Internet Grapes

joy in my heart

Originally posted elsewhere back in April of this year, but I find myself re-reading this and trying to take it to heart especially now, in the holiday season.

Dear me,

Not very often, but sometimes, as you are busy remembering what's gone wrong before or predicting what will go wrong later, it is all you can do to keep going, but you must. Do not stop. Continue: to put one foot in front of the other, to give your loved ones hugs, to help your children get dressed in the morning, to do the grocery shopping and the laundry, to think about what you want to do with your life (to believe that you have a choice about that), to pick up your camera and leave the house, to clean the toilet and the litter box, to stay in contact with your friends, to go to choir rehearsal and sing your heart out.  Keep going through the motions, and fake it until you make it, whether that only takes the next five minutes, or the next hour, or the next day, or the next week. There will come a point when real pleasure and ease return. There will come a day when you feel real joy.

Let this stand as a reminder to yourself. The real pleasure and ease and joy: they will always return. 

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A week or so ago, I had an argument with Geoff (or rather, the argument had us). I was talking to him, thinking that he was listening even though he was sitting in front of his computer, because he was making occasional reassuring type listening noises ("uh huh" and "yeah" and "oh"). There came a point when I discovered that he wasn't listening at all, had possibly not heard a word I'd said, and I felt so stupid for talking to myself, for not being able to tell whether he was actually listening or not. I stopped mid-sentence and walked out of the room and upstairs to bed, but then I wasn't sleepy, and so what followed was one of those fights that's about nothing and everything at the same time. Unlike most of those types of arguments we've had, though, this one ended with both of us calm and comforting each other. Geoff admitted he was worried about the music at church for Easter Sunday, and had been trying to finish with a piece he was working on when I was talking to him. I sympathized and comforted and told him he's a brilliantly talented musician (because he is).  It was better, but still exhausting. Sometimes it still feels like we have a lot to worry about.

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These days, a specter of myself and (of what I see as) my failed career haunts me, telling me that I've brought shame upon myself and my family (all that debt; all that effort; all of this selfishness, wanting to leave that behind). Most of the time, I see right through her. I wave her away, I tell her she has no power over me, I tell her that a life pursuing what I love doing is better and more important than following through on something I don't love just because I started it. (And I remind her that I tried so hard, so unsuccessfully, for so long, to get a legal job despite the fact that I didn't love it.) I tell her she's a jerk and a liar, and sometimes I think that she is really, truly gone. But she is preternaturally patient, and so far she always returns. She waits as long as she needs to wait, until my guard is down, until I am vulnerable, until she can hurt me again. I am determined to outlast her. (I am taking an online class with Brene Brown & Jen Lemen called ordinary courage, on love, shame resilience, and worthiness. I hope for further healing.) 

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Our trip to London, which I will write about in more detail soon, was wonderful. I love London, and I loved being there. The trees were blooming, the weather was pretty much perfect, and the company (my mom and Katie) was excellent. There was this thing, though, that at first I had some trouble identifying. For awhile, in London, I felt one step removed from myself, and wondered whether I might be losing touch with my emotions - whether I had lost the ability to just feel, without worry, without doubt, without a sense of level-headed temperance. No matter how much beauty surrounded us or how intrigued I was by anything, a part of me stayed detached. So I did have a marvelous time. I did love the experience. But because of the circumstances (most notably, my beautiful and sweet but devilish seven year old companion), I was mostly unable to truly relax or to be completely wide open to what I was experiencing. This is ok, I think, but I am glad I have recognized it and named it. It is not a flaw in me.

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A week and a half ago our cat Lucy (the mother of the eight kittens who were born at the end of April 2010) was hit by a car in the middle of a street a few blocks away from our house. She was killed. Geoff and Katie and I have shed many tears over her. We buried her body in the back yard, between the fence and the back alley, and marked the spot with daffodils that we picked from our back yard. Lucy's life, and the birth of those eight kittens, was a joyful blessing to our family at a time when we desperately needed it. Her fur was the softest. Her eyes seemed the wisest. When we'd drive up to our house after having been gone for awhile, if Lucy was outside she'd be on the front porch waiting for us, and she'd stand up and pad over to greet us as we got out of the car. When I sat on the couch and watched tv before going to bed, she'd come over and lay on my legs, purring. I miss her. It's been almost two weeks, and Katie cries about her death almost every night, and apologizes when she cries. "You don't have to be sorry," I say, and most nights, I will stay there in Katie's bed next to her, petting her hair or rubbing her back or just letting one part of my body touch hers so that as she drifts off to sleep she will know that I'm there with her. Lucy is gone, but I'm not. I'm right here, sweetheart. I'm right here.

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A few nights ago, all of us were tired and grumpy, and Annabel kept saying "uh uh" in her whiniest voice, incessantly, over and over (as she does every day lately; a few days ago she said it so many times, and refused to even explain what she was saying it about, that I lost my temper and yelled at her, which made her cry so hard there was no way I could feel anything but regret and shame), and after Annabel was in bed, Katie was whining about everything, too. As Geoff and Katie and I stood in Katie's room, getting ready to tuck her in, I said something about the drawing Katie had done on her whiteboard, and she misinterpreted what I'd said as a criticism, which in turn hurt my feelings. As we stood there, frustrated and full of hurt feelings and disconnect, Geoff reached out to pull us both closer, but instead of feeling comforted, I suddenly had a flash of insight into the future between Katie and me. I was suddenly sure that when she is older, we will not get along, but instead the air will be charged between us, full of miscommunication and missed chances to reach out to each other. (I thought of Angela and her mother on My So Called Life, actually.) I cried about it a little bit then, and I cried about it later, about how much I will miss Katie when we aren't able to get along with each other anymore. Geoff says it won't be like that, but he doesn't know. Of course, I don't, either. But the possibility of losing Katie's friendly, easy companionship during her adolescent years has never felt real to me before, and now it does. 

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Saturday morning, there was coffee and playing in the backyard. We rehearsed beautiful music for the next day's Easter service, and we visited with friends from out of town. Later, the ingredients for lemon curd (for lemon cake, for Easter dessert) simmered on the stovetop, and the smell of lemons wafted all through the house. The very first spring tulip opened that afternoon in our backyard. Annabel & Geoff were napping. Katie & a friend were upstairs laughing. There was sunshine everywhere, after so many days of rain. And this is what sprang into my head: Joy in my heart today.

Despite everything! Despite everything I can think of that is sad and heartbreaking, still. Joy crashes into me, overwhelming me, drowning me, and I'm so grateful and amazed. 

I posted about this joy on Facebook, and then went back to making the lemon cake, and I started having second thoughts about posting about joy right there out in the open, for those 500 plus friends (or "friends," in some cases) to see. Should I delete it? Should I have written it? Am I ridiculous to think that my joy matters to anyone else, or is even real? 

I knew the right response to these doubts, as clearly as if I heard a voice telling me: it would be a waste, a great sadness, a tragedy, a huge loss, to ignore this joy. These moments of overwhelming joy don't come along that often for any of us, or at least not for me. If I had one of these moments a week, I'd say I was living a pretty joyful life. How wrong it would be to let any one of those moments pass by without recognizing that it is here!

