Birth Day, VII

Seven years ago today, I gave birth to a baby girl.

That sentence alone is the most surreal thing to write and read.

I am smack-dab in the middle of travel-hockey/another-snow-day-on-tap/beginning-swim-training-for-a-triathlon/winter-that-won't stop hell.  My bandwidth is down to the width of a piece of dental floss, and I have a feeling when the Nor-easter comes tomorrow I will lock myself in a closet with a bottle of something and my cell phone and a box of tissue.  My day breaks and sets with yelling -- and for the record, seldom my own anymore.  (Pats self on back.)  But the boy, oh the boy, he's a loud kinetic force who has spent too much time this winter in the car seat and in the cold hockey rink and he's ready to blow.  That or he has a small hearing loss and is freebasing caffeine when my back is turned.

And I joke (through tears) that my hands are full, too full, and god help us all when the small one starts travel sports too because I will remember this crazy as the good ol' relaxin' days of yore.

And there -- this time of year especially, when I'm ramping up the annual fundraising project and dealing with my family's many seasonal maladies -- is something tugging gently, and then more insistently at my pant leg.  I try and shoo it off, make a sweeping motion to show that I'm knee-deep in dinner prep, or getting two separate breakfasts, or -- crap, please leave me be -- driving in some snow/ice debacle, but it persists.

And sometimes it takes the leg-pulling to scream at me through the din and remind me:

I'm here.  But I'm not.  Remember me?

If she had been born healthy as I (stupidly) assumed all babies were, she would be seven today.

Seven.

+++

I didn't know them as babies except for one, but for some reason I now know a slew of children in the first grade at Bella's school.  New kids in the neighborhood, younger siblings, kids of newfound friends.  One of these just celebrated a birthday a week or so ago, and I didn't know her then but I do now and I find myself staring at her in wonder.  Seven-year-olds don't bother me, but babies still do.  They are all still mystical, lucky, elusive creatures that make me catch my breath and tremble.  I don't understand them, I don't understand the allure in them, I don't get how so many of them are here.

+++

The family scorecard has altered only slightly:  Buddy is still here, the geriatric cats finally both dialed in their ninth (or, in Kirby's case, 49th) life.  We have a new rescue cat name Violet; she's two, but acts as though she's two months and still learning how to play.  Though she loves us all (well, except Buddy still figuring him out) she plays rough and we're all playing mama cat and telling her no.  She is the current baby.

Bella is beautiful, Bella is overdramatic, Bella will someday make a great lawyer the way she argues ev-er-y-thing.  She asked this morning if I was buying flowers, I said yes, and she smiled and showed me that she was wearing her blue Maddy bracelet.  She is at once a selfish, impatient, loving, and fantastic big sister.

I did buy flowers as I do annually, and I'll light a candle at some point between appointments and dinner-prep and studying for the science quiz on salmon and Valentines.  I'll quietly congratulate myself for carrying and delivering three babies, those beautiful flowers are there in part for me, too.  But mostly I'll remember the delicate sweet baby that was mine for ever so briefly.

She was here.

I love you Maddy, and miss you awfully.

+++

Side note:  I switched web browsers (long story) and while it corrected many of the problems I was having, and my smile was widening, I clicked over to Feedly . . . and it had erased all of my feeds.  All of them.  I crawled through the FAQs and help sections and sent them multiple emails (all met with "Welcome to Feedly!" auto-bot-bullshit), and . . . nothing.   And I was so sad and depressed I couldn't bring myself to even click in there and see the empty page.  But I miss keeping up with even the annual posts of my old friends:  If you still blog, if you were on my radar, could you please comment here if only to say "I'm still writing!" and I'll add you.  I may not comment often, but I'll try and check in and read.  I promise.

Birth Day, VI

Remind me of my blogger password.

Remind me how to edit and spellcheck on this thing.

Remind me how to write.

Remind me why I start clenching my jaw in January, and why during winter I have vivid daymares involving my children and blood and hospitals and machines that go beep, and feelings of anguish.

Remind me why that story on NPR my husband told me about  -- the one with the woman whose infant died from Whooping Cough -- pushed every fucking button on our panels.

Remind me why I have a button panel again?

Remind me why there's this monstrous age gap between my children?

