December looming

As I look at my grocery list and wonder if there is anything I absolutely need before Friday, anything that is worth descending into the hell that is supermarket the week before Thanksgiving, I realize that holiday is almost here. It's late this year, so two days later, the Christmas season is upon us. Christmas, and of course, December.

I'm not ready.

As my mind tries to grapple with birthday party—which kids, how will I fit them and their parents in my house, is my house really still in this utter disarray from my office dismantling this summer?, theme, when—and the special snacks for school and a present and Christmas—crafts and shopping and decorating, my heart is bending in around itself, protecting, pushing back the busyness and all the doing.

I seem to alternate between okay years and not okay years. This feels like one of the latter. Where last year I barged into December ready for battle, ready to reclaim the month or at least some part of it, this year I'm worn out already. I can't seem to get any traction going into the month.

I've done my usual clearing of the slates as much as possible: no appointments, no work from difficult clients, no tight deadlines. I'm trying to get myself organized to wrap up the gift part early, get that out of the way. My family is helpful. They realize that this month still wipes me out. They offer to pick up or order gifts that will bear my name, and sometimes I take them up on it. I hand off the toughest of my nieces and nephews to Brian.

I look at my to do list and think about what I really have to do and which things I really want to do. I try to cross out the rest. But there is an almost five-year-old who wants a real birthday party this year. The kind with games and cake. If it were not this month, if life had not taken that wrong turn a year before she was born, I would be all over it. We'd have fun picking a theme, figuring out games and activities and decorations, decorating a cake. I don't want to throw a birthday party in the middle of December, but even more I don't want to let my daughter down. I have grappled with this since before she was born, since I stared down that first December without Henry and waited for her to arrive.

When I ask who she wants at her party, she starts listing her cousins. Maybe I'm trying to tackle this all wrong. I keep trying to get out of the way and hear what it is that's important to her, try to strip down my own expectations of what birthday means. I try to create simple traditions, ones I can pull off, ones that can grow with us. I love the idea of a quiet tradition that fits our family, but I remember birthday parties—the DIY, homemade affairs that I grew up with, the kind my sisters give their kids. I toy frequently with the idea of a summer half-birthday party as the time to do all the games and activities. I don't know how to sell her on that though, so I keep coming back trying to figure out what it is in her head.

I am looking forward to

• putting up the tree with the girls
• the wrapped up books advent calendar that I'm planning for them
• sleeping with Kathleen on her birthday, because she is so excited about it
• the tea party to honor Brian's mom, using the tiny cups she gave the girls
• seeing their faces Christmas morning

I'm dreading

• Christmas Eve and the hour and half mass and the scramble to get to Brian's brother's house
• getting bogged down in things that feel like they need to get done
• that day just past the middle of the month, the one between the birthdays and Christmas, the one that is dark no matter the weather

Tonight, Elizabeth picked We're Going on a Bear Hunt for her story. December is almost upon us. We can't go over it. We can't go under it. We have to go through it. 
Stumble trip   Stumble trip   Stumble trip
 

This week

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.

Here and healthy

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.

Dates and decisions

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.

In Good Times and Bad

Yesterday, Brian and I celebrated our fourth anniversary.

It was a quiet, brief celebration at the end of a busy day for both of us. In years past, we might have cooked dinner together, but this year I shopped and marinated and chopped. He grilled and steamed and cleaned up the kitchen. We finally sat down together to surf and turf and local potatoes and broccoli from our own garden. Then we both went back to work. Just before bed, we reconvened for warm apple crisp with vanilla ice cream and a peach lambic toast. The lambic is our special drink, the one he brought to a mountain top when he proposed, the one the restaurant brought in special for us to toast with at our wedding.

Four years. Somebody asked Brian how long we had been married, and he said "Four years, but it feels like longer." Living a lifetime in seven months will do that.
***
Shortly before Henry died, when I think I knew but could not quite yet admit that I knew Henry was going to die, the priest from Brian's parents' church came to pray with us. He did not ask for Henry to be saved, for him to live, not that I remember. He did ask that Brian and I lean toward each other and not away from each other.
***
When you have a child born with a disability or health issue, people like to cite divorce statistics. I'm not sure why. Should we be on guard? Should we just give in to the inevitable? What they didn't realize was that statistics no longer meant a thing. We got on the wrong side of the odds. There was no comfort in them, but also no fear.
***
For our first anniversary, we had dinner at the restaurant where we had our wedding reception. Brian even made a reservation for the specific table where we sat on that special day. No lambic toast that night, though. I was already pregnant with Henry.

For our second anniversary, we had Thai food in a crowded restaurant in Boston, within walking distance from the hospital. We could not have imagined on that rainy, rainy day in October 2005, that we would be living on opposite sides of the state on our second anniversary—me in Boston with Henry, him at home in Western Mass. But there we were. Brian brought a lambic with him, but I think I wasn't in the mood to drink it.

For our third anniversary, we were 10 months out from Henry's death, still raw and tired and sad.  I was pregnant with Kathleen and had just been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. No bread, no dessert, no lambic.

And now, here we are. Almost two years since Henry died. Almost a year since Kathleen was born. Four full years since we said "I do."
***
We are still here. Still together. Still working on the in good times and bad. Still that other side of the statistic. Still loving, still happy despite the deep sorrow.