Katie and her friend had gone to her friend's backyard to play, and while they were gone, I started working on the cake batter. They burst back into the house when I was almost done, just mixing in the last ingredient, and Katie asked if she could play in Chyanne's house, because Chyanne had Just Dance, and they could play it. I said yes, she could, and then she asked if she could have dinner at Chyanne's house, and I said yes to that, too, as long as she was invited, as long as it was ok with Chyanne's mom.  Chyanne said it was, and so I said it was ok with me, and the two of them shrieked with their own joy, bursting into huge grins, running from the house. I followed them to the door and watched them leaping down the sidewalk happily. "Bye!" I called, feeling bemused, and Katie called back a goodbye. "I love you," I said. She kept running alongside her friend, didn't turn her head, didn't look at me. But I heard her call, loud enough for me to hear, "I love you, too," and I was both comforted and devastated by the easy casualness of her declaration of love, by the way she is growing up and forming her own friendships that have nothing to do with me. Amazingly, joy continued to run through me as I watched them running down the block. I cried a little bit more, and then I went back into the house. A huge shaft of sunlight streamed through the dining room window and lit up the dust motes and pet hairs. Only the sunlight mattered to me.

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Dear you,

You don't remember exactly when it was, the last time you felt this kind of joy. You don't know when it will come again; do we ever? When it comes - when it is here - you owe to it yourself to grab hold of it, to hold it close to you, to let it overwhelm every other emotion that's going on inside you. (I am holding this joy. I am holding it tight.)

When joy comes, let it take your breath away. Let it drive its lightning bolt through the core of your heart (at least as deep as the moments of pain and despair have traveled). Let it make a mark on you that will last for hours, for days, or for weeks. If you are lucky, you will still be reeling in its wake, rocked slightly off balance, the next time that it finds you. If you are lucky, the joy of this moment will be your lifejacket in future times of grief, when the heaviness of loss threatens to drag you so far down that you will be lost forever.

If you are lucky, your joy will shock you, and make you cry real tears, and you will stand there open-mouthed for a second, and then you will laugh. 

You may be tempted to feel embarrassed about feeling your joy so deeply, especially on a day that looks so ordinary on the outside, but ignore that; this is not silly. This is not shameful. This is what life is all about. (Isn't it?  And if not this, then what?)

this is the one for my Belly bee baby

She talks up a storm, and you can't grin at her without getting a smile back.

She's very bossy ("stand up! or I won't sing to you!"), is constantly singing or talking, and will repeat the same things over and over. (Every time she puts on her shoes, she'll say, "Is this the wrong feet?" I'm not sure what the answer is supposed to be, because when I say no, it's the right feet, she'll often switch them, but she also usually switches them if I say yes, it's the wrong feet.)

She lets us (and we do) call her Belly and Bel all the time, but if someone refers to her that way, she'll protest, "No, my name is Annabel."

She has a terrific, always-at-the-ready sense of humor, but is intensely serious if she's focused on something.

She loves going to school, which until recently she called "sook" and then "soolk," because it took her until a few months ago to conquer any dipthongs involving s's (i.e., she used a "foon" to eat her cereal, worried about whether food would be "ficy," and wanted me to push her on the "fing").

When I first started writing this (back in the summer, months ago now), I wrote that I didn't know how we would get her weaned from her beloved binky. I wrote:

Last night she had one in her mouth while she was taking a bath, and later it disappeared. I couldn't find it right away, so I pulled a second one off of our bedroom dresser and gave it to her. Then we brushed her teeth, and suddenly she was binky-less again, so I told her - frustrated - that was it, that was all the binkies, she had had two of them and now there were none, so she was just going to have to sleep without a binky. She sighed sadly, whined that no, she wanted a binky, and when I said that it was too bad, but she was going to have to do without, she started to sob in earnest. I asked her why she was so upset, and she said, "I'm crying because I'm sad because I want to sleep with my binky!"

I have talked to lots of people about how they got rid of the pacifier, and they include: 1) simply saying that they are now too old for a pacifier, and that is that; 2) purposely breaking the pacifier (usually by cutting the end off so it can't really be sucked, at least not enjoyably, I guess) and then explaining that it was broken - this seems to often culminate in throwing the broken binky in the trash; 3) creating an elaborate scenario about sending the old pacifiers to needy babies in other parts of the world and/or about having them taken by some sort of Binky Fairy who leaves a present in exchange. No one has so far admitted that they or their child has had a difficult time giving it up, so maybe it won't be as hard as I think it will. But Annabel is committed to what she wants, has a memory like an elephant, and is very matter-of-fact about what she knows. For instance, I am 100% confident that if her binky is broken, she will simply instruct us to go to the store to buy a replacement, and that will most definitely not be the end of that.

But now I think that one of these days she will just decide to give it up when she is good and ready. Shortly after writing the above, I told her that we had a new rule: the binky was only allowed in the car and in the crib - nowhere else. I expected her to protest, if not initially, then later, but nope. Surprisingly, she has never once challenged that rule, not until last week, when she suddenly announced, "I'm a mom now, so I don't need my binky in the car. Just for sleeping." (She's a mom to her doll Sally, which is actually Katie's doll, and on a regular basis Katie will say, "Ok, Annabel, tomorrow I am going to play with Sally, ok?" And Annabel will say ok, but then when tomorrow comes, she refuses to hand it over, and since Katie gives in, she gets it for another day.) She hasn't asked for a binky for anything but sleeping since then.

Katie is so often my reflection, for good and for ill. She looks a lot like me. She goes through somewhat wild and obvious roller coasters of emotions, all worn on her sleeve - so much like me. She is also eager to please, and would try almost anything if she thought it would make you laugh or would make you like her. She wants everyone in the world to like her, and she is deeply hurt if she knows that someone doesn't. Her speech is rarely matter-of-fact, but is more likely full of hyperbole - again, for good or for bad.  She'll swing from "you never want to play that with me" to "you're the best mommy in the world" within seconds. Katie is so much like me that usually, even when I don't like how she's acting (especially when I don't like how she's acting?), I understand it. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm more patient with her, though; often I think I'm less patient with those flaws of her that I'm already so tired of and frustrated with in myself.

If Katie is my treasured not-exactly-doppelganger, Annabel is my cherished mystery, so often surprising and delighting me.  She is different. She is straightforward, and she will not be manipulated into doing something just because we'd like her to; she'll do it if she wants to, thank you, and not otherwise. I am not too worried about Annabel succumbing to peer pressure when she is older (Katie, on the other hand, I can easily imagine going along with something that she doesn't really want to do if she thinks it might make people like her). Annabel is even keel, especially for a 3 year old: when she's at her most upset, she'll scream and fuss and protest loudly, but two minutes later, she'll be calm again. Well, that didn't work, I imagine her thinking. Might as well move on to the next thing.

She will hardly ever be persuaded to agree with you, though, if she started out disagreeing, or if you believe something that directly oppposes what she wants to do. My mom was here for Thanksgiving, and at one point she went into the bathroom and started to shut the door. "I don't want you to shut the door," Annabel said. "I want to see you when you're in there." My mom told her that she'd rather have privacy and be alone in the bathroom, but Annabel insisted on coming in, and my mom relented. "Ok, but at least come in and shut the door," she told Annabel. Annabel went in the (tiny) bathroom and shut the door behind her, and I heard my mom say, "I like to have privacy when I'm in the bathroom." I could picture Annabel nodding in a placating way as she said, "Yeah, sometimes you do." (I laughed out loud when I heard that.)

She can be very sweet when she feels like it, and she has a very definite sense of her own strength and value. The other day she told me that when I am sad and she talks to me that it makes me feel better, and today when I was whining & actually crying in frustration over a stupid computer issue I was unable to solve, she came over to me, said "I love you," and gave me a hug.

