accurate anatomical likeness if I thought so myself, and got down the 2010 calendar to enter in my next appointment. She grabbed the calendar and a pen, and before I could catch what she was doing, flipped to "May," plopped her finger down in what to her appeared as the middle square, and without saying a word wrote "BABY." Like I said, at least one of us is thinking a bit in advance.

Tangled Web

2009-12-15T15:53:00.002-05:00

I'm not big on pain olympics, really truly I'm not. But I did want to draw attention to one particular element many bring with them, in their overloaded steamer trunks and suitcases, to babyloss: Infertility. All tangled up and intertwined, two sets of grief each deserving of their own place in your mind. Let me know how it impacts you, today over at Glow in the Woods.

Within

2009-12-14T09:15:00.002-05:00

It poured here yesterday. Just warm enough that it was rain, not sleet or ice or snow, but a frigid rain. We took a neighbor with us to the movies, and otherwise hunkered down inside.

But when we left the house around 6:15, the rain had stopped, the clouds were breaking, and the temperature had gone up a few degrees. We were all bundled in layers, Bella even sporting her new snow pants, and hoping Children's would set us up outside under the sky. Bella even swore she could see a few stars peaking through the gray cover.

It was not to be. Faced with a day of deluge, I'm sure Children's expected the worst, and prepared to put all of us -- 1,300 there to represent 345 children -- inside. They nicely set up three viewing areas to spread the crowd out, but somehow the evening loses something when you're inside peeling off layers and trying not to spill your hot chocolate on the rug and Bella is helping you with your glowstick. No live candles inside, save for the one the person running the ceremony lit on her dais, and promised to keep lit for at least the full hour.

Grief has nowhere to go inside, but up into the ceiling, where it forms a cloud and simply rains right back down.

I saw a few moms I recognized from my old support group, and watched for their children in the program. As always, there were the children that for some reason dropped on your conscious: for my husband, it was the small child who died on his birthday this past year; for me, it was a boy born mere weeks after Maddy who died this summer. That cleaved me in two for some reason -- made me mutter, Son of a Bitch under my breath. He was a blond boy with wide, deep brown eyes -- the kinda boy that a few years ago would've made my ovaries hurt just to look at. To think he escaped our vortex of death and destruction only to be felled two years later by god knows what. You're on my mind today, sweet Joseph.

Bella watched with rapt interest, and when the screen was blocked from view, she settled down on the floor with the book to follow the names and pictures in there as they were read. I was amazed at her ability to see straight through wires and IV's and bald heads and central lines, and coo, "Oh how cute, look at her Santa hat!" or "Aww, she had a dog, too mom." She took in the surroundings of Children's -- their Holiday decorations, lights of all sorts (mostly not holiday, I'm guessing), and even gamely tried to sound out the names of some of the buildings. This comforted me. I remember driving by Children's in Phoenix growing up and shuddering. I viewed it as a leper colony, a place where monsters lived, and children were sent to die. It was the place of nightmares. I don't want her to view our Children's as that place. I wish I didn't.

I recognized the boy in the program who died a day after Maddy and I believe had the bed right across from hers. I believe I found the baby born right after Holly's Ruby, who died a month or so later. I found a toddler who died the day before Maddy, and her parent's missive in the book began with "Saturday." I knew it was a Saturday. I will always know every numerical day and the day of week it corresponds to in that week for as long as I live.

Walking out I reached in my pocket for my ziplock baggie of names, and . . . it wasn't there. I panicked, thinking someone inside had probably just reached down and found an unusual souvenir on the floor when I checked another pocket and there they were. I had placed them in an interior pocket earlier in the day so I wouldn't forget them, and so they would stay dry. The pocket right next to my heart. They're all home, in a bowl, with a candle. The stack is incredibly big now, and I don't have the heart to count how many names. But they're there, keeping Maddy company. Keeping me company.

I noticed this year that the short entries in the accompanying book came from people three years out. Interesting. They increased in length after that again. I'm wondering why that is. This year we just couldn't seem to come up with anything to say that we hadn't already, that matched what we still felt three ceremonies in. I have a feeling regardless of what happens next year, Maddy's memory will come flooding back to play a central role and we'll have more words to put down on paper by next December.

:::

Maddy,

It's been almost three years now, although often it feels as though you were just here. We think of you daily, we miss you mightily, and we remember you always. You're still the most delicate yet strong human we've ever encountered.

Mom, Dad, and Bella

Names and Light

2009-12-08T09:28:00.000-05:00

It's been on the calendar since September; I know, because our photo and written submission were due October 1. And yet, it was just last night when Bella asked what was going on this coming weekend that I realized Sunday night is the annual worldwide candlelight service for children who have died. Per usual, sponsored by Compassionate Friends, and for us, hosted locally at Children's.

For those who haven't been reading since inception (and who can blame you?), the first year we went to this it was . . . rough. It was rough thinking about going, and in the end we were stood up by family members -- the first of many ~~schisms~~ abysses to appear in the relationship we have with extended family.

But. I decided it would make me feel better, and less lonely, and even my load so to speak, if I carried in my coat pocket the names of all the children I know who have died. And you know? It did. And I did it again last year, when Bella and Mr. ABF were kept home with a bilateral ear infection and I went with my Aunt and Uncle. And again, as I absorbed the names and faces of the children in the program in front of me, I silently clutched my stack of names, knowing I wasn't alone in this. None of us are alone in this.

We're planning on going, barring a last-minute massive ear infection for any of us, and again I'd like to carry my names with me. Please note: these names are NOT part of the service, they are not read aloud. I write them down on a piece of paper, and all of the names come with me in my pocket where they keep me company and the palm of hand nicely warm. At our service, they read the names and show the pictures of children who have died at Children's -- some going back before the year I was born, back when fire was invented. Everyone holds candles that look amazing in the frosty winter night, and the grief seems to dissipate skyward into the black. When I return home, the names all go into a bowl next to a candle that is lit nightly until my Christmas decorations overwhelm it all. (Or the cat threatens to dump everything on the floor. Crap happens in this house.)

I love saying the names of your children as I write their names, and put them altogether. There are far too many, and yet it makes me feel so much less alone in my grief and missing.

If you'd like for me to carry your child's name with me this year, please leave a comment with the name. If you'd like me to use a real name and not a blog pseudonym or you'd like to keep this otherwise private, please feel free to email me at tashabf at gmail. As always, I carry the names of children I gathered from my first year doing this, so it's highly likely I already have yours written down, but a reminder and double-check are always welcome.

And please, feel free to light a candle at 7:00 p.m. your time on Sunday, and join in a wave of candlelight remembering Maddy, and those who made impressions despite their short lifespans, earthside or inside.

Lost, and Lost

2009-12-01T14:10:00.001-05:00

On Thanksgiving morning, after reading Bella the comics, I picked up the local section to peruse the obits as is my wont. Imagine my surprise when there, staring back at me, was the name and a picture of my RE -- yes, the new local one we only just saw recently. Twelve days after we last saw him and he cheerily dismissed us to the OB, he had a heart attack while on vacation and died at the young age of 60.

I'd like to paint a heart-tugging tale using wide brush strokes and deep shades about how he helped create life before departing this world himself (and I'm sure he probably did), but that wasn't so much my experience with him. Ironically we ended up not needing his help in that critical regard, if you catch my drift. (At least I thought this was so ironic, I was set to mail in my picture to some cheapy dictionary with the subtitle "Irony Exemplified: geriatric fecundity" under it, when the resident biologist informed me that it wasn't remotely ironic at all and in fact made perfect sense. So maybe I'll get to that bit of narration here or later, we'll see how it goes.) Not to mention I spent a fair amount of time grumbling about his super-sized practice and their propensity to lose stuff. There was also his utterly classic deer in the headlights look about three minutes into our initial consultation. Here I've been wondering how to start this story, if at all, and this provided me with an apt segue. So here we go.

:::

The decision to try and have another child began with candlelight, a bottle of wine, Barry White in the background, and numerous phone calls to various medical institutions. First there was Children's, where I told our point person to tell everyone else that we were thinking of doing this (I know, how private and romantic and spontaneous and all! We'll name the baby after our genetic counselor's phone extension, how's that?), and the plan was that if there were still eggs in the basket, we'd try with our own genetic material. He recommended an RE's office, and I called them next and blindly agreed to go with whomever they scheduled me with. The next call was tough, to the old RE in our old state, who was never informed of what had happened. I didn't recognize the receptionist who told me to fax over a release for our records, so I did with a very short explanatory cover letter and no less than 10 minutes later my phone rang and here it was old RE himself on the line and the first grief-stricken words practically shouted into the phone were, "My God, WHAT HAPPENED??" I cried. He expedited my record release.

I strolled into the new RE's office, with the game plan already composed in my head: I'd go through my reproductive history Greatest Hits!, and stress that what I really wanted right now was information. I'm practically moving with a walker after all, so I wanted to know my FSH and whatnot, and I'd make a decision from there about whether to try or not and how, and with whose gametes. It sounded good to me.

I didn't get much beyond the part where I hand him the pathology report "in case you're interested," when I noticed his eyes were as big as dinner plates and he had picked up the phone and was punching numbers. "You need to speak to Dr. [HotShit]." Butbutbutbut, I stammered, we've talked to the greatest minds in the country, we've thought for 2+ years, I'm FUCKING 40! HELLO!?, we really don't want to talk to another doctor! What on earth could Dr. HotShit tell us we didn't already know or have thought about, and who was she anyway?

Too late, he cut right into my protestations, he handed me the phone with Dr. HS's scheduler on the other end. As a bone I suppose, he told me to come in on CD3 for the usual.

I was a wee pissed. I called my Children's guy to see what the deal was with Dr. HS, and firstly, it was noted she was actually mentioned at the end of the pathology report as someone to send it to. I picked it up, and there in fact was her name. Huh. And my Children's guy went on and on about what HS she really was, and this would be a good thing, and ugh. I decided if this is what it took for the RE to move forward with me as a patient, we could at least sit in this person's office for a few minutes.

Dr. HS's waiting room was completely unremarkable, replete with one of those brochure centers with pamphlets titled, "Chromosomes: The ABC's of X's and Y's," and while we waited for her assistant to intake us, I told Mr. ABF if she made us watch a Troy McClure filmstrip on basic genetics and amnio, I was walking. He said he'd hold the door. We went back, assistant nicely took our history, and went to get Dr. HS.

And like so many doctors I've met on this road, she walked in the room, the spotlights went on, the music swelled, and the dry ice rolled. She said all the right things about being sorry and asking how we were doing, and then quickly ran through Maddy's history. She knew it cold. Even the really recent parts. And even though this woman has multiple degrees including one in genetics, she also was of the opinion that it was probably placental abruption and/or infection, and we were totally reasonable in wanting to get pregnant again. Not that it mattered -- she could have told us the opposite and I'm not sure if I would've changed my mind, but nice to know Dr. HS thought I wasn't insane. We then went into what would happen on a subsequent pregnancy, at the end of which I may have slightly, just a tad wee bit begged her not very subtly to be my MFM. I may have been on the floor with my arms around her pants-leg. And she agreed on the spot, and her assistant piped up that all I needed to do was call her and she'd schedule everything.

No going through the front desk, no hand-wringing explaining my past to a new MFM. It was like being handed the golden ticket.

With a small caveat: Dr. HS wanted to run "some tests" before I got pregnant. Sure! Whatever. Run away. We'll just get them coordinated through the RE's office because how hard can that be, right?

So I do have RE to thank for that connection, even though I'm pretty sure he set it up because he thought we were despondent batshit crayzees who didn't know a chromosome from a allele.

My other great memory of RE was him calling me from home on his day off to tell me my CD3 results. "How old did you say you were? Because you have the levels of a 20 year old." I sat with my jaw on the floor. (And it stayed there until a few weeks later when he told me my progesterone results, which were like the levels of a cardboard box. But whatever, let's focus on the positive.) And, it turns out despite still being a good 18 lbs overweight (e.g., over what I was before getting pregnant with Bella), my glucose/insulin levels were fine, totally normal, that is to say, better than they were. To make even more clear: the whole reason for my 2+ years of infertility prior to Bella, and the raison d'etre behind seeking secondary infertility treatments before Maddy had vanished. RE said something about an IUI, but certainly didn't think I'd have a problem getting pregnant, and definitely no need for meds at the moment.

By now the candles are stubs, the wine is long gone -- the bottle kicked under the table, and Barry is hopelessly stuck on the same endless loop of "Can't Get Enough of Your Love," but we look each other in the eye and decide to do this thing. Let's just get this pesky bloodwork out of the way.

It took my nurse what seemed like ages to find all the right codes and stuff for the myriad clotting, circulation, autoimmune, and general antibody screening tests that Dr. HS wanted, and I finally went in to the lab and they took a gallon of blood in small individually marked vials and I went home to wait by the phone and fix the Barry recording.

And I waited. And waited. And I called the nurse for results, and she said they weren't back, call next week. Next week I started the daily stalking routine and she finally called me back (now over three weeks later) and said, "I called the lab. They never received them, they were all lost en route." Well fuck me, there went a cycle not to mention a gallon-sized zip lock of filled vials. That can't be good for anyone. Back I went, drained my arm, and again sat by the phone to wait.

And then August hit.

There was no way we could go in August. I didn't even call to see if the test results made it, and they certainly didn't call me, and I hardly cared. There was no way I could even think about doing anything in August, including, you know, that. At least that much. Poor Barry got put back on the shelf. But hey look, how convenient, the next cycle starts Bella's first week back in school! I'll call then.

And the first day of school rolled around and I packed up a lunch and stereotypically forgot my camera and we headed in for the Kindergarten parents' coffee reception where I guess we're supposed to stand around and cry or something, and on the way in I merrily started doing math in my head so I could call the office when I got home and . . . I was late. Well, I was on cd28 according to my really bad August math, and for someone who never makes it beyond 26, that's . . . suspicious.

