Ten life-changing moments of gratitude, from bathtubs to Zuckerberg

10.  Polio vaccines.  I am thankful for polio vaccines (and other vaccines too, actually.)  Folks, I am absolutely tickled pink that I don't have to worry about my kids getting polio, pretty much. Crossing that anxiety off the list right now.  If I'd have kept up with posting one thing I'm thankful for daily on Facebook, like I intended too, that would be one of them.  Along with

9.  The absence of sharks.  Yep, I'm thankful to have a phobia that I very rarely encounter, and then only on the other side of a tempered glass aquarium that I've been assured throughout life would never, ever break, really Katie, are you kidding me.  :D

And yes, I've tried to overcome this fear.  Mad at my stupid anxiety in the presence of a fish as a teen, I'd press my face against the tank and try to be calm while seeing those cold eyes and sharp teeth swim slowly and menacingly by me at Mystic Aquarium.  Now that I'm older and more mature, I just give the predatorial exhibit a wide berth and gaze at penguins.  In the words of Mark Shea "no mortal power could possess me" to get in a shark cage or swim with those ugly fish.  Nor this, which will open in the spring in Kansas City:

World's Tallest Water Slide, which I'm thankful I'll never go on

I'm also thankful for the overall absence of famine, pestilence, war, anarchy, earthquakes, and twisters where I live.  On a positive note:

8.  Bathtubs.  The year was 2001, I was hugely pregnant, I was in Europe, and I did not have a bathtub at my disposal in my Austrian dorm.  There was no way to immerse my procreating massiveness in water.  This was hugely unpleasant.  So we had the opportunity to visit Ireland, Dan took me to the tourist spot I most wanted to see: a B&B with a white tub, in a white, windowless bathroom.  Where I stayed for blissful hours at a time.

 I love my bathtub.  Yes, it was designed in the 30's for a generation that attained, judging by the length, the regal height of about 4 feet.  Yes, when you immerse in said tub, you close your eyes not so much out of a desire for relaxation, but more of an urge to shut out the areas of soap residue you couldn't see while cleaning from a more upright angle.  Yes, your preschoolers will positively howl when they realize mommy is taking a bath to which they are not invited.  It's still worth it.  At least every six months or so.  With epsom salts.  Because they rock.  Really you must try them.

7.  Speaking of baths... I'm thankful to have, despite various chronic issues, an intact and serviceable body.  I just took a bath in aforementioned tub, infused with a dead sea salt tea-like concoction that worked magic such that I've only taken two Advil and one frozen bag of rice to the couch to write this.  Anyway, I had time to consider my pluses and minuses and you know... it's a win.  For having given life to four kids on earth and two in heaven... I'm content.  We all should give our bodies more credit than we tend to do, we women especially, and okay guys too, especially

6.  Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.  I'm thankful for them.  Personally, I didn't get introduced to the internet until college, and our entire dorm shared a corded phone.  When my kids get to college, I can Skype with them on a tablet.  I mean, that's awesome.  :)  I really appreciate I-Phones and Facebook.  I love looking up information and getting it instantly.  Yes, it can be abused, and yes we need to get some eye to eye contact with human beings but... wow.  Thanks, gentlemen.

5.  Fruit.  Sweet, healthy, no cooking required.  As we prepare for Thanksgiving, I am reminded that there was no cooking in Eden.  Macintosh apples are my favorites, an apparent genetic preference since I rarely get to eat any with all my kids ravenous for them as well.   I am not thankful that these seem harder to obtain these days.  I remember when you could get these any time of year, harumph. Which reminds me:

4.  Memory.  I mean, most of the time, I have some.  What was I saying again?  Oh yeah.  It's great to have memories!  Wouldn't it be awful if we just lived linearly?  I love the ability to be in the doldrums of peeling potatoes and busting out laughing over a prank a friend played on me in college.  Speaking of pranks: just today, I found two empty soda bottles in my mailbox (since it was hours ago, I still remember this.)  I've been grinning all afternoon plotting the return of these objects.  Also been grinning while thinking of the imminent visit of

