A few things I’ve learned in the year since my mother died

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photo-54

The anniversary of Mom’s death is Wednesday

But I have the day off today,

So I went down to the cemetery.

I always feel the urge to

Bring something

To put on her grave;

It feels wrong somehow

To show up empty-handed.

I usually stop by the

SuperAmerica on the way and buy a

$3.50 single rose in a plastic tube, which I remove.

But the rise her grave is on is

So windy

The petals get stripped off

As soon as I place the flower on the ground.

So I decided to take the Christmas wreath

Off our front door and

Bring that instead.

But as I was taking it down,

And saw how dried out it was,

How the fronds broke off at the slightest touch,

I felt like I was just

Dumping our left-over Christmas decorations on her.

Doesn’t she deserve something new?

Is it okay to bring a dried-out

Six-week-old Christmas wreath as an offering

To a grave?

I don’t know.

I haven’t figured this out,

This grieving business.

I drive into the cemetery and am

Relieved to see the

Hundreds of Christmas wreaths,

From a distance as uniform as the military graves they adorn.

Dried out now,

They are army green with

Flashes of red ribbon.

I lean my wreath against her gravestone

And stand there for a few minutes.

I never feel much at the cemetery,

And never know what to do.

It’s so windy, and this time of year,

Bitterly cold.

I have to pee.

Should I talk to her?

Tell her everything that’s happened in the past year?

Rocky being born,

Victor getting glasses,

Me starting another novel.

It feels unnecessary.

I think if she knows things,

If she’s aware of facts about our lives,

She knows.

I don’t need to come to the

Cemetery to inform her.

How long is the right amount of time to stand here?

Should I pray?

God, it’s cold.

I hope the bathrooms are unlocked.

——————————————-

I remember one day,

After Mom had

Retired.

It was a couple years into her

Illness.

We were still calling it

“Mild cognitive impairment”

To spare her feelings

Although it was

Clearly

More than that.

One thing she loved to do was

Go get mani/pedis.

And on this day,

A hot summer day

With a clarifying blue sky,

I was in the front yard as she

Backed the car out of the driveway,

And as she put the car into drive

And drove away,

She waved out the window:

One flip of her hand,

Delighted to be

Retired,

And going to get a

Mani/pedi on a

Lovely summer day.

She was driving the

Silver Camry which

I would inherit just a

Few months later.

Standing on the

Hot, crispy lawn,

Watching her drive away—

It was the last time I saw her drive—

I thought,

Yes.

That’s what her retirement should’ve been like.

A carefree little jaunt to the

Mani/pedi parlor.

She deserved that kind of retirement.

So lesson No. 1:

People don’t get what they deserve.

Lesson No. 2:

Everyone identifies with a

Parent dying.

‘Cause we all have ‘em.

And people have either

Experienced the death of one or both,

Or know they likely will someday.

Lesson No. 3: It’s possible to

Have a relationship with

Someone who is dead.

Someone told me this, right after she died:

“You might not grasp what this means right now,

But you’ll get to know your

Mother in a new way

Now that she’s gone.”

I have this little brown teddy bear

My mother grasped as she was dying—

I pulled it out of her hands

After she had died—

And I have it sitting

Among my talismans and

Candles on my
Writing alter.

It’s a reminder to me to

Be kind to myself—

To take it easy—

The way my mother would’ve wanted me to.

I see now that she

Loved me with a

Perfect love and

Wants me to love myself as

Unconditionally as she loved me.

Lesson No. 4:

It’s possible to feel sadness and joy at the same time;

They are not mutually exclusive.

At the same time that

I feel grief that she is gone,

I feel gratitude that

I have her for a mom,

And relief that the ordeal of her illness is over.

Gonna write another novel

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photo-46I’m going to write another novel.

I surprise myself by

Saying it/

Writing it

Out loud.

There’s a certain hubris to saying

I’m going to do something like that,

Like saying I’m going to

Run a marathon

Before I’ve gone out for my first jog.

In fact,

They are not dissimilar,

Writing novels and training for marathons.

I’ve never run a marathon,

But from what I understand,

It’s a lot of

Inglorious training:

Getting up early in the dark

When everyone else is still asleep.

Sacrifices and trade-offs made.

Can’t stay up to watch

Sunday night football.

Gotta get to bed early,

Get up early for my

Morning training.

I feel okay telling you

I’m going to write a novel because

I’ve done it before.

Twice, actually.