Remind me why driving to Children's for a completely innocuous, non-life-threatening, totally completely superficial appointment for one of my children made me tense?  Why I had to take deep breaths in the parking garage?

Remind me why people (people I don't even know) who said the whole Sandy Hook thing on TV made them so "sad" they had to turn off the television and "get away from it" made me hate my in-laws all over again?

+++

We went to a child's birthday last week where my husband had a chance to finally meet the new baby of the family who lives a few doors down in back.  For some reason I thought they had another boy, but it turns out it's a girl.  In the safe warmth of my kitchen, after the party, with Bella standing two feet away from me, Mr. ABF said, "Do you know what they named her?"

(stunned silence, perhaps my stomach and fists clenched)

"Magdalena."

"Jesus," I said, gripping the wall corner and immediately apologizing to Bella for saying something I don't allow her to say.  She gave me an "It's cool" look.

And you know, it's a beautiful name, it's not her name, and when this girl is five and everyone is calling her "Maggie" I'm not going to care remotely.

But right now?  Today?  Because she's a baby and it's February?

Remind me why this is like a punch in the gut?

Today I will undergo the annual traipse to the flower store, and lighting of the candle at 4:30 p.m.  Mr. ABF will be at Bella's hockey practice, which will just be getting underway; Ale will likely be riveted to a "Little Einsteins" or throwing something or narrowly avoiding stitches and a trip to the ER.  But it won't matter, because it's impossible for me to forget as much as I'd like to.

Funny how so much of that week fades to black during the year when the schedule is jammed -- sometimes it takes something really grossly obvious like misplacing my bracelet for me to even remember the events of six years ago and why I even wear a bracelet at all.  It seems so "normal" to have two children at the ages they are that there's seldom a thought as to why so many years fall between them.

And then I get to this week and I can remember every last detail:  starting with the total humiliation of February 12, 2007, where I came to realize that things do not always follow the plan, you know, the plan you had just totally assumed would occur while holding your newborn,  from napping on the couch to teaching her how to walk in heels to chatting about her professional life over a glass of wine.  The plan that you never gave much thought to because, duh, of course it will go like that!

Until it didn't.

I don't need reminding of how I almost passed out the first night when they finally started to go through her litany of problems.  How I howled through the second night.  How Valentine's Day has become the ultimate irony because I remember every vivid detail of a doctor coming into my room and telling me my daughter's heart had stopped.

I remember what I ate for breakfast on the last day of my daughter's life.

I remember the ride home after she died.

It's not that I think I outright forget the rest of the year, but I think the memories have become just that:  memories, not something I touch and feel and bump into every day like I did for years.  Back then, they weren't memories, it was grief -- tangible, identifiable, slap-you-in-the-face grief.  I felt like I was in a daily wrestling match with the memories big and small, everything from the final moments to the ice-machine location would cause me to slump and ponder.  Grief slid away eventually, hallelujah, and now I'm left with memories that are part of a blurry background that contain millions of others, good, bad and indifferent.  They just sit there through the seasons, occasionally wave hi from their shelf, maybe do as much as poke me in the side and cause me to verbalize out loud:  "huh."

It's only now, in winter, especially this week in February that the memories are unpacked like holiday decorations, dusted off, and trotted in front of my conscious self in a parade of horror.

I won't need reminded, but I may need to find some time around 4:30 to actually light a candle, and then keep someone from throwing a book or cheese stick right at it.

Today, I'll remember.

Today, and even all the other days you sit quietly and observe from your perch in my subconscious, I'll remember.  Those other days, I just won't feel remotely as hollow as I do on this day when I wink back.  I love you Maddy, and miss you terribly.

Deja Vu, Not

What's the saying, like riding a bike?   Some bike ride, but instead of pumping my legs and feeling the air rush through my hair and the sweat building under my grip on the handlebars and the spray of muddy water kicking up on my back, I'm in the car.  Driving, always driving, to see a dying human.  There's the still, and the quiet.  There are the blankets, the bed, the window -- always with a rather peculiar view.  There's some amount of machinery, from the shiny and technical to the almost hidden line tracking back into the wall.