Just for good measure, the lab ALSO lost my second beta draw, forcing me to drive in early on a rainy Saturday morning hoping we could all do math and figure out doubling/tripling over three days instead of two. I casually asked if the lab was like this, big and overworked and overused by multiple offices and prone to just chuck things in the trash when they didn't have time to get around to them, and they stared at me and insisted that they'd never heard of anyone losing results ever. That losing two sets of stuff within the space of two months was really unheard of. Must be me, then. How auspicious.

And hahahahahaha and progesterone supplements, here we are.

I felt a bit . . . guilty? Like a liarliarpantsonfire? going back to see RE and I suppose he felt a bit smug seeing as all he did was point me in the direction of Dr. HS but given that the lab had lost a few results and I felt like patients in this practice really needed to be proactive (when I was about as passive as one could imagine), I'm wondering what would've happened had we really needed assistance. Would they have handed us a turkey baster, pointed us to a private room and gently reminded us to shut off the ultrasound machine when we were finished? RE personally did the first ultrasound to make sure the sac wasn't in my ear canal (not entirely a laughing matter when a resident on the second visit found the heartbeat but couldn't locate the yolk sac, which I really didn't think was biologically possible, but I didn't want to mess with the poor kid's head), and then on subsequent visits stood and chatted with us while residents had all the fun practicing "Find the embryo!" Last we saw him, he smiled, shook our hands, wished us luck, and asked to be kept apprised of what happened.

I'm sure in another life, I'd pull out all of the steaming hot omens in this story -- the wreckage left behind with missing test results and a dead RE aren't exactly good signs, are they. But that was the old me, and the new me understands all the pregnancy omens in the world are contained in a small box of ashes in a bowl on a shelf in my family room, and what happened here was just life.

:::

Although not exactly personally responsible for what lies inside, my RE was a remarkable person. According to his obit, the first in vitro baby in Philadelphia was born in 1983, and RE headed up the IVF center -- the only one in the region. He was considered an IVF pioneer by his peers (and I googled his peers and saw their publications, and damn that's one peer group) and led the center until taking over reproductive surgery. He is survived by his wife, two sons, a grandchild, and I imagine countless, thankful parents and their offspring. Including the girl born in 1983 whose embryo RE apparently looked at under a microscope, a girl who is now a woman with a child of her own.

Thank you, RE, for everything.

Merging

2009-11-24T22:40:00.001-05:00

I remember in Italy, when we mentioned we were renting a car and driving from Florence to Rome (cue hysterical laughter) in order to make some day trips along the way, an Italian told us, "Don't follow the lanes. Don't expect to. Just move with the flow."

Best advice we could've ever received.

Imagine my surprise though, when I went out on my usual run of ~~denial~~ normalcy last Saturday at the beach and found that on the boardwalk was a demarcated lane just for me. Despite the fact that it was a cool, crisp morning and everything was eerily shut down for the season and the boardwalk was close to deserted, I got in my lane and stayed there all the way down and back. Sometimes it's nice to know you fit in somewhere.

:::

Two weeks ago I got a message from Ms. Prufrock at Barren Albion wondering if I lived anywhere in the proximity of [place to remain unnamed, story belongs on her blog] and I believe my reaction was "HOLY SHIT, that's 10 minutes away."

And last Thursday night, I let Ms. Prufrock in my front door and despite popular internet legend, she was not an attention-starved 14-year old boy or a 56 year-old male axe-murderer. She was beautiful and sweet and had this lovely little British lilt despite her Pennsylvania roots, and we sat and drank tea in my kitchen and chatted and it was . . . . awesome. It's really quite strange to sit with someone you've never met, and yet you know their whole backstory. It's like you don't know them at all, and know them more than most.

:::

Less than 24 hours after my tea time (Ms. Prufrock promised not to make fun of my gauche American tea-making skillz, which consist of putting a bag in a mug of water and putting it all in the microwave if I promised not to mention that she sat at my kitchen counter and tried to get her no-plan mobile phone to work and . . . did I just say all that out loud?), I loaded my car with goodies and set off for the shore to meet . . . . total strangers. Psychopaths. Internet hoodlums. Well, ok, not entirely true -- I had met Angie and Sarah before, so I knew it would be at least three against seven (if they were still alive), and I more or less trusted Niobe and Julia since I had communicated with them a bit and knew a bit of non-internet information . . . . but you never know. I mean, even if everyone else there -- M., TracyOC, Lani, Molly, Laura -- was legit, what if (gulp) we all just didn't click? And then I saw people unloading Dogfish Head and Victory beer from their coolers and knew, knew right then and there, that we were all going to get along just fine.

And we did.

There was chatter, and eating, and eating yet again, and laughter, and crying, and even crying because you were laughing so hard. (Ok, that was me.) And everyone just fell into their places at the couch or the table or walking down the boardwalk, and conversation was usually chippy and up but occasionally the elephant entered the room, and how nice to know we were at the convention of florescent pink elephants and no one skipped a beat.

It was so nice to finally fit in.

I think what I really liked was the normalcy -- the knitting (though I don't), the photo taking, the game playing. I didn't know what to expect, and while I didn't think there would be seances and chest beating and shrine design sessions, I was pleasantly surprised at how beachy and weekend-y it all turned out.

I know what you're all thinking, I can sense it through the interwebs, and the answer is . . . YES. Yes computer friends, I DID get a picture of Niobe. Right before she threatened to grab my camera and smash it to bits.

Niobe Playing Jacks

I jest. I would never attempt to photograph such a spirit.

Friday Afternoon News Release, Typical

2009-11-20T14:15:00.001-05:00

Genetics called.

All chromosomes are there, all accounted for, no extras, none missing. No breaks, no obvious translocations.

It's a boy.

I'm 14+w pregnant.

:::

I suppose there's a somewhat humorous and interesting back story here (isn't there always?), but I'll have to sort through what I feel like mashing through and what I don't.

I guess the big thing is that I thought this would be hard. That I'd either be a) petrified, cowering in the closet, clutching my safety blanket and weeping while rocking back and forth and wishing a coma upon myself, or b) fighting off hope. DAMN YOU! GET AWAY YOU INSOLENT LITTLE SHIT! BEGONE! (Stamps foot, sprays poison, wields blowtorch.)

I'm neither. Frankly, I'm nothing. This has, to this point, been the most out-of-body experience ever. I stare at the ultrasound screen, and I might as well be watching television. They flip it off, and I ask when I need to come back. My due date has been said out loud to me a grand total of once, and thank goodness for short-term memory loss, because I've honestly forgotten. Something in May. Mid-May, I think. I function. I'm . . . nothing. I'm not pessimistic, which is good, but nor am I optimistic. I feel surprisingly fine, good even, which perhaps is significant, or maybe just evident considering I'm not moving to another state, I'm not bleeding, I've yet to visit the ER (knock wood, throw salt), and I don't have a two-year-old. I've been cleared to run, so I lace up my shoes and leave out the back door and inhale the Fall and it's like none of this is really happening.

And right now that's exactly what I need.

So . . . . no C-word please. You know the drill. We know if this works, um, sometime in May. Save the C-stuff for the first day of Kindergarten.

Seeing in the Dark

2009-11-17T16:05:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, the US Preventative Services Taskforce recommended that the age of regular mammogram screening get bumped up to 50 from 40. Furthermore, they stated that getting screened every two years was enough.

In addition to providing fodder for the next conversation with the ol' OBG, this story crystalized some of my newfound problems with modern medicine as a result of Maddy's death. Do you have any problems with doctors, medicine, technology, or science in general as a result of your experience? Join me today over on Glow In The Woods.

Own Goal

2009-11-11T08:54:00.002-05:00

As a soccer fan, I was shocked to read the headline yesterday about Robert Enke, a German goalkeeper who apparently, willfully, lethally, put himself in the path of a train. According to all reports, he was to be named Germany's starting goalkeeper in next year's World Cup.

And as a soccer fan, may it be said I would've been drawn to this story whether he was a German goalie or a Ugandan midfielder, and as a human being I would have kept reading the story -- whether he played soccer or not.

I wrote about attempted suicide in the second post I ever wrote for this blog. I remember that particular story and person being a small paradigm shift of sorts for me: pain is yours, no matter the cause. And gratefully, my pain at that moment was no where near as great. Poor Owen Wilson gave me relativity, exemplified my first lesson in pain olympics, and proved that despite my shitty circumstances I was able to still show sympathy, and empathy. And did I mention gratefulness of my own pitiful condition? I should underscore that: I wanted to disappear, but at the end of that metaphor, I always wanted to come back.

I don't know what drives people to want to end their lives, but I no longer compare rationales because in the end it's moot: it's what the individual feels, and who am I to judge what someone feels?

Buried at the end of the saga of Enke, the lovely quotes from coaches and teammates and fans, descriptions of mourning taking place, pictures of candles and flowers, was this:

Enke is survived by his wife and eight-month-old daughter, who the couple adopted.

The couple's two-year-old daughter died in 2006 from a heart condition, and [soccer commentator and journalist Rafael] Honigstein said the loss of his child had taken a toll on Enke.

That brought me to my knees. Because I do know this pain. I just don't know his.

Rest in peace, Robert. And my profound sympathy to his family.

Un-muted

2009-10-15T09:54:00.005-04:00

I may be quiet here, but I have a new post up on GITW today about my newfound ability to discuss death.

Also: Today, October 15, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. I have a pin I will wear today, and will light a candle at 7 p.m. tonight in memory of Maddy, and all of yours. Much love.

Excuses

2009-10-14T13:19:00.003-04:00

Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for not posting.

In No Apparent Order

2009-09-22T13:02:00.000-04:00

I owe y'all pictures of the garden. So! First there was this:

which led to this,

pun completely intended. We ripped out poison garden, and my industrious husband built these:

(Two more to be added next year.) It was July by now, so we threw in seeds for beets, arugula, lettuces, carrots, and beans. At the nursery we found a couple herbs and peppers and a really raggedy tomato plant, all looking withered and on deep discount. We threw them in too.

It's not quite the harvest we wanted or intended but hey, I'm an aim-low kinda gal now. At least we know we can actually grow things to next year should be fun.

My big conundrum now is what to do in the bed adjoining the garden (see behind Bella's shoulder in the cucumber picture? The round bank of windows with a basement window underneath? That one); it had been over-ridden by some vine weed and mint (people, don't put mint in the ground. Grow it in a container, or if you must put it in the ground, plant the whole effin' container in the ground. I learned this valuable life lesson when I was about six from my mother, and am mystified to find people who don't realize what a pervasive weed it can be). The original plan was to put in blueberry bushes, but now with the lead we are not so crazy with this idea. Someone (I'm going out on a limb here and assuming not the people who planted the mint) planted peonies, which I really liked, but were overtaken and smothered. I'm toying with more of those and something tall in the corner next to the door (butterfly bush?). I welcome suggestions.

:::

Because we've been busy with getting rid of houseguests and school and whatnot, the fishtank was cleaned and refilled (and forgotten pretty much, but) and has now been "established" for at least a month. We now have an ammonia sensor, not to mention a couple bottles of stuff to regulate water chemicals. The filter is clean and running. In total, I've probably spent $70 on fish-tank related accouterments. And yesterday, we went and bought two tiny feeder goldfish -- that bill was 28 cents. I told my mom this was apparently about guilt.

:::

We're now wading knee deep in Fall and in addition to the pile of minutia I need to deal with, I've added to my docket . . . .coaching. No, for real. I am now head coach of Bella's soccer team after a fair amount of arm twisting and then using the arm to beat my husband over the head with. It's nerveracking, it wears me out, it's hilarious. After more than 20 years of playing the game, coaching the first time really puts things in perspective and has forced me to return to the essential, the raw, the root: Don't touch the ball with your hands. Followed closely by, Don't take the ball away from your teammate. The point is to score a goal. (A point quickly retracted when my wee scrimmage team goes up 3-zip in about two minutes, and I then tell them I'm not counting any more goals until I see them use today's skill of pulling the ball backwards on the way to the ball going in the net.) For me, it's a valuable lesson in not swearing for an hour, not laughing (out loud), realizing that running around with eleven 5-7 year-olds wears me the hell out. Aging is not a pretty thing.

It's also served to remind me that I haven't completely turned into some bitter, pariah freak of nature that really shouldn't be around innocent lovelies, even if I do know a thing or two about how to effectively bend a corner kick. It's reminded me I used to love soccer. Apparently, I still do.

:::

It's my first fall with my new kitchen. Last year I wistfully looked at the recipes for baked apple whatevertheheck, and this year I'm itching for an excuse to make pumpkin cake. (Does one need an excuse?) We've ushered in the season of hot breakfasts, and afternoon cups of tea. It almost feels like my first settled fall -- the first one where I wasn't in fear about the spooky pregnancy, or tied in emotional knots, or running my house out of a makeshift kitchen while contractors took up residence in my downstairs. The first fall where I can now sit with my tea and pumpkin cookie and look at my favorite tree in the yard, and watch the yellow and red start to erupt behind it.

I wonder if life will be like this, always a series of firsts as Time that uneven bitch makes it way beneath my feet.

I'm sure there's more, but seriously, I'm still catching up on my August Tivo. Not to mention my blogroll. Which I feel like a real asshole about. I'll come say hi, I promise. PROMISE. In the meantime, what are your Fall plans if any? (I know this is loaded, any season is a ton of crap for some, so I'm really sorry. Feel free to tell me about those plans, too. Really.) Also, have any of you ever considered letting your parents live with you? Because when we moved here, we honestly thought this was in the realm of possibility. After August, we're both thinking we were fucking mental to have ever entertained that thought, and we've forbidden each other from speaking of It ever again.

