Micheal and I are driving to the grocery store listening to 107.5 f.m., the pop station that plays one song for every ten minutes of music. Though it makes me feel like an old woman to admit it, the vast majority of the songs aren't what I would call "catchy"--Where's the music? I often complain. I can't make out the lyrics either which reminds me of my own mother whose gripes against the Top 40 Countdown would be endured every Sunday as we drove to church.
I agree with Micheal that at least Lady Gaga's songs are catchy. "Oh, turn it up," he reaches forward to do it himself. "This is my mom and Ryan's song." The August wind is rolling in through our open windows and Rosa Parks is almost clear of cars. It's early in the morning, a day barely formed and Micheal and I are making up the day as we go.
"What kind of music will your baby listen to?" Micheal asks. At just 11 weeks pregnant, I am barely beginning to show. I have gained 2 pounds, but this time around, my stomach began to bulge earlier and Micheal, with his astute observations doesn't miss a thing. He's known for 2 weeks now.
Yesterday he asked what food my baby will grow up eating, if like me, the baby would be mostly vegetarian, with occasional exceptions for meat, or if the baby would be like he and his dad, "omnivores". I don't know, I'd replied, but whatever the baby grows up to be, I hope it eats a lot of vegetables. At that Micheal had rolled his eyes and smiled as if to say, 'of course you do.'
I consider his question for a moment. "Well, Where did you start listening to pop music?" Micheal shrugs, "School, my mom."
"I'll tell you, the person who will probably have the greatest musical influence on any brother or sister of yours, is you."
He considers for a moment the possibility, nods, looks out the window and smiles.
"Then it's probably going to like Lady Gaga a lot."
"I think you're right."
He turns up the next song and begins humming to it. "Do I know this one?" I ask, to which I get a smile and an eye roll.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Loss and it's Aggregate Forces
Less than a month ago, when I told my aunt about my pregnancy, she looked at me, moved, and said it was a miracle. "Maybe so," I agreed, "but a common one." I regretted my response almost immediately. In that moment, I forgot, briefly, the long ordeal of her efforts to get pregnant.
For weeks, I thought of sending her a note, saying that she was right, common miracle though it is, conception to birth is a pretty miraculous process. Then, without warning, I lost the baby. Now I keep thinking of that statement. Of course she was right--to bring a child into the world is nothing short of miraculous. Pregnancy is a beautiful crap-shoot.
My response to my aunt caused me to wonder why I had been so hesitant to celebrate, openly, my joy about this pregnancy. Why, when people congratulated me, did I feel resistant to accepting the warm sentiment? When asked if I was excited I said, instead, that I was happy.
I was shy to say to anyone that suddenly, in spite of years of saying I would never have children, that I wanted this child. I imagined that I could protect my desire if I didn't speak too loudly about it. Privately, I was pulled, drawn, as if following a strong current of longing toward the possibility of motherhood.
Losing the baby was something I knew was possible, I just doubted the likelihood of miscarriage given my steady and growing certainty that this child had chosen me--planted itself firmly inside of me. I imagined she knew me already.
On a Thursday, two days shy of week 17, I went in for an ultrasound and saw for myself, once again, that she was perfect, her little heart thumped along steadily; she seemed gifted at living. Before dawn on Friday, I woke to a sudden flood. My sheets were soaked. My water had broken. The baby, though still alive, could not live.
I was given an ugly choice. I could wait for her to die and be expelled from my body. I could induce labor and birth this child with her soft, filmy, unformed lungs, and watch her die, or I could have her body scraped out of me by way of dilation and extraction.
As the nurse outlined the bleak options for my growing child, the bright white of the room pulsed. The air was sucked out of the space, fluid continued to soak the waxy paper beneath me. Recognizing my lack of comprehension the nurse said, "I'm sorry, there are no good options here. This is only tragic. I am so sorry."
It happened quickly--a future born and eclipsed. Two weeks pass; each day shedding the skin of the previous until my body begins returning to its pre-pregnancy state. I prepare to go back to work. I am left with the the new knowledge that miscarriage is common--as common as 1 in 4 pregnancies. The stories of these losses are spoken softly among women and nearly everyone has a story, a sister or a mother, a grandmother, or a friend.
To be among the living requires a kamikaze spirit, a do or die willingness to muck through the thick stew of beauty and agony. I haven't always been sure that it was the thing for me. Like so much phenomena, the white heat of stars, the synchronized flight of starlings, pregnancy is common as well as miraculous--cells joining, hemispheres separating, fingers flexing, the first movement, the growth of fine hairs, the opening of eyes. And perhaps miscarriage then, is part of life's natural revisioning process, possibility arisen and quelled, reminding us of the constant expansion and contraction of everything of which we are a part, every day, on and on defining for us, on some level, the notion of the Miraculous.