(Both unpublished!)

So I know I can do it.

I think it would be possible to

Write one or two novels,

And run one or two marathons

With your eye on the result,

Yet hating the day-to-day training.

Bumbling out of bed,

Dreading the blank page or the

Cold concrete.

And making yourself do it

Anyway.

Because it’s one of your life goals:

To write a novel,

Or run a marathon.

But to keep doing it

Year after year,

Marathon after marathon,

Novel after novel,

You’d have to figure out

How to enjoy the daily training.

To not dread it.

To go to sleep at (8:00 at) night

Looking forward to your alarm going off at

4:00 a.m.

Because you’ve built your

Life around this

Hobby,

This passion.

Because you love it.

You love not just

Completing the marathon (the novel)

Or even the daily training exercise.

You love the daily training

Itself.

My first two novels

Were so willful.

I was so fixated on the result of

Having Written A Novel,

That I dreaded the practice of writing.

“I hate writing;

I love having written,”

Said one famous author.

But that’s not sustainable.

What’s the point?

It’s very possible I

Won’t make a cent on my novels,

That they’ll get rave reviews from

Close friends and family,

And that’s it.

They might completely suck.

It’s a hobby,

And a pretty demanding one,

So I’d better enjoy it.

It’s taken

Years

For me to learn how to enjoy a

4:00 a.m. writing session.

Mornings are best

Because I don’t have

Time to talk myself out of it.

Alarm goes off at 4:02 a.m.,

No snooze,

No thinking,

Just up.

(That’s the name of my alarm:

“Up.”)

Creep around the bedroom with my

Flashlight app,

Pulling on my training clothes–

Running shoes because

I write standing up.

Downstairs in the dining room,

I set up my writer’s space.

Virginia Wolff was wrong.

A woman does not need

Money

And a room of her own

To write fiction.

The dining room table is my desk.

In the still-dark early morning,

I fill it up with candles, talismans and tchotchkes.

I provide myself tiny comforts:

Hot tea,

My cozy red bathrobe,

Thermostat set at a decadent 72 degrees,

Thelonious Monk or Miles Davis on Pandora.

It takes patience

To settle into the

Experience

Of the daily practice of writing.

And strangely enough,

It’s the disappointments

(Two novels, not even published let alone

Best-sellers)

And a little suffering

(Drunkenness and then the bracing sobriety journey)

That have given me this

Patience gift.

Writing novels takes the ability to both

Be in the moment,

And have the long view.

I can sustain both best in the early morning quiet

Of my candle-lit dining room,

My family sleeping around me.

In the soundtrack to my life,

This scene of me starting to write novels again

Would be set to

“Fire On The Mountain,”

Grateful Dead:

Long distance runner, what you holdin’ out for?
Caught in slow motion in a dash for the door.
The flame from your stage has now spread to the floor
You gave all you had. Why you wanna give more?
The more that you give, the more it will take
To the thin line beyond which you really can’t fake.

Fire! Fire on the mountain!

Just another liberal on the bus

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One day last summer

I wanted to take my infant son to a festival and

Since my husband had the car that day,

I decided we would ride the city bus.

My son was in his stroller–

The kind where you clip the car seat in–

And his huge diaper bag was stuffed into the undercarriage,

And my purse was swinging from the handlebar.

Like any infant/parent duo out for an afternoon,

We had as much

Equipment as we had

Pounds in our two bodies.

Now,

My experience with public transportation is

Informed by the five years I lived in

Scandinavia

Where parents and kids in strollers

Ride for free,

Where if you’re getting on a train or tram with stairs,

Strangers will pick up the front of your pram without a word

And help you and your kid on board,

Where other riders will

Uncomplainingly

Make way for you and your stroller.

It felt like

We were all in this together.

Everyone invested in raising these kids–

Even those who didn’t have kids–

A value exemplified by the

Public transportation system:

Institutionally, with the free fare;

And culturally, with the unspoken agreement that

Someone will help you

Get your pram

On the damn bus.

So as I was pushing my

Stroller system to the bus stop,

I got a sinking feeling:

I’d ridden the bus plenty as a commuter,

And I’d seen that

Wheelchair elevator thing they have,

But I’d never seen a stroller on one…

Sure enough,

The bus pulled up to the stop and the doors opened,

And the bus driver looked down at me and my

Grapes of Wrath-esque stroller system and said,

Skeptically,

“You’re gonna have to fold up that

Stroller to get it on here.”