I Think That Was Me on TV

2009-09-17T09:36:00.002-04:00

Ever run across a fellow babyloss parent on television, in a book, in the movies, in a play? Were they sad or psycho? Depressed or drunk? Feel you could write this stuff better if given the chance? I've got a post up today on babyloss parents in popular culture over at Glow In The Woods.

Cusp of Solstice

2009-09-05T15:12:00.001-04:00

(One of my favorite pictures of grandma with Bella, age 4 months)

(In the middle of my grandmother's very overly-long memorial service, Bella turns to me and says in conversational voice):

I wish I was at camp.

I wish I was at camp too.

*

Bella we missed you yesterday!

I was at the Deadness Thing for my grandma.

***

Funerals are odd in that they're sort of fun family reunions minus the fun. I shouldn't say that -- there's still fun around the edges, but sometimes the funny stories take a sharp turn and you find your eyes brimming over, or someone else's voice cracks mid-story and everyone's left fumbling in an unexpected pause of silence.

I got to talking with one of my mother's cousins from Florida, one I don't think I had seen in over a decade if not longer (there was a family reunion in '98, but my memory is a bit fuzzy on all the cousins -- the one great uncle had a LOT of kids). I spoke during the service, framing my discussion on my grandmother's lousy cooking (in a real stretch for me, I tried to make it funny and touching), and cousin told me how much she loved what I had said, and how many memories it pulled out for her. And after lingering over some photos she turned to me and put her hand on my arm and said,

I'm sorry, I only just heard that you recently lost a child.

I did the two sentence spiel I have canned for such occasions, and she said,

You know, my mother had a baby who died. Gregory. He was three days old. They say he choked, probably on phlegm that no one then thought to rid him of. He was perfect. My mother couldn't speak of him for years without fully breaking down. I grew up knowing my brother that I never knew.

You can't know how relieved this made me -- not that there was another deadbaby in the family tree, but that here was this grown, totally sane, well-put-together smart beautiful woman with a family of her own who had gone through this. Whose mother had gone through this. She in no way looked as though she were living under a bridge, and though I've only seen about 10 minutes of Jerry Springer and a grand total of five or so Oprah episodes, she didn't look familiar from either milieu. Phhhhheeeeewwwwww.

I told her how much I now appreciated the silver lining of being able to talk to Bella straightfowardly about things like Grandma's death and funeral, and Bella exemplified this moments later by delicately tiptoing on the fresh mound of dirt covering my grandmother in order to see what flowers were still alive after last week's burial. No fear, this one, King of the Hill of Death.

***

The cemetery in which my grandmother is buried is older than some, but for this region decided not "old" -- I think the stones closest to the church date back to the early 1800s (this was indeed a stretch of road where Washington rode and slept, and some of the churches just up the street must have older occupants), which give way to the recent, as you walk back through the yard, to the last row where my grandmother now lies. I always pause at the military stones to read which war, and how old. (There's a veteran of the Spanish-American war in the same column as my grandmother a few rows back, and I've already promised myself when I go to plant pansies and bulbs by my grandmother, I'm weeding his place and tidying up.) As a historian I'm always fascinated by family structures: how many wives/husbands over time, how many children, elderly sisters who are buried as neighbors. Now of course I laser in on the children: fourteen years old; ten years; three, one, and then . . . there it is. A life measured in days.

***

At some point in early July, when I realized summer was getting away from us and we weren't going to the Outer Banks because the family that we usually meet up with there had decided to go even farther southward (should we take this as a message?), I suggested that we quick find a close beach getaway for a few days or a weekend in August. I hope that laughing I hear is with me, not at me. August obviously got sucked into a maelstrom of houseguests, grocery runs, meals, trips to the country, funerals, services, cleaning up and out my grandmother's things, and that ever familiar drive-through of grief. I'll take the usual. So last Monday, I piped up -- mostly to myself -- let's go to the beach! And go we went, to a close one, for two days and one night. Beach for Bella, brewpub for us.

It was unseasonably chilly, extremely windy, overcast; there were tidal warnings, red flags, anxious life guards; wind burn, sand in every orifice . . . . . and it was AWESOME. The sand was clean and soft and perfect for castles, we bundled up in our covers and rash guards (save Bella, who is a leper when it comes to water, and ran around in her swim suit as if it were a sunny , still 92 degrees), read, napped, watched a pack (school? herd?) of dolphins swim by, oogled at the parasurfers, ate, slept, and went back for more. I made no decisions. I didn't make a meal. It was a slice of heaven.

Now I'm back staring at the yard I didn't weed for a month, the list of school supplies I didn't shop for, the soccer gear I need by next weekend, the garden that needs tending, the fridge that needs disinfected and I'm wondering, where did summer go? I could point to times when it was fast, and times when it was slow. Overall, it was . . . disappointing. I'm going to eat home-grown beet salad for dinner, and look forward to Fall.

Good Grief

2009-08-22T23:27:00.001-04:00

Is Grandma going to die?
Yes love.
When?
This week.
Yeah, but what day?
They don't know.
The doctors can't tell you that?
No.

:::

A million moons ago, sometime in July, began the influx of house guests. They came to party primarily, and say hello, and for my mom there was also the added benefit of a high school reunion. At some point in this initial seizure of good times, my grandmother was hospitalized for dehydration.

I suppose no one ever foresees this kinda thing, but in that bout of institutionalization came MRSA. Followed by organ failure. The day my mother was to drive west for a few days of wine and old yearbook hilarity, we had a conversation in my kitchen about DNR's where I suddenly found the following words leaving my mouth, as though my lips were possessed by their own small wee brain:

I know all situations and doctors are different, but when we were at Children's . . . . . There's a lot of gray area in there between "yes" and "no." You can give them a half-assed answer, there's a lot of wiggle room . . . .

Under what circumstances does a daughter tell her mother these things?

For a while, grandma was "stable." And anyone with time clocked in the NICU knows "stable" simply means "not plummeting in a death spiral at the moment." It does not mean "good," or even "better." She wasn't eating. She recognized a vase from her china set when I brought in flowers. Me not so much. Because of the infection, we all had to suit up, and I had to wear gloves just to touch her.

There is no comfort in latex.

After stabilization came a stint at the nursing home, and decisions were made about hospice. There was no time line, but it was understood that she was seriously compromised and the next step -- whether in days, weeks, or even months; whether a small stumble or a flying headfirst leap -- would be her last. Plans were made to dislodge the house guests.

And then hospice called: we could expect only days. Flights were changed; my brother madly hopped on a red-eye.

And after dinner on Monday I drove out to the nursing home to say goodbye.

Did you touch her?
I touched her hair. It was so soft. She's not in pain, she's very peaceful. She didn't talk. She looked like she was sleeping. I told her you loved her.

It was deja vu all over again, sitting in a dark nursing home room, listening to her shallow, long breaths. Her eyes were closed, she may well have been sleeping, and I sat not knowing what to say. Again. A life so short, I couldn't possibly cram everything in versus a life so long I couldn't possibly cram everything in. I left it at I love you. Awkwardly hunched over a bed, this time with no suiting up but strict instructions to wash my hands very well afterwards. Some things never change.

My brother's plane touched down at 8:19 a.m the following morning; Grandma died at 8:00 a.m.

Bella, Grandma died.
Oh. Will we bury her?
Yes.
Can I help?
Yes.

Pieces of conversations slammed me: "We're going to the funeral home. I have no idea how long it will be; I don't know what they do there." I do. But I decided not to regale them -- they'd find out soon enough.

The funeral director offered to include ashes in the casket, and apparently there was a whispered conversation between my aunt and Mr. ABF about Maddy's remains. We were touched, but opted no. Grandma will be buried at her church, where she's been a member for 40+ years -- a move I couldn't argue was more perfect for her. It is not perfect for us.

The burial was Friday, a private affair, just immediate family plus one family who will not be there for the memorial service next week. Plus since my dad can't lift, we needed another pallbearer. We stood in the hot noontime sun, my aunt, my mother, and I wearing grandma's jewelry we had laid claim to the day before while sorting through her apartment. We went to a brew pub afterwards and drank and ate. And that evening, we all dissolved in tears.

Can we visit Grandma?
Next week at the memorial we will. And later this fall we'll plant flowers, ok?
Great.

It has been an incredibly long month. We've had uninterrupted house guests since July 29, and more are on the way this week. I have been in constant motion since July 27 or so, always planning the next 48 hours. I am exhausted.

For Bella's birthday my father gave her a fish tank, and since that fateful day, we've been through (I am not making this up) 8 fish. We finally realized the primary goldfish we bought was aggressively trying to make meals out of his/her compatriots, and then sadly the last partner we brought in brought disease with. Before the major cemetery ceremony, we had a few in the back yard. Until that got old.

Do you want to bury Lily in the yard or flush her so she goes back into the water?
Flush her. I'll do it.

Poor kid has overseen 9 burials in the past four weeks. The silver lining is that although there have been tears, there has been only honestly, no mincing of words, no euphemisms. No hiding, no secrets, no lying. No finding a babysitter. She has asked great questions, she understands perfectly that we will never see grandma again.

Mom, can you get another grandma if yours dies?
No love. No you can't.

Sadly, I know exactly where she's going with this.

Spare the Messenger?

2009-08-17T13:02:00.002-04:00

Still processing how family and friends deliver the new me news of a delicate nature. Please go share your stories and opinions today at Glow in the Woods.

Spinal Tap

2009-08-11T16:00:00.000-04:00

I started this blog with the primary purpose of recording my grief. I thought there would come a day when the writing would wane, when all that was left to say was said. When all the metaphors had been used, all the social ramifications had been chewed through (or perhaps more accurately, put through a shredder), and we hit some plateau regarding our daughter and our missing.

Today is not that day.

:::

Saturday a.m. I awoke late and somewhat . . . well surprisingly, not hungover per se, but full? Still tired? Friday evening, neighbors invited 10 of us to celebrate their anniversary with a trip to one of the area's top-rated restaurants and even sprung for a bus so no one would have to drive (and thank goodness, because by "Philly area" we're actually talking "practically Delaware"). It was delicious, it was wonderful, and I haven't laughed that hard since . . . well I honestly can't remember the last time I was surrounded by people I considered friends and laughed quite that hard. Probably grad school.

So there I am, weeding with coffee mug in hand, smiling at this great thing that is now my life and thinking I wouldn't eat for at least four more days, when Mr. ABF got a call and walked away looking somewhat grim and serious. Huh. Inside a bit later he approached me and said, "[SIL] had a baby this a.m.; they had to deliver it early due to pre-ecclampsia." I got wide eyed and asked how far along she was, expecting the absolute worst since we hadn't heard boo from or about them in over a year, and was met with a steely, "Nine months. Over 37 weeks. Baby is fine. They never told us she was pregnant."

We sat there and gaped at each other. I kinda understand his (asshole) brother not telling us because dude doesn't talk to us anymore. I actually consider him least to blame in this present mess. Mr. ABF's mother though, was in my house for five days last week and said nothing. She invited over shitloads of relatives who ate at my table and said nothing. Only minutes before getting the serious phone call, Mr. ABF called to confirm a late birthday celebration for Bella at his Dad's, and he said nothing. Let's forget for a moment, the past -- let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say six -- six months of interaction with this family. We found out from a cousin, who apparently sat in stunned silence on the line and said, "I thought you knew."

Within a space of minutes, we realized we had become the social pariahs, the fragile freaks around whom no one can speak freely (apparently), and we felt like utter assholes. Everyone tiptoeing around us now thinking they deserved some fucking medal for not speaking the P-word, but never once considering to simply stop and ask us: How are you guys feeling these days anyway? How are you doing? Never once in this entire two and half years stopping to say, "You know, we still think of Maddy all the time. I know this hasn't been easy." No, they simply assumed through the vast powers of osmosis and probably some bad made-for-television movie swirled with a bit of family drama, that "we couldn't handle it." No one in this entire fucking family could find the stones to start a conversation, "I'm going to tell you something, and I realize it may hurt, and I understand that completely, but I didn't want you not to know . . . "

I suppose the supreme irony here is that my reaction would have been: whatever. Honestly. I'm kinda beyond the pregnancy = jealousy stage, and into the pregnancy = fear stage. I root solidly for my online friends to find two lines in the morning. When my mother said to me about six months ago, "[SIL] is having some infertility issues -- she's wondering if it's ok to talk to you," I leaped at the chance to help her. Know why? She's been one the good ones, one of the best ones. One that's communicated with me from the get go, one that interweaves Maddy into everyday conversation like it's no big deal. I can honestly say I'd be thrilled if anything I told her resulted in a healthy, live baby. Is there a twinge of regret? Sure there is. Honestly though, I'm more put off by the banter than I am the actual news/view, and I'm a big girl and can go entertain myself just fine, thanks, when the conversation veers toward college funds and the best place to get maternity formal wear. Mr. ABF's BIL? We don't even talk to these people. Hearing they were expecting their second would probably draw a lesser reaction from me than finding out a neighbor was.

But. They obviously wouldn't know I've come around to this position (or, that I ever had another position on the subject, frankly) because no one every bothered to talk to us. About anything.

And I realized, as I ran through the vast array of bullshit we've experienced with the IL's since Maddy's death, that Maddy's death was just one big inconvenience to them. It upset travel plans. Holidays would be "too depressing" to spend with us. Memorial services "too wet." The only feedback we've ever received are things like "you're wallowing." And now apparently they can't talk to us either. Poor them, the verbal gymnastics they've had to endure this year.