It's amazing to me how the skin softens so, in the final hours.  It's seemed that way with everyone.  His face was so smooth, the traces of lines and age and sun disappeared, and his complexion looked a robust 60, not 95.  (At one point the hospice worker lifted his blanket to explain mottling on the legs, and three middle age women were standing there and finally one blurted what I'm sure we were all thinking, "Jesus, they look better than my legs.")

And there's always the awkwardness.  What to say to a daughter, one who couldn't understand you even if she could hear you?  To a grandmother who again probably couldn't make sense of what you were saying even if totally conscious?  To a grandfather who has done everything, and kicked the living shit out of "elderly" and continued to hike and golf -- despite being legally blind?

My grandfather died.

And I was shocked to find in the car that this was not my usual death march, but an unqualified relief.  He went from 60-0, fast.  On the weekend of Bella's birthday we discovered that his hip pain -- which we had all been blowing off as old-man hip pain -- was cancer.  Humongous, spreading, inoperable, cancer.  They gave him 6-12 months, averages both, both on the outside.  He had all his faculties about him, made his plans known, and sat back with the game on and waited to die.

It was painful for him, and painful to watch.  When the pain was at 11 in early September, I wondered how in hell he could possibly go six months, or even get to some "average" like four, or (gulp) eight.  I wondered if the DA would actually prosecute a mother of two if she offered to grind up her grandfather's percocet in a glass of scotch and sit and watch the game with him.

So when they called and said, it'll be in the next 48 hours, I may have smiled.  Thank god.  Jack up that morphine, let him ride that dream, no 95 year old needs to go through this crap.  I drove out and said goodbye.

Of course, being my grandfather, I drove out three days later, to say goodbye, again.

And I held his hand while he grimaced, and although he was in a world where he didn't know me and wasn't speaking much, he scrunched his face up when I told him the Steelers had lost.

And they called and said, "any minute now," and my mother went to his side in the middle of the night, and 12 hours later, he finally decided he had fought enough.  This, almost a whole week after that initial call.

And I'm sad, don't get me wrong.  And I'll miss him.  But my grandfather got an amazing, long, life.  I got to travel with him to his favorite place, and he will now be cremated and taken to Alaska where one of his many many friends will disperse his ashes from a plane somewhere remote and high and cold and beautiful.

I've had so much ugly shitty and gut-wrenching death in my life the last five years, I had forgotten that death can be welcome, and peaceful, and beautiful.  I hated that line about being "in a better place," but there is zero question in my mind that my grandfather is now in a better place than he was curled up in a pain so extreme he temporarily lost his sanity.

I miss him already.  I was amazed that Ale took to this crotchety old dude as just another guy, and it seemed to make perfect sense, what with Ale speak-yelling his two-year-old sentences into the deaf man's ear.  They would both laugh at their private inside joke.  It was some bizzaro circle-of-life meets sit-com, but it was beautiful to watch.

I've been helping dismantle his house, riddled with mouse droppings (big surprise, what with the old house in the woods inhabited solo by the legally blind guy) and it's strange, as always, to find yourself the caretaker of someone's passed down stuff.  The stuff, it lives -- the old crank phone that's easily over 100 years old will now hang in my kitchen; my great grandmother's china, also over a century in age, now occupies a high shelf.  My great grandmother's linen chest is coming, next time I can make it out there with the truck.  And it's so odd to think that people die, but the flotsam and jetsam of their lives just trickles down on onward, and my house has become a repository for baby bracelets and blankets, two sets of old china, and nineteenth-century needlework.  I dream about the people who used this stuff, and wonder about all the awkward handoffs that preceded my possession.

It's odd to think that at a week, even Maddy had "stuff."

I'm good with this one, though.  I'm going to don his old Steelers cap and put on the game, and dig around in my liquor cabinet for the scotch I bought, just for him, for when he came to visit.  And I'll hope fervently that I too live to 95, and have time to break down all the cardboard boxes in my house before my death, before passing on all my stuff.

Mind the Gap

It's fairly inevitable:  I'm surrounded by people, literally -- you should have seen the baby explosion on my block in the last two years -- who are on their first child.  And they turn to me/mine and ask sweetly and naively,

What if any tv programming does he watch?

Does he still take a bottle?

When will you start potty training?

And I try my best to keep the snark in check and answer as sweetly and politely and truthfully as possible:  Phinneas and Ferb; never did, drinks out of a technical camelback water bottle or a regular ol' cup and has since he was one; he started himself when he was 18 months.  (No, by no means there yet, relax yourselves, I am by no means that lucky.)

