one year six months

I close my eyes and whisper his name so that only I can hear it.  

George.

The wind stirs and it is him, waking up to listen to my voice and touch my face.

I miss you, my love.

Between my fingers the silk of a petal and a subtle fragrance of something clean and sweet; the touch of his face and the scent of his skin.

I'm sorry I couldn't save you.  Can you forgive me?

From a distance comes the sound of a stream over stones and I hear his breathing, rhythmic and soothing.

I hope you felt how much you were loved.

I open my eyes.  

It is just the wind and the flowers and the water.  But for the briefest of moments it was my son and for that instant I was whole again.

...

I whisper his name so that only I can hear it.

George.

you win some, you lose some

Sometimes Clio does something that reminds me so strongly of Leif that my heart completely melts into a puddle of love at the bottom of my toes.

Other times she does something that reminds me so much of myself that I have to shake my head and say,

"Poor kid.  She absolutely has my crazy."

the bargainer

I prayed today.


Is it still called a prayer if you don't really believe in God?  

Before today the last time I prayed was an hour before they repeatedly stuck a spinal needle in my belly in order to inject George's heart with medication.  I was in the shower at the hospital and sobbing to whoever or whatever may be (but probably isn't) out there to save my son.  I tried to make a bargain with a God who, if one exists at all, doesn't make bargains.

If you are really there, please save my son and I will do whatever you ask of me for the rest of my life.  
If you are really there, please save my son and take my life instead.  
If you are really there, please save my son and I will never doubt your existence again.
Let him live.  Let him live.  Let him live.

This morning I prayed for someone else's baby.  I don't feel it is my place to discuss any of the details here but my friend's baby, who is about the same age as Clio, is very sick and struggling to survive in the NICU right now.  This family has been constantly in my thoughts for the past five weeks (longer, really) and my heart is breaking for them.  I feel helpless and the only thing I could think of doing was to beg whoever or whatever might be out there;

Please save this baby.
Please save this baby.
Please save this baby.

Please, universe or God or life-energy or whatever may be out there, have mercy this time.

work schmork

Today I brought Clio by my office to show her off.  I know that isn't the humble thing to say but it is the truth.  I totally took her to my office to show her around to everyone.  I wanted to post a sign around her neck that read, "Product of Leif + Bree.  Brought to you by 2 1/2 hours of pushing."  I am a proud mamma, what else is there to say about that.

I dread the day I have to leave her at daycare and go back to work.  I absolutely hate just the idea of going back to work.  It makes me sick to my stomach and I want to cry.  I try to tell myself that it is only going to be three days a week but it doesn't seem to help ease my anxiety very much.  If I did not have a ridiculously large student loan to pay off I would stay home with her.  But I do and so I can't.  Had I known what my future would look like at this point I never would have gone back to school to get the degree I have.  Hindsight...

But at least I like the people I work with, right?  That is something.

I've got until mid-October (probably) before I have to make that sad, lonely long commute to work without my girl.  The start of flu season.  That sucks when you work in medicine.  I'm going to be afraid to kiss my own child until next March.

Hmmph.

Anyway, I've still got the rest of the Summer (and in Los Angeles September is most definitely still Summer) to give her as many kisses as I can without the fear of passing on germs from my patients.  Ugh.  How do people do this without going crazy?

a completely random post about being a mother, leif going back to work, and why it is the wee hours of the morning and i am awake writing this post

It is amazing how much you appreciate help with an infant after you've been on your own with one for awhile.  Leif went back to work last week and so I've been on my own with Clio until a couple of days ago when her MeeMaw (my mom) came down to help out.  I have to say, my hat is off to single parents.  Seriously, this shit is hard work.  Worth it, of course, but a whole hell of a lot of work.  Between breast-feeding, diaper changes (Um, hello, Clio why do you find it necessary to poop right after I change your diaper every single time?), fussy-fixing, breast-pumping, laundry, showering, brushing teeth, and attempting to eat meals there is hardly time for anything else.  Even when she asleep I hardly ever have the opportunity to take a nap with her.  The last two times I made the attempt I was just starting to nod off either my phone rang (Oh no!  Water is leaking in the downstairs apartment!  Can you please turn off your kitchen water!) or she decided that a 45 minute nap was sufficient and as soon as those big blue eyes flicker open, Oh Lordy, it is of utmost important to get milk in her belly right away or else suffer her wrath.

