Fragile

I have rarely lacked confidence in my ability to get things done. I have a healthy stockpile of self-doubts, but my ability to act and decide and plan and put plans in motion is not one. This has served me well in many contexts. It has made me a good lawyer, a good provider, a good payer-of-debts. It has helped me help others and fix problems big and small.  I am a developer of Plans of Attack and a checker of all the boxes. But pregnancy in a pandemic has shattered everything.

I know from experience that pregnancy, every pregnancy, feels disorienting.  On Monday your body is your own.  On Tuesday it is shared sacred space. We've been here before. Twice before. And while those pregnancies ended, they were long enough to disrupt what I could and could not believe about my body.  They were long enough to love someone and lose someone. They were long enough to love and hate what was in the mirror. They were long enough to be surprised by how resilient our flesh can be, suffer and still wake up whole, suffer and still wake up and go to work, suffer and still go to happy hour, suffer and still hope.

After losses, pregnancy feels especially tenuous. My only experience of pregnancy thus far has been destruction and loss, so to be in this new world of good news, healthy ultrasounds, kicks and somersaults after supper, feels beautiful and fragile. To know he's a boy, growing into a boy body, with boy elbows and knees in my stomach, means there's so much more to imagine and cherish, so many daydreams of dirt and baseball and laughter and boat rides, so much more to be lost. He is pictured, not more loved than his lost siblings, but certainly more concrete. He is possible and probable, and that makes the risks loom larger.

But he is an anchor now, too. We cannot drift too deeply into any sea of despair because there are bassinets to research, child care options to discuss.  There are nurseries to daydream and names to debate. We may be isolated, a bit stuck, and bruised by the disappointments and fears of this current storm, but we are constantly reminded by a tiny person we love that the future must come, too. And he doesn't care if Mom doesn't have baby showers, or if the new house isn't quite put together, or if he even has a "new" house to come home to in the first place. He'll just be here. We love him for just being here, just existing. And that love is not fragile, it is fierce.

Something to Talk About

I'm new at my job. Unsurprisingly, I'm frequently making my way to the printer and end up exchanging pleasantries with folks who don't know me.  Those initial conversations are frequently awkward, so polite as to be ridiculous, but that's the dance we do in new spaces. Because I started this job while going through our second miscarriage, I was more sensitive to some of those getting-to-know-you questions and I was struck by the fact that only women with children asked me if I had children. It was frequently one of their first questions, and perhaps it always has been.  Perhaps it's only now, when we're trying for and losing our babies, that the question lodges somewhere painful and leaves a mark.

I will say, first, that for whatever reason, the second loss has been easier than the first.  Easier in that I knew what to expect, understood what I was feeling, and had a learned timeline of events.  It was not emotionally easier, but I definitely functioned better. No catatonic evenings on the couch writing drippy poetry and sipping whiskey. I'll partly credit the new job for that high functioning sadness but I'll also credit the weird, wonderful resiliency of human experience. But that doesn't lessen the hitch in my breath, feel the hollowness of my answer, "no, no children." I am an excellent actress, so no need to assume this is painful for anyone other than myself. I am slick and clever and any discomfort can be easily sidestepped with a quick reference to lawyer antics, my newest kitchen gadget purchase, or a comment on somebody's fabulous shoes. 

That's fine. Really. I understand the weirdness of meeting and investing in people, asking questions, picking and prodding to determine points of shared interest. We do so desperately want to connect with people and questions are how that information frequently makes its way to us. But I think it's the expectation of the question itself that I find difficult these days. I don't doubt that mothers want to know if there is shared experience there, a shared bond, working mom to working mom, and that's certainly a valid connection to hope for.  But I wish we didn't start there. I wish that wasn't the first of the getting-to-know-you questions.  Because I am positive that I will not be a more interesting person if/when I become a mother. I will never be of more value than I am right now. My worth, vitality will not increase. I will love someone new, cherish someone I've longed for, but I've actually experienced those things before. I could talk about my husband that way. And if you'd spoken to me before I met him, I could have spoken similarly about members of my family, dreams, goals, travels. My mind, my heart, my relationship with the world, they do not become more worthy of interest or bond or connection when I can add "mother" to my list of descriptors. I am wholly myself today and will be wholly myself forever. 