When we had the blowup with FIL two Decembers ago, our therapist said "I don't recommend cutting off communication with family unless there's abuse involved." To which I responded, "Damn." But we tried to be the bigger people. We sucked it up, we tried to make people comfortable around us for the sake of Bella -- so she could have relationships with people. And now we discover people weren't communicating with us at all -- they were communicating around us, they were communicating in spite of us. And now, frankly, I'm tired of playing fifth grade and am ready to move on to people who take us for what we are: parents of a live child and a dead child who have come a long way in two years. We have such an amazing support and friend system here, it seems a waste to spend time on people who would feel more comfortable if we weren't in the room.

:::

I opted not to go to my FIL's this weekend when it was determined that I would not be able to keep my mouth shut this time. (I even offered to drive a second car in the event I turned tail and walked out the door.) And perhaps, good thing, because FIL was genuinely shocked that we didn't know, and at one point in the afternoon apparently turned to Mr. ABF and said,

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I'm giving him a few points for this, delay notwithstanding. It's nice an old dog can learn new tricks, but a whole lot of crap could've been avoided here if someone in this family had uttered those seven words about, oh, 26 months ago, and then continued to use them every now and again. Also nice I wasn't there, because the "talk" would've been a stream of expletives. They talked, although no consensus was reached: FIL feels badly, but I'm not sure I'm ready to let him off the hook for "I thought you knew." Someone had to step up. Someone had to ask around.

FIL also said, "Here we thought you knew, and we've been walking on eggshells." And this? Made me feel like a big, fat freak. When I told one of my good friends this whole soggy story, her response was "It sounds like they've projected a whole lot of crazy on you." She's absolutely right. (Incidentally and somewhat pertinent to this narrative, this friend is nine months pregnant.) (Hahaha, funny story about how I found about her pregnancy: SHE TOLD ME. I know! ) I feel as if last weekend (and countless times before) I had people into my home, cleaned for them and made them dinner, gave them our good bottles of wine and entertaining conversation . . . . but they were all in on the performance art of the evening. They had a conversation on the way about the entertainment, and unbeknownst to me, it was me. And when they left, I can almost hear them saying to each other walking down the porch stairs, "Dude, you're right! What a fucking freak show! We're back for lunch tomorrow, right?"

I guess we were supposed to find out at Christmas time, when Bella's present arrived "from" another child's name we didn't recognize. I guess in their heads that would hurt less than simply sitting down and telling us. Scratch that, it would hurt THEM less if that's how we found out. Because who wants to sit down and talk to us?

Today's post brought to you by the Cold War Kids : Something is Not Right with Me. How Was I supposed to know?

Crash Into People who're sleeping late into the evening
Reach behind they can hardly find their spines.

Lightning, And This Time I Mean It

2009-08-05T08:38:00.000-04:00

Two weekends ago, on the 26th, we dragged Bella to an outdoor rock concert. We decided to leave when we did in part because I could sense the internal meltdown slowly brewing, but also because the sky looked a wee tad ominous. On the drive home we had a view of the coming storm through our windshield, and at one point, a dagger of lightning sliced across the sky sideways. It was beautiful, blue, veined. "I've never seen like lightning like that," Bella cooed.

:::

Wednesday, the big day, at around 5 p.m., we had what is a typically normal but this summer is a bit unusual afternoon thundershower. There was thunder, and lightning, and a tree across the street got hit dropping a branch onto the electric wire. Poof went the electric, in came the fire department, the electric guys, and finally, the bastard tree butcherers. It was an "event" as no one got hurt, and everyone gathered on our corner to gape and chat and talk about their crude 19th century evenings.

Ours went like this: we have a gas range, which was already lit since daddy made his little girl homemade tomato sauce for her birthday. We simply slid the pot off the flame, and popped on our pasta, and ate a lovely dinner by candlelight. Afterwards, we invited a neighbor family over for champagne and s'mores, outside, next to the grill. Rough, right out of Little House on the Prairie. Well, everything minus an outfit Bella received from a far-flung relative that had her father and I gaping and struggling for words when she came out to model it. (Seriously, this is from a major kid's clothing chain -- one I never shop at, incidentally, and now I remember why -- and in size 6 they make a rhinestone encrusted tightly fitted cotton halter top with matching skirt. "Your job to keep her off the pole," I whispered to Mr. ABF and then turned to Bella, told her she was absolutely stunning, but she did know this was a dress up box outfit, yes? Dress up for what exactly remains to be seen. Please no one send her the matching thigh-high white leather boots.)

We had planned Bella's school-chum party for Friday evening; I invited a gaggle figuring it was summer and only 10 would show up, but, gak, 18 accepted the invitation to drop their children off for dinner, cake, and a moon bounce. Whatever, how hard can that be?

Thursday I watched the weather report go from 20 to 40 to 70% chance of showers on Friday. And Friday evening, three minutes before the scheduled start of the outdoor party and hot dog grillathon, the heavens opened. In my house were 18 amped kids who blew through my "rain back up plan B" activities in about 4 minutes. Over was the draw a picture of yourself guest list; whatever-d were the foam doorhandles, cool but quickly completed was the scavenger hunt. When there appeared the slightest glimmer of light through the drops I hissed at Mr. ABF, "Go blow up that thing, NOW." All 18 hustled into the moon bounce. Skies clear, kids eat, kids pinata, kids bounce again. Party saved, barely.

Saturday was the get-together for the neighborhood (sunny, of course), which featured "Adult Bounce" on the hour ("Man Bounce" was especially entertaining), followed by dinner for about 16.

I woke up Sunday, groggy, tired, and facing rain. We packed up the soggy moon bounce, and Mr. ABF went to return it, and I stepped in the shower.

Just as I turned off the water, there was a huge crack of thunder coming at the same time as the flash. Moments later, while toweling my hair, I heard the fire engine go by our house, and stop nearby. I traipsed out the front door in bare feet, and admittedly a small smirk on my face, completely expecting to see a live wire dancing down through the neighbor's yard.

I was met by clouds of black smoke.

My neighbor's house was on fire. In fact, two of my neighbors' houses were on fire: lightning hit one side of the twin, and the fire jumped the roof to the other. I ran down in driving rain to . . . . I don't know. What compels people to run to certain things and not others? Just the day before as I was grocery shopping there was a police take-down of some guy near the fish counter. No idea what happened (Out of Easy-Peel shrimp? That always pisses me) , and I honestly just tried to mind my biz and not gape. And yet here I was going to the mouth of the disaster. I met my one neighbor standing on the sidewalk looking as if she personally had been struck by lightning -- if she were a cartoon, I'd put swirls in her eyes. "Is everyone out?" "Yes," she responded, clearly a million miles away. "Let me take the dogs," I said and she robotically stuck out her hands with the leashes and off I went to add two more canines to my brood at home.

Everyone got out, including three cats and three dogs between two houses. One side was two-thirds damaged, but the other side -- only just recently renovated -- was totaled. It's a gut. Again.

My awesome neighborhood absorbed both families and their children, clothes were found, toys were pulled out of yard-sale bins, pizzas were ordered, wine was poured, dogs were walked, tv's were housed, suitcases were loaned in order to dump clothes into them. We've all been walking around bewildered, stunned, that one minute you can be minding your business on a Sunday morning, and the next, your life is up in flames.

I guess a lot of us understand that metaphorically, but it's really grim to see it happen literally.

The family came late in the afternoon to collect their dogs -- they needed to be with them, and I understood that completely. When I asked what she needed, she looked like a zombie with the eye swirls returning, and I said, hey -- I'll come by in a few days and ask again. You'll know more then. In the meantime, just ring the bell and ask. We went for a walk after dinner this evening, in the beautiful breeze of a sunny summer evening, as if the perfect day had just occurred. Past the charred remains of two homes, emiting smoke fumes. Contractors already at work with tarp and plywood. Past the littered front porches of the adjoining houses, which now contain the saved remains of two families lives.

:::

I've always had a secret fascination with thunder storms. Since a child, I've loved counting in between the flash and the boom (a trick I've used often this summer while trying to grill, standing safely on my porch figuring how much time I have to go flip things over), feeling the bass run through my legs, watching the lightning dance and weave. I've never been afraid of being struck -- maybe before because I was naive, and afterwards because . . . . I don't know. Naivite again? Won't get struck twice? Figure I can live through it, so run and enjoy?

Sunday, I sat in my family room, holding a shaking, soggy dog (not my own), listening to yet another wave of thunder and lightning go through (1, 2, it's getting closer). The rain was torrential (we got 4" on Sunday, alone), the multi-alarm fire had trucks planted outside our house tapping the two hydrants and running them down the middle of the street and through neighbors' back yards. Mr. ABF came in with an update: a few of the trucks were getting peeled off to go fight another lightning-inspired fire a few blocks away.

(That one didn't turn out so well.)

And I sat watching the fireman run like ants from my window, and willed that storm away. No more. No more lightning. No more heartache, no more work and danger for these guys, no more acrid smoke. Please no more.

A front is supposed to move through this afternoon. I will sit through it, undoubtedly, jaw firmly clenched with my fingers hovering around 9-1-1, counting. Always counting.

Gravitational Pull

2009-07-29T07:43:00.000-04:00

It dawned me sometime in the last few months that I really no longer know what "normal" parenting is. And I hear you saying, But Tash, there is no "normal." Everyone is different, every family is different, every child is different. And I know that. But when I look back on the last five years of Bella, it's hard to assess it without the prism of Maddy. What is it like to parent an only child -- an only child by choice? What's it like to parent to two -- when both are on the same plane of existence? What is it like to be distracted -- by a job, a death in the family, a midlife crisis? I wanted, when this all started five years ago, to be a fun mom, a friend mom, an honest mom, a mom that didn't do baby talk and a mom who wasn't afraid to introduce my musical tastes on my kid at an early age (which may have backfired this weekend when we took her to the local radio station's outdoor rock fest and she asked if The Killer's were going to be there. Um, no. And then expressed extreme disappointment when I told her that The Police were not only not going to be there, but were no longer a band. Growing up is tough, y'all. Now how to break it to her about The Beatles). I'm not sure what I've been, exactly, but I'm hoping I was there, not too mean, not to exasperated, not too exhausted.

The common refrain looking back on a child's life is how fast things are going, and indeed I suppose they are. But time is funny now, defined mostly by six particular days. At times those days seemed so painfully long, so brutally eternal, we pleaded with any deities listening to end it and now. And at times, so brief, faster than a insect's life span, caught in a whirlwind of paperwork and decisions and kleenex, before we could know -- before we could know her. After this, time is no longer measured in fast and slow, but beauty and ugliness and truth.

Four? Was rough. But is this normal, or is it . . . . you know. I finally came out of my coma for four, so maybe I'm just feeling the sass more than I did? My therapist suggested that kids are extremely perceptive, and that Bella probably kept it together herself a bit if she sensed I was fragile, but now that I'm back to my steel-plated-armored-Mercedes self, she's more apt to lob rocks and let loose with the demanding and the whining and see what kind of effect she generates. Don't get me wrong -- I'm lovin' most of the independence: she can dust while I sweep (and it's still a novelty!), and on the 4th of July, decorated cupcakes while I sat on the computer. She's developing a sense of humor (perky!), and is inquisitive an fun as hell. There's just no one trailing anymore to go through the milestones, again. Bella was two and a half when Maddy died, and although I don't play the "She woulda been ____" game anymore, we're now two and half years beyond her death. And for some reason I feel as though I've passed another odd milestone, and am now in an area where I know nothing of what the future holds for any of us. And for me at least, that's a relief.

There were conversations when I was pregnant about parenting two children with this particular age gap. Mr. ABF and his brother are roughly 2.5 years apart, and they never got along. He was very churlish during the pregnancy -- very defensive of Bella and her space -- and at times I got downright angry, feeling as though he was taking sides before the child was even here. My brother and I were five years apart, and mostly got along, and now I wonder whether things would be fine if we had another, or would just blow her brain in a way that would never recover. Would any of us recover?

:::

On July 27, 2004, I felt a rush of water from down yon. Which they later told me that afternoon was not THAT water. Which they then told me 36 hours later, was in fact amniotic fluid. I know now, having read of all the possible tragedies that this was not a good thing. And maybe in another universe I would tell this story dramatically and with a flourish, taking my audience to the edge of the cliff only to release the parachute: "But when my temperature started rising, they quickly suctioned her out! And here she is!" Back we all shuffle away from the rim to enjoy the view.

Now I know what lies at the bottom of the gorge, what it's like for the rail to falter and to pitch over the edge headfirst and watch the cliff-side rush past your eyes in a blur. And now I know it's just luck, just random, nothing special I did, no master-stroke of Darwinism or obstetrics, just sheer luck that she's here, stuffing a unicorn pinata with cavity-causing goodness.

I remember on July 27, turning to my husband and saying, "This baby is angling to take over the center of our lives. Just watch, s/he'll be born on our anniversary, insuring that we'll never get time to ourselves on that day ever again." And I was right. Literally. About the shared anniversary, and about being the center. She is it. There is no other. There is only a distant moon that orbits around all of us, sometimes so close you could almost reach out and touch its harvest orange, and sometimes on the other side of our earth. Often eclipsed now, but still reflecting light.

:::

July 27 means something else for Janis; what for me was mild warning (shoo'd away like a pesky fly) was for her the drop of the blade. Her story -- Ferdinand's, really -- starts and tragically ends July 27 too; the understanding that a child will always be central to her universe, but strangely never there. And July 29, 2007, what could have been a random sharing of dates between two children, three years apart, never to cross paths, fell. And because one lived and one did not, our family's paths crossed and intertwined, and now it's a date shared, a slice of the cosmos all too familiar and ironic and bittersweet.

We joke that Bella will never forget our anniversary, but that she'll never do anything about it. We'll never forget Ferdinand's birthday, though I'm at a complete loss as to what to do in order to acknowledge it. Hit the pinata especially hard, I suppose.

