Right Where I Am 2013: Five years, five months, fifteen days

Past years in this project, I was on the verge of Henry's birthday, which meant that no matter how good I had been doing, I was wound tight, waiting. This year, though, his birthday is just behind us. He would have been six. I'm almost five and a half months away from last holding him.

Like last year, he feels far away. Even when my girls talk about him, about how we love him, how they wish he could be here, and they do talk about him often, he feels far away. That he was here, sometimes feels like a dream. Immediately after he died, it all felt unreal, that he had died, but also that he had lived, and the latter part of that bothered me to no end. If he was not real to me, what about the rest of the world who had not felt him kicking inside, had not rested feeling their body calming with his as he slept on their chest, had not felt the flash of his smile. Now, it is a gentler distance mostly.

It is still surreal to me if I let myself think about it. I had a baby boy and he is not here.

But day by day, I get my big girl off to school and hug her when we both get home for lunch. I snuggle in the morning with my little girl until I can convince her to come make coffee with me. I tell stories and sing songs at bedtime. I notice how big they are getting, and only rarely do I compare to where Henry might be.

Right now, I notice the tree we bought as a gift for his first birthday is heavily laden with peaches. Right now, the red-flowered hawthorne we planted on his first birthday, a gift from my husband's cousins, is starting to fade, but was absolutely brilliant this year. Right now the garden that I tend for him is full of color, early, purple phlox that is almost luminescent at dusk, tiny blue starry flowers that I can't name, brilliant red verbena and the red gerbera daisy I planted this year on his birthday, a hint of pink covered in ants that makes me think of Mary Oliver where my peonies are about to bloom for the first time.

Right now, I'm exhausted but feeling strong. Finally. I am tired, but not worn out. There is something left in me to give. I think in possibility again. I start projects like overhauling parts of my garden that haven't been touched in years, like writing something more than blog posts, and in that writing starting to delve back into memories and sometimes finding that things are closer to the surface than I realized, and sometimes realizing there are still little pockets I have not really explored since he died (though sometimes it seems I have explored every inch from every angle).

Right now I am grateful for the neighbor who knew me when Henry was born and knew Henry for sitting with me on Henry's birthday with a bottle of wine and the dinner I threw together. Right now I'm grateful for the neighbor who didn't know me when Henry was born and never knew him for asking how I was doing in the days before his birthday (not the first time she has given me that space to talk about him).

Right now I'm listening to the summer night sounds coming through the window and the silence from upstairs where my girls finally fell asleep. Right now I'm relieved that I can once again enjoy the quiet.

Right now, I'm grateful to Angie for hosting Right Where I Am again. Because five years and some plus, I still need to pause and reflect.

Right where I was 2012
Right where I was 2011

Six

Everyone slept in today. Elizabeth stirred around 6 and then settled back and so did I. I woke with a start at 7:30 and hurried up to get started with the morning. I felt beat up. I felt old. Everything tired and dragging.

Elizabeth Mitchell in the car.
Egg sandwich for breakfast.
Gardening in the rain.
Cemetery and chocolate cupcakes.
Six.
Six.

This birthday snuck up on me. I knew it was coming. But I have a deadline at the end of the week and I've been finagling my schedule around this day that I take off even if I don't do anything. Yesterday, I kept needing the date for a check I was writing and a tracking sheet for my project, and I kept having to check, even though it was the day before this date I can't forget.

I have been feeling stronger, but today I just feel beat up. Six years ago right now, I was in a hospital bed. Henry had, I believe already been transferred to the other hospital. Our dreams had already cracked but we had no idea what the road looked like ahead, how those cracks would keep spreading and everything would finally shatter. Six years ago today, Henry had been born, but in some ways, I was still waiting to meet my baby.

Six.

Brian went to our friends' weekly potluck last night. I haven't gone in months because it's too late for Kathleen on a school night. They celebrated a six-year-old's birthday, the little boy born just days before Henry, the one I ran into at the hospital, his mom back for a lactation consult while I was waiting for to get released to see my own baby. I'm glad I didn't have to see six in action last night.

Six.

I should have been bringing those cupcakes to his kindergarten class today. Kathleen has been peppering me every night recently with ideas for her birthday party. I have been impatient with them, coming as they do in a flood at bed time. "Just go to sleep. Your birthday is far away. We have lots of time to plan." Maybe I've been impatient too because I should have been planning a party now, cake and games and favors. Would he have liked dinosaurs or trains or animals or sports? Would he have wanted a pirate party or a farm theme? Pin the tail or pinata?