I looked up at her,

Starting to panic as I

Envisioned how I would

Sherpa a

Folded-up stroller,

Car seat,

Diaper bag,

Purse, and

Oh yeah,

The baby

Onto the bus

In one load

With no help.

Reader,

I lied.

“My son has a head injury and the

Doctor said

We can’t move him.

He has to stay in his stroller.

I can’t take him out.”

The bus driver looked at us for a minute,

Then pushed the button, and the

Elevator contraption

Beeped its way down to the ground for us.

I crammed us onto the thing

Diagonally–

It’s not meant to have someone standing behind the

Wheelchair–

And we got on the bus.

Not only did people

Not make way for us,

But they glared at me.

Annoyed that I was making the bus run behind schedule,

And probably seeing through my bullshit line.

The whole bus ride,

I fumed.

How is it

Safer to have a

Folded up stroller and a

Loose infant rolling around the

Inside of a

Moving bus than a

Stroller locked in place with a brake system

And the infant buckled inside?

It seemed designed to actually

Discourage

Parents from using public transportation.

As I steamed,

I made this into an

Example in my mind

Of everything that’s wrong with our country,

Of an individualism that borders on

Absurdity.

It’s your kid.

You decided to have him.

You decided to ride the bus.

You get him on board yourself.

You don’t want to ride the bus with  your kid?

Then get a job

And get a car.

Oh, and by the way,

Same goes for his health insurance.

But all of a sudden–

Maybe it was the evil eyes boring into the back of my head

From the ridership sitting behind me–

I could see myself like I think

The

Other side

Might see me.

The assumptions I was making,

The language I was using in my mind.

Wow.

I did sound entitled.

(I even lied to get my way,

Which is another whole issue.)

I’ve been given the gift

In recent years,

Of having

Politically conservative

Friends.

And though we don’t talk much about politics,

I can see from the way they live their lives

What they mean about

Personal responsibility.

They see a problem,

And I see the same problem

And we see different

Reasons for that problem,

And we have different ideas for

Solutions to the problem.

I can look into their eyes and

See that they’re not

Evil or

Mean or

Vindictive.

My problem–

And it is

My problem–

Is when it’s a whole

Half a country of them,

And they become faceless,

And I don’t get to look into their eyes

And see that their motivations are true.

It hurts.

It hurts me to feel so

Disconnected from seemingly

Half my countrymen and women.

(It felt like

The bus was

Full of them

That day.)

But all I can look at is myself.

My assumptions.

My senses of entitlement.

My distrust of

The other side.

Where does it come from?

It doesn’t even matter.

I’m pretty sure that

Any of my conservative friends would’ve helped me

Carry my stroller off the bus–

Though they might not have thought I should have

Free fare–

And maybe that’s a start.

Back to work after maternity leave

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So get this:

You,

As an unfertilized egg,

Developed inside your mother’s ovaries

When she was an embryo

Growing inside

Your grandmother’s womb.

Hence,

You,

Or the ovum that later became you,

First budded to life inside

Your grandmother’s body.

When Rocky and Victor were born,

I could look at their

Smashed red faces–

Perfect to me–

And know what people meant

When they said a

Baby has an

Old soul.

It was more than just the

Wizened old-man wrinkles and

Tired eyes from

Months squeezed into the amniotic sac.

It was how they knew

Just what to do:

Root for milk;

Cry for attention;

Burrow into my chest for a nap.

The way they knew

Just how to make me love them–

It felt altogether too knowing and

Sophisticated for someone just a few

Minutes old.

You’ve done this before,

I thought.

And in the fever of the first

Maternal pangs:

“Please, don’t ever, ever die,”

A glimmer of hope:

Maybe they have had lives before,

And maybe they’ll have lives after.

Maybe there’s a chance of

Immortality

For these precious creatures.

And now,

Scientific validation:

Maybe not immortal,

But at least an extra 30-odd years.

Since the two bitty ova that became

Victor and Rocky

Grew inside my fetal body

Back in 1974-75,

They were along for the ride,

Inside my mom for

Nine-plus months.

A comfort,

Since Rocky never got to meet my mom

Who died in January when I was

Five months pregnant.

And I,

In fact,

Date all the way back to 1942-43,

While my mother gestated inside my

Grandmother.

Makes me feel somehow wiser.

A part of me existed during World War II.

Thus, perhaps,

My penchant for

Third Reich documentaries on Netflix.