Awesome pic of the three of us.  You're welcome. :D

3.  Inlaws.  To be precise, my sisters-in-law, our flesh-and-blood fairy godmothers.  I've been absolutely overwhelmed by the thoughtfullness, generosity, and kindness of these two ladies, which has materialized in everything from furniture to shoes.  It's a rare woman who can take another woman and say, "Sister, I love you dearly, but you are never to wear x article of clothing again. Here's five new ones of x.  Wear them or I will haunt you." And oh!  They have great taste.  :D And they are such fun to go Black Friday shopping with (no, I didn't say Thanksgiving shopping: we will dutifully be thankfully eating turkey at the proper times, never fear.)  Thanks to these beautiful ladies, Black Friday shopping is very much "family time."  Even more so than Thanksgiving football.  Go figure. :)

2.  Women and Infants Hospital.  Yes, they were awful during my pregnancy losses.  But they also sent me home with my 32 weeker, who's now a towering 11 year-old little mommy to her sisters. I'm very grateful for that, and that I can work to affect change at the hospital to help other women have better experiences.  Currently, I'm honored to be putting together a "miscarriage task force" to improve the treatment of women who have losses at the hospital.  Please feel free to message me with any personal stories, ideas on what to do, and/or what to avoid when a mom has a baby they can't take home. And thanks for your prayers for the success of this project! 

1.  Literacy.  Cuz how bad would it be if, like centuries of people before us, we couldn't read or write?

It goes without saying that I'm tremendously grateful for God and my faith, my husband and kids, my friends, my country, my home.  And you.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  :)

"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever." Psalm 136:1

Linked to Many Little Blessings, Titus 2sday, 
Far Above Rubies, From Inmates to Playdates, and Growing Home

A quick thanks

If Blogger is accurate, this blog just crossed 10,000 views.  I hear rumors that some get a half a million people reading each of their posts, but for me... I am so honored and grateful for those of you who've spent time with me here.  Thank you for giving me a reason to write.

Though I can't right now... again.  :S  New Hampshire and back, with two sun-burned, emotional happy-sad kids in tow, and two babies who don't like long car rides... not sure what sort of literature I'd be typing if I did.  Some pictures from the day:

Through a new lens

It's been an odd day.  I woke up to realize my contact lens case had been knocked over, drained and dried overnight.  Went to look for new lenses and realized my spares were in my purse... you know the one I lost on the train?  Yeah.  My glasses were in there too.  I hope the thief has my same prescription.

So spent the morning wearing an old pair of my husband's glasses.  They made things clearer but... weirder. The ground was too close.  I felt short.  Surfaces were oddly convex, doors and counters bending up to meet me. I was getting a headache...

Finally, I talked my doctor's office into giving me a free $20 sample of contacts.  And I arrived home just in time for the delivery.

"Kate, there's a couple boxes on the porch.  Just take what you want and toss the rest."  And with that, my Dad and Mom scooted off to deliver similar boxes to my other siblings.  I also instantly inherited and presently lost most of my grandmother's china, a set which was decimated when my dad picked up the box with a loose bottom, and quartered when it arrived at my door and was placed at the wrong angle.  Still, I have two bowls and seven plates to remember the many dinners at her small apartment with white bread and pre-sliced pats of butter. More than I had before.  :)  Don't have much room here anyway!

Moving away from your family of origin is a longer process than you think.  Had no idea this stuff was still in my parents' basement.  Now that they are in the throes of a cleaning frenzy, I got back all these pieces of my history...

Besides the dishes, I received a box of well-preserved letters, arranged in categories by the organized soul I was as a teen.  Letters I received at Camp Don Bosco as a kid in New Jersey.  Letters I received when I worked summer months away from home at a retreat center near Boston.  Letters from when I was visiting the convent in Nashville and colleges in New Hampshire.  The letters from home as dry as the life of a truly non-socialized homeschool family can be, detailing interesting caterpillars and (literally) what the garden was growing.  (Not that those things were bad; just really wish there had been more to say of that time...) Sweetly colored pictures and notes from my little brothers and sister, for whom I was something of legend: the one who was most grown-up and most independent.  The stuff of my life till I was 18.  And finally, every letter I got my freshmen year in college.

