Seven quick takes on Good Reads and Heavenly Kids

1.  For me, the biggest obstacle to blogging is having a computer that isn't working.  For real.  And few things are more frustrating than knowing what to write, having nine minutes to write it in, and a laptop that does not desire to load, connect, behave, whathaveyou.  But since technology is being favorable to me at the moment, I'm gonna ketchup...

2.  I want to get caught up on my October photography project: Capture Your Grief, hosted by Carly Marie in commemoration of Baby Loss and Remembrance month. Yes, I know: this does not sound particularly uplifting. And prior to my loss in March, I would have questioned both the necessity and the sanity of such a project.

But now... I get it.  Greater awareness leads to greater compassion, more acknowledgement of the grieving hearts of so many moms around us, and hopefully further research to help make stillbirths and miscarriages less painfully frequent.  Pretending that these tragedies don't happen does no one any favors in the end.

3.  One of the first articles which opened my eyes to the prevalence of stillbirth was from the Motherlode. Besides demonstrating to me that stillbirth was not nearly as rare as we all would hope it to be, it addressed how to answer the question, "How many children do I have?"

And my answer to that is, "I have six children, four living."  Here's one of my favorite pictures of that idea: four kids, two spots of light.

As the article relates, this sort of answer used to be a common one, as child mortality was quite high before today's vaccines and penicillin; (whatever your current opinion of these are, they have in fact saved countless lives.  Walking around a cemetery, you can find a decreasing number of children's graves starting around the 1950's for this very reason.  Personally, I vaccinate with caution, spacing them out, skipping some in favor of others, and I'm mighty grateful I live in a time and place to have such options.)  But I digress...

4. My main point is that it used to be easier to talk about death.  Villages would celebrate births and deaths with song.  When a child died on the prairie, the women would gather to quilt the final blanket.  It was never easy I'm sure, but it used to be more widely acknowledged that we are mortal, and that sad things can happen to otherwise happy people.

But somewhere along the line, it became "inappropriate" to talk about, say, miscarriage. Part of it might be due to the American dislike of discomfort, or a lowered respect for the value of human life, or simply WWII coping mechanisms being passed down for generations.  That somehow, if you don't say anything, if you force yourself not to think about what you lost, you get better, faster.

My grandfather spent years fighting in a tin can submerged in the ocean: a submarine.  Few jobs at sea were more risky or more unpleasant; he deliberately chose this position for the high risk pay to support his widowed mom and orphaned sister.

I'm told the military's advice at the time was to block out unpleasantness, to try to forget tragedies.  And never talk about them again.

5.  When it comes to my daughter Perpetua, I don't find this tactic desirable or even possible.  Isaiah 49:15 comes to mind: "Can a woman forget her infant, or have no compassion on the child of her womb?"  And, what do you know, I can't forget her.  Furthermore, however painful it sometimes is to acknowledge what happened, I don't want to ignore it.  I will talk about her when it seems appropriate to do so, and be proud of my little one in heaven.  I am hopeful that those who listen can try to understand why pretending she never existed will not change her existence for me, with all the sadness and stunning graces left behind.

I've so appreciated the support of being able to grieve along with "the loss community."  It's been so helpful for me to read books like "Still" by Stephanie Paige Cole (who graciously sent me a copy of her book when I shared my loss with her), and the blog of people like Lori Dente, whose book "With Just One Push" will be coming out soon.  I read her blog before I knew I'd become a "loss mom" myself.  The strength of other women in these circumstances continues to inspire me.

It's odd but necessary to have a mommy group for those with children in heaven.  Such children still make us parents.  If we believe life begins at conception, and believe life continues eternally after death... why on earth shouldn't these little ones be a part of who we are, affect how we live our lives, and at times come up in conversation?  It just makes sense.

6.  As I've mentioned previously, I've had a hard time facing the oncoming cold and darkness.

Yes, I have a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder... but it's much more than that this year.  I'm re-entering the season I held "Pepper" here on earth for the first time since her loss in March.  And while fall is usually my favorite season, I'm dragging my heels like never before.

