Things I've Learned Along the Way

It's Wednesday, it's snowy and cold, and I'm feeling a little random...so here are some random thoughts I've learned from my life so far:

1) Never eat half a package of cherry JuJu hearts in one day. Don't ask why, just trust me.
2) There's nothing like a "queeze ug" (squeeze hug) from a 2.5-year-old to make anything better.
3) No matter how many times you tell a 7-year-old to hurry up because we're going to be late for school, it is physically impossible to make her go any faster.
4) 23 degrees Fahrenheit (with snow) is not that cold when two days ago the wind chill was about 10 below zero. It's downright balmy.
5) Even though the school newsletter clearly states each week that the deadline for submissions is 3:15p.m. on Tuesday, there will be 4 new submissions waiting in your inbox Wednesday morning and one on Thursday morning, the day it goes to print.
6) Before children, you could never imagine going out to an informal meeting in the same shirt your child has just peed on. After children, it's no big deal.
7) Brownies make a bad day good. Brownies and ice cream make a bad day downright fantastic.
8) Eating half a pan of brownies, however, will make you feel good for only 5 minutes and fat and sick for an entire day.
9) Having children guarantees that you will be late for every appointment, drop-off, and function 98.3% of the time.
10) I don't actually need more time in my day, I need less to do.

What random things has your life taught you so far?

Three Days at Home

Ok, so the title of my post reminds me of the song by Sheryl Crow with the lines "Three Days in Rome." Ah, if only.

Today is my third day trapped in my house with my children while my husband is out and about interacting with other adults. Charlotte has been home from school for the past two days; took her to the doctor yesterday and she has strep throat. So today she is still contagious and not going to her class at Little Gym, and I've cancelled the babysitter who was to stay with James while I had an hour or two to myself. No need to spread the germs around. My husband is out all day at a workshop, and I am going a little stir crazy. Not to mention the massive headache as yet untouched by the aspirin I took an hour ago.

Bleh. I'm complaining. Anyway...next Friday James starts preschool. We were supposed to go yesterday for him to meet teachers and fellow students and just get used to the place, but we went to the doctor instead. So we will try again on Monday, and then on Friday - 4 hours of preschool. FOUR WHOLE HOURS!! I alternately can't wait and then get all tearful and sad because, come on, my BABY. Is going to preschool. And how did this happen? If I ask him if he's a baby, James says, "No baby." He is so adorable right now and I wish I could keep him right here for a few years, in this in-betweenness of baby and preschooler, when he adores his mama and is still willing to hug and kiss me and be seen in public with me. My girl turned 7 a few weeks ago and is, like, getting, y'know, embarrassed by me sometimes. (Gawd! I'm the mother of a 7 year old!)

My James is calling for me to play Legos with him, so I will go build a monument to boys. How can I ignore a sweet voice saying, "Mommy pway!"

A Tiny Part of Me

Yep, I'm still here. I haven't known what to say this month; I've been tired, cranky, sick of the very cold semi-Midwestern weather. And oh, the snow. I'm really not a cold-weather person. January is just not my month, for a number of reasons, the most obvious being Ben. The weather does, however, mirror a lot of what I felt (and feel) about that loss. I remember in the months after he died, when spring began to push its way through the snow and cold, and I wanted so desperately to stay in January because that bleakness, the gray skies, the cold - the deadness, really - were what I felt inside. So in some ways January suits me, gives me a chance to mope and mourn. A tiny part of me is forever stuck in January; I envision a little corner of my heart figuratively chipped off and left behind in that January, or perhaps left in the hospital and taken off to be cremated with Ben.

