Wabi-Sabi Life

Using the Broken Pieces

2010-05-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

One of the side benefits of the adults not doing much paid work around Casa Wabi is that we have all sorts of time to volunteer in the neighborhood. When we heard about a project to create a mosaic mural outside Big A's elementary school, we figured what the heck, we'd give it a try. Free, unskilled labor available! We came home that first day sunburned and smeared in thin set. We were both hooked.

Mosaic is like knitting, only sharper and dirtier. But both are addictive -- containing little, repetitive movements that get your brain humming in a pleasing rhythm where you lose track of time. And when you break that rhythm and step away, you get a pleasing second kick -- a look at that pattern writ large, whether it be in the form of a sock, or with mosaics, the bigger images popping out of the chaos of different shapes and colors.

Back home after volunteering, D. mentioned we had several large boxes of tile sitting in the garage. That's what he said, but what I immediately thought was: Tile I bought on sale during our kitchen renovation that ended up not being quite right. Tile I felt guilty about every time I came across the boxes, since it represented mistakes and waste. Tile I meant to donate to a local house-building charity, but never did.

Then D. pointed at the large concrete wall in the backyard -- something we've also meant to spruce up for years. And it all came together suddenly -- for the cost of a bag of thin set and a handful of other materials, we could mosaic the wall. It's a big wall and will take time. But we can do it together. We can take out the regret and turn it into something else. No perfection required, since mosaic is all about using the broken pieces.

Let's just say that process is pleasure and hope to a person like me, who can only sidle up to things like hope, making squinty glances at it from the corner of my eye.

This is what we've done so far:

Times that Walk from You

2010-04-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

There is something particularly MIDLIFE about realizing the newest music on your Ipod was discovered by you more than five years ago. Sure, things caught your ear since that last download -- a song on a television show, in the bumper of a radio program. But you were squashed flat then, not energetic or curious enough to accept the invitation. You didn't go searching. The chances passed away along with the days and no new music there to mark them.

Live long enough and we all have times like this. Yet now I find myself awake again, in an unusually wet Northern California spring when I just turned thirty nine. I download new music and listen while I run along the bike path next to Big A, who just got the training wheels taken off her bike. My knees ache as she pedals. I'm not fast or particularly in shape. But it still feels really good to get out there and be aware of every step. I feel awake.

The world remains full of car accidents and hurtling asteroids. My house still sits on the left side of the Hayward Fault. Inside the house newer cracks menace: My father in law has been seriously ill and my husband and his family haven't dealt well. D., my husband, lost his job, found another, and then lost that one -- all within a span of six months. My freelance work dried up at the same time. Not that my freelance work, even when gangbusters, would ever approach covering our mortgage payment.

I chose not to be scared during the first bout of D.'s joblessness, but now that's hard to swing. The severance package is eaten fast by regular expenses. Worse, my husband fell apart -- depressed, anxious, not sleeping. Lashing out at me during his father's illness. Vacillating between panic about our inevitable financial doom and announcements that now would be a great time to blow thousands of dollars on impromptu, extravagant vacations. Turns out D. secretly went off his meds at the worst possible time. Now he's medicated again, but damage has been done.

Honestly, I don't know what comes next. Do we lose the house? Leave California? Is our marriage destined for the ditch? I can't tell. I do not know. I cannot scrounge a magic coin to throw into the wishing well.

But there's the music, all that new music. From the Ipod and also preschool. Songs of longing, loss and loving. Stories of lady bugs and Easter Sunday. We sang these songs and dug a new garden for vegetables and flowers. The girls are screaming, whirling, laughing. And I'm relearning how to join in.

One of Those Conversations She'll Deny Later On

2009-11-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

Scene: Casa Wabi, 6:50 a.m., the master bathroom. Wabi is brushing her teeth when Big A knocks and then immediately lets herself in without waiting for a response.

Wabi: "Morning. What's up?"

Big A: "I gotta pee!"

Wabi: Is the other bathroom occupied?

Big A (baffled): "No. Why?"

Wabi turns up the radio to avoid hearing ... sounds not emanating from the radio. She returns to brushing.

Big A: "Mommy, look at my poop!"

Wabi: "Uh. I'd really rather not."

Big A: "But you can see CARROTS in it! Carrots we ate last night!" She does a little happy dance while still sitting on the toilet.

Wabi: "Honey, not everyone wants to see that. In fact, I went through a lot of effort to toilet train you three years ago just so that I would no longer have to see it. I think it's kinda gross."

Big A (hurt): But I like looking at my poop! It's so cool.

Wabi: "That's fine if you want to check yours out. But usually people don't want to see someone else's poop, ok? It's not just me. It's like a general rule of life."

Big A (eyes narrowing): "Well, I don't like to see your lava, either! But sometimes I do."

Wabi: "Lava?"

Big A: "You know, your blood ..."

Wabi: "Oh, you mean my period. Yeah. You know the best way to avoid seeing that, Big A? STOP BARGING INTO THE MASTER BATHROOM WHEN IT'S OCCUPIED."

Late and Lucky

2009-10-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-08T19:55:00.000-07:00

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 ...)

2009-10-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-31T14:16:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

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 ...)

2009-06-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Random Pondering of the Day

2009-04-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

1) Why is the Ford Escape the mall security vehicle of choice where I live? Are they just trying to egg on shoplifters?

2) My local utility district imposed water rationing during last year's drought. This year the drought abated, rationing lifted ... and rates went up by 15 percent. Why? Because revenues went down during water rationing.

3) Finally, why oh why must children learning to yo-yo practice standing over a toilet?

When Babies Attack

2009-04-20T22:10:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting bunch of comments over at Niobe's regarding whether it is proper for a woman to bring live offspring to a walk of remembrance in honor of lost babies. The range of opinions is large, but can be very generally characterized as follows:

1) Babies? Oh, you mean those diaper-covered daggers with grenade handles. Remembrance marches should be adult-only events to protect the newly bereaved and anyone else who doesn't have a living child.

2) Babies do sort of suck. But ones born to parents who had a previous loss get grandfathered into my good graces. So ... bring your kid to the walk, if you really want to.

3) Babies represent hope. And kids who lost a sibling -- what are they, chopped liver? Let everyone whom the loss impacts walk together.

I am in the minority on this issue -- firmly ensconced in Group 3. I loooove babies. Babies were a much better soother for me than liquor or drugs or religion in my darkest days of loss. They were the best thing for me.

I should back up and say that in the first few weeks after my loss, seeing a baby was tantamount to a punch in the throat. I understand why some people recoil from kids in the wake of loss. I remember that stage well. But the lucky event that propelled me out of that place was the birth of my niece Scamp.

At first I couldn't believe how annoying, rude, and insulting the timing of that birth was. Scamp entered the world only six days after I said goodbye to my own daughter. I seethed at the unfairness of having to bind my stupid breasts to stop my milk while SIL geared up for a happy life at home with baby. I ground my teeth down to nubs listening to SIL complain about how hard it was to get up to feed the baby after a C section. I'd just gone through surgery and I was tired, too. But the reason I couldn't sleep was because of panic attacks due to complications from the loss. I yearned to tell SIL to suck it.

So when torrential rains flooded the roads between Oakland and Sonoma, I rejoiced at not having to go to the hospital to visit SIL and Scamp. Then once they went home, I perhaps exaggerated a wee bit about the whole family being deathly ill. "So sorry, we can't visit yet. Wouldn't want to give the new baby a cold, right?"

SIL, for her part, was lovely. She'd had a previous loss herself and understood. "Whenever you come is fine," she told me right after my termin.ation. "I realize it's hard. I won't be offended if you stay away for awhile."

All my instincts were screaming "Stay away forever!" But after about three weeks DH and I realized that like it or not, we had to go to Sonoma and see the baby. SIL and her family are the only relatives we have in the whole Pacific time zone. Staying away was weird.

Nobody asked if I wanted to hold the baby when we came. I couldn't decide if that was really kind or really mean. Finally, in an internal act of defiance, I thought, "Fuck it. Let's REALLY get this thing over with." I picked up Scamp and took a good look at her.

It was not what I expected. I didn't have the urge to drop her or start screaming at the loss of my own baby. In her nonchalant, unconscious way, she was utterly fascinating. Scamp settled into my arm and pursed her lips. They were the cutest little lips.

All I could think was, "Oh my God, she is adorable." And ... that was it. Nothing else. No spite or envy or bitterness. I was aware she wasn't my baby, but suddenly that didn't mean I had to dislike her out of loyalty to my own. In fact, I liked Scamp already. She and I were gong to get along -- I could tell it already. I patted her back gently and wished Scamp all the love and happiness on earth. Miraculously, I truly meant it.

It was the first moment since my loss where I didn't feel stunted and ruined by rage. It was also my very first moment of peace since I'd learned my baby might be sick. And all of those gifts came from a must-be-avoided-at-all costs baby. Go figure.

So that was when I decided that babies were no longer to be avoided. To this day I have a special bond with Scamp. She gave me so much, even though she is utterly unaware of all of it.

Summer Planning

2009-04-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

I just finished my two weeks of fancy-schmancy, uber-expensive antibiotics and I would like to give them a standing O. After months of feeling crappy, suddenly I'm normal again. (Well, at least normal in that neck of the woods.) As someone whose life is a convoluted syndrome of complicated circumstances, I marvel when a simple solution works. I feel better. Drinks and leftover Easter eggs for everyone!

This is a month where most of what happens is preparation for other months. I'm doing activity research for the girls and trying to decide if/when we might go camping or otherwise travel, or just have the kids at activities, camps, preschool/daycare. Because by this summer I'll be back working more than I have been this winter, so I need dedicated blocks of time where my office is quiet. I could attempt to save money by working when they are home with me, but historically that's been dicey. Picture two girls running with scissors and wielding markers while I hide book manuscripts and page proof. Yeah, it was just like that, plus muddy fingerprints on the ctrl+alt+del buttons of my keyboard.

Thus far I've got Big A signed up for a week of art classes and another week of theater camp this summer. Big A also wants a week at horse camp, but I am leery. In theory she loves horses -- but her experience mostly involves waving at fields of them from the car, or clutching a shiny pink bejeweled neck of one on a carousel. With real animals, Big A tends towards skittish. She's fine at the zoo, where moats and barriers keep creatures away. But should a dog amble up and say hello to her on the bike path? Cue hysterics. So putting down a nonrefundable fee for horsie week is something I'm on the fence about.

Speaking of fences, today a new one gets installed at my house. It replaces a 50-year-old dilapidated trellis. While I adore the elderly couple who lives on that side of the yard, I did not love that they got to stare at my bathing-suited backside every time I took the kids in our pool last year. I'm soooo excited about the new privacy fence. We are also installing a more secure gate to keep the pool area separated from the rest of the backyard. We jerryrigged a system of homemade gates and fences that worked fine last year, but a couple weeks ago I saw the girls merrily scaling the old pool gate. Oh how they grow. So now my efforts to keep unsupervised kids out of the pool must grow as well.

Anyone else out there making summer plans now?

Helpful Hints from Wabi

2009-04-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Dear TG Associate,

It's great that you are now comfortable enough with your tran.sgend.er identity to begin taking concrete steps to transition from male to female in the general world. How exciting it must be to take the plunge. I'm so happy for you!

However, breaking the news to everyone the other day could have gone smoother. If you ever come out to people en masse again, I suggest ... actually coming out. You know, announcing the news. Because simply starting to send emails as some chick named Karen without ever mentioning "formerly went by Kraig" was very confusing.

Especially because you did it on April First.

Best Wishes,

Wabi, Queen of Helpful Hints

The Keeper of Your Heart

2009-03-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

This week one of my cousins died in an accident. There are a whole range of emotions that go along with a 17 year old losing his life, especially when the details involve a speeding motorcycle and lack of safety gear. So many unanswerable questions that all begin with "WHY?" -- Too many whys to contemplate.

The current thing that sticks like a burr in my mind is the story of what happened in the hospital later. After brain death was confirmed and everyone gradually gave up hope for a miracle, staff at the medical center approached my cousin's immediate family about organ donation. His mother consented to donate the liver, corneas, and kidneys for transplant.

But she expressly said they couldn't have his heart. The transplant team asked about it. She refused to let them take it.

My cousin's mother is a nurse who sees the benefit of organ donation in her work. I'm proud she gave what she did. But I am also mystified by the matter of the heart.

Medical March Madness (I Win!)

2009-03-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

March turned into a tournament of doctor visits. I've been to the gastroenterologist for the initial meet-and-greet, went back three more times for food allergy and bacteria testing, got an upper endoscopy with stomach and intestine biopsies. And today, I finally received test results and diagnoses: gastritis, along with bacterial overgrowth of the small bowel. Oh, and I'm also supposedly lactose intolerant. Woot!

In the grand spectrum of possible causes for belly pain, these are fabulously treatable ones. A few weeks of antibiotics followed by probiotics should solve the small intestine problem. For the gastritis, I can take an over-the-counter stomach acid reducer to calm things down (something I avoided for eons, because my primary care doc initially warned me they might make my pain worse). And since I already stopped eating dairy awhile back, the lactose intolerance is a moot point.

There are real, concrete solutions at hand. I'm not a syndrome anymore. I am simple and clear cut. I win!

Part of me wonders at how slooooow the wheels of HMO-based medicine turn. I went to the doctor the first time for this right before the presidential election, and here we are just shy of April. Meantime I've had pain every single day for five months. I realize it wasn't life threatening pain, but still. It was enough to wear me out and wake me up night after night. And if I'd bought my PCP's boiled-frog pronouncement on the problem, I might be on antidepressants and in talk therapy now! Presumably a shinier version of me, but nonetheless still in pain, since antidepressants and psychologists don't do squat for bacterial problems.

But wait, there's more: My HMO currently refuses to pay for the extremely pricey, specialized antibiotic that my GI Doc wants me to take. So now my doctor's office is having the drug manufacturer negotiate payment of the RX on my behalf. This may take several weeks. If the drug company isn't persuasive, then my GI doc plans to prescribe Cipro instead. Considering the realm of side effects than can come with that super-powered drug, I'm hoping I get the first-choice option. Regardless, at least the end of the stomach-pain era is in sight for me.

Maybe this just shows my newbie status in the world of health care wrangling, but the fact that my doctor and I are sitting on the sidelines while two businesses negotiate treatment seems utterly wrong. Ignore the guy with the decade of medical training or the patient with the infection -- this is all about business, right? We'll just be sitting over here twiddling our thumbs while the firms have their say ...

Daffodils, Again

2009-02-19T14:55:00.001-08:00

Last year I wrote about the neglected daffodil bulbs that sprouted in their bag after Little A's illnesses and tests prevented me from planting them in a timely fashion. Back then I promised I would post photos of the flowers once they were safely deposited in the ground.

I never posted the followup pictures. It's not that the daffs didn't grow at all once planted. They did. But I'd gone and set them up as a damn metaphor for the beeyoooteeful reflowering of Little A's health and our family life ... and that proved a wee bit embarrassing. Without a lot of soil around them, the daffs didn't put much energy into their sprouting. They turned out strange. The sunny heads looked great, but lay with their chins in the dirt. A 2-inch stem is just not long enough to hold a daffodil high.

But spring keeps rolling around, and today I looked into the yard and saw this:

Hey, good lookin'. What's up with you?

I guess another difference between this year and last is that I don't think being compared to a stunted flower is quite so unsettling anymore. They were pretty, those flowers; and pretty strange. But with some time and a little more dirt, they managed to sort things out.

I guess I'll stick with the metaphor.

Wordless Wednesday: Snow!

2009-02-18T13:04:00.000-08:00

Acceptance

2009-02-10T13:58:00.000-08:00

I was about to post a long-winded treatise on how dealing with physicians after you've experienced serious medical errors is a minefield of awkwardness. But then Bon wrote a beautiful post about what acceptance of the death of her baby feels like over at Glow in the Woods. I nodded all the way through, recognizing myself in what she said.

Like Bon, I said goodbye to my lost baby a little bit at a time. The first big moment of letting go came seven months after my loss, when I was pregnant again and learned Little A had normal chromosomes. Up until that point the lost pregnancy and the new one were firmly merged in my mind as the same. So that was the first moment I relinquished my ghost baby from my body. It was when I began to tiptoe slowly away.

Still, I felt a strong need to keep looking back. Little A's surprise birth exactly one week before the first anniversary of the death complicated that. The joy (and feeding) of a live baby eclipsed all else for awhile. And it felt wonderful to be in the moment, to have the weeks go by and the photos pile up showing the happy progress and growth. But ... it also made me feel guilty. It seemed I was somehow slighting the baby who came and vanished. I think that's why I started this blog when Little A was an infant. Even with my outrageously good turn of fortune, I still needed to voice the stories of what had happened in the previous year. I wanted to be able to write about the good things that happened in my family, too -- this has never strictly been a babyloss blog. But mostly I *needed* to vent that bad stuff. It was an irresistible urge.

To be honest, the second anniversary of her death swamped me like a sneaker wave. I think my life was finally stable and safe enough for me not to guard against the onslaught. So it came, and it shook me in a way that grief had not in a long time.

And then Little A got sick, and life flipped around for me again: new fears and concerns. But as terrifying as some of what happened in 2008 was, there was always hope that it could get better. There were also little stretches of happiness and calm. And during one of those worry-free patches in June of last year, it occurred to me that I my ghost baby's estimated due date had passed unnoticed by me for the very first time.

For me, it took about two and a half years after the death to let go in a significant manner. I knew the change was real when the third anniversary of my daughter's angel day rolled around this December, and I didn't feel the need to write about it. I was busy taking my eldest child to a showing of the Nutcracker that day. It was an awesome day, not at all ruined by my knowledge of what had transpired three years before. If anything maybe that made it just a smidgen sweeter, by contrast.

These days I don't write so much about my babyloss grief journey because it mostly feels completed. When I get a pang, I dish. But most of my harangues revolve around other issues. And that feels right. I guess when it comes to grief, you just have to do what your gut tells you to do: Wallow when that's the only thing you crave, and then move forward when that starts to feel more like a rut than a catharsis.

Forgive the awkward segue, but this feeling of release is precisely what made my last conversation with the doctor so damn frustrating and ironic. Because I have done the work to get over this pain as much as I am likely capable of getting over it. And frankly, outside a doctor's office most days, I feel good -- so long as I'm not dealing with things that would make anyone wig out a bit, such as a sick kid or your own mystery illness. But one lasting tattoo of these experiences is my discomfort dealing with doctors. Discussing my medical history always makes me freeze up. I suck at distilling the story into dry, emotionless bullet points. Because all of the most noteworthy events in my medical life (the D&E, Little A's c section) revolve around medical errors or cascades of complications from medical errors.

Talking about someone else's mistakes or misinterpretations within the medical field is AWKWARD no matter how you go about it. And I never know how doctors will react, either: will they think I'm a raving lunatic? A liar? Somebody ready to sue the next doctor they run into? Or maybe I remind them of someone they accidentally hurt in the past -- their own mistake that haunts them. Any of these reactions is possible, but none of them are particularly helpful in getting me decent care.

Anyway, I think I need a do-over with that appointment with my doctor. Heh, THAT's gonna be a great conversation, when it eventually takes place ...

Boiling Frogs

2009-01-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to see my primary care doctor yesterday about the stomach/back/belly pain I've been experiencing. Since I saw her partner for a sick appointment the last time, I had to bring her up to speed on the whole scenario of what happened and what tests I've had so far. Every test has been normal, yet the pains persist.

Of course she asked me what my level of stress has been. I said, "Heh," and briefly outlined what's been going on my personal life for the last three years. She gasped here and there, and stated that it sounded like a traumatizing level of stuff. In addition to giving me a referral to a gastroenterologist, she suggested I should take antidepressants and possibly seek more counseling, since I haven't gone to any therapy since right before Little A's birth.

I expected she'd refer me to a GI doc, but the antidepressant discussion totally threw me. I get that GI problems are often linked to anxiety and stress. I'm absolutely sure some part of my stomach problems are stress, given that they began around the time of Little A's lung CT scan. And I appreciate being asked how I'm coping.

BUT ... the thing is, my doctor didn't actually ask how I was doing. She just listened and said, "You look really sad and tired. And when you were just talking, your body was really tense. You just don't look well. I think you should seek psychological counseling and possibly medication to help your mental state."

"Um ... I am tired," I stammered. "I've been up since five a.m. with my sick toddler. And I'm in pain. For three months."

"Wabi," she said. "I worry that you're a boiling frog."

I wasn't aware of the analogy, so I asked her to explain it.

"If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, he'll try to jump out immediately. But if you put him in a pot of cold water and warm it up gradually, you can boil that frog alive and he'll just lay there and let you."

My mouth dropped open. There was so much I wanted to say, but it was all jammed up behind a huge WHAT THE FUCK that had to come out first. So I just took the referral and left, mulling and simmering for the rest of the day.

Seriously though, WHAT THE FUCK?

1) Is she saying that I'm a retarded frog just happily paddling around the boiling water, completely oblivious to the roil? Because I kind of recall telling her that I was well aware I was under lots of stress.

2) Doesn't the frog die in either scenario of the analogy?

