Heart Heal Hope

Whatever else

2012-01-24T23:41:00.002-05:00

Whatever else I did today—
whether or not I met my deadline
whether I did all the laundry or left some in the dryer and the basket,
whether I served healthy meals and good snacks or drank too much coffee and ate too much sugar
whether I got Kathleen to pick up toys and go on the potty without a tantrum
whether I got us outside on this balmy, melty, sunshiny day—
whatever else got done or undone,
this morning I sat at breakfast and played peek-a-boo with Elizabeth.
We took turns doing the peeking. We peeked from behind hands and napkins.
She said "Picka buh." She laughed. Whatever else today, there is that.

My View, Year 4

2012-01-21T22:49:00.000-05:00

It has become a January tradition for me to sit in this chair that I got to rock my babies in and reflect on what I see and what has changed and where I am.

The view this year is much like last year. The swing is gone, replaced by the kitchen set, but toys still fill the shelves and block the fireplace. Kathleen's babies—Lulu, Baby, Maisie, and Jack (where's Bessie?) are jumbled on top of the stuffed animals along with "Sister's baby" Maxie, who Kathleen informed me is Lulu's brother. The stuffed animals are piled in a huge basket, made by our neighbor and given to us at our neighborhood party two days before Henry was born.

The milkcrates and CD stand still overflow with board books and picture books. One of our actual bookcases, however, is half empty, the books moved to save them from Elizabeth, who has a knack for destroying them.

CDs are piled above the TV all around Henry's picture, where I've stuck them after our pre-bedtime dance parties.

Up until last week, the Christmas tree lighted the corner by the stairs, the first time since 2006 a Christmas tree graced our home. Now, the Christmas ornaments are down, with some snowflakes and snowmen and cardinals (I categorize them all as winter) remain.

From here, I can see that much of the house is a mess, though I don't know if it is more so than years past. I think I just feel more overwhelmed with stuff. Toys, diaper bags, outgrown clothes litter the table and pile by the stairs. I don't worry really about the house being clean. I don't bother to apologize for my messy house. But sometimes, the clutter gets to me. Every time I make headway, we get an influx of clothes or laundry piles up waiting to be put away or I don't have time to finish sorting and everything gets jumbled again. Sigh.

It's messy and lived in and filled with things we love (and things we don't have the time or energy to get rid of (see above). Sitting now, remembering the many steps Elizabeth took today, it's hard to recall just how tiny she was this time last year, how many hours I logged nursing and reading and cuddling in this chair. Thinking of the songs Kathleen makes up, its hard to remember what it felt like sitting with her three years ago, making up songs for her. Looking around this room full of family and life and love and stuff, it's hard to remember the barren walls and just how shocked and adrift I was four years ago. I look again at his pictures and still wonder how this can be my life, how he can be gone. And I look around the room again and wonder how that fits somehow with all that is here, because it does. His being gone is somehow part of this life that we have settled into.

Five little things

2012-01-16T22:26:00.001-05:00

I love that Kathleen calls clementines, lemontines, and the image of a squishy, easy to peel, tart, yellow fruit it creates for me.

Kathleen tried skating today for the first time. She got out on the ice on her double-bladed skates, holding tight to our friend's hands and then mine. She moved on to a milk crate and then, center ice (on the tiny, wonderful homemade backyard rink), she let go and half stepped, half slid one foot forward. Again. Again. Again. Til she reached me at the side, complaining that her hands were cold.

We went out skating today (I tried too though it has probably been 20 years—or more—since I last wore skates). We went out skating today despite my careful watching of the thermometer (It was 20 degrees out today, but sunny and still. Compared to yesterday with it's biting wind it felt almost warm.). We went out skating today despite the work deadline waiting on my desk. I'm glad we went skating today (and glad too to have moved that bigger than it seemed project off my desk).

Last week, while I was working, Brian and Kathleen made me five-layer squares, one of my favorite treats, certainly my favorite that Brian makes. He makes them particularly good by not skimping on any ingredients and being exceedingly precise in spreading the ingredients. I still have a few left and I look forward to my afternoon coffee every day because I get to have one.

We made chili over the weekend. I say we, but Brian did most of the work while I learned about making cheese and traded a few jars of dilly beans and jam for chutney and honey and elderberry elixir. Fourteen quarts of chili means a bunch of meals in the freezer—and chili pizza this week. As Kathleen would say—Hooray! That's another thing I love, how much she has been saying Hooray! lately.

Good intentions

2012-01-04T23:42:00.000-05:00

I wrote last night in my journal (pen on paper!) about my goals and intentions for this year. I wrote about what I'd like to continue (letting go, seeing the good, opening to joy) and what I'd like to let go of (anger, frustration, anxiety).

At 4:30 AM, Kathleen fell out of bed (her bed rail, that I knew was loose when she went to bed, collapsed). We had the first meltdown of the day. My suggestion that she sleep on her brand-new Christmas present sleeping bag led to a screaming, kicking fit. Sleeping with me got the same response.

I finally got her settled in my bed. And I was wide awake. I was exhausted, knew I had a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it. I was angry with Brian for accepting a last minute overnight shift. I was irritated with Kathleen for waking up. I was frustrated that I couldn't get back to sleep. She couldn't either, so I pointed out the stars out the skylight. We snuggled, and when she asked at 5:30 to get up, I thought why not.

I made coffee and toast, and we had a picnic on the kitchen floor.

It was not the day I expected or wanted or planned for. It was long and sometimes hard. I ended with a lot of anxiety about getting all my work done and feeling a little incompetent though I suspect I'm not the first one to question the process on my new assignment and I know I'm not to blame for the schedule cram I'm in.

I'm going to take 15 minutes to breathe and maybe read and be away from my work and my desk and my computer. I'm going to try to let this day go, but maybe I'll hold onto the stars and the snuggle and the picnic.

Old Year, New Year

2012-01-02T23:07:00.000-05:00

Last night I read through all of my posts from last year,because I love doing a kind of year in review. If I had time, I’d read throughmy journal from last year too, but we were up too late last night for NewYear’s Eve and I was up too early in the morning for Elizabeth. I’d do ittoday, but my four-day vacation is over and work is piled up, and I’m stillunpacking from being away.

My family celebrates Christmas just before New Year’s, so Ispent this transition night with them. I rang out the old year laughing withpeople I love. Laughing and loving is not a bad way to welcome the new year.I’ve missed a lot of these family gatherings the past few years, and I am gladI was there, but I think my ideal New Year’s Eve would be spent at home, eatinggood food, enjoying a fire, and reading and thinking about where I’ve been andwhere I’m going.

2011 was about embracing the fullness, holding the joy andthe sorrow together. It was about watching that first year of astoundinglyrapid growth from Elizabeth and the leaps and bounds of Kathleen. 2011 wasabout starting to come back to life by making time for things I love and, insome cases, simply remembering some parts of the old me that I had forgotten (or in the case ofBrian and I remembering what it was like to be us).

I don’t make resolutions, but I like to take stock at yearsend and again mid-year at my birthday. I like to figure out what is working inmy life and what isn’t, what I want to keep and what I want to change.

In 2012 want to continue the opening I did in 2011, therediscovery of me. I want let go of anger and frustration and laugh more. Iwant to notice what I am doing, not what I can’t quite figure out how to do. Iwant to keep working at that priorities thing that I smugly like to think Ihave in good order, until I can’t figure out how to get it all done, and aspart of that I want to keep work at the letting go that December afforded methis year.

What are your resolutions/goals/hopes for 2012?

Letting go

2011-12-28T15:02:00.002-05:00

I keep sitting down to write about late December and finding myself talking about letting go. Not about letting go of Henry or sadness or even the actual stuff that he used (or didn't), not about that kind of letting go that I struggle with so much. This month has been about letting of my lists and expectations.

I let go of getting all the Christmas stuff out. The tree, Henry's tree, the stockings, wreaths on the doors. A red and green mat with a candle and some greens on the table. Enough.

I let go of baking Christmas cookies (and made just the chocolate orange cookies I love and kept them for myself).

I let go of sending out Christmas cards and with it the struggle for both the "perfect" picture and a way to include Henry that felt right to me.

I let go of the idea (dream) of fixing up my old dollhouse for Kathleen for Christmas. Instead I latched on to her sudden and unexpected idea of having a toy toaster. Whenever people ask her if she had a good Christmas, she (unless she is taking a turn at being shy), says, "I got a toaster!" And I smile.

My jams and pickles are still sitting on the futon in my office, sticky notes designating where they are going. They still need to be packed and mailed or wrapped and delivered. I've doled out a few as I've seen people, but I let go of getting them all out in time for Christmas.

I'm not usually good at this, this letting of of to-do lists and trying to do far too much. Even when I try, I do so grudgingly and keep looking at all the things I want to be able to do. This year, like the year when I was pregnant with Henry and so tired, I really let go of all these things and took joy in tossing my undone list in the recycling. Some of that thinking and talking about prioritizing over the summer must have sunk in.

One more holiday celebration (and I am remembering the final project I wanted to do, that maybe I can pull off tonight, or maybe I'll decide to let go of . . . hmm, it would make a good birthday gift for my dad. Yep, just crossed that off the list) and then we settle in for winter. I'm looking forward to the slow down that seems like it should come after the bustle of the holidays, because they are busy, even when you let go and toss out your lists.

Afterward

2011-12-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

I'm exhausted today, less drained perhaps than years past, but more drained than I thought I'd be given how "well" the day went.

Yes, yesterday was manageable for the most part. We actually went out in the evening. To a holiday party. And it was okay. In some ways having something to do helped, and it was hosted by my first ever babylost friend so it somehow felt safe.

Just before bed, Brian asked me what we did after Henry died when we left the hospital. I told him we went to his parents house. We ate meatloaf. My parents, his parents, and his brother were there. I think this is true, but it could be a false memory or a mixed up one from some other time. We ate meatloaf and then we went to bed in his sister's old room.

He talked about how sick he'd been, how sick so much of our family had gotten.

Then I mentioned standing by the door at the hospital, waiting for a ride, and he said he remembered that. I didn't know, couldn't remember if he was there with me or not. I felt so separate from everything around me.

Then we said goodnight and he rolled over and then I felt myself break, the shattering I had expected at any point during the day. Before I was waiting by that door, I walked out of a door upstairs. I left by baby, just his body by then, on the bed with a nurse. I walked down a long hall, took an elevator, and stood there, arms empty.

I put him down and I left. And I don't know how I did that, how I came to have to do that, how this is my life, how he is not here.

I split open and everything flooded out. I didn't cry long. Today I didn't have that crying hangover of stuffy head and puffy eyes. I was just tired. I wanted to curl up and take a nap, and perhaps if we didn't have Christmas to celebrate with Brian's family and if I didn't have an insane deadline tomorrow, we might have taken turns getting a chance to do that. But it—life, the world—doesn't stop because I'm grieving, because I'm wiped out and need a break. It never did, never will. (But man, wouldn't it be nice if it did?)

I'm more than halfway through December. I got through the worst day and it's aftermath, tired, but standing. (And every kind word I've received has helped keep me standing and opening to the joy and light that shines alongside my darkness. Really. Thank you.)

Tomorrow

2011-12-16T23:36:00.005-05:00

Tomorrow
Tomorrow
Four years tomorrow.

I slept with his blanket last night. It was cold in the house (I woke up in the morning to find the front door ever so slightly ajar) and Brian wasn't home and the 17th was looming. I slept with his blanket last night, like I did every night that first year. Like I did for many nights after that. Like I haven't done in a very long time.

His blanket is yellow, like lemon chiffon. My grandmother made it, one of thirteen she has made for her great-grandchildren. I didn't use it because he always had velcro on him somewhere and it snagged on the knit blanket. But when we went to the hospital for the last time, I brought it. It is what he was wrapped in when we held him for the last time.

I slept with his blanket last night.

Tonight, when I sang Kathleen the "Kakeen" song, the lullaby I made up just for her, my voice cracked and I choked through tears when I got to the Henry verse.

Kathleen, my baby, your brother is Henry.
He is an angel who watches over thee.
He is no here with us upon the earth
but he's watched over you since before your birth.

He is not here with us upon the earth.
"We don't have Henry," she tells me sometimes. "No. No, we don't."

Brian and I went through the timeline again tonight. The discharge into the snowstorm on the 13th. Actually getting home on the 14th. The visiting nurse's stamp of approval that all looked well on the 15th. The fever and vomiting and diarrhea and frantic phone calls and exhaustion on the night of the 15th. The pediatrician, the ER on the 16th. The drill into his leg. The sighing over the weeks it would take to ween him off the ventilator again. Going home for a couple hours. The phone call. Back to the hospital. Brian wrung out sick and needing to leave somewhere in the wee hours of the 17th. The unfamiliar beeping. Singing him out, singing him love. Brian arriving too late, seeing my mom's face and knowing.

I have no idea what time he died. I have looked at his death certificate just to find out, but I never remember. Time had lost all meaning then. And it was the time of year, this time of year, when darkness falls so early and grayness sometimes conveys dark. Had I been looking out the window, it wouldn't have helped.

I am past the joyful days this week. I am not far from the day. I have been feeling it coming on today, even as I worked and read Christmas stories and delivered jams to our church and cooked dinner.

Tomorrow.
Four years.

I don't know what to do with that. Four years. I've come so far, but come these days of December, I am still standing there by the revolving door at the hospital, waiting, arms empty, for somebody to come to take me home. I don't remember if Brian was beside me or behind me or with me at all at that door. I was numb and searing and separate from everything that flowed around me.

I think I will go hold his blanket again and check on my girls and feel them breathe. I will go to sleep knowing my neighbors have been holding me in their hearts and my friend Tricia has been thinking of me this week sending big hugs. I'll go to bed knowing my friend Michelle will listen to You Are My Little Bird with her daughter tomorrow and remember Henry. I'll pass by my tree and see the ornaments others have made to remember him. I'll go to bed and hold his blanket knowing his place in the earth is marked.

I'll go to bed and wake up and it will have been four years and a new year will start.
Tomorrow.

One

2011-12-15T22:54:00.001-05:00

It has been a week of celebrations and cake, but we couldn't let today go by without one more.

It was a small celebration, but she's a small girl. The cake was left over from earlier in the week, but I cut a fresh slice and lit a candle and we sang. Kathleen helped Elizabeth blow out the candle. Elizabeth helped herself to the cake.

They opened Elizabeth's present together, a copy of Jamberry to symbolize the blueberry bushes we will plant for her next summer (along with the ones we are overdue to plant for Kathleen). Kathleen pouted momentarily that she didn't get a present.

When Kathleen turned one, I breathed a sigh of relief. It felt like her first birthday was more than a year in coming. The journey to that first birthday started in the fall of 2006 when I found out I was pregnant for the first time. Robbed of Henry's first birthday, getting Kathleen to hers seemed like a momentous feat. While I don't take for granted that my children will live, I am able to believe again that they will. Elizabeth's birthday was much more a regular first birthday. It's still amazing though, isn't it?

My baby is one. One!

Run away

2011-12-13T21:36:00.002-05:00

I went for a run today. 40 degrees and mid-afternoon sun. I started out wishing I had another layer, grumbling and swearing I wasn't bringing anything to bring to the potluck dinner tonight (I had warned Brian it was on him.)

And then I ran and got warmed up and pushed past my usual turnaround point. I breathed deeply, or as deeply as I could as I ran on and on. I noticed that my run started and ended at a funeral home and my turnaround point was a cemetery, not intentionally, no significance. I didn't think about the hills. I'm not sure what I thought about. I counted. I considered an alternate end to my route. I took that route, extra hill and all. I finished strong.

I got back home and took my shower. The girls and Brian were still gone. I finished the first pass of my chapter for work. I looked at the clock. It was 5. I got up and made the chowder to take to the potluck. It was ready at 5:33, just three minutes after we should have been out the door. Kathleen had fun. Elizabeth didn't get to cranky, despite the late dinner and the third night in a row past bedtime.

I ran off the sadness and anger and frustration. I came back with more energy than a nap or another cup of coffee would have given me. I need more of this. I knew it, but today really reminded me how much good running away does for me.

A crack

2011-12-12T21:11:00.002-05:00

There is a crack in my armor. I am not invincible against December, though I was starting to feel like I was.

It started just a hairline last night. I stepped out of my office and saw both my Christmas trees—the full tree and Henry's little tree—glowing. The house was quiet and a glow filled the darkness. I took it in. I smiled. Peace and joy and love.

And the memory of why I have that small tree covered in cardinals and hearts surfaced. It's not that I forget that Henry is dead, but sometimes I don't have to really think about it any more than I have to remember to breathe. But sometimes like last night, it hits me. A gasp, a quick sob. No lying on the floor. No crying for hours, but a crack.

Today, all my efforts to keep things simple fell apart. Brian introduced all kinds of projects into the day despite my efforts, and I ended up doing alone what I thought we would do together and finishing up one of his projects. So I spent the afternoon in a pissy mood and cried some more.

It doesn't help that I'm tired. It doesn't help that I feel fat and most of my clothes don't fit and I can see in pictures how I've gained weight since summer. It doesn't help that despite my best efforts and intentions I'm coming into some tight deadlines for work. It doesn't help that the 17th is drawing nearer.

But I'm not lost yet. As I sat in the car, taking deep breathes, waiting to pick up our pizza, I remembered all the kind words of support I've received this month. While I was gone, Elizabeth took her first steps. My behind schedule author sent me an email telling me how amazing I am. And now my work files have uploaded. I'm going to go sit in the glow of my Christmas tree and light a candle for my boy and drink some chamomile tea. And tomorrow I will do my work and take a run and try to take care of me some more.

It's still December. I'm cracked open, but I'm still standing.

Three

2011-12-11T22:01:00.001-05:00

My big girl is three.

I remember when Henry's third birthday rolled around feeling suddenly the difference between baby and kid. I realized he would have been a little boy and what I was missing, would miss hit me in an entirely different way.

Today, Kathleen's third birthday is here. And I see that I am right, that three is so much bigger than two. She is a little girl, not a baby. Even since last year, her face and body have thinned out. She uses the potty, and without her big cloth diaper butt sometimes she wears jeans. She gets the silverware for dinner and loves this little job. She explains things to Elizabeth: You have to be buckled in, sister. I'm buckled. Mommy and Daddy are buckled. You have to be buckled too! She plays, sometimes by herself and narrates her play (often interrupted by me thinking she's talking to me).

And sometimes she is still my baby who sits in my lap and wants to be held. But not too often. She's busy that big girl of mine.

That three year old of mine.

This week

2011-12-10T22:14:00.001-05:00

This is the week.
December 11–17

I knew my joy-grief was packed tightly into this month, but the alignment of the calendar brings that so into focus this year. One week to mark birth birth death.

Sunday Kathleen turns three.
Thursday Elizabeth turns one.
And Saturday Henry will have been gone four years.

We have a busy, but low key week planned.
Tomorrow evening, if we can, a train ride through the park to see the lights. A cupcake she doesn't have to share. A gift. Monday birthday dinner with neighbors. Tuesday more cake with friends. Thursday. Oh, my. I haven't planned anything special for Elizabeth's actual birthday. More cake? Something to open (her real gift will be blueberry bushes, as was Kathleen's on her first birthday, though they have yet to be planted). Poor second/third child. I was okay with not giving her a big party, but perhaps, I should do something to mark that day.

And Saturday?

All I knew was I didn't want a birthday party that day, for my girls or anyone else. It was one thing I didn't think I could handle. But we got invited to two holiday parties. We could easily have bowed out of either, but we're going to both. Part of reclaiming this month. Part of reclaiming our lives. And right now, it feels okay, good even. I need to go to the cemetery in the morning, so that we we head out in the evening and drive by his grave, I'll have been there already.

The next day, the 18th we start the Christmas cycle.
But first, this jam-packed week.
And to start that week, a birthday.

The stories of the tree

2011-12-05T23:20:00.001-05:00

For as long as I can remember, I have loved Christmas. There was that Christmas when I was thirteen or so, an awkward age, and I lost the magic. But it came back, and I loved Christmas again. Until 2007, when Henry died on the 17th and we buried him on the 22nd and somehow managed to visit with family on the 24th in a blur.

It wasn't that I hated Christmas after that. I just couldn't do it. Couldn't listen to carols or put up a tree. I stumbled through presents and probably baked cookies, but none shaped like Santa or reindeer or trees.

I made excuses in the years following: I was tired and pregnant and we'd have a baby two weeks before Christmas; we had a cruiser who would surely just tip the thing over; I was tired and pregnant and we'd have a baby ten days before Christmas. But this was the year, I decided. I'm not pregnant. We have a cruiser who will, given the chance, surely knock the whole thing down. But we also have a little one who is starting to notice and remember and want her to have the magic I had. So, at the bottom of the stairs, behind the makeshift baby gate, we set it up.

Over the past two days, I decorated. Yesterday it was just the tree and the lights and two ornaments that wound up in the wrong box last year—a cardinal from my aunt and one from Amy, a surprise gift last year.