For weeks, I thought of sending her a note, saying that she was right, common miracle though it is, conception to birth is a pretty miraculous process. Then, without warning, I lost the baby. Now I keep thinking of that statement. Of course she was right--to bring a child into the world is nothing short of miraculous. Pregnancy is a beautiful crap-shoot.
My response to my aunt caused me to wonder why I had been so hesitant to celebrate, openly, my joy about this pregnancy. Why, when people congratulated me, did I feel resistant to accepting the warm sentiment? When asked if I was excited I said, instead, that I was happy.
I was shy to say to anyone that suddenly, in spite of years of saying I would never have children, that I wanted this child. I imagined that I could protect my desire if I didn't speak too loudly about it. Privately, I was pulled, drawn, as if following a strong current of longing toward the possibility of motherhood.
Losing the baby was something I knew was possible, I just doubted the likelihood of miscarriage given my steady and growing certainty that this child had chosen me--planted itself firmly inside of me. I imagined she knew me already.
On a Thursday, two days shy of week 17, I went in for an ultrasound and saw for myself, once again, that she was perfect, her little heart thumped along steadily; she seemed gifted at living. Before dawn on Friday, I woke to a sudden flood. My sheets were soaked. My water had broken. The baby, though still alive, could not live.
I was given an ugly choice. I could wait for her to die and be expelled from my body. I could induce labor and birth this child with her soft, filmy, unformed lungs, and watch her die, or I could have her body scraped out of me by way of dilation and extraction.
As the nurse outlined the bleak options for my growing child, the bright white of the room pulsed. The air was sucked out of the space, fluid continued to soak the waxy paper beneath me. Recognizing my lack of comprehension the nurse said, "I'm sorry, there are no good options here. This is only tragic. I am so sorry."
It happened quickly--a future born and eclipsed. Two weeks pass; each day shedding the skin of the previous until my body begins returning to its pre-pregnancy state. I prepare to go back to work. I am left with the the new knowledge that miscarriage is common--as common as 1 in 4 pregnancies. The stories of these losses are spoken softly among women and nearly everyone has a story, a sister or a mother, a grandmother, or a friend.
To be among the living requires a kamikaze spirit, a do or die willingness to muck through the thick stew of beauty and agony. I haven't always been sure that it was the thing for me. Like so much phenomena, the white heat of stars, the synchronized flight of starlings, pregnancy is common as well as miraculous--cells joining, hemispheres separating, fingers flexing, the first movement, the growth of fine hairs, the opening of eyes. And perhaps miscarriage then, is part of life's natural revisioning process, possibility arisen and quelled, reminding us of the constant expansion and contraction of everything of which we are a part, every day, on and on defining for us, on some level, the notion of the Miraculous.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Love's Simple Hierarchy
Two years ago, summer :
Micheal and I are outside drawing an illustrative story. He is seven years old. He likes to narrate the story and suggest things for me to draw. I am stretched out in the sun, laying in the grass with a piece of smooth plywood beneath the scroll of paper. There are colored pens scattered in the grass. Micheal has climbed on top of me, like a cat or a cub, and is stretched out the length of my body, his feet just past my knees and his head over my shoulder watching as I work away at fulfilling his directions, elbows on the plywood, squinting in the bright June light. We are just two months from the date of my wedding to his dad.
"How old are you?" he asks me. "Thirty-two," I tell him. "No you're not," he insists, knowing full well my age and that my answer is truthful. "You're older than my mom." Still drawing, I tell him that his mom is thirty-six. "Nope," he insists. His toes curl into the backs of my knees, flex and stretch out again. "No," he says again, firmly, head hooked over my right shoulder, our shadows making us a two-headed monster. "You are older because I want you to die first, then Ryan (his mother's boyfriend), then my dad and THEN my mom."
It strikes me as funny, because I can't remember anyone ever telling me they want me to die. I smile but squint even harder at the bright spots the sun is making on the paper in order not to laugh. So this is step-parenting, I think, death wishes as a pronouncement of inclusion into the tribe.
"That makes sense," I pause, "to want your parents around you for the longest and no matter what."
Satisfied, he sighs, having told me something of the terms of his love.
Micheal and I are outside drawing an illustrative story. He is seven years old. He likes to narrate the story and suggest things for me to draw. I am stretched out in the sun, laying in the grass with a piece of smooth plywood beneath the scroll of paper. There are colored pens scattered in the grass. Micheal has climbed on top of me, like a cat or a cub, and is stretched out the length of my body, his feet just past my knees and his head over my shoulder watching as I work away at fulfilling his directions, elbows on the plywood, squinting in the bright June light. We are just two months from the date of my wedding to his dad.