I bet I did look stressed telling about my life. But frankly, it would have been a little bit less awkward and, well, stressful if my doctor seemed to have any memory of our last exchange about these subjects. Because we've talked about my medical history before. Then I must have done a better job at keeping my voice from cracking, because the other time her reaction was, "SQUEEEEE! Weird medical mishaps -- tell me all the details!"

Which was also disconcerting. For different reasons.

I'm the first to admit that the last couple months I haven't been twirling on a mountaintop singing with Julie Andrews. Aside from a fabulous summer, 2008 sucked. And lord knows, I've got my scars and mental tics. But I also don't drink heavily, snort coke, or smoke anything. I don't beat the kids or daydream about driving my car into the ocean. I'm basically ok. Functionally disfunctional, and cracking jokes along the way. Enjoying the kids and trying my best.

I thought I was some sort of a success at this. Moving on and getting over. And then she went and decreed I wasn't. It made me wonder if I was completely dellusional -- am I just telling myself I'm ok, when I'm really hanging by a thread?

So ... What is your idea of "good mental health" after a trauma and a tragedy? Do you have to be able to talk about it 100 percent of the time without feeling it? Do you have to stop thinking about it, or just stop minding that you think about it?

Lenses

2009-01-15T15:03:00.000-08:00

Big A flunked the eye exam at her five-year-old well visit with the pediatrician. No surprise to me, since I've noticed she now sits on the hardwood floor right in front of the TV rather than lounge on the comfy sofa ten feet away. World'sBestPediatrician referred us to a kid-friendly optometrist. WBP and I shared stories of getting our own glasses when we were kids to show Big A that glasses were normal.

Turns out Big A needs no convincing that glasses are neat. "I want to have glasses like Mommy and Daddy!" she shouts, "When can we go?" I am wondering if there might be some sort of replacement insurance one can buy for children's eyeglasses, since there must be 50 different ways she could crush her specs every day of the week.

Insurance musings were pretty much the beginning and end of my internal dialog about Big A's eyes. At least until I mentioned the optometry appointment to DH. Surprisingly, he seemed crestfallen at the news that Big A is nearsighted. He wondered if Big A was distracted during the eye test. Since then he has pointed out moments when he thinks Big A is seeing very well from beyond ten feet.

"What's the big deal? I asked him. "We both got glasses when we were in gradeschool."

"Yeah," he said wistfully. "But I had hoped she would be more perfect than us. Glasses mean she isn't, and that she'll have to deal with this for the rest of her life."

I get what he meant. Really, I do.

But the thing that popped into my head was we made one kid with an extra eighteenth chromosome, another with brittle asthma, and you're seriously sad about this one having 20/80 vision?

Somehow, it didn't seem appropriate to share at that moment. So I just changed the subject.

2009 Resolutions

2009-01-06T13:58:00.000-08:00

Oh, what the hell. Maybe I'll have better follow through if I put these out there:

IN 2009 I RESOLVE TO:

1) Go for a walk every single day for the first 100 days of the year. This probably sounds totally lame to anyone who spins, swims, or runs on a regular basis. But I tend to lie around like veal in the winter months. Walking for the first 100 days of the year will probably net me many extra hours of exercise compared to normal. And then when I have my annual oh-my-God-it's-almost-swimsuit-season panic attack in April or May, I'll be in better shape to start exercising more strenuously at that point.

2) Organize my bedroom closet. They say a bedroom closet is a metaphor for what's going on in the rest of a person's life. That's so true for me -- mine has been a den of chaos since I became a mother. It seems like I never have anything to wear, yet the rack is so full I can't wedge another hanger in there.

Time to ruthlessly prune my wardrobe of everything I don't wear anymore. Even if I do manage to get back down to my prekid weight, those prekid work outfits I've been saving for years? Out of style. Likewise, I have tons of too-big clothing from early postpartum days. All of it needs to go.

3) Go to the dentist. It hit me the other day that I haven't had my teeth cleaned since my pregnancy woes began in 2005. I don't think this is a coincidence -- after my r@.pe nearly two decades ago, I also stopped going to the dentist for a long time. I think there is something about the dentist experience that tweaks my sense of being vulnerable. Getting teeth cleaned makes me feel ... invaded. But, time to suck it up. I'm way overdue for a checkup.

4) Renew (or, depending on age/passport status) or apply for brand-new passports for everyone in the family. Currently it seems unlikely we'll have the extra money to go on any foreign adventures this year. But not having valid passports for everyone just ensures that we stay home. At least having the valid travel documents leaves the possibilities open for us. (You know, in case I inherit megabucks from some long-lost relative ...)

Wishing much resolve to others in the resolution boat!

Bring on 2009

2008-12-31T23:19:00.000-08:00

Christmas plus two December birthdays in our immediate family make Wabi a frantically busy nonblogger this month. But I'm slipping online in the dwindling last hour of 2008 to say HOORAY, this damned month and annoying year is finally over!

Don't get me wrong, we had a great Christmas. The kids were adorable, and even though we had fewer gifts under the tree due to the loss of my income this year, we seemed to enjoy it more than usual. I can honestly say that I'm grateful for every damned, sleepless, stomach-churning moment. And sitting in front of the TV watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve tonight may be lame, but it feels like progress to me. After all, last year Little A and I spent this night together at Children's hospital, Big A spent it sleeping at her aunt's house in Sonoma, and DH spent it by himself. (Poor DH ... I can only imagine how lonely he felt that night, coming home from the hospital to our empty, cold house.) Now we are all together under one roof again. Thank God.

I would like to say that since Little A didn't die -- something I really feared could happen last December -- the rest is just gravy. But I am a small and bitchy person who bounces between immense gratitude and equally huge pissiness. Because Jesus H. Christ, 2008 was hard. Financially, professionally, physically, and emotionally difficult. Something had to give this past year, and over and over again, the thing that gave was me. I'm heavier, wrinklier, drabber, and poorer in so many ways. So while I'm glad it wasn't worse, it could have been a damn side better. Really.

I don't usually do resolutions, but this year I'll bite. In 2009, I want to hunt for joy. Too many of the past few years the Wabi-Sabis have measured the worth of their years with the yardstick of past horrors. And I am really tired of saying that a year must fall into the good category only because I somehow survived it. I am ready for a good year by anyone's measure -- even the happy oblivions who skip through life. I want one of their good years.

It's time to try for something new and different. But after being in crisis mode for so long, I fear my horizons have narrowed to the point where I don't even know how to dream big anymore. I'm actually having a little trouble figuring out what might bring the family more joy in the coming year. It's a little alarming.

So help me out: When was the last time you were deleriously happy? And is it something you willfully made happen, or was it happenstance?

The House Whose People Sit in Darkness

2008-12-05T12:55:00.000-08:00

The report for Little A's CT scan came back today. The problematic area of her right lung is not a tumor or congenital anomaly. The most likely big bad we dreaded -- bronchiectasis -- got ruled out as well.

So, we're left assuming that this weird patch of lung is scar tissue that developed during Little A's back-t0-back bouts of pneumonia last winter. Scar tissue is great news, as it can reverse in small children. So we'll continue to carefully manage her asthma and try to limit the amount of colds she gets (ha, ha, ha on this last one ... hoo, so funny).

After I talked to the pulminologist I hung up and skipped around the house and high fived Little A 50 times. There is nothing like a toddler to happily indulge a giddy adult in the high fives. Then I put Little A down for her nap and in the silence of the house, found myself crying.

Three years ago today I sat at the desk where I now type this post. The phone rang, and as I stared out the window into the backyard, a perinatologist I'd never met before told me that the baby in my belly had a 1 in 5 shot at having either Trisomy 18 or Trisomy 13. And so it began. The waiting, the hoping, the crushed hopes, the termination, the complications, the marital strain, the depression, the subsequent pregnancy, the pain, the worry, the uterine rupture, the joy of Little A, the medical problems of Little A. Had that call not come in December 2005, what would my life look like now? To be honest, I don't even know how to imagine that scenario anymore. It's all too strange too contemplate.

They say it's not uncommon for people to associate sounds or smells with the moment they receive terrible news. For me, the thing that always pops into my mind when I think of this day in 2005 is The Epic of Gilgamesh. For some reason -- probably because it is shorter than most other Penguin Classics on my shelf -- I happened to be rereading Gilgamesh around the time of that phone conversation. And now the call and the poem remain linked. Especially the passage about Gilgamesh's best bud Enkidu, who dreams of his own death, of going to the palace of the Queen of Darkness, which is described as the house from which no one who enters ever returns, down the road from which there is no coming back:

There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay is their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness.

It sounded so familiar to me, that Palace of Darkness. I lived next door in the House of Grief for a really long time. Food's just as sucky as it is at the Palace, and the lights are out, too.

But at least the road from the House of Grief runs in two directions. And sometimes you get to walk back out of there and into a real home. You get to turn up the thermostat, flick on the holiday lights, and enjoy a nice cup of tea while you bake cookies. And if the wind is blowing ominously outside, maybe this time you can just ... shut the damn blinds and ignore it, and not have the weather serve up a tornado while you're not looking.

Sometimes you can do this. And today, I am so thankful for that.

Scans, scans, scans

2008-12-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

It's been a scan-tific week here at Casa Wabi. Yesterday Little A had her chest CT, which probably took six seconds, but required us to not feed her for 12 hours ahead of time and then be at the hospital for several hours. That's because toddlers won't hold still for scans, so they need to be given IVs and sedated. Thankfully preparation for the scan was way more hoopla than the actual deed. I was a bit of a wimp, sniffling as they escorted me outside the CT room after Little A went to sleep. But aside from waking up from the anesthesia incredibly pissed off afterwards, Little A did just fine.

We should find out the results of the CT scan by Friday. I'm hoping the pulminologist is just test happy and abusing our good health insurance. In that case, the results should be that her lungs don't appear to have any growths or congenital anomalies. Then all of her respiratory problems this year could be safely chalked up to her asthma.

Maybe I should be more worried about the results. But for some reason, I don't feel worried. And I'm just going to go with that for as long as I can.

The other scan that occured this week was on me. My quest to figure out what the hell is wrong with my body continues, and so today I got a pelvic ultrasound to check for cysts, fibroids, and other oddities in the nether regions.

This is the first pelvic scan I've had as a nonpregnant entity, and I'd been hoping that the drink-a-bucket-of-water prep was something only pregnant ladies have to do. But nope, all women need full bladders for pelvic scans. Lucky us!

I have what one medical professional once dubbed very efficient kidneys. Which is a nice way to say that my digestive track, it processes water like Niagara falls. I can (must) pee out a glass of water within ten minutes of ingesting it. So when told I was to drink 48 ounces of water 90 minutes before the test and not pee until afterwards, I practically fainted at the thought.

So, I cheated on the prep. I scaled the water back to 32 ounces and drank it less than an hour before the scan. But even so the tech informed me that I had too much fluid in my bladder, and so I had to go to the ladies room to get rid of some. I'm not sure what was more satisfying --peeing out a fish tank's worth of water, or the feeling of vindication I had in blowing off the exact test instructions to begin with.

Anyway, the good news is that there wasn't anything noteworthy on my scan. Since my pain does seem more stomach/upper GI related than gyno, that isn't a big surprise. But still, it's nice to hear that I can cross some stuff off the list of possible problems.

Next up: food allergies? Can a person become lactose intolerant at the ripe age of 37?

Sisters

2008-11-25T12:58:00.000-08:00

Big A (to Little A): "Stay here. Smile for the camera! Mommy is taking our picture when we have fashion!

Little A: "Wuh dat?"

Big A: "That's when we are fancy and beautiful. Did you know those boots you've got on used to be mine when I was a toddler?"

Little A: "Lez GOOOOO!"

Big A: "Geez, you sure are in a hurry."

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

Little A can't even speak in proper sentences yet, but that doesn't stop these two from talking, joking, and bickering every conscious moment they spend together. Growing up the only girl in a household of boys, the early-sibling communication style I became versed in was the thwack-and-run-for-your-life variety. So the chatter of girls is something that still surprises me.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Crazy = Ordinary Day

2008-11-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

"Well, since you couldn't manage to make this last appointment on time, I think I'll just have Dr. H call you back herself about whether she'll reschedule. Because the current calendar is booked up for a very long time." So says the curt phone receptionist after I explain that I am going to miss my appointment with the gynecologist. My car has just gone BOOM and sputtered to the side of the road in a hail of coughs and smoke while en route their office.

Crazy is just an ordinary day for a OB-GYN . Running that kind of practice has got to be controlled chaos at best. Pregnant bodies do not always cooperate with regularly scheduled appointments. I keenly recall that back when I was a pregnant body, there were many snafus, dilemmas, and emergencies that led my appointments to be canceled because I wasn't allowed to leave the hospital to trek over to the OB office. As such, whenever I made it to a normal appointment it felt like a victory. I never complained about Dr. H running late -- and there are times she runs extremely late. I was just glad not to be the cause of her lateness. And although I've heard other patients exchange irritated words with office staff at times, I always tried to be the friendly, polite, understanding patient. I didn't want to be the person the staff hates.

I realize that my car breaking down on the way to the OB-GYN office does not fall into the same category as a baby sticking out the wrong end of my uterus, or someone hemmorhaging through their belly button. But it's still completely out of my control. And Dr. H's office is the first call I made (before the tow truck, even) to let them know I wouldn't be there. What else, exactly, did that receptionist expect me to do?

And hey, if it weren't for all THE UNEXPLAINED, CONSTANT PAIN, I'd be more than happy to drop this whole appointment thing like the receptionist insinuated I ought to do. But I don't really think it should be up to her to decide if I get an appointment or not on the basis of her being annoyed with me.

So rather than let it go, for the first time ever, I snarked back at someone at a doctor office.

"HEY ... Do you really think that I enjoy standing next to a highway ... especially when I'm paying for a babysitter just so I could visit your office? You know, I'd say this is even more unpleasant than the pelvic exam I am now going to miss. And it's at least as inconvenient for me as you!"

Silence on the other end of the line for a moment. Then, "Can you see her the day after tomorrow at 3:15?"

So today I'm thankful for PMS. Because sometimes it helps get things done.

Hand Me Down

2008-11-18T14:59:00.000-08:00

It took about 12 days for me to begin to eat and walk around like a normal person again, but thankfully I'm there now. Maybe the some-random-stomach-virus theory is going pan out after all! But even though I feel functional now (despite having caught Big A's chest cold last week), I still have some sporadic abdominal and pelvic pain. So, I'm going ahead with pursuing the might-be-endometriosis theory with my gynecologist. Endo frightens me because of the cyclical nature of it -- the idea that I might regularly be in as much pain as I was two weeks ago makes me shake and cross myself. On the other hand, if I have another attack that starts just as period begins, at least the mystery will be solved, and we could finally make a real stab at treatment.

I have been feeling on edge and punk in the past month, but given the mystery illness, that wasn't terribly surprising. But it occurred to me that most of the anxiety focused around Little A. Since we are also sorting out her health issues at this time, I figured maybe that was also normal. Still, I didn't understand the intensity of my freakouts. Little A has been doing well on her new meds and there really isn't much reason to be anything other than optimistic about what lies in store for her. So why was my heart hurting so much whenever my little girl toddled by?

While folding laundry the other day I finally figured it out: This black mood had started the day I took the bin of 2T and 24-month clothes out of the garage and incorporated them into Little A's general wardrobe. It's those clothes. The ones Big A wore three years ago when I was pregnant with my angel baby.

I have a hand-me-down hangover.

Who knew that such strong anxiety and grief could imprint on little dresses and pants? There is one particular outfit that looks adorable on Little A (much as it did on her big sister) but every time she flits by wearing it, I'm hit with the knowledge that this was the play dress Big A wore on Christmas 2005, which was just two days after my pregnancy termination. It was all I could do to keep from hurling myself out the picture window that day, and most of the events of that time are thankfully lost to the fog of despair and vicoden. But oh, that dress -- that I remember all too well.

It pisses me off! Not only because Little A looks so adorable in it, but because now that I'm a SAHM, my budget doesn't allow for me going out and buying an equal-but-different dress for Little A. So I'm in a conundrum: do I suck it up and deal with the sadness over seeing the clothes again, or do I donate the old clothes, and hope that people give Little A outfits for Christmas?

Strange and arbitrary. That's what grief is three years after a loss.

Gee, What's Up with the World This Week?

2008-11-07T21:10:00.000-08:00

Nothing like raging abdominal pain to make the election go far, far away.

Good news: CT scan rules out big honking tumors, cysts, abscesses, and pancreatitis. Other tests seem to rule out gall bladder issues and hepatitis. Bad news: well, the pain of course, but also the fact that nobody knows why I woke up Sunday night doubled over and vomiting, and have spent most of the rest of the week that way, too. The three best guesses at this point are endometriosis on a kidney and my intestines, a virus, or a small kidney stone that isn't showing up on the scans. If I had to pick the most likely culprit, my hunch is the endo. But since endo is chronic and complicated, I'm crossing my fingers and saying GO, virus!

Bleah.

In much happier news, I found out this week that a dear friend of mine is pregnant after struggling with secondary infertility. I'm soooo happy for her. That made me smile all day yesterday, even through the continuing saga of the endo/kidney stone/virus stuff. Here's hoping she has a safe, boring nine months with the little bugger safely snuggled away on the inside.

Three Days till the Election, Aneurysm Pending

2008-11-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

I thought that Halloween festivities at Big A's school (I'm a room mom this year), trick-or-treating plans, and prep for Big A's upcoming birthday party would keep me busy enough to not notice the election hoopla. But even with the TV and radio turned off, it's everywhere. For instance, six months ago, people went to my neighborhood yahoo group to discuss earthquake preparedness and block parties. Now the posts there involve accusations of theft of political lawn signs. I ran into Yes on Prop 8 picketers at the market and No on 8 protesters at Target. On the way to get a cup of coffee, I was hit up by two separate groups of Democrats. I told each of them, "I don't need to hear your pitch, I've already voted by mail." But they didn't want to sway me -- in fact, nobody ever bothered to ask whom I voted for. They just wanted my money for the close races in Ohio and Florida.

Since avoiding the election is obviously impossible, DH and I decided to drink the Kool Aid and throw a small election night party. Because regardless of who wins, I think we can all agree big drinks are in order at the end of this damn thing.

Speaking of election-themed parties ... hopefully our beverages won't be quite as putrid as this.

Cusp

2008-10-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

Here we are again on the cusp of so much: Halloween, the end of daylight savings time, the presidential election, Big A's birthday, and the first real rainstorm of the California wet season. The pumpkins not yet cut into jack o' lanterns, and the new moon waxing, but hidden behind thickening clouds.

The world wobbles on one foot, ready to plunge in some direction at any moment. Are you feeling it, too?

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

I cannot think of a nice way to transition, and since I'm kind of time strapped this morning, I won't even try. I'll just say thanks to WhichBox for nominating me for a I Heart Your Blog award! (Mutual admiration society on that one, Which.) Below is the related meme, which says to answer questions with one word. Ha! I'll do my best ...

1. Where is your cell phone? Misplaced
2. Where is your significant other? Work
3. Your hair color? Faded
4. Your mother? Dead
5. Your father? Mellowing
6. Your favorite thing? Jewelry
7. Your dream last night? Forgotten
8. Your dream/goal? Serenity (the state, not the pad.)
9. The room you're in? Office
10. Your hobby? Knitting!
11. Your fear? Port-o-Potty during earthquake
12. Where do you want to be in six years? Mexico
13. Where were you last night? Couch
14. What you're not? Reassured
15. One of your wish list items? Cashmere
16. Where you grew up? Burbs
17. The last thing you did? Email
18. What are you wearing? Glasses
19. Your T.V.? Old (enough to drive)
20. Your pet? None
21. Your computer? PC
22. Your mood? Hopeful
23. Missing someone? Always
24. Your car? Mini
25. Something you're not wearing? Socks
26. Favorite store? Anthropologie
27. Your Summer? Restorative
28. Love someone? Many
29. Your favorite color? Aquamarine
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? Summer?

I nominate:

Sara at Streaks on the China
Beruriah at Further Records
Lori at Losses and Gains

When the Personal Is All Too Political

2008-10-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the world credit markets going boom, abortion hasn't been central to this presidential campaign. Yet when it does come up, the lets-talk-about-real-stuff style of the race evaporates, and we're back in the land of pure slogan. For instance, McCain air quotes the phrase "health of a mother," and everyone instantly knows his opinion on a whole range of issues -- all from four words and a hand gesture. When this sort of telegraphing happens, you can be sure that whoever McCain had in mind while uttering those words, it wasn't a real woman or real babies. Because just as you won't compress a 1-megabyte image to 10 kilobytes without losing the essential picture, you cannot discuss abortion in bumper-sticker phrases without major degradation of the story.

So I'm saying up front that when candidates talk about abortion, I listen on the small scale. I think of myself, of my medical termination for trisomy 18, and of all that I went through almost three years ago. Then I try to relate whatever they said to me.

I'm having a really frustrating time this fall. A lot of extra stomach bile and swearing. Too much teeth grinding, too.