Tonight, before Kathleen went to bed, she helped me put a few ornaments on the tree:

This is Henry's heart, and one for Kathleen, and one for Elizabeth. The first year of the Buddy Walk, I used the leftover felt hearts we pinned to our shirts to make ornaments, and then, I made one with Kathleen's name on it too. This year, I added one for Elizabeth.

People gave these to you your first Christmas, I say of the pink baby carriage and the peas in the pod.

And then after she went to bed, I added others:

This was from Amy for our wedding. Two become one (and Brian adds, "As often as possible") and this one with the picture of us kissing

I got this one for a report on Denmark in middle school (a straw star)

Here's the Mount Washington marker ornament. (I wanted Carrigain but they didn't have it.)

Aruba—Did we buy this or did your mom bring it for us? I'm surprised I can't remember how we came to have the little painted glass ball with sand in it, but Brian reminds me we bought it at a little market near the pool.

Oh, Bandit, I sigh at the little dog bone I made of clay and tied up with Christmasy ribbon

And this one's from my fifth grade teacher, I remember as I hang the glass clown with a glass balloon.

My earliest ornaments, a wooden gingerbread man, a string covered ball with my name and squiggles in glitter, a shiny red ball with my name and birth year, also in glitter

These brass ones are from my friend, Tina, and my friend Erica made this mussel shell angel and hung it around a wine bottle (years and years and years ago).

Cookie party, more cookie party—For years I hosted a cookie party where friends would come over and bring a dough and we'd roll and scoop and bake and decorate. It got a little insane eventually and then fizzled (though we've talked of reinstating it with kids). But from that era, I have gingerbread ornaments and cookies on cookie sheets and rolling pins

Here's the canoe I bought you the year we bought the canoe. And the old wheelbarrow and my watering can.

Here are the snow shoes Amy got us. And the snowshoeing Santa I picked for you one year.

And your AT ornament.

Brian is trying to read in front of the fire. It used to bother me that he wouldn't help me put up the tree, but this year, I just interrupt him occasionally to point out an ornament and tell him its origins or significance. The rest of the time I tell myself the story of the ornaments, because that is one of my favorite parts of the season.

In years ahead, I foresee more cardinals and hearts, and I will tell their story too. This is for Henry and I'll tell who made it or where it came from.

This is the star somebody from Canada made for me the year Elizabeth was born. Nana and Grampy brought the package to me to open in the hospital.

This is the red bird, this is the heart that somebody sent me from Indiana, the year we had a Christmas tree again.

Yes, this is my favorite part of decorating—the traditions and the stories and the remembering.

Reclaiming this month

2011-12-03T10:52:00.001-05:00

Perhaps it was a bit melodramatic to say that I feel like I am being challenged to simply survive this month. I've tied too much importance to December this year, but December 2009 scared me. I don't want to be in that place again, so I've made this the test, as if it will determine what every December here on out will be like.

But as I stumbled through draft after draft of a post last night that never came together, I realized that I'm not waiting for the month to test me. I'm stepping in and trying to reclaim it. I want to be able to listen to Christmas carols and put up a tree and host birthday parties and wrap gifts and bake cookies. And I want to enjoy all these things, not just go through the motions.

I want the 11th and the 15th and the 25th to hold their own against the 17th.

I want joy and peace. I want light in my darkness.

So I came into this month ready to battle my December demons. I came in armed with space carved out by turning down quick turnaround jobs and postponing pediatrician appointments and getting much of shopping done early. I carried a plan for simple birthdays and marched in with December 17th left purposefully empty on the calendar. I have candles to light and chocolate to eat and red wine to drink. I am moving forward planning birthday cakes and thinking about little hands plunging into Christmas stockings and the nip of a Christmas morning hike. I am enjoying the preparations, my crafting and shopping and figuring out where to put the tree. I don't quite trust this month still, but I'm trying to take it back and hold the peace and joy and light while knowing the time will come to sit with the darkness.

December 1

2011-12-01T20:33:00.001-05:00

It is here, the month of dark and dread. All year, I face it with trepidation or push it off when I can. I have faced three Decembers since that day when he died. Two were tempered with life and joy and love and welcoming of new little lives. One almost drowned me. One took me deeper than I thought I could go. There is no new baby this year to soften the blow, distract me, throw me a lifeline, and it feels like a test of sorts to survive this month, to do better than survive.

Today I skipped our music class because we all have colds
I read stories with Kathleen
sipped the garlic chicken soup I froze months ago to stave off our first winter cold
sorted through my old dollhouse furniture to find the pieces appropriate to pass on to Kathleen this Christmas
prioritized my Christmas list and got ready to let go of some pieces
gave myself time to sit and read
worked on an ornament for another mom
really looked at Henry's face in the pictures in Brian's office, different pictures than those I look at every day

smiled as my girls induced big belly laughs in each other

thought about my friends who have reasons to pause in December as well.

I changed my calendars today. It is December. So far, so good.

A few days late

2011-11-27T22:08:00.001-05:00

I'm grateful for family
and traditions
and the laughter of Thanksgiving night, after the crowd has thinned and the turkey has been put away.

I'm thankful for my neighborhood, where people share and help and look out for each other

and for the beauty of this area and bounty of my garden.

I'm so very grateful for this community and this space,

for people who listen and read and nod and say "me too" and send big hugs when I need them most,

for the amazing people I've met because of Henry

for the wonderful people I knew who I got to know in a different way because of him.

Who we were

2011-11-21T21:27:00.001-05:00

Saturday night we danced, Brian and I, at my cousins wedding. We smiled and laughed and kissed and danced. It's been a long time since we danced.

We dance every night with the girls, but that is all about getting out extra energy and swinging Kathleen around and spinning her. We have danced a few lines of a song in the kitchen while cleaning up after dinner. But it has been years since we really danced.

We are not particularly graceful or skilled dancers, but we dance together with the abandon of people who don't really care. We sometimes look better than we should because we don't worry what we look like. I suppose sometimes we look like asses out there, but asses having a good time.

We both noticed, how light it felt and easy and . . . like us.

I'm not quite sure what to do with that now, because it was a good reminder of who we were, who we could still be.

Over the summer, I took my niece camping at a local state park. It poured the one night we were there, and as I was standing in the rain heating water for our dinner, the smell of the gas and powdered cocoa and the hiss of the stove made me suddenly miss backpacking with Brian.

I was perhaps nostalgic, forgetting how tired my legs would be, how achy my back, how heavy the pack. I forget about my tent anxiety (perhaps a mild case of claustrophobia that I had to overcome each time we went).

I remembered how good the food tasted when you've worked for it, how cool the breeze feels on your sweaty back when you take your pack off. I remember taste of boiled water and the watery dregs of hot cocoa as I drank the water that cleaned my mug and the taste of oatmeal mixed with a leftover tang of chili in the morning. I remember the smell of the open outdoors and the musty tent, despite good airing and drying practices. I remember the snug feeling of slipping into my sleeping bag, my sleeping pad shifting under me as I rolled trying to get comfy. (Comfy is a relative term in the woods.)

Standing there in the pouring rain, in my Gore-Tex coat (it's more than a coat, it could save your life, Brian says) with the well appointed hood, tending the stove that I lit for the first time ever, I got nostalgic. I missed the damp, dewy mornings, the hustle of setting up and settling in in the evenings, the hard climbs, the good views and pack off breaks, dreaming about what we would eat when we finished.

Did I really miss all this? Or did I miss that time with Brian, the sense of adventure? Do I miss who we were then? Do I miss the time we had? our innocent, unscarred selves? Do I miss my body that seemed more invincible? It seems somedays we are both falling apart.

If we had a chance to go away, I would be inclined to go someplace with a cushy bed, perhaps a fireplace, good food, wine. But part of me would collect all the gear, tent and sleeping pad, sleeping bag and stove, cook pot, plastic mug, sturdy spoon, stuff sacks and synthetic clothes. We'd get it all in our packs, purple next to black, and go. Tie on our boots, hoist the heavy packs, tighten straps, grab our poles and go. Left, right, left, right. Go.

Brian would lose me on the uphills, and coming back down too. Much of our day would be spent in solitude with breaks to chat and the longish night together. I would not come home well rested (oh, like that wedding on Saturday), but I like to think I would come home restored.

Brian has always lamented that I don't do winter backpacking, so we have a long winter and mud season to get through before we might even venture out. I think we need some time though and that reminder of who we were, who we still are underneath the tired grief and lack of sleep and daily grind of diapers and laundry and groceries and bills and dishes and bedtime. Maybe a day hike soon (like we did on our first date) would do the trick.

Or maybe we should just crash a wedding and dance.

Henry's castle

2011-11-10T20:15:00.001-05:00

Just down the street on the way to the playground is an old cemetery. We walk by it frequently and sometimes we stop, because Kathleen likes to visit the "castles." It is not a particularly ornate or ostentatious cemetery, but some of the monuments are tall and there are some family plots with steps and one with a decaying wrought iron gate.

While Kathleen climbs up and down the steps, I walk the rows, reading the aged stones:
11 months
10 months
8 days

I like that they make it easy for me. No math, no wondering if 1871–1871 lived a day or a year. I considered (though not seriously) writing 203 days on his stone or 6 months, 18 days. We didn't though.

Our family name. His name with hearts on either side. His born and died dates. Son of Brian and Sara.

It's a rough, imperfect stone. I love the stone itself. I'm happy with the carving. I'm getting used to how it looks next to the more polished stones. I accept that it is not right over him (we were warned of that long ago when they first put him in the ground), though a little closer would have been nice. Still, he is marked. You can find him. We can plant things, place things for him. Henry's stone, his castle, was installed today.

I stopped today on our way to music class to see where they were placing him and what the stone looked like. "It looks good," I murmured. "Pretty soon it will be all set, in forever," the guy told me. Ah, yes, forever.

When I got back in the car, Kathleen was asking questions and wanting to see them work, and perhaps we could have stayed and watched the process, but. No. I couldn't. As I fielded her questions and focused on the road, hiccoughing sobs wracked through me. There it was, written in stone, the brief time he had with us. There is was, written in stone, my baby is gone. Not that I don't know, but there it was.

I met Brian there after work and we looked and commented on how it came out and I cried again in the gathering dark and the misty rain. I'm glad it's done. I will appreciate having it there when we visit. But, it's a grave stone for my baby, calling it his castle doesn't disguise that.

Love for today . . . and tomorrow

2011-11-08T21:54:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back, the Dragon Mom article kept popping up on Facebook. I gave a heavy, knowing sigh when I read, "finally do the hardest thing of all, a thing most parents will thankfully never have to do: I will love him to the end of his life, and then I will let him go." I know what it is to do that, but I don't know what it is to live through my son's life knowing I'll have to do that.

Instead, I had a really sick baby who was expected to live. There would be meds and follow-up appointments and perhaps more surgery or other procedures. There would be equipment to figure out and insurance and other programs to navigate. It would not be easy, but we worked under the assumption that Henry would make it. He'd get through the ups and downs and interminable hospital stay and be okay. The definition of okay kept shifting, as much as I tried to pin it down, but okay kept being the assumption.

I loved him constantly, but I had to remind myself, more than once, to live in the day. Before Henry's surgery as we were struggling with the oxygen monitor's frequent beeping and trying to fatten him up, I kept looking ahead, counting down days, weeks, months til he could have his surgery and lose the oxygen and we could really start our life. Except the clock was already ticking. "I'm wishing away his life," I realized, long before I knew how short a life he would have. So I reset and focused on enjoying him as he was. I hated that oxygen monitor, but I loved my boy and our peaceful mornings. I focused on what he could do, not what his peers were doing, not what he couldn't do. And at the same time I set up Early Intervention to help him do all that he could do.

When Henry was in the hospital later, I at first refused to bring things from home—blankets, clothes, toys, music. Having stuff at the hospital felt like admitting we were going to be staying, and all I wanted to do was get my boy home. It took me a long time to realize that I was doing it again, wishing away his life in wanting to get out of a sucky situation. "This is his life," I reminded myself. As much as I hated living there, hated the anxiety and the separation from Brian and the machines and the lack of privacy, it was his life, and with that realization I changed. I read to him more and played music and set up routines and took pictures. I brought blankets and clothes and hung up the cards people sent us.

Even as I settled in, I told him about what we would do when we got out. I told him about the friends he would meet and the farm down the road. I told him about riding the school bus when he got bigger and working in our garden. I told him about where we lived and about the vastness of the ocean that he would finally see some day. I loved him for the day and believed the future for him.

I had stripped down my dreams and expectations, but I believed he would come home. I believed he would one day go to school. I believed he would visit my family. I believed he would live and grow.

We don't know how long we have with our children. We should love them right now, today. But, unless we know they have no future, parenting isn't just loving them here right now, part of parenting is believing they will grow up and helping them along the way.

The idea of just loving them today, noble as it sounds, isn't possible long term. Or rather, loving my children today is possible, but acting solely on that isn't. I have to say no sometimes because things aren't safe or healthy. I have to say that I'm working sometimes, not because I'm attached to furthering my career, but because part of parenting is keeping a roof over my kids' heads and putting food in their bellies.

I try to find balance. I try to do my work and get food on the table and clothes clean and still say yes when Kathleen says, "Wanna play play dough?" or "Read a book" or "Let's put on crowns and take pictures." I love my kids today. It's why I set up a cozy corner under the dining room table and lay down with them to read story after story after story even as I felt my back seizing up with the sciatic problem that's plagued me since my first pregnancy. It's why we turn up the music and dance together as a family most nights before bedtime. It's why even when Kathleen doesn't get a story before bed because of all her stalling tactics in getting ready, I sing the "Kakeen" song to her, the song I made up that tells her how very loved and wanted she is.

Yes, by all means love your child today. Take time to notice them as they are, as they grow, as they change. Take time to snuggle and sing and read stories and listen to them. But, unless you have a reason not to, believe that you will watch them grow and change. That belief is hope and love too.

My pumpkins

2011-11-01T11:39:00.001-04:00

When Kathleen was a baby, approaching her first Halloween, somebody sent me a baby pumpkin costume, which I promptly passed along, because I couldn't imagine having another pumpkin.

When Henry was in the hospital, I decided he would be a pumpkin. It was hard to dress him with his IVs and monitors and oxygen and other tubes, so I decided I would make something like a large bib that would cover him from neck to foot. Despite my vision and desire to make is costume (and the fact that I spent a long part of my day just sitting in his room), I couldn't quite get to it. People wanted to do thing to help, so my mom had one of her friends make the basic pumpkin (hemmed orange fleece with a ribbon to gather the top). My mom bought a pumpkin hat and I cut a face out of felt.

After a long day of waiting for Henry's fever to break, his nurse told me he could have his costume on for a bit.

So I never planned to have another pumpkin. Until Kathleen picked pumpkin.

I suggested witch; she thought cookie monster, then giraffe, then pumpkin. And there she stuck. Again and again I'd ask, and again and again she'd answer pumpkin.

I still had the orange fleece blanket, but I didn't want to tie it around her neck (fears of strangulation). So I sewed up the sides, cut a slit in the center for her head, cut the face a bit smaller and sewed it back on, and made running stitch to gather up the bottom. Instead of the hat, I attached a felt pumpkin top and stem to a headband.

I had a night of frustration when I tried to sew her costume on my machine and spent almost two hours fiddling to get it to work. The next day I gave up and sewed it all in less time than I had wasted. My sister had offered to send me a choice of pumpkin costumes, but I really wanted to make it. There are so many things like this that I've wanted to do since Henry died, but when it came time to do or make or create, I ran up against a mental block or energy drag. So making this felt like a step forward.

So there you have it: my two pumpkins. I actually love that I reused Henry's costume for Kathleen, and in two years I will suggest to Elizabeth (who wore Kathleen's recycled kitty costume) that she should be a pumpkin, though by that time she may very well have ideas of her own.

Unmarked

2011-10-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

It's been nearly four years since we buried Henry. It was too late in the year to install a stone and too much to think about one anyway. He's squeezed in at the edge of a family plot, too close to the road, next to Brian's grandfather. It was important to me that he wasn't alone. We didn't have his name added to the family stone (the wording of the relationship seemed to cumbersome and confusing and besides be planned to get him his own stone).

Last November, we drove up to visit my parents and chose a stone, a rough piece of granite, from the yard of a family friend. Last week, my cousin drove it out to us. Now, we are waiting to find out if we are allowed to have a raised stone for him or if it will have to be a flat one. We need to find out if they can carve the stone. We are still fine tuning what we will say. (Last name above first and middle name? First name and middle initial? Months spelled out or in numerals? Is there room for our names, to say son of Brian and Sara?)

Everything about this process takes time. And energy. It is one of those things I want done, but how I struggle to actually takes the steps to do it. I will be relieved when it is done, when his name is there, when I have a place to put whatever it is I bring to the cemetery. Until it is done, I will become weary every time we try to make it happen. I will feel weary and guilty that it has been this long.

Hindsight, or Music and Me as a Mom

2011-10-17T16:29:00.000-04:00

Last night, just after midnight, I sat in a steamy bathroom with Kathleen. We read stories until we finished our stack, and then I began to sing to her. I started "One Man Shall Mow My Meadow," a song I like but that she usually doesn't have patience for, but being tired and not feeling 100% right, she snuggled onto my lap and let me sing verse after verse.

I learned this song when Kathleen was a baby, maybe four months old, from my friend Carol, who hosted an informal music class at her house. Every week we'd go and sit in a circle in her living room and she'd teach us songs and lead us in songs we had already learned. Kathleen was one of several babies in the group made up mostly of slightly older kids. There was a mom I had met at baby group and another I had met at Carol's support group.

I smiled and sang and changed diapers and gave bottles and and talked to the other moms. I thought I was doing fine. I thought I was comfortable as a mom, not overly worried or sad or nervous. And I suspect for who I was at that time, I was doing great.

Looking back I see that me so differently.

Carol is again hosting a music "class" at her house. We went last week for the first one, me and Kathleen and Elizabeth. I smiled and sang and changed diapers and gave bottles and talked to the other moms. And it felt completely different.

Three years ago, I was still really struggling to figure out how to talk with other moms. To be able to talk about being Kathleen's mom, I needed to talk about being Henry's mom and I was never quite sure how to do that. Even there, even in that house where pictures of a much loved daughter who never took a breath line the walls. Even there where more than one person knew my story.

I thought I was relaxed, comfortable in my parenting, but I think I was more anxious than I knew, wanting, needing to do it right. Believing very much that everything was different this time around, but too aware of what it really meant if things went wrong. I was defensive about how I gave birth even as I truly believe that the outcome, the healthy living baby is what matters. I was defensive about bottle feeding, even though I truly believe I did the best I could.

A lot of what I was going through was typical new mom kind of stuff. Even though Henry lived six months, and we were still within that timeframe for Kathleen, I was a brand new mom in so many ways.

So last week we went back to music, me and Kathleen and Elizabeth. I was relaxed enough that Elizabeth crawled into the other room before I realized she was missing. I handled Kathleen's near meltdown because the toy kitchen she remembered wasn't there. I gratefully accepted a pretzel for the ride home to keep her happy, and I laughed about something as I said my goodbye to Carol and ushered Kathleen out with Elizabeth on my hip. And as I got into the car, I noticed how very different it felt from those days when I buckled Kathleen into the baby seat.

The Swing

2011-10-10T00:15:00.000-04:00

I'm looking forward to getting rid of the baby swing. It takes up such a big space in our not so big living room. I imagine putting a cozy reading corner in for Kathleen or a real bookcase to replace the milkcrates housing her books right now or some kind of toy storage or . . .

I'm almost ready to ditch it (give it away, put it up in the attic for that tag sale we'll never have). I barely ever put Elizabeth in it. She never took to it the way her brother and sister did. When Kathleen grew too heavy for it, she went from a three hour nap to a twenty minute nap. I swore I wouldn't make that mistake again, so Elizabeth didn't swing much.

I started saying I was almost ready for the swing to go more than a month ago. It's still sitting here beside my chair, though. Now Elizabeth's far too big and too eager to be moving around. The last time I put her in it (a month ago? two?) she grabbed for the mobile pieces that circle around the top, so I took her out.

I thought it was one of the things I would have no trouble getting rid of.

Then I remembered.

December 14, the night we finally brought Henry home from the hospital, we put him in the swing, which he had always loved, and turned it on. His oxygen tubing tap, tap, tapped on the floor in the swing's rhythm. Henry looked at himself in the curvy mirror above him. He seemed to notice the mobile for the first time, not odd as he was six months old, not the three months he had been when he left the swing behind for the hospital.

Brian wanted to get some video footage of Henry in the swing, but before he did, Henry fell asleep. Our footage pans back and forth between our content, sleeping baby in the swing and me telling the story of our homecoming. I am deliriously exhausted and relieved and happy to be home and terrified at the prospect of keeping up with Henry's meds and keeping him healthy and haunted by what we had just endured. My story ends with us all home, getting ready for a busy med schedule, but all doing it together.

