Late and Lucky

After a tragedy it is easy to focus laser beams of envy upon that parallel universe where the chromosomes divided neatly, the other car stopped for the red light, that blood vessel didn't burst. Everything over there is so normal and perfect and utterly different. For me the craziest thing about parallel universes is that the people in them there have NO IDEA what fresh hell they've missed. They live this miracle every moment after our catastrophes but for them, it's just hohum blah blah blah.

Today I can't help but thinking that in another universe, Parallel Big A didn't dawdle getting dressed, and we made it to the playground exactly when I'd intended -- which is really only 15 minutes earlier than we actually did. That would put Parallel Wabi & family directly under the 100-year-old pine tree when it did this:




To put it more precisely, that would put Parallel Big A & Little A on the swing set. The girls absolutely love those swings.



Or at least they did.



And so the weekend goes on as scheduled for lucky, late us. Only I'm more than happy to rate it as a miracle, if others are so inclined.

For Better and for Worse

When DH came home early from work Friday the kids were excited. But I knew what it probably meant and was leery. Sure enough, the company's latest project got canceled. In the tech industry, progression from canceled funding to job losses can happen within hours or days. That was the case this time -- sixty people given pink slips when the week before everything seemed like business as usual. The entire studio shuttered.

The friends, family and neighbors who know DH lost his job have all responded with sympathy and kindness. It's really lovely on one level. And on another ... misplaced.

"How are you doing?" they ask.

"Oh, we're pretty ok," I answer.

"No really, must be so worried! Such a terrible time to look for work," they persist.

I'm not deluded. This is not a good time to look for work. We are not doing cartwheels over the prospect of holidays on unemployment, three out of four family birthdays in the next two months on unemployment, or even just life in general on unemployment. We have two children, two goldfish, preexisting health conditions, and a house that is worth less today than what we paid for it six years ago. Oh, and we'd promised the kids we would all go to West Virginia to see the recently relocated cousins this Christmas ... I'm really not sure if that can happen now. Yep. Life without money SUCKS.

But still, I also feel a decided lack of worry.

Part of it is that I have faith in DH. He's good at what he does, and if there are jobs to be found, he'll discover them.

More of it has to do with this little moment between DH and I a year or two ago. It was at the end of a conversation about DH's angst over us not being able to save any money since we had kids and bought our house. DH really likes to sock it away for a rainy day. It makes him feel warm, fuzzy, and cocooned. My dwindling income, the collapse of our house equity, the deflation of our 401ks -- they all bug me. But they have haunted, taunted, demoralized DH in many ways I see, but cannot fully understand.

So that evening DH griped about his disappointments. Then he shrugged and said, "Of course I would have given everything we have -- all of it -- if it could have saved the baby." After that he turned off the TV, brought his empty glass to the kitchen, and went to bed.

That little shrug of his shoulders, my half nod back -- it was truer than our wedding vows 13 years ago. We have learned so many things that we didn't ever want to know since we got married. But what we learned also allows me to pick how I'm going to deal with issues that are not life and death.

Right now I choose to be fearless.

Playdate Reject! (That would be me, not the kids ...)

Hello, my name is Wabi, and I am a playdate reject.

I HATE playdates. I've always been shy and reserved -- not completely antisocial, but sort of sub social. Wall flowerish. Mind you, I volunteer for projects at my kids' schools and in the community. I am quick with a wave and a smile if I see someone everyday. And if you lean up against the wall with me, you might just enjoy some of my jokes and snark. Our kids might also like meeting up on the playground to knock heads on the jungle gym while we chat it up on the bench nearby. Maybe.

But for a sub social like me, setting up those playdates and breaking the ice with parents I don't know is awful. Watching me is pornography for anyone who gets off on social awkwardness. I wonder what the other mom thinks about my kid/mothering style/appearance/house/professional status/etc. There is a voice in my head that narrates in much the same tone of voice my father used when teaching me to drive:

That's a cool bracelet she has ... Say something nice about her bracelet. Say it now... SAY IT SAY IT SAY IT! Ok, so why did you tell her the bracelet reminded you of something you made back eighth grade art class? Now she probably thinks you're comparing her jewelry to pipe cleaners and bottle caps -- not exactly a compliment. Go on, what are you waiting for? Say something else to change the subject. Say anything, it doesn't matter wha -- OH JESUS, DID YOU REALLY JUST TELL THAT JOKE?