Just once, I want to hear a candidate -- any candidate -- acknowledge that not every abortion is for an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. Each year thousands of people terminate beloved, sought-after pregnancies for fatal or extremely serious problems. But since most people seem unable to imagine these sorts of problems until they touch their own life, the stories must be pointed out. They must be proven true, lest they be shrugged off as fictitious, or as an excuse for something else. (Hellooo, McCain, hellooo? I'm talking to YOU here, mister.)

I would also like anyone who utters the phrase "late term abortion" to immediately add, "of course, the vast majority of these are done for very serious medical problems I know nothing about, so I won't presume to try to moralize or legislate about that." Oh, and before anyone laughs at the idea of mental distress being a genuine reason for abortion, how about having them live through clinical depression for a day and then decide afterwards? (Hey, a woman can dream.)

And Palin -- I've got a huge list of disappointments and issues for Palin. But for starters, it would have been so nice to hear her say, "Regardless of my personal choice when it came to carrying my youngest son to term, I want women to know that I understand the anguish of receiving hard news after amniocentesis. A lot of women go through that, and it's just heart breaking."

Maybe that's slim common ground with Palin ... but it's something. And it would be the start of a genuine conversation that otherwise isn't happening today.

Searching for 'The Safe Side'

2008-10-06T10:33:00.000-07:00

Little A had a regularly scheduled pulmonary appointment last week. I was almost looking forward to it. It's been over four months since we've had to break out the rescue inhaler to stop an asthma attack. Even two weeks ago, when we had that fast breathing episode with a cold, there was no wheezing present, and radiology declared it wasn't another pneumonia. Plus we made it through a whole vacation without going to the ER, which hasn't happened in over a year. To me, all that was progress. I arrived at the pulmonary clinic expecting to hear "Good job, guys! Those long-acting maintenance asthma meds are doing the trick. Keep dosing her, and see you back in six months."

Which is why I felt pretty smacked upside the head when the pulmonologist talked about how Little A's latest Xrays are oddly grainy in the same place they have been oddly grainy in previous illnesses. He launched into a discussion of right middle lobe syndrome . He also mentioned how he'd like to stick a scope down her lungs to see if there was any goop or other obstruction in there. Depending on what they found, they might culture the goop, biopsy a growth (gulp), or in the case of discovering something she accidentally inhaled into her lungs that got stuck there -- remove the problem.

Not quite the high-five fest I was expecting.

Hearing that a doctor thinks your child's lung is partially collapsed all the time does not make for a happy mommy. And a syndrome is extra difficult to contemplate. I'm not a medical professional, but it seems that the word "syndrome" is medical shorthand for "this grab bag of weirdness impacts the same body part, so let's call call it a single disease, even though it actually has fifty causes and can range from being a little bit annoying to requiring a surgeon to cut out part of your lung."

This would be nerve wracking enough if I had a good relationship with Little A's pulmonologist. But while he is gentle and good natured with children, his communication with me sucks. Each appointment the doctor (let's call him Newbie) spends one minute examining Little A, then buries his face in his laptop while firing off questions and typing answers while I hold Little A. I often wonder why we have to be there for the appointments after the nurse takes vitals. We might as well be at home on conference call, given the amount of times he makes eye contact with either of us.

Because Dr. Newbie is in his fellowship (aka still training for his subspecialty) he needs to check in with the attending pulmonologist at the end of our appointments. And many times, what the other pulmonologist says to me doesn't sound the same as what Dr. Newbie says. It's terribly confusing to get conflicting explanations in the same appointment. Especially now that we're dealing with tracking down a less-than-straightforward diagnosis.

I balked at Dr. Newbie's idea of immediately putting a scope down Little A's lungs to have a look around. When the attending physician arrived, I explained that I was concerned because I kept hearing the same phrase from everyone involved: To be on 'the safe side."

I had taken Little A to the pediatrician before vacation for an iffy cold that in retrospect, would certainly have cleared up without any intervention. I did it "just in case."

Her pediatrician sent Little A to be Xrayed this last time despite the fact she didn't hear clear crackles or wheezing in her lungs. "Because of her history, let's be cautious," she said.

And now the pulmonology dept. is saying this latest Xray is evidence that, just to be on the safe side, we should do more testing.

It's not that I don't want to discover a potentially serious problem in addition to the asthma. But I am haunted at the prospect of such aggressive testing when we are not 100 percent sure it is needed. Usually a parent wants to hear that tests have come back clear for their child. But if we jump in with both feet on this and Little A is poked with needles and surgical instruments, I can't help but feel like I won't be quite as elated as I should be if this syndrome is ruled out. Instead, I'll be sad at the thought of what we've done to my little girl needlessly.

Off to email the pulmonologist some pointed questions. More on this soon ...

I Heart Disneyland (Holy Crap)

2008-10-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

We have officially broken the vacation jinx, getting through an entire week in Southern California without needing to call 911, visit an ER, or have Little A admitted to the hospital to be tethered to an oxygen line. This differs markedly from the previous two vacations that were cut short by medical emergencies. It's just so freaking normal, I almost don't know how to process it. Oh wait, I remember -- YAY! We had such a great time!

So, Disneyland. I'd never been there before. I believe there are two types of Americans: those that naturally embrace all things Mickey, and those that squint and back away from the cartoon empire as if it emits toxic fumes. Prekids, I was a big Disney hater. The parks, movies, DVDs, and merchandise tie-ins are so massively hyped that it seemed like a huge, embarrasingly obvious racket to me. I just didn't get how anyone would want to go there. It didn't help that since DH is in the entertainment industry, we know people who have worked for The Mouse and oh, the stories of hardcore corporate craziness I have heard. So going to Disneyland in my twenties or early thirties made me grunt and roll my eyes. It was not going to happen.

Of course, motherhood changes you. Alters your body, makes you accept things you never thought you'd accept, makes you utter ludicrous statements on a regular basis. Just the other day I found myself saying "We do NOT wash each other's butts!" Shortly before that, "You cannot marry daddy. He already has a wife." But even though strange announcements are fairly routine around Chez Wabi, this latest one still feels odd when it comes out of my mouth:

I am a convert. I love Disneyland. I want to go back.

Now, I expected Big A would want to move there. She's almost five, deep into that frilly princess stage. (Ah, the princess stage. This is another one of those things I was initially horrified by, but now just find routine.) And Little A is a generally affable little imp, so even though she is too young to know the various characters and stories involved in Disneyland attractions, I guessed she'd like it all.

But me? I figured I'd just grit my teeth and be there on the girls' behalf. The lines were going to bug me, I knew I'd be hot and annoyed by people in the crowds. I didn't expect that I'd find going to Disneyland so pleasant myself: That walking by the uber-romanticized buildings on Main Street would still feel cozy and fun; that the parades would be delightful to watch, and that the rides would be as fun for me as the girls. And the lines? With a little planning, they turned out not to be a big deal. In a nutshell, I discovered that despite the nonstop merchandising and inflated prices, despite the fakeness of every single thing there, I had an authentically great time anyway.

I read somewhere that Disneyland averages 30,000 visitors every day, and that as many as 50,000 are in the parks during the summer and on other holidays. But the interesting thing was that I didn't see a lot of the typical ugly scenes of family stress/hunger/tantrums/arguments that one usually witnesses with that many people hanging around together. I wonder why it is that everyone seemed to be on such good behavior (my family included)? Is it park engineering? People's expectations? Some sort of happy gas?

If anyone has any theories on this, I'd love to hear them.

Update

2008-09-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

Little A was a terror in the radiology waiting room, but a dream on the actual x ray table. They found what the pediatrician called "a little infiltrate" in the right lung. Too small to officially call it pneumonia on the report, though. Given her medical history, Little A came home with a prescription for antibiotics anyway, on the off chance it isn't viral.

Even better: after chugging along at 60 breaths per minute for a day, her respiration rate dropped back down to about half that last night. And she finally ate. It was ice cream and not her dinner, but whatever. She took in calories. After a bumpy couple of days, I think my girl is licking this infection on her own. I'll give her the antibiotics anyway, since she also had a developing ear infection. But as a mom, my anxiety level with Little A's health tracks closely with her breathing rate. There's nothing like a gasping child to get me all nerved up! So now I feel better too. Even though Little A gifted me with a cold of my own, and now Big A is now complaining of a sore throat, I feel better.

We may have to pack lots of tissues and Tylenol for our trip, but now it seems we will be packing. Hooray!

Summer Is Officially Over ...

2008-09-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

... When Little A gets her first bad cold of the season and ends up at the doctor's office with what might be the beginning of yet another pneumonia. Or maybe not -- hard to tell what's happening in those lungs when Little A is screeching and batting away the pediatrician's stethoscope like it's a hot iron. (Why oh why do doctor appointments always end up right in the middle of naptime?)

On the doctor's recommendation, I took her home for a power nap after the appointment rather than going straight to the hospital radiology department. Hopefully the nap improves the odds that she'll stay calm during the chest Xray this afternoon, and we'll get a nice, nonblurry shot of her lungs. Right now we have no idea if the fast, shallow "belly breathing" I've watched her do in the last 24 hours is just a bad (but nonserious) cold, or something else that requires aggressive intervention.

It feels like eerie deja vu from the first time Little A got seriously ill last December. That time her illness began when we were about to go to Lake Tahoe for New Year's weekend and stay at a house we rented with friends. So in addition to being frantic about Little A's wheezing and coughing, I was worried and conflicted about whether to cancel the trip, and how that might impact Big A. We decided to postpone leaving by a day, then traveled after the pediatrician gave us the ok. But despite all our precautions, Little A ended up in the hospital for a week anyway, after a terrifying experience that cut the trip short.

This time instead of a Tahoe house rental, the illness coincides with an impromptu trip to Southern California that is supposed to begin this weekend. Sitting on my desk is an envelope containing nonrefundable Disneyland tickets that I only purchased a couple days before Little A got sick. We also have nonrefundable hotel reservations for inside the park and nonrefundable hotel reservations in San Diego for a few days after Disneyland -- a real splurge for us. Big A is apoplectic with excitement over this trip, and frankly so am I. We haven't gone on a real vacation that lasted more than a couple nights away from home in years. The idea we might have to cancel this due to a medical emergency so similar to the one that ended the last big getaway we tried for is something I'm trying not to think about. But of course, that just means the possibility of canceling the trip is the second-most frequent thought on my mind today, right behind "what's up with my girl's lungs this time?"

So. Off to radiology now -- wish us luck!

Plans (Temporarily) Thwarted by that Pesky Innability to Write More Than Her Name

2008-09-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

Big A: What are you writing, mommy?

Wabi: A note to the babysitter about what you and Little A need to do at bedtime.

Big A: Oh! Write this down: "Big A can go to bed whenever she wants, and that's ok!"

Gotta give her points for trying ...

Thanks for all the Babysitter Advice ...

2008-09-12T09:43:00.001-07:00

Without going into all the nitty gritty details, let's just say the conversation with Susanne went as these things generally do: A little awkward and strange at first, but ultimately ok. And now that it's September, my work has dwindled down to practically nothing (as planned), which means that Little A is no longer in regularly scheduled daycare anyhow. Yee haw!

I'm loving being a SAHM so far. Of course ... two weeks in is just the honeymoon period. Especially since DH is home with me this entire month!

Usually when DH is home for a month, it's a stressful, dicey thing that has to do with him getting laid off. The video game industry is famous for its lack of job security, since many companies slash staff between projects. You work like crazy, and then you look like crazy for work. But this time it's a little different. After working six days a week for about five months in a row, DH's project finished in time to ship for Christmas. (Not finishing in time for the Santa retail season is the kiss of death for any game.) The company thinks the game is going to sell very well, and decided not to lay anyone off between projects. Instead they shut down for a month.

I love having regular family dinners with DH again and having leisure time that is actually relaxing. The girls are over the moon to see their dad more, too. Yet being the crankypants I am, I also can't help muttering a little bit under my breath about how all this came about. Reasons for eye rolls include:

1) No advance notice on having September off. There were rumors of it happening in the last couple weeks of August. But we didn't know for sure until two days before it started. So long-term planning for any travel during September was impossible.

2) The company continually insists on calling this "comp time," even though nobody has a choice in when or if they take it. Doesn't sound like comp time to me -- it's really a plant shutdown between projects to save the company some bucks. Yet the company brags about how they are the most fabulous, generous, wonderful employer in the world for "allowing people to take off September." Pay no attention to the fact that everyone just worked through the three last national holidays and about twenty Saturdays without any overtime pay at all. Time off now is nice, but doesn't match up to what was given by employees in the last few months. Not by a long shot.

3) Last and most important: Can you imagine explaining to a not-quite five year old why Daddy, Mommy, and Little Sis get to hang out together at home every day while she must suddenly attend Kindergarten five days a week? So much for making that transition to school easy.

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

At any rate, it was a very good summer, and despite my always-at-least-residual crankiness, it's a good fall so far as well. I have a post brewing about Sarah Palin as well as other topics, both large and small. I feel recharged. I think my 'blog vacation' is officially over for awhile.

Misadventures in Baby Sitting: WWYD?

2008-08-06T21:25:00.000-07:00

Picking up Little A from daycare, I pause to coo at the newest kid there, a bright-eyed baby who is perhaps five months old. The baby sucks fervently on a bottle. I ask Susanne, the owner/operator, if the transition is going well for the little one.

"She had a good day," Susanne says as she cradles the baby and smiles at her warmly. "I'm just so THRILLED she's finally taking the bottle! The first couple days can be hit or miss for babies who are used to the breast alone."

I nod, remembering that particular hell when Big A started daycare. Just then the mother of the new baby enters and the baby throws off the bottle and lunges for mommy with a joyous chortle. I say hello but must turn back to my brood rather than make more small talk. Big A holds her sister's beloved blankie over Little A's head just beyond reach, and Little A is ready to poke every finger through whatever orifice she hits first. I separate and haul both kids toward the door, tossing a goodbye over my shoulder.

When my head is turned toward them, I watch as Susanne asks the new mom if she can give the bottle to someone else. "It's seems such a shame to waste it!" She says. And next moment, another child who happened to toddle by is happily guzzling the beverage.

I'm curious: What would you do?

Inheritance

2008-07-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

"Oh, oh, oooh!" shouts Big A, overcome at the sight within the box. "Oh my GAWD. It's soooo sparkly."

"Oh my goodness," I correct. But I skip the language lecture in favor of pulling out another drawer. One by one the pieces come out: Pink and blue beads, faux pearls, rhinestone bracelets, silver chains and golden bangles.

My mother's old jewelry box, guarded so well from a greedy daughter for many years. "Don't touch," she scolded when she caught me going through it. "Those are mine," she'd seethe. "You have no respect! You just break things."

Like a crow, I adore the shiny. So as a child, sometimes I snuck my mother's jewelry box into my bedroom. Sitting with my back against the door, I'd run fingers through the gold plated ID bracelets and costume gems. Once, calamity -- a stone was lost from an earring, so she knew. Whether it was the necklaces in her box or souvenirs and trinkets in the attic, she always seemed to discover my rummaging. "Stop snooping!" she'd growl, utterly frustrated.

And it was snooping. No postcard or scrapbook gone unread. I tried on every shoe, robe, and dress at the back of her closet. I knew where she stashed the Christmas presents every year. I could find the shoe box where letters she wrote to my father before their engagement were stacked. Curiously, I never found the letters he wrote to her. (Did she not bother to save them?)

To her it was all rudeness and invasion. My mother was stingy with so much more than her things. And so I went looking for some clue and trace of what I needed in dusty lockets and books instead. Then suddenly she died when I was 22, and the jewelry box was all mine.

Not quite knowing what to do, I packed it away and barely looked at those things over the past 15 years. Until yesterday, when for some reason, it just felt like it was time to take it out again.

So the girls will now enjoy my inheritance. And God willing, we will build a different one together.

Out

2008-07-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

Are you "out?" To everyone or a select few? And which -- or how much of your -- story do you tell?

This is the question Tash recently asked at Glow in the Woods regarding what portion of the story of our baby loss we share with the real world. For anyone who ended a pregnancy early for medical reasons, this is one of the core, lingering conundrums. You think about it hard from day one. Actually, given the nature of medical termination, you usually think about it before day one. The lead up to a second-trimester termination generally includes at least one or two days of prep, plus many tortuous phone calls with doctors and hospital or clinic staff to set up appointments. And the question gets into your head early on and clings: What in God's name can I tell people about all of this later?

Two and a half years since my termination, I still grapple with the concept of "out." I personally count four tiers of knowing my story in the real world:

Tier One: The most trusted. These people know everything about my baby's diagnosis, what went into my decision to terminate, as well as all the crazy woe that came later on. Plus, they know the horrible strain all of this put on my heart, body, psyche, and marriage.

Tier Two: The mostly trusted. These people know about the termination and probably also heard that my uterus ruptured later, but don't necessarily realize the connection between those events, or that I can't have kids anymore. Not every detail and no major emotional baggage has been shared, but I trusted these individuals enough to tell them the basic framework of the whole complicated story.

Tier Three: The suspect. Either I don't know these people well enough to gauge their philosophical stance on abortion, or I know for certain they are antichoice. I may not be close to these folks, but they are still entrenched enough in my life to require some explanation as to why I suddenly wasn't wearing maternity clothing anymore, or why my subsequent baby came so early. For them, I created an artfully edited version of the story that isn't false, but allows people to incorrectly assume that my loss was a stillbirth or miscarriage.

Tier Four: The blissfully ignorant. These are mostly people I've met since Little A's birth who have no idea of my pregnancy woes. It's not a secret, but it just hasn't come up, and I haven't volunteered it.

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

In the early days after my loss, Tier 3 was the group that caused me the most tension and sadness. No matter how you lose a baby, you feel flayed and exquisitely sensitive to how others perceive what happened in the aftermath. People routinely say things that they think will help but inadvertently hurt. This problem magnifies significantly if you terminate. Because in addition to the kind-hearted blunderers, there are also the shunners and the snubbers. These are the people who feel that the manner of your loss negates all rights to condolences. In fact, some people feel that a termination requires insults and condemnation. Which is bad enough on any ordinary day, but downright impossible to contemplate in the wake of your shaky new grief.

So, everyone who terminates has a Tier 3. What varies is how many people get put there, and for how long.

Now, my Tier 3 is likely very tiny compared to many other women. That's because here in the Bay Area the vast majority of people are prochoice. There isn't much risk in being open with my story. The most push back I get is on this blog. And when the occasional anonymous wing nut stops by to comment, I hold the power to delete, which really takes a lot of sting out the random trolls. So my situation is much easier than someone in Topeka or in Oklahoma City. There a woman may very likely have a friend or relative call her a baby killer to her face after a medical termination. And there just isn't any magic button in real life that can erase that.

Yet even in my "safer" locale, the specter of snubbers and shunners falls over me every time I consider telling my story. I have to really think about what the long-term implications of talking with some one could be before I open my mouth. It's always a gamble, the revelation.

And as much as I try to keep it at the personal level when I talk about my baby and my decision, inevitably it's also more than that. It's where the personal, political, and religious intersect. For always, whether I like it or not.

Random Summer Fun

2008-07-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

Run Over in the Parking Lot

2008-07-14T14:57:00.001-07:00

Wabi: (to Big A while strapping Little A into the stroller and locking the car) Stay next to me, honey. See those cars? We're in a parking lot and you need to be careful.

Big A: So I don't get squished?

Wabi: Yep.

Big A: So I don't die?

Wabi: (Deep sucking in of breath) Exactly.

Big A: If I die, do you just start over with another new kid?

Wabi: ... No. It doesn't work that way. You are not replaceable. Besides, I can't have any more children.

Big A: Never? Why not?

Wabi: I got a little bit broken when Little A was born, sweetie. I'm ok, except that I can't have babies anymore. But even if I could have more children, you are still not replaceable in any way.

Big A: Because I'm special?

Wabi: Yeah. So please, try not to get squished, ok?

Big A: Well all right, momma!

Sisyphus Takes a Holiday

2008-07-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

It's an odd sensation, this feeling of idleness without guilt. Usually any moment I sit staring off into space, I'm nagged by the needly pricks of my to-do list: Manuscript editing, career networking, email reading, invoice mailing, playdate booking, neighborhood volunteering, childcare swapping, tantrum soothing, lunch packing, lawn mowing, argument refereeing, pool cleaning, floor mopping, diaper changing, toy sorting, laundry folding, medication dosing, bill paying, bathroom scrubbing, asthma monitoring, grocery shopping ... wait, I'm forgetting something. Oh yeah, quality time. When the heck am I supposed to squeeze that in? Argh.

As a working mom, I have found quality time to be the very rock that Sisyphus pushes up the hill. Maybe if you have smiley, cheerful kids made out of plastic, quality time is great. Especially if Mommy takes enough uppers to be perky and patient all the way through 8:30 p.m, because then the family can bond over dinner and roll right on to the nightly bedtime routine happily. But me, I am amphetamine-deprived, and my kids, they are the normal, made-of-meat variety. We all arrive home on worknights in a precarious state. It does not take much to push three hungry and tired females into being cranky. And once cranky, it's just a little hop over to someone (everyone) becoming screechy. And there might have even been a little biting in the dinnertime mix. Because toddler Little A, she is not above taking an angry chomp out of mommy's shoulder, should that sippy cup of warm milk not fly out of the microwave fast enough. That child is silky angel hair and sweetness most of the time. But you do not screw with Little A's hunger, if you know what's good for you.

