Waking Up

       Sometimes when M wakes up he asks a big question, as if he has been dreaming of distant philosophies, alternate dimensions, or investigating the wide spectrum of human achievement or human limitation. I often sit on the edge of his bed as he works his way out of sleep wondering aloud about the world. This morning I was sitting at the table working on my computer when he emerged, sleepy-eyed, from his room.
     "Kate, do you think some people find happiness from thinking they are better than other people?"
I pause as I have learned to do.
     "Why do you ask?"
      He shrugs in response.
     "Maybe," he murmurs "but what do you think?"
     Before answering I think for a moment. It is difficult not to begin moralizing, but I keep trying to be a parent who broadens his worldview, rather than narrows it. "I think some people do find happiness from thinking they are better than other people, but I don't think it's the lasting kind of happiness."
     He nods, picks up his cat, and takes her back to his bedroom, leaving me to wonder about the definition, texture, and expression of happiness.

A Child's Wish

         My husband is napping. He rises every morning in the quiet dark, hours before M or I begin to stir. Because of this he often drops into sleep in the late afternoon when he sits down, or early in the evening if we are sitting together to watch a movie. M and I joke about it. We know he won't make it through any movies we start. When we hear his faint snore begin to issue from the heavy head, when we see the softened mouth and the crazily angled head, we nudge each other and smile.
        Sometimes we wake him.
        On this particular afternoon M feels that regardless of Der's waking hour, it is simply far too early. "Hey dad, wake up!"
        "What, what happened?"Der stirs and looks blearily around, warm from the stoked fire, from dreams.
        "The war's over!" M shouts, apparently, the first thing that comes to mind.

        The "War on Terror" has been going on since his first year of life. He was born in the year 2000. He has only known a world and a country at "war" with everyone who looks to be a threat, an abstract war on terror in which anyone could be an enemy. When M was eight, during the election year, he said, "Bush has been the president my whole life," and it seemed a long time.   During his lifetime homeland security became a household term, the war on terror justified the detention of people without a trial.
       "I wish that could happen, a person falls asleep and a war is over. I wish it were that easy. You wake up and say,'Hey, the war is over,' " he says to himself.
       "Is it over?"he asks me.
     Der, lion-like, smiles sleepily, happy to let me field that question, and lets his eyelids drop again.

The Last Day of School

       My step-son is a beauty. Each week, when he returns to the house he flies through the door chattering like a bird. He drops his lunch by the sink and his school bag by the table and picks up his bass guitar or his ukelele. For the next 40 minutes he follows me around the house from task to task--do I like this song or this song? Which bass-line is better? Do you recognize this? He wonders about the date of the first time a man walked on the moon; how many flags are there on the moon?; when did Kurt Cobain die? M wonders about racism, which soccer player is leading in goals scored for the European Championship tournament; who will pick him up today; why girls don't realize that just by wearing pants they are cross-dressing--but it's weird for boys to wear makeup?
         Today M dressed for the last day of school like the alternative rock stars that so inspire him. It is the same outfit he wore on the first day of sixth grade, nine months ago. This morning he dresses in a white linen shirt, a tie, a suit vest, and black skinny jeans and his black adidas sneakers.
         He smooths his hair down and asks me to help him put on mascara. As far as he is concerned, eye makeup is a necessary part of this outfit, a break from his usual jeans and soccer jersey. Just like the first time he devised this outfit complete with makeup, we don't say anything except to compliment his unique sense of style. We don't have time for eye shadow or that would be put on too. As I apply the mascara, I comment on how long his eyelashes are. He squints, squeezing his eyes together (It tickles!)printing little tracks of the still-wet mascara on his lower eye-lid. "Well, it looks more like The Cure this way," he comments, tilting his head and inspecting himself.
         "Do you want to keep it?"Considering the effect, he shakes his head."To remove it, just put a little lotion under each eye, applied with a q-tip, then get your finger wet and wash it off," I instruct. He follows my directions inspecting himself, first just his face, and then in the full-length mirror.  He straightens his vest and smooths his hair. We realize that the tie is sticking through the bottom of his vest and M decides it looks silly.
         "I know a trick," I tell him. "There's this secret pocket," I fold the tie up under the vest and slide it in between two of the buttons in his shirt.
         "Really?"
          I smile and shake my head. "If you take your vest off just pull it out from the bottom of your shirt where I've tucked it in."
         Suddenly we realize we are late, that we had not budgeted time for "getting ready." We move quickly into high gear--I put the mini pizzas, still cooling, into a plastic ziploc bag, wash a handful of cherries, pull out a frozen yogurt tube from the freezer and put them all into his lunch sack.
M hefts his incredibly heavy backpack up with one hand and slides his arms through each of the straps.
         He grabs his lunch and patiently waits by the car while I rush around the house looking for my keys. 'Just my luck to drop him off late on his last day,' I tell myself).
          In moments, we are off--not too late--he'll still get there on time, but not as early as M likes. He is like his dad, he wants to be 20 minutes early for everything. I glance at him as we drive down Greeley toward I-5, singing along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, while intermittently asking me questions about the news or the rest of the week. Beyond his young, flawless face the Willamette river glistens and the buildings downtown spark in the morning light. We flow past the Fremont bridge, the Broadway bridge  and merge onto the Interstate. We can see the city unfolding before us into the perfect possibility of a new day.
          As we pull up to the school he sighs again about being late. He gets out of the car, waves, smiles and confidently joins the stream of students entering the school, already looking the part of the seventh grader, and I marvel at my luck to be a part of his life.