Women without children never struggle here, they don't ask if you have kids. I don't ask women if they are mothers when I meet them.  And it's not because I don't care, it's because their motherhood isn't a key piece of information for me in determining how I will connect with them.  Because motherhood is not something we will link arms over, we have to find other areas to connect. Books, school, autumn, a shared love of americanos with vanilla syrup, travel daydreams, cars in the shop.  I am aware of my increased sensitivity these days but the questions surrounding children feel very much like an audition with some women, as if my choice of monologue is under scrutiny and the cast list won't be posted until Friday. I think it's this assumed lack of invitation, this knocking on the window of a club I'm not invited to, that scratches the wound. Because so frequently after I say I don't have kids, the conversation falters. Even if I joke and bring up my adorable dog.  Even if I ask to know more about the children, what grade, what sport, there's a languishing there and I feel not a little bit left in the cold. 

While we've begun the adoption journey, we don't know how/when that road will end. I wish, in meeting women, we could connect as friends,  as colleagues, as athletes on side by side spinning bikes, as lovers-of-Jane-Austen, as mutual haters of the office copier, as owners of the same leopard print sweater, and leave the do-you-have-kids questions for days, weeks, months down the road.  I wish for many things, and this is one. 

A Roof

Several weeks ago I lost two people, my uncle and  my baby. The losses are married in my gut because they happened so closely in time, days apart.  It's hard to unwind where one pain ends and the other begins, if the tears are for one or both or all or everything. I remember saying to my mom at some point in the process of both losses, "it's too much." She agreed, of course, it is entirely too much. On their own, each loss would have felt unbearable, but the two together feel as if I've broken some internal meter for fortitude.

The last few weeks have blurred, smiles and laughter and warm meals with friends a welcome balm.  But I still feel bizarrely scooped out, like the strongest, worthiest, most-myself-est pieces have been removed for maintenance and I am just a roof, pulled taut over the remaining bits and pieces that make me a person.

I have many in my life who pray for me. My family, friends. And I would never dismiss the desire loved ones have to bring the heartaches of their dearest companions to God.  I'm thankful for prayer, for the messy attempt we humans make of offering comfort when comfort feels impossible, but the underlying faith necessary to believe in the helpfulness of prayer these days is pretty thin.  And that spiritual shakiness is what makes me ache for my uncle. No stranger to pain, especially over the last five years of his cancer struggle, he always ended his health updates with "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away/Blessed be the name of the Lord." It could have been a casual email signature to some, but to him it was the greatest of truths.  I miss having that bone deep belief in my life, that smiling assurance that no depth of sorrow was without hope.

There wasn't anything to bury when we lost the baby. Too soon, too small, too fast. So we wrapped the petals of flowers given to us by friends and family in a remnant of my wedding gown and buried the hope of our babe at my husband's mom's grave. By that time, Uncle Buck had left us, too, and so the prayers I threw into the clouds were directed to him, not to God, "Show him around, Uncle Buck. Take care of him until I get there." Childish perhaps, but speaking to my uncle is easier than speaking to God these days, and so I do.  I hear his "darlin," his "sweetheart" when I cry and I hear the refrain he repeated throughout the course of his treatment, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away/Blessed be the name of the Lord." I read my poems to him and pretend he's with me in the car when I listen to political podcasts. On the days that it is difficult for me to believe in a good and loving God, I am thankful for my unshakable belief in the communion of saints. While God may feel far away, Uncle Buck does not, and someday perhaps I'll acknowledge that that's God, too.

I am a Roof Now, Empty and Protective

The hurt stretched, pulled thin against some immovable plane.

I picture ancient warrior women, all hands and sweep of hair, rolling out some mammoth hide and 

pulling it taut. 

That's what I am now, for now, 

my hurt some wet, bloody roof to our home. 

The sweat and crush of it has passed but the shade remains, 

the shade and the protection from all this rain.

We bury you (just petals really because you had nothing else to give us when you left)

beside your Granma, not far from a lake, 

That's where I am now, for now,

the loss of you so quick, your daddy dug a hole with a tiny stick.

I wonder if grass is cool or green or itchy, slim and sharp or soft and wide

In that other place you've bloomed without the protection of my animal hide.

The sun will dry this skin in pieces, patches, and the rain won't soak us through.

But you're still out there beneath a tree and I am still a mama with no baby

That's who I am now, for now,

Hands smoothing the stretch of me, pulled tight to the ground as music wafts from somewhere

I protect some part of you still, beneath this roof of flesh and blood

And you grow somewhere new, God's garden, God's flood

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.