But then the summer solstice hit, and life suddenly shifted. Work started to wrap up. The crazy patchwork of childcare we'd put together for both the kids in the past year also got cut back and simplified. Plus it is July, when colds, flu, and pnuemonia take a plane to the other hemisphere. So nobody is sick, and the doctor's appointments are also fewer and farther between.

All of this has made a huge difference in our lives. That elusive quality time I have been fighting for? It now exists! Ironically, I got here by spending huge quantities of time with the kids. We've picnicked at the ocean, visited the zoo, tromped through the science museum, hit the amusement park, camped in the Sierras, gone swimming in our pool, wandered on the hill trails around our house, skipped along the bike path, watched parades and fireworks, and worn an entire extra-large box of sidewalk chalk down to the nibs. We've eaten more stone fruit, strawberries, turkey dogs, and ice cream than I fathom. Labor Day is over six weeks away, and we've already gone through two bottles of sunscreen. I'm lining up the empty coppertone tubes on my bathroom windowsill as trophies to the fun.

And the housework? It's as piled up as before. But now it doesn't vex me quite so much. There is a huge difference between trying to find the time between work phonecalls to launder your daughter's blankie quickly because she won't sleep in the hospital without it and trying to get the beach towels clean so you can head out tomorrow for another day in the sand.

Long story short, the not working for awhile thing? It's working out.

Maybe come September when Big A starts kindergarten I will again feel the tug of work and need to change things up again. But that's September, maybe. For now, I feel like I can rest, play, and breathe. Finally.

World through the Lens of a 4 Year Old, Part 2

2008-06-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

More of Big A's photos:

2008-06-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

By trade, editors deal with the micro details of a work. I have come to realize that I'm not naturally a big-picture person in regular life either. I try to employ my little-picture methodology to monolithic issues (raising kids well, saving for retirement, etc.). I want the reassurance of knowing the exact order of operations that go into whatever goal I'm facing down beforehand. But that's cramming a square peg into a round hole. The big picture is a vision that requires faith, hope, and improvisation at the start. For someone like me who absolutely sucks at improv -- that's a huge hill to climb, just to get started on something.

I've thought a lot about big-picture events and quests with a capital Q since reading the book, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm probably I'm the last middle-aged American woman to read it, but for the benefit of the three other people hiding under a rock, it is a memoir that chronicles a year of traveling and spiritual exploration after the author's soul-sapping divorce.

I'm shocked at how much I liked the book. I was cautious going in, because I heard the author was on Oprah promoting the story, and that Julia Roberts will star in a movie version. The book's press gave off the faint stench of The Secret, which really is just Social Darwinism respun in less harshly Victorian language (If your life is awesome, it's because YOU are positively special and earned every last orgasm and gold ingot! And if your life sucks, it's because You are negative and dragged those problems right to yourself like a magnet. Got that?)

But by just a few pages in, it was obvious that Gilbert wrote a memoir, not a smug how-to book. She isn't holier than thou or rigidly dogmatic. She's funny, open minded, and as enthusiastic about food in Italy as she is about meditation in India. Reading about her path from lost to found really did inspire me.

And here I am, recently awake to the fact that I am relatively at peace with my dead-baby-and-pregnancy-calamities saga. It took two and a half years, so it's not like it was an overnight change. Yet it feels so markedly different. It's like I've been staring for eons at the random dots in one of those Magic Eye books, and suddenly the big-picture just popped out at me.

For anyone newer to their grief, I would hasten to add that "at peace" doesn't mean I want to turn away from my loss, or distance myself from others out there for whom this is not as settled. I've been struggling to figure out a metaphor that explains the difference between how I felt before and how I feel now. The only one that sort of fits is that of the leg amputee.

We've all heard the death of a child being referred to as similar to amputation, right? It's permanent and impacts every step. The underlying truth is that you would always prefer to have your old leg back, where that an option. And in the beginning, even as you make progress at adapting to being one-legged, the lost leg is always keenly on your mind.

Being at peace is not getting your old leg back. Instead, it's akin to receiving a high-tech prosthetic. After being in a wheel chair and then on crutches, it feels pretty magnificent to bound around as a biped. So you don't think about the fact that all things being equal, you'd still like that real leg back, please. You just enjoy the breeze in your hair, and maybe look to the road ahead.

For me, anyway, that's what peace feels like. For others who have got here (in any matter, grief-related or not) what does it feel like for you?

EDD

2008-06-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

"Waiting is Painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering." -- Paulo Coelho

This week is the two-year anniversary of my estimated due date for my angel baby. In a different world, I would be ordering a birthday cake and planning for my second daughter's official entry into the terrible twos.

The most interesting thing to me about the anniversary this year is that I forgot it. It was only when I logged into an online support group discussion board I'm a member of and saw my name listed under the "Special Days to Remember" thread that the significance of the date hit me.

Maybe part of the reason I forgot is that my healthier pregnancies ended no where near their due dates. Big A was supposed to make her debut a week before Halloween but stubbornly refused to come out until after Election Day. And Little A arrived in a whole different calendar year than her EDD. For me, due dates have not held true.

And of course, there are no real memories to associate with this. Unlike my angel day, which is burned into memory, the EDD was a guess of an assumption that never came to pass. It is ephermeal as a spiderweb made out of clouds and cricket songs. It casts no shadow. It floats away.

In years past I would have felt guilty for not holding on to my phantom baby bundle tightly on this day. So much of new grief involves fighting the disappearance of your child. We wait for these key anniversaries not only to get past the pain they bring, but to experience the jolt. Sometimes the white-hot memory is less disconcerting than the feeling of the fire going out.

But once you cross the line between forgetting and forgot, it's different. I have no guilt. It's ok. I'm glad to be set free in certain ways. To no longer be waiting, and to finally let the baby be lost.

Whoever You Are, I Wanna Thank You

2008-06-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

The Wabi family vacation equation is that time spent away will be less than or equal to the amount of days spent packing and unpacking. [ :) ≦ %$*#!! ] So even though we only camped last Thursday through Sunday, this Thursday I am still sitting in a house crammed full of sleeping bags, flash lights, coolers, and deflated swim floats. Curiously, I am also still wiping the red clay dirt of the campground out of the children's nooks and crannies. I'm starting to wonder if that stuff is the base for tattoo ink.

And so it was not particularly surprising that being off my routine this week, I forgot to put the garbage cans out to the curb last night. It is a little more surprising and pathetic that I failed to notice all the cans of the neighbors out at the curb this morning when DH wrestled the kids into the car to take them to daycare. I only realized it was garbage day when the truck was roaring away directly outside my house. I ran downstairs through the garage in a halfhearted attempt to chase after the driver, knowing that once they get past your house, all you can really do is cram extra garbage into your over-full can for yet another week. Garbage trucks do not go back in Oakland. Since the hot summer weather has finally arrived here, I knew that it was going to be a smelly and possibly maggoty endeavor for the next week. Yech.

But the cans were not in their corral behind the row of cannas. At first I thought, "Wuh ... who would steal cans full of garbage?" Then the garbage man came around the side of the truck, carrying one large empty can in each of his huge hands.

"I got it," he said congenially.

"You got my cans out of the corral?" I stared at him like he was an alien.

"Sure," he said, shrugging.

So I'm having a Geggy Tah morning, folks. Whoever you are, I wanna thank you, garbage man. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

World Through the Lens of a Four Year Old

2008-06-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

When my camera refused to turn on, I counted back and realized it was eight years old. Digital cameras age quicker than big dogs, so that's not a bad run. Time for a zippy new model. I laid the old one to rest in the junk drawer and when Big A found it a few months later, there seemed no harm in letting her play with it. Surprisingly, it revved back to life when she hit the power button. So now it is Big A's camera (at least until she drops it on the sidewalk and kills it permanently).

Big A is not interested in learning how to frame a shot or work the flash. She just clicks away excitedly at whatever she likes. I find her photographs fascinating. Somehow they remind me of the smallness of her body in a way that the bigness of her personality sometimes makes me forget.

Do you remember the time when the world of your hallway and bedroom and pillows and sidewalk and street seemed so wide open and so huge?

Decision or Retreat?

2008-05-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted nearly as much this year as I did last, and the main reason for that is illness. Most families I know complain this has been an especially harsh cold/flu season. Even so, we've been harder hit than most in 2008. I rang in the New Year sitting next to Little A's hospital bed and that's been the theme of life ever since. January had two hospitalizations for Little A, and since then things have been less life threatening, yet serious enough to interrupt daily life. Pneumonia, the common cold, lingering fevers, conjuntivitis, earaches, asthma, etc. have kept us visiting the pediatrician's office well over a dozen times in five months. Both kids were Xrayed to assess pneumonias, both have needed antibiotics. Additionally, Little A has semi-regular pulminologist appointments and has been on at least seven different respiratory treatments as we search for the right drug combination to keep her asthma at bay.

There has been another casualty to all this illness: my job. I was working part time after my maternity leave ended when Little A was six months old. As a freelance editor, I'm pretty flexible with the schedule. I felt like I'd finally hit the right work/life balance after struggling with it for years in those first few months after I returned to work last year. But then we became the House of Plague.

At first the problem was mostly financial: daycare is expensive, and I pay for unscheduled absences due to sickness even when I am not billing anyone due to caring for sick kids. And while the occasional fever or case of pink eye isn't serious, it does keep the kids out of daycare or school for a day. With the run of luck we've had, those days rapidly added up. For many months, I was actually running in the red, financially speaking.

But I was still keeping up with the actual work load and enjoyed it, so I wanted to soldier on and get past what I kept thinking of as a bad patch. It would go back to normal soon, I kept telling myself. But one messed-up month turned into two, then three and four, five and six, etc. Here we are at the end of May and the kids are both home sick with chest colds and fevers for the umpteenth time. And I have to conclude that this -- being home sick with the girls, juggling doctor appointments and weighing treatment options -- this has truly become more of a job than my regular job is. Long ago I slipped into constant catch-up mode with work. It is no longer very enjoyable, because I just feel so frantic and under the gun all the time. And feeling that way only makes concentrating during those rare days where I actually get a full work day in all the more difficult.

So of course I've been mulling over quitting my job. But it seemed impossible at first. We needed my salary to pay for Big A's kindergarten tuition starting in September. DH's work was looking like it might dry up in the next few months, too. How would we get by?

But a long-term freelance project I've had is concluding, and I suddenly found myself with the prospect of having no work at all this summer. This is the first time I've been completely unemployed in years. Even when I was on maternity leave, I had work lined up for afterwards. I don't know if the folks I usually work with are just at a point in their projects where they aren't hiring for new jobs, or if people have decided they don't like my chaotic schedule due to the sick children. (Maybe a little bit of both?)

At any rate, I was half-heartedly updating my resume and trying to scrounge up job leads for the summer when DH suddenly got a raise that would (if I cut our household budget carefully) pay for that pesky kindergarten tuition I was worried about. So, that's it. I can wrap up current projects and just ... stop. Quit.

Part of me is incredibly relieved that by sometime in July, I'll be out of work. I'm burned out from the struggle to keep up. I'm also more out of shape physically than I've been in years, and looking about five years older than I did five months ago. I need to take better care of myself, and suspect that until things stabilize more on the health front with Little A, my job, which sucks up most time not spent with the kids, makes that impossible. We are lucky to be able to eke it out for awhile without my salary, and so I should probably take advantage of that.

And yet another part of me is scared shitless to give up work, even if only for six months or a year. I'm afraid my life is retracting and that I won't be able to easily get back into the swing of balancing a career and family again later on. I feel like I've failed in numerous, hazy ways. I also don't know if staying home with the kids full time will drive me stark raving mad, either. What if I'm not wired to be a SAHM? Will I feel stifled or isolated?

I'm veering off the road I know and plowing into uncharted territories. Here's hoping it all works out.

6 X 6

2008-05-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

The lovely ladies over at Glow in the Woods have posted 6 X 6, a self-serve meme for deadbaby-related questions and topics. I thought I'd opt in:

1) In a word, how would you characterize yourself before your loss, and then after?
Before: Lucky. After: Cracked.

2) How do you feel around pregnant women?

It's been over two years since my loss. I feel pretty ok around pregnant ladies most of the time now. Having living children undeniably helps me on that front because they are the band aids that cover my old wounds when I go out in public. Socially speaking, they buffer me from a lot of questions and interactions that previously hurt. For instance, nobody asks a lady who is nearing age forty who has two small kids if she plans to have more children. People assume the baby making went ok for you, and that you are now done by design rather than because of medical mishaps. And most of the time, these assumptions are exactly what I prefer. It's very relaxing, to pass as "normal" and not wear my gored heart on my sleeve. That feeling of naked emotional exposure that comes with early grief was terribly disconcerting for me. I'm glad it's mostly gone.

Occasionally a naive, lucky pregnant lady yammers on a little too long about hating stretch marks or about how their 27-page birth plan is going to ensure a drug-free birth, and at those times I still feel exasperated at the inequities of the universe. But the anger I used to feel for the actual women has gone away. I think it's because I know it could all turn on a dime for them. It did for me.

3) How do you answer the 'how many children' question?

I only tell about the kids who were born alive in 95 percent of the situations where that question gets asked. That's no disrespect to others who count differently. It's just how I happen to do it.

4) How did you explain what happened to your lost baby to your living children?

Big A had just turned two when we found out her in-utero sibling had Trisomy 18. Big A was young enough to not understand the reason for Mommy's growing belly, and we hadn't told her she was going to be a big sister before I terminated the pregnancy. We continued avoiding all dead baby discussions with her in the immediate aftermath.

Some might say this was good for Big A because of X reasons, while others might counter that it was bad for her for Y reasons. But why I chose that path had nothing to do with Big A, pathetic as that may sound. I just wasn't up for explaining how babies were made in the same conversation where I explained death to a 25 month old girl. Big A's age allowed me to punt, and so I did.

That said, I've always viewed Big A not knowing about her lost sister as a temporary situation. Some day both Big A and Little A will know about their other sister. I think I'll tell them about her existence first, and then when the girls are older and more sophisticated, I can explain about the termination part.

5) What would another pregnancy mean to you, and how would you get through it—or are you done with babymaking?

Little A is my "happy ending" -- a pregnancy after the loss that resulted in a live baby. Unfortunately her pregnancy was a complicated nightmare that ended with my uterus being so damaged from the rupture that I can't ever carry another child. I'm lucky to be alive now, and Little A is even luckier on that front.

If I'd known in advance how dangerous another pregnancy would be, I never would have attempted it. My parenting of Big A suffered greatly when I was so ill during pregnancy, and the idea that I also nearly orphaned the girl just because I had the urge to have more kids seems utterly ridiculous.

Yet I got away with it -- somehow, I got my Little A even though it all went so wrong. That contradiction is the duct tape that holds my life together today, actually. Because I don't feel like the world owed me this child. I don't think she is any sort of cosmic payback for what came before. But she's here, she's awesome, and I'm going to enjoy the hell out of being her mommy for as many days as I am lucky enough to have her. I own my relationship to the world in a different way because of her existence.

6) Imagine being able to step back in time and whisper into the ear of your past self the day after your baby died. What would you say?

I would tell myself, "Today is Christmas Eve. By this day next year, there will be a healthy baby in the bassinet by your bed. This era of waiting and wondering and worrying about these particular issues will be over. You will hang a lantern in your window to remember your dead, and hang two stockings on the mantle to celebrate the living."

But I do not think I would have believed myself. I probably would have thought I was one big, fat, equivocating jerk!

Near Misses

2008-05-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

The past month has been chock full o' mostly normal stuff for my family. Taxing enough to keep me away from blogging for awhile, but nothing remotely crisis-like. Yet streaking past my windows are a series of red-hot comets of doom and despair. Disasters for others, near misses for us.

First, that horrible earthquake in China. The news reports of broken schools and buried children are too much for me as the parent of small kids. Add in that I live one street away from a major fault line in the Bay Area, and I can't help but cross myself and pray hard for everyone in Asia impacted by that quake.

There are also the smaller, more personal difficulties of friends. First, I fear one of my best friends is sinking into the world of secondary infertility. Her first pregnancy came at age 36 and resulted in a healthy baby (delivered vaginally and drug free, just for icing on the whole pregnancy cake). But after a year of trying for baby #2 unsuccessfully, I can see her confidence eroding. Her smile stretches too tight when news of other people's easy pregnancies come up. She just got a referral to a fertility specialist from her OB, but she hasn't filled it yet. I don't think she's quite ready to accept that what came so easily before is no longer easy. She's hoping a few more months of trying without intervention will work out. And for her sake, so do I.

Then there is the elderly couple next door. The other day I came upon the man bent over his push mower awkwardly. I was ready to jump the fence and check his pulse, but suddenly realized he was crying. "My son," he choked. His 43 year old son just received a diagnosis of malignant melanoma the night before. The biopsy alone left 30 stitches, and more surgery and radiation await. It doesn't look good.

My neighbor's son has a six-year-old boy. Which reminds me of another comet that streaked by: A good friend (the best man at my wedding, actually) just lost his only sister to cancer. Holly was 35, and is also survived by a six-year-old son.

So, near misses. They remind me that I should grab that bottle of bubbly and celebrate the days where wiping noses, dirty laundry, and work-related annoyances are all that occupies my mind. Whoo-hoo, good times! But they also remind me that when you're in a stronger place, you ought to reach out to others who are under siege.

Which leads to a question: What are some practical, little things that a friend or neighbor can do to let someone know they care? I know I could go the card route, but really, I was aiming for something noncommercial and more personal. Is saying it with home-baked pie ok? Something else? Everything I come up with seems so small and ridiculous in comparison to what has happened. Suggestions greatly appreciated!

Update on Unwelcome Blast ...

2008-05-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

Dear C.,

I am surprised you emailed. The last time we spoke was before the nasty R./Z. business, which I'm sure you heard about. But you never contacted me after the r@p.e, which I took as a comment unto itself.

It goes without saying that life evolved into something entirely different for everyone since then. I don't feel particularly haunted or grudge-filled by the distant past. Regular life is just too chock full of other things to dwell on what happened so long ago.

Yet when I do look back, which I can't help but do now with your email sitting in my box, the truth remains that I was hurt badly back then. Being dropped by friends was an extra betrayal on top of a trauma. Given Z.'s personality and her issues with men, in retrospect I can see that she was going to rationalize a way to stick with R. no matter what. This has been an enduring lesson in judging character and choosing friends more carefully.

But you, C., I can't quite figure out. Because if I you think I'd lie about something as serious as a r.@pe, then why would you care to check in with me now? Yet if you suspect I spoke the truth, then how could you wait so long?
..................................................................................................................................

I doubt very much that C. will email back. I actually don't care if she does or doesn't. Ultimately writing back was for me, not her.

I lost a lot of self respect when I didn't report the r@p.e and pursue charges when it happened. At the time it was all I could do to hang on and do ... nothing. (Nothing being not drinking myself into a hole, and not killing R., or committing suicide -- all of which I contemplated for a time.) To go to the hospital, to talk to police and go to court would have required family support or other sane adult guidance that was completely lacking in my life. So when I lost friends in addition to being r@p.ed, it was even more overwhelming. It cemented that secret belief I had that I must be at fault. I slunk away with my tail between my legs when people turned away. I didn't stick up for myself.

So both sending the email and not shrugging off the past hurts -- that's a big difference between now and then. It's like the 37-year-old me just told the younger me "Psst -- They are never going to apologize but you are still going to be ok. You will figure out how to live with the wrongness without having to rewrite your part of it so you are responsible for the horror."

Ever since baby loss woes splattered all over my life I've felt more of a mess than together. I still feel, sometimes, that I am waiting for the answer to the question why did this all have to happen? I still struggle with the idea that so much of it was beyond my control, and suspect I must be to blame. So it's comforting to look back at this early period of my life and realize I'm actually different now than I was then. Certain key questions that hung in my mind became resolved without any particular answer.

I can live with that scenario. I am living it now. And maybe I even gained a little something extra for the effort, beyond the damage and the dust.

Unwelcome Blast from the Past

2008-04-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

I recently signed up with Facebook. Due to sick kids, work deadlines, and other life issues (a.k.a our pool installation and a visit from the in laws) I've been too busy to even slap up a proper page with photos or anything personal there yet. Yet with just my name out there, I am shocked at how many people have emailed me. Old college buddies, a few former coworkers, some cousins. Nice. But then today an email from C., a former friend during high school, landed in my box. Yikes.

I wish I could write a generic version of exactly what happened between C. and I, so that people could understand the nature of my dilemma now without baring the naked, ugly details. But to simply say "C. betrayed me" doesn't do it justice. I think I have to give the skeleton of the details for perspective. Which makes me feel edgy and a little flummoxed ... but here goes:

C. and I were pretty good friends throughout high school. In college I was roommates with another of our mutual high-school friends, Z. During one of those stereotypical train wrecks of a party in my junior year of college, I drank waaaay too much and passed out. While unconscious, Z.'s boyfriend r@p.ed me*. But Z.'s boyfriend denied the se.x wasn't consensual. Z. believed him. One long-term aftermath of this was that my old high-school clique split into two factions: one that still associated with Z. and immediately dropped me, and one that shunned Z. out of disgust, since they believed I wouldn't lie about the r.@pe.