Brian focuses the camera once again on Henry, wishes him goodnight and then says More footage to come.

I didn't remember he said that until afterward, when we finally sat down and watched all of our video of Henry.

More footage to come.

And the screen goes blue.

The swing is just some metal and cloth and mechanical bits. And the very last place my baby was okay.

My to-do list f has us putting the bassinet and the swing up in the attic later in the week during Brian's time off. I've made a mental note to remove the batteries from the swing. I'm mentally cataloging space up there wondering where it will go. I'm ready, to get it out of the living room, not quite ready to get rid of it, though.

Someday. For now, I hold onto the swing and hold onto this:

Before the frost

2011-10-05T23:54:00.000-04:00

There is a frost/freeze warning on tonight, so between my run and dinner I hustled out to the garden to pick whatever was left.

Now basil and parsley is chopped and in the freezer. Hot peppers are ready for drying. Tomatoes are freezing or waiting for a bit more red to color their cheeks. Chard, mustard greens, and beet greens are in the fridge. Green beans are blanched and in the freezer. Flowers are on the table and the window sill and in my office and between Henry's picture and memory light. Extra sage and parsley are tucked in among the zinnias and dahlias, just because it was there.

Maybe it won't freeze tonight and we'll eke out a few more nice days. Perhaps I'll pick a bit more parsley tomorrow or find some peppers I left in my haste. Maybe we'll get a handful more green beans (or not . . . I'm getting a bit sick of them). If not tonight, soon. Really, the garden is done, but for the clean up.

My neighbors have returned from their summer cottage in Maine. The leaves have been coming down for a while now, though they still have a way to go.

It smells cold and I put on layer after layer. I long for shepherd's pie and butternut squash soup and roasted beets and pork pie with apples. I've switched to red wine (or dark beer or hard cider).

I'm settling into cozy.

In 2007, summer lingered into November. The days were strangely warm. The leaves stayed green. I was at the hospital with Henry, and the unseasonal weather was part of the surrealness of my life. It was if summer knew my boy only had one growing season and gave him everything it had.

I remember bending over my big belly in May, using hand tools to loosen the soil, turning over little sections bit by bit, sprinkling lettuce seeds, setting tomato plants from the farmer's market.

I don't know what else I planted that year, but I remember thinking that if I could just get some things into the ground, we'd be able to eat something later. I didn't think I'd have much time for our garden. I expected to be too busy with a newborn. I didn't expect doctor's appointments nearly daily or oxygen or surgery. I didn't expect to be living away from home come tomato season.

Instead of running out to my garden for some greens or a bit of basil, I walked busy streets. I discovered a rose garden in a city park. I watched the leaves stay green and imagined it wasn't really fall.

I was not listening to the news, so when the weather forecasters said It's going to be a cold one tomorrow and Bundle up I missed the message. I went to bed in summer, got up the next day and dressed in my usual capris and sandals, and started over to Henry's room, only to be greeted by a blast of cold air as the morning shift hurried in in winter coats and hats and mittens.

The change is not that dramatic this year. Fall has been creeping in with cooler days, mostly, and yellowing and browning leaves. The garden has been slowing down. I'm ready for fall. Still, that it is October surprises me. Weren't Brian and I just outside in a cold rain rototilling the garden? Wasn't Henry's birthday and my careful tending of his garden only yesterday?

When was it that I hovered over his bed on a strangely warm October day? It seems so near and far. He came to me in the tenderness of spring. I said goodbye to him in the darkness of deep winter. Sunmer was fear and the golden glow of fresh beginnings. Fall was not garden clean up or glorious cool days but fear and hope and hope and hope. I did not see it for the winding down that it was.

Fall is still woods smoke and crunchy leaves and crisp apples and orange pumpkins, but it is also hand sanitizer and the beep of monitors and cafeteria food and watchful waiting and believing. Fall stirs up this part of my memory, but doesn't drag me down. I still revel in being here at home clearing out the garden, pulling clothes out of the attic, popping casseroles in the oven, planning Halloween costumes, planning hikes and apple picking and baking. Fall is settling down but invigorating too. I'm ready.

Stomach bug

2011-09-26T22:19:00.001-04:00

It turns out, your child doesn't have to be in the ICU for you to feel completely helpless as a parent.

Kathleen has a stomach bug. It started Saturday night and continued through dinner time tonight. I'm waiting to see what's next. She hasn't been puking constantly, just every time I think she is starting to feel better.

Until mid-day today she seemed fine in between losing whatever she had eaten. Today, though she looked sick. I don't know what it is, but eyes are the indicator to me and she had sick eyes. That and she just wanted to sit on my lap most of the day and voluntarily went to lie in her bed at my mere suggestion. In the morning, hours and hours and hours before her usual nap time.

So we sat and read books and we sat and I rubbed her back and we simply sat.

To her requests for orange juice and pizza and onion rings (a hoped for lunch with the neighbors) and chips (Daddy had some after work) and more crackers and her big water bottle, I had to say no and no and no. Or wait. Or just a sip. Because when I said okay, just a little, maybe a little more, it all came up. So we tried again. S l o w l y.

Popsicles and a video and a bath at the end of the day and that sitting. It was the best I could do to make it better, and it didn't really work.

Hovering around the periphery of my thoughts is the memory of a night in December 2007 when Henry's stomach bug erupted full force. We could not keep up with changing sheets and him, so we left him in his diaper on a blanket while making slightly hysterical phone calls.

This is nothing like that. They are both stomach bugs, but the similarity ends there. Still, that memory hovers hazily as I go about my day comforting and cleaning up after my sick girl. The memory is hazy only because I refuse to bring it into focus. It is, I think, the one night I do not revisit and review and process again and again and again, the one night out of all 203 that he had that I let lie in the darkness. I still stand behind my decisions of that night and believe the outcome would have been the same, but perhaps more prolonged. But sometimes I wonder.

Without that night, I would still be here, wishing I could make my little big girl feel better, wishing there was something else I could do. Without that night, I would just be here, wishing there was something else I could do.

Just last year?

2011-09-24T23:07:00.000-04:00

Kathleen has been climbing on the plastic play structure in our backyard. She climbs up the ladder section and right up over the top. "Look at this!" she calls me. Eventually she goes down the slide and climbs back up again and again and again.

Last summer, she could not climb the play structure. She wanted me to pick her up so she could slide, again and again and again. My belly was big and my back ached and I would pick her up a few times and sigh enough. Often a neighbor would take pity on me and help her up more and more and more until I convinced her it was time to go in.

Just last year.

***
Yesterday I stopped at the outlets on my way home from my sisters to buy pajamas for Kathleen and see if there were any other good deals. Kathleen ran around hiding under racks of clothes and played at the Lego table; Elizabeth checked things out from the Baby Bjorn.

As I poked through wintery, Christmas sleepers, I remembered searching last year for matching winter-themed pajamas for a newborn and a 2-year old, something not too girly in case that newborn was a boy.

Just last year.

***
Elizabeth roams the house on hands and knees, pulls herself up to standing anywhere she can, and jerks around whenever she hears her sister's voice.

Last September, a baby kicked and rolled and squirmed about as Brian read The Hobbit to me.

Just last year.

***
Nine months in seemed to fly by and take forever.
Nine months out has simply flown by.

Glad

2011-09-14T09:33:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been listening to "So Glad I'm Here" from Elizabeth Mitchell's You Are My Sunshine every morning. It's been going through my head for over a month now, and it feels like a really positive way to start the day. Because I am. Glad I'm here, that is, and I'm trying to let go of the need to hold onto the hurt.

I have been, holding onto the sadness, without even realizing I was doing it. It's like when I would swim at the pool wearing my rings. I'd come out with a hand cramp from inadvertantly clamping my fingers together for fear one would slide off and be lost. For a long, long I didn't have to hold on. The sadness was just so big and heavy it wasn't going anywhere, but now, almost four years down the road, when I stand in the light again and smile and laugh and feel as well as see the beauty around me, I find I still cling to it sometimes, holding it out to anyone, who might think it is gone. It's what prompted my bitter grumblings. It's what makes my smile dim just briefly when somebody tells me I have a beautiful family. It's what makes me prod around inside sometimes to see if something is going to bother me.

It isn't gone. It isn't going away, but I don't need to call it up. It will visit me on it's own. So right now, I'm facing the sun, seeing the light, feeling the warmth, enjoying the brightness of the world, knowing that my shadow is behind me whether I look at it or not.

I still face December with trepidation, not sure how it will hit this year, but for now I'm not revisiting four years ago. I didn't race down the road in the back of ambulance on September 11, didn't rewalk in my mind the labyrinth of halls from the ambulance entrance at Children's to a too bright room on the eighth floor on September 13. I went for a run on a cool, dry, clear day and thought perhaps I could run forever. I shopped for groceries and sorted clothes and gave Kathleen high fives for using the potty. I lived, I didn't relive.

My zinnias are still blooming, three shades of pink and a little orange. The leaves are starting to pile up. Tomatoes fill my counter waiting to be cooked down, and in a minute I will brave that late batch of mosquitos to pick green beans and see what else is ready in the garden. This is the September I love.

I am opening to the golden days and the gladness. I wish he were here, but I don't have to tell you that. I'll always wish he were here, but it doesn't stop me from being glad that I'm here, so glad I'm here enjoy these golden summer-fall days, so glad I'm here with Kathleen making up songs and Elizabeth chewing everything she can find.

***
Thanks to Kathleen and Elizabeth for bringing joy to my days and to Mandy for giving me the song and to Angie for Right Where I Am, which I keep circling back to, and for asking for questions, which prompted me to start answering my own, and to Barbara for helping me remember to notice good things and to open this space up to them, and to Liz for making me think about being open to and seeking joy, even if it made (and may make me still) grumbly. Thanks to you who come here and listen to me grumble and glow.

Abundance

2011-09-07T21:57:00.001-04:00

Since late June, they've been stacking up in my office closet, boxes of canning jars filled with jams and pickles and sauces:
strawberry, strawberry rhubarb, strawberry vanilla
raspberry, raspberry rhubarb, raspberry chocolate liqueur sauce, raspberry with orange liqueur, raspberry peach

dilly beans, lemon beans, Asian (soy-ginger) beans

blueberry, blubarb, spiced blueberry
dill pickles, bread and butter
peach, peach raspberry, peach ginger, peach tomato salsa
mild tomato salsa, bruschetta

16 boxes of jars, 180 jars in all, not counting those I've already traded or given away (or eaten), and I don't think I'm quite done yet.

I've loved picking in the sun and the heat and the humidity and the rain. I've loved standing in the steamy kitchen with juice dripping off the counter on to my toes, standing until my legs and back ache. I love the ping of a good seal and the early tastes of the jars that don't seal. I love my weekly canning date with my friend and her big garden and raspberry patch and two kids. I love my new canning friends and trading goods. I love thinking ahead to winter and what we will eat and what I will give away. I've loved simply watching them stack up, seeing the fruits of my labor, tangible proof of how I spent my days, the abundance of it.

I chafe often at not having time to do so many things I want to do. Writing and craft projects and bigger cooking projects and gardening and reading pile up underneath the dirty diapers and the laundry waiting to be folded. I sit down at night, too tired to get motivated. So I grumble and I look with amazement at other people with as many or more kids as me. I see them write and tend a big garden and chickens and well-maintained blogs. How do you do it? I always want to know, but I realized after I posed the question to Angie (who answered today) that people have been asking me that all summer as I posted on FB about my canning escapades.

So I started thinking about how I do it. Sometimes Brian takes the kids, but usually I have both girls in tow, and the friend I usually can with often has both of hers. How did we do it? Occasionally there were extra hands or kids not there. Sometimes the babies would nap. We put babies in backpacks and offered lots of homemade popsicles. There was a sandtable and a trampoline and a hammock and a tricycle. Kathleen ate goldfish crackers and drank more juice than I ever allow (or even have) at home. Kids (the four year old and the two and a half year old) helped wash jars and pick berries and snap beans. We had painting projects and stories at lunch and ice cream when we were all done. We sang and cajoled and took turns refereeing arguments. And every now and then, we just had to laugh as four kids erupted into tears right at the point where we just needed to get hot stuff into hot jars.

I made it a priority. I hate people telling me that to do something I really care about I have to make it a priority (even though I know it's true). But because I know it's true, I've been working on choosing.

I have prioritized running, because I want to get back in shape and because it helps clear my head.

I have prioritized writing in the mornings that Elizabeth is up at 5 and everyone else is sleeping. I feed her and then (if I don't fall asleep on the couch with her), I make myself coffee and I write. Even if the dishes are piled up in the sink or diapers need to get in the washer or I'm behind on my work. I write until one of my girls needs me. It doesn't feel like enough really, but it feels like the right balance for now.

I prioritized canning this summer. At least once a week from late June to the last days of August, I met with my friend and put something into jars. Because I love doing it, because I love spreading jam on Kathleen's toast when she asks me for some "blubabane" jam. I love giving jars of jams and pickles at Christmas. I love tasting summer on cold winter days. I love being connected to my food and the past.

I can look at the list of projects still untouched or my weed filled garden or the mess of my office and sigh about what I can't seem to do, or I can look at that stack of boxes and the notebook filling up and my sweaty running clothes and realize I'm doing okay. And I can listen to Kathleen making Elizabeth laugh and laugh and laugh. I can snuggle with my girl at nap time. I can say yes when she asks for a story or to do music or to sit and color with her. I can have all this abundance of life. Sometimes I just have to remember to see it.

Waiting for the Bus

2011-09-01T23:26:00.000-04:00

Today is the first day of school here. I made muffins and a little extra coffee for my friend J. and her kids who wait for the bus outside our house. Kathleen and I went out in our pajamas, Elizabeth in a hooded onesie and legwarmers against the morning chill. We waited for the bus, always late on the first day as routes become familiar and proud parents snap pictures, and had our breakfast party.

The other day we were talking about the start of school, and J. said, "Sara and Henry used to come out and wait for the bus." For less than two weeks, we were out there every morning to see, but in neighborhood/friend lore that is "used to" and I love her for remembering.

I have sat outside my house for five Septembers—with Henry, with a big belly and a ghost, with Kathleen, with a big belly and Kathleen, and with Kathleen and Elizabeth—to watch these neighbor friends of ours off to school on the first day. I thought I'd watch them get on the bus with Henry in a few years (that is now suddenly next year). Our older friend will have moved on to the other school by the time Kathleen boards the bus as a kindergardener, but our younger friend will wait with her and Elizabeth too.

This morning we were out in a classic September morning, sky blue, grass dew wet, with coffee and muffins and another neighbor and her dog. It felt a little like a morning block party. Festive.

And as our friends got pictures taken in their first day of school outfits and new backpacks, I found myself thinking not of Henry who would be in preschool (preschool!) this year and ready for the bus next year, but of Kathleen, who is already clamoring to get on the bus. Not yet, my little big girl, not yet, but you will.

Your brother Henry

2011-08-29T07:43:00.000-04:00

Angie's answering questions about talking with your living children about their lost sibling at Still Life with Circles, and I thought I'd chime in.

Right after Henry died, I worried about how we would keep him as part of our family as our family grew (which I hoped it would). I didn’t worry about explaining what happened to him to other children we might have, but I needed to know that they could somehow accept this person that they never met as part of our family. I was desperate to figure out how to do that. Then I met a mom, a little further down the road, who really seemed to have integrated her daughter into her family, even though, like me her firstborn had died and her other children never met her. I decided it was enough to know that it was possible and that I would find my way once I had another child to hold in my arms, not just my heart.

***

Henry, I lost my orange blanket at Zoey’s house.

I’m not sure why this it the thing that Kathleen chooses to tell Henry, over and over and over. The blanket was lost and found much earlier this summer, but it is what she says to him often, when I do the bedtime routine.

Brian talks to Henry about praying for our family and others who knew him. I simply ask if she wants to say good night to Henry. If she says yes, I bring down the picture. Sometimes she kisses it, sometimes she says goodnight or I love you or I lost my orange blanket.

I don’t know how this nightly ritual started, but it is as much a part of the routine as brushing her teeth. I accept that there may come a time when she doesn’t want to say goodnight to Henry or when she wants to do it in some other way. This is about how she interacts with her brother.

***

We had a new babysitter here on Tuesday. While I was getting Elizabeth dressed for the day and Kathleen and H. were playing, I heard Kathleen say, “This is Henry.” I looked out and she was showing her picture blocks with immediate and extended family members, and the first person she decided to show was Henry.

***

I made Kathleen an alphabet book for her first Christmas. Or I intended to. I only completed one page in time for that Christmas. On the H page, I put Henry’s picture in the middle of a big heart. H is for Henry and hearts. Henry is in heaven, but we carry him in our hearts.

***

Brian has lots of photos and little video clips on his iPod. Kathleen likes to watch the video of her going down the slide, but she likes the one of Henry smiling too.

***

In late May, Brian told Kathleen that the next day was Henry’s birthday, and she said I sing “Happy to You” to Henry.

Should we have cake? I asked. But of course.

I had made cupcakes for his first birthday, the only one we marked with our family, but I hadn’t made cake for him since. This year we had chocolate cake with sour cream frosting, and we sang to him.

***

We have pictures of Henry in almost every room of the house. He’s in Kathleen’s alphabet book and blocks. We have photo albums of him as we do of Kathleen and Elizabeth. We talk about him. We talk about memories and missing him. We tell Kathleen about things that she used that Henry used just as we tell her about things that Elizabeth now uses that she once used. We talk naturally about him, and so far it seems she does too.

People have asked me if I will talk to Kathleen and Elizabeth about Henry. I tell them I already do. I can’t imagine how I would not.

So we talk about him, but how do we explain what happened? We’ve told Kathleen simply that he died. We have pictures and stories and we love him, but we can’t see him. We tell her he is with Auntie K and Bandit. We will, I suppose, add more as they asks more and understands more.

I just revisited what I thought about talking to Kathleen about her brother in her first year, early on and later. We're doing the same things, but they have evolved more into part of our routine now. I worry less about Henry's role in our family. My questions about how he and his siblings will interact evolve too—will they ever resent him? feel like we love him more? how will they share him with their friends as they get older? what will they want to know about him dying, about death, about where he is? Or maybe they'll have completely different questions. We'll talk about them as they come up. We'll continue to talk about our son, their brother.

8 Months

2011-08-15T23:03:00.000-04:00

She's 8 months today, and as if on cue, to mark the event, she started crawling.

Oh, she's been on the verge for a while now, up on hands and knees, rocking back and forth, moving one hand, flopping onto belly . . . back up onto hands and knees, experiment with hands and feed on the ground . . . nope, back onto belly. She had quite mastered a very purposeful slither to get to what she wanted. But tonight as I sat trying to edit a chapter on game design, while she refused to sleep, I caught her out of the corner of my eye. "Is she . . . " but, no, as I turned to watch, she dropped on her belly.

Two minutes later she was back at it though.

Then she cried because she got stuck under the swing in the corner by my chair.

Then I put her back in the middle of the room, where she sat and smiled at herself and at me, clearly proud of her accomplishment. Then she crawled some more.

And I sat and watched, because crawling is new and exciting, and she is not very fast yet, and soon I won't be able to sit at all trying to keep up with her.

8 months and on the move

The little things

2011-08-06T23:24:00.000-04:00

The box was sitting under the phone table. My friend dropped it off a couple of weeks ago—medium diapers for Elizabeth. I have a set of all-in-ones from another friend that I love, so I haven't bothered to unpack the box yet. Tonight, though, I was putting things away, tidying, clearing spaces in the clutter, so I opened it up.

I was headed to the bathroom to pull the last of the small diapers out of the drawer where they have been tucked in the back.

Good, I thought, now I can freecycle all the smalls . . . visions of clearing out bags and boxes of tiny diapers to make room in the attic and my office faded.

Instead rose the image of me, early spring 2007, my belly big, talking to my friend K., the one who gave me the diapers. Our due dates were weeks apart. Her mom was so excited about her coming grandchild that she bought diapers and covers and more diapers and more covers. We planned to cloth diaper too, but I thought we'd start with a service, see how it went, then maybe buy diapers once the baby was a little bigger. Such hope. Such simple belief that things just work out.

It amazes me sometimes how hard it can hurt all of a sudden, how it can still make me gasp. I sat at my kitchen table sobbing, for Henry not being here, for my rocky entry into motherhood, and not least for that lost hope and innocence.

A diaper, dammit. No birthday or anniversary or missed milestone or thoughtless word. Just a diaper.

Earlier, while puttering about the kitchen making a blueberry cake, I was smiling, feeling like I'm in a good place right now. I've settled into caring for two kids. I've settled into a more comfortable way of talking about being a mama to three. And then I picked up those diapers. The storm has passed now, leaving me just a little tired, but after my cry, I got up, took the cake out of the oven, finished folding the laundry, took a shower. This is where I am right now—3 years, 7 and half months later. I'm in a good place right now. Not a perfect one, but a good one still.