This poem by the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado, a poem I haven't read for years, came to me this morning as I was sipping coffee in the early morning light.

Last Night As I Was Sleeping

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart. 

Antonio Machado

Inanna's Journey into the Underworld--and Why We Need to Tell Stories

            Since I wrote last the weather has warmed up. We are having a glorious Portland spring.  My garden is leafing out and all the perennials are putting on quite a show--making it look like I have done more work this year than I have. The rhubarb is coming back as strong as ever--huge leaves and inch-thick stalks; the fig tree is bejeweled with tiny studs of shiny, green figs; the raspberries are fuzzy and sharp, cutting tiny thorny teeth on the new season; the blueberries are covered in the white promise of fruit. I even have potatoes volunteering in my potato patch and the strawberries have decided to exponentially proliferate. The tomatoes and leeks, sweet onions, spinach and lettuce are planted and now the weeding begins.  I am like the seasons--ecstatic at the return of sunshine and leaves, the summer birdsong, the flies buzzing.
            Winter is a good season too, but I am always relieved to be through it. This winter, while the bare leaves raked the sky and the few stars pierced the soft filminess of the cloudlayer, I slept long and dreamed about swimming with whales. I kept choosing the whales over people, kept wanting nothing but to be in the depths of that dark world with those enormous creatures and hear their ethereal lowing.

The light has beckoned me back.