When Ale breaks into song it's frequently something from the pop charts; today, just for example, it was, out of the blue from the backseat, "THIS IS CRAZY!" He can name the title of a Ting Ting's song in the opening bars, and chants the chorus from the Beastie Boys "Sureshot".  He wants to do potty "by self," eat "by self," and tells us to leave his room at bedtime.  "Go mommy, nap time.  Goodbye."   He eats pizza "big," and is generally in the habit -- for better or worse -- of monkey see, monkey do.

He is by no means independent, and by that I mean he clings to his mommy with a ferocity known usually to atomic particles.  I don't sense any nascent super intelligence.

What he is, is the little brother of a much, much older sister.

So, the conversation goes, "Oh!  How old is his sister?"

"Seven."  "Eight."

And then I can fucking hear the gears start turning as they contemplate that six year gap, maybe with some stupid turn of phrase, "Oh, nice gap."

(Nice?  I mean, not for nothing, but if everything was lovely and it was 2.5 years, is that "nice"?  Or "Not nice?"  I'm confused.)

And I can practically read their minds as they eyeball me:

Infertility.

Remarriage, baby with husband number two.

Infertility.

Whhoooooops!


And very seldom, nay, rarely, do I step on the toes of their wisps of thought with the concept that the gap really isn't, and like every other red-blooded American (it seems) my children are in fact about 2.5-3 years apart.  It's just that the middle one is, um, missing.

Not much to pick up from that one, amiright?

It's tough this, when people start asking me what the up and down sides to this break are.  I try and answer honestly because I know they're asking from a good place:  It's lovely to have an older child who attends school, can get in/out of the car by herself, uses the toilet AND takes her dirty dishes to the kitchen and unloads the clean dishwasher.  It may take four nags, but she can in fact put her shoes away and sort her laundry.  So only having to deal with one child's tiny shoes and dirty dishes and plastic crap is a relief.  I  make one meal a night, and I can grab a half hour for the shower by plopping them down in front of the same programming (Ale loves to imitate Candace, it's a riot).

It's a bummer in that Bella was/is an awesome traveller.  I could easily see taking her to Alaska or Africa right now, tomorrow if the opportunity presented itself.  Yet, every time I think "You know, I think we could do London, maybe with a day trip to Paris -- Ale eats and sleeps pretty well," he up and contradicts me by melting down during a trip to Ikea hours later.  The kind of meltdown where other mothers silently mouth "I'm sorry" as they pass by with their wide-eyed toddlers staring at my screaming progeny.  Bella can climb and ride skateboards and get in and out of the tub by herself and a load of other stuff that looks amazing attractive to a small guy who doesn't understand helmets or that his hands and feet are still a bit too far apart to do things.  We've have some extremely close calls, some bumps, and a bloody nose or three.

The gap is lovely, the gap is tough, but what the gap really is is a daily reminder that there's something in there, something in the middle, that the oreo is missing something rather critical.  There's a whole lifetime of counseling and depression in there, and watching him coo "Happy Birfday" to his sister only highlights the chasm between them.  There shouldn't be a canyon between my children -- a path perhaps, a very windy road maybe.  Not something that requires road guards and a suspension bridge.

+++

Bella is eight.  I fight the urge to put a "teen" on the end of that.  She is at once, extremely mature and a bit of a hot mess.  She is a lovely combination of girl and tomboy; yesterday she determined with her birthday cash and savings she had enough for the American Girl she's been pining for, today there were real hot tears when I broke the news that one of her favorite ball players --  the one whose name graces her very pricey and very favorite official jersey -- had been traded.  She gobbles up pop tunes like M&Ms, and deigns to get down on her knees with the stuffed animals and play school with her little brother.  Usually she looks so old it drives me a bit bonkers, but I was looking at pictures from her party on Sunday and I can still espy that baby fat in her face, that glimmer of three still peering out at me from those eyes.  Still a girl.  But not for long.

+++

We've fallen into a nice tradition of ordering a small copy of our wedding cake from the baker who made it along with Bella's birthday cake so we have something to remind us of our anniversary.  This year the Birthiversary picnic was at the farm where we were married, but for the first time sans Max who actually attended our wedding.  He was just a year old then, hard to imagine -- about as hard to imagine as watching our children run around with my cousin's children.   It was beautiful, and surreal, and exhausting.