Plus it had been in the upper 90s or low 100s all last week.  Have I ever mentioned how we don't have AC?  The heat was simply overwhelming so we ended up buying a portable unit to put in our bedroom so we didn't have a hot little infant on our hands everyday.  All week (until Friday when it finally started to cool off) Clio and I spent our days and nights in a tiny little bedroom like hermits.  Not a big deal for the girl but crazy-making for me.

I'm not complaining.  No way.  Just giving background as to why when MeeMaw came to visit last week I was super grateful.  But what did Clio end up doing the entire time MeeMaw was here?  She slept like a rock until right after MeeMaw left to go home.  Seriously, she is such a great sleeper when we have company, the only times when I can't or don't want to take a nap.  She's clever that way.

Just over the last few days she has taken to sucking on my finger to soothe herself to sleep.  When she is awake it is very, very difficult to get her to sleep so my finger is a small price to pay for some relief.  Her reluctance to fall asleep is great during the day.  An awake baby is super fun (mostly) during the daylight hours but at two in the morning, which is what time it is right now, it is much less fun.  I've noticed that I tend to bargain with her at these times, as if it is possible to bargain with a four week old infant.  Go to sleep and mommy and daddy will buy you a pony or whatever animal now equates itself with privilege and spoiling.

We finally also made the decision to move her into her own bedroom and out of ours.  Up until two nights ago she was sleeping in a co-sleeper in our bedroom but apparently she is a very vocal infant and her grunts and squeals and mewls, even when she is asleep, tend to keep me up at all times.  I got tired of sleeping on the couch and waiting for Leif to bring her to me when she got fussy enough to wake him up.  We had wanted to keep her in our room until she was at least two months old but it just became too much for me and I really missed sleeping next to my husband.  The first night she was in her crib was the first night that I actually slept soundly during those three hour chunks of time between her feedings since she came home with us.  So in her crib (or her Baby Jail as one of Leif's crunchy co-workers calls the evil cribs) she stays.

This weekend has been really great.  I think having Leif gone during the weekdays made these days all the more special.  Even before Clio I always looked forward to the weekend for the sole fact that Leif and I would get to spend quite a bit of time together, just hanging out.  Now I know that the weekends are going to become even more precious to me since we hardly get to spend any time with each other anymore.  I mean, we do spend time with each other, but not in the same way that we did before Clio.  We were each others' whole world and now our world is occupied by an amazing little creature who demands all of our attention.  I simply miss my husband but that is another post for another time.  Maybe one when there isn't still sleep clouding over my eyes and their isn't a grunty little baby at my side who needs some rocking to tip her over from half-asleep to full-asleep.

But anyway what made this weekend especially good...We hung out with dear friends and for the first time in almost a year I was able to have a couple of alcoholic drinks.  We had a visitor from my work, someone who insists that Clio know her as Gammy Sunny.  I'll have to write something about her sometime, she is a most interesting woman.  We visited with my sister and her two girls.  Love them.  The little one, Leela, turned two (I can hardly believe it) and she calls Clio, Kilo because she can't quite figure out the CL blend.  While we were over there I was feeding Clio and Leela was fascinated with us.  She just kept asking over and over again, "It eating?"  Toddlers tend to find babies and breast-feeding fascinating.  We went to the Farmer's Market, always a treat.  We went for a walk and a picnic in the sun.  We made bolognese from scratch.  Leif and I managed to watch a whole movie, snuggled on the couch, while Clio slept soundly in her bouncy chair.  It was wonderful.

But now the weekend is over and Leif is asleep in our bedroom and I am up with the baby.