           Ironically, I have been teaching in my high school Evening Scholars class, the ancient Sumerian story of Inanna, Goddess of Heaven and Earth, and of Inanna's descent into the Underworld. It is a story of lightness and darkness, of death and rebirth. To me every winter feels like a descent into quiet reflection. Similarly, loss requires a descent of some sort into the depth of self and so this has been an important story for me this year.
           The story of Inanna's Descent into the Underworld is a tale that negotiates the upper world with the lower world, the inner world with the outer world. It is a story translated from inscribed tablets and exists as one of the oldest known works of literature, originating in the Middle East. It predates the similar, and widely known, Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. Part myth, imbued with strong metaphor, it is a tale in which Inanna is called to meet with her sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Great Below, who, in this tale, suffers from having not been "seen" or heard. My students and I believe that, like Hades, she suffers from a sense of isolation. Residing in the Underworld she is haunted by a feeling of diminished sovereignty over her own deep realm--a belief that the the "Great Below" is inferior to the Upperworld.  For this reason she devises to put an end to Inanna.
            I tell my students to imagine twin sisters. One is the golden cheer-leader, for whom everything seems easy, she is the celebrated one. Her sister on the other hand can be imagined as a "Goth," artistic, introspective, and inclined to more isolating behavior.
          Out of spite, Ereshkigal fixes her keen, envious eye on Inanna, Goddess of the Great Above, and devises to reduce her to a corpse as a way to end her own agony. She calls her heavenly sister to the underworld determined that Inanna will feel her pain.
          Inanna, unafraid, certain of her own power, heeds the call. At each of the seven gateways into the Underworld Inanna relinquishes a garment as instructed by the gatekeepers. As she sheds each piece of clothing she also sheds power.
          Arriving in her sister's chamber, Inanna stands naked and powerless. She is killed when Ereshkigal fastens the eye of death upon her (I tell my students to think of giving someone the stink-eye). Ereshkigal orders Innana's corpse to be hung from a hook in her chamber. Ereshkigal's goal is accomplished, but she feels no real satisfaction from it. In fact, she still feels miserable.
           Inanna would have remained there, her corpse wasting away on the hook, had it not been for a faithful servant Ninshubur, and two "genderless" flies sent by the god of wisdom and waters, Enki, to see to Ereshkigal and retrieve Inanna.  The flies are small and unthreatening and thus are able to pass through the seven gateways unheeded.
          Once in the chamber, the flies do as they have been instructed, they repeat everything that Ereshkigal says. When she says, "I have pain," the flies say simply "You have pain." When she says "I have lost so much," they reply, "you have lost so much," and so on until Ereshkigal is spent but suddenly relieved of her need to say more.  (We imagine that she has finally been "heard.")
           At this moment her eyes turn outward and she looks at the tiny creatures as if seeing them for the first time. "What can I do for you?" she asks, realizing that as Queen of the Underworld, she is endowed with the power to give gifts. They request only the rotting corpse of Inanna and she, no longer needing her prize, no longer fixated on Inanna as she has come again into herself, grants the flies their request. Notice, I tell my students, it is significant that she doesn't need Inanna anymore.
           Inanna is restored to the Great Above, revived, but changed. She has literally "been to hell and back."My class interprets this as the possibility that she was altered in her appearance from the experience of near-death, either literally, or that she was changed internally, simply by the encounter with her own powerlessness.  From that moment forth, both sisters rule their realms differently, Inanna with humility and a new knowledge of the darker shadow-side of life. She now knows something of loss and despair (we imagine that she understands pain--what we call human frailty). Ereshkigal, by being listened to changes with a knowledge of her own importance--her voice has been affirmed--the power of her own realm realized.  The powers that each wield are now more complex and superior to those wielded before.

             My students, seniors in high school, have been looking at this story through many lenses including the Carl Jung's Hero's Journey; Elizabeth Kubler-Rosses Seven Stages of Grief and Loss; Feminism; Symptoms of Depression; and Sibling Rivalry. But of course, this story has been my lesson (and I hope theirs too). In teaching this story, in repeating and examining it in so many different ways, I have considered my own journey of loss, my own sense of powerlessness and of restoration.
             I remember how once I knew only the hope and possibility of the "Upperworld" believing that I would bear a child easily. My loss initiated a descent that changed that feeling.  Like Ereshkigal, I had things I needed to voice, pain I needed to feel. Ereshkigal is a perfect metaphor for the shadowside of our personalities--the subterranean depths of the intuition and psyche. With the help of others and with time, my sadness released enough so that I could "ascend," and be restored, like Inanna, changed but stronger.
             I thought of therapists or friends when I considered the flies, about how therapy or just the right kind of listening can offer a reflection of who we are and what we are feeling.  Stories too, ancient and new, give us a structure to hang our own stories on, or a lens through which to understand ourselves better.
            So often when someone close to us has lost something or is grieving, depressed or despairing, we don't know what to say. We try to understand, but we don't. Loss can scare us--maybe other people's loss scares us even more than our own. We don't know what our role is or what it looks like to be supportive. In talking to women about their lost babies. miscarriages, and infertility, even I, having suffered something of my own loss, walk away feeling like I have said too much.
            The genderless flies in this story remind me that simply repeating what a person has said, adding nothing new, is balm enough.  Ask any of us. Tell us that you just want to listen to what we are feeling and thinking. Perhaps you will hear the the grating agony of depression. It might not be pretty. Maybe you will hear the lowing of whales. Either way, you will likely see relief as one of us is given the space of quiet listening to tell our story, and thus, we may find our way back to the light of possibility.