I love this shit.

These bits of biological trivia that

Expand my sense of the

Miraculous in life.

Yet another point to marvel on

As I gaze on my boys,

Stunned by a ferocious love

I did not know I was capable of.

My intention with this blog post

Was to somehow tie this back to

Going

Back to

Work after

Maternity leave.

A counterpoint to the

Bummer of it all.

See,

It’s not that I want to be a

Stay at home mom

(A SAHM, for those who don’t

Read mommy blogs.)

Or actually,

Here’s what I want:

I want to be both a

SAHM

And

Have a fulfilling full-time

Career

At the same time.

I want both

Simultaneously.

Not at different times in my life.

All right now.

I mentioned this impossible

Longing to a friend,

And he responded,

“You should be able to have both.

This world is dumb.”

Agreed.

But like a good mortgage-holder,

I trooped back to work last Monday morning

Wearing the sparkly pink eye shadow I had

Bought to make myself feel better.

(It worked.)

I didn’t cry on the phone to my husband

In the pumping room.

I didn’t cuddle Rocky for too long that first morning,

Making myself late.

I’ve just been

A little crabby and

A little cynical.

Like,

What the hell does anything matter?

There are

Babies

Being born.

Human lives starting.

Anything else can seem a little

Banal when compared to a baby’s

First sweet smile of the day,

Instantly nullifying the

Six times he woke you up the night before.

I’m not ungrateful–

I like my job and my coworkers.

(How much would it suck to

Not.)

“Why am I feeling this way?”

I groaned to my husband.

“Because now you have to

Go back to work for the

Rest of

Your

Life,”

He synthesized.

Ominous,

And true.

Nothing else to look forward to;

Just the long slog to retirement.

(Or another baby?)

I know I’ll pick up steam again.

Start popping vitamin D supplements.

Get back into shape.

Join the world in

Spirit as well as

Body.

It was a precious,

Rarefied time.

My intention was to

Savor every moment of it.

So it kinda sucked when

Some days were rough.

It really did take the

Six weeks

Allotted by the insurance company to

Physically recover from the birth.

I was at the doctor at least

Once a week for

Various unmentionable reasons.

Sometimes had to sleep all day to

Catch up from the night before.

Now that I think about it,

It is kinda nice to be

Back at work.

Beyond those puffy,

Alternative-reality

First weeks,

When getting a minute to

Take a shit feels like the

Big accomplishment for the day,

And my bed,

Old friend,

Has turned against me,

Is no longer the quiet sanctuary of

Rest at the end of the day,

But is instead the scene of a weird sleep continuum,

A never-ending struggle,

Day and night,

Night and day,

To match my circadian rhythms to the

Nonsensical ones of the

Tiny body

Lying next to me,

Banging his feet on the mattress.

So what does this all have to do with

Immortal lives and

Ova that transcend a

Normal human lifetime?

I don’t know.

It’s just a subject to

Ruminate on that

Makes life feel more

Fascinating,

That’s all.

Summers without my boy

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It’s not a simple question for me:

“How’s your summer going?”

The answer requires

A deep breath,

A quick assessment of how

Forthcoming

I want to be

With this person.

My six-year-old son

Spends summers with his

Father’s family

In Finland.

This summer,

He’s gone from

June 11 to

Aug. 25.

I’m Minnesotan;

I come alive in the summer.

I emerge from my

Black down coat with

Browned limbs,

Sun-lightened hair,

Tan-lined feet from my sandals.

Smile at strangers whose

Faces are liberated from

Scarves and hoods.

When my son is gone though,

I have to steel myself for summer.

I hate wishing time away—

Especially the rarefied days of

Light and green—

But I can’t help

Counting the summers down.

I’m not

Quite

Myself

When my first-born is not

Physically near.

I can function.

I’m fine;

I’m okay.

But a part of me is

Missing.

I’ve described it like

Temporarily

Losing my left arm,

If you will.

A survivable wound,

But disabling.

You can adapt to the loss,

But it’s obvious nearly every

Hour of

Every day.

Describing it to people,

I put a desperately positive spin on it:

“He has so much fun,” I say.

“The only grandchild.

All the attention on him.

Plenty of time outdoors.

Healthy food.

He always grows a mile.”

“What a great experience,”

People say kindly,

Even enthused for him.

I’ve never felt judged.

Thank you for that.

It’s a fear, I think,

Of many divorced parents.