C was part of the Z. camp. I never actually heard that she called me a liar directly, but even so, she never spoke or wrote to me again after she found out about it. That's pretty much calling me a liar with her actions, if not her words. And now there is a breezy, dippity-do-dah type email in my inbox from C. saying "Hi, at last! I was wondering where you landed and now I see it's the West Coast! I'm doing blah-blah-blah in X state ..."

How is one supposed to respond to an email like that, given what went down so many years ago?

Really, I'm at a loss at the moment. Opinions would be greatly appreciated.

*Also stereotypical was my 21-year-old reaction to the r@.pe. I didn't go to the ER for an exam and never reported it to the police. So it was my word against his when I finally shared my story with friends.

Wabi Snobby vs. Wabi Foxworthy. (They Have a Fight. Foxworthy Wins.)

2008-04-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

Due to the hilly topography around here, our house has a lower and upper backyard. Nine months out of twelve we use the hell out of the lower yard, which sits directly behind the house and includes a covered patio and grassy area. By comparison the upper yard is all wasted potential with a side of weeds. Although it’s pretty big by urban standards and fairly flat, we have yet to figure out what to do up there. You have to go out the side gate of the lower yard to reach the path that leads to the upper section, which is awkward. The upper yard is also hidden behind a large hedge, which is good for privacy from the neighbors, but bad in the sense that the hedge blocks view of the upper yard from the lower one. Since the girls are too young to play unsupervised in an area I can’t easily monitor, we hardly ever set foot in the upper yard.

In Target this weekend I suddenly hit upon an idea on how to use that upper yard. Standing in seasonal sporting goods the pools caught my eye. Hmmm, I thought. What if we stamp out that weed problem by taking out the sod and installing a pool?

As soon as I considered it, I found two sides of myself arguing passionately right there in the store.

Snobby Wabi said, “You have got to be kidding me. NOT an above ground pool. It’s so tacky.”

To which Foxworthy Wabi said, “Oh hell, YES. Suit up and get wet!”

Snobby pointed out that nobody else in the neighborhood has an above-ground pool. What would people say?

Foxworthy said she’d be having too much fun splashing in the pool to hear what people say.

Snobby fretted that the neighbors with the bare trellis fence on that side of the house would not be pleased to see the screaming-blue visage of our pool looming next to them.

Foxworthy said those folks should have grown some freaking vines on their trellis at any point in the last 30 years before complaining about lack of privacy now. Plus a pool might motivate them to go in with us on a better fence next year. “Two birds with one stone!” Foxworthy trilled.

Snobby said she wanted a classy pool. An in-ground pool. One with a stone deck and maybe an attached spa.

Foxworthy pointed out that short of winning the lottery, the classy pool was not going to happen while the kids were still kids. Especially since we never, ever play the lottery.

I drove home from Target and asked DH what he thought. He doesn’t have as much redneck in him as I do, so I figured he’d turn pale at the very thought of an above-ground pool and say it was out of the question. Instead he said, “Hey, we wouldn’t have to mow up there anymore! And you’d get to swim with the kids and cool off on the really hot days when the house turns into a kiln. Let’s do it.”

So we checked into the zoning and permit requirements and found out we were good on all fronts. Next thing I knew we were whipping out the credit card and ordering a pool online. It’s on a truck rumbling across country toward our house as I write this.

So, after all the years I spent fleeing my Upstate NY hillbilly roots, I find myself embracing them again. I still wonder what the neighbors will think about the pool. But not enough to give up trying it out this summer. Ever since I was a kid I've dreamed of having a pool of my own. But my family was pretty poor and I never had that pleasure. Now I'm going to be able to see the glee on my kids' faces and feel the exact same emotion stir inside me. What could be better?

This feels like a big milestone. I mean, I know it's a ridiculous thing, just a pool. But that's the point. For many years now I've felt like I just didn't have it in me to put forth much extra effort in life beyond what needed to be done to keep everyone clothed and fed and breathing without a tube. When you are in survival mode due to fear or pain or grief, it's all you can do to grit your way through each day. And now here I am, debating whether or not my neighbors will dub me a redneck if I get a pool. What could be more frivilous? It's like I'm almost ... normal. Something nearby normal, anyway.

Yee haw!

The Event that Wasn't

2008-04-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

I have (oddly) fond childhood memories of getting minor frostbite on my toes while waiting for a torch to be trotted past me on the way to the 1980 winter Olympics at Lake Placid. So when I heard that San Francisco would be the only North American stop for the 2008 Olympic torch relay, I immediately wanted to bring Big A to see it. San Francisco usually throws a fine public party. In addition to the music, dancing, and pageantry, San Francisco seasons these events with a whole range of protesters and a light sprinkling of nudists. That's just how we do it out here, and for the most part, it works out fine.

After the protester mayhem that occurred in London and Paris, I considered not taking Big A after all. But in the end I simply went early, assuming any problem protesters were likely not locals, and would therefore be sleeping off jetlag while Big A and I walked around the plaza in the morning.

Big A loved the BART commute. "Our train is the biggest thing in the WORLD," she marveled as she watched Oakland streets zip by far below the elevated tracks. In San Francisco we checked out the Olympic flags and music first. I explained to Big A about how the torch goes all the way around the world to where the games are taking place. Big A was duly impressed. I talked about how China is very far away, a beautiful and interesting country. I said I would love to travel there with her someday.

Then we made our way over to the side of the plaza where the protesters gathered. It was hard to know exactly what to tell a four year old about all the "Free Tibet" signs. So I just said that even though China is full of fabulous things and people, it is not perfect. Sometimes China has been a very bad neighbor. Sometimes it mistreats its own people, too. So a lot of people were protesting to try to get China to behave better.

I wondered if Big A would be confused by the two radically different stories about the same place, but she just accepted it all, as four year olds sometimes do. We walked around some more. She marveled at the balloons and banners. I bought a "Hot Chicks Dig Obama" button from a guy wearing a "peace for Darfur" shirt. Big A received an "honorary SFPD" sticker from a policeman, and the nice bomb squad guy let her pet the explosive-sniffing dog. We eventually met up with DH (who works downtown) for an early lunch.

By that time Big A was overstimulated and tired. She was too jumpy to eat her sandwich. Helicopters circled overhead and Big A began shouting at them to stop bothering her. Even though it was only 15 minutes before the torch was supposed to arrive for the welcome ceremony, I decided to leave right then rather than deal with a huge meltdown on the BART platform if I lingered much longer.

It was only later in the day when I turned on the radio that I learned San Francisco opted to scuttle the originally planned event. They raced the torch through parts of town where nobody was expecting it. Well, maybe raced is too strong a word -- apparently the lines of police around the torch bearers were so tight that they couldn't really run at all, but just sort of shuffle along en masse.

Inspiring? Well, I suspect Big A will always remember her first BART ride. But for the rest of public out there waving the whole range of signs and flags? Feh.

Sure, San Francisco foiled any rowdy protesters from dousing the torch flame by doing what they did. But thousands of people waited downtown to catch a glimpse of it, and SF doused something in them instead.

Low Tide Near Trader Joes

2008-04-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

One of the loveliest things about living in this area is
what may lurk just behind a dull and dreary strip mall.

Kitchen Reno

2008-03-27T12:28:00.001-07:00

Meg asked for before/after photos of our kitchen renovation, so here are a few. This is the main view you got entering the kitchen when we moved into the house five years ago:

Why yes, those dark cabinets and fake marble countertops are original to the 58-year-old house! Note how that upper cabinet obscures all views and light from the backyard, requiring adults on one side of the kitchen to bend down over a hot stove to have a face-to-face conversation with anyone on the other side. And I get a facial tick just remembering the old cooktop. It suffered from narcolepsy. You'd boil something and realize that the power had nodded off when the bubbles petered out. Then you had to beat the burner with a wooden spoon to get it to wake back up.

This is what it looks like now, after years of incremental improvements. The fresh paint and built-in bench for the breakfast nook were the final projects:

Obviously we didn't go crazy and break the bank, knocking out walls and upgrading everything to the highest degree. It's still a small kitchen that has a 1950s feel to it. We didn't even put in new cabinets, opting to just paint the old ones and replace the pulls. But the floor is now eco-friendly marmoleum, the counters are silestone, and we went with a tile back splash to add a little bit of color. We also sprang for a new back door to take advantage of the views and light. Then we created a countertop peninsula for another food prep area, and added a small bookcase under that for more storage.

My favorite addition to the kitchen is the corner nook bench. Even though we always had a table and chairs back there, the space was awkward because there was only room for two people to sit. The nook is a real space saver that allows the whole family to eat together.

I still need to unpack my cookbooks and bricabrac, as well as get some curtains and bench cushions so it feels more homey. But overall, I'm really happy with the changes. The kitchen went from a dark and frustrating place to cook to a bright little spot where I savor my coffee while the kids throw food at each other.

Solitaire

2008-03-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

Queen of Spades from an 1810 card deck
by Vincenz Raimund Gruner (Vienna).

My mother's mother taught me the basic game of solitaire as soon as I was old enough to count to 13 and shuffle a deck by swirling the cards in messy circles on the Formica table. We'd sit in her kitchen and snap down cards in round after round of side-by-side solitaire. The games gave my fidgety, childish fingers something to do while I listened to her stories.

The names of the places she spoke about were familiar because our family had lived around our village since before the American Revolution. But the jobs and activities Grandmother spoke about were strange to me. Men worked at the locomotive plant in the City or sharecropped in the hills. Women rose before dawn to build a fire in the kitchen stove so breakfast could be served. There was no radio, no television, and no electricity in most of the homes when my grandmother was a girl.

I couldn't imagine what people did when it got dark. Sleep, my grandmother would say, And play cards. The family always had cards. Not the waxy, mass-produced type I used for my games, but ones my great grandmother cut out of cardboard and drew with a pencil.

My grandmother said that as a child she would sometimes wake to see the lantern throwing off a glow that filled the gap between the floor and the bedroom door. She'd stumble out to find her mother bent over the kitchen table staring at a game of solitaire.

"Come to bed," my little grandmother would plead. "It's late. It's cold." My great grandmother, recently widowed and raising four daughters alone, would promise to come soon and then linger.

The story never included direct mention of what kept my great grandmother at the table those nights. But I sensed it even without understanding the details of the poverty and the times. As children we all know to fear the darkness lurking just outside the narrow glimmer of a lamp.

And now every time I click and drag a card of light across the laptop, I can't help but think of my great grandmother. She played her rounds one hundred years ago and died decades before my birth. But the chains of cards stretch out, and sometimes I catch a glimpse of her weary eyes reflected in the screen.

Progress

2008-03-17T10:20:00.000-07:00

I am holed up in my home office as I write this, trying to work but instead really just listening to the contractors do some finishing details in our 3/4ths renovated kitchen. (We are into year four on this project now. Obviously we move sloooowly on these things.) It's not that anyone is preventing me from working by being incredibly noisy. More that I'm either used to working with the bedlam of children behind me, or (when the kids are at school and/or the sitter) complete quiet. Having adults milling around in the background is odd. I have to resist the urge to offer them sippy cups or ask if they need to go to the potty.

Plus, construction in the kitchen reminds me of when we redid the floors, counters, and back splash when I was at the tail-end of Little A's torturous pregnancy. That job contract was signed when I was in the second trimester and feeling relatively ok. But most of the work ended up being done in the period of time when I was in and out of the hospital with preterm labor. That last month of Little A's pregnancy was probably the most difficult of my life so far. I was terrified that things were going wrong, unable to control what happened, and in terrible shape. It hurt too much to pick up Big A, or get down on the floor to play with her. Even if the kitchen hadn't been gutted, I couldn't stand up for a half hour to cook dinner at the end of the pregnancy, anyhow. We ate way more takeout and watched way more TV than I want to think about now. Hopefully our hearts, arteries, and brains have recovered from all that.

I am glad to be reminded by the new construction that life was shitty back then, much like the old kitchen sucked. It's not that life is perfect now, what with Little A's illnesses and trying to make ends meet during a recession. But, those are all new problems. Hallelujah, that's real progress.

The Green World

2008-03-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

After growing up in a place where March is really just
Winter Part Two (aka the muddy season,) this month
always takes me by surprise in the East Bay environs.

When does the garden burst into bloom where you live?

Daffodils

2008-03-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

Back in January Little A's baby sitter offered me a mesh bag full of daffodil bulbs. "I won't be around this weekend to plant them," she explained, adding that she'd accidentally left the bulbs outside in a rainstorm and they were wet. Once wet, they would need to go in the ground almost immediately to have a good chance at sprouting in the spring.

I brought the bag home and put it down next to the orange tree, intending to plant them early the next morning. But it rained more, Little A went back in the hospital, and life turned into one big to-do list that kept increasing in size but never saw any items crossed off of it. I did not plant the daffodil bulbs. I did not even move the bag. But every time I set foot outside for the last six weeks, I saw it and felt regretful.

Then the doctor called with good news -- sweat test normal, no cystic fibrosis for Little A. I felt so relieved, so grateful. The ice jam of terror that left me suspended for so long broke apart. I could cry, I could think, I could live again. The next time I saw the bag in the backyard I resolved to throw it out.

When I picked the bag up, I saw the green fingers of stem pushing out from the gnarled fists of each bulb. Despite laying in the wet grass with no nourishment outside of the occasional rainstorm for so long, they had not rotted or frozen or withered. Every single one grew.

Thinking about toughness and luck, I planted them after all.

Another Fork Stuck in the Road

2008-03-03T10:47:00.000-08:00

Back home now after spending the morning at Children's Hospital getting Little A a sweat test to check for cystic fibrosis. The procedure went fine. No needles or strapping her down to get what they needed. So long as I held her in my lap, Little A was quiet and cooperative. She even held her arms out for the lab lady to attach the electrodes and sweat-collection device thingies, which astounded everyone. And now she is at her baby sitter's house taking a nap, no doubt dreaming of cupcakes and tricycles.

Meanwhile I'm sitting at work all a jitter and distracted. On one hand, I know that according to the powers that be, Little A has a relatively low chance of having CF. Both parents need to have a bum gene for a kid to develop the disease. And even when both parents have the mutation, you still have a 75 percent shot at not having a child with CF.

But the problem is twofold. First, we know I am a CF carrier and DH's status is up in the air. Back when I was pregnant the first time, I found out my carrier status and DH got tested. He screened negative, and we were told we had "zero chance" of having kids with CF. But now that zero has turned iffy. The pulminologist claims that the blood test DH took only checks for the 30 most-common CF gene mutations. There are about 1000 rarer mutations DH might still have. So, to clear up ambiguities, we opted to do the sweat test on Little A.

Second, I can't help but think about how my chance of making a baby with trisomy 18 was over 1 in 300. The chance of getting my uterus perforated in the D&E and having the anesthesia fail was even lower than 1 in 300. And the risk of uterine rupture outside of labor in Little A's pregnancy was way less than 1 percent. In light of all that has happened in the past few years, risk statistics are cold comfort.

So ... 25 percent. Possible big fork in the road directly ahead. More news soon.

I Can See Clearly Now, the Rain Has Gone

2008-02-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

February, the F month, so full of days of rain and trouble. This was going to be a gloomy post about trips to the pulminologist for Little A, of new medications we are trying, and my freak out over her asthma being described as brittle by the doctor. I was going to wallow in my fears about the upcoming sweat test that will determine if Little A has cystic fibrosis rather than asthma. Also on the menu: bitching about how Little A's milestones are now delayed. She was almost walking before Christmas, but since then regressed back to crawling. And she fell so many percentiles on the weight charts that during the last hospitalization, the nutritionist came by to give me pointers on how to feed a baby. I could have died. Or killed someone. Or died while killing someone. Picture earnest hospital lady saying, "You should offer her food often -- every two hours, even," as I bared my teeth in a fake smile and tried to stop myself from snotting, "But I usually put out kibble for her once a day -- is that not ok?"

But, right now I feel so happy. All that trouble can wait until another day. Little A started walking this weekend!

We've been trying to get her to walk with us for many months as practice for some solo steps, but she hated toddling along with her parents hanging on to her hands. She voted with her butt -- slamming it down on the floor each time we pulled her up. The more we tried, the more irritated she got.

The rain has been constant, and the kids home a lot due to sick babysitters and holidays. So on Friday I allowed Big A to bring her tricycle inside the house. She can ride a circular route through the whole main level and loves it. It turned out Little A is also in love with the tricycle, though far too little for her legs to reach the pedals. So, she would grab on the back of the trike and stumble along behind as her big sister looped the house. After a few days of holding on to the back of the tricycle, Little A suddenly took off without it.

She's super clumsy, having not figured out how to use her knees yet. Very Frankensteinesque. It's the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time.

Violets are Blue

2008-02-14T15:39:00.000-08:00

I met DH when we were sixteen years old and in a driver's education class we took during one boggy, glorious, mosquito-filled summer in Upstate New York. Given the on again, off again nature of the relationship during our teen and college years, I don't remember our first date. I don't recall ever having a song we called our own, either. But I do remember the first flowers DH ever gave me: blue violets picked from the edge of sidewalks on the way to high school. We were both self conscious and tried to play it off as no big deal. But it gave me such a thrill to get them.

Life is so different today, with twenty years and three thousand miles of distance between now and then. We would be unrecognizeable to our sixteen-year-old selves. But when DH brings me flowers, and it still gives me a thrill.

Happy Valentine's Day, sweetie.

If your first love gave you a flower, do you still remember what it was?

Uh No, I Don't Do That

2008-02-13T10:24:00.000-08:00

Normally I don't talk about work here due to a healthy fear of being dooced. But four different conversations this week involving the "What Do You Do?" question have got me thinking. Describing my work to people I've just met inevitably leads to misunderstandings.

If I just say "I'm an editor," most assume I mean a copy editor -- a professional grammar cop who ferrets out spelling and syntax mistakes. Anyone who reads this blog can guess that is NOT my area of expertise. In fact, (SHHH, don't tell anyone who hires me) but I'm just a wee bit dyslexic. To occasionally spot a howler of a mistake in a manuscript is indeed possible for me, but being a stellar copy editor under the circumstances? That would be like putting a color-blind guy in charge of picking all the tints for Revlon's lipstick division. Not a pretty thing.

But, I must fit the nerdy, persnickety personality profile of a copy editor, so this is the conclusion most people draw. To dissuade people from this assumption I started saying, "I'm a book editor."

But "book editor" also carries heavy assumptions. Many automatically think I work on fiction. Not just any fiction -- best-selling stuff. The excitement and interest that warms people's voices when I say "book editor" flatters me, so sometimes I don't elaborate further, but look away and blush with equivocation. (Hey, I'm human and I need to be loooved. Just like everybody else does.)

Except sometimes people sound too excited about my job. Then I must hasten to add, "I work on nonfiction" as I back away slowly. Otherwise someone whips out a 1,000-page manuscript written in a sestina verse variant that retells the story of Moby Dick from the whale's perspective. And that person will always expect me to take their manuscript home and spend the next six months of leisure time reading and editing it for them (for free, of course) before I short track them through the rest of the publishing process to fame, fortune, and Oprah's book club. There really isn't a nice way to say "Oh hell, NO!" under these circumstances. All you can do is run away and hope the manuscript doesn't give you a concussion if the person throws it as you retreat.

Usually saying "nonfiction editor" stops this process dead. But a small, diligent group of memoir writers still gets too excited at this news, which leads me to add "I work on educational books. You know, for college?"

That ends all conversation. Because apparently university press is like tampax: something a lot of us use and need at one point in life. But not something we want to think about.

Meantime, people STILL have absolutely no idea what it is I actually do to the books I edit. Probably they assume I'm a copy editor.

I really envy DH when people ask him what he does. "I'm an animator" inevitably brings cheers of "Wheee!" from all age groups, no strings.

Rhymes with Bucket

2008-02-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

Big A: "Mommy, what rhymes with jacket?"

Wabi: "Well, there's ... bracket. And racket. And ... placket."

Big A: "Mommy, what rhymes with bucket?"

....

Big A: "Are you ok? Did your coffee go down the wrong throat?"

Now Repeat After Me: "I'm So Sorry for Your Loss." Great! Now STOP TALKING ...

2008-02-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to say I have eluded the stomach flu thus far! Alas, poor DH fell ill yesterday. Here's hoping my good luck sticks ...

I was reading Ann's recent posts (Raw, and Raw Part 2) over at The Unlucky Twenty Percent She reminds me so vividly of the conundrum of early pregnancy after loss. I didn't have a blog when I was fresh in my grief and newly pregnant with Little A. But most of what I would have written about back then is stuff she talks about now. Ann's description of certain health care professionals who are inappropriately gushy over a new pregnancy announcement on the heels of a loss? Boy, I remember that.