Notes from December 2007

2011-07-24T22:39:00.000-04:00

I'm cleaning my office and in the file holder next to my desk, I got rid of folders for Christmas 2009, a prospective client that got bought out by another company, a project that I finished too long ago to remember. Then I got to a folder of a company I never worked for, though I accepted a project from them. Inside were two sheets of paper, one full page of my notes from a conversation on December 11, 2007. The other has no date. It has half a page of less detailed information about the project and a list:

BCBS form mail
get sympathy cards—Amy & her mom, Heather & Pat
TY notes—Henry's hand, list from mom
finish bears
finish elephant
make heart—Henry
penguin

During those last couple of weeks Henry was in the hospital, I was thinking about starting to work again, dealing with insurance, sending thoughts to others who had lost a loved one, thanking people for the many kindnesses they had done for us. I was making ornaments for Christmas gifts. The bears were for my nieces and nephews to go with the book Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, which I had already bought for them. I think the elephant was for my aunt (her version of my cardinal), the heart was for Henry. I think the penguin was for my friend Tricia's daughter, who was a penguin for Halloween. (That came to me just as I was writing that I had no idea who the penguin was for.)

I was not thinking that my son was going to die.

The list doesn't say how worried I was to bring him home, how terrified I was that he would get sick and we would end up in the hospital again, how anxious and exhausted I was.

On the other side of that paper there is a list of things for parents on one of the other floors—massage and reiki twice a month, yoga once a month, snacks, acupuncture, pizza, community art, coffee and Sunday papers . . . the bottom of the sheet is cut off. I remember how hard it was to start to find out about these things. You needed to be in the hospital a long time. You needed to hang out in the family center or the parent/patient resource rooms and talk about needing to get out or have a break or de-stress. There were times I felt like there was a secret language I didn't know that I needed to know in order to get help. Then coordinator of the parent coffee hours on our floors started offering me a slot for reiki whenever it was available. One day, I didn't make it to coffee hour and she left a cookie at the nurse's desk outside of Henry's room for me. It made me cry, that simple kindness. All of this rushed back with this not quite full page of events and times.

I opened this folder expecting to find useless info about a project that never happened, pages I could easily recycle, but instead I found notes that showed where I was weeks, days, before Henry died, busy, hopeful, looking forward to Christmas, deciding I really should try to get back to work, and completely oblivious to where I would find myself on December 17.

I'll tuck these pages back into my file holder, and next time I clean out my office I'll look at them again. Maybe then I'll be ready to toss them or maybe I'll hold on to them, useless and mundane as they are. Sometimes a to do list is hope incarnate.

Bitter

2011-07-21T22:54:00.000-04:00

I have opened up to joy again. I find beauty and love and sweetness in my life. I smile. I laugh. I congratulate new moms—and mean it.

I don't want anyone to know the world shattering pain of losing a child. But I get jealous, even a little bitter when I read or hear gushy stories about perfect births. I get that way too reading about people feeling strong and amazed with themselves after coming through a dangerous patch with their baby, health issues that have been resolved or seem to be resolving.

I feel petty saying it. I feel the need to apologize to all my friends who have lost a baby and then lost again or waited and waited and tried and tried. I feel the need to apologize to my friend Tricia who is an amazing mom who deserves to feel strong and amazed with her self for what she went through with her baby, who has been doing quite well (last I heard, knocking on wood and like safety measures) and whom I don't feel bitter at at all.

Maybe part of it is the gushiness. Certainly part is what I didn't get, but maybe it's the gushiness that feels like the naivety I lost even when the gushiness comes from somebody who knows how fragile life is, who had a far from perfect birth, who had a rough start. And maybe all this bile rises in me because of a sliver of life I see in a blog, the bit that somebody wants to put out there being the pride not the pain, the loveliness not the lost.

I've noticed lately that I still get jealous and bitter and even angry sometimes about what I don't have. Despite what I have. Despite feeling the love and the joy and the beauty in my life. Despite liking to think that I'm "better." Despite feeling a little bit gushy myself when I see Elizabeth laughing at Kathleen.

These days

2011-07-18T23:06:00.000-04:00

These days I've been . . .

picking raspberries and making jam (raspberry alone, with rhubarb, with Cointreau) and sauce (raspberry with chocolate liqueur—so good on ice cream).

loving Elizabeth's belly laughs

smiling at Kathleen making Elizabeth laugh

struggling with a 2 1/2 year old's tantrums

chipping away at weeding the garden

pretending I have the summer off (dreading my next piece of work coming in this week)

enjoying garden meals (even if they are from a friend's garden, not my own)

watching Elizabeth getting ready to crawl (may be a while yet, but she's practicing)

turning watering the garden (a chore I usually hate) into a mediation of sorts

waiting for the red dahlias to pop in Henry's garden

remembering having Henry out with us, oxygen tank in the bottom of the stroller, while we worked in the garden

eating drippy homemade popsicles outside

sorting and cleaning and starting projects and making messes

staying up too late to enjoy the quiet.

What have you been up to these days?

The Necklace

2011-07-09T22:47:00.000-04:00

The day before we left for vacation, I bustled about cleaning things up in the garden, and the pear tree reached out and grabbed my forget-me-not necklace. The one that has survived two babies' grabby hands. The one my sister gave to me just after Henry died. The one I wore at first just on what I expected to be hard days. The one I at some point started wearing pretty much all the time.

For a long time it was a talisman against the world that didn't know I'd lost a baby. I'd put my hand to it frequently for comfort, for something to do when I told that news—or didn't. Now, as I find myself putting my hand to my bare neck again and again, I realize just how much. I probably have another silver chain somewhere that I could use with it, but I haven't had time to look.

I spent most of my pregnancy with Elizabeth feeling like I couldn't breathe. Some nights the necklace felt like it was constricting my breathing. I'd take it off, only to put it on again the next morning. I worried about the instructions not to wear jewelry to the hospital in my pre-birth anxiety I feared they would make me take it off.

Yesterday, Kathleen noticed I wasn't wearing it and wanted to know why and where it was. She asked over and over and over and over as a two and half year old can.

She wanted to see it, so I showed it to her. "Put it on, Mumma." I told it was broken, that I couldn't wear it until I fixed it and she lost it. For over an hour, she screamed and cried and kicked. She didn't want me to wear another necklace. She didn't want to wear another necklace. She didn't want to go up to her room with her dolls and special animals to hold. She didn't want stories or songs or other distractions. Finally, after some time with me and some time alone and some time with Brian, she agreed to come down for bacon.

Even calm, she asked me again where it was. She heard me though and said, "Got stuck in pear tree."

I don't know why it bothered her so much. I don't think she knows the significance. I don't know if she is just used to me wearing it and she was reacting as she might if I lost my glasses or got a drastically new haircut or if it was just the random thing at the moment that opened flood gates.

The thing is I kind of like not having it on sometimes. It is like a haircut—it's surprising how cool and light it feels with it off. I have two chains upstairs, either of which will probably work, but I haven't made the switch because I'm not ready to put it on again. Maybe it's time to take it off, maybe replace it with a family necklace that represents all three of my babies. I know where it is if I need it.

Early Summer, 2011

2011-07-01T10:19:00.001-04:00

There are strawberrys—whole and sliced with sugar and pureed for strawberry margaritas in my freezer—and jars of strawberry jam and strawberry rhubarb jam and strawberry-vanilla sauce in my closet.

Dinner tonight was pesto chicken (last years pesto from the freezer) with greens from our garden and peas from a friend.

Henry's garden is lush. My day lilies and Peter lilies are blooming. My delphinium is on the verge and my dahlias are growing, growing, growing.

I was out in the gardens today, tying up tomatoes, pruning shrubs, weeding just enough to be able to see what I've planted when I get back from vacation.

Tomorrow I will go to the coast to see my family. I'll feel the rhythm of the waves and breathe the salty fresh air. I'll be grounded and balanced again. I'll sit in the late afternoon breeze and wish I lived by the shore.

I will watch Kathleen run in and out of the waves, see her splash with her cousins, and I'll try to keep Elizabeth and her red-headed fairness and tender baby skin out of the sun.

Elizabeth will sit (new yesterday!) until she gets tired and takes a face plant. Kathleen will not nap and be fussy and tired like all the other kids. She will eat donuts and ice cream and all manner of things not good for you. It's vacation.

I will stay up too late with my mom and sisters and eat too much ice cream and play games and laugh and laugh and laugh until somebody pees their pants.

I will come back and call my friend and we will find a time to pick and start to fill jars with raspberries and beans, then tomatoes and blueberries and peaches and pickles. Because strawberries are just the beginning.

Happy summer (and for those of you not in it, look forward to it. It will come soon enough).

No more binkies, no more babies

2011-06-24T19:27:00.000-04:00

The Binky Fairy came this week. Kathleen said goodbye to all her binkies (Pink and Yellow and Blue and Green and Other Green). She put them in a bag and we put the bag out on the porch. She went to bed tonight with two of her dolls and a small blanket square from her nana to hug if she needed it. I read her an extra story. She did not ask about a binky, though I was up and down the stairs because she was wet and banged her elbow and was wet again. I knew I needed to really get rid of the binkies, not tuck them someplace where she might find them, but I had a hard time putting them in the trash. And later when I went up to check on her before I went to bed, I looked for them, ready to put them in reach. I'll be glad they are gone, but it felt sad somehow at this sign of her growing up, of this thing she must let go of.

I'm in a letting go phase.

I went to my OB-Gyn yesterday for my annual exam, nothing baby related. It was weird to walk in there knowing that unless I had some problem that I'd only be there once a year from now on. It was a reminder that I'm done.

There will be no more babies for me. Mostly I'm okay with this.

I think.

You wouldn't know it from the bins of maternity clothes in the attic, the ones I can't quite bring myself to drop off in a Salvation Army box or Freecycle. I've parceled a few things off to one of my sister's friends. I've promised some to a babylost mama friend of mine. I've offered some to a friend from the neighborhood. I feel like I can give them away to somebody I know but not just get rid of them.

You wouldn't know it from the boxes of 0-3 and 3-6 month clothes that I'm trying to pack up. I know they should not go into the attic, but I'm sure that's where they will probably go for a while.

I love seeing Kathleen grow, all the new things she does, the way her mind works. I love watching Elizabeth rolling around, holding her head up, jumping, tasting foods. I'm okay with them growing and changing and moving on to new stages.

I'm still having trouble letting go of the stuff though. Does that mean I'm not really letting go?

Monday, Monday—Five good things again

2011-06-20T22:22:00.000-04:00

Sleeping in until 7:30 and waking up in crisp fresh sheets

Dinner in front of the chiminea, so relaxing watching the flames flickering and shifting

Salad from our garden!!! The first food aside from a few herbs from the garden this year

Locally roasted, small batch coffee at the farmer's market (just ordered 3 lbs for a belated Father's Day gift for B.)—so yummy

Unexpected s'mores with our neighbors yesterday

Hmmm . . . food and sleep seem to dominate the list this week. How about you?

An evening out

2011-06-16T23:59:00.001-04:00

I went out for drinks and apps with a good friend tonight to celebrate my birthday. After what feels like weeks of rain bracketing a mini heat wave, it was absolutely perfect weather-wise to sit on the deck, sipping beer and eating nachos and fried catfish and mussels. It was the kind of night that makes me wonder why I don't go out more often.

We were there for a little over three hours, and for probably half of that time we talked about Henry, about what happened when he died, what she remembered, what stood out to her, what I remembered, what I couldn't remember or what was fuzzy.

And here's the thing: it wasn't depressing at all. I love having conversations like these. (Not the experience that led to this conversation, but that, given that experience, the conversation happened.) It was not what I expected of my birthday outing, and yet it was what I needed right now.

Gratitude and Good Things

2011-06-13T22:55:00.001-04:00

Years ago, a friend gave me a blank book to use as a gratitude book, an idea she got from Oprah. I tried it for a while, sitting down each night and listing three things I was grateful for. Some days it felt quite forced. Maybe it was that word grateful. It feels so big.

When Henry was in the hospital, I'm sure I prayed more than I ever have before. Throughout the day, I'd send out hope as a prayer. At night, as I lay on the narrow, plastic coated bed that crinkled and made me sweat, I'd prayer. And each night, I began not with please, but with thank you. I don't know why or how I started doing so. Maybe it was a really good day—or a really bad one. In any case, that was how I started each night with gratitude for at least one good thing. There were days it was easy to find one thing—or more. Other days I had to struggle. Some days it was simply that he was still with us or that we hadn't had setbacks. Open eyes. A breath on his own. A smile. Getting to hold him. Climbing into bed with him. A visit. A note from somebody unexpected. Having our favorite nurse. Coffee and cookie hour. Little things.

I'm aware of the big stuff. I'm grateful for a family that I both love and like. I'm grateful for my children and my health. I'm grateful for a comfortable home in a safe place with wonderful neighbors. The little stuff, the day-to-day stuff, is the stuff it's easy to overlook, and I try not to. Sometimes the gratitude for the little or the mundane has simply been hanging on to a splinter of hope; other times it is a deep, deep awareness of the world around me. And sometimes it's just acknowledging simple pleasures.

Last Monday, Barbara inspired me to list 5 good things. She's back at it this week, and I loved seeing her list again. It feels like such a positive way to start the week.

Here's my list this week (if you read the comments on her post, you'll see my five things have changed already, not because those five weren't good, but because I've had more.

Homemade pizza for dinner
Working in the garden with Kathleen: getting potatoes planted—one step closer to the garden being done; watching her sturdy little legs going as she went back and forth back and forth the the compost pile with my weeds in her wheelbarrow
Anticipating chocolate cake at least once (maybe two, maybe three times) this week for my birthday
Birthday greetings beginning to roll in
The quiet when everyone else is asleep (although sometimes it keeps me up when I should be asleep too)

Baptized

2011-06-12T22:57:00.001-04:00

Elizabeth was baptized today in the church where Brian and I were married, where Henry and Kathleen were baptized, where Henry's funeral mass was held. It is a place of memories, but I did not cry today, not even a little.

She wore the dress I was baptized in, which was made from my mom's wedding dress (I was so afraid she would grow too big for it before we finally got her baptized). Before the ceremony while she napped, she was snuggled in a white blanket my grandmother knit for her great-grandchildren's baptisms. We got a picture of four generations (I have one from each of my children's baptisms): Elizabeth, me, my mom, and my nana. I'm so glad my nana could come (and she couldn't come empty handed—unbidden she made a blueberry cake and I get to have some leftovers for breakfast).

The sun didn't shine, but the rain held off enough for the kids to play outside. I love watching Kathleen run around with all her cousins. I trusted Kathleen to run around with the eight of them older than her, though it was easy with that many of them to lose track of one.

It was a lovely day, and I'm so glad it is done. I put off thinking about it over the winter. Too many snow storms (this winter especially) to be able to count on my family getting here. Then we had such a hard time finding a date when our families could all make it. I started to get really anxious, feeling like we needed to get it done "before something happened." Yes, that's the scarred part of me talking. I don't believe that had something happened before we baptized her that she would be punished for eternity. It wasn't even a fear that something was going to happen to her, just anxiety that we needed to act before it could. Once we set a date, I relaxed a lot. But I admit I was a bit nutty when we were trying to get that settled.

Now it's done, and Elizabeth is officially part of a community that welcomed her already, a community that has been developing for us over the last four years. A community of people who know us, many of whom knew Henry, some of whom still talk about him. And next Sunday we will take her again to the church where Brian and I were married, where Henry's funeral mass was held, where she and Henry and Kathleen were all baptized.

A Collage

2011-06-08T22:34:00.000-04:00

here's Henry . . . pictures of Henry . . . Down syndrome resource group . . . congrats . . . preparing for surgery . . . back in the hospital . . . thinking of you . . . sending our love . . . Hoping . . . just down the hall . . . wicked cute . . . need anything? . . . that's great news . . . glad to hear about Henry's progress . . . Home?!!? . . . Hurrayyyy! . . . sad news . . . donation in Henry's honor

—Henry's life in email subject lines

5 Things I'm Loving Right Now

2011-06-06T10:01:00.001-04:00

The two new posts on my blog reading list today were lists of good things, and I'm inspired to do the same on this June Monday.

Five things I'm loving right now

Working on the porch in an old rocker with ice coffee (OK, I'd love it more if I were reading and not working, but if I have to work, this isn't a bad way to do it)

Knowing that the garden is almost planted (finally)

Anticipating a run later today

Strawberry smoothies (with strawberries from the freezer from last year, eaten with abandon knowing that we will soon have fresh ones)

Listening to the drone of bees in the rhododendrons

What are you loving these days?

Right Where I Am: a week later

2011-06-03T22:11:00.000-04:00

His birthday was easy this year, so let out the breath I was holding and moved into June.

Tonight, it struck me as I closed the door to Kathleen's room. I could (should) have a four year old right now. Four. I see that in other children, other families and can't quite picture it here in my house. Four. I know, I recognized that on his birthday, but it hit me with that sudden realization that I can't see four, can't imagine it here.

Tonight, it rolled over me as I sat comforting and settling Elizabeth. I held Henry the day he died—but not the day he was born. And sadness rumbled up though me for the four year old that I will never know. For the first day I will never have. For that last day that I will always have.

All of what I said just before his birthday holds true, but this is true too. This is where I am tonight in the missing wallow and the disbelief.

Four

2011-05-29T23:22:00.000-04:00

He would be four today, that boy of mine. Four years ago, he arrived, a day earlier than expected and nothing really went as expected or planned after that.

I got up early with Elizabeth today. I made coffee, and we listened to You Are My Little Bird. I sat with Elizabeth and danced with her when she needed to move. I cried ever so briefly. I remembered being home and scared with Henry, in the hospital and hopeful. I haven't listened to our morning music in a long time. I've missed it.

I had decided last night that I would make fried egg sandwiches for breakfast, because it's what Brian and I had the morning Henry was born. I know this only because I wasn't supposed to eat. I was supposed to have a planned c-section on May 30. Late on May 28, I started spotting. In the wee hours of May 29, I started having contractions, far apart, but growing closer. My OB suggested I come in and be monitored at 8 before my first appointment (I was supposed to be back and forth between the hospital and my doctor's office all morning). When Brian suggested fried egg sandwiches for breakfast, part of me was pretty sure I was having a baby that day and I knew I wasn't supposed to eat before surgery. But, I argued to myself, my doctor hadn't told me not to eat, and if we stayed on schedule I wouldn't get a chance to eat for quite a while. So I ate the fried egg sandwich, and a few hours later we decided that, yes, I should have the baby that day.

We had cake with Kathleen after lunch. A few days ago when we told her Henry's birthday was coming up she said, "I sing 'Happy to You' to Henry." I asked if we should have cake, and she said yes.

My plan, the one thing I really wanted for the day, was to work in Henry's garden. And I did. For hours. I got it all cleaned up, soil loosened, compost in. I planted the dahlias from my friend who manages to dig hers up and not kill them. I planted the delphinium and rosemary I bought for Henry's birthday this year. I moved the pinwheels and flags and stones and sign. I was sweaty and tired afterward—and peaceful. Friends brought by some flowers to plant and I tucked those in around the dahlias where the dirt looked too bare and I had been feeling like it needed something.

I like the physicality of digging, the nurturing and caring. (For my shower when I was pregnant with Henry we had wildflower seeds as a favor. When Henry was in the hospital, my aunt told me she would go work in her Henry garden and feel in a way as if she were caring for him.) I like the space to let my mind wander (to think and remember him or to just be quiet). And I like getting something for his garden each year. It takes the pressure off the idea of a gift; I simply know I will get something for his garden each May.

It was perhaps the most comfortable, peaceful birthday we've had yet. I like to think that I've just gotten to a point where they are easier or that it was because I had a plan and followed through with it, but really it was probably just a good year.

Happy birthday, my sweet boy. I wish as always you were here. What would you be like at four?

Right Where I Am: Three Years, Five Months

2011-05-26T23:30:00.001-04:00

Mostly these days, I find I am content. I feel the sunshine, see all the vibrant colors, smell the damp-hope smell of spring. I laugh. I dance with my daughters. My smile includes my eyes.

***

Right now, there is a tautness under all that content. Sunday should be Henry’s fourth birthday, so while I’m sailing smoothly on the surface, I feel everything wound a little tighter in anticipation. I’m a little on the verge, though mostly, so far it’s been okay. It is not the crushing weight of the first May or the utter exhaustion of the second. It is not my sudden realization of the third that my baby would be in fact a little boy not a baby. Would be if he were here.

This May is easier than the past, but with Memorial Day weekend approaching, I find myself taking deep breaths a little bit more often. Still, I have a plan. Whatever else happens that day, I will work in his garden. I will take that time and space, in the middle of a busy weekend of work and family cookouts, and claim it for him. This is my tradition. It isn’t something I set out to do, it simply became what I do, what feels as right as anything probably could.

***

Last Tuesday we went to dinner at a friend’s house. There were three babies there and somebody wanted a picture. There she was in the middle, my girl. On one side the baby five days older than her, on the other a boy four months older. I peeked and then turned away breathing back tears.