Being judged for decisions we’ve made

That have given our kids

This

Story.

Yep.

I left.

I did it.

It was me.

And now my son’s story includes

Airports,

Backpacks full of toys, books, drawing material

For the plane.

Ability beyond his years to

Operate the seat-back entertainment system.

And me?

I haven’t bothered with 4th of July fireworks

In years.

I go to bed at 9,

Get up for work the next morning.

Just a day like any other.

To be gotten through.

This summer though.

I feel guilty saying it:

It’s been easier with Rocky,

The new baby.

I don’t have to

Turn off my

Maternal energies like a

Faucet

For 10 weeks.

There’s a small body to

Hold and squeeze,

Chubby cheeks to kiss the

Tears off of.

Joe and I joked,

Before Rocky was born,

We’d have him

All the time.

No one to hand him off to

For the weekend.

I’m glad.

I don’t want to share him.

I want to have access

At all times.

Make all the decisions.

I want to learn to let go

His freshman year of college

Dropping him off the dorm.

Not in security lines in airports.

I would never want Victor to think,

Though,

That Rocky has somehow

Replaced him.

I can’t wait to hold Victor’s

Larger,

Tougher

Body on my lap,

His long legs dangling,

His hands,

Dirty from outside,

Squeezing my fingers.

Rocky takes the edge off,

But Victor’s absence still yawns.

Seven more days until the airport.

Till Victor comes through the

Security doors

With his backpack,

Signaling the end of

Summer,

Finally.

Baby daddy: take two

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I was scared of comparisons

This second time around.

A second baby,

With a second father,

A second husband.

A man who’s done it all before.

I would ask him questions

About the pregnancies and

Births of his two first kids.

A lot of it he said he didn’t remember.

But some things he’d describe:

He was a long-haired 21-year-old

Making big decisions,

Trying to do the right thing.

He said after his daughter was born—

The only Packers game he’d missed

Since he started watching football—

He came out in the waiting room

Where his parents were,

Tried to tell them it was a girl,

Started sobbing.

This time around,

Three months pregnant,

Touring the L&D ward at Regions Hospital

Joe started telling me about

How nice

The hospital was where his

Kids were born:

Wood floors,

Homey furniture,

Decent food.

Comfortable pillows.

Tears gathered in my eyes and

I snapped at him:

“That hospital isn’t covered by our insurance.”

He looked at me in surprise.

“You keep comparing.

I’m scared of you comparing,”

I said.

“But I’m not comparing,”

He said, mystified.

“It just feels like you are,”

I said, crying a little,

I’m sure not the first

Expectant mom to

Cry during the tour of the

L&D ward.

“Okay, I’m sorry,”

He said,

Ginger with me.

I wasn’t an emotional wreck during pregnancy,

But there were a couple topics that got me flared up,

And “comparison” was one of them.

This was a man whose

First wife heroically gave birth

Twice

With no pain killers.

With my first son,

I had asked for every pain killer they had:

Gas,

Local topical anesthetic,

Epidural.

I wanted to try for

“Natural”

This time around,

But what if I couldn’t make it without

Pain killers,

And Joe would compare

This birth

To his older kids’ births,

And I would fall short?

As it turned out,

I did have Rocky with no pain killers

In a steadily progressing,

Eight-hour labor with

Twenty minutes of pushing.

(It’s funny to think of me

Worrying that I would be

Concerned with comparisons

During labor and delivery;

I had forgotten how completely

Consuming

The process of giving birth is.)

I didn’t dream

As a little girl

Of having

Two

Baby’s daddies

And a husband with

Private memories of the

Births of his first children

That I’m not a part of.

But now that Rocky’s born

The comparisons aren’t as scary.

The story’s been amended.

The tension of pregnancy

Released.

Life is good.

Life is peaceful.

Our family has taken its shape:

Yours,

Mine and

Ours.

Why I need you in the delivery room with me

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It started with a discussion

My husband and I were having–

You could call it an argument–

About the difference between

Animal and

Human

Birth.

“Have you ever watched a cow

Give birth?”

Asked my husband.

“They just moo and

Work the calf out of their body.

It’s all a

Natural process.

There’s not all these

Medical

Interventions.”

I was a little pissed off at

His audacity–

He was including pain interventions in his argument–

Plus I was skeptical that

He had ever

Watched a cow give birth.

However, it piqued my interest:

Is live birth as

Complicated for other animals

As it is for humans?