Carefully opening the slightly yellowing pages (how dare they yellow, it's not like I'm really old), I'm trying to comprehend the person I was in the 90's.  Through more mature eyes, I can understand what I'm reading worlds better than I did.  Several pages of handwritten letters from the guy of my dreams who I truly thought didn't like me (even as I read several pages of handwritten letters from him, sigh.)  Letters about scholarships won and lost.  Sketches that obviously had a joke that went with them that is long since forgotten, but still seem vaguely funny somehow. I'm chuckling as I realize my class exchanged Christmas cards and even some Valentines... the one's you buy at the grocery store that rip along perforated edges, even the ones with Minnie Mouse on them.  Gosh we were... young. 

It strikes me that my own kids will likely not have dusty boxes of letters, tangible evidence of the regrets and triumphs of their lives; it will likely all be some sort of digital version...  I wonder what to do with this box. Wasn't exactly emotional in all this process of reviewing a precious piece of past I can't revisit or alter, but I kept rubbing my eyes till I lost the precious contact in one and spent the last half hour doing that awkward eyeball roll you do in the mirror when you are trying to find something stuck in the window of your soul.  

I think there's room for a box of letters in this house, right?  Worse comes to worse, I'll scan 'em into a hard drive or something techy like that.  :)

"Behold, I am doing something new... I will make a way in the wilderness 
and rivers in the desert." 

Isaiah 43:19

Throes of insecurity

If there's anything I hate doing, it's self-promotion. But that seems to be a necessary part of getting, say, a part-time job as a writer.  Sooooo (blush/stammer/cough)... I began a Facebook fan page, which you can like here. If you do, indeed, like me. ;) Or if you have indeed ever liked anything I've written.  Or if you like liking things and clicking buttons, this one's for you.

Short rant on my own ignorance: I don't know exactly what this will or won't do for me.  I know nothing about what I'm doing here in "Blogger," and often fear I'm committing a slew of faux-pas... Posts too long, too short, too frequent, too infrequent, too... something.  I mean besides the fact that I blog about my entire personal life under a title some people (i.e. most of my relations) would find outlandishly offensive. (I'm just being literal, really people.  Wanted a catchy title, you know?  Sigh...)

I'm trying to Tweet.  I'm stumbling through Stumbled Upon.  I'm googling blogging tutorials.  I've written to other, bigger bloggers for tips.  No dice.  Cannot yet access the secret knowledge of blogdom, hmmm.

I fear I've kinda estranged some friends (okay, I _know_ I have), since I do a lot more talking here than I do in "real life."  Like one close childhood friend said to me, having read TLC: "Clearly, we are VERY different people."  And I didn't think we were quite so different...

Ouch.

On the other hand, I've gained much more than I've lost.  That, in and of itself, is a priceless outcome of my time here: the support from you (okay that unintentionally sounded like a PBS appeal).  But really, the kindness from my blog fam during this loss has been overwhelming.

I want to thank you again for grieving with me, for remembering and honoring an unborn baby I loved.  It has been a tremendous blessing to be able to share Pepper with you.... something I can't do in the day to day business of living, where people either don't want to talk about sad things, or I can't bring myself to speak, or I do and then they say something dumb like (and I quote): "You buried her? That's so weird."

I really appreciate everyone who has just let me talk (and talk) (and talk) when I'm going there.  Like I do here. :D  I love it that no one here has changed the topic to the weather (oh yes, it's actually been done... more than once.)  I love and thank you all for it.  And for reading ramblings posts like these...

Anyway, to get back to blathering about my insecurities: it doth appear that, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, I posted about a toilet.  I clean forgot.  What kind of a Christian Catholic am I? <wring hands here>

A hopelessly distracted one.  Far from the days when daily church attendance reminded me of what I should be celebrating.

Sigh.

And I'm not saying I'm jealous, but the convent I checked out as a teen?  A large group of women just entered it, vowing their lives to the service of God.  And gosh, peace, quiet, and prayer seem so swell right now.  Again, not that I have any wistful thoughts or anything, but I lived for awhile there in Nashville and these women are fantastic.  They make their own long white habits, and play volleyball in them and laugh and carefully eat pasta with red sauce.  And then they pray together in the evenings like this:

I miss them.  I'm thinking a lot, these days, about all the ways my life could have been different....

I know it's mostly because I miss her.  Like crazy.  So much that it's hard to sleep again.  So much that I feel like I'm back in April, not wanting to be alone and just as much wanting to be alone.

It's difficult to face the cold and stark reality of no baby this month.  I know I have four other girls.  That somehow does not affect it at all.  Not an iota.  And, I suppose, this is normal.