We had chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and sprinkles at Kathleen's request. She picked a gorgeous red gerbera daisy to put in his garden and helped me plant it today. My babies, two, four, six.

Six

May

Six years ago I was getting ready for this little being I didn't yet know as Henry to be born. I knew there was a small hole in his heart, and yet I wasn't freaking out. Otherwise, all was well. I felt great. The house was chaotic as Brian tried to finish up the painting projects we had begun before I got pregnant, but the glider was up in his room, a few clothes were washed and ready.

I was busy digging in my garden, trying to get things planted. I didn't expect to have much time to work in the garden, but lettuce and tomatoes would do their own thing if I could get them in. I think of this in flashes, remembering squatting, moving around my belly as I worked. I remember my simple expectation as I get my garden ready this year. And here's the thing: I still believe.

I still believe that my work will pay off even though unforeseen circumstances could pull me away from home come July or August or September as the bounty really begins to flow; we could get late blight on the tomatoes again this year or drought could shrivel up my plants or a late freeze could kill them before they begin to thrive. Squirrels will undoubtedly get the peaches from Henry's tree long before they are ripe. I don't think about what could go wrong when I'm out there digging and moving compost and spreading ash. I don't worry the what ifs while I sprinkle seeds or wield the hose while Kathleen flaps about the yard with the rhododendron branches I pruned recently. I dream. I look at where I might shift and expand. I try to figure out where to put a new strawberry patch next year and where to finally start asparagus. I contemplate fruit trees and blueberry bushes and how they fit in with dog runs and clothes lines and open space for play.

I see the magic in the rhubarb that is already humongous and the chives that greened up before anything else and the cilantro that seeded itself for me and is ready to use now. I see the wonder as little bits of green poke up where weeks, days I ago I planted seed. I, who am usually so linear and organized and planful, can't seem to finish prepping a particular section because there is so much work to be done and I see so much potential. I have new energy. It's been growing in me, and maybe I've talked about it before. I am refilling after the complete and utter wring out of early grief. I am refilling after the needs of the early days of mothering my girls. I am refilling by claiming a little time and space for me to run and write and dig in the dirt.

I am not thinking ahead to the rest of May, to Mother's Day and Henry's birthday, except to think about what I will get for his garden this year. His birthday isn't easy, even separated from the day he died by several months, but somehow, part of what I relive right now is the anticipation, of him and a garden of vegetables, this time of joyful waiting and wonder.

Enough: Little by little gardening

It's the time of year when I'm itching to get out into my garden and get stuff planted, even though I know I have more than a month before our "last day of frost." But all those "as soon as the ground can be worked," cold weather veggies? It's time. The past few years, pregnancy and little babies with short attention spans or quick legs moving toward the road and brick steps they can't climb, have made my gardening goals more modest. My dreams are still big, but my expectations are low. I work a small bit of ground at a time, say enough of a patch to do a first planting of lettuce. Little by little, piece by piece, my garden comes together, and most things get in on time, and the things that don't I pick up at the farmer's market.

Right now, I work in the afternoons while Elizabeth naps and Kathleen works on her castle, an intricate stack of bricks and soil and sticks that started last summer when Brian was digging out an old, choked flower bed in preparation for planting hops this year. Her castle has occupied her and one of our neighbor friends for countless afternoons. I'm not crazy about its location between the rhubarb and this year's tomato patch, especially with the ever bigger moat that they dig on one side, but I'm letting it be for now. Kathleen is big enough to work on her castle or on her alligator dam (a pile of sticks between a small stone wall and a downed tree) while I'm in the upper garden. Sometimes she comes to help me, but more often than not, she's quite busy with her own gloves and tools in her own little projects.

So as much as I want to get out there when the sun shines and the temps pop up into the 60s and 70s, I work with the time I have, and sometimes I just sit because that feels good too. It's April 9 and I have lettuce and spinach and arugula and beets in the ground, not to mention more lettuce and broccoli, kale, bok choi, and flowers started in my milk jugs. It's good enough, and maybe just a little bit more.

Green magic

 A cold front blew in today and the blue skies belied the blustery wind. I pushed aside the winter boots and snowpants along with any notion of packing them away. But, there was this:

and this:



This time of year is such a time of hope and promise and waiting. I remember knowing that even in the spring of 2008 when somehow knowing there was hope even if I didn't quite have it was enough.

Today, I have the hope, and I nearly squealed to see those seeds Kathleen and I planted in the old milk jugs starting to turn into broccoli and bok choi and lettuce and marigolds.