Up until she was 10 months old, she was a pretty terrible sleeper, waking up more than 4 or 5 times a night until well after she was 8 months old, and still waking up at least once every night (and often 2 or 3) until April 2009, at which point I was diagnosed with pneumonia and was prescribed antibiotics that were not breastfeeding friendly. After 2 or 3 nights of Geoff being the one who went to her in the night, she apparently decided that it was simply not worth waking up if she was only going to be offered a bottle, and she started sleeping through the night. She has never stopped, and in fact her sleeping habits are still somewhat miraculous to us. Unless she's sick, she sleeps all night, every night, except for an occasional wake up from a nightmare, between 9 and 10 pm. If she stays up late or misses a nap? She makes up for it by sleeping in.  (This is the opposite of Katie, who routinely gets up before 6 if she's been up past 9 or so the night before.)

Have I written this before? About how before Annabel was born, there was a part of me that was afraid that I would not be able to love her as much as I loved Katie, but that instead, from the day she was born, I loved her just as much, just like that (which in a way seemed unfair, since Katie had already had more than 4 years to work her way into my heart; but I know that love doesn't always - ever? - work in a logical, incremental, rational way), just the way people had said it would be: I loved her as much as Katie (inasmuch as my love for either of them can really be measured), but in a different way.

I have not written nearly as much about Annabel as I have about Katie, and I have felt guilty about that (how motherly of me), as if by not documenting her amazingness, her quirks, her whimsy, her incredible vocabulary & her extreme gregariousness, that I am appreciating her less.  And honestly, in some ways, I think that might even be true: I look back now and read old posts about Katie and am reminded of things about earlier phases of her life that I would have forgotten about if I hadn't written it out. I am sorry that I haven't written more about the specifics of life with baby Annabel, but if Annabel ever reads this, I hope she knows that my not writing about her had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me (and a lot to do with how difficult the past few years have been, which have made it hard for me to write the way I'd like to have written).

If you read this someday, Annabel, I want you to know that I love you now, have loved you since before you were born, and will love you always and forever. I love the way you often greet me in the morning with an excited, "The bedbugs didn't bite me!" and I love how when I knock on your bedroom door, you call out, "Are you home?" I love the way you run so fast & so hard, so often, on your own or alongside your sister or cousins on their scooters or bikes. I love how determined you are and how difficult it is to dissuade you from doing something you've decided you want to do (even though your determination sometimes makes some days more difficult). I love the weight of your little body on mine when I rock you in your bedroom rocker at bedtime, and already I miss that tired, relaxed weight, since most of the time these days you are still wide awake enough at bedtime that instead you sit up away from me. I love how much you love school, how much you love drawing and cutting and pasting and folding, and how you can count to 16 in Spanish (and how today when we watched The Muppets you wouldn't stop repeating "Hola!" after one of the muppets said it). I love that your artwork is, first and foremost, for you: so often you bring home little personal art projects that consist of a piece of paper on which you've drawn, colored, or painted, that have then been folded a few times, glued together, folded more, then taped together on the outside. You won't let me open them up; you insist that the taped-up, folded-up version of the paper is exactly how it's supposed to be seen. I love how you go crazy for particular foods - the other day you ate 6 or 7 clementines in a row; some days you will eat 4 bananas one after the other, and you will never turn down a mashed, salted avocado with a few tortilla chips.

Oh, Annabel, I just love you, almost everything about you, so much. It is my hope and my belief that, regardless of what I write now or have previously written here, that you will already know how I feel about you simply from the history of our relationship with each other, but just in case there is any doubt: you are my sunshine, my entertainer, my stubborn & beloved little Belly girl, who impresses and delights me every single day.

Today you are 3 and a half years old exactly, and already I am so proud of the person you are. I feel joyous and blessed that I get to be around to continue to help you grow and mature as best I can, and to see how you change and develop. I am so very, very thankful that you're my daughter.

adjusting the lens

Even before we made an offer on our condo, we knew it was not our ideal home.  We wanted 3 bedrooms - one for guests, since neither of us have family in town.  We wanted 2 bathrooms, or at least two toilets.  We would have really liked air conditioning.  We would have liked a spacious tub (with jets, even!), a new sink and toilet, a bathroom floor that was tile instead of vinyl.  We would have liked pretty granite countertops, and wood cabinets, and new appliances.  We would have liked an open floor plan, where a person cooking in the kitchen could have carried on a conversation with a person sitting in the living room or dining room.  And oh, we really would have loved our own washer & dryer. 

If our home didn't realize all of our dreams, it did satisfy all of our requirements, plus some.  There was parking (and not just a designated space, but a spot in a garage).  There were two bedrooms plus an office.  There was a living room and a separate dining room.  There was storage space (we have half of the space in the basement).  There was a shared (and free) washer and dryer in the basement.  There was a small balcony on the front that appealed to our (or at least to my) romantic sensibilities.  Pets (both dogs and cats) were allowed, and there was a fenced in backyard where we could let out the dog.  We loved the hardwood floors, and found the crown molding (in a few rooms) and glass blocked window (in the entryway staircase) charming.  And we could (barely) afford it.

In the first year or two after we moved in, I painted every room (floral wood, silver sage, tuscan beige, Del Sol, magic spell, thyme green, and a gentle pink color for Katie's room that I don't remember the name of).  We fantasized that one day, when the value of the place had increased, we would refinance the place and redo the kitchen and the bathroom.  We would put new cabinets in the kitchen (the current ones, our inspector had pointed out, were never properly attached to the wall) and install a new countertop (we could not, our inspector warned us, install a granite countertop without also getting new cabinets, since the current cabinets were so weak that the countertop would likely collapse them).  We would put new tile in the bathroom, both on the wall (our inspector said that the tile, too, had never been properly laid) and on the floors.  We would refinish or replace the scratchy-bottomed tub.  Maybe we would convert the hall closet into a space for a tiny washer & dryer.  Maybe we would install French doors on the office entrance, to make a better guest space.

Fast forward to now, 3.5 years after we moved in, and the value of our home has not increased.  I took a pay cut in October, and will lose my job in March, and the idea of redoing our kitchen or bathroom seems like a ridiculous pipe dream.  Instead, we live daily with various inconveniences.  The burners on the stovetop don't adjust well.  The cabinets are still hanging onto the wall, but I regularly examine the seam between the back of one cabinet and the wall to see if it's widened (so far, it hasn't visibly grown, but often, as I'm putting heavy dishes into the cabinet, I imagine it crashing onto the floor, and wonder, in a semi-detached way, whether the fall would happen slowly enough to give me time to move out of the way fast enough).  The oven doesn't heat to the right temperature (we adjust for it), and long ago the handle ripped off of the refrigerator door (we just pull on the side of the door).  Almost every time I load and unload dishes into the dishwasher, the wheels on the rack of the dishwasher fall off (they snap back on).  There is one tile on the bathroom wall, above the faucet, that routinely falls off the wall and into the tub.  ("Mommy!  Daddy!  The wall fell off again!" Katie will call out to us.  We push it back into place.)  And last week, the gutters (and the part of the house attached to them) fell off of one side of our building.  (Insurance will cover it as storm damage, a result of all the snow and ice this winter, but there's a deductible.) 

Then there is our clutter and mess.  I can sweep the kitchen and dining room at 8 am on Monday only to have clumps of dog and cat hair floating around by 8 pm Monday night.  There are four of us living here now, and each room is jam-packed with stuff.  Right now, in addition to all of our usual furniture, our home contains a Jumperoo, a high chair, and a baby swing, not to mention a Christmas tree that we still haven't taken down (the ornaments are off, at least; soon the tree must follow).  Annabel's crib is in our bedroom, and Katie's room has a bunk bed and shelf and desk set-up that leaves almost no room to turn around in.  There is a cheap Ikea futon in the office for guests that is a complete pain in the neck to flatten and fold up again.  The laundry and the dishes and the sweeping are overwhelming and never ending. 