Thankfully many things change over time. The blast crater left in my life by pregnancy woes has been camouflaged by the new things (children, work, holidays, home renovations, vacations, etc.). Most of the time others don't sense that anything catastrophic happened to me and my family in the not-too-distant past anymore. I actually take solace in that. We're different, but still chugging along the best we can these days.

Yet the one place where my loss still always seems like a huge, ugly tattoo remains the doctor office. For instance, I went to my primary care doctor this January. I wanted a prescription for antibiotics to clear up a month-long sinus infection. But I haven't seen my PCP in about 18 months, since before that I'd been under the OB's care. Understandably, my PCP needed to update my chart. "Gee, what have you been up to since 2006?" she asked. "Any changes in your life that relate to your health?"

And so it begins. Mind you, I'm there for my nose. Or other times, I might be in a physician's office on behalf of my kid's wheezy lungs. Yet my damaged uterus keeps butting her scarred little self into the conversation. It always goes the same way during medical history:

Well ... not quite a normal delivery.

Not during VBAC. I'd never had a c section before Little A. The rupture was spontaneous and preterm.

No hysterectomy, but no more pregnancies allowed, either.

Yeah, they say it's a great outcome given what usually happens.

Actually it was a perforation scar that ruptured. A prior surgical complication.

A D&E.

Yeah, second trimester. Due to trisomy 18.

The surreal thing? I find doctors don't react in caring-empathetic mode. I can't remember the last time someone said, "Oh, that sounds dreadful," or "Sorry for your loss." Instead doctors (and some nurses, but especially doctors) eat this stuff up with a spoon. They are obviously excited to hear about what happened to me and Little A and tend to linger and ask detailed questions. Which might reap benefits, IF they were staying to talk about the sinus infection or lung problem at hand. But Little A and I get the standard 90 seconds of conversation on that, and then doctors want to talk about the crazy medical history that is completely unrelated to our chief complaint of the day. We are obviously the caliente in their otherwise lukewarm medical-history-taking day.

Maybe I'm putting out an "I'm ok" vibe by not choking up or crying myself, and that's why I get the borderline gleeful reaction? Perhaps they are all unfeeling dolts? Something else?

I don't even know how I'd like doctors to react to the news. But having to swallow to keep from salivating all over the chart is quite creepy.

And Then There Were Two ...

2008-02-04T22:40:00.000-08:00

Hip, hip, horray! Little A's stomach flu played nice and didn't wake us up in the middle of the night and concluded without much fanfare today. However, Big A just sat up in bed and started spewing an hour ago. I suspect I may not get off mop free tonight.

I'm feeling a little off in the stomach dept. myself. But I can't tell if that's because cleaning up someone else's vomit (in the bedroom, in the hallway, and in the bathroom) is stomach churning, or because I am hatching the bug myself. But I have a feeling I'll know for sure before too much longer.

Meantime, I'm madly trying to get some work done before I either get too tired to read anything else or start throwing up.

Bets, anyone?

Home Again

2008-02-03T21:04:00.000-08:00

The good news: We got home Wednesday night. Plus Little A saw a pulminologist this week who put her on new meds. Eight days after initially getting sick, Little A's lungs sound pretty darn good. Today was the first time Dh and I haven't had to do albuterol treatments for breakthrough wheezing. There will be more tests and monkeying around with her medications in the future, but for now, I'm just thankful she isn't fighting for every breath anymore.

But perhaps the world has decided it will spin off its axis if we have a completely normal weekend? Because around 4 p.m. this Sunday Little A started throwing up. We've spent the rest of the day and night dealing with a baby with the stomach flu. FABULOUS.

After feeling unhinged about this development for an hour or so, I've calmed down and decided that this is not something to flip out about. No fever so far, and more Pedialyte is going in than comes out during the GI episodes. These are all signs that it's just a mild bug. Plus, the mommy vibes? Not an ominous tingle from them so far. I'm going to trust in the signs that the imminent dangers are low for this. The rest is just mess, and that I can definitely handle.

Keep your fingers crossed for us getting through the night without changing the crib sheets and cleaning the baby up multiple times!

Hey, This Hospital Has Wi-Fi!

2008-01-29T15:37:00.000-08:00

That's pretty cool. Now maybe they could work on covering the basics, like a cafeteria that is open for three meals a day rather than just between the hours of 11 a.m.-2 p.m.? Because the eat-one-meal-a-day thing doesn't work out for parents staying at the hospital 24/7 with their kids. The only store within walking distance is Walgreens. I guess I could buy a dinner of little bottles of alcohol* and Cheetos there if I get desperate. Yummy!

Little A is next to me in her crib/cage as I write this, butt high in the air and face down, nose plowed into her fuzzy blankie. She continued her pattern of going on oxygen earlier each day. Today she desaturated and went on it at 3 p.m., whereas yesterday it was 7 p.m., and the after being off since 7 or 8 a.m. If she were not on oxygen now I'd be turning her over on her back for the 312th time and carefully respositioning her so she could breathe better while staring at the monitor, hoping to prevent her from going back on the supplemental Os. But since she's already on them now, I'll just let her snooze the way she wants for now as I write.

I wish I could say we are going home tomorrow, but it's looking like Thursday or Friday are the more likely scenarios. I wish it were earlier, but it is what it is. I really think that sleep deprivation may be the culprit for her desats at this point: She has bags under her eyes from lack of sleep! When she finally does take a nap, her body just can't keep up with her needs like it might have if she hadn't been exhausted on top of being sick. Annoying, but I'm not sure I can do much about it. I'll talk to the nurse about possibly delaying vital checks if she's sleeping, though. (Don't know if they'll do it, but I can always ask ...)

*For nonCalifornians it might sound weird that I could buy booze at a drugstore. But out here grocery and drug stores often have whole aisles filled with alcohol.

Used that Prepacked Overnight Bag ...

2008-01-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

Paul Moore: It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room.

Jane Craig: No. It's awful.

I've been thinking about this, my favorite quote from the movie Broadcast News, a lot over the past few days. Not that I believe I'm anywhere close to being the smartest person in the rooms I frequent. But I've been right about a key issue a lot recently, and how that is working out feels awful.

Saturday played out like a water-down version of three weeks ago Sunday, when Little A's original cold went from something normal to something scary. It's all less insanely frightening than before, but still no fun. First DH and I had differing opinions on how to proceed with Little A's developing illness. He was concerned but more of the "let's wait and see, it's work out ok by itself" school, while I was of the "my mommy instinct is tingling madly, something is WRONG and we must attend to it NOW" school. We exchanged words about our differences in a not-very-nice way this time, much the way we did before Little A's hospitalization last time. We sort of made up afterwards, but the stress of what was said remains. And then after a few phone calls back and forth with the pediatrician, I ended up bringing Little A to the ER by myself while DH stayed home with Big A.

This time she was in respiratory distress (as opposed to respiratory failure last time) when we arrived at the ER. The staff tried several one-hour albuterol treatments and did a chest Xray before deciding to admit her. They informed us that this time instead of staying at Children's hospital, she was being transferred to another hospital across the city. They said the transfer to the other unit (I'll call it Hilltop Hospital) was because Little A wasn't sick enough to rate a room at Children's Hospital, which is reserved for the most severe illnesses. To which I said, "Yay?" Then Little A and I took our second ambulance ride of the month together.

Hilltop hospital is the shabby, country cousin of Children's Hospital. The nurses we met at Children's were all stellar whereas Hilltop nurses seem to be more of a mixed bag. The facilities are far less posh. Some of the policies seem arbitrary and very family unfriendly, whereas everything at Children's was progressively geared toward making a child's hospital stay as easy on the child and family as possible.

But, the one thing Hilltop has that Children's doesn't is private rooms. Thank God we have one. We have a quiet space all to ourselves this time, rather than a curtained ward room shared by six patients.

And the view? Pretty darn nice. (Though I can think of better ways of seeing it than from a hospital):

That's Oakland in the foreground, with both (stylistically incongruent) sections of the Bay Bridge in view. Those with eagle eyes can also spy the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

And here's a shot of the view at sunset, with San Francisco's skyline showing off its pretty silhouette:

We now live in limbo. Because while Little A is definitely not as sick as before, she is still nonetheless not in good enough condition to come home. At first we hoped she'd be discharged Sunday morning, but at 5 a.m. Sunday she needed to be put on supplemental oxygen, which killed our chances of discharge that day. They removed the oxygen supplement a few hours later and she went until 2 a.m. Monday without it, but then desaturated and needed oxygen once more. Today they took her off the oxygen at seven a.m., but she was back on it by seven p.m.

To me, the pattern isn't one of getting better or even of holding ground. It worries me. Each day they put her on the oxygen earlier than the day before, and she stays on it longer. At the same time, the doctors and nurses seem to be focusing on the fact that her admitting Xrays this weekend looked better than her discharge Xrays did earlier in the month. They also point out that so far, they are not putting her on ever-higher levels of oxygen, either. 0.50 liters per minute is fine to keep her saturation in the nineties while she sleeps deeply. When awake she can maintain a safe oxygen level without supplementing, which is something it took many days to accomplish during the first hospital stay.

Part of me focuses on those good things too and feels relieved. But another part of me is so frustrated, because any need for oxygen prevents us from bringing Little A home. From a practical standpoint, the amount of oxygen doesn't really matter, the end result -- more hospital time -- is the same regardless.

I feel like I'm failing at everything. Failing Little A by not working harder to prevent her from getting sick again when she was ill so recently, failing at my job because so much of this month has been spent taking care of ill children. Failing Big A by obliterating her much-needed life routines when one of her parents is always at the hospital rather than at home.

I also suspect DH feels I'm failing him. I think he's like Paul More in Broadcast News, believing that like Jane Craig, I revel in making the right calls about going to the hospital with Little A. He just seems to take whatever I say about the girls' health as a braying I-told-you-so on the subject now. But the reality? I just feel scared and bewildered about all of this. There is no comfort in being right when it means your child wins a hospital stay.

And is it wrong for me to so acutely notice that DH has never even acknowledged that I was right to insist on going to the hospital in both these recent situations? How do I keep ending up the bad person in all our disagreements about Little A's health and treatments?

Like I said -- awful.

One More Thing

2008-01-26T10:36:00.000-08:00

Last night Little A got a fever and a strong wheeze back in her lungs again.

So, back we went to her pediatrician's office today during their weekend drop-in clinic. That makes three visits in four days between the two As. So far it's not pneumonia again (yet). But, it's not good. We'll be back in the pediatrician's office first thing Monday if things go as planned.

Because I'm in a really black mood, I have already packed a hospital overnight bag. That way if we have to suddenly go to the ER and have her admitted for treatment before Monday, at least we won't be without some basic needs: a stash of toddler-appropriate snacks, a warm blanket for Little A to snuggle, toiletries for me, etc.

Children don't get serious lung infections multiple times per month unless they have an underlying autoimmune disease. So, in addition to the problem of the moment, I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that Little A has asthma. This is the most likely culprit, and with the other possible options being things like cystic fibrosis, we'll take asthma. (Well, obviously nobody is letting us choose what she has ... but if we had a choice in this scenario, asthma seems like the best of the crappy things we could pick. )

We'll be giving a lot of nebulizer treatments multiple times per day for the time being and hoping it doesn't turn into pneumonia again. We'll sort out the rest of the ramifications of the asthma when things calm down more.

I know I am whining and probably come across as particularly ungrateful right now. Apologies for that. Chalk it up to the continued sleeplessness and a myriad of worries.

Enough Already

2008-01-24T10:40:00.000-08:00

January has been post-lite for me. It's all related to residing in the house o' plague. Little A's illness alone ate three weeks of our lives: a week when we thought it was just a bad cold and tried to manage it with doctor's visits, then the week when it was officially double pneumonia and she was hospitalized, and another week after that where she was at home, but I was giving her nebulizer treatments (five times a day), antibiotics (three times a day), and steroids (twice a day). There really wasn't time between medical treatments for anyone to do much of anything else.

So then Little A was ok again. Yay! Except I was sick with something I caught in the hospital by then and my doctor was afraid it was a super bug, so she gave me what she referred to as the "big-gun, super-serious antibiotics." Which did help clear up my ragged lungs, but only after making me nauseous and dizzy for days.

Meanwhile Big A was seriously acting out because Little A's hospital stay had frightened her. She began throwing fits like an overgrown toddler. I tried to be patient and give her lots of extra attention. I tried ignoring all but the most rude or obnoxious behavior. And if her antics were confined to daylight hours I probably could have gutted it through with more grace and kindness than I have. But oh, those nights. Her nocturnal shit fits have been driving DH and I insane. Multiple wake ups per night where no cuddle, kind word, or glass of water mollifies. After waking her sister and parents up she eventually quiets down enough to be put in the parental bed, but then she can only sleep with one hand jammed into my ribs and one foot shoved up DH's bum. Repositioning either appendage results in her waking and howling again.

Big A was finally getting back to normal when we she started complaining about an ear ache. We treated with tylenol for a few days but it wasn't going away on its own. So back to the doctor's office we went.

"Her ears look fine," World's Best Pediatrician said. "But I'm a little worried about this rattle I'm hearing on the left side of her chest." A treatment of albuterol in the office didn't change the rattle. So off across town for an Xray, which confirmed that Big A now has pneumonia in one lung.

The good news is we caught it early and Big A is doing well on antibiotics. It doesn't look like we are hospital-bound again. But if one more freaking thing happens this month, I swear that my head will explode. ENOUGH, already!

Why It's Important to Vote Pro Choice

2008-01-21T17:39:00.001-08:00

NARAL is celebrating the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade by asking bloggers to write about why it's important to vote pro choice. This is one of those topics that is so broad that I'm actually having a fairly hard time saying anything that isn't blah, blah, blah on it. It would be like asking the devout to write about why religion is good. Or making Ms. Pac Man explain why she eats the dots. Duh. What's to be said?

Of course, many people out there obviously don't think it is important to vote pro choice. Every single viable GOP presidential candidate right now is officially antichoice. So, I'm going to talk about the small little corner of pro-choicedom that I know very personally, which is termination for medical reasons.

I'm addressing this to all those married, middle-class, suburban, thirty-something Americans who routinely vote Republican because they don't think the abortion issue has anything to do with them. Please, start making this a priority in your voting. I'm appealing to your self interest now, because if abortions are restricted further, you are likely the first people that bans will impact directly. That's because abortion rights are getting chipped away in the second trimester before the first. And contrary to popular belief, the woman who ends a pregnancy in the second trimester isn't a callous bubblehead who forgot to schedule the appointment at the clinic for five whole months. Women who get second-trimester abortions are often married, middle class, suburban, thirty-something mothers who loved the unborn baby they aborted. I am the face of second-trimester abortion. And that means you potentially are, too. This is happening to women with wanted, planned pregnancies all the time.

Wait, you say I'm wrong -- you'd never have an abortion under any circumstances? You say you'd keep your baby, no matter what?

That sentiment is sweet, but also a trifle smug. Oh, the viscous, brutal things that can happen during a pregnancy. Things that no prenatal vitamin is mighty enough to thwart. Unfixable, misery-inducing predicaments for babies. Some of these afflictions are fatal, some not. Many in both categories are entirely devastating, for both the baby and his or her entire family.

Do you know the details of any of these potential problems? I'm guessing not. I didn't either until my unborn baby was diagnosed with one of them. And that's when I discovered that what can sound so correct on a bumper sticker might feel wrong when it comes to your actual child. I'm not saying all will want to have an abortion under my circumstances ... just that you will truly not know what you might do until faced with a real scenario. When staring down a poor prenatal diagnosis, all the easy rhetoric falls away. And wouldn't it be terrible to discover, too late, that abortion was an issue that impacted you directly after all, but was now completely off the table because you voted for people who didn't respect your right to make a choice?

I think that the pro choice agenda is, in many ways, a victim of our wealth and success in America. We live in a magical bubble of comfort and luxury where most of the time, people are healthy and things turn out alright. That kind of prosperity is great in a myriad of ways, but has one big ironic drawback: when people don't experience serious hardships on a regular basis, that can lead to a colossal failure of empathy and imagination among citizens. Many people out there simply cannot understand the challenges facing those who are not lucky or healthy in life. Under these circumstances, it's much easier to buy into the antichoice assertion that anyone who aborts must be completely different, both inside and out, than they are.

Don't buy into that argument. Remember that a pro choice vote is many things to many different people. For you, it is the way to protect your parental rights so you can make a full range of decisions if your wanted pregnancy goes disastrously wrong. So vote pro choice. Not because you want an abortion, but because some day you may discover that you need one.

Bye Bye, Baby

2008-01-16T19:46:00.000-08:00

Latest development in the Wabi-Sabi abode: sisterly relationships are blooming! Up until now, the two A's shared space with each other, but most interactions were short and cajoled into occurring by a grownup. ("Hold her so I can take your picture together," etc.) But since Little A's birthday, the girls now play together on purpose. Big A builds block towers so Little A can smash through them. Even though Little A still can't walk, they play tag and some variety of hide and seek, too. It's incredibly heart warming to see the girls seek each other out enjoy each other's company. Growing up with a house full of brothers, I always yearned for a sister. Now I get to experience some of that through my own kids, which is wonderful.

Of course, just as I'm reaching for the camera to record video of some adorable scene, it has usually morphed into a tug of war over toys or some other variety of domestic strife. They are not shy at screaming at each other if the mood so strikes one of them.

The other day Big A fell asleep on the couch after a long walk, and her sister (who was energized after snoozing in the stroller on the bike path) crawled up and started poking Big A in the face. Big A moved away instinctively in her sleep, but that just made Little A even more interested in continuing her torture."Stop it, stop it, stoooop," complained Big A groggily.

To which Little replied, "Heh heh heh," sounding like a bonafide trickster. "Haw haw," she crowed triumphantly as she poked even harder before I could scoop her up.

My innocent little baby is now officially a toddler, I think.

Adventures in the Children's Hospital, Part 2

2008-01-07T20:53:00.000-08:00

At Children's Hospital, the universal word of need is "Mama." Babies and small children cry it out constantly when uncomfortable. They yell it in anger when they feel cooped up or hungry or tired. They whine it in fear when anyone in scrubs approaches their bedside. At first it is jarring to hear the word howled so often, but after the first day I get used to it and start to screen out all the plaintive "Mama" calls around me.

Little A's room contains six beds and sits directly across from the nurses' station. Due to constant chatter of doctors, nurses, and parents at the desk outside our door, and the monitor alarms and beeps, plus sounds generated from six children and at least one parent per child at all times, our room remains cacophonous at least twenty hours a day. It is so loud that even with earplugs in, I can make out television dialog and distinct conversations in the room around me when I try to sleep. And poor Little A doesn't have earplugs, and is a naturally light sleeper, so the situation is even worse for her. She never sleeps before 11:30 or so each night, even though she is ready to drop by 8 p.m. Rather than getting her usual 14-15 hours of sleep each day, Little A is getting something closer to 8 hours. The combination of drugs, forced insomnia, and illness gets her so amped up that sometimes she bashes her head repeatedly against the metal bars of her crib.

The children crying and monitor noises I don't resent. But I grow more and more annoyed with the parents around us. At least half of them seem to be confused about where they are. This isn't a hotel, I keep muttering under my breath. This isn't about you and your entertainment. The annoying parents blare Nightline or telenovelas past midnight on their children's bedside TVs. Since the oldest child in the room is all of four, it seems to me that the TVs ought to all be turned off by nine or ten p.m. Unfortunately no nurse seems willing to tell the noisy parents this. Even when the TVs go off, some parents have loud, joking conversations with each other or on their telephones at 2 a.m.

The worst noise offenders also seem to be the people with the least-sick children, which only fuels my anger. The child with RSV a few beds down has coughing jags so severe that his mother keeps hitting the call button for nurse assistance as his choking sounds fill the room. Through my curtain I hear the doctors say that his lungs are getting worse. His fever is not going away, either. When that boy's mother speaks on the phone, it is practically in whispers. But the beds around that child and mine are a revolving door of not-nearly-as-sick children. It is the parents whose children only stay a night or two in the hospital who have the energy to shout into the phone about their recent travails, or to complain repeatedly about not having their hair dryer after they take a shower.

To be released home, Little A has to be fever-free and be able to breathe room air without her oxygen saturation falling below 90 percent for twenty-four hours in a row. Her fever breaks the first night, but it takes four days before we can get her off the supplemental oxygen for good. The nurses keep turning it down to try to wean her off, but after an hour or two of doing well, her saturation falls into the eighties, and then we have to turn the oxygen up again and start over. Each time this happens we reset our time table in the hospital by at least another 24 hours, which is frustrating. At the same time, the idea of taking her home before she is ready to go without oxygen scares the hell out of me. I want to be able to sleep at home, not sit in a chair by her bed watching her breathing out of fear. So until she is obviously more healed, it really is best for her to be in the hospital.

Finally by Thursday Little A's oxygen saturation stabilizes. She still needs to get through a night without any problems, but we are optimistic she'll go home the next day. I am ecstatic, but also have my hands full with Big A now. She has returned from her aunt's home in Sonoma after four days and is acting out. DH spends the first night home with her, but has such a difficult time that we decide I should go home for what will hopefully be Little A's last night in the hospital. DH stays with Little A while I try to reassure Big A that she hasn't been abandoned by us, and that her sister really is getting better and will be home soon. I give her a toy from the hospital gift shop, tell her she's a brave girl, and let her sleep in my bed. Normally she'd be in heaven, but she is pretty freaked out.