A Little Bit a' Bitter Goes a Long Long Way

At the squealing, shuddering, slow-motion end of my last relationship, my then-partner looked at me with a mixture of what appeared to be disgust and disappointment, and remonstrated, "Oh Kate, don't be bitter." Immediately, I felt like a child being reprimanded for bad behavior, for indulging in a coarse, despicable emotion that had no place among the wise or the mature. I had coughed up a tight-throated comment, both snide and resigned for which I was being chastised.  Wishing to retain some semblance of self-respect, I gathered up the little wounding shards of my agony and sighed, weakly faking a smile, trying to make myself look brave.
    At first, for months, the thought repeated itself, "Kate, don't be bitter" and so I was not. Instead, I was awash in my own living colors.  I was vacant, raw, tremulous, a blur of myself.  I lost 15 pounds and still could not eat.  Bread turned to ash in my mouth, soup tasted like bile. An acquaintance casually told me not to worry about it. She said that I was too busy digesting the past, and resolving the present to take anything into my body.  She said that the feeling would pass, and that my appetite would return. But I felt as if something wasn't working.  In dealing with loss, I was forcing myself to be gentle; I was taking the blame; I was practicing compassion; I was actively understanding, but I was empty, edgeless, skinned.  I was raw and I felt ill.  It occurred to me that because I was having a hard time digesting the past, I couldn't savor the moment.  Intellectually, I knew that life was too short to be wasted.
      In an effort to return to a more balanced self, I began seeking the help of Naturopaths and healers because though part of my problem was my body, the other part appeared to be rooted in my emotions.  I went to acupuncture and was silently ministered to twice a week for two months.  I read about tinctures and supplements. I wanted my strength back and somewhere in my research I happened upon the uses, both modern and ancient, of bitters.  Immediately I took notice because I was still trying to ward off my own emotional bitterness. That bitters are used medicinally struck me as funny at first and then later as profound.
       In my studying, I learned that bitters have long been used in folk medicine to aid in digestion. From everything I read, it appeared that bitter foods might be the remedy to my diminished appetite thereby solving some of the physical symptoms of my malady. I found that mustard greens, radicchio, wormwood, endive, arugula, dandelion greens, chamomile tea, calendula flower, licorice root--all of these were part of the ancient food-wisdom associated with digestion.
       I read that, now, because so many modern-day diets are deficient in bitter foods, these important plants are prescribed as potent tinctures to remedy what more or less can be described as pain in the gut.  Bitter tinctures ostensibly allow people to make use of the food traveling through the intestine, to absorb what is useful and be rid of the rest by increasing the production of bile in the stomach, healthy acids, necessary for digestion.
       I began to think of my former relationship as a heavy meal full of the wrong kinds of food from which I was now sick.  I thought of my desire for some form of sweetness to finish it off (a sure sign that something is missing), and the terrible lack of satisfaction I felt. I thought of my body's own wisdom when, all those months ago, it turned to bitterness as a way of digesting hard facts. And so, I  have come to believe, bitterness has it's important place in our emotional lives, and it applies to all loss: Bitterness is sometimes necessary to digest indigestible emotions. Bitterness gives one the space to move on, to swallow that unthinkable thing and begin the slow work of chewing on the hard facts of our losses.
       It appears that early people knew something of the matters of moving on, of passing through agony of the gut by tasting a little bit of bitterness. It  seems right to me that the natural, external world should parallel the internal, that to pass through what is causing your emotional gut to wring itself out, to knot, might be the small dose of bitterness that allows you to say, "He wasn't worth it"; or "He's dead to me"; or to allow yourself to laugh that sardonic, hard, little laugh, that this might allow you to create space between yourself, and the hurt.
      Since the loss of my pregnancies, I have revisited the notion of bitterness, of its danger and it's usefulness. I have spoken to other women who are waging a battle against their own bitterness, or are trying desperately to hide it, or are being chastised for it. It occurs to me again with a sort of clarity: emotions are like ecosystems, they are beautiful and balanced when they are most diverse so, of course bitterness has it's place. But, you can't be only bitter. Too much of anything is poisonous, it robs the body (or the ecosystem), of its fine balance, its complexity.
     Even sweetness, a life of pure pleasure can lull a person into a sort of over-feasted torpor, a half-sleep that knows nothing but the desire to continue feeding.  Similarly, bitterness alone for too long will corrupt one's view of the world--it's true. But, experienced in small doses (as bitters are taken medicinally) acknowledged as part of the process, I believe a little bit of bitter can help heal, or at least help begin the process by making the indigestible digestible so that you can once again savor the sweetness of the world.