Right now it would be super awesome if she would go from this:

To this:

C'mon Clio, you can do it!  Do it for Momma!

work in progress

I make an attempt to weave the two together; the time in between and the now.  A need to make them make sense together, somehow, to learn to live in both at once.  My daughter in Chronos.  My son in Kairos.  I hold his pictures and trace his face and at the same time I feel my daughter stretching her life against my breast.  The two seem so very far apart and I wonder how it is ever possible to bring them together, my two children, without having to exclude one or the other.

One so undeniably alive and present.  The other so undeniably dead and missing.

I haven't figured this all out; how to be a good parent to my living child while simultaneously attempting to keep the memory of my dead one from also dying.  Sometimes the thought crosses my mind that I should do just that; let his memory die and go into the same oblivion that he did.  It would be easier to forget and to let the spinning of the world propel me with its forward momentum.  I look at my daughter and often feel the compulsion to clip her brother's name from my tongue when it hangs there, waiting to be said.  As if still longing for him somehow detracts from the love I have for her.  Can I really give all my love to this child wiggling in my lap while sometimes still wanting to live in that in between time when her brother was still alive.  Twenty-four minutes almost 18 months in my past.

There are still many times when I am in the shower when I cry out for him.  I beg and plead to have him back.  For just a day.  For just an hour.  To get to know him in the same way I know his sister.  Not as the sick and dying baby in the sterile operating room or as the cold and still one in the recovery room but as the pink and living baby I hold in my arms now.  A glimpse of what he could have been had things only turned out differently.  I cry out that I want to feed him, to bathe him, to feel him against my skin.

But I keep my cries to myself, mostly.  I fear judgment.  I've always feared judgment from people who maybe think I am hanging on too much or that I need to let go of the past.  I fear people thinking that I am incapable of mothering this living child because I can't tear myself away from the dead one.  I fear people thinking to themselves, "Isn't she over this by now? He wasn't even a real baby yet."  I fear people making a judgment that I must be depressed simply because I still miss my son when in actuality I am very grateful for the life I have with my husband and daughter.  As I said in my last post, they are my light and I know how very fortunate I am to have them lighting up my world.

The fear of judgment isn't totally unfounded as I have come to learn.  I hear the judgment in subtle tones from people we know.  It is often so subtle I don't think those from which it comes even would realize it themselves.

"Now that Clio is here you can move on from the pain of losing George."

I also hear it in the silence.  His name is hardly ever uttered.  I cannot recall the last time someone, other than baby loss parents, asked us how we were dealing with our grief over George since Clio arrived.  Her arrival and his absence are intwined for us in ways that other people just rarely acknowledge.

I fear even writing all this here for the possible judgment that some may have.
She has a living child now, why is she still writing about this?  She should be grateful for her daughter.

I don't want George's death to overshadow the life of his sister.  She is celebrated every moment I am breathing.  I love her completely and I recognize how fortunate I am to have her .  I take not a single cry or fussy moment for granted.  But I also don't want her life to negate the importance of her brother's.  How to keep that from happening I am not sure.  I guess it is just a work in progress.

the laughing heart

Yesterday Leif shared with me a poem by Charles Bukowski.  Seldom does it happen that I come across a piece of writing that strikes me so deeply to the core that I feel like I must memorize it so as to never forget its message.


The Laughing Heart 


your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.


Over the last two weeks I have felt much of that darkness again, not that it ever entirely left.  Having Clio here has been magical but it has also crystalized for me what exactly was taken away from us when George died and that has been difficult for me to internalize again.  I just miss him so very much and can't really fathom how I will never have him again.


Yet this poem has helped to remind me that I can choose to live out my days in the darkness of circumstance or I can choose to look for the light, wherever it may come from.  The darkness will always be my companion but I choose whether or not to let it consume me.  As Clio grows up I want to share with her the existence of her brother so that from his story and ours she will learn that even in the darkest moments of her life -and surely there will be moments that seem black as night- there will always be at least a small shimmer of light, even when it feels like all of the light in the world has been stolen away.  


And surely there is so much light.
My Leif. 
My Clio.  

My life is my life and I will know it while I have it.