Yeah, add kids and juice boxes, and that sums up my entire experience with most first playdates.

In the preschool years, it seemed a little bit easier. I would get to know other moms slowly in the parking lots next to nursery school or daycare. After awhile going to the playground together would just naturally occur. The kids and I didn't click with everyone we met up with, yet somehow we ended up with a handful of friendly families we socialized with regularly.

But now that Big A is in kindergarten, it's back to square one on the social front. It's like I'm having junior high lunchroom flashbacks. (When all my friends got assigned to a different lunch period than me and I didn't know who to sit with ...) Ack. I still cringe at the thought.

Who knew that starting kindergarten could be so challenging ... not for the kid, but for the 38-year-old woman hanging onto her student's hand?

Kindergarten!

Last night we picked out Big A's first-day-of-school outfit, packed the lunch, and shined her shoes. After the girls were in bed DH and I popped open a bottle of bubbly and clinked glasses.

"We made it to kindergarten," I said, "We did it!"

"And now she's the state's problem," DH concluded with much contentment.

Can we take a moment to give it up for public school? After struggling for five years with daycare and preschool payments on top of house payments and medical bills and the usual daily-life costs, the start of kindergarten is SUCH a financial reprieve. We are giddy at the thought of actually putting money in a college account, or upgrading our seven-year-old computer. Yippee!

As for Big A, she did really well this morning. She looked forward to seeing the class pet lizard that she met at the school open house last week. Also, she wanted to see that blond girl she made insta-friends with at the open house ... Corinne or Carly or Charlie -- we need to get her name straightened out.

Big A did want to hold my hand while waiting for the bell to ring. But that was it, in terms of angst. The bell rang, the teacher led the line of new students into the school, and Big A marched along. She gave one wave, and didn't look back after that. I was so proud of her bravery. Honestly, I don't know where she gets that. When I have to so much as change dry cleaners, I'm a mess.

Unfortunately, poor Little A was horrified to learn that she was not allowed to go to school with her sister. (Even though we'd told her this 400 times.) She cried and waved frantically as Big A walked into the school. I kept telling her we'd see Big A again at 3 o'clock, but toddlers, they can't tell time. I might as well have said we'd see her next year.

Speaking of which, it's time to walk to school to pick my kid up. I can't wait!

End of Summer

I've had a great summer full of camping trips and fun outings with the kids. But now even though we have a lot of August left, it feels like autumn is very much here already. It's funny how things putter along in a stable pattern for awhile, and then changes come rapidly, like a flock of birds landing or a row of dominoes falling. For instance:

• This week SIL, her husband, and the nieces left Sonoma and moved to West Virginia. Now our nearest family is located three time zones away. (Sigh.)
• We bought our first family pet: goldfish!
  
• Somehow, we managed to break Little A of her pacifier habit this month.
  
• Little A now wants to wear big-girl "unner pans," so potty training has finally begun.
  
• Today is Big A's last day as a student at the preschool she's attended for years.
  
• In a week Big A starts kindergarten at the nieghborhood elementary school and Little A begins preschool at the same place Big A used to attend.

Changes major and minor. But even the minor ones, like the addition of the fish and the ditching of the pacifiers, impact how we arrange our days. In a few more months we'll have a different sort of normal because of all that happened this past month. And what was a normal day in July will not come this way again.

I would have been teary-eyed saying goodbye when SIL and her kids left no matter what. The entire fifteen years I've lived in California we've managed to live nearby each other. We've gone through our twenties, thirties, earthquakes, weddings, deaths, and births together. Basically, during that time span I went from being a bad ass to just having one. And our relationship deepened a lot with the addition of the kids. So some tears were in order, no matter what.

But watching the agony of Big A as their car pulled away made me completely lose my shit. She ran down the street waving her lanky arms like a castaway left on shore by the rescue boat. When she reached the corner I had to call her back.