Big A is always the type of child who needs structure and routine, and the past few weeks have turned her world upside down: first Christmas recess from preschool mucked with things in a nice but chaotic way, and now this. And let's face it -- she's four, but she's not stupid. Big A may not understand the intricacies of calling 911 or being in the hospital, but she is not entirely buying the upbeat explanations she receives from DH and me about what's happening. She is scared and needs reassurance.

The next morning we awake to a howling rainstorm. It is the perfect sort of day to sleep in, but I have to hurry us out of the house early. Big A doesn't want to leave me, and is upset that I'm going back to the hospital and leaving her at preschool. She melts down over getting dressed, over breakfast, over not being able watch her favorite cartoon. I promise that today I will pick her up myself at 4 p.m. just like usual. Then I call DH at the hospital to verify that Little A did fine without oxygen for the night, which means she'll be discharged today. Hurray!

Unfortunately the power goes out at home during the rainstorm, and I worry how we'll be able to give the required breathing treatments every four hours if I can't plug in Little A's nebulizer. But just as I'm freaking out over that, the lights come back. It takes nearly 40 minutes to get to the hospital instead of the usual ten because the highway conditions are so poor in the storm. But it all fades away when I walk into the hospital and see Big A bouncing around in her crib, thrilled to see me. This time, I let the "Mama, mama, mama!" in, and bask in it.

So now we've been home for four days, and so far, so good. The funny thing is that because of her age, the whole experience seems to have been less traumatic for Little A than it was for the family! The rest of us definitely need a vacation from Christmas Vacation at this point.

Adventures in the Children's Hospital: Part 1

2008-01-06T19:18:00.000-08:00

As soon as the ambulance carrying Little A arrived at the Big City Children's Hospital, people scoff at her IV. The tube attached to her scalp threads through a small plastic medicine cup with the bottom punched out. The cup supports and protects the line. A wad of tape attaches the line and cup to Little A's head. It looks like a fez created by McGyver. Little A is one tiny car short of a baby Shriner.

"Did we do that?" people ask multiple times in the emergency department. The tone of voice is always disdainful, whether the person asking is an X-ray tech, orderly, or a nurse. Obviously they do better work here than in the last hospital. I feel sheepish every time someone asks about the IV fez, because it reminds me that this is all my fault.

I'd considered leaving Tahoe in the early morning Sunday when Little A looked so lethargic, but instead DH persuaded me to wait a few more hours to see if she improved before we packed it in. She didn't have a fever, he pointed out. Nor was she wheezing like she had been a few days before when her cold got worse. The albuterol treatments and prednisone we'd started a few days before must be working. So I went sledding with Big A, while DH watched Little A nap. When I came back from sledding I was even more alarmed at what shape Little A was in. She appeared more semi-conscious than napping. She grunted when she breathed. Watching her, my stomach quivered like I was in free fall. I insisted we go home immediately. Not in a nice, rational manner, either -- I yelled at DH in front of our vacation housemates and then threw everything we owned into bags willy nilly before rushing away.

That uncomfortable scene at the rental house was made even uglier by how pointless it was. We hurried, but did so too late. We did not leave in time to prevent Little A from spiking a high fever while traveling through the mountain pass. I watched as her breathing became more shallow and labored. Finally she stopped responding to my voice and hardly moved when I pinched her. That's when we called 911 from the highway in search of the nearest emergency care center (which I'll call Podunk ER). Thankfully it was only a few miles away. She needed oxygen and fluids and a wide variety of drugs immediately. Only then, after many hours in the Podunk ER, was she in any condition to go by ambulance to the Bay Area Children's Hospital where she eventually spent five days for treatment of pnuemonia.

The scalp IV jokes also bother me because truly, that is my fault. I am the person who asked for it. Podunk hospital nurses blew three veins in Little A's extremities and meanwhile her heart rate, breathing, and oxygen saturation were looking poor, and still they just kept poking at invisible veins in the arms and legs without seeming to notice that forty minutes had passed without making any progress on the IV. Little A cried but had no tears. She was so dehydrated. I felt on the verge of having my own stroke as I watched everyone around the gurney. Given her hair-challanged state, Little A's scalp veins stuck out like big, juicy apples on an otherwise barren tree. I said, "Can you put a line in on her head, like they do in a NICU?"

Two of the nurses immediately said they don't usually do that. But another nurse steps forward and said, "This baby has waited long enough already. Let's do it."

Nurse Mike was the one person in the Podunk ER who seemed to be trying to make my baby better, as opposed to just monitoring her as she got sicker. He placed the scalp IV on the first try. He gave Little A fluids and drugs to help her breathing, administered ibuprofen and aceteminophen for the fever (rather than idly mention she could use some Tylenol without bothering to get the meds, like 3 other nurses did). So I felt even worse when the Big-City Children's Hospital staff maligned Nurse Mike's IV. Sure, the rest of the other ER experience had been mock-worthy, but not him.

The irony is that over the next few days I am the one (privately) scoffing at the Children's Hospital staff when it comes to IVs, because although her fez occludes after eight hours and needs replacement, damned if the hot shots at the big children-only facility can get another vein. Even the hospital expert on "tough sticks" can't do it. My child has ten unsuccessful needle sticks in her arms and legs over two days before they give up. Thanks to the scalp IV, Little A was stabilized enough to continue her recovery by receiving fluids and medication by mouth or injection. So to me, Nurse Mike is a real hero. His IV sure was ugly, but it did what it needed to do.

Thankfully, aside from IV drama, the nurses and doctors turn out to be great at Children's Hospital. While unpleasant or painful things transpire (blood tests, Xrays, antibiotic shots, breathing treatments, etc.) everyone is respectful and sympathetic about the wailing and flailing that occurrs on the patient's part. Considering we stay for five days and deal with dozens of nurses and doctors, the fact that I never run up against an obvious asshole is pretty amazing consistency of care.

By contrast, there is no such uniformity in anything related to the parents of the children that surround us in the hospital. On one side of our room is a three year old girl with a difficult-to-control lung infection. The father is soft-spoken, dotes on his child, and spends each night at her bedside. Each morning the mother arrives with perfectly styled long blonde hair, wearing expensive knits and stylish high-heel boots. She appears to be early in the second trimester of a pregnancy. She's gorgeous, but constantly loses her shit. She yells savagely at the anesthesiologist when an MRI gets rescheduled. She snits at the doctor for not having test results available immediately after the test. She complains to the food service people for bringing dinner trays to other patients in the room who are allowed to eat when her child is NPO. When in her presence, her daughter's mood reflect her mother's, so the child screams twice as much as she does when she is around her father. I theoretically sympathize with the woman and all her frustrations, because having your child in the hospital when you are pregnant has got to suck buckets. But she is so unpleasant and huffy that in reality, I mostly just think she's a spoiled bitch.

In the bed across from the daughter of the spoiled bitch is a three year old boy. His mother sits with him a few hours each day but heads out at night for work and taking care of the rest of the children. The boy's mother speaks good English, but her husband and child mostly speak Spanish. The boy has pneumonia. The father stays with him at night and most of the day, too. When they take out the child's IV the father seems oblivious to the fact that the boy must drink a lot of fluids. The boy goes seven hours without drinking a drop, and when the nurses realize this, there is a mad dash to cajole the child into drinking a lot of fluid immediately, lest they be required to reinsert the IV. Nor does the father bat an eyelash when his son lies on his belly on the hospital floor and plays with the garbage can reserved for soiled linens. The father also fails to notice when his son scoots out from under the curtain separating his "room" from Little A's. The boy grabs at a pile of dirty diapers waiting to be taken away by the nurses (for weighing, then disposal). DH attempts to get around the crib and grab the boy just as the child's mother arrives for a visit and screams "DON'T TOUCH THAT!"

I suspect the boy would recover faster if he were completely unsupervised, rather than watched over by his father.

Home Again

2008-01-04T19:18:00.000-08:00

Yay! After five days at Children's Hospital Little A can finally breathe on her own again. It felt so good to spring her from the hospital, I can't even express it! (And right now the house is so full of dirty laundry and crap that I don't have time to express it. More soon ...)

Things Have Not Gone as Planned

2007-12-31T13:08:00.000-08:00

I am not sure what is worse -- having to call 911 while speeding along on the highway because it looks like your baby is about to stop breathing, or having called 911, discovering all circuits are busy. Then calling back again and getting a busy signal. Then calling back AGAIN and finally getting someone on the line after maybe six minutes of waiting.

Short story: Went to Tahoe Saturday, by Sunday came back home due to Little A's worsening illness. It's a four-hour drive. Halfway home we decided we needed to go to our local children's hospital rather than home. One hour from home we realized Little A was rapidly deteriorating and we couldn't wait to go to the hospital we wanted. So we called 911, and were directed to the nearest ER. Since then she's been transported to the local children's hospital, since it's one of the best pediatric care units around. Little A has a bad case of pneumonia. That means Big A is spending New Year's Eve with her cousins in Sonoma while her father and I spend it with her little sister at the hospital.

Little A is tired and bewildered at all the poking and prodding. Especially the poking: that child has had TEN IV sticks so far because her veins are so teeny that the IVs keep blowing out. And while supplemental oxygen is her best friend right now, she keeps trying to rip off the masks and cannulas. After last night, shows of fiestiness make us feel great. I never thought I'd squeal with delight when my kid lobbed a bottle over my shoulder at frustration with being forced to wear a mask. Life is surprising that way.

At any rate, she is holding her own now, and after last night that's saying something. We are hopeful she'll be home again in just a couple more days.

More soon. I'm off to quickly shower and defoul myself before heading back to the hospital.

Have Yourself a Wheezy Little Christmas

2007-12-28T21:50:00.000-08:00

At this moment I should be in a mountain cabin, drinking wine and resting after a day of playing in the snow with the kids. Alas, Little A came down with a cold that got progressively worse all week long. By Wednesday it was bad enough for DH to call the pediatrician's office and get blown off by the on-call physician, who felt we should just give her some Tylenol and wait it out. By Thursday morning Little A refused to play or eat and whimpered every time DH or I put her down. I called the pediatrician's office again and apparently sounded agitated/paranoid enough to score an appointment this time.

Little A was lethargic when I got her in the car to go to the pediatrician's office, but she sounded raspy and terrible by the time we arrived. As I undressed her for the exam, I noticed her arms and feet were the color of raw steak. We couldn't get a pulse ox reading due to equipment issues at first and abandoned that task in favor of giving her an albuterol treatment with the nebulizer right away.

My kids have both had occasional wheezing episodes with certain illnesses that required albuterol. Little children hate having a nebulizer mask over their face, but to me albuterol is an old friend. After just ten minutes a child who sounds like an rattly old air conditioner suddenly sounds clear. Magic nebulizer machine, magic drug!

Except not this time. After a full treatment, Little A still wheezed badly. The nurse set up another albuterol vial. Little A was so sick she wasn't even fighting the mask. The machine hissed, and my heart palpitated. Everyone was very professional in the office, but I caught the look between the nurse and the doctor, and I knew that if she didn't improve from this second treatment, Little A was probably going to the hospital right after this.

Thankfully as the second vial finished, Little A sounded better and had more normal skin color. Her pulse ox reading after two treatments alternated between 92 and 93. Not great (normal range is 96-100) but not in the holy-shit-dangerous range, either. Lord knows how low it was before the two treatments, but I suspect that had we got that first reading, she might be in the hospital right now based solely on that.

As it was, they monitored Little A at the pediatrician's office for another forty minutes and then sent us home with orders to give albuterol every two hours for the rest of the day. Little A is now also on oral prednisone and another inhaled steroid. If she wheezed again on all the new drugs, we were told to take her directly to the hospital. DH and I are exhausted from getting up in the middle of night to administer drugs on the proper schedule. But by this morning at the pediatrician's office, her oxygen saturation level was up to 96, which is a good sign that she is on the mend.

Unfortunately, a 96 percent oxygen saturation level isn't quite high enough for her doctor (or us) to feel comfortable going up to the very thin mountain air of our rental cabin several hundred miles from home. So today we stayed home instead of traveling. Poor Big A doesn't grasp how sick her sister was, and so was incredibly upset that she didn't get to see the snow as previously promised. We're hoping that we might get up to the cabin sometime tomorrow, if Little A improves further overnight. That would still give us a couple days in the snow. But either way, I'm just really thankful that if she had to get so sick, it could happen at the doctor's office, and not in a cabin (or car) in the middle of nowhere.

So if all goes well, I'll be in the snow tomorrow, not to return to the Bay Area until the holiday is over.

Happy New Year, everyone. Here's hoping that good things lie in store for all in 2008.

Back to the Sea

2007-12-22T19:26:00.000-08:00

Two years ago tomorrow DH drove us wordlessly in the winter morning gloom, rain ricocheting off the car with an unrelenting ping, ping, ping. We parked on a street adjacent to the surgery center and waited until the last possible moment to go in. Sad as the world is round at not being able to fix our broken baby, we came down from our house on the hill to the hospital, came down from the lofty aspirations of parents to be, came down to an unthinkable, brutal place where all the outcomes were the same, and we could only say when or how. We came to the hospital in deep despair, but also in hope. We would curtail our baby's suffering by doing what we did that day. And we would reach out and grab hard at a shard of the dream that we might be able to go on, to try again, to have a healthy child someday. When it was time we got out of the car and trudged into the surgery center. The rain fell and fell, pooling in the streets where it drained down the storm sewers back to the sea.

Many women who end pregnancies when they discover something is profoundly wrong carry a picture of a healed, whole version of their children in their minds. They think of themselves as having delivered their babies from affliction, and see them as perfected now. This strikes me as lovely. But for better or worse, I have never been able to separate out the Trisomy 18 from the rest of my child. It was in every single cell, indivisible from the rest of the baby. It's just who she was. Yet while the trisomy changed so many things, the one thing it never muddied was my love for the baby. I loved her the same before we knew there was a problem as I did when I got the amnio results. I loved her the same when I scheduled the termination, and after. I loved her no differently than I loved my living children when they swam in my belly. At first this was a source of pain, the sameness of the love. But over the years the knowledge of it changed into a source of solace. I can live with what happened because I feel my motives in what I chose were good ones. And maybe that's the most grace and healing one can hope for in the end, when it comes to the death of a child.

Love you, baby girl. Miss you, too. Always.

Better Living Through Random Products

2007-12-19T14:12:00.000-08:00

Has anyone else seen those ads on TV for the Dyson Air Blade?

Older Dyson ads always struck me as funny because of the way the earnest inventor tells you he spent years creating his high-tech masterpiece of a ... vacuum. Hundreds of prototypes, untold vacations and episodes of What Not to Wear missed, all in the name of reinventing an appliance that, as far as I can see, works reasonably fine in its cheaper, more technologically outdated, non-Dyson version. It takes a special combination of brains and passion for cleaning to make something like this. To then explain the details of invention in such excruciating detail in TV ads makes it obvious that Dyson truly believes you too have been suffering over inefficient vacuum suckage all of your life.

And now James Dyson is back with another product I didn't realize needed improvement: rest room hand dryers. Or as Dyson dubs it, the Air Blade. He says the problem with other hand dryers is that people would rather wipe their hands on their pants than use them. So inefficient! So unhygienic! Dyson, random appliance messiah, to the rescue!

At first I couldn't figure out why the Air Blade was being advertised on prime time cable TV. It is a product made for public restrooms, which the average television viewer has no part in outfitting with new equipment. But then I realized that selling the Air Blade is likely only half the point for Dyson. Those ads are a public service announcement for fellow OCD sufferers like himself.

I can only assume he'll be bringing us a nose vacuum (aka Kleenex 2.0) next year.

Oh My Darling Clementine

2007-12-14T13:29:00.000-08:00

Today is one of those days where I'm trying to edit a chapter, talk to an author about some delicate matters related to his book, order two birthday cakes, complete a pile of preschool re-enrollment paperwork for Big A, buy enough booze and soft drinks for brunch with 20 people, pick up the girls from daycare/school, drop off a coffee urn my friend is borrowing for a holiday party, address and mail two-dozen holiday cards, clean the house from top to bottom, and finish decorating for Christmas -- all while doing the usual usual dinner/play/bath/bedtime ritual with the girls.

So, it's a little crazy. Yet I've had an extra bounce in my step as I've hustled around today because of the news that Beruriah's big boy Samuel is safely in her arms today. Yay, baby Samuel!

As might be guessed by my to-do list, we're having a party this weekend. A combined bash for DH and Little A, whose birthdays are only 4 days apart. Last year on DH's birthday he got the present of bringing Little A home for the hospital for the first time. She was so teeny, cute, and jaundiced that I called her my little clementine, after the petite orange citrus that comes into season each December.

Here we were, just home from the hospital, looking worn out and sleepy:

And here is my Baby A now, full of vim and (sweet, maybe balsamic?) vinegar, fighting with her sister over who gets to break the tree ornaments first:

Ah. Life is good here. Really, really good.

An Amusing Month So Far

2007-12-09T21:36:00.000-08:00

Big A: "Mommy, is Santa going to bring me presents?"

Wabi: "Sure, as long as you're a good girl. Santa gives toys as a reward to good children. But really, really naughty kids get coal."

Big A, incredulous: "He's gonna give me a COLD?"

Wabi: "No, not a cold, coal. It's a kind of rock."

Big A: "He's gonna give me COLD ROCKS?"

Tagged

2007-12-08T20:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks, Complicated Mama, (aka Whatthef*uck) at Letters to the Babies that Lived, for tagging me for the Blogher Me and Mine Meme 100. Soooo let's see if I can follow the meme directions on 4.5 hours sleep without screwing up ....

1) My blog is called Wabi-Sabi Life, I'm Wabi, and my ridiculously bare about-me page can be found here. Really, the blurb on my sidebar sums it up best: Lost one baby, almost lost another, and nearly died myself -- all in less than a year. Just trying to walk the line between dwelling on it too much and ignoring it altogether. I vascillate between parent-oriented posts, prochoice-type rants about the undercover-nature of pregnancy termination for medical reasons, and discussions about my grief over what happened to me and the baby I lost.

2) Sure, I'd like to be profiled as a family blogger on Blogher, here's the linkback to the orignal post on this ...

3) I've been blogging for nine months.

4) Bloggers I'd like to tag are Labor Nurse at Rebirthnurse, Patty at Monday Changed Everything, and Meg at The-Para-graph.

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

Me and Mine Meme 100 Directions:

1.) State the name of your blog, your real name or your online name, and link to your "about me" page.
2.) Say you want to be profiled on BlogHer as a family blogger and link back to this Me and Mine 100 original post, http://www.blogher.org/mommy-and-family-bloggers-promote-yourselves-me-and-mine-meme-100.
3.) Tell how long you've been blogging.
4.) Pass this meme on to three other bloggers that you think should be profiled/interviewed, and ask them to do the meme. (Kindly link to the bloggers you select.)

Drafting a Letter for the Holiday Cards ...

2007-12-06T12:46:00.000-08:00

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy Holidays! I know, I know, long time no holiday letter from us. But life has been rather crazy in the past few Decembers. As some of you know, because I told you, although only 1 out of 5 of you bothered to respond to the news in any way, so I am making a point of saying it again in December 2005 we were reeling from a pregnancy loss and just couldn't get the cards out. Oh, and family? It was a termination for medical reasons. My baby had a fatal genetic disorder, and I felt this was the best choice. But I couldn’t tell all you Catholic relatives this, because you’d have responded so poorly. Then last December, happier circumstances a terrifying pregnancy filled with illness and preterm labor culminating in uterine rupture left the cards unmailed again, because we were scrambling to care for Little A, who arrived earlier than planned.

Little A has thrived this year. She left the hospital weighing 4 pounds, 13 ounces because she shoved her feet through a scar on my uterus at 35 weeks and had to come out via stat C section before I bled to death and now weighs over 21 pounds. She looks just like DH, and is sweet natured like him, too. And Big A? She maintains her dramatic personality but now beyond the toddler years, she has mellowed into quite the funny and charming preschooler the neighbors no longer ask if we are torturing her because the tantrums are so loud. She is usually a very kind big sister, even when the baby eats her artwork or yanks her ponytail.

I took off the first six months after Little A’s arrival and am now back to work part time. I started writing a blog that none of you will likely ever know about, too. DH continues animating the _____ game franchise at _____. We still live in our little 1950s house in Oakland and have been renovating bit by bit. This year we got new kitchen countertops and replaced all the windows and exterior doors. Next year, if we get our do-it-yourself mojo back, we will tackle building a window bench for the corner breakfast nook.

And that’s about it. Hey, did I mention that after the uterine rupture I can’t have kids anymore? I guess it was an ordinary year in many respects, but after the past few Decembers, ordinary feels extraordinarily good! We are grateful to have a quiet holiday this year, and dearly hope that 2007 was a gentle, happy year for you all. And if it wasn’t a great year and you don’t have it in you to send out the delusionally perky holiday cards, don’t worry. We get that, too.

