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. 

First Day of School

Kathleen and I stepped outside to say hello to our neighbor M. before she got on the bus for the first day of school. She's in second grade now and will be picked up at the other end of our short block, so we saw her and wished her a good day but didn't actually see her off as we did so many times last spring. She's an old pro at the bus now, having ridden it for two years.

But two years ago, I watched her get on that bus for the first time. Henry and I sat out on the porch on a cool September morning to wave goodbye. She was so tentative. I watched and Henry watched and her parents watched and her brother waited to see if she would actually go. Then, an older girl she knew met her at the door and M. got on and sat with her and the bus left. A few days later, M. told me that she would hold Henry's hand on his first day of school and sit with him so he wouldn't be scared to get on the bus. I smiled seeing the two of them five years in the future, my boy with his bright smile, his bigger friend taking care of him.

A few days later, Henry ended up in the hospital. Two days after that we were moved back to Boston, and we didn't know what was wrong. During that long hospitalization, I kept telling Henry about home. I'd sing "Old McDonald" to him and tell him about all the animals he would see at the farm down the road. I told him how M. would teach him to feed a lamb a bottle. I talked about playing with the kids, working in our garden. And I told him about M. and the school bus. And I kept believing she would one day help him onto that bus.

Last September, it was me with empty arms and a big belly watching her get on that bus. The bus stop was on the side of the house rather than out front. She was more confident. And all I could think was that she would never hold Henry's hand as he got on that bus.

Today was a gorgeous, cool, dry, perfect fall morning. The sky was blue and clear. The day screamed September. I reveled in that and I delighted in Kathleen's laugh as we stood by the back door. Just a little piece of me was out front on the porch steps with a different baby in my arms, a littler baby, one who couldn't hold up his own head yet, but one who had just as much possibility ahead of him as the girl I held today.

On the first day of school, I can't help but think back to a lovely morning with my baby boy, a morning when my fear for him was gone, when I was just a regular mama who could expect that in five years she'd wave goodbye and wonder how her baby got so big.

In Bloom

Last year, for Henry's birthday, we planted a peach tree.

I had decided, when I thought Henry would actually see his first birthday, that that's what Brian and I would give him as a birthday present. He didn't need toys or clothes, and the tree would grow and hopefully bear fruit that we could all enjoy. We already had one peach tree, one that had been given to us as a wedding present, and I thought we'd start a little family orchard.

After Henry died, I decided I'd still plant his tree. It was something I could do for his birthday, something we'd have for him.

Maybe it will bear fruit.

Maybe the squirrels won't
plunder it.

Maybe Brian and I will taste sweetness from a tree planted in bitterness.

I noticed the other day that Henry's peach tree is in bloom. How beautiful and bright and hopeful on this gray, rainy day.

***
Later, the sky remains gloomy gray, but somewhere the sun keeps peeping out, so it is bright off and on. And as I sat on the porch with Kathleen, a cardinal flew onto my neighbor's porch, sat for us briefly and then flew away. My Henry smile for the day.

Glow in the Woods' 7 x 7

Glow in the Woods recently posted it's 7x7 questions for January. Here are my responses:

1 | Welcome to 2009. What have you left behind in the year just past? What do you hope to find in the year to come?
I left behind year one of grieving, the firsts of everything without Henry.

I think I’ve left behind a lot of fear. I hope to find more moments of peace and more moments of good memories rather than the fearful, traumatic ones that seemed to have surfaced so much last year.

2 | We've just come through the season in which our culture touts cheer and peace and family togetherness rather relentlessly. How did your child's death impact your experience of the "holiday" season, personally or culturally?
I definitely felt the hole in our family. This year we marked two missing faces: Henry’s and my sister-in-law’s. This Christmas marks our second without Henry, though it felt like the first. Last year he had been gone only eigh days, buried only three. But this year also marks a different kind of first: our first with our daughter, born two weeks before the holiday.

3 | If you celebrate in any way through December, are there ways you include or acknowledge your lost baby/babies?
This year I could not deal with a proper Christmas tree, but I decorated a small, table top tree with hearts and cardinals (my symbols for my son) and a tiny angel, and I lit candles for him throughout the season. I made an ornament with his name on it, to match the one I made for my daughter, to be hung when we do have a tree again. I brought a heart-shaped wreath to his grave on Christmas day. It felt insufficient, but I needed to do something, to mark his place somehow.

4 | Through the year are there any holidays, seasons, or parts of what were once cherished rituals that have changed for you because of your child's death?
I wonder if I will ever find December to be a season of peace and joy again. It seems like a month that will always be complicated, marked as it is by both birth and death. Birthday, death anniversary, Christmas . . . right now it just feels exhausting.

5 | Do you do anything to remember your baby/babies' birth and/or death day? Or will you?
We planted two trees for Henry’s first birthday: one a hawthorn that family gave us planted on his actual birthday and one a peach tree that I had planned to be his first birthday gift from us. We marked the day with our families, eating cake and bring balloons to the cemetery, one for each of the cousins and one released for Henry. I’m not sure how we will handle it in the future.

6 | Is there anything about the winter season (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere right now) that lifts your spirits? Is there anything that especially brings them down?
I like the coziness and camaraderie of storms. I love the beauty of fresh snow. The flash of a red cardinal in a bleak landscape reminds me of Henry’s smile. But early darkness and being in all the time sometimes lead to a sense of isolation.

7 | During your hardest times, how have you found your way forward?
I just keep taking it day by day, step by step, and remind myself that grief is not a straight, linear path.