Almost

We saw a rental house today that we both liked. There’s no certainty that we’ll get it; it sounds as though there are plenty of other interested parties. No dishwasher, alas, but there is a laundry room, a basement workshop, a wood-burning stove, a yard, and a kitchen that reminds me of the farmhouse where I spent my childhood summers.  The roof is new, too, new this past year.  After months of leaking and leak-related unpleasantness, the thrill of a new roof and the thrill of a landlord who puts one on a house before there are leak problems is enticing, to say the least.

We’re turning in our application tomorrow and hoping that we’re the ones who get there first, who make a good impression, who are chosen.  But I’m keeping my hopes in check, not expecting much, trying not to get attached, trying not to want too much.

My wanting is reserved for other areas of my life right now.

I keep trying to squelch the insidious feeling that, because my baby died, the world owes me things, owes me this rental, owes me a sunny day, owes me a living child, owes me luck and good fortune.  I know that this isn’t how the world works.  I even know that this isn’t how the world should work (as if anything could pay me back for Teddy’s death).  But every once in a while these ideas pop into my head anyway.

And it is hard to be in a state of almost there – almost having found a new home, almost figuring out how to remember Teddy while not reliving every moment of his birth and brief life, almost being ready for whatever comes next.

I’m almost through my first year without him – less than three months to go.

It’s not that I expect to get to a place where everything is fine again, where life is suddenly sunshine and rainbows.  I just sometimes feel on the edge of coping better.  I may be on the edge for a long time, for years, and that’s if I’m lucky, but the glimpses of coping better are tantalizing.

I wonder if tadpoles with legs, who are almost frogs, feel awkward and restless and hopeful and anxious.  I wonder if it’s a relief to lose the tale and learn to hop, or if they miss the way they swam as tadpoles.

Incoming

During the first year N and I were dating, we grabbed dinner at a Steak n Shake. Over a basket of french fries, I watched with amusement (and some trepidation), as he taught the little boy sitting across from us how to blow through his straw so that the straw wrapper propelled across the table, hitting whoever was sitting on the other side. The little boy’s dad thought this was hilarious. The mom was more dubious.

He’s so good with kids. They gravitate to him, knowing that here is a kindred spirit, someone who can toss aside the dressings of adulthood and throw himself wholeheartedly into a game of airplane, catch, tag, or make-believe, someone who can inspire them to new heights of goofiness and laughter.  A year ago, he let his small niece feed him blueberries, a food he normally won’t touch with a ten-foot pole.  Coming from her little fingers, though, he acted like they were the most delicious things in the world.  He thinks kids, all kids, are wonderful things, and I know he was very excited about having his own, that he was eager and ready (as any man can be, at least) to be a daddy.

Now Father’s Day is less than a month away. I’m already hyper-aware of it, and while I don’t know what to do for N, I want to do something. Something that lets him know I see him as a father, that I remember that he lost Teddy, too. Something that honors the way he was there for me and for his son during those very hard days. Something that honors the fact that he still holds his son in his heart even though he can’t hold him in his arms. Something that recognizes his love and loss.

And also something that doesn’t make him feel like I’m pressuring him to remember, or like I want him to remember and feel the same way I do about Teddy. I want him to have the option of burying his head in the sand and hiding from the day if he wants. We both grieve, but we grieve differently and I try to respect that and walk the line of sharing, but not pushing. I suspect I often err on the side of caution, and most of the time, that’s probably not so terrible. Come June 21, however, I need to have a plan (even if it’s tiny and simple) in place.

Any ideas about how you might mark Father’s Day, whenever it may fall for you? Or about how to show appreciation for a babylost dad?

Patience

The summer is pressing itself upon us; seems like Spring, true Spring, was here so quickly. Now everything is warm sunshine, buzzing bees, and one thousand memory rushes a day. The end of June was when we found out that all was not well with Teddy, and I think I may have to resign myself to being overwhelmed with memories until August passes.

This weekend was full of sensory triggers, as is today, and these triggers – the smell of cut grass, the smell of lilacs, the sound of bees, the bright yellow dandelion blobs on our lawn, the soft noise of the ceiling fan in the bedroom – are like buttons on a time machine, sending me back, and back again. Those visits to the past are probably part of the healing, but I am left feeling drained and desperate to get out of the time machine, just for a day, just for an afternoon.

I want to go on a whiskey tour of Scotland.

I want to take a few days off work and visit the Oregon coast, where I could walk along the beaches and read a sea chest full of fiction, romance, mysteries, and YA lit. until I feel satiated and up-to-date on current literature again.

I want to get away. I want to escape from this season, from these languorous summer days where I keep meeting my past self, keep reaching out to my boy who is gone. I want to (and here’s the catch) escape from me, to run away from the tired, grief-ridden person I’ve become and be someone more lighthearted and less burdened for a while.