I feel like begging the leaves not to die, not to fall, for everything to stay warm and sunny, alive and full of light. Please. Please.  I don't want to relive this fall and winter season without her.

I think she knows that.

How do I know that?  Well... I can't prove the connection, but I've had an interesting few months of certain things just "working out."  And I don't just mean the Cajun spice set and Kindle childproof cover (never mind, I'll get the actual Kindle sometime I'm sure) I won from the last blogathon contest, or the fact that my blog crush Simcha Fisher (gee thanks, blush) shared my last post...

You see, as I've mourned the loss of summer and dreaded the coming of winter, I've also gotten nervous about the holidays.  I like the emotional recovery I've achieved, and don't want to go back "there"; and holidays are rather infamous for providing an emotional dip for those experiencing a loss.

I'd been hemming and hawing over how to make this Christmas somehow different, a bit more distracting perhaps.  So after going back and forth as to whether to try it or not, completely on a whim, I decided to have my kids audition for the Christmas Carol this year.

Now... I do this every year.  And every year, we aren't cast.  We kinda do it for the fun and experience of it all.

My kids were fantastic, if I do say so myself.  They sang very well.  Their lines were down pat.  Annemarie did a mystical impression of the Ghost of Christmas Past, and Claire did an absolutely hilarious monologue from Scrooge himself (her choice.)  Picture in your mind's eye a young girl of nine, earnestly telling the audience that her "life before her is her own to make amends in," wildly praising "heaven and the Christmas time" while shouting promises of conversion to Jacob Marley, and then dancing about with heel clicks declaring, "I'm as happy as an angel!  I'm as giddy as a drunken man!"

Silently, I had snuck into the last few minutes of her audition, and then collected her to go.

"We're still doing adult auditions, by the way.  We love your girls, and they said you can sing?"

I hadn't prepared one thing, my friends.  Not one.  I was chewing gum.  My makeup had worn off.  I had a sweatshirt on, which on close inspection appeared to be garnished with what looked like... chocolate.

I'd never been less prepared for the stage. I grinned. "Sure!  What do I read?" I got to act out a cockney version of Mrs. Cratchit.  I sang.  I went home dizzy and giggling, saying, "What did I just do?" to the kids, who were squealing with glee.

A week later, I got the email.  All of us were cast.  And for no less than ten performances at Park Theatre, I am Mrs. Crachit.  After years of on and off drama attempts, it's the biggest role I've landed since college, and at the least likely time.

It feels very weird.  It feels very perfect.  It feels very like someone is looking out for her family, and knows they need something a little different to get them through this Christmas.

I've gotta say it: it's so cool having your own personal little saint.

7.  I celebrated her, and my earlier miscarried little one, on the 15th, which is the official Baby Loss Remembrance Day.  I remembered my only niece or nephew too, who was also miscarried that same day a couple years back.  I thought of all the babies gone before us as I gave my presentation to the hospital council; it was strange to be dry-eyed in my focus while watching doctors and nurses reaching for tissues.

I came home just before 8, when the hour of candle lighting for my time zone would end.  Taking the candle my kids had recently made at a Yankee Candle Factory trip, of which I have some evidence:

I lit it, leaving it in the kitchen to fill the room with the scent of "True Blue."

Just before I put it out, I took my candle out the back porch into the night, silent except for the sounds of crickets.  (Click here for the real sound of crickets... woah!!:)  The almost full moon was extremely bright, but currently under a slow moving cloud cover.  Right above me, in an almost bird-shaped pocket hole in the clouds, shone one bright star, set in a perfect piece of deep blue sky.

I looked at the single star, peeking through the immense cloud bank.  I looked at the single flame in my hands.

Light to light.  Love from love.  Earth and heaven.

"Where is my camera???" was my first thought.  It was really too cool a moment to adequately describe with mere English.  But rather than risk losing the moment to search for my most inadequate photography equipment--and risk more kids finding me--I just looked into the perfect night.