I took to the Internet

And learned a thing or two about

Human birth.

Turns out

Four-legged mammals have a relatively large

Pelvic opening to push their young through.

Because we walk upright

Humans have relatively

Narrow pelvic bones.

Not only does a human baby’s head

Barely fit through the pelvic opening,

It even has to make a

Quarter turn

Right at the end to make it out.

“That’s why,”

The doctor on the

YouTube video explained

As she

Barely

Slid

An infant skull through a set of

Pelvic bones,

“Humans are the

Only animal that

Need

Help

To give birth.”

Wow, I thought.

So true.

Other animals go off to be alone,

To hide,

When the labor pains come.

We animals

Call for help.

The social instinct,

I thought,

Would seem to have a

Darwinian purpose.

The truth is,

I’m only starting to grasp how much I

Really

Need

People.

When I was young,

I confused an

Independent streak and a

Love for solitude with

Not needing people.

I remember once during my

Freshman year of college:

I watched a group of girls go

Down to dinner together,

And I, who hadn’t made an effort

To make friends, got ready

Alone in my dorm room.

In a spasm of loneliness, I thought,

“I don’t need people.”

And I knew immediately:

It wasn’t true.

I do need people.

It’s an instinct as strong as the

Need to eat,

Or sleep.

It makes sense:

As a species, we literally

Wouldn’t survive birth

Without help from others.

And here’s how that

Played out for me in the delivery room on

April 28, 2012

As I labored and delivered my son.

Four people in the room with me:

Midwife, nurse, doula, husband.

The midwife and the nurse were

Guiding my little son’s

Bobble head into the world.

My husband and the doula were at my head,

Holding my hands.

As the contractions

Built into their gripping pitch, and

All I knew was the

Black, vacuous void of

The pushing,

I had to

Touch

My husband.

I had to grip his hand,

I had to hear his voice saying,

“You’re doing it, Jen.

Good job.

You’re almost there.”

The sound I remember most from

Rocky’s birth six weeks ago

Wasn’t his first cry.

It was the gasping sob

My husband let out when I had finally

Done

The impossible,

And he yelled,

“Babe, you did it!”

And everyone in the room was

Laughing and smiling.

Do it alone?

Good god, no.

Grip bed rails with my hands, or

Dig my fingernails into my palms?

That would’ve been hell.

I needed my husband’s hands to grasp

As much as I needed the midwife to

Guide my son’s relatively huge head

Through my relatively narrow hips

(Who knew?).

And that’s,

I guess,

Part of what makes me

Human.

My big childbirth fear

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Our doula perches on the edge of the

Chair in our living room.

She has short sandy hair,

No make-up.

I am cuter than she is,

Which I hadn’t realized was important

But is.

You don’t want a cute doula.

“I think I’m going to sit on the floor,”

She says, and slides off the chair into

Lotus position.

She pulls papers and notebooks out of her

Whole Foods bag and

Fans them in a semi-circle around her.

The rug she is sitting on

Needs a good vacuum,

And some spot remover.

She folds her freckled, braceleted hands in her lap and

Smiles up at us.

“So,” she says.

“Let’s talk about your

Fears.”

Ah yes.

My fears.

The whole point of this meeting.

I’m lucky. My fears don’t consist of

Fistula,

Rupture,

Hemorrhage,

Obstruction.

I’m not afraid of dying,

Or of days in agony,

Or crippling lifelong injury.

But I do have fears.

“Okay, so,

Remember I told you my

Mother died in January?

Of Alzheimer’s?

Well,

I haven’t really been that

Upset

About it.

I haven’t been crying.”

I look at Joe for confirmation of my stoicism,

And he nods.

“I don’t know why.

I feel weird about it.

Like, have I been too busy to grieve?

Or was it that she was sick for so long

I’ve done a lot of the grieving already?

I don’t know.

But here’s my fear:

That in the rush of emotion after the baby’s born,

In those first seconds,

The grief will

Suddenly

Surface,

Or be unleashed.”

Our doula is nodding,

Jotting in a notebook

Labeled with my name.

I fall silent,

Imagining it:

A surge of bitter,

Unacknowledged emotion,

Having its moment

Then and there

In the delivery room.

Ruining it.

Ruining the birth.

I hate this shit.

Grief.

“That makes so much sense,”

Our doula says, writing something,

Then looking up at me.

“And I’m so sorry about your mom.”