It's all tied up together, this day of overlapping sentiments, this gift of uneven edges -- the beautiful, the promising, the truth. It is appropriate, it is complete, it is why we are here.

Happy Birthday, Ferdinand.
Happy Birthday, Bella.
Happy Anniversary, Us.

And the Livin' is (more or less) Easy

2009-07-17T08:40:00.002-04:00

Geez, I feel as if I have so much to say and yet neither time or inclination to get it down. "Wow, THAT'S blogable!" I think whipping out the phone to take a picture, or running through a few pithy sentences in my head. But the box never opens and fingers never type.

It's summer, the AC is on for the first time this year, and we have less a summer schedule than perhaps a summer rhythm. There's wake up time, which is sometimes early ("Mom! The sun is really bright in my room! My clock says 6:40. Hey Dad, do the Eagles play today?" I hear a muffled "No hon, the Phillies, it's summer" from the other side of the bed and lift a sleepy eye to see Bella toodling out in her Eagle's jersey and underwear, headed back to her room for outfit change number one of the day), and sometimes late (Yesterday? 8:30. I kid you not. The last time I slept in until 8:30 was . . . well, it was some time ago. But I was in a benedryl-induced coma, and Mr. ABF had a book to read, so up he got, and I just kept snoring).

Then some mornings there's a camp, or a swim lesson, or sometimes it's just barbies and hiking with the dogs, laundry and Tour de France. (And despite not having free seconds of time to use the toilet alone, I'm somehow finding time to read Lance's Tweets. Someone shoot me.) And there are playdates, and the garden . .

The garden! You know, I was going to post a picture, but the yard needs mowed and the sunflowers are looking to bloom -- maybe next week? So I'll get a picture then.

In short, we begin anew. Mr. ABF built us two lovely cedar boxes, and filled them with mushroom soil. In are already-started herbs and a tomato plant that was on the Throw-Out shelf for a buck, and some seeds that should bear us carrots and beans and beets and lettuces in early fall. Many neighbors are now testing for lead, and I even received some email after the last post from readers in other urban locations who are testing. Good for you! Now to test my water.

Summer . . . Anyway, point being, I don't have the blocks of time I usually do to sit on the computer. If there is a chunk of time it's "Let's go the pool!" and I'm not remotely complaining, but, well, it means nothing gets written for me or you.

And I sometimes miss it -- both the writing for me and the commenting.

:::

It's strange, I remember early on in this grief business when my emotions just took me whenever -- opening the fridge, in the car, on the stairs. And then I kinda got it together, and tried to just let myself go in the shower, or at bedtime. And then there was blogging, and that became my grief time -- and I needed a lot of it. And now . . .

Well. I guess you could say I don't need to come vomit on the screen every time I have an emotion, but that's not entirely true. I mean, I read this article on how a recent study concludes that swearing reduces pain, and thought "Well goddamn, tell me something I don't fucking know! Why do you assholes think I write like I do, hmmmm? Blog it!!" And then I read this one, which brought me to tears, about a mother and a deadbaby, and a health workers strike and a photographer trying to get the government's attention, and instead of resulting in "Never Again!" the whole thing getting reduced to "pornography" and ugly things people don't want to deal with.

It's not as if it's not coming up, let's put it that way.

Then there's Bella . . woah. To put it mildly, she's firmly entered the "I want to talk about Maddy" stage. So many encounters I couldn't possibly blog them all. Oh, and now there's art! We've already had the family portrait, avec Maddy. Who is small, with closed slits for eyes instead of round orbs (I have yet to teach Bella the symbolism of x's for eyes, clearly), and with the most adorable curl on her head. She looks like a very dead Cindy Lou Who. Then came the masterpiece, "Maddy coming out of Mommy's Tummy in the Hospital! And mommy's blanket is blue, because that's her favorite color." This alternate reality showed everyone surrounding me in bed, with bright red cheerful smiles, BellaWho holding CindyLou. We've had discussions about Maddy's remains and what we're doing with them (and I have yet to tell her where they actually are, because I'm now fearful that one day I'll be up to my elbows in raw hamburger only to have Bella skip in the kitchen and announce, "Mom! Guess what I did with Maddy's ashes! It's sooo beautiful!"); how old she was exactly when she died (a fact I've heard repeated now to near strangers); and a heavy sigh followed by "I'm not getting another sister, AM I." She's a jedi, this one.

So I think the point is . . . . I still have blogable emotions, but perhaps not so much time, and it's just not as necessary anymore to make the time. I'm perfectly happy these days to daydream about Lance giving Berto the ol' (Jan Ulrich-inspired) evil eye over his shoulder as he blisters a path by him in the Alps. And it's not really forgetting Maddy, because when the grandma at the museum today called, "C'mon Madeline, let's go!" to the child next to Bella (who stopped what she was doing, and the gears churned so loudly I could hear them), my heart still oozes and sinks into my (still tire-ringed) gut. (Remind me to post sometime about barefoot running.) I noticed two nights ago that my friend's adopted daughter, who was born roughly six weeks after Maddy, no longer really bothers me. And I'm wondering, is it because I'm further out, or she is? I mean, she's not a baby anymore, all walking, talking, art-ing, dancing, and ergo -- what's to miss? My toddler didn't die, my baby did.

CLC had a post recently, which reminded me of the Billy Joel Conundrum. Which goes: The writing is good when the going is bad. When you're poor and young and homely and lonely and otherwise depressed, you write really, really good music. Glass Houses kinda good. Then you get a bit of money and marry a supermodel, and what do you want to write about anymore? How chippy things are in the Hamptons? The impetus is gone, there is nothing worth agonizing and you're left with fucking "Uptown Girl."

I'm wondering if I'm entering the "Uptown Girl" phase. One the one hand, I almost hate to say it (dons garlic wreath, spits, throws salt, genuflects, waves cross) but I'm kinda happy lately. Things are good! (I know!) In fact, good enough that I'm actually looking around for the other shoe to drop. Which is all kinds of hilarious considering I still need to maneuver around the remains of the last gargantuan shoe when I back the car out of the drive. I keep thinking, "This is ok! I love my house! This neighborhood is awesome! My kid is cool! Hope this doesn't get fucked up!" and suddenly "Wham!" This is when it gets glum and I get down. And back I crawl, back to the blogspot login, back to where I can focus and be and maybe swear a bit out of earshot of the perpetually happy. Back where I can curl up with my peeps and whisper "Maddy" to the screen and not feel self-conscious and dramatic. Back where I can feel helpful, and feel as though I've made some progress and let my gut hang out over my waistband and shrug.

I keep thinking it's leaving, it goes out the back door, I wave goodbye and tell it to mind the shoe parts on the way out the back gate; and no sooner do I turn the lock than the front doorbell rings. And there it is, dripping wet on the step, grief come a'callin'. Nothing to do but let it in, dry it off by the fire, and sit with it for a bit.

Couch Doctor

2009-07-14T07:49:00.003-04:00

I stumbled into therapy -- for the first time in my life -- in less than two weeks after Maddy died. I didn't really know why other than, "Isn't this what people do?"

Sure, after some sessions I felt like I had been dropped off a building. Some days I felt like I needed therapy after my therapy to help me sift through everything I had unpacked. Eventually, slowly, I could see how it was useful and how it helped. Like anything else in this experience, I think I just got lucky.

I'm interviewing a grief therapist today at GITW. Come read along and give your shrink experience, won't you?

Reap What You Sow

2009-06-27T21:08:00.000-04:00

To recap, in May, garden was a nice rectangle of dirt full of seeds.

As of Friday, it was bountiful:

As of today, it is a hazmat site.

Yes, the lead report came back, and it's not pretty, kids. A whopping 793 parts per, which puts us in the (high-ish) "Medium" range. The handy-dandy pamphlet lets us know that with a moderate reading "restrict access of children or pets." Should we also be looking for signs of anger? (Haha, just looked up the symptoms of lead poisoning and "memory loss" is one; "appetite loss" and "weight loss" are others so I'm not remotely concerned for any of us. Yet.)

It's getting plowed in, we're putting in raised beds, and starting over -- although it's probably too late to do much this year save for lettuce and maybe a few herbs. And that's really optimistic because we've already got a host of other outdoor projects on the docket, so raised beds are unlikely to appear until sometime next year. We'll plow under the arugula and herbs and cucumbers, and lordy, there were tears -- real fat tears -- over the broccoli. Some day I'm going to remind Bella that she cried over the loss of green vegetables.

Mr. ABF's dream of an "Ultralocal Dinner" are gone -- dashed are the plans for beet ravioli, glazed carrots, stuffed peppers, grilled and rolled eggplant. Gone are my dreams of picking beans from the vine and eating them raw. I can say with authority: expecting the worst sure made telling y'all a lot easier, but I'm not sure it made the loss hurt any less.

Oh, and also, if you're gardening in an urban environment and not using raised beds, PLEASE, for the love of mike, contact your local university agricultural extension about getting your soil tested for lead. The good news here is that we thought to do this before making Poison Brain-frying Salad and eating handfuls of sweet smelling, well compost-fertilized dirt.

Back to the grocery store.

Slouching Towards Five

2009-06-24T21:20:00.000-04:00

Where did the Planets come from?

Where did People come from?

Does it hurt when a baby comes out of your tummy?

Can we get a new sister? Because mine died.

How do people NOT have babies?

How many days was Maddy when she died?

What would happen if everyone just lived one day?

If you had a baby would you still love me as much?

There's something so deeply philosophical about Bella lately -- when she's not in a droning whine "Moommmmy, I'mmm hunnggry" -- that I ache to give her Carl Sagan and Hobbes and Locke and Shakespeare for her birthday, not the goldfish which she has adamantly requested. Questions that aren't posited just to be annoying or waste time or find the weak spot, but that demand answers more than a sentence long.

Most of them.

And I struggle to discover from whence these questions are coming: I am not pregnant, I am -- to my untrained and biased and eternally hopeful eye -- perhaps even slightly lighter around the middle, not the other way around. None of her friends have recently acquired siblings (although the sibling question came on a day when she went out with a good friend and her younger brother. I have a feeling friend is feeling some things through, out loud). We have not been watching old Cosmos reruns, or discussing Darwin at the dinner table. I am sure that all to most of these are standard-issue four-going-on-five philosophical "how does the world work" questions, but for me they seem to revolve around common themes lately: life, death, the meaning of the beginning, and the end. And of course, what comes next. There's always the corner, beckoning, and to which I can only shrug my shoulders and say with absolute certainty, "I don't know."

For me there's a subtext here, and it's Maddy. I have no idea what Bella's subtext is. Probably Spongebob.

At times she seems 63, and others, 13. Because you see, the other annoying habit she's picked up in addition to questioning the age and origin of the solar system, is announcing to everyone within earshot, "I have a boyfriend."

(No, I mean that. Today we went to the zoo, just the two of us, and she wanted to ride the camel. Which she had to do with another single child. So I finally got her up to the front of the line, left her there so I could run around and get her picture, and I heard her announce to the complete stranger camel guy who took her ticket nanoseconds ago, "I have a boyfriend.")

And again, I have no idea from whence this concept sprouted. I've been paying more attention to her programming (she watches an hour, but I always go do something else, so I honestly don't know if Olivia has "very special!" episodes, or Spongebob's sidekick Patrick has untoward affairs), and as far as I can tell she is not getting this attitude from television -- no one on her shows even dates (unless it's an older sibling, I've noticed in an ep of this and that, here and there, but interesting, they never use the term "boy/girl-friend", usually it's a "date" gone awry for comic purposes), and they tend to be mixed sex groups of friends who hang and which I find quite healthy all the way around. (Unless I'm missing something regarding Agent Oso, cuz that's new, and I'm sure a panda-type bear in a vest gets all sorts of attention from the ladies.) (I jest.)

I cringe. She's not yet five, and she's so proud to have this, to own this term. I've quizzed her nonchalantly on the issue, and she claims "he's a boy who's a friend!" and more to the point, the only boy at her school apparently who will actually play with her, and not push, hit, or otherwise tease and torment and knock down her stack of carefully placed blocks. And I remind myself that no more than two months ago, she was discussing marriage with her "girlfriend," and specifically, who would have the babies. So I'm trying not to get too (too) worked up, and I kinda ignore it and let it ride, and remind her periodically that "you know, you're too young for a boyfriend," but it doesn't seem to be dying down.

My suspicion is that this verbage and interest comes from the friend of ours who just got married after a whirlwind romance. I'm hoping it all dissipates with the rose petals.

We're pushing five here, and I do mean pushing. She seems so confident and content most of the time, and yet sometimes I can just sense her surfing, trying to catch her balance as the paradigms move under her feet. Sometimes she is so easy and fun I wonder why I haven't attempted to construct a sibling; sometimes she is so unsettling I can't imagine having the strength to parent another; and sometimes she is so singularly incredible that I struggle to remember why I ever wanted another child in the first place.

Lightning

2009-06-15T12:36:00.000-04:00

Last Tuesday we woke up to . . . . darkness. Since Bella is occasionally sneaky like that, asking me if she can turn on the television or get some juice when it's 5:45 a.m., I had to look at the clock to make sure it really was 7:00 a.m., not 3:30 a.m. We cranked up the tv, started the coffee pot, turned NPR on in the kitchen, flipped open a laptop to check headlines, and I started methodically making Bella's lunch for school-camp. All to the delightful backdrop of one of the most wicked thunder and lightning displays I've ever experienced. Flashing, cracking, booming, dishes rattling, rain spilling over the gutters.

And suddenly, the thunder actually hit a split second before the lightning, there was a blinding boom, and NPR shut off. The lights stayed on, curiously, but Mr. ABF noted that we had lost our internet connection. We thought we may have experienced a direct hit, but just the radio and not the lights? Not the television? We continued our morning, and less than an hour later Mr. ABF got in the car to drive Bella off, and clicked the button to open our brand-new, two-week old automatic gate opener (part of the kitchen reno was a driveway to get the cars off the street) and it was dead. Deader than dead.