The Important One

Five weeks after I lost my second baby a woman who is a "Channeler" (one who makes contact with spirits or "guides") by trade, asked me if I wanted her to check in with my guides about why I had lost the babies.  My immediate, internal reaction was no, but I said instead, "Okay, sure." I don't know why I agreed. I don't know if it was because I have been trained to be polite, or whether I believed that being "open" meant that I was strong. It was complicated by the fact that this woman is a relation of sorts to my family and perhaps that is why I felt compelled or obligated to allow her to speak with me.

That said,  I knew enough to be aware that the thread of security, of acceptance, I was holding onto regarding the loss of my babies was the fragile and yet magnificently formed belief that my losses were not personal--that babies are lost not because we deserve loss, or have done something wrong but because life is a momentum, it is the sea and not the waves we come to understand as the vast kinetic energy of life; the sea is one great moving body and not a composite of separate shorelines or breaking waves. I had accepted the fact that, as part of nature, I too was bound to laws of expansion and contraction, sudden profound growth, and unexplainable diminishment. I was consoled by the fact that there is no meaning but the meaning that we make of our lives. I found kinship in the world, my lost babies like waves, like weather, like small seasons, not catastrophes or mishaps but part of all that is mysterious, cyclical and unknowable.  I don't mind mystery.  I abhor reduction. As I said, the belief was crystalline, but fragile, as I was still so vulnerable, so deeply sad.  I knew better than to expose myself to someone else's meaning-making, but I betrayed my own intuition.

On the appointed morning, five weeks after the loss of my second pregnancy, three days after agreeing to talk to the channeler but having no notion of what to expect, I sat in my car on a rain-drenched street holding my cell phone to my ear. At the scheduled time I received her phone call. She asked me a few questions regarding motherhood and my feelings about it and then told me that she had already checked in with my guides. I should have stopped her right there but I didn't. I sat in silence as she proceeded to read me a report of their communication. 

As one might guess, the report held plenty of reasons for my unsuccessful births, including rather horrific actions in my past life as well as my current, subconscious inability to forgive myself for those actions.  The result, she told me, was a belief I held without knowing it, that I don't feel worthy of motherhood.

Into the silence, I started sobbing. 

I wanted desperately to get off the phone but couldn't speak. I wanted to say that I had betrayed myself by agreeing to this phone call, but all I could do was choke out broken answers to her continued prompting. I felt complicit to my own violation and this felt worse than almost anything she could say. Why had I agreed to this? What good did I think would come from this? I hadn't wondered why I couldn't have babies. 