I stood stirring the cheese sauce so I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody, caught up in the swirl of memory. Not long after Henry died, we went to dinner here too. It’s a weekly potluck and all through my first pregnancy I was there with these two other pregnant women. That night when we were back after he died, a mom and a dad but two babies down on the floor to “play” with each other. I was standing right there. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to run. And I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move, couldn’t stop staring at the babies he was supposed to grow up with. B— rescued me. He came over and said simply that he couldn’t imagine how I was feeling but that he thought he would come be with me for a little bit. Even now, I am thankful for that kindness.

Last Tuesday after I stood almost crying into the cheese sauce, I smiled at the babies and talked to the “big” kids. I watched Kathleen, a year and a half younger, with them and didn’t see the ghost of Henry at all.

***

Right now, I can talk to other parents about my children, all three of them. I don’t know how it makes people feel, and I’m not sure I care. When I had Kathleen, a year after Henry died, I didn’t know how to talk about being her mom because I couldn’t quite figure out how to talk about being Henry’s mom. I still dread saying that I have a baby who died, but I can say it without coming home and going to bed. I can say it and then I can talk about him as he comes up as I talk about Kathleen, as I talk about Elizabeth.

***

I have pictures of Henry that people printed for us on their home printers. Over the past almost four years they have faded. I can still see me and Brian eager and anxious with Henry as we get ready to take him home from the NICU. I can still see me smiling, too broadly, as they get ready to take him into surgery. I can still see him, my post-surgery no oxygen golden boy with a half smile sitting in his car seat. I can still see us, but we are fading, ghosting, as my memories seem to sometimes. I still struggle to hold onto the surge of joy smiles while letting go of the fear and constant red-alert of his hospital days, but it all dims until something triggers it all sharp and bright again.

***

Right now, I’m frustrated sometimes as I get mired down in work and laundry and making dinner and washing dishes and packing away outgrown clothes and getting out things for summer and . . .

I hate the notion that death gives us perspective, helps us fix our priorities. I don’t think mine have changed all that much. I just get more irritated that I can’t figure out how get the crap out of the way to focus on what matters to me.

***

A few days/weeks ago, I met a friend for chocolate stout cake. We talked about writing and gardens and our husbands’ terrible sense of time and running and food and dead babies and live babies and yearned for-hoped for babies and travel and what we were like in high school. I met her because of the dead babies, and I’m liking getting to know the other pieces of her too. She is but one of the people I’ve been lucky enough to meet on this unlucky journey.

***

Right now, I’m up because I’m liking the quiet not because I’m afraid to go to bed. I remember the restlessness that would come over me at night for those first many months, how I dreaded turning out the light to go to sleep of the wave that would hit me of the sadness and longing and hurt that I had kept slightest bit at bay all day. Now, I just wish I had more time so I could stay up and do all the other things I’d like to do—write, read, think, simply be in the quiet—and still sleep too.

***

Last weekend we had a neighborhood work day to fix up a playground down the street. While there I saw a friend of a friend there with here two kids. “So O’s got a fourth birthday coming up soon,” I said, maybe a bit too brightly. “That’s right! How did you know?” And I reminded her we were in the hospital at the same time. And she remembers, remembers meeting me at baby group, remembers hearing about my story from our mutual friend.

I don’t know what made me mention her son’s birthday. Was I really prompting her to remember Henry? I don’t know. More often these days I find myself trusting that people I know will remember him. I have let go of the need (mostly) to remind people that while I am happy I am still sad, that while I love my daughters I still miss my son.

***

Right now, I still miss Henry and know I always will. I am still confounded some days that he is gone. I still find myself asking How? How can I have a baby who is not here? How can he be gone? I know there will be days that are dark and heavy. I know there will be triggers that send me spiraling, set me sobbing, and I know they probably won’t be the things I expect or prepare myself for. I know too that the dark days will retreat once again and I will again feel the sunshine and see the bright colors and smell the hope. Right now I’m content, happy even.

Three years, five months, nine days out, this is where I am right now.

Much thanks to Angie for this project.

Quiet

2011-05-20T07:35:00.000-04:00

It's still fairly quiet here this morning. Brian is off to work already. Kathleen not yet up. Elizabeth seems to be settling into an early morning nap as she nurses. I'm enjoying the quiet knowing as I do that it will soon end. Kathleen will call for me and come down the stairs and run over to Elizabeth with an enthusiastic, "Hi, Sister! Hi!," which will be all the more exuberant if I suggest letting sister sleep. So I enjoy the morning quiet but don't quite settle into it.

Last night when I finally wrapped up work at 10, I turned of the computer and sat down with a new journal. The girls were both long asleep. Brian was eating rhubarb crisp in the kitchen. The rain had slowed again from its torrential onslaught. It was quiet. Brian's spoon and my pen the two noises I heard. And I loved it.

I can't tell you how much I love quiet these days. I rarely listen to music if it is my choice. Most mornings I don't even bother to turn on NPR anymore, knowing that Morning Edition will be drowned out by clamoring and that I'll have audio overload. Quiet.

It took me some time to get here to this place where I could love quiet, because I remember another quiet, a terrible quiet.

Two kids asleep quiet is very different from one baby dead quiet.My house is rarely quiet these days for which I am grateful because I know the emptiness of that other kind of quiet. My house is rarely quiet these days, but when I is I sit and savor it.

Wishing you some moments of quiet and peace in your day, whatever shape that takes for you.

Today

2011-05-13T22:47:00.001-04:00

Today I ran almost three miles
and loved the cool air and the warm sun.

Today I smelled the lilacs, suddenly in bloom
and thought of Charlotte and her mama.

Today I dug in the garden, trading tools with Kathleen
and enjoyed working with her, even if I could have gotten more done alone.

Today I stopped to blow bubbles with Kathleen
and remembered Hudson and her mama and how one year felt.

Today I noticed how big Elizabeth is getting
and how her face is filling out—almost five months!

Today I looked out the window and saw the blue forget-me-nots under Henry's tree
and did not forget and still thought "What a good day."

Swirling back

2011-04-30T22:46:00.000-04:00

As we sat last night in our big powder blue and tan bathroom with the steam swirling around us like fog settling, making it everything just a little indistinct and rather damp, I slipped back into my memory. You would think that Kathleen waking coughing, gasping and raspy breathed in the middle of the night would send me spiraling back to Henry. I'd expect it to be a trigger, setting of a flurry of overgrown fear, but it didn't. I went back much farther than Henry. As the steam filled the air, I was no long holding my little one on my lap; I was the little one, three maybe or four. Smelling the moist heat, hearing the water beating down behind the shower curtain, I was sitting on my mom's lap in a tiny pink bathroom, that like the one I was actually was just of the kitchen, far from the bedrooms.

I got croup a lot as a kid. When I heard Kathleen's cough on Thursday morning I knew exactly what it was. I remember the curious reverberating feeling of the cough ending in a wheeziness. I remember the smell of the steamy bathroom. I remember the thrill of being outside on my swing late at night, long after bedtime, the sky clear and dark, the stars cold and bright. I haven't taken Kathleen outside yet, but we've taken steam breaks three time now. She starts out crying and coughing on my lap and we read Little Bear stories until her cough loosens and her breathing improves. I turn off the shower and we read one more story as the heat slowly begins to dissipate and the moisture begins to settle. Then back to bed.

Last night, after we steamed her she kept coughing off and on. I thought I'd have to take her down again. Elizabeth has a cold and a cough that kept waking her up last night. At 2:21 A.M. I sat in the rocking chair in Kathleen's room listening to her breathe and cough and nursing Elizabeth. In the nightlight's glow, I could see Kathleen scrunched down at the bottom of her bed. I watched her moving restlessly and waited to see if she would wake up or cry out again. I rocked and rocked with Elizabeth's squirming finally settling near me. I was awake and exhausted. I didn't like the sounds of Kathleen's cough, but I wasn't panicked. I wasn't anxious. I didn't think of the ER or ambulances or ventilators or oxygen. She was sick and uncomfortable and all I thought was that I wanted her—both of them—to feel better.

Smiles

2011-04-28T23:15:00.001-04:00

I never saw much of Henry in Kathleen. Sometimes other people would tell me they saw a similarity. I was gratified, somehow, that other people made that connection between my children, even if I didn't see it myself.

I see something of Henry's smile in Elizabeth, though, something around the eyes. It makes me happy.

I love her smile simply because it is so big and happy, but I love it too because it reminds me of Henry.

I love it because it links two of my babies together.

I love it because it brings a little Henry into my day when he was starting to seem faded and far, far away.

Maybe the moon

2011-04-21T00:51:00.000-04:00

Maybe it's because of the full moon last week
or Elizabeth's week of 4:30 A.M., up for the day, wake ups
or too much sugar and caffeine
or hormones.

Maybe it's the approach of May
or the growing pile of things that I'll never use for another baby
or the birthday parties
or a new season, another season without him.

Maybe it's just time for the wall to crack a little again
to breakdown
to let go a little more
to let the tears to flow again.

This past week, sadness has descended like the darkness, settling slowly over me as evening falls. It comes untriggered. It comes for no reason.

The sadness just comes and sits with me. It doesn't bring pictures or say remember when. It just sits with me and pokes a bit at some anxiety. It won't let me sleep, not right away anyway.

I haven't fallen into despair or been bowled over by grief. I've had some lovely, sweet, sunlight and laughter days. But at night, at night sadness come to keep me company.

Bye, bye baby group

2011-04-07T22:21:00.000-04:00

Today was my last day with Elizabeth at baby group. She'll age out before we are able to get there again. Four months next week.

The woman who runs the group has been asking people how they've changed since their first visit to the group. How have I changed since I first went with Elizabeth? I'm more confident, more adept (mostly) at managing the needs of two children. I'm sleeping more, getting out of the house more. That wasn't my first thought though.

How have you changed since you first came to the group?

My mind went back almost four years to a very different me, to a me who just wanted to be a "normal" mom. I was there with Henry and his oxygen and my fears of surgery and my lists of appointments. I was there with my anger that my baby was born sick and taken away from me before I held him. I was there, clinging to shreds of normalcy and what I expected, feeling all the while like an outsider.

How have you changed since you first came to the group?

I've learned that having a sick baby isn't the worst thing. I've learned that rather than being strong I'd rather not be tested. I've learned what it is to say goodbye to your baby forever.

I went back with Kathleen. I was awkward, unsure how to talk about Henry, about his life or death. I went back seeking normal again. I was there with a healthy baby, but I was mired deep in grief there at the beginning of year two without Henry.

How have you changed since you first came to the group?

I've learned how to talk about all my children to people who might never know I have a baby who died. I've learned how to let that be part of my story.

I went back with Elizabeth to have a little focused time with her. I went because I needed to go back to see how far I've come. I needed to see if I could be around other mothers more easily now.

How have you changed since you first came to the group?

Three and a half years after I first came to the group, I'm relaxing a little into my role. I'm getting used to meeting the needs of two little ones and holding and talking about the one who isn't here. I'm happier and sadder. My heart has a hole that will never fully heal and yet it is so full.

As I left, today, I thanked Maria for encouraging me and making a safe place for me to talk about Henry, especially when I went with Kathleen and was fumbling and figuring out how to do it. I left feeling good about doing this with all my babies, marveling that Elizabeth will be four months old next week, smiling in the sunshine on the first real spring day we've had.

I drove by the cemetery. My baby is there. I have a baby who died.

That still catches me off guard sometimes.

March Musings

2011-03-25T15:27:00.001-04:00

I have a love-hate relationship with March.

It is a messy month of melt and mud. The snow that remains is gray and gritty with sand. The snow that leaves reveals trash and dog poop and the yard and garden clean up you never finished in the fall. Our snow retreated slowly, slowly earlier this month and then suddenly it was mostly gone. How good it is to see the ground again!

Winter

Almost spring

March is a month of stirring and awakening. The sap is running and that means maple syrup. As I start to get really sick of winter and know that there is a lot of mud and cold and messiness between me and spring, I focus on sugar shack season. It's my bridge between snow and spring. The sap is running in the trees; sometimes I feel like my sap starts running this time of year too, as if I'm starting to re-energize and getting ready to bloom.

March teases. There are the occasional days when you can go out without a coat, when every one is outside and almost giddy. There are the days when you look out and think you can go out without a coat only to feel a raw wind overcoming the sun. Last week I packed away the snowpants and boots, but refused to put the bin up in the attic. There is always snow in March once you think you are done, but it never lasts long.

My neighbor has a little plastic house on her porch that Kathleen loves to play in. All winter, whenever we walked by, she'd start up a chorus of "Little house, little house!"

"Not today. It's too cold," I'd tell her. Now it's March, and many days it's still too cold. Yesterday, though, I decided we could do it. We packed some snacks and our water bottles and the book I'm reading. We put on mud boots and coats and hats and set off down the driveway. Kathleen ate her snack while I fed Elizabeth. Then I snuggled Elizabeth close to keep her warm and opened Zeitoun, while Kathleen carried spoonful after spoonful of sand from the sand table to a bowl inside the little house. I love this porch and my neighbor who lets me visit whether or not she is home. I love getting outside again even if it is still a little chilly.

Yesterday we stayed out for 45 minutes, came home and took our bread out of the oven, and went back out for Kathleen's "bikey." We ran into neighbors out for a walk and went around the block with them. Somewhere during that time it got really cold. The sun slipped down just enough, the wind picked up, and I found myself shivering and wishing for gloves. "We have to go in. I'm cold. Your hands are freezing," I told Kathleen, hearing all the while the murmurings of soon, soon, soon all around me. Soon we'll come out without coats. Soon I will sit with tea or ice coffee or white wine while the kids play. Soon we'll go in only because it is already past dinner time and nearly bedtime. Soon.

Not yet, but soon.

Every Last One

2011-03-24T15:07:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Every Last One by Anna Quindlen. I read it like I read most things these days, in bits and spurts whenever I get a chance to sneak in a few pages or a few paragraphs as the case may be. Back in February I saw Every Last One on the new book table in the library, and having liked some of Quindlen's other novels, I checked it out along with a stack of other things. I renewed it once and was on the verge of bringing it back unread, but I dipped in and got hooked.

This isn't a babyloss book. It is a book about being a parent and about loss and grieving, though I don't think you'd know the latter from the blurb on the cover.

I felt like Quindlen got it right. Got the mundaneness of grief right, because while there are situations that knock us down, moments that take our breath, there is also the everydayness of it, the way loss colors the world we move through even when we aren't staring grief in the face or trying not to burst into tears at an unexpected trigger.

I'm glad I didn't just return it. I've whizzed through lots of books in the last three months, many of them are a blur, but this one is sticking with me. Check it out.

Fringe benefits

2011-03-14T21:50:00.000-04:00

The wonders of breast feeding are widely touted. Your baby will be less prone to problems ranging from ear infections to obesity to death from SIDS. You will be less likely to get types of cancer, osteoporosis, or postpartum depression. Your baby will be smarter. Your weight will melt off. You'll form a special bond with your baby. You get to read.

Actually people don't talk about that last one much, but it's one of my favorites. I have been keeping the interlibrary loan system busy lately. The librarians are surprised, seeing me come in with toddler and newborn in tow. "When do you have time to read?" they ask as they check out my stack of books. When I nurse after Kathleen is in bed or in the early morning before she is up, in the wee hours of the night when I'm trying not to fall asleep in the chair. I'm reading more than I've read, well since I was nursing Kathleen.

After Kathleen was born, I snuggled in with favorites from my childhood: the Little House series, Little Women, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, Harry Potter (okay, not from my childhood, but felt like it could have been), the Wrinkle in Time trilogy, . . . There were adult books too, though I don't remember them all that well.

This time around I worked on clearing books off my dusty "to read" shelf and picked up the latest by Stieg Larsson, Jodi Piccoult (two), and Jennifer Weiner. At a friend's suggestion, when I told her I couldn't get past the first page of Julie and Julia, I read My Life in France. I won and read The Red Thread by Ann Hood, prompting me to seek out some of her older novels. I jump back and forth between fiction and nonfiction. I admit much of it is light and some of it doesn't stick, but still I enjoy reading again.

My reading spurt may be slowing down. Elizabeth is going longer between feeds and finishing them more quickly. And today, she wanted to talk to me while she ate. She'd pop off and smile and gurgle at me and I smile and coo back. There will still be times when she wants to suck herself to sleep and I'll sit with her, perhaps longer than I have to enjoying her warm body snuggled in to me and telling myself I'll just finish the chapter before I go to bed, but these will wane. But for now, I'll keep reading.

Recently finished and heading back to the library: Amaryllis in Blueberry and Sing You Home
Currently on my reading table: First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria; Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day; and The Lemon Tree

Read anything good lately?

Advice

2011-03-03T21:29:00.001-05:00

I just read an article called "25 Things I Wish I Knew Before Having Kids." I nodded at some of them, shrugged off others, and thought about what my tip would be. I suppose mine would be something like #6 (you can read and read all the baby books in existence, and sometimes they just won't apply to your child), except I skipped reading all the baby books.

I did have images of how things would be. I pictured family and friends visiting in the hospital. I saw myself in bed holding my baby. I had ideas about what I'd do: I'd use a sling. I'd breastfeed. I'd puree organic vegetables and fruit when it was time to start solids. I'd use cloth diapers. We'd keep making bread and go hiking and do all the things that people told us we wouldn't have time to do once we had a baby.

I didn't picture the baby being taken away to another hospital before I had held him. I didn't expect a baby too weak to work at the breast, empty bottles when I pumped and pumped and pumped. I didn't think my baby would get most of his nutrition from bulked up formula or something that looked an awful lot like Crisco put in through an NG tube. I never saw the oxygen tanks or the endless appointments or the ambulance rides. I didn't picture him turning blue in my arms. I never imagined a code. I didn't think I'd say goodbye to my baby before we got around to doing all those things people told us we wouldn't have time or energy to do.

Huh, where did all that come from? What I thought I was going to say is that sometimes the way you want to do things, the way you think you should do things, doesn't work, so you adjust. You find out not what the best thing for babies is, but what the best thing for you and your baby.

That holds true for every one. I have advice for mamas of rainbow babies, too. Give yourself permission to have bad days. Not my baby is in the hospital or my baby isn't breathing capital B capital D kinds of Bad Days, but regular old, run-of-the-mill bad days. It's okay to not like it that your baby has cried for five, seven, fifteen hours straight. You can be grateful that they are able to cry without actually enjoying the crying. You get to be exhausted and overwhelmed like everyone else. And it's okay to want a break. Usually when I have these thoughts it goes something like this: I'd love to be able to go for a run or to yoga or I'd like to have ten minutes to think or write or finish a conversation (but I just want a quick little break with my baby to come back to after).

I remember after Henry died I mentioned that I had just gotten up at 10:30, 11 AM. "Lucky," my friend said. I was bitter and wanted to ask her if she really wanted my kind of luck. She had been up half the night with her baby. I was up longing for mine. I knew even then, in the depth of my grief, that if I had another baby some day, there would be days that were hard, as much as I wanted the opportunity to face those challenges, I wouldn't love every minute or every situation. I gave myself permission then to have bad days. I am endlessly thankful to have my girls here with me, living, breathing, healthy. I feel lucky to have time with them and accept the tantrums and the colic and the sleepless nights as part of parenting, but somedays are hard. Some days I feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and inadequate. Some days I have cried right along with the baby. Yeah, I've had worse, but I still have (little b, little d) bad days.

What's your advice?

Morning light

2011-03-01T07:06:00.000-05:00

My morning is about to end. Morning itself will continue for several hours. I hear Brian negotiating with Kathleen for a few more minutes in bed. Soon our morning will begin in earnest. Noise and activity will ramp up. The radio will go on. I'll bustle about getting breakfast. My morning will be done.

I've been sitting here in my chair turned toward the window, feet warm on the baseboard heater, for almost two hours. I got up with Elizabeth in the last dark of night. The sky was black, the room lit only by the little memory lamp on the bookcase. We sat in the quiet, her warmth snuggled up against me. Some mornings I might have pulled out a book, eager to squeeze in another chapter or two before Kathleen was up, but I finished a book yesterday and I'm not engrossed in anything yet. So I sat and enjoyed the morning. I saw the sky go from black to dusky violet to pink to gold. I caught sight of a tiny sliver of crescent moon and a single bright star over the leaves of the rhododendron that curtains our porch between the dark branches of the maple up front.

We sat in the quiet and stillness and changing light. I've never been a morning person, but nursing has brought me close. I remember these mornings with Kathleen, finding the peace and beauty in them even as I longed for more sleep, and here I am again with Elizabeth, sitting in the quiet before our day really begins.

Now the room is bright with daylight, the sky a winter white. I hear Kathleen's voice now and Brian stirring. The mystical morning is shattered and our day begins. The day may have moments of joy and beauty and delight, but nothing quite like these early morning moments.

Back to the baby group

2011-02-18T22:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I took Elizabeth to the baby group at our local hospital for the first time. I took Henry and Kathleen to this group, and there was some part of me that wanted to get there with Elizabeth at least once just to go with all my babies.