Alone.  And not alone.

"I mean... this candle is pretty and all, but yeah.  I know, baby girl.  You win.  You've got a star."

"The world is more than we know."  --Ben Hur

Linked to The Conversion Diary

"The Decorative Scoop"

Ah.  You have happened upon one of my strengths.  :D

I have been asked the following question for my September Even Day Challenge: "Share 1 or 2 of your favorite recipes, DIY projects, or beauty/fashion tips."

Thus, here are Seven Quick Takes to a fun family craft: "The Decorative Scoop."

1.  Obtain an empty milk carton.  Rinse it out.  (I find the 2% "Great Value" from Walmart works best.)

2.  At this point, you won't be able to find the scissors.   Just trust me, ya won't.  So give your husband a sharp knife.

3.  (Husband's love sharp knives).

4.  Ask your husband to make your humble milk jug into a "scoop."  He will intently engage in the task (even though you interrupted his dinner.)

5.  In an effort to involve the whole family, peel stickers off the wall and have toddler decorate your scoop.

6.  I find that "The Decorative Scoop" is very versatile.  Suggestions that come to mind involve sand, cereal, and kitty litter, though I would recommend making a separate "Decorative Scoop" for each individual purpose.

7.  Here, my daughter demonstrates with Cheetos.  Note her surreal joy as she successfully pours her snack into a bowl.

Reduce, reusing, and recycling, this activity will have your kiddos and spouse begging for more, and demanding "Why are we doing this, Mom?  No, really?"

Linked to The Conversion Diary and Being a Wordsmith

Big brother

"Kate, you shouldn't wait till there's a fire before you take care of yourself."

Wrapped in hubby's black bathrobe, I looked and felt like the ghost of Christmas future.  Pretty bad. Dizzy and dazed and extremely nauseated, I groaned an agreement, but too late to fix it.

Racing about, preparing my kids for camp, supervising haircuts and running last minute errands, I'd been nursing an iced coffee throughout the day.  And ate nothing else.

I just forgot.  But my Crohn's did not.  Ugh.

We did get the two girls safely to NH today, and the house is strangely quieter.  But last night, I was having a flare-up and their departure did not look promising.

With hubby still recovering from food poisoning, I'd mumbled a phone call to my brother. In my family, he's the one with all the supplements, the guru who listens carefully to any combination of symptoms and produces the perfect supplement antidote to whatever ails you.

At the moment, I was getting a cocktail of organic whey, l-glutamine, and turkish figs in a blender, and several pills to swallow.

Armed with a backpack of supplies, Dave came over within ten minutes of my phone call. Systematically sterilizing the blender, he kept up a steady monologue of how soon I was going to feel better and what powder and mineral did what.  How he's getting closer to finding the perfect rotation diet to combating the auto-immune issues that plague me.  He'd pause only to check on the occasional scuffle as the girls finished packing and settled in for the night.

Blearily watching him from my horizontal position, I heard his words through a haze of queasiness. Trying to pull myself together for the trip to NH to drop kids off to camp, I put my confidence in my brother, my best buddy through childhood with whom I built legos, crashed matchbox cars on the braided rug, and oversaw a nation of Pound Puppies (and Purries).

Drinking the sludge that works every time, watching him toss water bottles and protein bars on the bed beside me for when I felt better, I still see my girlhood hero.

So do me a favor: set me a good example.  :) Take time to drink some water.  Stretch when you feel achy.  Get a good night's sleep if you can.

But if you can't, you're in good company.  :)  Think I'll try to go to bed now...

"A Psalm of David: I waited patiently for the Lord, He turned to me and heard my cry." Psalm 40:1

Beautiful in time

If, in the words of Paul Simon, it is "terribly strange to be 70," how much stranger still it must be to turn 97.  Which my grandmother did this past week. 

That's her with my dad there, and my two oldest leading the party.  :) As a kid, my family visited her weekly at her apartment, where she lived alone till she was 92 (while legally blind).  I remember trying to appreciate her every Sunday we came, thinking, "Gosh, who knows how long she'll be with us?" 