"I don't want them to go!" She said as we trudged up the steps into our house.

"Me either," I admitted. "But remember, we're visiting this Christmas. We'll get to explore their new town. That's going to be so much fun!" It would have been more convincing to say this while not crying myself. But it was the best I could do under the circumstances.

"But they'll miss my BIRTHDAY and Halloween and Thanksgiving!" Big A cried. "Christmas is too far away."

"I know this is hard, baby. But we'll get used to it. It's going to be okay."

"I sad, mommy," piped up a bewildered Little A. "I so sad. They. Gone. Way."

...................................

I'd like to think that deadbaby grief has made me better at saying goodbye and letting go than I used to be. At least the nuts and bolts of the process are very familiar. When Big A tells me she wants to move, I certainly understand what she is feeling. Being left behind is hard. The surface sameness of life is such a sham. Old routines are hollow. Of course Big A wants to move and try something new, if only so that the outside of life matches the inside.

"If we did move, what kind of house would you want to live in next?" I ask Big A. She describes a tall Victorian mansion -- pink, naturally. One with a nice big climbing tree in the yard.

"That sounds pretty nice," I say, meaning it more than I want to.

Fourth of July

What a difference ten degrees makes! Our annual watching of the Sonoma Fourth of July Parade with DH's sister and the nieces usually involves gallons of water, searching for shade, and triple-digit heat. But this year morning fog and afternoon breezes kept the heat down to the high eighties. As a result we lingered on the square for a long time after the parade ended. Everyone had fun, and for once, nobody seemed in danger of heat stroke. Awesome.

My childhood in Upstate NY during the 1970s and 1980s is often unrecognizable to the childhood my kids experience today in the San Francisco Bay Area: economically, socially, geographically different. But Fourth of July in Sonoma always reminds me of the very best part of when I was a kid -- summer weekends spent with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Parades, family, picnics, and fireworks ...what could be better?

Going into the event I was extra nostalgic this year, because big things are changing. SIL, her husband, and the nieces will leave California for a new job and life on the East Coast by the end of August. DH and I knew that business issues made their moving away a possibility, yet when it went from theoretical to reality, we still felt shocked and heartbroken. SIL and her kids are the only relatives living within three thousand miles of us. We spend every holiday with them, plus lots of other random, hanging-out days. The A-team and the nieces adore each other.

I decided to wait a few more weeks before telling the kids about the move. It's a delicate balance. Tell them too soon, and Big A will spend months dwelling and probably not enjoy the time we have left with the nieces. But if I wait too long to tell the girls, then Big A might feel like she didn't have proper time to get used to the idea before it happens.

Sigh. All I can say is THANK GOD for skype. That should at least soften the transition.

But even with the aura of change that settled over the holiday, in the end all the adults involved managed to set aside the looming sense of finality and just have a great time. As an in-your-head sort of person, I am not exactly a party animal. But there was a nice mix of people at the party this year, plus a lot of good wine, so even I managed to be in the moment.

Walking back from the fireworks this year I struggled under the weight of my "baby" Little A. It made me realize how memory plays tricks. Here I'd been thinking that all those July 4ths in Sonoma were the same, and that this was an abrupt and startling end of it. Yet each year spent up there was a whole different world -- both for us, and for SIL and her husband. There were pregnancies, some of which resulted in live babies, and some of which did not. And there were so many job changes and transitions for all the adults. The parade might have seemed the same, but other than that, each July 4th up there was totally different, in terms of the world we were all grappling with at those moments in time.

And so by the end of the weekend I'd managed to stamp out the sour sort of nostalgia I'd started with, and I just felt satisfied and glad. We really squeezed every last bit of juicy fun out of that tradition of going up to Sonoma. Everyone involved is always going to remember those years as special. And now we get to try to dream up a new tradition for next year. That's luck. That's really good luck.

I Am the One ( In 1 out of 5 ...)

The other day I had a project transition meeting with an editor whom I'd filled in for while she was on maternity leave. At the very end of our meeting I said, "Congratulations on your new little one. I hope everyone is well."