Patience is not my virtue, but I need it so much right now. I need to be patient with my body (especially since I’m denying it margaritas and caffeine), with the passing of this beautiful, horrible season, and with where I am in my grief. I think I need to let the memories come and allow myself to be overwhelmed by them without panicking, too. At least when possible.

Not quite Thoreau

I grew up going to the woods.  It was always a romantic venture, but the romance was just a part of it.  And if your family took you on camping trips every summer, and if you have had many experiences with camping ground outhouses, you probably know what I mean.  Nothing makes you appreciate modern plumbing and kitchen appliances like a few nights in a tent.

Even so.  I’ve seen skies so full of stars that they made me wonder how darkness can even exist.  I’ve hiked up mountains to touch glaciers, have dipped my feet in icy cold, glacier-fed lakes, have sipped camp coffee doctored with Bailey’s from a speckled camp cup while listening to my dad tell stories and watching the embers of our campfire.*

We didn’t go camping last summer, N and I. There was too much going on to get out our new tent (wedding present) and camping gear. We may go this summer, if we can whip ourselves into hiking shape, but the truth of the matter is that my mom did an awful lot of prep work to make our camping trips fun. A lot of packing and planning and cleaning and organizing. Much as I miss going to the woods, I’m not sure I can coordinate a trip with her same élan.

For now, we travel a short distance to the local arboretum, where I walk along paved pathways and watch the seasons write poems on the trees. Not too long ago, I managed to remember the camera. I found some tenacious branches, refusing to let go of their leaves, and thought about how I hang on to things, too.  I worry about this sometimes, but seeing these leaves reminded me that hanging onto things is a pretty natural part of life.

There were also some newly swelling buds.  I’ll go back soon, and see them in full leaf, and I will smile and sigh at the same time.  I am trying to be glad of the Spring, to be glad to see things that are full of life and growing, while letting myself feel sad about what isn’t.  It’s both sweet and sad to remember being pregnant last spring.  The smell of lilac and apple blossom gladdens my nose, but it’s now forever connected with those days of first kicks and talking to my belly.  Teddy, you are so very missed.

*This was when caffeine didn’t keep any of us awake at night.  The evening coffee was sweetened with Bailey’s.  Morning coffee was black.

Green light, and wind

Yesterday, storm clouds swelled, the skies darkened, and the light – this pre-storm, rain-full, brooding light – bounced off the new leaves and the spring grass until the whole world looked green and eerily beautiful.

A caught-in-crystal moment of quiet and peace before the winds whipped themselves into a frenzy and the rain started to fall. For the rest of my life, will I associate moments like this, when the world seems to stop and hold its breath, with my too-short time holding Teddy?

I ran outside, attempted to capture the green-tinted light, but mostly failed. I caught this lilac, though. One of the things I will miss about this place is the back yard surrounded with lilacs.

I usually think of Spring as a gentle, growing time, but it is also violent. There are rainstorms and wind. The wind howled like a lonely thing last night; it kept waking me up from restless dreams. I kept worrying about the tender little plants growing in pots on my back step.

I spend so much time longing for peace lately, perhaps because I’m also longing for something that would make peace very hard to find for, say, nine months or so.

I feel like yesterday, with its stillness and its storm, was trying to tell me something. I haven’t unraveled it all yet, but I was listening so I think I’ll figure it out eventually.

Walking

I love walking with N.  We walked together often in the couple of months after Teddy died, and it seemed as though we could talk to each other about him on those walks.  It seemed as though talking about him came more easily then

Yesterday evening, N and I went for a walk.  We offered to pick up some mail for friends who are out of town, and decided we should make a longer loop of it.

After a couple of blocks, he said, “I think you know this, but today is nine months.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t say anything because…”

“I didn’t either – I was afraid that…”

And as we walked up the hill we talked about how neither one of us had wanted to bring it up, about how each of us wanted to spare the other the burden of that particular memorial, even though we each thought the other knew.

We talked about the significance of the date, nine months since Teddy died, another Saturday the 16th, the feeling of wrongness that Teddy was here such a short time.

He told me how well he remembered that Teddy knew his voice, how our son opened his eyes when he heard his daddy speaking to him.

And I recalled how Teddy kicked at N’s hand when he put it on my belly.

We decided to mark off the 15th and 16th of each month, birthday, deathday, and plan on doing something to mark them – not necessarily big things, a walk or a dinner out or a drive – so that we can acknowledge these days openly.

It was N’s suggestion to mark these days, and it was a relief to me to hear him suggest  it.  We spend so much time shielding each other lately, and it’s good to know that we can approach some of our memory-ridden days consciously and thoughtfully and together.

We need to go for long walks together more often.

Nine months

Nine months.  He would be nine months and one day old today.

Nine months is supposed to mean something else.