As we entered the hospital, I saw a woman at the front desk. She had met Henry when I brought him to the group. Two years ago, she met Kathleen and asked about Henry, not knowing he had died. Yesterday, she cooed over Elizabeth's profuse red hair. Then she looked at me and said, "So that's three for you, right?"

There was another part of me that needed to go back to see how far I've come in the two years since I was there with Kathleen. I remember the struggle of figuring out how to talk about Henry and how to talk about my past experience as a mom (which led back to talking about Henry). I fretted over it. I had awkward moments and surprising moments of grace. The leader of the group knew Henry and encouraged me to talk about him. He would come up in passing conversation—with my son we . . . , my first baby ___, but Kathleen . . . —and I felt awkward every time like I needed to explain my situation or afraid that somebody would ask me dreaded questions: oh, how old is your other child?

Yesterday I walked back into the little conference room that looked dingier than I remembered, but bright in the sunlight. I sat next to the mom of a little boy just a little older than Elizabeth. In the group conversation, my experience with Kathleen came up. "My two year old . . ., with my older daughter we . . . ." When we did introductions, the leader suggested including names and ages of older children, which hadn't been part of the routine when I had gone in the past. I rattled off my name and Elizabeth's, her date of birth and age, the town we live in, Kathleen's name and age, "and my son Henry would turn four this May, but he died when he was six and a half months old." It amazes me sometimes how matter of fact saying that can seem now, how I can say it as if him dying didn't break my heart and shatter the world I had known.

I'm not sure if I will get back with Elizabeth. Schedule-wise it is hard with Kathleen to consider. I'm glad, though, that I got back, no longer wishing I was just a "normal" mom as when I was there with Henry or feeling like not quite a brand-new mom but not quite an experienced one either as I did with Kathleen. I was just there with my third baby, ready to talk about my experience, looking for moms I might like to plan playdates with. I don't know if the new confidence came about from having worked further through my grief or from feeling like an experienced mom now or from having gotten more used to saying that my baby died. I expected it to be easier to go back and it was.

"So that's three for you?"
Yes.

For Elizabeth at 2 Months

2011-02-15T22:11:00.000-05:00

Two months ago today, I saw your head emerge from my belly where you fit so snugly, so perfectly, and when they finally let me hold you, warm against my chest, you fit there so snugly, so perfectly too.

You are growing, more quickly than I realize. Already the newborn sleepers are starting to have a little off the shoulder look, the 0-3 sleepers that you were swimming in look about right all of a sudden. Already you are beginning to uncurl from that impossible position you were in for nine months. Already at the end of the day my forearms are tired from too much one-handed while you nurse and I bustle about.

Someday you'll have to scrunch up a bit as you nestle in to nurse. Someday I'll find you are too long, too heavy to sleep on me for long. Someday you will sit on my lap, legs dangling like your sister's do now and I will wonder how you got so big, so long, so old. For now, you still fit neatly across my lap when you feed, head snug at my breast, feet tucked in on the other side. For now, you still fit snuggled on my chest afterward as I sleep with you, holding you upright just a bit so you don't spit up and choke. For now, I just notice you have gotten bigger but you still look so small.

People see you and guess at your age. I stop to think before I answer their question, because always more time has passed than I expect. Two months today. Two months already.

Why?

2011-02-14T22:25:00.000-05:00

Two emails
Two friends pregnant
A friend, no stranger to loss, waits to see if her baby will be okay.
Another friend, no stranger to loss, learned that her son had died.
I am stunned and sorry and so sad today.

I find myself asking the unanswerable questions for them.
Why? Haven't they suffered enough? endured enough? lost enough?
Don't they deserve an easy pregnancy and a healthy, living baby?

I find myself wanting to say something to help,
to make it better,
but I can't. So I stumble over my words in emails.
I read their news again and again with tears and disbelief.
I can't believe sometimes how unfair the world is, how cruel.

To my waiting friend, I hang even more tightly to the hope I hold for you.
To my grieving again friend, I'm so sorry, as inadequate as that is, sorry and sad.
Love to you both.

Two and three

2011-02-09T02:40:00.001-05:00

I got a note from friend telling me she is pregnant again, due this summer. I was immediately happy for her, but, there it was again. That pang, that needle of jealously. When this baby is born, we will have three children each, six children total. When we get together, five children will play together. I'm happy for her. I just wish I could be happy without that little twinge.

Twice in recent days, people we don't know well, upon meeting Elizabeth, have made comments about us having a third. In both cases, somebody else made a comment or asked a question, and I never set the record straight. I didn't explain that we have three children, though they can only see two with us.

I always thought I'd like to have two or three children. One seemed lonely. Four seemed like maybe too many. Three was what I knew. Three seemed right, but at least two. So two or three. Somehow it feels like I have two and three. How many kids do you have? Three total, but two here. Three in my heart, but two to raise. How many kids do you have?

Letters unsent

2011-01-20T22:08:00.000-05:00

I read Tash's post on Glow. The letters I've been thinking about but not sending are a little different:

Dear R,

We got your Christmas card—L. looks great! We hope you've enjoyed a lot of time away from the hospital. I will never forget how you tried to help us the night we were afraid Henry would die. You stayed with our family for over an hour, trying to buck us up, to give us hope, to calm our fears. I really appreciated it. Later I learned that L. was on ECMO at the time and I appreciated it even more.

Dear A,

I don't think I ever thanked you for giving me back my baby. Dressing him, putting the quilt and stuffed animals on his bed, and setting up our cards and books made such a difference. Even now, more than three years later, that kindness stays with me.

Dear R,

I do remember you giving me a white rose at Henry's funeral and another at the mass for his first anniversary. They are dried in a vase in my office. Thank you, especially for remembering us on his first anniversary. I walked into the church heavy with grief and knowing we would see people who would see the new baby, not the sadness hanging off me. Thank you for recognizing that sorrow and for remembering.

Dear M,

Thank you for never shying away from talking about Henry. It means so much to me that you ask questions about him and refer to him as if he were any other member of our family, even though you met us after he died.

Lately, these are the letters that have been running through my head.

More than a month

2011-01-18T15:56:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth has been here for more than a month now. We're sorting out what she likes (the sling, being swaddled) and what makes her grumpy (gas, gas, and more gas).

I'm finding my way with her as I did with Henry, as I did with Kathleen. The differences between Henry and Kathleen were pronounced and expected. She did not start her life in the NICU, did not have his low muscle tone, did not have a plethora of medical appointments in her first months of life. She had a healthy heart and started life "cordless." The early days with Kathleen were more what I expected with Henry—except I was doing the sleepless nights, new mom thing as a second time mom and a grieving mom. So I'm experienced now. I've mothered two babies—one sick, one not. Here I am, third time around and it is different yet again.

Elizabeth is not the swing-loving baby (not yet anyway) that her brother and sister were. She adores the sling (which I couldn't use with Henry and used sporadically with Kathleen). She sleeps better at night, which may be her or it may be me. I could not breastfeed Henry. It was too much work for him and my supply was lacking. With Kathleen, I expected supply would be an issue again, but wanted to what I could to maximize it. Part of that was frequent feeds, which meant that anytime I heard a peep out of Kathleen I snatched her up and tried to feed her. If I woke up after three hours and she showed no signs of stirring, I'd unswaddle her to encourage her to wake up to eat. With Elizabeth, if she is sleeping, I let her sleep. If she makes stirring noises, I wait; if she resettles, so do I. As a result, I'm in less of a fog. I'm tired, yes, exhausted even some days, but not sleepless haze I remember with Kathleen.

That rest when your baby rests thing that I found so hard to do with Kathleen is rarely an option now. Elizabeth most often eats and has a bout of gas while Kathleen sleeps, and Kathleen is up and if Elizabeth has a nap that doesn't involve being held. Somedays feeding Elizabeth without Kathleen climbing on me feels like a nap, though.

We're settling into a routine of sorts (Elizabeth most always wakes up for a feeding minutes before Kathleen wakes up from her nap; I stay up too late at night thinking Elizabeth will be ready to eat again soon). I'm still figuring out meeting the needs of my two girls and managing to sleep and eat myself. It's a work in progress, but we are managing—quite well some days, getting by the rest.

The changing view from where I sit

2011-01-12T22:54:00.000-05:00

The past two Januarys I've sat in this chair and looked about and noticed the changes around me an within me. Here I sit again in my glider rocker in my living room.

I remember coming home from visiting my friend Kate in New York in 2007. I got off the train, jumped in my car and headed for a baby store that claimed to have a good selection of chairs because I wanted to try out the chair before I bought it. Then I made a trip to visit my sister to check out another store. This chair is the last one I would have picked from looking at it, but after back and forth back and forth sitting, I decided this was the one that fit me and felt the best. I imagined the chair in the nursery, but after Henry came home on oxygen we moved it to the living room and here it has stayed.

Toys—stuffed animals, puppets, puzzles, dolls, stroller, shopping cart, blocks, instruments . . . —have taken over much of this room and the next. I see Kathleen's coloring table in the next room, the school bus parked under the dining room table, the corner of the basket of play food that sits next to her kitchen set. Two milk crates and an old CD rack are filled to over flowing with books. This is clearly a house where children live.

Henry's pictures still sit on the mantle and above the TV and on the bookcase on the other side of the room. His memory lamp is still on the bookcase. I still light it every night and turn it off each morning.

There is one picture of Kathleen, one of us as a family, none yet framed of Elizabeth. There are also three pictures of Brian and me—us on top of a mountain, in front of a waterfall, on our wedding day—reminders of who we once were and things we loved to do. These are good reminders.

This year the swing is back next to my chair, though it hasn't gotten a lot of use yet. So far Elizabeth does not seem as enamored with it as Henry and Kathleen did. Right now she's lying in it, though I never turned it on, finally asleep after fussing with gas for a long time this evening. I sit with a toddler sleeping upstairs and an almost one month old asleep next to me. I sit, though I should sleep too.

I look at the fireplace, where the stockings still hang. They were filled this year with bubbles, books, socks, crayons, markers, and a regifted stuffed dog for Elizabeth. I had fun collecting these things and watching Kathleen pull them out. I look at December still with trepidation but with a sense that I may slowly find my way, feel the joy and the excitement that I want my girls to have.

I sit in this chair a lot again usually to feed the baby. Late at night, early morning, or during nap time, I sit along with Elizabeth. I sing her the song that is just for her. I trace her tiny ear, smile at the long hair that spikes on top of her head, feel the warmth of her body that fits perfectly across my belly right now. Or I sit with her and read a bit as she eats. The rest of the time, Kathleen, who rarely wants to sit with me any more often decides she must be in my lap if Elizabeth is. So we sit a big girl on one leg, a tiny one on the other, or I convince Kathleen to sit on the ottoman while I read her a book. Or I'm up out of the chair.

I remember the first January of sitting in this chair, numb, feeling like I didn't really belong in this much emptier room. Now it feels like home again.

The year in review

2010-12-31T14:43:00.000-05:00

As I sit here with Elizabeth nestled on my chest, it is hard to believe this year began without even the tiniest presence of her, not even a glimmer. Yet here she is, solid and warm and snuggly.

In some ways it was a year of waiting—waiting for Brian to finish with school, waiting to be ready to try again, waiting out my pregnancy. All that waiting was worth it. Brian graduated in May and has been working as a nurse. He's still hoping for a full-time position in a hospital that will give him the experience he feels he needs, but for now he's working, gaining experience, feeling like he is doing his job again after two years of school. Since he's been out of school, we've had more family time for walks and hikes and visits and meals and play. And of course, Elizabeth is here and healthy and settling right in to our family.

Waiting for her had me looking ahead but also had me firmly planted in the present, watching, soaking in Kathleen and her rapid change. At the beginning of this year she was just starting to totter about. Now she runs and jumps (with both feet off the floor) and dances and climbs. She shouts, "Mine," and sometimes shares. She reads, cooks me water on her play stove, delights in her swing, and wants to hold her baby sister. She seems to have gotten bigger and sturdier in the past two weeks as we remembered just how little newborns, even those who start out over 8 lbs, are. I can hardly comprehend that two years ago she nestled on my chest like this. Two years ago, she was this small. Two years already—just two years.

As this year winds down, I am remembering how to be ambidextrous—how to cut my dinner, sign my name, and do most anything with my left hand if the baby is sleeping or nursing on the right. I've learned that football hold is good for avoiding pressure on an incision, but also for making more room in a lap. Along with Good Night, Moon and The Big Red Barn, I've now memorized The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Kathleen's current favorite (bunny book!). I'm finding time in my day for two little girls who need to eat and be held and changed and sung to. We are shuffling things around making room for baby gear and two sets of diapers and 0-3 clothes along with 2T clothes. We've made room in our house for two and room in our hearts for three.

I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting about 2010, but as I sit here with this snuggly girl breathing sleepily on my chest listening for my big girl to wake up from her nap, I know I remember what matters.

Red birds and stars

2010-12-28T21:51:00.000-05:00

There is so much to tell, but somebody is beginning to stir and will need to eat soon and then I will gladly go to bed until she begins to stir again.

I'm so glad to be home and settling in. A week of doctor's visits and heel sticks is over, the phototherapy equipment just needs to be picked up, and her jaundice is a thing of the past. Today her weight is back up again and we are in the clear until her one-month appointment. I am thankful for this.

I'm thankful too for these red birds and stars that made their way to me over the past month.

Sierra's mom, Erika, saw this cardinal and thought of me and Henry. I love the smoothness of it, the heft of it in my hand and the way the stone takes on warmth. It came with me to the hospital, a talisman to get me through the 17th.

I participated in Jenni's ornament swap. This arrived in the mail while I was in the hospital. My parents were intrigued by my package from another country and brought it to me. This heart-centered star is my ornament from Marie-Josée with wishes for comfort, peace, and joy.

This lovely red bird ornament came from Liam's mom Amy. It was a surprise on a day I needed a lift. We didn't do a tree this year, but this little red bird has greeted me each morning when I turn off Henry's memory lamp and again in the evening when I turn on the light.

Thanks to every one who has made my dark season a little brighter.

Here and healthy

2010-12-16T22:03:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth Ann was born alive and well on Wednesday. They gave me a mirror so I could watch over the drape as she she came out. With only her head out, she started screaming. Once the rest of her was out she was screaming and squirming hard.

Her birth deserves a fuller story, but I'm not up to telling it right now. I just wanted those of you who don't know me elsewhere to know that she is here and well.

Today I'm straddling the line between my baby born just yesterday and my baby who died three years ago tomorrow. I'm tired, so there is more to say, but it will have to be said later.

Almost time

2010-12-13T22:39:00.000-05:00

It seems ages ago I found out I was pregnant, and yet I wonder how it is December already. The day after tomorrow is the big day. It hasn't really quite sunk in yet.

There is a bassinet in my dining room, a pile of newborn diapers in the bathroom. I'm sorting through slings and swaddles and tiny sleepers, making room for a swing. My freezer is stocked with meals. I have piles of things ready to go in they suitcase in my room. My parents will arrive tomorrow night to take care of Kathleen. I'm prepared.

Still somehow it seems surreal, hard to believe that in a few days there will be four of us living in this house. It isn't that I can't open myself to the possibility that everything will be okay, that the baby will be alive and healthy and come home in a normal course of time. No, it's simply that the change hasn't quite sunk in. I keep talking about Kathleen and how she doesn't know what's about to hit, how things are about to change. Maybe she isn't the only one.

It seems so long ago that I watched the light turn from gray to pink to yellow with her during early morning feeds. I remember—almost—the sleepless haze of those days. With just her, it was hard, but easy. I simply fell into her rhythm. Now she has a different rhythm, and falling into the baby rhythm of wake and sleep won't work. I wonder how it will, and I remind myself that people do this all the time.

I've spent nine months knowing I was going to have a baby, waiting, waiting, waiting, but here, two days before the birth is supposed to happen, I find myself filled with wonder that this is it, the time is here.

A birthday before a birth day

2010-12-11T15:07:00.001-05:00

Kathleen is two today. I had planned a brunch with family and friends from our neighborhood and was trying to keep it low key and say yes whenever anybody asked if they could bring something. It was something I wanted to squeeze in, a birthday celebration in these last days before a birth day.

Monday Kathleen had a fever, a runny nose, and hacking cough. I rescheduled my Tuesday OB appointment.

Tuesday Kathleen had a fever, a runny nose, and hacking cough.

Wednesday Kathleen didn't have a fever. She still had the hacking cough and the gunk from her nose was green and there was some new gunk in her eyes. We went to the doctor. Wednesday Kathleen had an ear infection, pink eye, and a cold. I rescheduled my Thursday OB appointment. Brian came home from work with a hacking cough and a headache.

Thursday Kathleen was still coughing and still had a runny nose. Brian came home from work with chills, the hacking cough, and a headache. I cancelled the party. I let it go.

Friday we were back at the pediatrician for Kathleen's 2-year check up. He thought she might have a sinus infection. Fortunately she's already on an antibiotic for the pink eye and ear infection. Brian came home with a cough and sore throat. I finally saw my OB. Everything is looking good.

Saturday we got up. I took my time making blueberry pancakes and sausage for Kathleen's birthday breakfast. Her appetite, off all week, seems to be back. She was delighted with the two balloons I bought her. She was almost as happy with her new doll.

Friends stopped by with cookies. Another friend stopped by with a present. We walked around the block and stopped to wish a happy birthday to our 90 year old neighbor who shares her birthday.

And tonight dinner and cookies with our friends down the driveway. Low key, easy, and just right for a second birthday.

Two.
We've both changed a lot in these two years. I'm still amazed we are here.

Happy birthday to my sweet two year old!

The countdown

2010-12-07T09:53:00.000-05:00

Just over a week until this baby is born.
If all goes as planned.

I feel the need to add that disclaimer. I usually say, "December 15—or early if the baby has other ideas," but lately I've been worried that it might be later. I've been fighting off a chest cold/asthma flair up. I feel like I've turned the corner, but I'm not 100% yet, not even 90%. I'm tired and coughing more than I'd like, certainly more than I'd like to be doing after abdominal surgery. Then Kathleen woke up with her nose running all over her face and had a fever by mid-morning yesterday. No fever so far, but green snots galore. I'm wiping her nose constantly and washing my hands obsessively and eating chicken soup and drinking orange juice and hot tea with honey and waiting to see how I feel a week from tomorrow.

My back, which bothered me since the earliest days of my pregnancy, seems to have decided it's okay. Aside from the coughing, I'm breathing easier. Sleep is elusive, though, but I'm trying to rest when I can.

That's the physical.

As for the emotional, that seems to be mostly okay too. I have moments of panic—that they won't do my c-section as scheduled, that the baby will need to go to the NICU and they won't let me in because of my cough, that Brian will catch something from one of us and won't be able to be there, that my low weight gain that my OBs have commented on but aren't worried about is actually a sign of something bad . . . mostly these thoughts stay in check except in the middle of the night when our demons are strongest.

December hasn't really hit me this year, but perhaps that's because my calendar ends on 12/15. I can focus on that mid-month date. I can spend less energy on the lead up to 12/17. There is no pressure, internal or external, to have a holly, jolly Christmas. I'm having a baby on 12/15, whatever I do for Christmas is enough. I can cut myself a little slack this year, as I did the year Kathleen was born. Other years, though, I don't want it to be like this. I want to put up a tree, bake cookies, sing carols, wrap presents, feel the magic and the joy and the anticipation.

This year there will be only Henry's little tree, a few presents wrapped, and anticipation, but not of the holiday, but of a birth that comes ten days before.

A week from tomorrow. If all goes as planned.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T23:04:00.000-05:00

Each Thanksgiving, I stand there again in the hallway right outside Henry's room. Ready to go to Thanksgiving dinner, eager to see my family, filled with guilt about leaving Henry. He doesn't know it is a holiday, that he should be seeing his cousins and grandparents and wearing a pilgrim hat. I'm standing there talking to Magie's mom, admiring her coat, talking about how we won't count this Thanksgiving, how next year will be the "first" Thanksgiving for both our babies. We were so sure they would both be home to celebrate the next year.

Neither of them made it to Christmas.

I'm thankful for many things. I don't spend all day stuck on this memory. I don't only lament what I don't have. I do give thanks. Henry taught me that. I was perhaps my most grateful when he was in the hospital, when we didn't know what was wrong with him, when every day seemed bleak and improvements seemed miniscule and setbacks huge. Each night I prayed for him, and I always began with thanks—thanks for another day, for better sats, being one step closer to extubation, a card in the mail, an email, open eyes, a smile.

It is easier when the daily challenges are more mundane to forget about the little reasons for thanks. Perhaps because nothing is all that bad, nothing is all that great. I like to think I am more aware of the small joys and blessings around me. Maybe. Most days.

Kathleen woke up too early this morning. She was cranky all day, throwing tantrums off and on. And yet, I was thankful.

I was thankful to sit with her,
to hold her,
to read to her,
to kiss her head,
to have her shout, "Bye! Ta ta! Cheerio!" as I tucked her in for the night.