And then there are the people living in the home.  Katie is almost five years old, a wild tornado, leaving destruction in her wake.  (We do make her help clean up, most of the time, but there is still plenty left for us, too.)  Annabel has not slept through a single night in her life; I feel like a miracle has taken place if she only wakes me up once.  She's on the verge of crawling, and we find ourselves scouring the living room rug multiple times a day to clear away anything that she could stick into her mouth and choke on (where does it all come from?).  I have been living with a job that has left me feeling by turns exhausted, angry, hopeless, and trapped (sometimes all at once), and now I am free of the trap (we're all laid off effective March 9th; that is a story that still needs to be told), but anxious about the future.  (My insurance covers all four of us.  My salary is more than 2/3 of our income.  My 401k is the only retirement plan we have, not that it has much value at this point.)  Geoff stays home with the girls, trying to juggle housework and dinner preparation and Annabel's naps and Katie's preschool with his own job at the church. 

Tuesday night Annabel woke up to nurse when I went to bed, then again a few hours later.  Within 10 minutes after I laid her back down in her crib, Katie appeared at the door, telling me she'd peed the bed.  I cleaned her and her bed up, tucked her back in, and found I couldn't go to sleep until almost an hour had passed.  I had just fallen back asleep when Katie appeared at the door again, telling me she'd had a nightmare that was too "horrible" to even talk about.  I took her back to her room, tucked her back in, rubbed her back and sang her "Edelweiss," and went back to bed myself.  Within 15 minutes, Annabel was awake again.  After I put her back to bed, we all slept for another 3 hours.  It was a rough night, admittedly much worse than most. 

It can get disheartening, sometimes.  Some days it seems like we will always worry about space and money and potty training and sleeping through the night.  Some days it seems like every step forward is followed by at least one equal step back. Some days I realize that I am looking at the days as part of a long struggle that I feel like I should have conquered by now.  I have been a lawyer for over 10 years now.  I will be 40 next year.  I feel, sometimes, like I should be doing better than this. 

And yet last night, as I stirred a batch of chocolate pudding on the stove (you have to stir the pudding constantly, which leaves room for deep thinking), listening to music on the CD player in the kitchen, and hearing the sounds of Katie and Annabel in the bath (and the occasional murmurs of Geoff, with them), I realized the likelihood that one day, this will be a time I look back on with great nostalgia.  One day, we may wax fondly about the stupid wheels that fall off of that dishwasher rack, and almost certainly we will laugh about that bathroom tile falling into the bathtub, because as frustrating as those things may be to us now, they are minor inconveniences in the middle of what is, in so many other ways, a wondrous blessed time in our lives - a time when Annabel and Katie are learning to be friends, when Katie's imagination is taking off in ways that amuse and impress us every day (in the past few weeks she has introduced us to at least five alter-egos/imaginary friends: Lunda, Lund, Blenda, Lenda, and Frank), when Annabel's babbling starts to sound like a language (ticka ticka dada blauuuuu), when the four of us are learning to be a family.  I come home from work, and Annabel kicks and yells happily, open-mouthed, to see me.  Katie yells, "Mommy!" and runs to give me a hug.  I know that as much as I am looking forward to seeing them grow up, I will miss them the way they are now.   

It occurred to me, as I stirred the pudding, that maybe one day I would even miss the way that I can so easily satisfy so many of my girls' needs.  When Katie wakes up in the night after a bad dream or after having wet the bed, I can help her.  When Annabel wakes up in the night hungry or upset, I am able to give her what she needs.  For each of them, I am able to be her comfort, able to solve her problem, able to put things right again so that she can go back to sleep.  How much more complicated will their problems be when they are older?  Will I wish for problems like today's (despite the sleep deprivation they cause)?

I do believe that the not-so-good things will get better.  I do believe that one day our finances will be in order, that both Geoff and I will be bringing in regular salaries, that eventually our student loans will be paid off.  I believe that one day we will have 2 bathrooms (or at least an extra toilet!), and that no tiles will be falling off of our bathroom walls.  I believe that someday we will have a guest bedroom, and our own washer & dryer. 

And so I am resolving to try to experience these days through a filter, imagining how I will feel when I look back on them from a future existence, thinking kindly of them the way I expect I will when I am no longer living them.  It is not so much a matter of pretending that I like the things that currently bother me; it's a matter, I think, of adjusting the lens through which I view those things.  In the whole picture, they can be small.  They can be background.  They can be out of focus.  (They can be bokeh.)  

I spend too much energy worrying about what we don't have, wishing for some ideal situation that I can almost guarantee I will never have.  It's silly, this waiting around for the ideal to become real, when I have so much to appreciate right now.  My husband is my favorite person in the whole world, and I would not want either of my daughters to be anybody other than who they are. We are all healthy and strong and full of love for each other.  Our condo is cozy and bright, and it's home.

How much better would it be if I am able to recognize the good in what I've got now, while I've got it, instead of only looking back later and missing it when it's gone?  How much happier will I be?

Let's try to find out.

how to live like this

I don't know how to live like this. 

I love that 4.5 year old girl in the bathroom, talking to herself while she plays with toys, telling me she wants five more minutes, but already I do not understand her.  Already, I feel like I have failed her in at least one important way. (She will not poop in the toilet.  This sounds simple.  This sounds easy.  If I told you that other than that, she is smart, creative, hilarious, affectionate, and compassionate (and of course also stubborn, often whiny, and weird), you would think, maybe, that the failure to poop in the toilet was minor.  Maybe it is.  And yet most days it is a huge thing, overshadowing all else, bringing an excellent day to a crashing disappointment, making a bad day worse.  I go from calm patience to angry ranting and disgust in a heartbeat.  She is failing us.  We are failing her.  I am failing.) 

I love that almost 5 month old baby in the crib, sleeping quietly at the moment, rolled over onto her stomach in her baby straitjacketed swaddle.  And yet I am already dreading bedtime.  I can not possibly go to bed early enough to get enough sleep, not with the number of times Annabel will wake me up in the night.  Not since I need to go into the office tomorrow.  Already, these days, I tend to only take showers every other day, hoarding the extra 15 minutes that a shower (and waiting for hair to dry) would take, using it for sleep, or for 15 minutes of time all by myself.  I took a shower today.  If tonight is like the other nights, she will wake up at 10 or so, when I go to bed.  She will nurse, and I will, at least that time, enjoy the weight of her little warm chubby body, the feel of her hands, opening and closing on whatever part of me she can reach (doing some weird but not altogether unpleasant massage of my chest), if she can get her hand out of the confines of the swaddling blanket.  Then I will put her back to bed, and lie down (the feeling I have each time I put her back in her crib, the feeling of impending blessed much-needed sleep, is (are!) the best part(s!) of each night), and go almost immediately to sleep.  But she will wake up again around 2 hours (or, if I'm very lucky, 3 hours) after I have gone to sleep, and I will pick her up and bring her to bed with me, lying back against the pillow, eyes closed, dozing, wishing for the time to pass quickly.  Twenty minutes or so after she's woken, she will be done.  I will burp her, kiss her soft fuzzy head, put her back in the crib, and return - ahhhh - to bed, pulling the covers up high over my shoulder, tucking them under my chin.  I will look at the clock, see that it is 12:54 or 1:36, and mentally calculate when she might wake up, and how much sleep that will be.  Most likely, she will wake me up again, 2 (or if I'm lucky 3) hours later.  And again.  And again.  Last night she woke me up at midnight, 2, 4, and 6. 