At her current rate, she'll outlive us all. 

(Mom and I and she.  I know lot's of exciting pics today. :)  Nowadays when I visit her, it's in the nursing home.  Despite her fierce independence, breaking a hip was the last straw in a series of physical maladies that required her to get daily help.  This still irks her no end. 

She sits most of the day in her big chair, praying her beads.  She wears headphones now to amplify sound for her hearing, so it looks as though she's always "tuned in" to some silent music.  On a ribbon around her neck hangs her watch, which she can read with much squinting; macula degeneration was not kind to her.  She listens for footsteps.  And when she realizes you've entered the room, she'll put on a slight frown and waggle her fingers on her lap. 

"Now, who's this?" 

"Just me, Nana."  Or I'll mention whatever child(ren) I've brought with me.  You have to shout.  Even then, she may not hear what you're saying.  Sometimes she'll pretend she did, and then embark on a completely different conversation.

"Katie!  I haven't seen you in ages!"  She will say this regardless of whether it's been two months, two weeks, or two days. 

"I know, Nana.  It's great to see you.  How've you been?"

"Can't complain."  This is abundantly untrue.  She can, and does, and has reason to.  But she likes to try not to. 

"So, who've you seen that you like better than yourself?"

She's fun to sass with. "Why, no one Nana."

She grins.  "Now Katie... you know I don't expect that of you..."

At some point in our every conversation, she will ask this: "Now I have a question for you: why am I still here?"  She asks it with both humor and true sincerity.  And she's not talking about the nursing home.  She's talking about planet Earth.

What can one say?  "Nana, I don't know.  That's a question to ask the good Lord when you see Him."

"Well, apparently He doesn't want me yet."  She's pouting.

"He wants you here, Nana.  You say so many rosaries for all of us.  Maybe if you quit that, He'd take you." 

She's grinning again, in mock horror.  "Now Katie!  You know I'm not going to do that!"

"I know Nana.  Thank you.  We enjoy having you here, after all."

But she's not enjoying it.  She has outlived all of her siblings and most of her friends.  She's even outlived three of her roommates.  She's grateful for how well she is doing mentally, and for the physical abilities she still has.  Yet for a fiercely independent woman, being confined to walker and chair is awful.  Once a constant knitter, she's stopped because she can't bear to know there's mistakes she can't see to fix.  She tries new craft activities, like stringing beads, but it is hard because her fingers don't work.  Everything is hard.  After almost a century of white bread and butter, lots of black coffee, and grueling physical work, she's still here.  "I never thought I'd get so old," she muses, fumbling for her water cup.

Selfishly, I'm delighted she lived so long, as it's been great to get to know her as an adult.  As a kid, Nana really seemed to hold to "children should be seen and not heard."  The mom of four boys, she always combed my hair the wrong way when she did it.  She would always talk about the same friends, names I didn't know.  She had only a few toys in the apartment.  I didn't really appreciate her when I was young.  But I do now.

Her life is a fascinating one.  Born in 1916 (that's like World War I time; it blows my mind!), she was named Elvira Louise Arans.  She hates her name ("How could you do that to a kid?  Katie, don't you ever name a kid after me, promise now!")  She made her peace with "Vera" as a nickname.  Her earliest memories include wood stoves, oil lamps, and horse and buggies.  Her father Bertrum was in the cavalry; she remembers him picking her up to give her a big hug when she was very small.  And that's the only memory she has of him, since he ran off on the family shortly afterwards.  We still aren't a hundred percent sure where he ended up. 

There is much evidence her mother was Native American, a fact which was busily covered up in those days.  (Now it's like way cool, for scholarship purposes at the very least, and I have cousins and siblings rapidly digging up more evidence and attending pow wows meanwhile.  Okay fine, so I've been to a couple myself.:)  Later her mother remarried a man my grandmother greatly respected for his faithfulness to the family, but who would be considered abusive these days.  He didn't believe girls should read, for instance.  She and her sister had to sneak books into the house.  Since her birthday usually fell during Lent, it was usually not celebrated. 