Per usual, Ferdinand was at the front of my mind on Sunday as well.  I wondered what Janis was doing, much as I always wonder how all these mind-blowing events can occur on a single day.  Who knew four years almost to the hour after getting married in a meadow I'd be holding my first child; who knew three years later I'd be celebrating her birthday, bereft.  Who knew within the year I'd discover someone had lost a son on the day I'd been mindlessly doling out cupcakes and goody bags and wondering if my marriage would continue through this shitstorm.

Who knew.

It's a few days belated, but:

Happy Birthday, Ferdinand.
Happy Birthday, Bella.
Happy Anniversary, us.

So an old Babyloss Blogger walks into a bar

2012 owns me.

I am 2012's bitch.

I am a slave to the coffee bean, and frequently count down hours and then minutes until bedtime. I recently told someone I could easily become alcoholic with the stupid piles of poo that have conspired to drown me this year, but I'm too tired. Given the choice between motoring through dinner and getting the kids to bed a few seconds earlier, I'll bypass a glass of wine, easy. Kids asleep? Work done? Pillow. It's not a choice. My book club books are collecting virtual dust in the Nook, and this blog . . . oh dear, this blog.

It's not all bad, not really, not when I reflect, although in the moment some of it seemed (and still does seem) a bit reminiscent of the unholy 2007.

The day of my last post, Maddy's birthday, all I could think was "Thank god Maddy is not here to turn 5, because how much would it suck to put down your dog on your 5th birthday." It turned into the day after, but still. The previous day, Max, just about 13, riddled with cancer, gagging every time he stood up, his breathing turned into a bit of a death rattle, sniffed and walked away from a sirloin hamburger that neighbors had bought for him so he could "go out in style." Nothing says "It's Time" like a dog turning down a medium rare piece of quality beef. We called the vet, and arranged for her to come to our house, and the evening of February 13, we held Max as he left our lives.

It was horrible, and would've been horrible in June, but to do it during this week, when all those memories were there was . . . . a lot. A lot to deal with. His death was extremely peaceful and still is perfect in mind, second only perhaps to dying quietly in his sleep, and he led a wonderful long life. He was a happy dog, the softest dog ever, and will probably be that dog as we continue down the avenue of our pet owning lives. But I know perfectly well you don't have to regret the actual death in order to be severely bummed out by it all, and god was I.

But not for long, because Tuesday morning, Valentine's Day, the morning Maddy's heart stopped five years earlier, and now with my dead dog lying in repose in the back of the truck awaiting burial in my aunt's pasture, I dressed up, caught a train and went downtown for Jury Duty.

Of course I got picked.

It was criminal not civil, and it's so not my story to tell, so I'm not gonna, but it was one of those cases, those awful gut-wrenching things that turn your tummy until you realize you need to focus and analyze and think critically and so you do. My brain, it was full. Overtaxed. And thankfully the trial and decision was only three days because I came home a pile of goo. I mourn the fact that Maddy's white matter was liquefied about as much as I joke about it, and for the first time I wondered if this is what it might feel like to start down that road of brain seepage. I had trouble tying words together, my emotions were all over the map, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, I didn't know what to think.

Of course there were some take-aways, not that I was looking, but I'm gonna catch the low-hanging fruit, thank you: For starts, the jury I sat on was awesome. I had extremely low expectations, and I was not pleasantly surprised but downright amazed. This group made me proud to live here, and once again I climbed on the lucky-star train for ever moving here in the first place. Secondly, this case, without going into any detail, was predicated on the lack of love. I'm not talking hate, because there honestly wasn't much of that going around either, but the total dearth of love, the misunderstanding or perhaps complete lack of understanding of what love felt like, looked like, was, is.  It made me really appreciate the love I take for granted, have taken for granted.  And when I found my voice that weekend, I turned to Bella during some meal and told her: I will always love you. I don't care what you do, and how mad you think I'll be, and how mad I am at you, I will still love you. Always. She teared up and turned back to her waffle, and I teared up too.