On Monday of this week I had what I would call a minor breakdown.  In front of two co-workers (luckily, my two closest friends at work), I started to cry.  They closed the door, told me it would be ok, gave me names of therapists to talk to, asked if there was anything they could do.  Mostly, they listened, and they let me cry, and when I apologized, they refused to accept my apology.  Afterward, not only later on that day, but stretching all the way to today, Wednesday, I felt (I feel) better, as if a dam had broken.  The pressure has been relieved.

I started writing this on Sunday, and I have not gotten a chance to continue until today (Wednesday), which I think is probably symptomatic of part of my problem: I have very little time that is not spent trying to sleep, taking care of the children, commuting to and from work, working at a job which pays me less and less (in addition to the pay cut from the beginning of this month, I'll pay more than $100 more a month for insurance in the new year; and of course there was no raise at the beginning of 2008) and which simultaneously requires more and more (not only more time, but more rules, more compliance, more bureaucratic hoops to jump through).  I am worried about my job.  I am worried about money.  I am worried, a little bit, about what we'll do for Christmas this year - it will be fine, I know it will be fine, and yet I want it to also be good; I want to find a way to make sure that I enjoy this first Christmas with Annabel and fifth one with Katie.

Even now, right now, I have had to stop at least five times (since about 3 paragraphs up) to go comfort the baby, nurse the baby, replace the baby's pacifier, wipe up the baby's spit up. 

In phone calls at work, I forget what I'm saying in the mdidle of saying it.  I transpose digits in people's phone numbers.  I am easily distracted from what I'm working on, flitting from one thing to another, rarely finishing anything.  It's hard to follow my own train of thought for more than a few minutes at a time. 

I am in tears at least once a day.  And the real, underlying problem is that I feel like I am trying to do so many things, and that I am succeeding at none of them.  I feel like I'm failing.

And yet right now, on Wednesday, a few days after I started this, on a day when I got to "sleep in" until 8 (after having been woken up 4 times), I feel optimistic.  I feel better than I have felt in days, maybe weeks.  I feel like I can actually make it through another day, and another day after that.  (This lovely poem helped, I am pretty sure.)   

I actually daydream about posting here often. I have an idea that I will start posting regularly again, and that what I write will be work I'm proud of.  I don't know when that will be, or even, I'll admit, whether that will be at all. 

I do plug along taking pictures, at least, posting them to Flickr and captioning them when I can. 

I do stop and smell Annabel's head and rub my cheek against her brand new downy fuzzy hair and put my finger out so that she will grab it in her hand and squeeze tightly.  I accept it as her embrace. 

I do stop to look at Katie's gorgeous perfect face, her bright eyes, her mischievous smile.  I watch her body grow leaner and longer, seemingly on a daily basis.  (Since April she has gained 2 pounds and grown over 2 inches.)  I am amazed at the way she is so much her own person, not my baby, not dependent on me or Geoff for ideas or for her sense of humor or for her likes and dislikes.  

I know that no matter how difficult each day is right now, I will miss this time when it is gone.  I will miss the people that my children are today: the way Annabel lights up when she sees either mine or Geoff's face, and the way she is learning to blow raspberries; the way Katie asks me every night to sing her a new song that she doesn't already know, and also some other songs that she already does (right now our regulars are: Edelweiss, Over the Rainbow, Til There Was You, Goodnight My Someone, Where Is Love?, Some Enchanted Evening, How to Handle a Woman, and the Beatles' "I Will" - I am running out of songs that I have memorized - I actually had to research the verses for "Some Enchanted Evening"), and wants me to tickle her while we sing. 

Today was ok.  Tomorrow might be better.  The only way to do this is day by day by day, I guess.  I think.  That is the only way to live like this.  I'm trying. 

A Birth Story

 Written on 5/30/08 (four days after our daughter Annabel was born.  8 lb, 14 oz, 21 inches long.  She looks a lot like her big sister.

Ok, so I'll see how much I can type right now, two-handed, with Annabel in a sling, while it's just Annabel and me at home.

Sunday morning (May 25th) we went to church, and all of Geoff's choir from the 9:00 a.m. service was there - normally there are two services, at 9 and 11, but in the summer it switches to one 10 a.m. service, and this particular Sunday was the first of those. The only reason I mention this is that all of these folks in the early choir (who I don't know very well, but who know Geoff, so I'm sure they feel like they know me) kept coming up to me and annoying me. I can't tell you how many of them said, "Are you ready? You look ready!" I was thinking that "looking ready" was equivalent to looking really freaking tired and irritable - oh, and huge, of course. One woman also reached out and rubbed my belly when people were "passing the peace." And there was a LOT of "Oh, so Thursday is the big day!" as if my due date was some sort of guarantee. Also, see 9 months pregnant: I was definitely more irritable than they deserved.

After church, Katie and Geoff and I went for lunch, then came home and took naps. After we got up, Katie and I made chocolate chip cookie dough, and we started doing some more cleaning/straightening around the house. I was sweeping the rest of the living room (I'd started the day before), wearing one of my many Target maternity dresses, at about 6:30 or 6:45 in the evening, when suddenly I felt warm liquid running down my legs, and I knew that was it. I pointed out to Geoff that my water had broken.  He was pretty calm about it.  I went to get some dry underwear and a towel.

We spent the next couple of hours packing my suitcase for the hospital (I had at least made a list of essentials the week before, so I didn't have to really focus), Geoff called my parents and his parents, we took quite a few family portraits, me sitting on the couch on top of a towel. (I wouldn't have cared if we had actually done this, at that point, but I'd been talking about wanting to do it for weeks, so when Geoff set up the tripod and said we should go ahead, we did.)  I kept leaking fluid, which Katie was mildly grossed out by ("I don't like the fluit!"), and which the dog kept licking up if Geoff didn't get to it first (which I was a little grosssed out by, myself). Geoff made some calls to find someone who could come stay with Katie until my mom made it up here from her house, which is about 4 hours away. (Our friend Rebecca, who was our first choice, was out of town for Memorial Day weekend.)  I soaked a couple more pairs of underwear before I decided not to put any new ones on. I soaked a few towels. Eventually Geoff heard back from our old neighbors and friends Heather & Arek, who said they'd come get Katie at the hospital and bring her back to our place to wait for my mom.  (Thank you, Heather & Arek!)  We left for the hospital around 7:45 or so, I think, and got there around 8.

Katie had been born on a Sunday, and my current OB, Dr. Thorpe, had been on call that day, so we wondered if she'd be there this time.  It turned out she WAS the doctor on call from 8 a.m. Sunday through 8 a.m. Monday. So we were glad about that. We checked in, and I wasn't really haven't any major contractions.  Not a whole lot of fluid was leaking anymore compared to when we were at home. They immediately hooked me up to monitors and took my blood pressure, which was SCARY high at first. Scary to me, anyway - at first it was 157 or something over 95, and then it was 162 over 107. It's never been high like that, so they didn't panic too much, but were concerned enough to take some blood and run some tests and have the doctor come by sooner rather than later. The next time they took it, though, it was 135 over 84 or something, and the rest of the time it ranged between that and down to 113 over 62 or so, so it became a complete non-issue.