She continued to tell me that I could be good again if I could forgive myself, if I told myself I was worthy of motherhood. She asked me if I could do this important work.  Instead of hanging up I choked out a ragged answer like, "Sure, what is life for anyway?" and she heard my sarcasm and was not convinced. She pushed me further.  "You understand about reincarnation? You must keep your heart open. This is your chance to do the work," she told me. 

Fine, I said, Fine. Paralyzed, I felt like a trapped child, my mind shutting down until I could be free of the conversation.  Finally, still unconvinced, she sighed"Call me if you have any questions, if you need any help." 

Driving home I howled. My knuckles whitened gripping the the steering wheel. Over and over I repeated no, no, no as my heart worked to shut out one person's story of my loss. I fired my hypothetical "guides," should they exist, for "speaking" with anyone but me. If there is information pertinent to my soul's journey, then I will accept it only if it is accessible to me directly. If it is not, I assume it is not for me--all of this began burning through the ruptured center of my mind--a wild blaze.

----------------------------------------------------------

Later that day I attended an already scheduled acupuncture appointment.  I walked into the office fierce and clear with indignation searing my insides with what felt like white heat. This was a new kind of clarity.  I would not longer allow others offer information to me about my life--and certainly not gurus. I was Athena, fierce, and certain.

My lovely, gentle acupuncturist listened. Hmmm. Nodded. Commiserated. I relaxed.

"You have a lot of aggressive energy around this. Let's see if we can release it." Trusting her, I agreed. She stuck what felt like 20 needles down my spine and left me to rest. 

When she returned to remove the needles, I did feel different. I felt washed out, empty, dull, bleak, miserable.

I left the office exhausted, stripped of everything: my clarity, my peace of mind, my anger and my story. But I wanted my anger, I thought, and now it's gone. My anger had arisen to protect me I realized, a temporary shield to separate me from the unwanted information, from the reasoning of meaning-makers but I could not reinvent it, reignite it however I beckoned.

The trauma of listening to this narrative was cataclysmic and, no longer protected by my own rage, it seeped in, gas-like, silent and invisible.  My trust and acceptance, the purity of my sadness, was lost in spite of my best efforts to shut out the details of what I had been told. The vault of my heart closed, the heavy doors shutting on their dark hinges and only silence followed.

I have been in quiet rebellion since then, against the notion of deserving.  I have anger at the idea that deserving has anything to do with bearing a child and yet the notion seems pervasive.  I don't believe the notion of deserving at all, nonetheless, it is hard to be surrounded by so many people who want to explain unexplainable events, who want to give meaning to loss or tragedy. It takes great skill to shut out these narratives and to choose one's own. This challenge alone has has silenced me for months.  I have wanted to protect myself from those who would attempt to explain me to myself or ask me for a reason for my losses (do you think you weren't ready?).

As the months passed I tested myself by wondering, Well, if her story was true, could I live with it? What do I think about redemption? Do I think the universe is a system of checks and balances? How do I feel about "healers" offering their services unsolicited? What good do stories from supposed past lives do? Isn't there enough material from this life? Don't many of us struggle with themes of deserving? 


And finally, Am I strong enough to withstand accusation, real or fictitious and practice fidelity toward myself? My answer, ultimately, was yes.

Isn't is strange that believing something isn't enough? We must act faithfully towards our beliefs, we must reflect on them, question them, alter and finally affirm them. Believing, in the best sense, is active not static. Believing is not a resting place but a practice in self-knowing and world-knowing.

Spring comes. My heart begins, like the plants, to unfurl its leaves to reveal foliage and blossom, to beckon the bees.  The hurt ebbs away.  I am not angry nor do I feel fragile anymore.  Winter is good for that; it provides the heart dormancy, lets it be nourished in the blind darkness.

I am not bitter at other people nor have I been. I love seeing pregnant women and children.  I no longer find it strange that every third woman I see is ripely endowed with a round belly or carrying a beautiful child, but I am bitter about human limitations, lack of compassion, need for meaning-making. Have not the great travesties of history taught us that heinous crimes are not exacted because the victims were deserving? Have not terrible tragedies occurred that have no meaning, no lesson, besides the lesson of endurance?