To which the woman happily chirped, "Oh thanks! I had some health problems but I'm better now. And we were also worried throughout the pregnancy because my daughter had a 1 in 5 chance of d0w.n syndr0me, and scans kept showing fluid around her heart. But she turned out just fine too!"

Clutching my lukewarm cup of tea, I fought the urge to blurt "What a coincidence! One of my babies also had 1 in 5 odds for a trisomy, plus anomalies on scans. Except my daughter was NOT fine!"

I realize this woman didn't do anything wrong. Yet the exchange unexpectedly rubbed me entirely wrong.

Part of my bitterness owes to the keen loneliness on being the isolated "one" in the 1-in-five risk stats we both received. Her kid ended up in the 4 out of 5 who are OK, while mine did not. And therefore her pregnancy experience is now fit for corporate meeting banter, while mine will never be. It's one of the smaller injustices that comes with this sort of loss, but nonetheless it still hurts to not be able to discuss what happened openly, in almost any normal circumstance.

But it's more than that. Ever since the Tiller murder I am extra sensitive to the formulaic story that showcases a pregnant woman who is scared to death by possible problems brought up by a screening test, only to go on to have a perfect baby in the end. This story raises my hackles for several reasons.

First, the story always leaves out that it was a screening test, rather than a diagnostic test such as amnio or CVS, that caused the scare. The general public has the impression that all pregnancy testing is very inaccurate precisely because nobody clarifies what test they are talking about.

Though I hasten to add that "inaccurate" is also misunderstood when it comes to the tests. Most people don't understand how pregnancy screenings work. A screen won't diagnose a specific baby's problems. It only states the risk of a baby having a problem based on the outcome of other babies who had similar fetal measurements, maternal serum levels, etc. By design, a screening test casts a wide net for potential problems. You actually want to have some women in there who end up with healthy babies when you design the parameters. Why? Because a terrible screening test is NOT one that warns women carrying healthy babies that there might be a problem. No, a crappy screen is one that miscasts unhealthy pregnancies as fine. Our current screens have an extremely low rate of missing sick babies. So for what info they are designed to give, screens function very well. Yet all we ever hear from people is how inaccurate they are!

Another beef I have with stories of pregnancy testing scares is the tone in which they are relayed. There is usually a lot of resentment and hostility for being made to worry when all was actually fine.

My issue with the hostility is that these women actually chose to take the path of long-term worry, if they didn't bother to get a CVS or amnio to further clarify their screening test results. CVS and amnio, unlike screening tests, diagnose problems. And they have a 99.4-100 percent accuracy rate. So when it comes to a trisomy, there won't be any wondering either way once you get those results.

Yes, amnios and CVS are invasive and carry risks of their own. The average loss rate for amnio in the U.S. was recalculated by a recent UCSF study to be something like 1 in 1200. But if you have a 1 in 5 shot at a baby with a trisomy, the chance of a real problem is vastly greater than your chance of hurting the baby -- healthy or otherwise-- with the invasive test.

Bottom line: If you are going to wait and wonder after receiving poor screening results, don't hold a grudge against the screening test for this predicament. Your "needless worry" is the direct result of your choice to get a screen but not follow up with a diagnostic.

Thankfully most people are not the "one" in the 1-out-of-whatever risk assessment they receive, so even if they don't fathom what their particular stats mean, it still works out OK for them in the end. But misunderstandings about screening tests are so pervasive that I think they do a great disservice to people like me, who researched and soul-searched and ultimately ended up on the lonely side of the 1 in 5 statistic despite everything I did.

When most folks think that all pregnancy tests are equal and equally faulty, it is only a short leap to treat women who go through medical termination with disdain. Because if you believe the tests are wrong, it is easy to decide women who end pregnancies for medical reasons must be lazy, selfish, or just unwilling to take a leap of faith that would probably be rewarded with a healthy baby in the end. It is easy to scorn, and scorn at its root is just a few steps away from hate.

A long ways down that hateful, ignorant road, are the bloody steps of Dr. Tiller's church -- a long ways down, but still, the very same road.