They checked my cervix, said the baby wasn't dropped all the way, that I was about 3 cm dilated, about 60% effaced. They hooked me up to monitors, which annoyed me, because I wanted to walk around, which we told them - they said as long as the doctor said it was ok, I could, but because my BP had been so high, I needed to stay put for now. The fetal heartbeat was great the whole time, galloping away in our hospital room.  Katie pointed out on her own that it sounded like a horse galloping.  I was SO uncomfortable in the stupid hospital bed - I know I wasn't really having much in the way of contractions, because the fact that my lumbar region was unsupported was bothering me much more than anything else. Somewhere in there, they put in an IV, in part for antibiotics.

At some point in there, our friends called Geoff's cell to say they were downstairs to get Katie, so he took her to them. She was pretty worried and scared and was trying to be brave - before she left, she kept giving me hugs and trying not to cry, but crying anyway. She wanted to stay with me, but at the same time was really worried that I might "make loud noises" and "there would be blood" (both things I had told her before just to give her information, not to scare her...oops).   After a few minutes of that, though, Geoff took her to them and came back, and then I got the ok to walk around, so we walked up and down the floor a little, but still nothing was really happening, contraction-wise.

It was some point after this that my OB came back and said we might want to consider pitocin.  The biggest downside she saw to pitocin was if I wanted to manage without pain relief, because the pitocin would make that really difficult to do. We said we'd think about it. I haven't talked about it here, but my hope was that I could manage without pain relief this time. Last time, with Katie, I had gone for about 16 hours without anything, and then finally, in desperation, crying, thinking I was not going to have the strength to give birth at all, I asked for an epidural. So this time I'd been hoping to handle things differently - do more walking around, letting gravity help, etc. But since my body wasn't doing anything, and we were already at the hospital - and since my water had broken, I wasn't going anywhere - I just decided. I said yes to the pitocin and decided we'd see how it went. They started the pitocin around midnight. For at least a couple of hours, still, not much was going on with contractions. Not regular, not very strong. I was getting really sleepy but didn't really want to sleep - I just wanted to get the show on the road.

Sometime around 2:30 the contractions started getting stronger, and around 3 I decided that I was ready to get an epidural. I didn't feel desperate. I didn't feel like I couldn't do it. I just suddenly felt like, All right, then. This is apparently what my body does - my water breaks, the uterus futzes around for a long time to get through the early stage of labor, and the last stage is pretty quick. And since this is where I am, and these are the tools I have, and since this time I no longer feel like I have to prove anything, I feel totally ok with getting an epidural. I kind of mused on it for awhile, testing to see if I was going to be disappointed in myself (I had been, a little bit, with Katie), and decided I wasn't going to be. So the next time the nurse came back I said I wanted the epidural.

It was almost 4 a.m. by the time they gave me the epidural. At that point the contractions were pretty strong. And I have to say, I HATE that stupid blood pressure cuff that goes off every 15 minutes while you are getting pitocin (and every 3 minutes when they are putting in the epidural).  Of course it was worse because the cuff had bad timing - it would go off during the strongest contractions, and was going off during a contraction AND when the anesthesiologist was about to put in the epidural. I told him it was the trifecta, and he laughed and said he'd wait until at least the cuff had stopped. The numbing shot hurt WAY more than I remembered it hurting with the epidural I got with Katie, and I started to cry a little. But other than that, it was fine. It gave me a lot of relief, and even the uncomfortable bed stopped bothering me. I could still feel all of the contractions, though, which again, was different than with Katie. Right before or after the epidural they checked me again and said I was 4-5 cm dilated, and about 80-90% effaced, and that the baby's head was "right there." So I at least felt like I had made some progress before getting the epidural. (I'd been thinking "open...open...open" to myself every time I had a contraction, and it was weird how much that helped me - I could really feel like I was dilating instead of tightening up.)

After the epidural, it was pretty quiet for awhile. I could feel the contractions, but barely, until an hour or so later, when they started getting STRONG again. Geoff came over and sat next to me and kept offering me his hand and telling me to "grip it and rip it" (which I also heard him saying to Annabel on the balcony in the sunshine yesterday, the weirdo), which made me laugh until the contractions got really strong again. I was feeling kind of down at this point, because I was thinking I was in for a long labor like with Katie, who wasn't born until 2:45 pm after getting to the hospital around 8 or 9 pm the night before. I was worried that the contractions felt so strong already, even with the epidural, so we had the anesthesiologist come back and adjust the epidural to give me some more relief - that was around 6:30, I think. Maybe 7.  I kept laboring, and the contractions were still REALLY strong to me - way more than I felt any of the contractions after getting my epidural with Katie - and around 8 my doctor came back and smiled and said she wished she could stay for the birth, but her own kids hadn't seen her in a little too long, and that Dr. Brennan would be there soon, etc. Then they checked my cervix, and the nurse looked at her, and Dr. Thorpe said, "she's complete?" And she said yes, maybe just a tiny lip of cervix in the way, but she's 10 cm and the baby's head is right there.

That's when I felt like crying more than at any other point, because I was so relieved, thinking that I was actually going to do this, that it was going to be soon, that this was mostly over, everything was going to be ok, and we were going to get a real baby out of this. I did cry some, and felt kind of hysterical. Dr. Thorpe told the nurse to call the OB on the way and tell her to go back home, because Dr. Thorpe would stay, since we were ready now. They asked me if I was feeling the urge to push, and I said not yet, but about 5 or 10 minutes later, I was feeling it (another thing that I did not feel at all with Katie), and told them so. They got everything ready, Dr. Thorpe asked me if I remembered from four whole years ago how to push, and I said I thought so, and they took me off of various monitors, helped push back my legs, told me to tell them when I was having a contraction.

During the first pushing contraction, the doctor said, "This baby is rocketing towards me!" And the nurse said, "Wow, she's a good pusher!" I felt very proud, which makes me laugh a little, but it's true. I pushed again during a second contraction, and this time after the contraction was over I could feel the baby's head down there even after I'd stopped pushing.

On the third contraction I pushed and pushed as hard as I could, and this whole entire tiny human being slipped out onto the bed in front of me, and she wasn't even very messy. It was 8:31 a.m.  She started crying almost immediately. They wiped her off a tiny bit, let Geoff cut the cord (there had been meconium in Katie's fluid, so he didn't get to cut hers), handed her to me to hold, and I just looked at her and cried a little and overall felt really happy. After a little while, they cleaned her up a little more, took her blood sugar (which was a little low the first time, but fine every time after that), weighed her (8 lb 14 oz, one oz heavier than Katie), measured her, and then gave her back to me to nurse her. I hardly felt when the placenta came out. Dr. Thorpe said I had two tiny tears - at first she only saw one - and put one stitch in each. It was all pretty quiet and serene - only 2 nurses, my OB, and me and Geoff. (With Katie there were a lot more people, maybe since it was the afternoon? It's a teaching hospital.) She latched on within a half an hour of being born, probably. She is, in general so far, sweet and calm and completely helpless, and I can't believe that it was only a few days ago that she was still inside me.  She looks a lot like her big sister did when she was born.

And there you go. The end of one thing, and the beginning of something even better.

Continuing pictures of Annabel & family are being posted here.

Tells a story (November 13th)

Geoff's mom is visiting us this week, and she doesn't want me to take her picture.  I think she will be sorry if she leaves without me taking a picture of her and Katie together, since the last time she saw Katie was last Christmas, and we don't yet know when she will see her next.  So I think in theory she wants the picture to be taken.  Or rather, she wants the picture to have been taken.  But she's not too excited about the present tense part of it. 