We talk for awhile,

And as she’s leaving,

Our doula hugs me and

Thanks me for telling her about my mother.

“I think your mom will come up during the birth,”

She says.

“I think it will happen.”

A few days later,

Something happens:

At my mom’s funeral in January,

I had asked my dad for her wedding ring.

I wanted to wear it for a while.

That was three months ago,

And he just remembered to give it to me

That week

After our meeting with the doula.

We were having lunch,

And he pulled the small cardboard box out of his pocket.

Presented it to me.

My mom’s ring.

“I have it now,”

I tell our doula on the phone.

“I’m going to wear it in the delivery room.

She’ll be

There,

Sort of.”

I am talking excitedly

Because the fear-dread is gone.

If there’s grief,

There’s grief.

I’ll let it in the room

And give it a symbol–

The ring–

And some

Words,

Tell my husband and our doula

I’m thinking about my mom.

Acknowledge the grief.

“What a fabulous idea,”

Our doula says.

“I love it.”

I don’t love it,

But I’m peaceful with it.

And that’s more important.

Lessons from an elementary school dance

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A few weeks ago

I was standing in a pack of parents

In the dark, hot gym of my son’s elementary school

Watching my son and his kindergarten friends

Get down to the latest Top 40 hits

At the annual dance and “fun-raiser.”

And as I leaned against the stage,

Grinning,

Something occurred to me:

I was having

So

Much

Fun

Just watching Victor and the other kids

Get crazy on the dance floor,

Their small bodies twisting,

Arms flailing,

Faces upturned to the D.J. on the stage,

Hoping he would toss a glo-necklace or

Mardi Gras beads their way.

At that moment,

There was nowhere else in the world

I wanted to be than in

That sweaty gym,

Watching my kid lose himself utterly to a

Katy Perry song.

I had

No

Idea

Parenting could be this fun.

I remember in my 20s

Making absolute proclamations:

“I’m never having kids!”

Realizing with existential wonder one day that

Kids are just

Small human beings,

Not another species.

Cautiously hypothesizing to my dad that,

If I did end up having kids

(Big “if”)

I wouldn’t change my life much.

“I’ll just take the kid with me

Wherever I go.

They can just hang out.”

(I think my dad just chuckled,

Didn’t even bother to respond.)

For me,

The desire to have kids came on like a

24 hour flu:

One summer day in 2004 I didn’t want kids,

The next morning I woke up

NEEDING

To be pregnant

That instant.

A year later,

The kindergarten dance phenom was born.

It took me a few years to

Learn to

Enjoy

Parenting.

I adored my son,

Cheered his accomplishments and

Squeezed his small body with a ferocious kind of love.

But get inside his experience?

Lose myself in his sheer joy of physical movement

And discovery?

I was kind of too busy.

I would take him somewhere,

The zoo, say,

And optimistically bring along a magazine

Hoping to relax in the old way

With him just

There, too.

Victor disagreed with my methods

And rarely allowed me to read.

“Oh, okay,” I would think as I eased myself down on the floor

To play a seemingly pointless game of

Car chasing or

Block-tower stacking and

Destruction.

15 minutes was about my limit

Before I would contrive a chore:

Gotta get dinner ready,

Or vacuum,

Or make a phone call.

“Two more minutes, Buddy.

Then Mom’s gotta go.”

Change happened through my campaign to just

“Be in the moment,”

That hippy-dippy phrase that’s the subject of

Books in the New Age section of the library

And shares in my 12-step meetings.

Go on someone else’s timeline.

Slow down.

Shut up.

Busy yet bored nearly all the time,

I thought, “What the hell,”

And gave it a shot.

Planned only through the rest of that day,

Then the next hour,

Then the next five minutes,

Until I got there:

The moment.

Instead of coming up with an excuse to

Sit on the pool deck in a chair

While Victor swims and asks me

Over and over again

To get in the water,

I just get in the damn pool and splash around and get my hair wet.

Now one evening a week after work,

I try to just

Hang out with Victor,

Whatever he’s doing–

No phone,

No laptop,

No book–

Instead of rushing him through his evening routine:

Dinner, bath,

Stories, bed,

So I could have “me time” before I went to bed,

Which usually consisted of aimlessly surfing the Internet.

We were leaving the school dance–

Victor wanted to leave before I did!–

And we walked down the hallway where

Chairs had been set up for parents.