I'm thankful for a warm home,
a comfortable bed,
and a full belly.

I'm thankful to have work that I (mostly) like,
and for three days off,
and for a break from that work starting a week and half from now.

I'm thankful for the blue skies today,
the November chill,
and the smell of smoke in the air.

I'm thankful for a close-knit neighborhood,
friends near and far,
and the amazing people I've met because of Henry.

I'm thankful for Thanksgiving traditions,

for two families that I will happy to see tomorrow,

for family that acknowledges the missing among us.

I'm thankful for my baby boy whose smile still warms me,
for my baby girl who amazes me with something new every day,
and for the baby I have yet to meet.

I'm thankful I'm not standing outside that hospital room this year,
thankful for having survived year one and year two,
thankful to feel the sharp edges of grief softening, slowly, yes, but softening still.

Thank you for reading here,
for bearing witness,
for supporting me on this journey.

Aware

2010-11-21T22:50:00.000-05:00

We're in the home stretch here.

Physically, I am ready for this pregnancy to be over. Physically it has been harder for me than either of my other pregnancies. I know I complain about my back a lot, because when I grimace or groan now, Kathleen looks at me and says "Back." Yes, my back hurts. My legs are tight. I've felt like I was struggling to breathe since the earliest weeks. More and more foods seem to bother me. This is mostly new for me.

With Henry, I felt great. I walked, did yoga, swam. I glowed.

With Kathleen, I walked and meditated and meant to start swimming. And probably the fear and anxiety and grieving kept me from noticing much about the physical.

Emotionally, I'm in a much better place than last time, but physically, I'm done. But . . .

I'm so aware of these last weeks. This baby seems to move so much more than Henry and Kathleen did. I remember being in the pool during the last week before Henry was born, floating in the water while he floated in me. I remember a sudden awareness that soon he come out, that the quiet closeness we had, just him and me would end, would change into something very different. I'm aware now that these few weeks will likely be the last time I feel a baby move within me. Given my age and the fact that after this birth I'll have been cut open four times, I just don't see another pregnancy in my future. So this is it. The last time I feel the strange, amazing sensation of another life moving within me.

I try to pay attention, to really feel it, so I'll remember it. I probably won't. But right now, I'm aware.

I'm aware too of my little girl of the here and now running around asking why. I'm aware this is the end of our time of just us. I don't remember being an only child, don't remember my sister being born, and likely Kathleen won't either. She doesn't know how her world is about to change, but I am. I'm aware of this time with her.

When she says, "Seat!" or "Rockee!" and points to my chair, I'm more likely to sit at least for a few minutes, through one book, even if I'm in the middle of getting dinner ready, even if it's early morning and I'm chilly without a sweater. I sit and feel the warmth of her body, notice how tall she's gotten, how long her hair is. I am aware of how quickly she is taking things, learning, changing, growing. I look at pictures from earlier this year and wonder if it is the same little girl.

I know that what we have will not be lost by bringing other baby into our home and hearts and family, but our routines will change. Love may expand, but time does not. It will be different. I don't think that is bad; I'm simply aware of and cherishing what we have right now.

In a few weeks, things will change. Right now, I'm ready for what is to come but not rushing to get there, just here enjoying what is.

Headstones and hospital programs

2010-11-07T21:57:00.000-05:00

Friday we drove up to visit my parents, but really to look at stones. We still, almost three years later, don't have a headstone for Henry. Making that decision was more than either of us could handle when Henry first died. Then grief was heavy, Brian was in nursing school, I was pregnant, we had a new baby, Brian was still in school . . . we didn't have the time to look or the energy to talk about what we wanted. Still it bothered me that he did not have a marker, and we finally started talking about it this year. We talked about getting a piece of granite from my hometown. I never got to bring him there, so we thought we'd bring a piece to him.

While my mom chased Kathleen around an very old cemetery, Brian and I poked through a pile of stones in the yard of a family friend. I wasn't sure we'd find anything. I kept telling Brian we could always get a stone from someplace else if we didn't find what we wanted. Then he found it. Not too big, not too small. A flat face for his name, curved on the back, not quite a perfect arch at the top. It looked natural, but workable—just what we wanted.

We still need somebody to carve and install the stone, but we are one step closer to having a marker on his grave. One step closer, maybe, to keeping people from driving over him. One step closer to anybody being able to find him.

***
Saturday we left Kathleen with my parents and drove into Boston for a program that Children's runs each November for grieving families.

The timing good for me. It feels right to go back in the fall, during the time that I lived there with him. It feels right to make space for him, for grieving, for talking about all of it, right before we head into the darkest days for me.

Strangely, it feels something like a reunion. We saw our chaplain and the woman I knew best from the family life center and the psychologist and a couple from our grief group and a mom who had helped me a lot while Henry was in the hospital and another mom who was in our small breakout group last year. There was that odd happy to see people feeling, despite our reason for being there.

It was an exhausting day, but a good one. I talked about the things that seem like the big issues right now for me: telling new people I meet about Henry and December. I cried the hardest talking about what I want for Kathleen and this new baby—fun birthdays, happy Christmases—and my fears that the weight of December won't let me give them that. These are the things I struggle with right now.

***
When we left our house on Friday, I thought of it as a grief weekend, thought it might be kind of depressing. It wasn't though: we found the stone; I talked to people have I haven't talked to in a long time; I talked about Henry. It was sad, exhausting, but not depressing.

The moment that sticks with me most clearly isn't sad at all. Friday evening we brought Kathleen over to see my grandmother. She was shy for about the first five minutes; then she was running around with her cousin like she owned the place. When it was time to go, I told her to go say goodbye to Big Nana. Kathleen ran right over to her and gave her a big hug and loud kiss, and my grandmother gave one of her famous neck-breaking hugs and sang "I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck. You bet your big blue eyes I do!"

Going to look for the stone, the extra night with my family was a last minute plan, but when I think of this weekend, the first picture I see is Kathleen with her arms around my Nana and it makes me smile.

Surprise excitement

2010-11-02T20:35:00.000-04:00

We took Kathleen trick-or-treating on Halloween. She didn't quite catch on to saying trick-or-treat, but she got the idea of grabbing some candy out of an outstretched bowl, and after the first few houses started saying "thankyouwelcome" after she did. We went with her friend from our neighborhood and saw lots of people that she knows. I think her favorite part was walking outside in the dark and holding the flashlight.

That's when I decided I would get her her own little flashlight for Christmas—perfect stocking stuffer.

And I was excited by the idea. I love the idea of filling her stocking this year, watching her opening her presents. It was a switch from the dread I've had facing December. I've worried about giving her the happy birthday she deserves. I've worried about sharing the anticipation and joy I used to feel about Christmas with her. I wasn't sure I could pull it off.

I'm still not sure, but I have a glimmer of hope. Maybe instead of giving her the joy and excitement, hers will carry me. I am beginning to see that she might lead my way, carry the light for me through the dark.

Maybe it will work that way. Maybe it won't, but December feels a little more doable.

Easier, but . . .

2010-10-28T21:51:00.000-04:00

Despite my meltdown of the last couple of days and the angst about scheduling my c-section, this pregnancy has been much easier than my last.

I can actually look ahead and think about having a baby.

Last time I couldn't order diapers or get clothes out of the attic or imagine bringing a baby home, certainly not right away. All I could do was fill up my freezer, easy meals would be good no matter what. When I packed my bag for the hospital, I wanted to bring a bunch of extra clothes in case we didn't come home right away. Brian had to convince me to just put a pile out on my chair for somebody to pick up if they needed to. When I went to the hospital, I made sure I had Carol's number. Just in case.

This time I have diapers back from the friend we borrow from, and the newborn clothes are in the closet. I'm trying to figure out where to fit the swing amid Kathleen's things. I've found coverage for my one on-going freelance gig. This time I'm not thinking about bring stacks of clothes for my self, but of packing my Henry book and the yellow blanket to get through the 17th. I'm thinking about having Kathleen come to the hospital to see her new brother or sister. "Bay-beee," she'll say. "Eyes! Noooose!" It is one of those bittersweet moments, and I fully expect it to happen.

I am better able to believe that this baby will be born alive and healthy, that we will stay in the hospital only the normal number of days post–c-section. So the anxiety sneaks up on me sometimes. Of course it is still there, but so is hope, a calmer, brighter hope than last time, a less desperate hope.

I actually had that OB visit today. Everything looks good, sounds good. Baby is moving, moving, moving. "Everything is okay." It's what you want to say when come through the door after an OB appointment, whether you're crying or not.

Today, everything was okay. The baby seems fine. I baked cookies. Kathleen pointed to the stool next to her and told me "Seat," so I sat with her while she colored. The sun shone. Today I held it together and it wasn't so hard.

Meltdowns and Venting

2010-10-27T22:54:00.000-04:00

Last night, I broke down crying. Brian asked what was wrong, if it was the anniversary of when Henry coded and ended up back in the CICU. I really didn't know, but that's where we were this time of year. Either he was struggling and heading toward that code or he had coded and we were back to square one, but all more worn out.

Last night, I slept with Henry's blanket, the one my grandmother knit, the one we wrapped him in after he died, the one I slept with every night for the first year after he died. I haven't slept with it for a while. It's been tucked at the foot of our bed, unused, but last night I felt the need to curl up with it again.

Yesterday afternoon, I started losing it. I was irritated and angry at Brian for taking more time with a project than he anticipated. I was feeling overwhelmed by work and frustrated that I was stopping to take care of Kathleen while he worked on it. I felt guilty for not enjoying the time with her because I've been feeling like I don't get as much time with her lately. I stepped outside to take her for a walk, and I started blinking back tears.

My neighbor, J., saw me having a hard time. "Take some time," she said. "Take a walk, do what you need to do. Kathleen's fine with us." So I did. I drank some water and blew my nose and walked around the block. I came back borderline composed. She had a visitor, a woman and her son. Her son is three. I thought yesterday that his birthday was the same as Henry's, but I think now that her son was two days younger. I remember J. running into this woman in labor when she came to visit me as I waited to be discharged. I remember meeting this woman at the baby group and putting that together. She introduced herself, and I told her my name and started to say, "We've met" and she overlapped with "at the baby group." I don't know if she knows Henry died. I'm guessing she does because she didn't ask about him. We talked about due dates and waiting to find out if you're having a boy or girl (she's pregnant again too), but all the while I was half watching her son, knowing I should have a three-year old.

****

"Everything is okay."

This is the right thing to say immediately upon walking in the door when you have gone to an OB appointment and come back crying.

It is true everything is okay, or if it's not I don't know it. I didn't actually see my doctor today. I drove the 40 minutes or so down there, found parking, waddled, back aching into the office, tried to check in. And they told me my appointment is tomorrow, which I know it wasn't. I insisted that my appointment was supposed to be today, and then I burst into tears, because I have better things to do than waste an hour and a half going to a non-existent appointment, only to do it all again tomorrow. They told me they could probably squeeze me in this afternoon, but somehow driving home and then driving back this afternoon felt worse than just going back tomorrow. I drove home crying and cursing and knowing that I should really calm down.

I've been stressed and overwhelmed lately, trying to get my work done, trying to get ready for this baby, trying to spend time with Kathleen, trying to enjoy the fall. This wasted trip didn't help. It also doesn't help that simply driving to my appointments galls me. Spending 40 minutes in the car each way, when if I went to my first practice I'd spend 30 minutes total getting to and from my appointments irritates me. It's one more reminder that my baby was born sick, that I don't have enough trust to deliver in a hospital without a NICU.

I messaged a friend about my woes, and she said it must be hard with my memories this time of year and pregnancy hormones and anticipation/anxiety about the next couple of months. I was strangely relieved to have her put all that together. This time of year is more stressful than I realize. I'm not constantly replaying the memories of Henry in the hospital, but it's there. That's what this time of year is for me now. This pregnancy is easier in many ways than my last, but I still dread going to appointments, worried what we might discover. I've resigned myself to my scheduled date, but in the back of my head I see myself lying in my hospital bed on December 17, images of another wing, another floor, another bed with a little, still body in it. Throw hormones into that mix, and I'm a mess waiting to happen.

***

When I was pregnant with Henry, I was the master of letting go. Before I got pregnant I overdid all the time. I made long lists and made sure I finished them. When I was pregnant with Henry, I threw them out, or I made lists and then looked at them and realized that I didn't need to do most of the things on them and I let them go. I rested when I was tired. I took care of myself, and I let go of expectations—mine or anyone else's.

I'd like to do that again, but I can't quite seem to get there. So I get stressed and I meltdown and I hate feeling so out of control. This is where I am right now—taking deep breaths, trying not to let it all get to me.

I came home from my non-appointment, too irritated to focus on work, so I sorted papers to clean up my office. While I did, Brian put Kathleen into her Halloween costume for the first time and she walked around the house roaring. And I couldn't help but smile. I need more of this.

Among the Stars

2010-10-15T21:01:00.000-04:00

Henry among the stars

This showed up in my inbox today from Jenni. Henry among the stars.

Two summers ago, when Henry's loss was still very fresh and very new, when my belly was beginning to swell with the growing baby who I didn't yet know was Kathleen, Brian and I went up to Maine. We spent a week with our neighbors in their rustic A-frame. We walked and canoed and ate well and rested. One night after dinner, we went out for a late canoe. It was clear with little light to obscure the stars. As I looked up into the darkness and felt the immensity of the universe, I felt tears rise, thinking that Henry would never see this, never experience this. And then that feeling eased and I knew, understood, that he was part of it. He was experiencing it more fully than I could.

There are images we create to comfort ourselves (Brian's sister holding Henry). There are things we say to try to find a bit of peace (he's always with us because we carry him in our hearts). I don't know where Henry is or what he is or how to picture him, but sometimes I get a moment like this where I just know he is part of something bigger, not among the stars but of the stars.

Thinking of my boy tonight and Jenni's Angel Mae, and all the other babies I've met who are among—or of—the stars.

Reality TV

2010-09-26T21:46:00.000-04:00

I should know better than to watch medical dramas. I surely should know to avoid medical dramas about sick babies. It wasn't a reality show. It wasn't even a character-driven drama. It was an old episode of House. It was more about the medical mystery than the hope-fear-loss-saving. But there were still trigger points for me.

A baby actually dies in this episode. Chase doesn't want to stop shocking the baby, but House calls it. Time of death . . . They don't actually say that, or maybe they just refrain when one of the parents is standing right there. I've watched too many medical shows and movies. When Henry died, I kept waiting for somebody to make it official: Time of death . . . but they never said it.

Cameron takes pity on parents staring through glass at their sick baby. "Imagine not being able to hold your own baby." There were two days at the beginning of Henry's life when I didn't get to hold him, and far too many when he was too unstable or too connected to machines to pick up. And then of course there are all the days since December 17, 2007.

And then there were the times I did get to hold him, hold him down, hold him still while they tried desperately to find a vein they could get blood from. I remember him, red faced, tears running down his face, and absolute silence because the tubes in his throat didn't allow him to scream. My poor little pincushion.

We have two seasons of House on DVD, and I will probably continue to watch them, but perhaps I'll skip the ones that mention sick kids in the episode description. It hits far too close to home.

Dates and decisions

2010-09-21T21:20:00.000-04:00

I had an OB appointment today. Everything looks good: heart rate, measurement, my weight, my blood pressure. I'm waiting to hear on the glucose screen.

"So let's talk about dates."

We've talked about dates before, but now we're at the point where we could actually schedule. My due date is December 22, and since I've been cut open three times already, we know it's a c-section. The plan is for somewhere in the 39th week. Which means December 15–December 21. At my very first appointment, I told my doctor I couldn't have this baby on December 17. And I've said that again every appointment since.

I'd rather be home on December 17, home curled up on my own couch, with Henry's light on all day, and a candle, and maybe a trip to the cemetery.

The doctor tells me that they could possibly send me home on December 17 if I have the baby on December 15, but I know that I will spend the whole day getting checked and getting the baby checked and waiting, waiting, waiting for discharge. I've gotten discharged 48 hours after a c-section before, but I've never had to go home and take care of anyone but me.

So, could we do it earlier? Maybe the 10th or the 13th, but that would require an amnio, which I managed to avoid with Henry by going into labor and with Kathleen by having the doctor and I suppose the hospital cut me a little slack. Policies have tightened, I guess.

With Kathleen, I needed the extra days, the extra space away from December 17. I needed Brian to be there, not in the final days of class or in a final. And I worried that I was placing too much importance on that. The two or three extras days turned out okay for Kathleen, for which I'm grateful.

I wish I had a little more space this time, but I'm going with best for the baby and no amnio and remembering that December 17 will suck where ever I am. I put in my request for December 15.

And all this thinking, imagining myself on December 17 has left me tired, weary with the unneeded reminder that I had a baby and he died. I've tried not to think too much about December, but now I need to.

I think I can survive, even enjoy, most of the year now, but December with its birthdays and Christmas bookending the day he died, I just don't know how to face it.

A little ice cream, early bedtime, and going back to how I started: I had an OB appointment today—everything looks good. I'll just have to stick with that for now.

A change

2010-09-20T21:58:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it seems so much of grief is waiting and anticipating and preparing for the next big event, reminder, or trigger, only to trip over something you never thought of. This fall, I find myself waiting, poking at old wounds to see if they still hurt.

I waited for the first day of school, wondering if I would see his ghost as we watched our friends from the neighborhood get on the bus. Instead, I was busy corralling Kathleen so she didn't run into the road. The bus pulled away and we went back to our breakfast.

I waited to see how reliving "The Golden Age of Henry" would feel, the two glorious weeks we had with him home after surgery before he got sick. There was no oxygen. He looked good. We thought we had a fresh start. I was trying to schedule Early Intervention visits, opthamologist and audiologist appointments, and follow up cardic check ups. We were visiting with family and neighbors and friends. I took a deep breath and pushed those first hard months to the side. I waited for September 11 when those first hard months turned out to be the easy part and we entered the dark age, but that day came and went. I didn't forget, but I didn't find myself thrust back there either.

I played Henry's CD the other day. I hadn't listened to it for a long time. I wasn't plunged back to the CICU. I didn't cry, didn't even get a little teary.

I know I'm not done, not "over it," but something feels different right now. For two years, I walked through Henry's life again, reliving it all from birth to surgery to new start to ambulance to hospital to home to singing his spirit out. This year is different, and I'm waiting to see what this new path is like, trying to enjoy the scenery and not worry about what might loom around the next corner.

I find myself waiting to see how December will feel this year, how fear and anxiety might come to play in this pregnancy, how I will again balance deep hope and joy and the heaviest of grief as December draws near.

And yet while I wait, I am here in these days, watching Kathleen dance in the rain, run in a crazy moth flitting pattern across the lawn, wave and blow enthusiastic kisses to everything from Daddy to the goats at the farm to the binky she leaves in her crib after a nap. It isn't a bad place to be.

His name

2010-09-07T22:15:00.000-04:00

As we come down the stairs in the morning, Kathleen points up to the ledge that runs above her to a picture she can't quite see, but knows is there. "Erri."

At night after her tub and brushing her teeth and getting diapered up and in jammies, she points to him again, this time on the bathroom shelf. She waves and blows effusive kisses. "Erri."

She knows his name, this brother she will never really know.

A friend

2010-08-27T21:35:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with my friend Tricia (who I wrote about here). I was visiting her new home for the first time. When I visited her last in her old home, I was touched to see she had a picture of Henry sitting on a bookcase.

It's the kind of thing that could easily get tucked into a box and not make it out during a move. But there he was. She said that people see the picture and ask if it is her daughter (you know, the oxygen and all), and she tells them it's Henry. And when they ask who Henry is, she tells them he's a friend.

And she is an amazing friend, one I never would have met without Henry, and I'm so glad to know her.

15 minutes

2010-08-23T22:22:00.000-04:00

"Here, watch this," Brian said, handing me his iPod.

He had been showing Kathleen a short video of her from earlier this summer when she first learned to go down the little slide in our yard. She watched the first few seconds and then looked up at me and earnestly repeated slide, slide, slide. Then she saw herself go down and said Whee!

When the clip was over, she poked at the screen, unintentionally starting the 15-minute montage Brian put together of Henry's life.

"Baby!" she said, and Brian told her it was Henry. They watched a few seconds, then he handed it to me.

He was in the NICU when I got it, in my arms, just waking up. I haven't watched any of this footage in a long time. I notice how much his chest moves, how hard he is breathing. Did I notice at the time? Did I get so used to it that it didn't register?

I'm okay until his smile the morning before his surgery. That's when I start to cry.

I watch a solemn me holding his hand a few days after surgery, waiting for him, willing him to wake up. I note the angry gash down his chest. I half-smile through my tears at the cordless dance, when we twirl around the CICU, free of oxygen for the very first time.

I beg him not to pull his NG tube out as he fiddles with it in a later clip and notice that his scar has healed nicely. I smile again as our favorite nurse bends over his stroller to say good-bye to him and another favorite hip checks her out of the way.