Spring hopes eternal

Two days ago, the snowdrops were blooming. My garden was mostly bare, muddy, half-frozen ground.

Today, my gardens looked like this:

Happy spring. (Grumble)

This time of year, I need something to look forward to so  I go out for pancakes and syrup, because sap boiling is a sign that spring isn't here yet, but it's getting close, and sugar shacks give me something to look forward to in what would be a month of mud and slush and fresh snow that nobody but skiers wants.
I need some brightness, so I buy bunches of daffodils every time I go to the store and cut branches of forsythia to force for our Easter tree.

I need to act like spring is coming, so I buy seeds anywhere I see them (and I never remember what I've bought so I always have way too much lettuce and peas and none of something else.) I never start seeds because I don't have a good place to do it, but last year I read about winter sowing in milk jugs. Today, in honor of spring, I started my garden.
 

 I gathered the seed starter and the seeds and the saved milk jugs from the barn. Then I schlepped through the snow to the compost pile out back. Even as I grumbled about the snow, I noticed that the sun had come out and the air had a hint of softness to it. The snow was still a solid covering, but underfoot it was yielding. You slid ever so slightly in it instead of crunching. And, I had to admit, it was pretty, clean and sparkly instead of dingy and dull.

I dug into the compost pile, clearing away a layer of snow and a layer of leaves. Underneath, instead of frozen ground, the new soil was warm and rich and fragrant. I scooped two small buckets full and added them to my pile of supplies in the kitchen. 

I prepped the milk jugs by cutting them most of the way around and stabbing drain holes in the bottom. Kathleen helped me fill them and plant the seeds. I labeled them as we went along. We spritzed them with water, and I sealed them up with tape.

Then we put on boots and brought our mini greenhouses out to the sunny side of the house.

Now we wait—and hope. I didn't plant all the seeds. I'll stagger my plantings and use some to direct sow in the garden, whether or not our little winter (or spring) sowing experiment works.

We finished just in time to get Elizabeth up for her nap. We all took a walk around the block with hats but no mittens, boots but no snowpants. We ran into neighbors and stopped to say "Happy spring" and Kathleen and Elizabeth and their friend from around the corner ran in circles and giggled and shrieked. It was bright and almost warm and we stayed outside until we should have been done eating dinner.

Spring is coming. Today, even with a covering of fresh snow, I felt it.

August

It's been a while. My mind flits here, but I don't quite know what I want to say. Plus I'm busy trying to keep weeds at bay in the garden (just enough to find the plants) and the fruit flies in check. The latter is a two part job—soapy fruit fly traps and doing something with all the produce piling up on the counter.

August is so abundant.

Tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and beans. Eggplant and basil. Summer squash and zucchini. Onions, carrots. Peaches.

Tomatoes need to be sliced and eaten with basil and mozzarella or slow roasted with garlic and olive oil or pureed and simmered into a base for a later sauce. Peppers get stuffed and chopped for pizza and ground up for sofrito. Cucumbers and beans get pickled and pickled some more with hopes they are almost done. Eggplant gets sliced and roasted and eaten with the roasted tomatoes and good bread or layered on a summer pizza. Summer squash and zucchini get grilled and sliced for pizza and baked in bread and brownies. Onions and carrots (so easy) just get tucked away until needed. Peaches get dipped and peeled and chopped. They drip all over the floor and go into the jam pot or salsa or ice cream or yogurt. They're eaten by the dozen. We have too many. We need more.

This has kept me busy along with the frenzied end-of-summer didn't do yet lists. A little more beach, a trip to Boston and the swan boats, a visit from a friend before she is back to school. . .

And amidst the bustle and the business and the bundles of produce, I'm so aware of what August is (or isn't) for so many friends. I've been sending out a lot of love and fingering the rosemary in Henry's garden and remembering with you.

Five and the Best Laid Plans

My plan for the day:
family breakfast of fried egg sandwiches
listen to You Are My Little Bird in the morning
plant flowers at his grave
work in Henry's garden today
have cupcakes with friends

This morning Brian stayed in bed after being up late with a feverish Elizabeth. I was leaving early to get Elizabeth to the walk-in hours at the doctors. No family breakfast.

I had a little time to spare, so I went to put the music on and the CD player closed and then opened and wouldn't close again. I fiddled with it for a bit, getting frustrated. No music in the morning.

And then I started to laugh. I don't know why I would think anything would go as planned on this day. Five years ago he was born, a day earlier than planned, and nothing, nothing really went as planned after that.