A few were doing that bored-waiting-parent thing:

Leaning forward,

Elbows on their knees,

Tapping around their smartphone.

Every few minutes,

They would sit up straight and stretch a bit,

And heave a deep sigh.

Done it.

Still do it.

But for that one night,

I managed to relish this

Whole new experience I’ve discovered,

That I can have,

When I want it,

If I let it,

As long as Victor will have me.

Where did she go?

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After my mother died

In the bed in my parents’ bedroom,

She stayed there for a few hours

Before two respectful men in

Dark suits

(One in a red ski jacket over his suit)

Took her away.

Wrapped her in a red cloth litter and

Carried her

Out the front door into the

Bright winter sunshine.

Later,

My six-year-old son ran into her room and,

Surprised by the flat, smooth bedspread,

Asked,

“Where did Grandma go?”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and

Repeated what we were saying, about

Dying–

Not sleeping.

Gone.

And the body gone now, too.

To get ready to be

Buried in the ground.

“Grandma’s dead,”

He said solemnly to visitors throughout the day,

And though I winced at his blunt delivery,

I was glad of no

Vagueness or

Euphemisms.

The days after she died were about

Her body

Being gone.

Making the necessary decisions while eating

Pastries and drinking coffee at the dining room table,

Driving with my father to the necessary offices

So he could sign the necessary papers to

Retire the body

Lawfully,

Tactfully,

Appropriately.

Mom’s body, that is.

Mom’s mind?

Leeched away over the years by Alzheimer’s,

So for me,

It was not difficult to spend a week

Being pragmatic about the body.

But then yesterday,

At work,

More than a week after the funeral,

The question popped into my mind:

“Where did she go?”

Her, I mean.

Her essence.

Her, I guess, spirit.

The question felt innocent,

Like when my son asked it on the morning she died.

I didn’t feel uneasy,

Like I did at the funeral,

When earnest loved ones told me with feeling

That she is in a

Better

Place.

With God.

In heaven.

I wasn’t completely sure I believed it,

But I wasn’t averse to the idea, either.

“Yes,” I murmured.

“I hope so.

That would be lovely.”

It surprised me to

Be surprised by my

Uncertainty.

I had never truly

Experienced

My agnosticism before.

I had only contemplated it.

Intellectually.

The body,

Even the mind,

Those departures were comprehensible.

The body

Shrunken and withered under the quilts

Over the last months.

The jaundiced waxy skin

Stretched, shining,

Over the narrow bones.

So that the white cardboard box of

Cremains,

The size and heft of a shoebox filled with sand,

Seemed like just another step in the progressive

Shrinking of the body.

She grew from a tiny baby

To a woman,

Then shrank back down again to a

Box of ashes

A tiny baby could fit into.

Her mind’s development and

Decline also flowed back and forth

Along the continuum:

Babyhood into

Adulthood and

Back again.

Until the last reflex to go,

The swallow reflex,

Developed by a fetus in the womb,

Finally failed her.

The continuum of her

Mental and physical

Development and decline

Was so neat and tidy:

A parabola,

Like an arc of water,

Or a rainbow.

I can sit quietly with those images.

They comfort me.

But it’s that tricky

Soul,

God.

Where did it go?

I can only relate this experience that I had

About five days after she died,

After the services were over and the

Flowers were packed into the back of our truck along with

Leftover cheese and buns and fruit salad from the funeral.

I was doing yoga alone in a

Dimmed, empty exercise studio at the Y.

My iPhone wasn’t getting enough bars to play Pandora,

So it was silent.

No music.

Just me watching my pregnant body

Move

In the mirrors.

And it occurred to me:

There was a way that I could have some

More

Peace

In my life.

And that was by

Being as compassionate to myself

As my mother would be to me.

It would take moving a little more

Slowly,

Perhaps,

Through my days.

Breathing a little more deeply.

No big changes,

Just some slowing down,

Some small adjustments.

And then I thought,

“It’s not that her

Soul

Has entered me.

It’s that

Her love for me

Has helped clarify

My own soul.

She gives me myself,

Purer, and

Clearer.”

I didn’t feel like I

Necessarily needed one,

But an image of

Where her soul went,

Or what it looks like now,

Came to me.

It’s a point of light.

Combined with

Countless other points of light,

But infinitesimally small.

“Maybe that’s heaven.

I wouldn’t know,

And that’s okay,”

I thought as I lay down

At the end of my yoga practice

In my own

Corpse pose:

Savasana.