I miss you, Teddy.

Holding my breath

One of Bon’s recent posts started me thinking about anger in a way I hadn’t for a while, of my history with it.

My mother tells stories about my temper tantrums when I was very small.  I would hold my breath until my face turned blue, which scared her (and probably also scared her into soothing the blue-faced toddler with what she wanted).  My pediatrician told her that the best thing to do was just to let me pass out, as I’d then start breathing again.

I used to be kind of proud of this, that I had such strength of will when I was two that I could hold my breath that long.

…….

My brother and I used to rough house together, tumbling and teasing half in play, half in, well, something else – perhaps youthful aggression or sibling rivalry.  One day we were alone in the house (I think I was seven or eight and he was six or seven) when we started playing, and then fighting – pulling hair, punching, kicking, wrestling, the sort of fighting that would have landed us in serious trouble if either parent had witnessed it.  I remember being hurt, feeling pain, and then wanting to kill him, and not in the metaphorical sense.  And I remember this moment when we both stopped and stared at each other, terrified not so much of what we’d been doing but of what we wanted, truly wanted, to do to each other.  We never wrestled like this again.

…….

I’ve mentioned that I was raised by Scandinavian stoics on the prairies of Montana, yes?  There’s a certain code, a certain way of behaving in my family and home community that really doesn’t include many outlets for the healthy expression of anger.  My brother and I would hide near the workshop when Grandpa and Dad were fixing farm equipment and listen to all the f*cks coming out of their mouths – nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, it was amazing – forbidden and intriguing.  It was also something men did when they were out of ear-reach of women and children.  It was fascinating, but I knew, listening to it, that those expressions would never be mine.

I hardly ever say it, f*ck, even under my breath.  When I do say it, it sounds like I’m speaking in a foreign language, slightly out of place, slightly wrong.  Writing it is a little easier, but not much.  Not much.

I was the girl.  I was the girl, and girls weren’t supposed to be angry.  And if we were angry, we weren’t supposed to yell or scream or kick or bite or throw things.  We were supposed to contain the anger.  To be fair, I don’t think that I was taught this intentionally.  My parents are loving, kind, people, and I’m fairly certain that, if they’d thought about it in the way I now think about it, they would have worked harder to get both my brother and I to express our feelings in words.  But what we learn isn’t always what we are intended to learn.  I am well-schooled in clamping down on the anger.  I practically have a degree in “Oh me? I’m fine.”

…….

I used to yell maybe once every three years; anger would pour out of me at strange times and for not very obvious reasons, and I would tear someone a new one, feel horrible, and then get on with life.  Back in graduate school, I learned that I could still lose my temper when my new kitten destroyed my precious yellow teapot that I’d brought home from England, and when she would bite my feet as I stayed up at night to finish papers.  I would shut her into the bathroom so that I wouldn’t go crazy, and I would worry in a theoretical sort of way about what this behavior said about any parenting skills I might have.

…….

I think I tend to get angry in ways that my Dad does, which scares me a little.  I was so in fear of his anger – the clenched jaw, the icy silence – we’d anticipate the blow up and even if it never came, I was still afraid, still wanted to hide from it.  I didn’t realize till late in high school how much anger Dad had grown up with, how hard he tried to shield us from it.  When I get angry at N, I clamp down on everything and turn cold and unresponsive and distant.  I simmer and brew, an icy, difficult-to-approach glacier.  I do not, by the way, recommend this as a way to build healthy relationships.  He hates it, and it always ends in both of us feeling miserable and sad.

When I was pregnant with Teddy, I watched N’s sister with her daughter, and marveled at her patience and gentleness, and at the way our niece responded to that gentleness.  I wondered if I had that in me.  I worried that I’d be brusque, that I’d get angry, that I’d take frustrations out on N, on Teddy, that the stress of being a new parent would be too hard for me to handle with grace.  I worried that I’d be cold to my child, that my child would come to fear cold anger.

And now I don’t have the kind of anger I worried about having.  I have something else, and I wonder if I may have to learn better ways of expressing it in order to heal.  It bubbles up inside me all too often, and I retreat with it, I pull myself away from people before I can scream at them, I try to write it out, I try to hold it back, I try to drive it away.  I try, very hard, to keep it from turning on myself and I’m having only limited success.  It has nowhere to go, no appropriate target, no clear path to follow, but it wants to hurt something.

I wonder if my toddler tantrums were not the result of strong will, but simply a way of dealing with feeling a great deal of anger and not knowing how to express it.  Even so, I really wish I could still hold my breath, turn blue, pass out into oblivion.  Oblivion is harder to come by now, and tends to involve money and hangovers.

I took a self defense course about eight years ago and I still remember how good it felt, to kick a padded wall, hard as I could, and yell “No!”  Perhaps my anger wants a dojo.