I ate my fried egg sandwich, much like the one I ate the day he was born. I made one for Kathleen. Brian got up. I got Elizabeth in the car, and turned the music on there.

After seeing the doctor (Elizabeth seemed fine except for that fever), we all went to the cemetery together. As Brian stopped the car, in one of those coincidences or something more, "Peace Like a River" was playing, which was perfect. I often find myself not knowing what to say when we visit Henry's grave. Today I sang "Peace LIke a River' as I worked. Kathleen helped me dig a hole and water. Elizabeth tried to pull up flags. Brian blew bubbles.

Despite oppressive heat, I spent much of the day in Henry's garden, as I did last year. I loosened soil and weeded heavily and split and moved plants. I still need to add compost and transplant a few things and add a few things from some sweet friends who know that is what I do for his birthday.

We had dinner and cupcakes with our friend who asked so earnestly that first winter " 'Enry 'ome?" and his sister who had promised to help Henry on the bus his first day of school.

That's what a fifth birthday looks like here, for now. Five. My boy would be five.

Before the frost

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. 

Four

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?

Honest Scrap

Cait's Mom at A Fifth Season chose me for the Honest Scrap award. I'd pick her back if I could. Her comments on "everything happens for a reason" and on Down syndrome being only two reasons why.

The rules are:
Choose a minimum of 7 blogs you find brilliant in content or design. Show the 7 winners’ names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they have won the Honest Scrap award.

Here are my 7 (comments to come):
Cover Her Briefness in Singing
Demeter's Feet
Ezra's Space
Happy Sad Mama
I Lost a World
Surviving the Day
Tuesday's Hope

List at least 10 honest things about yourself

1. The first thing you should know is that I'm terrible at things like this because I overanalyze the task/question. To be honest, does it have to be deep or important or can it simply be a statement of fact? Does it mean things nobody knows about me? Should they be things I don't like to admit? That said, here are my other nine.
   
2. Before Henry got sick and everyone kept telling me how strong I was, I kind of liked thinking of myself as a strong person. I learned that having your strength tested sucks. Whether or not I was strong, I didn't want to have to be strong.
3. I have toe thumbs.
   
4. I hate being shy. I've gotten better, but I still struggle with it.
5. When my yoga teacher said repeatedly, "Yoga can change your life," during my first ever class years ago, I rolled my eyes. But it did, and I miss it.
   
6. Lately I love running, or to be fully honest, I love the me time running affords me and knowing I'm getting in shape and the way I feel after a run.
   
7. The ocean is in my blood, and if I go too long without being near it, I get off balance.
8. I can get very grumpy, downright mean, when I'm hungry.
   
9. I often think of Henry's life in terms of my garden. He was born just after our last planting. We were able to pick lettuce when we brought him home. He sat in the stroller while we picked strawberries. My mother-in-law babysat while I picked blueberries. I made peach jam with my neighbor while waiting for an Early Intervention visit. He was in the hospital for most of tomatoes and all of squash and leaf raking. This is how I mark time.
   
10. I am slowly starting to find out what is happening in my friends' lives after two years of focusing on my baby or my grief.

Henry's Garden

From top to bottom:

• Henry's cousins made the Henry's Garden sign for his first birthday. The hand is his hand that I traced for Thanksgiving a few weeks before he died.
• This angel was a wedding gift from Brian's sister. We found the stone heart at the beach when I was up visiting my family.
• Red dahlia and turtle
• The red dahlias are from a friend who has a little girl two weeks older than Henry. I asked her for something red (Henry's color) from her garden, and this is what I got. This first one was in bloom when we got back from vacation. I love it.
• The turtle with three little red birds is a souvenir from our vacation. The store we got it from features the work of developmentally disabled adults who work at an on-site pottery and weaving workshop. My mom had been planning to get me a new plant for Henry's garden, but got this instead.
• Our second angel was a gift from one of our grief group friends. She gave them out in honor of the first anniversary of her son's death.

Would Be, Should Be

My boy, my Henry would be, should be two today.
I would be, should be making a cake with two candles,
would be, should be wiping frosting and ice cream off chubby cheeks,
would be, should be following little toddling legs around.
I would be, should be remembering the day he was born and marveling at how big he has gotten.

But he is gone.
And I will be visiting the cemetery to plant a batch of johnny jump-ups,
will be digging around in his garden, in the rain,
will be planting red flowers,
will be holding and loving his little sister and telling her of her angel brother.
I am remembering the day he was born and and wishing he were here.