(Did I mention during this week Ale came down with croup for the second time in two months?  Don't children develop immunity to this bug within the same season?  (Cue ominous foreshadowy music) And for those who don't know croup -- and I didn't because Bella never had it -- in addition to all of the lovely effects like this awful wheeze that inhibits your child's capacity to breathe and a cough like a circus seal, it keeps you up for five nights.)

It was an awful week.

+++

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE FARM: I mentioned in passing during an old post (not that you can remember, because that was a whole geological era ago) that Mr. ABF and I chaired a fundraiser that was held in late April. It bled me dry. And every day I left jury duty for the world's best latte across the street I flipped on my phone and was greeted with email telling me something went wrong, someone quit, someone else quit, and instead of a manageable one hole to fill by the end of the week we were pushing around buckets just trying to catch the torrent.

Nothing is as thankless as fundraising.  Because the institution you fundraise for thanks you, but you are left having worked your goddamn ass off and when it's done and you should be kicking back and throwing remnants in the circular file, your email is filling with complaints.  Sure, some second-hand compliments trickle in, but you wind up wishing they were actually addressed to you to counter the absolute crap that people find to bitch about.  I am never volunteering for anything again, civic-duty can kiss my ass.  My checkbook is open, my time and life and marriage and kids?  Not.   It took weeks for the mail *ping* not to make my stomach clench.  I don't think Mr. ABF and I have ever been close to divorce, but we might have thought counseling was in order towards the end of this endeavor.  I could just hear the therapist mewing, "So, what was it exactly that pushed you over the edge," and having me scream manically, "THE LABELS!  THE FUCKING LABELS!  No wait, THE SPREADSHEET!  THE GODDAMN THIRD COLUMN WOULDN'T PRINT!"  Divorce via Excel.

Did I mention that apparently toddlers do not develop an immunity to the virus that causes croup within a season?  They don't.  Because a week before the event, when I was at the height of batshit, I hadn't even brushed my teeth for bed yet because I was downstairs working on, why yes, a spreadsheet, when I heard that oh-so-familiar trained-seal bark coming through Ale's monitor.  Three times since December 31, godddammit.  And unlike the two previous times, this time his little neck muscles were clenching and the ol' shower/stand in the cold thing (twice) didn't work.  So off we went to the ER for a wee pump of steroids and we were both calm as punch since we knew what the deal was, being croup pros by now, but neither of us lay down to sleep (him/bed, me/floor next to his bed) until 3 a.m.  And a friend involved in this fundraiser chose the next morning to insinuate that I wasn't working hard or fast enough for her AND I ATE HER WHOLE, ALIVE.  WHILE SWEARING.  THE END.

Fundraising sucks, don't do it.

+++

There were casualties this spring:  Maddy's week got massively, tragically swept under the rug by Max, sleeplessness, and my brain having to be focused on some other-people's-tragedy.  The floral arrangement I get every year from the same awesome florist really looked like crap on day two; any other year I would've run it back because it's expensive and meaningful and they're good, but there was no time.  I told Maddy repeatedly that I was sorry, that I remembered her, and I'm pretty sure she gave an eye roll to Ale and Bella who shot her back a sympathetic look of allegiance.

I had the best of intentions to actually throw a birthday party for my son this year -- a totally casual playdate with the jillion babies who live within three blocks of us -- and when I finally picked my head up off the counter band looked at the calendar I realized:  His birthday is in 5 days.  I thought that was too late to organize something and expect people to show up, so no party.  We'll have something this summer.

Two years was marked by taking Ale to the Van Gogh exhibit (the only time we could make it before it left) -- really, the IDEAL activity for a two-year-old -- and eating take out pizza.  We got a marvelous, wonderful video of him listening to us sing and then blowing out his candles -- hell, even I looked good! And a few mornings later Mr. ABF handed Ale the phone, and and while everyone's attention was elsewhere, Ale watched it and deleted it.

It's strangely metaphoric -- the lost video and the way this year has gone, whizzing by in an amazing array of tension and shit with little good to grasp and cling to.  I suppose I could moan and groan and flail and say "typical," and perhaps tense up thinking of what horrible significance there must be erasing the only evidence of one's turning two.  Certainly in a past life, this would toll Omen.