She had to leave school after eighth grade to work in a factory where she packaged toy pianos; "It was common in those days," she says, without a shred of self-pity.  Later, she worked as a housekeeper in the homes of the wealthy, and kept her ears open.  "I got my college education there," she smiles.  Her love of reading has also made up for her lack of schooling.  Today, she fumbles diligently with her old cassette player till she can hear her books. 

Her husband was the handsome "new boy" in the town of Winchendon, Massachusetts.  His father and he had come down from the north after his mom died, leaving his sister in a convent school in Quebec.  As soon as she saw him, she apparently announced to her friends, "I'm going to marry that boy one day."  "And I did!" she still gloats.  She once chuckled and told me her brother Bert publicly presented her with Vaseline for her honeymoon.  "I was mortified!  That cheeky guy!  Don't tell anyone."  (I'm not Nana, just blogging about it.:)

They were very happy.  Moving to Providence because "Roger Williams Park was so beautiful!" they soon had four boys.  When they could, they would walk to Fox Point to get ice cream.  And my grandfather would take his boys down to watch the trains come into the station.  He worked in "cold storage," which I believe means he helped deliver cold meats and milk and other refrigerated items.  He picked up odd construction jobs around the city as well.  And somewhere, he also acquired tuberculosis.  It was just a few years shy of the knowledge of how to treat it successfully. 

If you are ever in the mood for a nice downer of a documentary, watch "On Walden Pond."  That's where my grandfather was sent with his diagnosis, undergoing months of various treatments thought to be helpful at Zambarano Hospital.  Meanwhile, my grandmother sanitized the house in a panic, terrified her boys would get the same disease.  (They never did, though my dad will still test positive to a TB test from the exposure.)  Nana carried a lifelong repulsion to the smell of Pine Sol from that experience.

She took the train to the hospital as often as she could, though the boys could not get too near their father.  My dad remembers his dad's big hand waving from his hospital window.  Nana remembers "Freddy's" good spirits in her presence, even after he also developed meningitis.  She recalls how he always said, "Love you, darlin'" when she left.  And one morning at 5 AM, she got the call.  My dad was 5.  The youngest was 2.  Nana was 34.

I have a few good pictures of the two of them, and one precious recording of my grandparents singing a song at a county fair, with lots of giggling and teasing: "Hand Me Down My Walking Cane."  My grandpa was a goof, happily blaring the silly song while barely in tune, and was urging my Nana to do a solo.  You can hear my Uncle Richard's two-year old noises in the background.  I find it sadly ironic to think that my grandfather never got old enough to need a walking cane.  I find it somewhat comforting that the song is actually about someone getting handed all his things so that he could take "the midnight train" to paradise. 

Here's video of her party with my Grandpa's voice singing:

She was angry at God for awhile, she said, and for a short time was too mad to attend Mass.  After the funeral, she had to move her four boys to the Chad Brown projects, which today are a place you fear bullets but in those days was simply the poor folks housing.  My father remembers a family friendly neighborhood where many were eager to help the bereaved boys.  She refused to move back to Winchendon, worried she could not be a proper mother to her kids with so much family influence on them.  She wanted to raise them herself. 

At one point, an old beau turned up to court her.  She turned him down too.  But she smiles when she recalls, "For awhile, he tried singing outside my window, 'Are You Lonesome Tonight.'  He eventually gave up pursuing me, but he never married."  (She seems slightly flattered on that point.)

Eventually, she attended a Lentan mission preached at her church, and returned to her faith, choosing to be grateful that her husband did not have to suffer long, nor did he lose his mind to the meningitis.  She took up housework while her boys were at school.  She encouraged each of them to go into the military, and they all did.  They all married and had kids.  She is proud of them.  She should be. 