And then we are home. Henry is asleep in his swing. Brian pans the camera over to me. I am not listening to the sound, but I know I am telling about our efforts to leave the hospital, being forced to turn around in the storm, stumbling back to the hospital through the snow carrying Henry and his oxygen. I am daunted by the med schedule ahead of us, but so, so glad to be home.

You can see the haunted look in the back of my eyes from what we've been through, but over that the relief. We are home. It is incredibly important to me that we got Henry home, but it is never enough. I see that relief now, see the me who had no idea that within hours everything would come crashing down.

While I watched and cried and felt myself go limp, I was also pretending to laugh as Kathleen tickled my toes. My baby who's here, my baby who's not.

I find myself wondering again, how did we get here?

Just in case

2010-08-22T21:49:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week I got together with an old friend. I haven't seen her since I was pregnant with Henry, and then for a while I couldn't talk to her. I don't know why. Every time I tried to call or email her, I got stuck.

It wasn't a case of a friend not being there for me. She sent sent a card at the one month mark. She made donations in is name. She noted that she had never met him and that she would always regret that. There was nothing she had said or done, or not said or not done, but anytime I tried to get in touch, I stopped. Finally I wrote and told her that I didn't know why but I was having a hard time talking to her, but I didn't want to lose our friendship.

Eventually we started again: e-mail, Facebook, . . . we joked about reviving our Birthday Weekend tradition, which had lasted from 1993, the year we met, until 2006. Some years were more extravagant (month-long cross-country trip, California wineries and spa, a week on the Outer Banks) than others (a weekend of watching bad movies and eating junk food and playing cards), but we kept up the tradition.

We didn't actually revive Birthday Weekend, but we did what we haven't done in over three years: actually get together. We started looking for a date in the spring and ended up picking one in late-August.

She asked if she should she bring the kids or try to get her cousin to babysit. We haven't seen each other in over three years. I know how hard it is to have a conversation with three kids demanding attention. Lunch or dinner, just the two of us, was appealing, but I told her I didn't know what Brian's schedule would be like and we don't have a regular babysitter. I'd have to plan on having Kathleen, so she might as well bring her kids. Besides, I added, you haven't met Kathleen, and I haven't met Charlotte.

I did want to meet her daughter, her second child, and I wanted her to meet mine. But the unfinished part of that sentence was, we should meet each other's kids—just in case.

She never met Henry, will only ever know him from pictures and stories. Most likely I will have years of hearing about Charlotte and seeing pictures as she grows from baby to little girl to young woman, and most likely, she will have years of the same with Kathleen. But you never know. So now I've met Charlotte, and she's met Kathleen. She'll never get to meet my first baby, but I made sure she met my second. I hate thinking this way.

It was a good visit. We talked, with interruptions and distractions, about our garden and her house and my pregnancy and recent health scares in extended family. We fell into that comfortable pattern of good, old friends, despite the long time since we last met, despite babies we had birthed and the one I had buried. It was comfortable and easy, and I hope it isn't three years before we get together again. And I'm glad that the paralysis I had in getting in touch with her for so long didn't choke off a friendship of so many years.

95

2010-08-09T21:54:00.000-04:00

My grandmother turned 95 at the end of June. This past Sunday we had a party for her—family, local friends, her quilt groups, friends she hadn't seen in 25–30 years . . .

95

I hope I have her genes for longevity and goodgevity. She is still active. She's tired after the big day yesterday, but she wants to get to quilt club tomorrow. She gave up her license late last year when her car died. She knits and quilts and does the Jumble every day. She moves tables and washes high shelves and does other things we tell her she shouldn't do because she might fall or hurt herself.

She is Mom to two children and Nana to eleven grandchildren and Big Nana to eleven great-grandchildren. She has outlived a grandson and a great-grandson.

She is known for her neck-breaking hugs and her cuddly baby blankets and her meatballs. The quilt she made me (the first quilt she ever made) is one of the things I would save in a fire. It is the blanket she knit as my shower gift that I wrapped and held Henry in when he died, that I curled up with every night for the first year and still sometimes hug close when my baby boy feels too far away.

When I was 16 she was terribly old. When I was 26, she was amazingly young, and she stayed that way for a long time. She is slowing down, but she is amazing for 95. She is simply amazing.

99%

2010-07-28T20:45:00.007-04:00

If I weren't pregnant, I'd be relaxing with a glass of wine right now and then going to bed early. But I am, and dinner is running late, so no wine and probably not an early bedtime.

I had my first ultrasound today. Everything looks good, but I'm exhausted.

I was anxious when we went in. Kathleen cried because I couldn't hold her, so they sent Brian out of the room with her before we even started. As he was walking out of the room, I burst into tears. He was able to come back in when she settled down, and I pulled it together. Still, I was wiped out when we were done.

At the end of my ultrasound when I was pregnant with Kathleen, the doctor told me that I had a 1% chance of having a baby with Down syndrome because I had had one. Then he patted me on the leg condescendingly and says, "That means 99% chance everything will be fine." Thanks for the math lesson jackass. I think it was the same doctor today. He said the same thing minus the leg pat.

I did breathe a little easier after we saw a heart with four chambers, normal flow between them. I was relieved to see no cleft palate, no spina bifida. The baby is measuring right, brain, kidneys, diaphragm all looked fine. . .

I take this as good news, knowing the limitations of this technology. But 99% doesn't mean a whole lot to me. I've been the 1%, the less than 1%. Odds are meaningless.

I am relieved that things look good right now.

I am hopeful that this baby will be born healthy, happy, alive, and whole come December.

And I wait, day by day, week by week, until we get there and see for sure.

The purple box

2010-07-24T21:52:00.000-04:00

My mom and sisters came today for a work day to help me get some things organized, and we did. I can actually enter the walk-in closet in my office; the four open boxes of outgrown baby clothes are arranged by size and ready to go in the attic; and the clothes we are transitioning in and out of in the next few months are tucked neatly in Kathleen's closet.

As we were clearing out one closet, my sister pulled a fancy white box off the shelf. I said it was just a gift box, but when she opened it, there was a fancy card a heart of silk roses on the front. My friend A. sent it for Henry's first birthday. Hanging from the heart is a small elephant charm because she remembered elephants were significant to my family. I remember that box coming in the mail on his actual birthday. There was no question I would keep the card, but I figured I didn't need to keep it in the big box it came in. Yet, I didn't want it to be crushed.

I remembered that the memory box from the hospital was practically empty. It would be safe there. I pulled the purple box of the shelf in Kathleen's room, where it sits for want of a better home. I sat down in the rocker, untied the ribbons binding it closed, and, Oh! It sucked the breath out of me.

I had sorted once again through the pile of blue clothes that we got when he was born. I identified the box my mom started to sort through with his caterpillar toy and his little old man plaid romper as a Henry box. Both of these without a pause or a catch or a cry. But the purple box stopped me. I cried looking at the barely existent wisps of hair, the bit of umbilical cord, the purple hand and footprints. I just sat there and cried.

My baby died.

Will that ever cease to surprise me? shock me?

I sat for a few minutes and cried. Then I put the card in the box, closed the lid, tied it shut again. I put the box up on the shelf in Kathleen's closet. Then I walked back downstairs and answered questions about where to find a rag and whether it was okay to make a box for ribbon and where the popsicles were. I didn't tell my family that opening that purple box was harder than expected, that I had cried, that I could still be sitting crying in that chair. I didn't keep it to myself because they wouldn't understand, but because my bed was piled two feet high with clothes to be packed away and you couldn't even walk into my office. There were things that needed to be done, and we didn't have time today for me to sit and cry for hours. The difference between now and two years ago is that I could have my little cry and then stop it.

But I keep thinking of that purple box now. There are pieces of Henry all over our house, but I keep remembering that box now and sighing.

Remembrances of a 6-year old

2010-07-21T22:56:00.000-04:00

My niece was talking to my sister the other day and said she remembered visiting Henry. Here's what she remembered:

He didn't have any hair. Well, maybe he had a little hair, but he didn't have much hair at all.
He had little things that stuck up his nose to help him breathe.
He had a bed like a basket. I could stand on my tiptoes and look in and see him, but I couldn't touch.
I got to hold him. Did I ever feed him a bottle?

She was 3 1/2 when he died.

She asked my sister if Brian and I were still sad sometimes, because she's still sad sometimes. And she's happy that we are having another baby because Kathleen will have a brother or sister here. That's something I want very much for my little girl. She will always know that she has an older brother, but I want her to have a sibling to play with and fight with and share stories with and grow up with.

16 weeks, 3 days

2010-07-11T23:15:00.001-04:00

I keep putting off this post. I'm pregnant—16 weeks, 3 days. And so far, things are good. So far everything seems normal. So far I'm not an emotional wreck. So far.

I do better when I stay in the present.

In just over two weeks, I'll have my level 2 ultrasound. It makes me anxious, as all my appointments due. So I will sit in the waiting room, trying to breathe, in and out, in and out. If I think ahead to that day, I start to tense up. So I stay here in today, where I've just started showing.

My due date is December 22 (the day we buried Henry) and I'll likely have a planned c-section in the week before that (not, I keep reminding them, on December 17). When my mind leaps ahead to December, it also jumps back to last December when I dragged my way through the month, barely able to get through it and back to the December before that when Kathleen was born and my anxiety grew until I could barely breathe. So I stay here in today, where I every now and then feel the first faint movements.

It is better than last time. Last time I was still crushed by the newness of grief. I could only imagine the outcome I had known or the various other scenarios by which you don't bring your baby home. I could plan for a funeral but not buy diapers; I could stock my freezer with food, but not wash the baby clothes. I hadn't started blogging yet, but I was desperate to talk to other people who had had a baby after losing a baby.

This time, I'm already plotting, where we'll put the bassinet now and the swing now that Kathleen's things have taken over the house. I've talked to a friend about covering one of my ongoing freelance jobs for a time after the baby comes. I hesitated to do it, but stepped away from superstition and made the request. Still, I have shared the news slowly and piecemeal.

I don't assume everything will be okay. I don't take for granted that I will bring home a healthy baby sometime before Christmas. But this time, unlike last time, I see that as a possibility, a very real one, and it makes a huge difference.

Home

2010-07-02T10:08:00.001-04:00

I very much consider where I live now home, but my parents house is still home too. I'm home at their house for the week—a week of chaos (7 adults, 5 kids, 2 dogs in a small house), staying up too late with my sisters, laughing until we almost pee our pants; a week coming home covered in salt and sand and sunscreen (nothing like a shower after a day at the beach). Tomorrow my cousins will come and we'll be at the beach from breakfast to dinner. We'll come home tired and sunburned and put the kids to bed. And then I won't go to my high school reunion.

I never committed to going or not going. There are a few people I'd really like to see, friends I've almost kept in touch with over the past twenty years. There are some people I'm curious to see and find out what they are doing. There are a couple of people I don't want to see, but mostly there are people I don't really care about either way. And I don't know who knows. Do you have kids? How old? I don't stumble over these questions as much as I used to, but I don't like answering them. I get weary thinking about it. It's easier to walk into a room full of strangers who I know don't know than a room full of people I once knew who may or may not know.

A one-time friend stopped by two years ago as we were getting ready for the parade. I was pregnant with Kathleen and just over 6 months out from Henry's death. I had walked on the beach that morning with my cousin's baby, enjoying her little body snuggling against my chest as we walked by the waves, but also lamenting that I never got Henry to the beach, that he never saw the ocean I sang to him about so many times. Mostly, I was having a good day, I was with my family. I was safe and content and I didn't want to break that by saying I had a little boy and he died. I didn't know if she knew, but I just didn't want to have that conversation right then. As she was leaving, my sister told her. I haven't seen or heard from her since. And this bothers me more than I realized.

A good friend of my sister's who had lost touch with her for a while got in touch with her back in March. They talked for a long time and they caught up on news. He emailed me after they talked and we've played Scrabble on Facebook and chatted there. He didn't shy away, but you never know who will.

There are plenty of people out there who don't know. And I don't feel like telling that story. I don't feel like agreeing that I have my daughter now but pointing out that I still miss and grieve for my baby boy. And, because I overanalyze things, I've thought about this and debated whether I should go because I should tell this story, because I shouldn't be a coward. Ten years ago, I didn't go to my reunion either. It fell on 4th of July weekend. I was here, but so were my cousins and friends who came to visit. I decided I'd rather spend the evening with them. That's what I'm doing this time too. There are kids to settle, games to play, cookies and ice cream to eat. My sisters and I will stay up too late even if we're tired; my mom will almost fall asleep playing a game with us. We'll all finally agree to go to bed saying we'll regret staying up so late when the kids are up in a few hours. And we will be tired, but we won't regret it—and we won't stop doing it.

Right now there is a cool breeze coming up from the harbor. The air is dry, the sun shining. My dad is running errands and all the others are at the playground. Kathleen went down for an early nap and I'm enjoying a little quiet and breathing deeply the ocean air.

It's good to be home.

Father's Day

2010-06-20T09:15:00.000-04:00

It's Father's Day and in trying to make a card for Brian from Kathleen, I keep thinking about making handprints on the card. It's a classic image, a way to capture little hands to remember how little they once were, but I can't do it. Every time I think of making handprints, the memory rushes in of the social workers sitting with us, helping us make images of Henry's hands and feet after he died. Purple ink, nice paper. They sit in a fancy purple box that I've tucked away somewhere. So no handprints.

Instead I put a picture of her on the front, and when she gets up from her nap, I'll let her scribble a bit on the inside of the card. No memories there, for of course Henry never scribbled.

Brian worked last night and will sleep today, but maybe tomorrow, we'll have a family day—take Kathleen out in the canoe or take a walk at the local Audobon Society preserve, or just hang out together and dig a bit in the garden. Kathleen's had a lot of mommy time lately. Today is Father's Day, but I think tomorrow will be a daddy day.

Flag Day

2010-06-14T21:38:00.000-04:00

Here in the U.S. it's Flag Day, a minor little holiday that most people haven't heard of that holds a special place in my heart because it also happens to be my birthday. When people ask when my birthday is, I tell them June 14, Flag Day. They all remember Flag Day, though they never really remember when that is.

So here I am, marking another year. It was an uneventful day. I didn't take the day off from work like I usually do, though I only had to put in about two hours. I didn't go out to eat or take a hike or go canoeing. Mostly I waited at my house for the repairman to come fix my oven which has been on the fritz for months. He called 15 minutes before the end of the four-hour window to say he was running late but would be there just after four. And I was livid, because I have better things to do on any day and especially my birthday. I could have gone out to lunch or gotten a free sundae at Herrell's. But he fixed the oven, and as I watched the temperature climb as it preheated to 350 in a mere 12 minutes (instead of the 45 minutes to never it had been doing) I was amazed and my mood reversed. It seemed like a pretty good birthday present to have a working oven, even if I had to write a largish check for it.

So today I waited and was annoyed and I thought about where I am and who I am as I hit 38. I do this on my birthday, it's kind of a check-in, follow-up to the self-analysis I do at New Years. I recently commented on another blog that I'm learning to know and mostly like the person I am since Henry died. But I'm not sure that's true. More and more I feel like the little things, the ones that really shouldn't bother me because I have perspective, do bother me. I am often irritated or angry at Brian. Sometimes I feel like we are back at the beginning, right after Henry died, when we couldn't communicate. We both literally could not find the right words, even when they were simple like milk or shirt or book. And we couldn't seem to comprehend what the other was saying, even when the words were there. I thought we moved past that, but some days it feels like we're still there, or maybe I'm just there floundering for my words and feeling misunderstood. But I don't like the anger the seems ever ready to bubble up. I thought always thought anger was the smallest part of grief for me, but maybe that's where I'm at in the process now. In any case, I don't like it, don't like this part of me. So this, this is what I'd like to change as I move into a new year of me.

Today my anger dissipated with a small, new part for my oven. If only it were all that simple.

Tomorrow, I'll eat a very decadent chocolate cake (my recipe made by somebody else with her equally decadent frosting), and some night when Brian isn't working, we'll get a babysitter and go out for a nice dinner together (already dreaming about what I might eat), and it will begin to feel like a proper birthday. And I will breathe and smile and try to be a less angry person.

Three

2010-06-06T21:45:00.000-04:00

Henry would be three.

This fact, this three-ness is hitting me in a way two and one didn't. Until now, I simply noticed he was gone. I thought of him as he was when I knew him last, not as he would have been if he had stayed.

I have always been surrounded by babies Henry’s age. There seemed to be a big crop of babies in spring 2007 among people I knew. I see many of these babies often, and while they sometimes reminded me that Henry should be there with them, I didn’t necessarily think, “Oh, look what Henry would be doing now.” I had expected him to be a bit behind in many milestones, even before his long hospitalization. During his short life, I didn’t compare him to others. After he died, I didn’t expect him to have been doing what his peers were doing.

And then, this spring, I saw pictures and heard stories of two kids from the baby group I took him too. I saw a little girl at an egg hunt. I heard about a little boy’s potty training and preschool open house—and suddenly I saw three.

Maybe it is the increasing distance from Henry that allows me to see not just who he was, but who he might have been.

Maybe it is watching Kathleen at 18 months—talking, walking, climbing, pushing, eating, smiling, laughing—and seeing what I missed with Henry that makes what he didn’t do, won’t ever do clearer to me know.

I don’t know. I just know that he would be three and that means something very different to me than he would be two did and he would be one did. He wouldn’t be a baby. He’d be a little boy.

He would be three.

Three years ago today

2010-05-29T11:27:00.000-04:00

A baby boy was born

I wish I had a picture of a three year old to show you. I wish I could tell you of big boy antics. I wish there were a cake with three candles.

Instead, I worked in his garden , planting the delphinium I bought for his birthday, replanting the dahlia tubers I dug up in the fall, weeding, moving, spending time thinking of this day three years ago when a baby boy was born and mama came into being, when a heart swelled with love and pride months before it broke.

Three years ago today.

Happy birthday, my sweet boy.

Happy birthday, Henry.

Graduation

2010-05-27T20:37:00.000-04:00

Brian graduated last weekend. It was a two-year program, but he chipped away at prerequisites for two and half years before that. It feels like a long time coming, this graduation.

He started taking classes, the fall we got married. He was taking A&P while I was pregnant with Henry. He read microbiology to Henry in the hospital. He took a final the day after Henry died. He was holed up in his office studying most of my pregnancy with Kathleen. He studied for a final in the hospital room while she was hours old. He lamented having to go study when Kathleen got bigger and started holding our her arms to him as he walked through the room. Through everything, he managed to graduate with honors. While I was sleeping and journaling and blogging and dragging myself through tiny amounts of work, he was trudging through a really tough program—and excelling.

I'm proud of him. And I'm really, really, really glad he's done.

I'm looking forward to summer and gardening and canoeing and fires in the chiminea and family and just time. And it has begun.

Mother's Day

2010-05-09T21:57:00.000-04:00

Kathleen and I were up much too early today, so I laid on the couch for an hour half watching her play and periodically hoisting her on to the couch so she could cuddle with me. She is usually too busy these days, this girl of mine, too busy to sit on my lap. Maybe she just wasn't feeling well, or maybe she knew it was Mother's Day. Either way, we had lots of snuggles today.

And in the late afternoon, I cut three clumps of lilacs, one for each of his years, wrapped them in a wet paper towel and then in foil. I clicked Kathleen in her car seat and we drove to the cemetery together. I put the fragrant flowers on Henry's grave, knowing they would likely be stolen or tossed or blown away by the wind. I stopped to sniff them deeply, spoke briefly to Henry, and then got back in the car. I peeked into the back and smiled at Kathleen before we headed home again.

This holiday no longer paralyzes me. I can walk down the card aisle without crying. I can (though I didn't) go out to brunch.

But still it is laughter and tears, snuggles and the cemetery.

The other tree

2010-05-06T10:58:00.000-04:00

Henry has two trees, the peach tree I wrote about recently, which we bought for him, and a hawthorne tree that came as a surprise gift in late May 2008. We planted it on his first birthday, and as neighbors walked by on that lovely May day, Brian told them that the tree was for Henry and that it was his birthday.

While we were digging the hole to plant the tree, we found this:

I looked out this morning and noticed that the flowers in Henry's color were about ready to pop, and a few hours later on this gray day, they had. Here they are, a flash of red, a bit of bright in the gloom.

To let it go

2010-04-19T19:48:00.000-04:00

I've written before about the lines I love from Mary Oliver. You can hear Jess at After Iris Reads Aloud read the poem "In Black Water Woods" for Henry.

The pause before the last line has had me thinking today about letting go of his body.

"Let me hold him one more time." And who ever has him hands him back to me and I hold him close. Even as I hold him, I know that I have to let him go, that telling him it was okay to go, singing his spirit out as it flew, that was not enough. I would have to put him down, walk away, not hold him again.

In that pause I feel that last holding, the last hand on him as I back away slowly and then turn and walk out of the room. How do you do that? I still don't know.

I loved him.
I held him close as if my life depended on it.
And the time came too soon, but I let him go.