And really, I understand.  I don't like to have my picture taken, either, even though I love to take pictures of other people, and even though I don't mind taking my own picture.  I know how it is to feel tense and anxious about having somebody else take your picture, though.  You paste that anxious smile on your face, your teeth grinding together while you mutter, "Ok, take the picture now!"

It is easy to look at a bad picture of somebody else and realize that that's all it is - a bad picture.  It's not somehow "realer" than the person they see in the mirror every day or the person you see standing in front of you.  It's not proof that they really do look older or fatter or weirder or more awkward than the way they see themselves in their mind's eye.  If I see or take a bad picture of Trish, I would never think, "Aha!  So that is how she really looks!" 

And yet I've done that about pictures of me, many times.  Bad pictures of me have made me feel bad. 

There are also those good pictures, though, the ones that make you feel like you really do know who you are and how you appear to the world, the ones that make you feel confident, and maybe even pretty.  Sometimes, if enough time passes, the bad pictures miraculously turn into good ones.  You look at them and wonder why you ever thought that was a bad picture, why you were ever as critical of your body and your face as you must have been to have looked at this picture and judged the subject as ugly.  And of course if you never take a picture in the first place, you won't ever have any good ones. 

Anyway, so my plan is to take some pictures of Trish, who is one of my favorite people, and definitely my very favorite mother-in-law.  I hope to get some pictures that she thinks are good, but you know, we'll see.  Last year I took a picture of Trish and Katie.  Trish was pushing Katie in the swing.  They were both looking at the camera, and it was a nice picture, although not really a great one.  I printed it out and framed it and gave copies of it to both Trish and her father last Christmas.  Trish looked at it and thanked us, but she wasn't too enthusiastic.  I could tell she wasn't overly fond of the picture of herself.

Geoff's grandfather, though, opened the picture and smiled.  "Two little girls," he said, and got tears in his eyes.  And just like that, Trish got tears in her eyes, too. 

House of Sick (November 4th/5th)

House of Sick (November 4th/5th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Hello. Welcome to the House of Sick. Katie started with a cough and cold, and Geoff followed. Last Sunday I felt weak and achy and feverish all day, and Monday evening I started coughing. By Thursday the stuff coming out of my sinuses had blood in it, so I saw my doctor on Friday morning - she gave me an antibiotic, which seems to have had a near-immediate effect. I'm no longer in horrible pain when I swallow.

Meanwhile, Katie spent all day last Monday throwing up and feeling bad, but by Tuesday morning she was raring to go. She went back to school and was ok for Halloween (about the time my throat was really starting to hurt).

Meanwhile, my mom, who recently got over bronchitis and walking pneumonia, came up to visit us on Friday, her birthday. It was late when she got here, so we decided to save the cake until Saturday, so that Katie could share in the cake festivities.

Around that same time, Geoff started feeling bad. On Friday night he came to bed and told me he felt sick to his stomach, and then early Saturday morning he started throwing up. He figured he had food poisoning, but when my stomach started getting queasy at around 6 that night, we weren't so sure. I went to bed before 9.

I finally threw up around 11 at night, and the diarrhea lasted all through the night. This morning, not too long after we got up, Mom succumbed.

Geoff is feeling better, and has gone off to work at the church. I was feeling like I'd gotten relatively lucky with this flu thing, whatever it is, because although I'm still achy and weak, I feel well enough to take care of Katie, to laugh weakly and how pitiful we all are, to get us snacks or drinks. Geoff spent all day yesterday in bed, and Mom is in bed now.

And then I threw out something in my upper back/lower neck. I took some ibuprofen, and it's a little better (I don't feel like I have to remain prone), but FOR PETE'S SAKE. No more!

There was a brief moment last night when we did all feel well enough to sing happy birthday and sit at the table. Geoff wasn't well enough to actually eat any cake, but maybe today. As far as I know, Mom and Katie were both feeling fine when this picture was taken, so it made me laugh. Still, the picture does a good job of summing up the weekend.

So far, with regard to the flu, Katie seems ok. Please, please let her stay that way. (She is, it's true, the only one of us who had a flu shot this season.)

Hanging around (October 12th)

Hanging around (October 12th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

I don't even remember the last time that I had a day that felt like a "snow day". An unexpected day off to snuggle inside in pajamas all day, to sip a warm drink, to burn candles, to venture outside into the cold with the knowledge that we could duck back inside at any moment, to play music and dance around or to lay on the couch and watch stupid tv.

Today I baked banana bread with pecan pieces and chocolate chips. Geoff made coffee in the french press. Katie drank hot chocolate out of a tiny espresso mug. Katie and I went out on the balcony during the morning flurries, and I showed her how to try to catch snowflakes on her tongue. We danced in the kitchen and the living room, and watched a lot of "Backyardigans."

I didn't feel like I had to be anywhere else but here. With anyone else but them.

Let me

Reflection (October 10th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

I went to see my doctor back in July.  I like my doctor; I haven't seen her too many times, but she had a baby about 6 months before Katie was born, and whenever I see her, we exchange compliments on the respective cuteness of our daughters.  My doctor also has long curly hair, a sweet kind roundish face, and she's somewhat overweight.  For reasons that are probably not mysterious, I feel some kinship with her. 

I went to see her for a couple of reasons.  One was that my right shoulder, which I'd injured back in May and June of 2005 during multiple marathon painting sessions, was still hurting me on a daily basis.  The second was that we'd been trying to get pregnant since January, and the advice I'd gotten said that if you're 35 or older, you should consult a doctor if you've tried for six months without conceiving.  In August I turned 36.

They weighed me first, as usual, and then a nurse took my blood pressure, which was higher than usual.  When the doctor came in, she shook my hand, smiled, and looked at my chart.  "Your weight is up a few pounds," she said.  "And your blood pressure is too high.  Let's take it again."  She did, and this time it was even higher.  "That worries me," she said, "we'll need to keep an eye on that."  She took some notes.  "So, why are you here today?" 

I told her, and she said she would give me some samples of Celebrex for my shoulder, which she expected would be more effective than ibuprofen.  She also said she would give me a referral to an OB/GYN for the fertility issue, and would take some blood from me that day to have them run "fertility work" on it.  She told me to make an appointment to come back in two weeks so that she could check my blood pressure again.  She asked me if I had any questions, smiled and shook my hand again, and told me to follow her out.

As I was coming out of the examining room, she spoke to the nurse.  "She needs a follow up appointment for high blood pressure, Celebrex for her injured rotator cuff, a referral for infertility, and blood work for infertility."

Nothing she said was a surprise, but that sentence right there, with all of my problems lumped together, crushed something inside me.  I felt broken, and old, and unhealthy, and ashamed.  When I left, I called Geoff on the cell phone, crying - feeling like I was overreacting, but crying, anyway.  I drove around for a few minutes, and then I went home, where my sister in law Stephanie was waiting.  I cried to her, too, and she comforted me. 

I went back two weeks later, and my blood pressure was lower, within normal range; we made a follow up appointment for December, just to make sure it stays ok.  My weight was down 3 pounds from what it had been at the earlier appointment, back to the weight I've been ever since a few months after Katie was born.  I got a referral for the doctor who delivered Katie (not the OB/GYN that I had during my pregnancy, who so often made me feel judged); my appointment is not until October 23rd.  That is less than two weeks away now; maybe I will leave with some answers.  Then again, maybe I won't.