The rest of her life, she lived alone, but had many friends.  She was the president of the activity council at her apartment complex.  She drove her green Volkswagon bug everywhere.  She cleaned rectories for free.  She stuffed bulletins and counted budgets.  She's still a fierce Bingo player, though she now needs help reading her cards.  When she lost her sight, she still lived alone for another ten years, though the driving was over and the cleaning was limited, just as well since decades of scrubbing floors led to very sore knees and knarled hands as it was.  She continued to cook for herself, though she never knew which can she was opening for dinner.  "It's always a surprise," she says.

I am proud of her.  I see much of her in myself: the stubbornness, the tendencies to perfectionism, the independent spirit, all attributes that can be qualities or curses.  She claims something I said to her once really helped her, which I find hard to believe.  While preparing to go away to college after years of being a homeschooler, I was both nervous and in serious pain; arthritis started early for me.  It seems Nana was very worried, but I told her, "You gotta do what you gotta do Nana."  (I don't remember saying this, and am very sure I was just trying to quickly quiet her so I could focus on getting off to my long-awaited college experience without further family interference.)  But somehow, she found the words profound.  "I've always tried to live by that, ever since."  Yet she'd obviously been living that way long before I was born.

I rather wish, for her, that she had remarried and not had to be alone quite so much, yet I admire her wholeheartedness for her husband of ten years, and her unwillingness to compromise on the parent she felt she should be.  I am honored to know her now, and appreciate her prayers for her whole family: she has almost thirty great grandchildren.  I would appreciate your prayers for her too as she enters her 97th year on this earth, that God will give her increasing peace with His unique will for her as she gets ever closer to meeting Him (and shortly giving Him an earful of the questions she's acquired through life.)  May we all continue to age in grace and wisdom ourselves!  Grace and wisdom sounds a lot better than just "aging," eh?

She received many new clothes for her birthday from my parents, who visit her daily.  My dad looks like his dad, a fact which has always given her comfort.  "It's nice to see how he would have aged," she says.  (Dad's version of aging is just slightly less and whiter hair, so it ain't bad.)  As she opened her gifts, her roommate--slightly less refined in language than Nana--would shout out, "Hey Vera!  That looks sexy!  Better look out for the men around here!" 

She stopped unwrapping the red shirt and frowned, "What's she saying now?"

We told her.  She smirked, looking at the bright shirt, eyes twinkling.  "I think I can handle myself."

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:11

Happy Birthday to Me....

I just dumped several years of Christmas letters right on your lap in celebration.  I was intending to dole them out to you piece by piece--I'd saved them as drafts back in December--but when I publish from my phone they are dated IN December, and here on the computer they publish the day of.  Too confusing.  You now know more than you ever wanted to know about the past ten years of my life.  :)  All the way from the dawn of my motherhood when hubby and I returned fresh from a year of study in Austria, to the present.  Oh yes, still haven't sent out Christmas cards.  Or taken down the tree.  Or told Facebook friends about this blog... still writing to myself.  I'm absurd. 

Well, a pretty good birthday.  Partied this morning with my parents and 97 year old grandmother, always a good thing.  She made me some nice chunky jewelry.  And carefully fed my baby cake. :)



Got a hug from each of my siblings.  Ginger beer from one brother, a cell phone case from another, and my favorite flowers and chocolates from my sister (tulips and Almond Joys.)  Roses and card from hubby.  Then took a nap (Score!!) Snuck out in the evening to have tea with one of my best mom buddies during the Patriots game, and remain dry eyed at their loss, despite the despair of my friends' husbands everywhere.  I'm actually inwardly dancing with glee, oh wicked, wicked, me.  Sorry Danny.  Just glad to have one less distraction, that's all.  Next time maybe they will get cut out of the playoffs BEFORE my birthday... oh, I am evil...

I thank God for my life today, that my mom chose to have me in a time when she could have legally chosen otherwise.  It's great to be here. --TLC

P.S.  Here's my cake, courtesy of my girls' creativity.  You can see the cupcake blossoms over the stems and leaves on the cake, right?  Kinda?  :)