My husband is on red alert that Phase II of my NFP chart this cycle (or the white baby stickers for Creightonites) will be a doozy.  Still undergoing testing, tons of bloodwork left to do (tests beget more and more tests it seems), some concerning symptoms but... frankly "want baby NOW" is the predominant message from my loss-obsessed brain at the moment.  Not that any of that makes sense, but it just is...

I'm happy for her.  I'm miserable for me, right now.  I can't wait for this month to be over, but yet I'm not prepared for the summer to end.  At all.  Or for homeschooling.  I'm so uncharacteristically unready for a year I'd thought would be so, so different from the one facing me.

Thank you for your prayers.  I would have had her any time now, which is why I'm having a sulk.  I'm wondering when her real birthday would have been... which day to do this commemoration stuff I feel led to do.  Nothing really special I guess, just visit her site, release balloons, get some windchimes, order a headstone... stuff like that.  Must change my computer's cookies or crackers or whatever: it keeps sending me sales on headstones.  "Buy two, get one free!"  "Add another name to a stone for just $19.99!"  Okay so I made that last part up but I do get ads...

I'm taking mini escapes.  Like biking for miles and hours with my brother.

Also, been going line dancing with my other siblings.  Even though my only former connection to country music is that my parents used it as bedtime music when I was three, and only stopped because they realized I'd been crying myself to sleep from the sad songs about lost dogs and broken trucks.  But hey, I blame my sister for getting me into it, my sisters-in-law for buying me boots, and anyway it's exhilirating to be moving fast and in time with lines of people.  (For those of you unfamiliar with line dancing: think of a thousand riffs on "Electric Slide" and you've pretty much got it.)  It's fun and feels quite cool, though I probably look like a duck with untied shoes. Most of the time, I'm just gleefully bouncing around, trying to follow along, earnestly seeking to avoid kicking or being kicked, stomping or being stomped upon.

Very oddly... I feel a special connection to her there, always dancing solo (since Dan watches the kids while I go.)  The first time I went line dancing, back in January, she was there with me.  Alive and well and with me.

So now when I'm learning a new dance, I always ask her to dance it with me.  And it might seem odd but I think she helps me with the steps.  When I'm dancing, I can feel some of her boundless joy.  Kinda feels like I'm spending time with her.

"Your love has given me great joy and encouragement..." Philemon 1:7

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Which do you want first: the good news or the bad news?

The good news: we learned the autopsy results.  The bad news: we learned the autopsy results.  They weren't good.  Then again, are autopsy results ever really "good"? 

One real positive thing: I can officially tell you pregnant mommas who've been brave enough to keep reading all this that--as far as what happened to Perpetua--you have nothing to worry about.  Because, as it turns out, it was all me.

We were escorted to an office, a different one than before, with a shiny desk adorned with the remnants of a KFC snack bowl and medium beverage, condensation dripping down the side. "Oh.  Sorry about the clutter."  The doctor plopped into her wheeling chair, looked at her papers, sighed, and delivered the following:

"The results were significant.  Not that you are to blame, but your placenta... basically you had preeclampsia.  I've never seen it this early, so I assume it's caused by an underlying medical issue you have.  Possibly lupus.  Anyway, the fetus was normal, but was eventually not able to get enough oxygen due to the placental issues.  But don't worry... were you to get pregnant again, the solution may be as simple as a daily baby aspirin to help thin your blood and prevent clotting..."

I've never been in a free fall, but I think I kinda know how it feels now: I'm thinking that it gets really quiet from the rushing of the wind past your ears like white noise.  That you feel numb from the chill of the speed of your fall.  That it's cold, and numb, and quiet, and you wonder when it will stop.

I know it's not "my fault."  I know I didn't intend it, and would have done anything to prevent it.  But for the record, baby girl: Momma is so very, very sorry that her body failed yours.  I'm so sad I didn't know in time to fix it, if I could have.  I'm so sorry I didn't know that you were quietly getting too sleepy to survive and live to be my baby here, like I'd hoped you could...

As for my "free fall" comment, I actually stayed in my chair... couldn't have moved if I wanted to.  I really did think (and hope) the problem was some genetic fluke that meant the baby couldn't progress further than she did due to an inherent error in her chromosomes.  In other words, that she'd lived as long as she could.  I guess I wasn't prepared to hear the baby was normal, and I was not.