Remembered

Last Mother’s Day, my parents sent me flowers. We were happy and expectant; the specialist had told us that he really didn’t think there was a problem, and we were reading chapter by chapter through Baby Bargains, talking about cribs, strollers, and car seats.

I live with almost constant disbelief that Teddy isn’t here, that Teddy isn’t here and this is my life, but marker days, days like Mother’s Day, are especially full of this feeling. Is this really me, really who I am now?

Marker days are also especially full of remembering, and, in my case (because I obsess over this, I really do) with worrying about Teddy being forgotten, about losing even more of him.

In the mail a few days ago came a package from my parents. And I know my mom; I know she hunted down the most beautiful blank card she could find and that she cried a little when she wrote in it, and when she tucked it into the package containing a candle for Teddy. The candle has his name on it, and under his name:

Precious one
Loved forever

Thanks, Mom and Dad.  It means so much, that you remember him and keep remembering him, so much.

And then, yesterday I woke to hear our doorbell ringing.  I pulled the blanket up over my eyes and hoped that the polite but persistent Jehova’s Witnesses would take their copies of The Watchtower and move on.

But when I couldn’t reclaim sleep and stumbled out of bed, I found a small and beautiful flower arrangement sitting outside my door, with a note from three good friends from work, saying they were thinking of me and N, and of Teddy.  My heart still overflows with that bit of unexpected grace.

And you remember, too, you who know what this kind of loss can feel like.  I can’t thank you enough for that.  I am thinking of you, dear Mamas, and remembering with you, and sending you love, love, love.  I hope this day is gentle on you.

Today I’m going to buy some pansies to complete my potted garden, and N and I will see a movie with friends.  I think it will be not too bad, and I’m making peace with the fact that “not too bad” is the best I can hope for today.

It will never be okay, that last year marked the only Mother’s Day I had with Teddy, that I’ll spend the next few years longing for a sweaty little fist full of dandelions from my first born, and that I’ll spend years and years after that missing all of the things he should have been and should have had.

Yet, strangely enough, having other people remember Teddy has freed me from clinging to memories the way I know I would have, at least for right now.  I’ve relaxed my death grip a little – which means, perhaps paradoxically, that I can remember better, can honor him more with what I remember.  And that’s the best gift anyone could have given me for today

Like prayer

I come to this blog, this “place” on the internet, with the words and hopes and fears that build up in me, and I pour those words (and sometimes the hopes and fears) out.  I come here the way I used to come to prayer.

I used to pray so easily.  It was like talking to a friend, a lover: “Did you see that, God?  Promise me that you won’t let me act that way toward anyone.”  Or, “Those clouds are amazing.  Thanks for that.”

And sometimes it was longer, more intentional, more prayer-ful, I suppose.  I would talk about my hurts and hopes and joys with a sure sense that someone was listening, that someone cared.  I thought I could feel the listening.

Me and God, it felt like this:

Then came those days where every single prayer I offered was a “please, please, please,” or a “help us, help us, help us,”  and then, “no, no, no, no.”  I always knew the answer could be no – if you grow up with my religious background, someone tells you this, that your prayers may not be answered in the way you want them to be answered.  But I guess I thought I’d get some indication of why the answer was no, some inkling that would help me make sense of a great loss.

I didn’t.

You know the ten questions James Lipton asks on Inside the Actors’ Studio? Number ten is this: “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?”  I can’t answer that question.  I’ve tried.  I’ve racked my heart and brain and I can’t even imagine what answer would satisfy me.  It’s not just Teddy.  Losing Teddy is my personal great grief, but it’s just one grief among many in the world.  I can’t think of an answer for all of them besides “oops,” which isn’t satisfactory at all.

These days, my relationship to God feels more like this:

found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doblonaut/495138524/

I don’t pray often, but I still pray.  I still bang on that door and yell words of hope and fear (and sometimes anger) at it, for others and for myself, but it’s not conversational now, not easy, and I miss the ease.   I miss the sense of being listened to.

It’s not tearing me up inside the way I thought it would, though.  Perhaps this is because I pour my words out here.  I send bits of me out into the great, wide sea of words and symbols that is the internet, and I sense a thrum of listening.  And my words find other words, find your words, and connect and swell, and I change from that, mostly, I think, for the better.  I studied medieval saints’ lives, so I know mystical when I see it, and sometimes writing here comes close.

I don’t know who locked the door, me or God, or if I’ll wake up some day and decide that I no longer believe in God, or if I’ll come to a new understanding of who or what God is, or  if someday I’ll stomp up to the door, ready to pound on it, and find it wide open.  Whatever happens, I think I’m okay with it, which is a strange and probably heretical thing to say about one’s Christian faith.  I’m glad burning at the stake is outlawed.  And perhaps I’m praying now, and God is here, too, and this is my way under the door.