I want to walk into the achingly bright world with wonder.  I want to see myself among the living, part of a spectrum of experience, free of what if, because, or any other conditional phrase of deserving. There is freedom out there in not knowing, in not needing to know, just ask the trees, the mountains, the rivers.

I want other women to know that we can't afford to let other people dictate our stories, or interpret the text for us.  We are our own best narrators--these are our stories to tell. It is our own work to do.  If we want the clarity of someone else's perspective, fine, but we must seek it and seek it with care and discernment. Afterall, aren't we are our own best sources of wisdom, lonely as that might be?

It cannot matter what others believe to be the source of our losses or our maladies.  Rather, we must decide what to make of the circumstances of our lives, choose what we wish to learn, be our own gurus, and as Polonius in Hamlet said, "To thine own self be true."

Fermaldahyde

Today the high school science class across the hall from the room where I was substitute teaching was dissecting stillborn piglets; they were 8 inches long and had little arm buds.  I wanted to throw up.

Spring's Return

I haven't written for a long time because poetry escapes me. I still want a baby.  It's been a quiet winter. I read the book Ahab's Wife and dreamed of swimming with whales which felt like flying underwater. All winter, while I slept, I would join the whales, leave the world above to join the blue, quiet power of the deep water.

My sadness about the loss of my pregnancies was buried for so many months that when it did well up, it didn't even look like sadness, it looked like dissatisfaction with my life, like snarly, wolfish teeth-gnashing. I'd feel my body tightening, my mind stalking around to find something to criticize, then someone would say something really kind to me and I would just start crying. Every time it took me by surprise.

As spring unfolds, thrashes, and shines, as the days lengthen, I notice I am saying my baby's name to myself.  I don't think of her as a little angel hovering over me or even as a person--she wasn't but a possibility--still, I feel her as a familiarity within me. Sometimes, this familiarity and I are accompanied by my memories (my fondness?) for my dead grandmother. I'll say to her, "I miss you. I miss your tile floor and the smell of your cigarettes, the sight of cowbirds in the orange trees; I miss watering your petunias, the sound of the filter running and snaking in your swimming pool. I miss your scratchy handwriting, and your long face, your beautiful hands." I might pause. "Do you know about my lost babies?"

Before she passed, my grandmother told me that she talked with her own mother, gone two decades, daily. "We're as close as ever," she told me. To my grandmother, conversations with her own mother served as a kind of prayer.  I think my conversations with my lost-child-presence and my grandmother are the same.  Afterall, to whom would I pray? I don't know who my god is: god of light, god of seasons, god of births and deaths, god of chaos and destruction, god of renewal...but I know that it feels good to converse with the unseen and so I continue to do it often and softly.

Roses

Last night I dreamed that a woman, larger than me, more abundantly built with thick arms, a full waist and large breasts, was near an altar in a darkened church. She was preparing  a baptismal font for the christening of her baby. She was filling the font through a narrow slot just beneath the lip of the bowl which rested on a simple wooden pedestal. As the water poured in, it surrounded and lifted a "cake" of rose petals resting at the bowl's center. As the "cake" of pressed and fragrant scarlet petals lifted with the rising water it began to break apart, petals floating on the surface and within the water. I watched her as if from the shadows, as if from a tandem world, admiring her silent purpose.
        The water continued to rise, almost filling the ceramic bowl. As it neared the rim, an aged priest entered, informing the woman that she was filling the wrong font. The one she was filling was for lost, not living, babies. In that moment, a moment of slow horror, as the recognition of her error registered on her face, I realized that it was in this font that my lost babies had been washed out of the world.  I remembered them, small, brown and delicately formed.
        The woman, in terrible dismay, began sobbing, crying out that she had beckoned the wrong fates. I felt helpless to protect her from her fear that her child was now in danger. I felt a searing agony for her sudden sense of threat, arriving in a moment of such soft, quiet and careful beauty.