Every year, 26,000 babies are stillborn in America. In 2003, one of them was my son.
Well, we finally did it. After much begging by the girl, we broke down and went looking for a kitten. And ended up with...two.
Lily and Rosie have been hiding under our kitchen table for 3.5 hours now. They're 9 weeks old and as cute as can be. The kids are over the moon with excitement, and, in all honesty, my hubby and I are kind of excited too.
Hosted my daughter's 8th birthday party this morning, and it was fun until she melted down completely at the end and turned into a spoiled brat. I'm feeling really down now, upset with her, sad, disappointed, feeling like I've raised a brat. Ok, so I'm feeling sorry for myself, I know, but, to change the subject entirely: A friend of mine on Facebook put up this poem by Langston Hughes the other day, post-inauguration, and it is too wonderful not to share. Hope you enjoy it.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll sit at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.
-- Langston Hughes
Sitting with my daughter this morning, watching the Macy's Parade, on comes a float called something like "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends."
Charlotte turns to me and says, quite softly, "I have an imaginary friend."
"You do?" I said. "I didn't know that."
"Ben is my imaginary friend. Our baby that died."
"Is he your imaginary friend, too, Mommy?"
"Well, yes, honey, I suppose he is."
I have two living children, one from "before" and one from "after." Charlotte was 16 days away from her 3rd birthday when Ben died; James was born 20 months after Ben's death. I remember writing in my journal at some point after losing Ben, that I wonder if Charlotte will grow up to think of us as always being sad. Will she always feel she missed out on getting to know us as happy people? Will there always be a sense of something missing - whether that be her brother or something in her parents? I'm afraid she'll feel that we were never wholly there for her after Ben died. I realize she won't have much, if any, memory of life before Ben - I guess that's what worries me. We were different people then, different parents. I'm afraid her life will be forever tainted by Ben's death, and she'll feel cheated out of us because of it.
Maybe I'm not making any sense, but I wonder what she'll think and feel in 10 and 20 years, about what might have been, what was, what wasn't. Part of me died the day I lost Ben, and that part of me can never return. I hope she can forgive me if I'm not the mother I could have been.
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