I find myself walking around, telling myself, "We're going to have a baby." (I have never told anyone that, not even my husband.) I told myself that through all of my pregnancies, I suppose to try to make myself believe it, and I can't seem to stop saying it. I am most definitely NOT pregnant; though it could certainly happen unexpectedly, it isn't anything we're planning. We're done. But I'm having a really hard time coming to terms (no pun intended) with that. My dreams for a family with three children came true, but not in the way I planned. And I am rapidly approaching the age where the statistics get really bad for safe and healthy pregnancies. In short, I'm getting old, and no more babies means I really have to face that. Perhaps that sounds shallow, I don't know. I can't believe it's over for me; I can't believe those babymaking years went so fast; I can't believe one of my children died.

Maybe I would be more comfortable with the end of my babymaking years if Ben had lived and we'd gone on to have child number three. I'm incomplete this way. Subconsciously, still being able to have babies ties me to Ben; the passage of time for me takes me further away from the time I had with him, and reminds me that I get the time he did not have. But I can't keep myself in those moments I had with him (and believe me, I've tried to not move on). I guess I'm still working on acceptance, of a lot of different things.

*Thanks, Monica, for checking in.*

A Loss, but Not My Own

My cyber-friend Christy had a miscarriage on January 4th. She is the mom of Elias, who was a micro-preemie, barely 2 pounds at birth, who is now a beautiful 3-year-old with numerous physical challenges. Christy has two uteri (yes, plural of "uterus" - sounds weird, doesn't it?) and knew this pregnancy would probably require bed rest and many precautions. But she didn't lose the baby because of any physical or medical problems, she lost the baby just because miscarriage happens to about every 1 in 4 women, just one of those statistical anomalies that happen.

Which doesn't make the loss a damn bit easier.

Fast Away

For Ben - Happy Birthday, wherever you may be.

Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

-D.H. Lawrence

After Great Pain

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round--
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone--

This is the Hour of Lead--
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow--
First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go--

- Emily Dickinson

Four

Four years ago today, Ben died.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

I think maybe I have lost the magic of Christmas. I imagine I lost it some years ago, probably after Ben died, but I never really thought about it before this year. I didn't want to lose that magical feeling, the belief I used to have as a child, looking out my bedroom window at the vast dark sky on Christmas night, feeling that anything was possible. Peace on Earth, Joy to the World, Santa Claus and flying reindeer. Christmas was the most magical time of the year - I even saw Rudolph flying past my bedroom window when I was 3. I believed.

I hope Christmas is magical for my children, but I don't suppose I'll know that until they're grown. I hope my loss of magic doesn't rub off onto them; so far, I think it hasn't. Maybe it can't rub off when you're a kid - at least when you're a kid of parents who love you and each other, and can afford to buy you gifts and make it a special day.

So I sat in church last night and thought about the ghosts of my Christmases past. We were attending the church I grew up in, which is 300-some miles from where I now live. I remembered Elizabeth, who died 2.5 years ago, who was a wonderful presence in my teenage years and through my mid-30s. I remembered Christmas Eves when she was there, with her young children. I remembered her oldest son lighting candles as a 10 or 12-year-old on Christmas Eve, and the worry that maybe he wasn't quite up to the job. I remember her smart, beautiful daughter singing. And I remember how Elizabeth had this aura of love and life about her. There are some people you meet in this world who are exceptional beings, who radiate something - the love of God? Peace? I don't know. Whatever it was, Elizabeth had it, and I adored her for it. I wish I had it too.

Her husband remarried this summer, and it breaks my heart.

When I was in elementary school I belonged to the church choir, and we had a wonderful director whom we all adored. He wrote musicals and songs for us, amazing things, and we were really good. I even remember bits of songs he wrote for us. He made us believe we could do anything. I remember singing on Christmas Eve those songs he wrote for us, how much joy there seemed to be in the congregation as we sang.

He was arrested last year on three counts of gross sexual imposition and corruption of a minor.

And then there is my third ghost of Christmas past - Ben. I had one Christmas present with him, and a lifetime of Christmases past.

I miss you, my little love. Merry Christmas.

And to all of you who are reading, I hope you find the magic. I hope you still believe.

Merry Christmas.