"How old are you?" he asks me. "Thirty-two," I tell him. "No you're not," he insists, knowing full well my age and that my answer is truthful. "You're older than my mom." Still drawing, I tell him that his mom is thirty-six. "Nope," he insists. His toes curl into the backs of my knees, flex and stretch out again. "No," he says again, firmly, head hooked over my right shoulder, our shadows making us a two-headed monster. "You are older because I want you to die first, then Ryan (his mother's boyfriend), then my dad and THEN my mom."
It strikes me as funny, because I can't remember anyone ever telling me they want me to die. I smile but squint even harder at the bright spots the sun is making on the paper in order not to laugh. So this is step-parenting, I think, death wishes as a pronouncement of inclusion into the tribe.
"That makes sense," I pause, "to want your parents around you for the longest and no matter what."
Satisfied, he sighs, having told me something of the terms of his love.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
What the Japanese Know
Someone told me that in Japan there are gardens, little sanctuaries dedicated to lost babies. I want to find one. I like the idea of a place where Magnolias bloom in late winter casting shadows over magnificently raked gravel, where water pools and moss softens the edges of white stone. I like to picture delicate plum blossoms, a symbol for courage to the Japanese, fondly testing the morning air, bravely offering their petals year after year to the new season.
For women like me, there are no such gardens that I know of. No place to visit the memory of an almost-person, a baby that is more cloud-shape than human, to whisper to a never-born child, sing to it, look for it.
Portland winters are sometimes grey as a tarpauline, the city covered over by cloud; we live in a house of mist for months. This is hard for me, and harder still this year. After Christmas, when my family left for their homes in southern Oregon, Der and I left too. Someone had suggested we go to Hawaii to escape sadness of losing a baby, many even offered to help us "get away." But there were financial matters to think of; there was work to be done. So we took our memory of the baby into the field of gray. We drove through the still, ashen-colored buildings of Portland, the rain-sodden trees, out past St. John's bridge, the Linton Feed store, Sauvie Island, farther and farther until the landscape was unknown to me, until the damp world slid by in a monochrome wash.
Our destination was Astoria, and the Cannery Hotel. We spent three days looking at the bridges, watching the tide shudder and swell, the birds become indistinct from the waves and then burst forth flying. On the last day we drove over a bridge spanning the wide Columbia. The sky was rubbed charcoal, with flirtations of blue streaking through. We drove out to Cape Disappointment, the false end to the journey of the Lewis and Clarke expedition, and did not even discuss the irony of the name.
We reached the terrifying mouth of the river and the dark stones that protect the slim shore from its massive force. We climbed out of our car and over the cold basalt slabs, stood on the slick boulders that compose the levy and were made mute by the pounding waves and the raking wind. Our jackets flapped and billowed; my eyes teared. Bits of rain needled my face. My hair tore around my head reckless and electric. The water sucked and roiled with such great, thundering force that I could feel the raging pulse of it rising up in the dark slots of my bones. I could hear the rocks as if they were moving or echoing or rolling. It was a sound the color of basalt, an impassive gray, a simple mineral cry.
We stood there for no more than five minutes looking at the wild, thrashing water. Our instinct to retreat was too strong. Without a word, we climbed, slipping, back over the dark, hulking boulders, crossed the dun-colored sand threaded with sedges, back to the safety of our car. It was no Japanese garden, but it was something--the shuddering pulse of the harsh, cold mouth of the Columbia, the battered landscape twisting and shoveling unthinkable tons of water, not thoughtful, just massive heaving and thundering with a terrifying, awful momentum. It gripped me, that force, challenged my specialness, delivered me to myself.
In the car, blood started to return to my face and hands, to my ears. The blueing sky dilated and showed through briefly. The trees stood still, unmoved, cantankerous and grey, protected from the wind and waves by the height of the levy. Der kissed my hand with his cold lips and we left without ceremony.
For women like me, there are no such gardens that I know of. No place to visit the memory of an almost-person, a baby that is more cloud-shape than human, to whisper to a never-born child, sing to it, look for it.
Portland winters are sometimes grey as a tarpauline, the city covered over by cloud; we live in a house of mist for months. This is hard for me, and harder still this year. After Christmas, when my family left for their homes in southern Oregon, Der and I left too. Someone had suggested we go to Hawaii to escape sadness of losing a baby, many even offered to help us "get away." But there were financial matters to think of; there was work to be done. So we took our memory of the baby into the field of gray. We drove through the still, ashen-colored buildings of Portland, the rain-sodden trees, out past St. John's bridge, the Linton Feed store, Sauvie Island, farther and farther until the landscape was unknown to me, until the damp world slid by in a monochrome wash.
Our destination was Astoria, and the Cannery Hotel. We spent three days looking at the bridges, watching the tide shudder and swell, the birds become indistinct from the waves and then burst forth flying. On the last day we drove over a bridge spanning the wide Columbia. The sky was rubbed charcoal, with flirtations of blue streaking through. We drove out to Cape Disappointment, the false end to the journey of the Lewis and Clarke expedition, and did not even discuss the irony of the name.