Upon his return, we went in the basement to examine what the deal was. The cable that brings internet into our house (but not our televisions; we're satellite people) runs through a box, which was fine. The light was on. Everything on the other side of that box, however -- the wireless routers and so forth -- were blitzed. The radio happens to be right next to the box, we just rebooted that and it was fine. The wire from the gate opener happens to run out of the house hear the cable box as well, and the fuse box to the gate was black and still smoking.

We apparently got hit by lightning.

As if you didn't know that already.

My theory, and I'm no meteorologist, is that lightning actually hit the lightning rod on our house, which runs to ground right by where all this stuff enters our house. And the shock entered the house through the cable wire, not the electric. But whatever -- we're a few hundred bucks out of routing stuff (thankfully the only computer directly hooked up to the cable was on the third floor, and it was unaffected), and we're to disassemble, dig up, and send in the entire gate mechanism to see if they can fix it. It was a few days without internet.

And a few days of pondering odds. We joke about being struck by lightning, but according to the paper, 2,000 other people reported lightning strikes last Tuesday a.m. (including a friend about 20 miles west, who lost two televisions, both hooked up to cable. No other appliances). Sometimes lightning doesn't just hit you. And if it actually hits the rod, is that a good thing?

:::

No sooner did we get internet access back, than we all piled in the car to go to NY for a friend's wedding. It was his second marriage, as his first ended right around the time he reconnected with Mr. ABF at our old location. I remember a lot of dinners where we invited this guy over and ate and chatted until late in the night. He later told Mr. ABF those dinners were a sort of lifeline for him. We proceeded to witness a good seven years of dates and girlfriends, some of which were deemed important enough to tell us about or even meet; some, apparently, not so much. He moved to NY, we moved here, we all stayed in touch.

For Spring Break, we crashed at his place for a few days while exploring NYC with Bella. He had just started a relationship with a new woman -- in fact, I believe we as a family accompanied them on dates three and four. She was lovely in appearance and spirit, and I was personally won over when Bella offered her a butterfly tattoo and she acted as though Bella was presenting her with a spa makeover. As we were leaving, friend told us he thought this was it -- this was the woman. I think the words "marriage" and "wife" and "killing my J-Date account" actually left his lips, in all our presence, and I wondered if he shouldn't dial it back.

A few weeks later, friend called and asked for Bella. We put her on the phone, and from our end we caught,

"Mmmhmmm, mhhhmm, oh. Yes. Purple. Ok. Here's my dad."

Turns out they're getting married, and Bella just agreed to be a flower girl. In June. It was April, end of. They had been dating approximately 50 days, and were planning to get married on their 100th day of knowing each other. I guess when you know, you know. Sometimes you're struck by lightning.

It was my first wedding since Maddy, and it was a bit strange. I had forgotten how overwhelming positive and happy and upbeat weddings are, and I seriously slouched in my seat, hoping the couple wouldn't catch sight of us and realize how when the rabbi said that "for better or for worse" part he really meant it. Sure, at the rehearsal dinner and the actual night of there was heartwrenching oration on how both the bride and groom each had lost a parent, and how both parents had remarried. (I know how much our friend's loss continues to touch him, and I'm relieved and grateful he found a soulmate with a similar missing piece.) This was followed by examples of how the parents showed them "how to love again," which I suppose for me was a bit touching-slash-bullshit.

Bella was a flower girl, decked out in floofy lilac, sprinkling rose petals. She was in heaven. She continually asked where the bride or groom were located, so she could offer hugs and ask "When are we eating cake?" "When is the chair dance?" At the end of the evening, as we were leaving, we slipped into the photo booth they couple had set up for the guests and Bella and I held hands, jumped up on the trampoline, and the flash went off.

:::

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

"Maybe," the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.

"Maybe," replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

"Maybe," answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

"Maybe," said the farmer.

-- "Maybe," Stories from Zen Buddhism

Bax

2009-06-02T21:15:00.004-04:00

(Scene: Fenceline, muggy evening, Mr. ABF greets new neighbor and one of her three kids.)

Mr. ABF: "I'm [Mr. ABF] by the way . . . "

Neighbor: "Oh, I remember! You're [Mr. ABF] and Tash, and your daughter is Bella, and your dog . . . your dog is . . . . Maddy?

Mr. ABF: ???!!!!?????

Neighbor: "No wait, Max. Max and Buddy. Isn't that funny, I combined them!"

:::

Mr. ABF walked over where I was lovingly grilling our salmon dinner and recounted this by beginning, "So I just had a weird encounter." And we both wound up laughing so hard there were tears. Our collective sense of humor has indeed twisted.

Sometimes When It Rains

2009-05-26T09:50:00.003-04:00

. . . it shits.

I had a pithy little memorial day post spinning around yesterday, but was totally creamed by other signs that the universe is indeed out to get us:

Turtle and Monkey's Mom discovered that the woman her husband had an affair with? Is Pregnant.

Sue, who I personally think has found a new voice with everything thrown her way of late, suffered a seizure last Friday. Her husband C. has the story on his blog.

And finally, Chance, who has suffered more than enough loss for one lifetime, found out that her final round of Surrogate IVF did not work out. Kym's beta started lowish, and dropped. There are no embryos in the freezer, and there's no more money on the tree.

I hate singling out stories when I know there's so much more hurt out there that I'm missing and not personally noting, but these three really twisted my weekend into knots and made me flip off karma and the universe more than once. I tried so hard to strip naked and dance in traffic and divert the bad luck in my direction, but apparently that's not how it works.

Please, if you haven't already, lend some support. Toss in some swear words. Fluff up the pillows. It's the least we can do.

Seeds of Life?

2009-05-18T15:23:00.000-04:00

It's not often that the metaphor becomes reality, but here the last few weekends I've been working quite hard on the new kitchen garden.

During the kitchen reno, some doors were moved around, and this lovely patch outside the kitchen -- facing south -- was dug up and cornered off. This spring we brought in mushroom soil and tilled it in. Bella and I started some seeds inside (went a bit better than last year -- only managed to brutally murder some cherry tomatoes, and for some reason the rosemary self-aborted? I'm terrible with rosemary. I understand for most people rosemary is akin to a chia pet, the one thing they can keep alive by sprinkling beer on it when they open one. Not so much, me), and sowed the rest into the ground. We planted a marigold border, and finished that off with multi-colored globe amaranth seed.

Right now, it is a nicely squared off patch of dirt. If things go as they should, in a few months we should have: broccoli, carrots, beans, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumber, beets, lettuce, arugula, and a host of herbs including one entire row of basil for my Italian husband. There should -- allegedly -- be sunflowers against the back wall, and cheerful flowers in the corners.

It's very nice in theory, isn't it.

Once it was in, and I was purposefully watering with the sprayer, I tried to self-analyze (shit, am I good at that now) about how I felt about my endeavor. And that's when I realized the irony of life imitating metaphor: the first thing that popped in my head was how this felt as if I had a positive pregnancy stick in my hand. It's "implanted." In theory, it's one of those "positive" symbols. But I know nothing of gardening, right now it just looks like brown soil, and (to me) it will seem nothing short of a Biblical miracle if there is food to harvest at the end of the day from these mere seeds I've jammed in crooked rows. As I've told my neighbors, "If we get vegetables from this, it's a bonus."

(To gently reiterate and avoid any confusion: METAPHOR, LIFE-STORY-USUALLY-EMPLOYING METAPHOR, SWAPPING PLACES. THERE IS NO POSITIVE PREGNANCY TEST. THERE IS A GARDEN. Kinda like bringing a metaphor to life, but without having to clean horse parts off your bat and shoes. Just thought I'd clarify.)

One of the contractors who worked on the kitchen and "consulted" on the garden swung by this week -- she's one of these types that maintains a self-sufficient farm in a yard the size of a postage stamp, replete with chickens and goats. And she was incrredibly impressed by our plot, and I gave her the line about it looking nice in theory, and wouldn't it be awesome if vegetables actually grew from those seeds?

"Why wouldn't they?" she asked. In complete seriousness.

Ha ha ha, why wouldn't they, IS SHE FUCKING KIDDING ME?!

Just because you put seeds in dirt and add water and sunshine does not mean you get a beet (or god forbid, some rosemary) in a few months. No sir-ee. I mean, why should it work? Not like I know what I'm doing. Then I read this article about lead in urban gardens, and I'm utterly convinced I will give us all brain damage should the garden actually produce something and I prepare grilled eggplant and beet salad, so this week on my to-do list is packing up some dirt to send off to the EPA for testing.

Seriously, I just wanted a little vegetable garden. Instead I got a boatload of cautious pessimism, irony, and paranoia.

Sounds about right.

(Poison Beets!)

Happy. Mother's. Day.

2009-05-10T12:12:00.001-04:00

Deconstruct THAT one.

I've got a post up on, er, you know, that thing that's happening today. Today, at GITW.

Lipstick Cherry All Over the Lens

2009-05-05T10:23:00.000-04:00

Spring is here, that fickle bitch, what with a week encompassing a prickly 92 degrees and a damp, cool 54. There are fields of weeds to be pulled up, there is yellow-green fuzz on my car and surfaces in my house near windows that I deigned to open the last nice day. We're stockpiling alright -- on claratin, flonase and the like, and I feel like printing shirts for me and Bella that announce, "ALLERGIES! NOT FLU!"

Spring is pretty coupled with problematic, and ultimately makes me feel like I should be doing more than I'm doing, and, well, feeling more than I'm feeling.

I've noticed before, but never so much until this year, that one thing I like so much about this neighborhood is spring. It seems as if every house, even the most ramshackle, boarded up, neglected heaps have something in the front yard -- be it a scraggly, volunteer dogwood tree, a few bulbs that were probably deposited by a run-away squirrel, a technicolor fuscia-hued azalea in desperate need of pruning and shaping. There is color there, as if mother nature said, "Dang, this place needs a hit of rogue," in hopes that the human passers-by would overlook the dirt-filled yard, the sunken porch, the stump overgrown with ravenous vine. And this time of year? It works. This old trick works, and my eye is drawn to the lonely clump of red tulips, or the appropriately-named weeping cherry, or the grape-like clumps of bright purple wisteria -- even if their ancient support has long-ago collapsed, and they're now slithering across an un-mowed lawn. The dilapidated that exists in a few pockets will soon be overpowered by a layer of green, and I will only come to realize how dumpy some of the nearby abodes are in late fall, when the leaves finally drop and there is no amount of snow that hides the droopy shutters.

Sometimes it's a bit whorish, but spring's a welcome makeover.

(Lest I embarrass my neighbors, this is a unkempt corner of my yard, where someone thought it wise to randomly plant azalea of varying colors in the middle of unruly, weedy groundcover.)

:::

I played violin seriously from age four to twenty-two, and until college, studied with the same teacher. She was a Juliard-trained woman, who came of professional age at a time when orchestras were still edgy about hiring women (their stamina for rehearsal and uteri exploding with babies in need of attention were undoubtedly ticks against them in the hiring process), and -- much like me, now that I think of it -- arrived in New York City, sight-unseen, from the south. She was proper, she was elegant, and you could tell through her music that her cool and sophisticated demeanor masked a river of romance that ran through her bones.

She taught kids like me for a living, and had crazy hours -- she eventually ran a studio, travelled in order to meet demand elsewhere in the Phoenix area, worked camps and master classes, and taught taught taught, six days a week, beginning at 7:00 a.m. and often running through the dinner hour.

It was not uncommon to arrive at the studio, sometime after my school had let out in the late afternoon, 4:30 p.m. or so, and while I warmed up, she would pull out her compact, and carefully apply lipstick -- always something cheery. For years I was too young to take much away from this ritual, but at some point, I wondered why she was putting lipstick on for me, for a violin lesson, for fuck's sake.

Silly me.

At some point, I'm not sure whether the wondering got the best of me, or she volunteered the information, but in a late-afternoon practice room, as she focused on her mirror, she said, "If you're ever tired, just put on a little lipstick. Wakes you right up."

All this time, she was fucking exhausted, drinking coffee out of her thermos, escorting me and countless others through pouty twinkle-twinkle to stress-laden competitions and auditions and tapings, always with a freshly made pair of lips.

She taught me so much, this teacher. She saw me weekly, for fourteen years. She was in charge of selecting my music, and while my friends were put through the usual paces of Bloch and Bruch and Mendelssohn by their instructors, she sensed something else in me, and put in front of me raw and passionate, wildly-fun and painfully-aching Wieniawski and Lalo. I realized only in retrospect that she, of all people, gleaned a personality that I was only coming to understand myself. And yet I remember so clearly, things like this hot Arizona afternoon, wandering through my scales, while she dabbed her LateAfternoonDoldrums Red freshly made mouth on a dainty handkerchief.

:::

My neighborhood springtime lipstick application and memories of Mrs. M coincided nicely with Julia's timely piece at GITW on how we take care of ourselves -- our outward selves and appearances. I didn't cut my hair in '07, in large part because I didn't want to go back to the stylist who did my hair at 39w and have to explain the whole fucking thing; and in part because I simply didn't care. My eyebrows grew shabby. My skin, already fucked over by progesterone supplements and pregnancy, exploded in a torrent of stress and hormones. It didn't help that I rarely bothered to wash it. I brushed my teeth if I had the energy, I gave up flossing. The makeup I had bought expressly for my brother's wedding, a month before Maddy was conceived, lay in the drawer collecting dust. I didn't want to buy new clothes for my new, large, ungainly, memory-laden and depressing body, so I wore sweats and big t-shirts well into summer. I looked the part, there was no mistaking that something about me was completely, totally wrong. Could be grief; could be flu.