But I smiled and kissed him and told him, "I was there."  I was there.  I got to watch him, and his eyes, and his fat cheeks, and witnessed him stuff his face with homemade chocolate cake.  I don't need a video, or a picture, or a charm, or a birthstone.  He's right here, not in my phone, not in my imagination, not poking me irritatingly in the subconscious.  No, he's poking me irritatingly, in real life, at 6 o'dark o'clock, proclaiming, "Just woke up!"  Thank goodness.  I'll take it.

+++

Somewhere else in there was a vacation to a warm climate marred by having to check fundraising email daily and Ale once again picking up some noro-whatsit on the last night and passing it along like a good boy.

After swearing on a stack that my child would never be over scheduled and would enjoy childhood, Bella somehow had three sports this spring.  Which sucked until we all realized that her baseball team was a bit Bad News Bears meets a Ritalin advertisement and then I became grateful that she had two other experiences within the week to remind her that sports could be fun, not all coaches were incompetent, and not all children her age had the emotional maturity of her little brother.

Project "Move Children to the Third Floor" is still in progress (see: fundraiser time suck) but damn are we close.  We are thinking it's time to move our sleeping bag out of Benjamin Moore and give them a break from us, and the other half of the floors get sanded this week.

A week or so ago, 10 minutes after putting Ale down for a nap, his voice chirped from the top of the staircase:  "Climb! Out! Self!"  Wuh oh.  So he's in a big boy bed, and doing great.

Second grade has been so, so awesome I don't want it to end.  I want it to continue forever.  I feel like there can't possibly be anywhere to go from here, what could be left to learn?  But end it must (sob) and Bella has requested a smattering of camps this summer:  sports, zoo, baseball, hockey, sewing.  Her hockey program introduced to her the goalie position back in winter and she lurves it.  I'm not sure mommy  lurves it, but watching her throw on a hundred pounds of pads turning her frame into a square shape and then trying to look mean while skating backwards goes a long way toward changing my mind. Cuz that shit is hilarious.

Did you know Wegmans sells Maddalena olives?  They do, I bought some.

+++

Good lord, how in fuck's name ARE you?

Birth Day, V

Or, Physics.

As a joke, sorta, I taught my wee little soccer team some physics last fall. You know, fun goofy things like: a well-kicked ball can travel faster than a person. (We had a race. Everyone lined up, I said go, and they sprinted and I passed the ball and we saw which made it to the 20 yard mark first.) The ball does not run out of stored energy, but you do -- let the ball travel for you. (Yes, yes, I know the ball has some too when kicked, but let's not blow the young children's minds just yet, m'kay?) Goalies can train and learn to jump; but because of that crazy thing called gravity, it's harder to learn to fall fast. Ergo, shoot low. I sent them forth to run in circles and kick wildly and discuss the oeuvre of Justin Bieber. Bella complained the whole time, "But I don't like Fidgets!" A malprop which I'm going to tuck away until she wins a nobel prize for her studies in plate tectonics.

When soccer ended, I thought I'd have some time to do stuff, like wash dishes and write here. My endless hours of computer bureaucracy were over (seriously, that is mainly what the modern coach does that kills time -- practices and games are 90 minute stretches of fresh air and contempletude by comparison), complete with two additional gaping holes in my weekly schedule. But what's the principal, nature hates a vacuum? The mud encrusted cleats remained (and I believe, still do) in the mudroom while we shuttled Bella to her Nutcracker rehearsals and tried and reschedule her ice-hockey initial fitting because it conflicted with a dress rehearsal. One of these years perhaps she'll do Nutcracker! On Ice! But until then her angel outfit will remain separate from the shoulder pads. (For the record, you cannot get a hockey helmet on over a ballet bun. In case you were wondering. Also? Please look for me in the Olympic Ballet Bun Hair-do competition, I'll be in the "moving target" division.)

The holes, they filled with dump-truck alacrity -- there was quickly hockey, and more hockey. The third floor bathroom was demolished (in the longest demo ever, where it was discovered bad bathrooms merely beget other bad bathrooms) and rebuilt. And I decided after years of participation to chair (whatinfucksnamewasIthinking) a big fundraiser in my neck of the woods. Mr. ABF is co-chairing with me, and together we are pulling our hair out and madly doling out our cell phone numbers and email. Good golly, the email. How much time can it possibly chew? Very much time, as it turns out. There are no more holes to fill; I put children to nap or bed and in the space where I used to do nice things like shower and do laundry, or clean dishes and tidy up and maybe read a blog or do a crossword or curl up with a book club selection, I ponder email and spreadsheets. And I stress.