Best Wishes to All. – W.

Possibly Bad News

2007-12-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

Going through old email today looking for an address for a holiday card, I happened across a reply someone sent me to a message titled "possibly bad news." And I realized by the date stamp that two years ago today, I received my crappy NT scan and maternal serum screening combined results. Two years ago today, I was sitting at this same desk working (with my gestating baby's last ultrasound pic up as my computer wallpaper, no less) when the perinatologist called to say my baby had a one in five shot at having either T18 or T13.

Hanging up the phone that day, I had absolutely no idea how badly everything would go after that. I had not yet done any research on trisomies 18 and 13, hadn't had to make any difficult choices yet. I didn't know that if it turned out to be a worst-case scenario diagnosis, that it didn't guarantee me an ok ride the rest of the way after that either, that there would be horrible and serious complications in the termination itself that would permanently alter the course of future pregnancies. Finally, it would have been completely outlandish, the idea that just a year later my uterus would give out and rupture. If that had been my fortune, I'd have squinted at the soothsayer and laughed. Who has so many worst-case scenarios happen in a row like that? How many times does probability just have to let you know you are its bitch?

And then just as suddenly, I was no longer probability's bitch. Little A was ok despite her early birth and the uterine rupture. Aside from being unable to have more kids, I'm ok too.

But I realized upon seeing that "Possibly Bad News" email that I still have absolutely no idea where to file that year of hell that started with the crappy NT results in 2005 and ended with a crash C section for Little A in 2006. I don't understand why everything went so wrong. Perhaps even more strange, I can't really grasp how it finally went right, either. Is God benevolent? Or is God a mean girl/queen bee, whipping me around at whim.

I'm grateful, but utterly confused. No answer I can fashion does the questions formed in 2005-2006 justice.

So I cried at seeing the old email, but it wasn't very cathartic, just a few strangled sobs. I feel like I've got rock salt and dirty snow slushing around in my chest and now I have to run off and pick up the girls from preschool/daycare. Hopefully I won't look like too much of a basket case when I do it.

Puking, Fevers, and Thanksgiving, Oh My.

2007-11-28T11:32:00.000-08:00

We had a sweet and quiet Thanksgiving this year, but everyone in the family came down with the flu over the weekend. Not just a little cold, but the full on fever, chills, and throwing up sort of flu that eventually just turns into a kickass cold. Bleah. So much for those flu shots we got in October.

The up side of being sick is that DH and I have now caught up on our bad-TV watching. We viewed both the semi-finals and finale of Dancing with the Stars, for instance. Wow. Can I just say that Marie Osmond is a fascinating creature? She works the America's sweetheart thing to the bone, batting eyelashes and giggling nonstop so long as people are complimenting and adoring. But as soon as someone, say a competition judge, does what they are supposed to do -- judge -- she turns bitchy and snarky. Marie's semifinal routine, where she dressed as a doll and her partner dragged her around the floor while she twitched spasmodically, was awesomely bad. Yet she acted personally affronted by what the judges said. I actually winced watching her smile grow fangs and her laugh grow brittle as she explained that she didn't care what the judges thought, because she was doing the routine just for her legions of doll-collecting fans, who would completely adore it. Uh huh, Marie. Sure. And the rest of us out there just think you're a little bit spoiled, and a little bit out of touch.

Meanwhile there's a Spice Girl on the same show whom a lot of people might automatically expect poor behavior from, and she took all comments and criticism with grace and good humor. It just goes to show image and substance are not the same thing. And that live TV can be a whole lot of fun to watch.

Animal

2007-11-20T20:28:00.000-08:00

My friend said it best: "At some point, babies make excellent dogs." Little A is at that stage now. Interested and enthusiastic all the time, panting, crawling up your legs, ready to roll in some poop that's lying on the floor in a diaper that didn't quite make it into the garbage can (ahem).

In many ways, this is similar to how I feel about being a mother of a baby. The first year is all about hormones and instincts, the limbic reaction, the things we have not learned to do, yet ... do. For all the talk of motherhood as an elevated state of existence, for me the first few years of having children have been the opposite of that. I have never felt more like an animal than I did after having my babies.

I really wonder if this is the true root of all the hoopla that routinely erupts in the U.S. over breastfeeding in public. Prudery alone doesn't explain the level of ick that some people profess over this issue. Could the "public decency" protests mostly be about hating the evidence breastfeeding provides that people are animals, as opposed to most-favored higher beings of a different class?

Hmmm. Next time someone gives me the stink eye at the park when I nurse Little A, I should ask them.

China-Free Christmas = Lots of Wood

2007-11-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

Toys, that is ...

After resolving not to buy children toys made in China this year, I have discovered that if it's plastic or cloth, it's almost always made in China. So the girls can have anything they want so long as it's plywood, ash, or bamboo. Mark my words, "Log in a blanket" is likely going to be a very hot seller this year among parents who care. Or at least among parents who are paranoid about all the toy recalls like I am.

Actually, log jokes aside, there are some very cute European-made toys out there (such as the ones shown above, by Haba). Unfortunately, they are insanely expensive compared to the 70-80 percent of toys manufactured in China. So we'll be buying a lot fewer toys than usual this year because the costs are so much higher.

Case in point: I bought these adorable blocks for Little A's upcoming birthday, and they cost $35 for only 28 blocks. This German-made mermaid doll -- the sole nonwood Christmas item I bought for one of my kids -- is also completely charming. But if you want something soft and cuddly with your China-free, it costs even more dearly than the tree-derived toys do. That doll was 40 bucks on sale, and she is only seven inches tall.

Christmas has me feeling schitzoid this year: On one hand, I'm happy that I have enough money to decide to buy fewer but higher quality toys this year. On the other hand, I never thought I'd be paying so much for something I couldn't inject into my arm or wear on a gold-filled chain around my neck.

Smokestacks Aflame

2007-11-15T09:48:00.001-08:00

It has been a pleasant November so far, yet I keep finding my jaw clenched when I wake up each morning. I can't shake the feeling I'm forgetting something ominous and hugely important.

My mind seems to work like the oil refineries that dot the northeast corner of the Bay. On a sparkling, clear day, smokestacks blaze to burn off pollution collected from production on smoggier days. I'm told refineries pick the cleanest air days to outgas because it prevents them from running afoul of the environmental laws. Bad ass particles that would have resulted in penalties if they were released on smoggy days are just fine when released on the clean-air days.

This always struck me as sneaky of refineries -- sort of an end-run around the clean air mandates. Still, it is practical. And now my psyche is doing the same thing.

Little A was due in mid-January 2007. She was born five weeks early, so last year at this time I was nearing the end of my pregnancy but didn't know it. Crisis mode is not the time for constructing big pictures and waxing philosophical. So last November I ricocheted between the hospital L&D triage room and my home with preterm labor and tried not to go completely loony from the terbutaline. I also tried not to go crazy over the fact my kitchen renovation ran late. Nothing like the grit, noise, and power and water interruptions from construction to make working in your home office peaceful and productive!

And that was about it, in terms of conscious thought from me. I was more tired and uncomfortable than I will be until I (hopefully) reach my nineties and have worn out entirely. My body felt like someone turned it inside out, whipped me all over, and then yanked me rightside out again. Even though nobody could see it, my uterus was about to go boom.

I know people say that when you look back on pregnancy later, you forget all the annoying parts and focus on the sweet parts. Well, maybe if you're talking about a case of hemorrhoids or stretch marks that's true. But would you say "Someday you'll look back on this and laugh!" to someone right after a hostage crisis? Because that's what Little A's pregnancy was like. I'm thrilled to be where I am now, but I'm not particularly fond of the scene of the crime, and don't think I ever will be.

Paging through the Past

2007-11-09T09:46:00.000-08:00

I got out L.'s journals and went through them when Big was at preschool and Little A was napping. I finally made a decision: I'm sending L.'s son the notebooks his mother wrote between ages 10-16. These provide a sweet, touching, funny window into his mother's personality and will give L.'s son a better idea of how she spent her time when she was around the same age he is. But they do not contain anything that a 15 year old motherless boy might misinterpret as hurtful or disturbing like some of the later journals do. Those notebooks I will send when he is over eighteen.

There was an entry in the journal from the last year of L.'s life that really struck me. The obvious path for L. after high school was to earn a doctorate and eventually teach at a university. But she got pregnant as an undergrad and decided to keep the baby. This alone did not have to end those plans, because she did return to school and graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, etc. despite having an infant. But L. had pretty thoroughly rejected the old life plan at the time of her death. From the outside she seemed to be foundering.

I know that L.'s parents were disappointed and fearful that L. was wasting potential, living hand-to-mouth in an apartment as a single mother and working what they probably felt was a job well beneath her abilities. And usually that would have driven L. crazy, would have eventually drawn her back toward the "approved" life. That was her mode: To be attracted to the dark and risky and dramatic things in life, but to retreat back to the conventional and safe when it got scary, all the while feeling disgusted with herself for not being brave enough to follow through more.

Now I think maybe that was changing when she died. I think that if only she had lived longer, everyone would have looked back at that "slacker time" and realized she was not foundering at all, just lying fallow. And we all would have agreed that was when L. became a true adult who faced her life with clearer eyes, and who built a foundation for something new with her very own hands.

But as always, L. said it best herself:

I'm reading this book Possession, about two academics researching the lives of poets. I realized tonight how glad I am that I am not in that life. It would have been easy to slip into the life of the cerebral brain and the reference and footnote and paper and book -- I'm good at that, and for so long I thought it was all I was good at or good for.

And instead I am in the life of the body and the emotions and hopefully the spirit, too -- The life of other people and flesh and pain and ecstasy and complication and uncertainty and blood and ambiguity and danger and risk and smells and tastes and fear and joy and acting and coming and merging with people, events, and places.

And this is so much better for me -- I am seeing my other possibilities and what else is in the world besides life in a book, and a brain in a jar.

China Gets a Time Out

2007-11-08T11:00:00.000-08:00

All the toy recalls earlier in the year because of unsafe lead levels already left me feeling watchful and wary as Christmas approached. Especially those Mattel recalls. My children's bedroom is filled with Fisher Price items I had to comb through multiple times while looking through the ever-expanding unsafe toy lists.

Still, I thought the almighty dollar -- or the quest for it -- would prevail in fixing this. I thought that with Christmas looming, that even if the spectre of damaged kids didn't prompt Bush Administration and toy company officials to stop the insanity that occurs unchecked in Chinese factories, then at least greed would make everyone clamp down hard on quality control. That's the way hard boiled laissez-faire economists claim markets are supposed to work, right?

Then the news about the lead Halloween costume teeth recall sort of made my eyes bug out of my head a couple weeks ago. This was NOT a good sign at all. And now we've got the Aqua Dots recall, this time not because of lead --but because an epoxy can turn into the date-rape drug if ingested.

This is craziness, people. Children are in comas from Aqua Dots. If China were a person in your neighborhood who hovered around the playground and kept trying to choke or poison children, what do you think would happen? Police would be called and the guy would get hauled off to jail -- that is, if the lynch mob didn't string him up first. And yet in the case of these toys, we get mad, but nothing else happens. In fact, we just keep inviting the creepy, dangerous guy into our own houses and backyards and then seem surprised when he goes and tries to hurt the kids again.

So that's it for me. If the government and the toy companies aren't acting, then I'm forced to do the only thing I can. If it is a toy (or food, cosmetic, or other consumer product) made in China, until further notice, it is not coming into my home.

China gets a time out this Christmas at my house. Here's hoping others kick China to the curb in theirs, too.

Promise

2007-11-06T23:20:00.000-08:00

On a New Years Eve back in the late 1980s, my best friend L. and I played Sinead O'Connor and XTC cassettes on the stereo and alternated between bitching about people we hated in school and gushing about people we liked. Since driver permits, fake IDs, and boyfriends were all in our future, that New Year's Eve was more contemplative than the ones to follow. The change of a digit at the end of the calendar year incited meth-like spasms of excitement -- The things we were going to do in that new digit! Passage of time was all up side.

At some point before the ball dropped on Time Square that night, L. and I got our journals out. She wrote an entry in mine, and I wrote one in hers. We declared that when one of us died, the other would inherit our journals.

Maybe that sounds morbid, but we were simply doing what teenage girls do -- making a dramatic show of affection. Besides, I believe we actually wrote "If one of us dies ...," like the death part was a theoretical point up for debate. And it became a running joke. When one of us landed on the wrong side of an after-school special situation in years to come, remember to confiscate the diary! was the our rallying cry. We laughed about it right up through college and later.

When L.'s heart stopped beating at age 25 from a heart defect previously diagnosed as benign, her journals made their way to my doorstep. I looked through them once and then put them away. It was inexplicable to me that L. was dead, and nearly as inexplicable that a silly promise made by girls was being honored by L.'s family. I almost felt ashamed to have something so precious in my possession. I put them in the deepest corner of my closet and never went through them again.

Ten years have passed since L. died. I have been thinking of her a lot recently. It's not just the round-number anniversary of her death, but the fact that I now have a four year old child. L.'s only son was four when she died. And now her boy is just about the same age L. and I were when we swapped journals that New Year's Eve.

L.'s son is the rightful owner of her diaries, and I always knew that someday, when he was old enough, I'd give them to him. But now that he is a teenager, the concept of "someday" and "old enough" are things I need to actually nail down. I'm struggling hard with that.

I have several concerns. First, L. partook of some wild escapades in her day. If her son read about the crazy shit she did (or thought) at too young an age, he might judge her harshly and feel alienated from what few personal memories he has of her. Or worse, maybe he'd feel her antics were a great excuse to behave in similarly risky ways during his own youth. So for the longest time, I leaned toward not giving him the diaries until after his eighteenth birthday.

However, in the past few years stories about the home situation of L's son (relayed via L.'s parents) make me wonder if the boy should have the journals now regardless of the repercussions. Because L.'s son's father married a woman a few years back who sounds awful. L's son tells his grandparents stories of rejections and of being held apart from his new stepsiblings in arbitrary, petty ways. L.'s parents were so upset by these stories that they confronted their daughter's ex. The kicker: L.'s ex didn't dispute their understanding of their grandson's home life at all. He agreed that his current wife was not fair to L.'s and his son. But in the end, L.'s ex was not willing to force his wife to change her ways. He said, "Kids are resilient, he'll be ok."

So if L.'s son lives in a home barren of affection and kindness for him, perhaps the journals would be something he could cling to, something that reminded him that his stepmother was not the final judge on his worth. For better and for worse, his mother was never anything but passionate about life. Maybe that would help him in the next few years.

So many ifs. I honestly don't know what to do next.

Happy Fourth Birthday, Big A!

2007-11-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

We had a little party for Big A on Sunday and a good time was had by all. Well, except maybe for Party Burro. (Rest in peace, mi amigo!)

Party Burro!

2007-11-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

I was at Target shopping for party supplies for Big A's fourth birthday party this weekend. I decided to buy a pinata, because frankly, I am going to give myself diabetes if I keep eating the kids' Halloween candy. Repurposing all those tootsie rolls is an act of desperation. Still, finding the right pinata was tricky. This time of year there are a ton of leftover Halloween-themed pieces, but not much else. I refused to buy a Shrek or Disney Princess-themed pinata and so opted for the classic llama variety.

Since it's very hilly in the Bay Area (thanks to the earthquake faults pushing up land willy nilly) I didn't want the llama to get prematurely dented when he slid around the trunk of my car with the rest of the supplies as I drove home. So, I seat-belted him into the front passenger seat. I got some funny looks on the way back to the house.

Then when we arrived home I discovered that in order to stuff the pinata you have to lift his tail up to expose a slot. No, I am not making this up -- they put the hole in an anatomically correct place on the stupid thing, which made me giggle all the way through loading it up with booty. DH looked at me like I was the four year old when I tried to explain what was so amusing.

Oh, the kicker was that when I read his label, I discovered he's not a llama pinata after all. He's a party burro.

Now that I've bonded with Party Burro, I may actually feel a bit sad when we bash him to bits on Sunday. Maybe I should go back to Target for a Shrek pinata after all ...

Haunted Halloween (2)

2007-11-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

While it wasn't the sweeping or terrifying sort of change that came with Halloweens past, there was a memorable event this Halloween I neglected to mention in the last post. This year Halloween was the last day we employed Sharon as our family babysitter.

Four years is a long time to stay with one childcare provider. Early childhood is a state of constant flux for both parents and kids. People move, schedules change, kids get older and move on to preschool. Through all this time Sharon has been a fixture in our days. She was kind and patient to our kids. Three out of four years DH and I were incredibly happy with Sharon's services.

No more. In the last ten months things deteriorated to the point where I am sad and bewildered at how things ended up the way they did. It was never about the kids and their treatment, but about the adult aspects of the daycare relationship: money and time. And at the end, respect, too.

Yes, I cut back on my work schedule, and that impacted Sharon's income. But she is not a nanny who worked for us exclusively. She has as many as five client families at a time, depending on whether the kids in question go to her home part time or full time. So I don't understand the animosity of the past few months after I started a part-time schedule. Sharon now seems to have a sense of entitlement that I find obnoxious. She is angry that I didn't want to pay a 20 percent rate hike for services when she simultaneously cut back her available hours by 20 percent. But what rational person thinks they can get paid so much more for working so much less? (Especially when they devolve into petty nastiness during the discussion about all of it.)

When I gave Sharon two weeks notice a few days after our blowup, she accepted the news without any questions. I guess there really wasn't anything else to say. We fell into an ignore-the-angry-elephant-in-the-room type scenario for the last few weeks. But that last time I picked up Little A from Sharon's house, I sort of wished we could part with a few kind words. I admit I could have made the effort, but chose not to. She did the same. And so I walked away from her house with baby and diaper bag in hand, feeling a peculiar mixture of feelings. I hate having big arguments, but somehow that one day has seemed like the most truthful exchange between the two of us in some time.

It's a new month now, and the beginning of a new daycare situation for Little A. The new babysitter, Susanne, is a retired teacher with a house full of toys and and a rambling, gorgeous yard. I like the idea of Little A being outside playing in the fresh air. And it's nice that the relationship with Susanne is a clean slate. No muddy boundaries or simmering resentments. When I dropped Little A off this morning, I left with a sense of relief that hasn't been part of my daycare routine for a long time.

I know the change we made was the right one. I am sad I stuck it out with Sharon for so long. It would have been better for everyone involved if we had left sooner.

But that in itself makes me sad, too.

(Note that I can't get bleeping Blogger to link back to my older posts on Sharon for some reason. Anyone got any pointers on that? But I wrote about our blowup last month in several "daycare debacle" posts, in case anyone is curious ...)

Haunted Halloween (I)

2007-10-31T20:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday when I raised the shades and looked out at the view, a few lines sprang to mind: Summer is past and day is past. Somber Clouds in the West are massed ... When I start thinking about Robert Frost, winter must be here. I have always agreed with the Celts' view that Halloween marks the border line between the end of one year and the beginning of the next. Even here in the balmy Bay Area, the days are short and the trees that go bare in the cold season have shed most of their leaves. For the past week fog paints out the mountain that normally sits beyond in my living room window and leaves a sinus-headache-white curtain in its place. No rains yet, but (hopefully) soon.

This time of year my life also seems caught up in the rhythm of the world around us. Especially in the past five years, life teeters on the cusp of change every November.

2003 I spent my first Halloween in Oakland. My main memory is being pissed off at being four days past due in Big A's pregnancy. She was an extremely tall baby (over 22 inches long at birth) and I am not an extremely tall person, so by the time we were 40+ weeks along, her feet were tickling my tonsils. And besides being uncomfortable, I was also nervous about the birth and what would come next, of course.

Halloween 2004 was much more fun, with DH and I going out trick or treating with our own kid for the first time. That October Big A was still my baby, but less than a week later she quit crawling in favor of walking and celebrated her first birthday. So Halloween is the last "baby" type memories I have of Big A, before she laid down on the floor and enthusiastically kicked and screamed her way through the toddler years.

Halloween 2005 I was too tired from my doomed T18 pregnancy to go out trick or treating with Big A. Despite my fatigue, it was also one of the last dwindling days of normalcy, when we still thought the baby was fine and hadn't be forced to make a series of gut-wrenching decisions yet. And last year was a bad sequel to 2005: pregnant again, only more tired this time, with more worries already about what my pesky uterine scar from the previous year was up to, and what would happen to the baby and me in the coming months.

I'm grateful to say that Halloween 2007 kicked ass compared to the last few years. I had a baby in my arms dressed like a daisy, and she squealed with delight every time a front door opened and -- SURPRISE -- yet another adult bearing a bowl of candy stepped out. Which is to say that Little A totally hooked us all up with extra buckets of candy. And Big A loved her bag full of candy so much that she named the individual pieces and played with them like dolls after we got home last night.

Here's hoping Big A won't notice that while she was sleeping, I ate "Mommy Snickers"!

The Family Gourds

2007-10-31T13:34:00.000-07:00

Are pumpkins even gourds? (Wiki says not, but whatever.)

Note that Big A's pumpkin has three eyes. On purpose, she wants all to know.