My first foray out into groups and crowds was a local fundraiser held at a neighbor's house, in May? June? Well, it seemed awfully soon to me, whenever it was. I pulled a comb through my unkempt hair, poured my body into a cheap sundress, decided no amount of makeup could possibly do justice to my skin. But heeding some advice from the crevices of my memory, I pulled out an ancient tube of lipstick and carefully applied it.

Not for anyone else, mind you. Not to look better, certainly -- my mouth was in no way going to detract from my baggy eyes or my sorry midsection.

Just a quick coating of Wake the fuck up Pink to get me out the door.

:::

Bella returned home from a party last week, and nestled in her goodie bag was a plastic container of lipgloss on a string. While I can still (!) pull the ol' bluff of "Hey, you don't like gum so I'm throwing it out, ok?" (much like I make a face and explain, "Eew, this drink has BUBBLES in it. You don't like bubbles. I'll find you some water." These scams aren't long for the making, are they), there was no getting rid of the MAKEUP. She seriously ground her finger into the pink goo, and mashed it on her lips, so she more resembled The Joker than any angelic child model made up beyond their years. It was depressing (she's FOUR!) and simultaneously fucking hilarious.

"How do I look?" Bella asked, with a mature downward glance that screamed for a Louis Vitton briefcase, and possibly a fan to blow some wind through the wisps of hair around her face.

"Beautiful."

Sometimes it's not about how it alters the outside, but how it makes you feel on the inside.

Aloha 'Oe

2009-04-28T09:59:00.001-04:00

I really owe all of you a follow up, you were so kind to inquire about my dad even though I wrote (but apparently didn't emphasize quite enough) that he was ok. He's ok! Or so it seems. While the initial call was obviously fucking scary, a few hours later I was no longer thinking I had to reroute my flight home to stop at my parents'. I was going to turn around and fly west next week, but am now actually thinking next month would be just fine. Maybe even June, because then I could take Bella. The two main bugaboos at the moment seem to be: 1) they couldn't really determine where the block happened exactly (although it was apparently the right side -- which is kinda rare?), and 2) the wounds from putting the catheter/shunt in (through his leg, incidentally, fucking yeow) hurt like hell, and are making it tough to get around. Which he's ostensibly supposed to be doing. But the actual breathing part (and his blood pressure and the like) seem to be just fine, thank you. He was released last Wednesday (a mere three days and a few hours post "attack") and sounds great -- if already getting pessimistic about the Penguins in the next round is great. It will undoubtedly take mom a while to recover and allow him to use the toilet or make toast by himself.

Hawai'i was full of surprises. A while ago, I followed the advice of The NYT Samurai Shopper and bought the drugstore mascara recommended therein. I found it akin to applying oatmeal cookie batter to my eyelashes. But ~~I didn't have time~~ I forgot to buy something else so in the bag it went, and out it came a million miles later, and lo! No clumps! I have apparently discovered the secret to reducing clumps in your mascara, which I think is worth a patent, no? Simply buy the sweet little tube a ticket on a long and vast journey in the cargo hold of an airplane or two. Failing that, maybe stick it in the freezer for a day and then warm it up in nice balmy 80 degree weather? While playing ukelele music?

Other "Huh!" Moments:

I was kinda underwhelmed by the beaches. I know. I think this was island specific, and I didn't have a choice of islands (see: business trip that underwrote my husband's ticket and some of our hotel), and everyone tells me not to give up but the beaches elsewhere are fucking insane. I'm usually lemonade out of lemons when it comes to beaches -- Sure I can cram my towel in here, close enough to smell a strangers deodorant! The shells between the glass and syringes are truly wonderful! No really, 49 degrees is refreshing! -- but I guess usually I don't travel that long for the privilege? Or something? Anyway: next time, if there is a next time, different island. Oh, and I'm leaving from the west coast. Because 13 hours in transit is too, too long for anyone, grown-ups included.

I had never given much thought to how good pork would be in Hawaii. I suppose if I gave five seconds of time to the concept of a luau, the progression would be: lei, grass skirt, some weird stuff called poi, roasted pig. Pig. They must have pig there! But never really applied this concept widely to consider Hawaii's pork industry as a whole. Apparently there is one! I pride myself on my continental bbq excursions, but people -- don't let the islands go underestimated here. Mighty fine. Failing a sandwich, make sure to sample bacon, sausage, or random hot dog. You won't be disappointed.

Food overall was much, much better than I had anticipated. I don't know what I anticipated -- fresh fruit and fish? And there was a lot of that. I think four to five of my meals were fish tacos in a variety of preparations. But overall, I guess I never gave much thought to the idea that a place that made sugar might be pretty good at making, oh, I dunno, pastry. Or that a local microbrew would actually taste great and be more than a simple tourist plug. Yay food!

I was a bit taken aback by the number of homeless I saw in Honolulu (apparently others are too, I discovered via google). Not in a "Ew! Homeless!" kinda way (dudes, I live in Philadelphia), but in a per capita, "Wow that's a lot," kinda way. After rummaging around a bit, I guess my surprise has piqued; the total population of all the islands is somewhere around 1.28 million; Philly's population is circa 1.5 million. The park there I saw was more crowded than any I've seen downtown here; BUT, I'm thinking the resources are probably centered around the capital, and ergo, the people are too. It didn't really buzzkill my paradise as much as it made me realize this global recession thing truly is. Sadz.

Bella is apparently talking to strangers about Maddy. The incident on the beach was the first time I've heard her bring up her sister to anyone other than me or her father (and in fact, talking to Dad is a rather recent development. Apparently last week while outside on the swings, she asked him what we would name a subsequent baby girl. Mr. ABF gave up our second-to-Maddy name, and Bella made a face. I'm at least relieved I have some back-up should it come to this again). Not only did she cough up this information to beach girl, but while I was packing and panicking on the phone, she outlined the particulars of her Very Special Family to a new best friend by the hotel pool. Mom apparently turned to Mr. ABF and mouthed, "Really?" to which he responded, "Yes, she lived six days" or somesuch, and she was appropriately sorry. AND THEN went on to say how her son had some lung cold and they had to delay their trip home until he left the hospital. Because you know, same exact thing, really.

I think Bella's output here is pretty question specific. That is, the inquiring party needs to directly offer information about his/her siblings, and/or ask Bella about hers. Mr. ABF said a new neighbor came by yesterday while he and she were by the fence, and she asked Bella something to the effect of, "So is it just you?" Which, DUH! Does Bella resemble Macaulay Culkin? Does she look parentally neglected? More to the point, does new neighbor understand the literalness of a four-year-old? (She should, she has one herself.) Was she expecting, "Why yes, it is just me. When do you eat dinner?" Of course Bella answered with a "[Fuck] No! There's mom and dad, my dogs Buddy and Max, and my cats Kirby and Tucker." So there, neighbor lady. Mr. ABF figured he'd spill the beans about the urn in the family room some other time.

Or maybe she's just responding to us and kids right now. People who get it on her level. Her homies.

:::

I have been a complete bundle-of-nerves-insomniac this week. I was blaming Hawaii (sung, avec ukelele, to the tune of "Blame Canada"), but last night after talking myself down from a Bella-getting-a-lethal-illness panic attack, I've come to conclude that the whole heart attack/swine flu bullshit has ratcheted my anxiety level up through the ROOF. I'm reminding myself multiple times during the day when my brain veers toward the horror graphic that "It's not a premonition! It's a symptom of your fucked up psyche!" but still not feeling much better.

It would help to know you're freaking out too. Aloha!

Overheard

2009-04-20T15:51:00.003-04:00

4/12, circa 6:00 a.m.
(scene: watching kids run around on airport play yard, chitchattin' "so where ya goin', blahblahblahbalah")

Airport Woman: "I just found out my husband of 15 years is having an affair."
Me: "Oh Shit, I'm so, so sorry."

(Do I have a "Talk to me, I totally get your shit" neon sign on my forehead?!)

:::

4/12, post Philly-to-Chicago leg, listening to "Doors Closing" announcement on 8-hour Chicago-Honolulu leg

Me: Do you have the DVD player?
Mr. ABF: I thought you had the DVD player.

:::

4/12, 40 minutes into flight

Me: Can I hold him for you?

(Aisle-mate was a woman flying alone with a six-month old; woman developed a nose-bleed on ascent. And this is how I came to hold my first baby since Maddy. It didn't crush me. It wasn't nirvana, either.)

:::

4/14, circa 8:00 a.m.

Me: What are they doing?
Mr. ABF: Oh, it's Tuesday. They're renewing their vows on the beach.
Me: (avec dripping sarcasm) Do you want to renew our vows?
Mr. ABF: No, but I'll buy you a beer.

:::

4/14, 5:00 a.m.

Bella: My ear hurts.

(9:30 a.m.) Bella: My ear hurts.

(1:30, feverish, whining) Bella: My ear hurts.

(Found local clinic, massive ear infection. Smoothies and tv in the hotel.)

:::

4/16, circa 9:00 a.m.

Bella: They're going to take a picture of our family, dad. Of everyone in our family. Of everyone in our family who is alive.

:::

4/17, circa 2:30 p.m. (Bella has just made friends with the five-year-old girl whose family is camped out next to ours on the beach. They're going through general family introductions with each other.)

Bella: I have a sister, but she died.
Beach Girl: YOUR SISTER DIED??!!
Bella: Yes. Her name was Maddalena.
Beach Girl: Who killed her?

:::

4/19, 5:00 a.m. (Both cell phones have just gone ringing and beeping)

Me: What's up?
My Brother: Dad had a heart attack.

(Turns out a rather bad one, but caught in a most-timely fashion. Still in hospital, but out of ICU, and recovery looks good.)

:::

postscript
4/20, 11:00 a.m. Philly time

Mr. ABF: So you think you'll deliver our luggage to our house this afternoon?

:::

I so need a vacation, yo. Mahalo!

Expediahhhhhhh

2009-04-11T12:45:00.002-04:00

Well, I feel like a big ol' pants-on-fire sort because not too long ago I whinged a bit on how the money tree -- it was a barren, and there would be no vacation this year. And in lieu of warmth and relaxation we went and crashed on a friend's couch in the vicinity of downtown Manhattan for a few days. Then, seriously, back home a week later, Mr. ABF picked up a client in a warm sunny locale and came home from work and said, "I'm going for two days. Wanna come?"

I'd like to say I did a bit of math: 2.5 plane tickets + six nights hotel - (business plane ticket + two nights hotel) x family fun vacation! - two days of one-on-one Bella time / travel hell x time difference = hmmmm, but really all I did while my mouth filled with saliva and my eyes filled with palm trees and my skin tingled with the anticipation of 80 degree weather was say "Yes, ooooohhh, yes."

So, er, I'm going on vacation for a week, starting by my alarm going off circa 4:10 a.m. tomorrow morning. Did I say for a week? A week.

Catch you on the flip side. Hopefully with pictures, and not too many "ZOMFG!" travel tales. Don't write too, too much while I'm gone, please?

Socks! Lots of Socks!

2009-04-08T21:40:00.000-04:00

I know I say I started blogging for purely selfish motives -- ME, MY psyche, and I -- but I was so quickly welcomed and enveloped and downright comforted by everyone. Even though I say I trust nothing (ever again!), I must to a great degree trust this community. In many respects it's all I have. Going through my reader isn't just edifying, it's become a sort of security blanket -- knowing there are others out there who get it, get me, understand. The times that I see tangible evidence of a blogger doesn't just confirm that one human's identity, but reminds me that there's an army of real people out there who I consider friends.

:::sniff:::

It's with great pride that I opted to participate in Kymberli's cleverly imagined and incredibly organized "SockItToMe" party -- whereby I sent a super cute pair of socks overseas where I hope it's not eternally lost in mail hell, and I received a pair from someone else. And I thought it was a fun thing to do and really kinda emotionally stopped right there until I received a soft package in the mail.

My socks! I opened the package and the first thing I noticed was that it was the same fucking brand of socks I had sent to my sock buddy! Ha! What are the odds? Like minds and all that. But then I pulled them out and something was wrong. They were kids socks. WTF? And below them another pair . . . of matching adult socks. I was still a bit mystified, and then I read the card.

Dora, of ISO the Golden Egg sent me a pair, and a pair for Bella. I will not lie, I teared up. I read the card to Bella, and she said "Awwww," and proceeded to rip the tag off and put them on right then and there. This was so above and beyond and touching and . . . . well.

So now when Bella and I wear our funky socks, I don't just feel comfort and support -- I feel like someone out there gets me. I feel like a whole bunch of people out there are propping me up, and know what's important to me. And I'm so incredibly thankful.

Now please run over to Dora's blog because she has news. Good news.

Work Safe?

2009-04-08T09:28:00.000-04:00

Some people think religion is the third rail of blogging. Or abortion. What happens when you go off the rails entirely?

I'm talking about s-e-x today at Glow In the Woods.

Useful metaphors employed when necessary.

Honey, I Shrunk Children's!

2009-04-01T11:20:00.000-04:00

For some reason, Bella's school decided to extend Spring Break by two days (?), so yesterday we ambled off to check out the Please Touch Museum in their new digs. This is an amazing, amazing children's museum, made all the more amazing by their new abode: a left over structure from the 1876 centennial exhibition in Philadelphia. If you've read Devil in the White City, you know that such fair structures from this era are massive in scale (one wing is devoted to a "make your own flying machine" where you assemble a foam creation and then self propel it up three flights before letting it drop and seeing how long it stays airborne); incredibly architecturally detailed on the outside; probably thrown up in about 60 days with water, flour, and scrap lumber; and incredibly fire-prone. Perfect spot for a Children's museum.