We reached the terrifying mouth of the river and the dark stones that protect the slim shore from its massive force. We climbed out of our car and over the cold basalt slabs, stood on the slick boulders that compose the levy and were made mute by the pounding waves and the raking wind. Our jackets flapped and billowed; my eyes teared. Bits of rain needled my face. My hair tore around my head reckless and electric. The water sucked and roiled with such great, thundering force that I could feel the raging pulse of it rising up in the dark slots of my bones. I could hear the rocks as if they were moving or echoing or rolling. It was a sound the color of basalt, an impassive gray, a simple mineral cry.
We stood there for no more than five minutes looking at the wild, thrashing water. Our instinct to retreat was too strong. Without a word, we climbed, slipping, back over the dark, hulking boulders, crossed the dun-colored sand threaded with sedges, back to the safety of our car. It was no Japanese garden, but it was something--the shuddering pulse of the harsh, cold mouth of the Columbia, the battered landscape twisting and shoveling unthinkable tons of water, not thoughtful, just massive heaving and thundering with a terrifying, awful momentum. It gripped me, that force, challenged my specialness, delivered me to myself.
In the car, blood started to return to my face and hands, to my ears. The blueing sky dilated and showed through briefly. The trees stood still, unmoved, cantankerous and grey, protected from the wind and waves by the height of the levy. Der kissed my hand with his cold lips and we left without ceremony.
The Memory of a Peach
Think of peaches
Think of nectarines.
Winter's bare branches are a stiff denial, but fruit--
think of that dream color,
a happy detour
into the possible, how now
the summer seems improbable
and geese
are always heading North.
Buildings in the city ruminate
and decay while
the memory
of summer haunts and tempts,
toys with the imagination
like a dream.
Think of nectarines.
Winter's bare branches are a stiff denial, but fruit--
think of that dream color,
a happy detour
into the possible, how now
the summer seems improbable
and geese
are always heading North.
Buildings in the city ruminate
and decay while
the memory
of summer haunts and tempts,
toys with the imagination
like a dream.
Boats in Water
The longer I live, the more alive I feel, partly because of what is gained, but mostly because of what is lost. Every time I lose something, a new layer of the human experience is revealed to me, a new layer if myself. I've learned that nothing is tidy and I've come to think of life as a sweet and awful mess, a gorgeous, horrifying mess, in which survival means, at the very least, endurance, at most, epiphany, maybe revelation, perhaps even beauty.
I don't know whether children are born with joy, pure and unbroken, then are set to sea, and if life is a series of storms that batter each human boat until it forgets its native shore, loses all sense of direction and must set course for some entirely new destination, or if we are lost to begin with and encounter myriad opportunities to restore our commitment, to refine our internal compass, to see ourselves made and remade by events that my either capsize us or bring us, in the end, safely home.
At 35-years-old I find, to my shock and amusement, that I am fine. It's strange to accept the simple fact that a single, unalterable loss does not capsize me.
I don't know whether children are born with joy, pure and unbroken, then are set to sea, and if life is a series of storms that batter each human boat until it forgets its native shore, loses all sense of direction and must set course for some entirely new destination, or if we are lost to begin with and encounter myriad opportunities to restore our commitment, to refine our internal compass, to see ourselves made and remade by events that my either capsize us or bring us, in the end, safely home.
At 35-years-old I find, to my shock and amusement, that I am fine. It's strange to accept the simple fact that a single, unalterable loss does not capsize me.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Pen Pals
"My pen pal asked me how far along you are."
Micheal scribbles on a sheet of paper at the dining room table. His thick hair obscures his eyes but I can see his lips pressed into a thin line, concentrating.
"Was that hard?" I ask him.
He shrugs and shakes his head, no.
"Her mom is 14 weeks."
The space between us elongates. I look at him as if down a corridor as it stretches into a tunnel and warps.
I don't say anything for a moment.
"I think we'll try again," I say to him, to myself, to the space between us.
"Like when? You'd better do it soon. Don't ladies stop being able to have babies when they're like 50?"
"Maybe tomorrow. Maybe we'll start trying tomorrow."
He looks at me then, rests his pen, smiles finally.
"That'd be good. Almost everyone I know has a brother or a sister."
"Was that hard?" I ask him.
He shrugs and shakes his head, no.
"Her mom is 14 weeks."
The space between us elongates. I look at him as if down a corridor as it stretches into a tunnel and warps.
I don't say anything for a moment.
"I think we'll try again," I say to him, to myself, to the space between us.
"Like when? You'd better do it soon. Don't ladies stop being able to have babies when they're like 50?"
"Maybe tomorrow. Maybe we'll start trying tomorrow."
He looks at me then, rests his pen, smiles finally.
"That'd be good. Almost everyone I know has a brother or a sister."
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