*****

I remember how I felt the last time we tried to do this – desperately yearning, impatient, and with an ever-present undercurrent of "I want this so much I am afraid it will never happen."  Before Geoff and I were even married, I brought up the subject of how much I wanted children.  We agreed that we would do whatever we could to allow us to have children.  Before I even went off birth control, we agreed that if I did not get pregnant, we would consider infertility treatments, and we would consider adoption.

When Katie was a baby – not when she was a newborn, but since she was a bigger baby, old enough to smile and giggle and interact with us – I felt torn about having another child.  (I've written about it before.)  On the one hand, she is so wonderful, I can't help but want another one!  On the other hand, she is so wonderful, maybe she deserves all of the attention we can give her, just her.  Maybe, I used to think, I wouldn't be as good of a mother to two children.  Maybe, I thought, the three of us together is the best family we can be. 

I have no doubt that we would (will?) love another baby just as much as we love Katie.  In fact, I think I would probably love a newborn second baby more than I loved Katie when she was a newborn, because even during those early days, when we were exhausted and worried, before he or she was capable of giving anything back to us, I would know what lay ahead.  I know that my love for that baby will grow more with each passing day.  I would know that Geoff and I would sit together and marvel over each new small development the baby makes, and that (in addition to great challenges) the new baby would bring us great joy.

And so each month starts with hope and promise.  I think about when my due date will be and how old Katie will be by then.  I consider whether my emotional state is a symptom of early pregnancy.  I think about how far along I'll be at future holidays and vacations, and whether I'll have any maternity clothes from last time that I can wear again this time. 

But each month ends with a new failure, and each month's failure hurts more than the failure of the month before.  And now that it's been almost ten months of trying and failing, I feel like I am failing.  I know that everything might be fine; I know that any month now, I might get pregnant.  I know that this worry and anxiety could be for nothing.  I also know that, because I no longer feel the desperate need for a child that I felt before Katie was born, that we will probably not do whatever it takes to have a second child.  If it comes to expensive infertility treatments that we can barely afford, we might stop.  If it comes to considering adoption, we might not take that step.  How long will we try?  How long will we hope and fail, hope and fail? 

We might not have another baby, I think to myself, and I'm sad, but not heartbroken.  I can't be heartbroken at having "only" Katie, because being mother to "only Katie" is about the single best damn thing I've done in my life so far. Still, in January I was ambivalent, and for the first few months my sadness at not being pregnant was tempered with a little dose of relief; now in October, I have reached the point where I feel no relief.  If we do not have another child, I will need time to adjust.  I will need time to grieve.  I don't know how long I will need.

*****

Geoff didn't get the job at the church in New York.  We don't know this because anyone from the church called him, because they didn't.  Geoff got no response to his letters, emails and phone calls sent and made over the past nearly seven weeks.  We only know this because there is now an announcement on the church's website advertising an upcoming concert, and it contains a reference to Dan, the church's new associate minister of music. 

Geoff wasn't looking for a job, and we weren't actively trying to relocate.  But once the opportunity arose - once the potential boss (who now won't take the time to compose a five second reply to Geoff's inquiry about whether he is still being considered for the position) invited Geoff to apply for the job - it started to seem like a puzzle piece falling into place.  This time in our lives started to make sense to us in a way it hadn't before, as if we'd been looking at things upside down, or sideways.  Aha, we said, as we spun the picture.  So this is how it's supposed to look.

References to New York are everywhere, in case you haven't noticed.  In the weeks after Geoff came back from his interview, we pointed them out and smiled to each other.  One day we sat in a booth at a restaurant.  "Look at the picture behind you," I said.  He looked, and saw the New York Yankees poster.  "It's everywhere!" he said, laughing a little. 

After over a month had gone by, with still no word from the church, we were pretty sure it was not going to happen.  We talked about it a lot - about how although nothing in our lives had changed (the same jobs, the same home, the same city), we felt like we had lost something.  "At first," Geoff said, "everything seemed like a sign, you know?" 

I nodded.  I knew.

He smiled a little sadly.  "But now it just feels like it was the universe mocking me."  We laughed.

*****

Katie started full-time daycare last week.  For the most part, she loves "school," and looks forward to going.  Her first day was reported to have gone "amazingly well," with no tears or sadness.  She ate well, napped well, played well, and wasn't even excited to see Geoff when he came to pick her up.  As the week went on, though, it seemed to get a little harder.  She was thrilled to see Geoff on Tuesday, and both of us on Wednesday.  On Thursday and Friday, when Geoff dropped her off, she cried and said she wanted to stay with Daddy, but was fine the rest of the day.  Her daycare was closed on Columbus Day, and when we drove past it on the way home from lunch, she yelled, "My school!  That's my school!  Look, mommy daddy, my school!"  Today, again, she cried when Geoff left her there.  I'm sure she has been fine the rest of the day. 

I am sure, in so many ways, that she is doing just fine.

It is no mystery to me why my sadness over not getting pregnant has gotten more intense in the past week or so.  My little girl is growing up.  (I could be biased, but I think she would be an absolutely fantastic older sister.)

I have asked Katie whether she would like for us to have a baby, a sister or brother for her.  She always says yes.  My brother and his girlfriend Frankie are expecting a baby girl in mid-February, and we met them at the beach this past Sunday.  I've told Katie that their baby will be her first first cousin.  At the beach, Frankie lay on her back for a little while with her tshirt pulled up to expose her belly.  She feels the baby move around a lot now, and Josh has felt her move, too.  We stood there for a few minutes, watching Frankie's belly.  "Forgive us for staring at your belly," I said, smiling at her.   She laughed; she didn't seem to mind. 

Our latest baby-making failure made itself known on Sunday.  I wasn't really surprised, since the pregnancy test I'd taken early had been negative, but I cried anyway. 

Last night Katie was fighting bedtime, the way she does more and more often lately.  I got frustrated, and I told her so.  Katie looked at me and moved toward me.  "You have a baby, Mommy," Katie said.  "You have a baby in your belly." 

"No, sweetie, I don't," I said. 

"Yes, you do, Mommy.  You have a baby in there.  Getting bigger and bigger."  She stood there looking at me, her hand on my belly, patting it.

"No, Katie, there is no baby in my belly." I picked her up and looked into her face and tried to smile like I meant it.  "But you grew in there," I told her.  "You were in there, and you got bigger and bigger and bigger.  You used to be my little baby."

She nodded, and she relaxed her body against mine.  We rocked.  We turned out the light.  We sang.  We hugged her.  We kissed her.  We put her to bed. 

*****

I don't know how to wrap this up.  I am doing all right.  There are lots and lots of things in my life that are wonderful; there are so many things to be grateful for, as I told Geoff the other day when I was especially sad.  It's just that right now, lately, there have been some big things that I'm sad about, too.  I'm just trying to go with the flow, letting myself feel how I feel, figuring it out as I go.

I don't pray only for others.  The other day, I was driving in the car, feeling sad, and I prayed for myself.  I don't really believe in praying for the specific outcomes that I want; it is clear that the world isn't fair, and that bad things happen to the best people.  It doesn't make any sense to me that I would get something just because I wanted it, or that I could make a bargain with my life that would earn me something I'm yearning for.  So the other day, I drove and I cried and I prayed something more like this:

Let me be open, to whatever happens.  Let me love.  Let me feel.  Let me see.  Let me appreciate what I have.  Let me understand as much as I can.  Let me live with grace and humor.  Let me do my best.  Let me find my own peace.

It's a good prayer, I think, because it stands alone, valuable whether or not any God hears it or answers it.  I'm also praying to myself. 

Splash (October 8th)

Splash (October 8th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

My brother is going to be a father in a few months.

He'll be a good one.