We made our way through the automobiles, the space portion, music, beautifully restored carousel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and finally -- the piece d'resistance -- the kid's sized mini city. Dump truck! TV studio! Shoe Store! And hey, woah, what's that on the left?

Ohmygoodlord, it's MiniChildren's! So kids can make believe kids need their own hospitals! Cuz you can't make that shit up! But wait, walk inside and you're dumped right into . . .

THE NICU! Bwahahahahaha! Lookit all the lifeless, plastic-complexioned babies staring vacantly into space! The recreation is uncanny. The lighting is dead on, and it looks about that comfortable for parents to spend the night.

"I think it's supposed to be a maternity ward," said Mr. ABF through my peels of laughter, but definitely sporting a smug smile when I retorted, "I am so blogging this."

Bella gave the babies a quick once over from the door, and headed off to see some xrays on the far wall. I was wondering if there was going to be some kid's-museum-inappropriate reaction from her (given MY reaction was quite mature, and thank goodness, it was pretty empty in the afternoon so I don't think anyone heard my conversationally-volumed, "Oh for Fuck's Sake"), when she spied . . . .

Kid's bakery, right next store. Crisis averted, and a girl after my own heart. We got the hell out of dodge, and spent the rest of the afternoon in the kid's grocery filling our cart with imaginary carbohydrates and corn-syrup-laced goodness.

If I Can Make it There

2009-03-29T13:01:00.001-04:00

Because a remote island resort was out of the cards for us this spring, we bundled up, dressed in layers, and hit NYC for a few days this week while Bella was on break. (Nothing says spring break like a windy, high of 40 and urine-scented subway platforms!) We crashed on the sofa bed of a good friend who lives near the express line (location, location), and despite not really sleeping for four nights, enjoyed the hell out of the city. Kinda. There were a few unfortunate hours at a country-specific-large-scale-doll store (and though I did not partake, I am pleased to report they do in fact offer booze to the parents. Which is all kinds of smart), but you know, for the kids. Right? We spent a day at the Museum of Natural Science and overloaded on all things space and dinosaurs. Sadly, I am still mortified by how much I weigh on Mars even though it's only two digits. We somehow forced ourselves into the fin-tailed-red-headed-Disney musical and were, frankly, pleasantly surprised. High production value, and the bad guy (er, gal) had some serious pipes. Finally, if ever in the vicinity of the Transit Museum, go. Incredible. It's in an old station, and on the old platform they have lined up on both sides umpteen cars dating from 1904 to the present. Can you imagine a subway with wicker seats and ceiling fans? Neither could we. Again, sadly, I realized that even I can date myself on the token time line (my college years were a few iterations from the end of the token life span), and Mr. ABF even remembered an old bluebird line around Coney Island when he was a young lad.

We also paid a visit to a certain someone at the Plaza:

We ate way, way too much, came home, and entered a coma of sleep and catching up on television. And jeebus, from Sunday to Thursday my reader jumped from a manageable 30-something to 160-something. I kid you not. Time for a moratorium on news so we can all catch up, m'kay?

Hope you're well.

It's Hard to Celebrate on Your Own

2009-03-19T16:49:00.001-04:00

Happy Non-Biological Father of Jesus Day!

I have a partially eaten Zeppole on my counter that I bought so Bella could see what they were. Because I feel it's important to know your pastry-fried-in-lard stuffed with sweetened marscapone and ricotta with chocolate chips and topped with a cherry -- jeez, wouldn't want to mix that up with your carrot sticks, am I right?

:::

Today my grandmother moved from her rehab center (she had a stroke about three weeks ago) into her new assisted living place. I hesitate to call anything that nicely decorated and well lit and cheerful and friendly and spacious a "Nursing Home," which I kinda reserve for creepy quiet places where screams rise from the basement and the occasional bat flies by. She was pleased and quite surprised to discover her furniture in her new suite ("This is MINE! This is MY CHAIR!"), and tonight will sleep in her bed for the first time in almost a month. She is obviously a bit nervous, but I think in other areas, genuinely relieved. "No more cooking!" she said beaming, after finishing every scrap of her lunch in their restaurant-like dining area. She asked a few times what the name of the place was, and kevetched about having to use her walker again (she's been in bed or wheeled for a month now), but was in good spirits. And she remembered me.

And she remembered it was my birthday.

:::

I'm downplaying today with a force of a thousand suns. I've forbidden any cheer or notice or celebration EXCEPT that which emanates from Bella. I may believe in being truthful with her about a lot of things, but I really do honestly think she's too young to learn that birthdays can suck. In her world, Birthdays rate right up there with Christmas if not higher because there's cake and you get to pick the food. So I grin sheepishly every time she tells someone with gusto, "TODAY IS MY MOM'S BIRTHDAY!" as if I won the lottery -- and she did this, this morning, to everyone at her school.

Holidays and anniversaries and such are just a bit sour after Maddy, but my birthday -- this birthday especially -- is different. Unlike a day that just kinda has a dull edge to it that you know you'll revisit again in 12 months time, this birthday is like slamming a door shut. I don't get this one back, it doesn't get "better." I just get farther away from a dream and person I thought I was when I started the decade. I feel like I'm losing a grip on me -- my multi-faceted identity that I've always been so proud of. If one part started failing, there was always something else. And now I feel a bit as if I'm trying to hold sand in my palms and it's just blowing away.

Anyway.

Niobe once posted a link to The News From Your Bed by Bishop Allen, and it's become my life's soundtrack. (In fact, the last verse starting "When your family calls you make nice to them all" is my ringtone.) And today it's bouncing off my inner walls. I'm not splitting town with the husband, leaving the kids at the 'rents for a weekend of hedonism. I'm not going to Vegas with the girls. I'm hunkering down at my counter with a piece of Ganached Guinness Goodness lovingly prepared for me by Mr. ABF and Bella (who calls it "Beer Cake"). And wishing I was somewhere, someone, somehow, else.

Circles

2009-03-17T23:10:00.000-04:00

I had what I thought was a good post, and I wrote and contemplated and eventually it sat in the juice too long and instead of fall-off-the-bone-goodness, it was more a tough whiny bitchy shoe of of Saturday Night Skit that I just couldn't end. But the gist was meaningful, so here's at least that much.

Mel had this gem of a post a few weeks ago as part of her Barren Advice series. I felt with some substitutions (turnips for carrots, cumin for cinnamon) I probably could've written the question itself, which was essentially, "I've tried to have a second child, but it's not going so hot, and maybe I should just stop -- how do I know if I should get off the gerbil wheel?" (Obviously one of my substitutions was"tried" for "sat around on the couch and hoped the decision fairy would call with my fate.") Mel suggested making a decision tree -- you know, where you start with a big circle (e.g., "Try Again"), which leads to some smaller circles (e.g., "Successful Pregnancy," "Unsuccessful Pregnancy," "No Pregnancy Whatsoever"), each of which has orbiting circles of consequences (e.g., "Gain even more weight on top of two-year-old flab you haven't yet lost," "Spend $," "Baby Dies, again.") Make one page for each major decision and see where the chips fall.

I decided this was fucking brilliant, and I would try this and see what transpired. My pages were "try again" and "don't," and soon I had filled each with a host of tiny circles. Yay me! Self-satisfied smile. And then I sat back and read them. And jeebus, if 98% of the circles weren't downright sad, negative, and depressing. On both pages. Including the circles orbiting the "Baby lives" option on page one.

I know.

So I threw the circle sheets in a drawer and proceeded to have this amazing weekend that got me thinking long and hard about child care (and how convenient things are now) and my current circle of friends (and how that would likely change with a baby), and I decided I'd add a couple more circles to complicate things (because Mel said to add even the really stupid embarrassing things. So shut up.)

And then I stepped back and realized a few things about the forest of trees I had just amassed:

This -- thinking about trying to add another child to our family -- is a fresh decision. This is not the same decision I made to have another child a few years ago. I now have a completely different mind set, and a life I've grown somewhat comfortable in. And the last time I played (what I thought was candyland but turned out to be roulette) with my comfort zone, I got royally hosed. And not for nothing, comfort's kinda really important to me now. I'm older -- hell I've aged exponentially. I live somewhere else, I have different friends. I still don't have a job. It's not just having another, it's having another now.

The little tacky, mundane, stupid circles filled with utter nonsense (Mel MADE me put them in, I SWEAR) also illuminated the point that I'm still dealing with an enormous amount of fear. I'm to some extent trying to rationalize my way out of this decision because I'm afraid of what will happen . . . . in the big picture kinda way, not the "We can't host dinner parties for a few years" kinda way. Truth be told, I'm not exactly sure how to separate "babysitting will suck" from "I DON'T WANT TO CREMATE ANOTHER CHILD" because they're kinda part of the same line of thinking: risking change is no longer "good" in my mind. Hell, risk can go take a hike. I didn't even worry about ticky tack stuff like this before, and look what happened. Why do I want to mess with what I have -- in any way, shape, or form? I like my comfy couch of grief, with it's indecision and mug of angst on the side table. I've grown accustomed to the ebb and flow of not-knowing and shirking and dodging my husband. And when I question, "Will my friends with no kids still invite us over for dinner on the fly?" I know the answer. And I care about the answer. How many other answers on this page do I know deep down as well?

I swear on all holy to me (come back here, chocolate chip cookie) that I have also thought of (a few) good things. And if you must know, not like it's your business or anything, the other page with the big circle "Don't try" is full of medium and little circles that positively scare the shit out of me. I'm worried I'm creating a lesser of two evils situation, but hey, maybe I knew that going in. Who has to make a decision tree that looks like this one, anyway?

Did I miss this in Kubler-Ross?

2009-03-06T11:44:00.002-05:00

What's up with the Guilt? I'm talking about guilt and grief today, at GITW.

Whadaya Know, Georgia?

2009-03-05T10:51:00.005-05:00

Dear any State Politician who thinks now is a good time to ram through some really assinine anti-IVF legislation claiming to be proactively warding off octoplets, but really fucking over potential parents everywhere and giving a big wet one to the pro-life contingency:

Am I in favor of octoplets? Well, in some abstract universe I suppose I find a line of puppies slurping from their mama curled up in a basket kinda cute. As for humans I'm happy they're all here safely, but I don't think anyone in their right mind (stress "right mind") thinks that being pregnant with eight babies is safe and prudent for mother and especially the children in question. The financial outcome I suppose is another concern in these trying times -- but really before we get in parents' biz, howsabout we get your own fucking State Legislators to pay their goddamn taxes? Hmmm?

Back to the point: I'm rather concerned that "politicians" (word used loosely) don't have the necessary reproductive chops to go messing with these medical issues. Let's go take a look at a few politicans in Georgia for kicks: the Senator who is introducing this nonsense lists his profession as "Investor." We also have an Orthodontist and a Grocer. Worthy and valued professions all, but NOT obstetricians or reproductive endocrinologists or anyone who might know about things reproductive. This is just a hunch. But an itch I'd love to scratch. I'd really like to see just how much these concerned citizens know before going and making laws curtailing Georgian Women's Bits and Pieces. Have you done your homework? Have you had some hearings and asked experts and professionals to explain these issues to you? I understand that we all can't be experts on the differences between Follistim and Gonal-F (Trick Question! There really is none!), and I do not claim to be an expert in budgets or deficits or things of an agricultural nature. I would think, though, if I held elected office and was asked to weigh on some of these incredibly important issues, I would take my sweet, sweet time doing some research and talking to people who DO know before weighing in with an opinion or -- gasp -- voting.

I think if you'd like to weigh on this bill and vote, that you must take the following quiz, and make your answers public with your name and picture attached. NO CHEATING! NO LOOKING THINGS UP ON YOUR IPHONE! NO FAIR IM'ING YOUR WIFE! TWITTER IS OUT! Pick up your pencils, and begin.

1) What does RE stand for?
2) What is an embryo?
3) What is a zygote? A blastocyst?
4) What does IVF stand for?
5) List two reasons why a woman might opt for IVF -- and no, "Being Angelina Jolie" or "Being a Really Disturbed Angelina Wannabe" are not valid answers.
6) Can you explain what happens procedurally during IVF? Please be specific. Extra credit will be given for knowledge of medications and their side effects and costs. Will give credit for original body-part euphemisms, but demand use of word "uterus." Feel free to make a table with corresponding calendar. (Hint: there is enough information here to actually fill a table.)
7) Please define the following and place them roughly on a pencil drawing of the human body:
-- ovaries
--fallopian tubes
-- uterus
-- cervix
-- vagina
Extra Credit:
-- corpus luteum cyst
-- endometrium
-- placenta

8) What does IVF cost? With/without insurance?
9) Does an RE "transfer" or "implant" embryos, and what in your mind is the difference?
10) Does every IVF end in pregnancy?
11) What must happen biologically after transfer for a woman to become pregnant?
12) What are the current odds of a successful IVF? Same question, but for a woman over 40? (Answers within 10% acceptable)
13) Can you think of any medical reasons why a woman might transfer more than 1-2 embryos? "Shits and Giggles" is not a valid answer.
14) When can a woman get pregnant? How does this happen for a woman undergoing IVF?
15) What hormone does a pregnancy test actually test for?
16) If you transfer a blastocyst, and the test comes back negative, have you just committed murder?
17) If you and your wife create an embryo the old fashioned way (sketches and diagrams not necessary) and the test comes back negative, have you just committed murder?
18) what is a miscarriage?
19) Compare/Contrast IVF with FET.
b) What is FET?
-- What is procedurally different?
-- What is monetarily different?
c) extra credit: What is IUI? How is it possible that more multiples could be produced from this than IVF? (Hint: IT COULD!)
20) Do you know anyone personally who has undergone IVF?

Want to know more about the proposed bill and what you can do? Go visit Mel or Julie.