Last fall, a few long-time, long-term members of this corner of the blogosphere finally got good news. I circled around to all of their comment sections, and even wrote a few emails, and I tried so hard to explain that it was good -- no, it was great -- that they could feel joy and happiness and relief.

And sadness.

And glee, and smile uncontrollably.

And cry at the drop of a hat.

And that it was totally possible, within the realm of medical science and understood nature and math and quantum mechanics, to feel better and whole . . . and not. To finally feel full, while still having a hole that was totally impossible to fill, no matter how busy you feel you are now, no matter how emotionally and time-wise stretched. Your life may be full of cherub photos and dirty diapers and solid food and babies who won't sleep, and somehow that gap between the mountains looms there.

Funny how that happens.

++++

I think because of the crammed boxes on the calendar and the bizarro spring-winter we seem to be having here (I swear. to. god. I saw poor cherry blossoms wondering what gives around Thanksgiving, and a peek of forsythia in January, and already bulbs popping up and then pausing to ask what month we're in because this? is odd) February snuck up on me. That and it's been a whole five years. Half a decade.

I don't measure in Maddy's would-be time -- frankly, I really never have because it was so evident to me that she would have never lived, but I do measure in my children's time in relation to the very bad thing. And so it was last week when Ale was sliding down our backyard playset by himself (almost) that I realized he was the exact age that Bella was when we looked at this house. In fact, she slid down that very slide with my MIL, while we wandered through rooms inside. And ergo, he is the exact age Bella was when I found myself surprisingly, relatively easily pregnant with Maddy. And now this funny clock will start and I expect that while today and next Saturday will hurt me some, that the kick to the solar plexus will come in November '12, when Ale will be the age Bella was Maddy was born. It is then I will see, without bloodshot eyes and dehydration and leaky breasts and crushing sadness, what it's really like to have a two-and-a-half year old. I think it will be then that I'll emerge from the overgrowth, the now flowered weeds, to discover that all this time they've been covering an abyss.

++++

Black holes aren't really you know, they're filled with dense matter. So I'm realizing I can't fill these holes, and nor do they need to be filled. It is entirely possible to function, to function normally and even -- dare I say -- well, with a mini-van swallowing pot-hole in your soul. My days are filled with the stress of planning and the boring regularity of groceries, and great joy of finally having the Soccer Channel, and eating a seven course seafood feast with my neighbors, and coaching a teamful of beautiful girls, and watching my own cherub glide across the stage in what I hope is her first Nutcracker. There is unabashed smiling at a seven year old who can skate backwards and do a hockey stop, and a 1.5 year old who occasionally uses the toilet, prefers mushroom/artichoke pizza to plain, and says "crap" in context. My toddler-wannabe scores a goal with his miniature hockey set, holds the tiny stick above his head, and shouts "GOOOAAAL!" And then very methodically pushes the nets aside and boards his push-bike and rides it around, imagining life on a Zamboni. I am, all things considered, quite happy. Very happy. Strangely, I feel very blessed.

All while occasionally peering into the hole that I know leads through to another galaxy, where horrible things occur, and beauty is snuffed out before it is realized. A place packed with great sorrow and unspeakable horror. A tiny wee bit of beauty perhaps, and a precious few furry-purry kisses but mostly a nightmare that I don't dare consider on any given day.

I guess I've learned to drive around it, except for in February, where I stop and peer over the edge and remember, and ponder what might have been, and what on earth will be.

I realize now looking at my blond big-eyed children stuff their faces with warm waffles that all my children are, and were, beautiful. All of them. I love them all completely. And I do what I can in a jam-packed world to remind them -- all of them -- of that fact.

Today I park my car on the edge of the floral, cedar-fumed forest, and stroll up to the edge of the craggy canyon, peer into the stank vapor and lonely darkness, and I know it's not really an empty hole at all. So I shout into the echo and am somewhat comforted to hear it bounce back at me:

I love you, Maddy. I miss you terribly.

Boxing it Up

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

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)

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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

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

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.