I believe I was calm and monotone as I asked my questions, and requested copies of the pathology report.  The write-up's almost incomprehensible, every other word a complex medical term you feel you need a college course to understand.  Ever feel like you majored in the wrong thing?  Golly.  I've still been trying, Googling every word separately and in phrases to try to understand better.  Mostly getting studies on rat embryos, nothing particularly helpful.  Try these out for size: "Severe decidual vasculopathy." "Fibrinoid necrosis."  "Avascular villi." "Pervillous fibrin deposition." 

Now trying saying those in an accent. :)  Sigh...

And then there's the stuff that's easy to understand: "Markedly abnormal placental tissue."  And what I guess is typical pathology report style: a moment by moment description of what the researcher was doing.  Color, texture, weight in grams of everything... great appetite reduction literature really.  X-rays had been done.  Apparently there were pictures taken of her after all.  (!)  The baby was completely normal.  But concluding the perinatal report: "Severe preeclampsia with marked maternal vascular disease."

My friends, I will be going to doctor's appointments for a lonnng time it seems, blood tests, MRI's, the works... trying to find out what bizarre disease (if that's actually what it is) I have that can cause problems like this, or blood clots in me, to find out what happened with this pregnancy and how I should proceed for my own health.  In the doctor's words: "I've never seen anything like this, preeclampsia so early on, without high blood pressure or anything..."  Shhwell.

Wow.  I really did take my fertility for granted before all this.  It is just so darn easy for me to get pregnant.  (No, I didn't mean it that way... oh never mind. :)  After my second unplanned pregnancy within two years of marriage, I had been completely convinced that "Dancause" may as well be "Duggar," at least until I actually learned Natural Family Planning. :)  And overall, I really did think, that if I had two strong lines on a stick, and had awful morning sickness, and didn't smoke or drink or eat too much tuna, and made it to 17 weeks... that everything really was going to be okay. That it made more sense, at that point, to worry about getting struck by lightning.  But I was wrong.

We aren't in control, no matter how much we want to be, no matter how often we think we are.  Ultimately, we are wearing seatbelts on a sphere spinning through space, upheld by a Power far beyond our reckoning.  I'm grateful I have a personal relationship with that Power, and that He loves me.

I'm still not mad at Him.  I'm kinda surprised about that, waiting for the rage at the "unfairness" of it all to hit and me to go through the motions of trying to blame my Creator.  Who knows, maybe it will at some point.  I don't blame the people who are mad at Him; He can handle it and guide them on their own journey...  I mean, I was plenty mad during my first miscarriage: the early one, Gabriel.  I felt completely betrayed by God then.  The weight of the unanswered "why" was too great.  It took time to get through that and to let go of that primal anger at losing a child I was "supposed" to have. 

But now somehow it just seems that I don't have to know the "why" right now.  I have the medical "why" I wanted, or the beginnings of it, but the "why" of God allowing it... I'm leaving that to Him.  I am leaning on my faith that the God who loved my child into existence hasn't changed His mind about that at all.  She still exists.  And He still loves her.  And we'll all be together again someday, gloriously happy in eternity, the Whole that is greater than the sum of all the fragmented earthly parts of a much bigger and better plan.  Because hey, if this life is all there is, there is simply not nearly enough chocolate to keep me happy... I'm just gonna say it, cuz we're all thinking it.  :)

I was the careful mom that stayed far from the edge and yet fell off a cliff.  But somehow, God has been there to catch me.  Somehow, I love and appreciate Him more than ever.  Partly because this has been so awful that I've really had to "give" this whole situation to Him, because I just couldn't bear this on my own.  Even being cynical: doesn't it make sense for me to keep working on a relationship with Him, since He has full custody? :)

With all the sad things that can happen in this world, either the universe is a cruel joke run by a blind Deity, or our losses here are all part of a greater gain.  Even the shortest lives here are ultimately too precious to be a waste, too important not to matter. 

Nothing good is ever truly or permanently lost.  More than ever, every day, I remember what I have to look forward to.  More than ever, every day, I'm thankful

for the blessings

I got to keep.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Have you ever given orders to the morning or assigned a place for the dawn?

What is the way to the place where light lives?'

And Job answered, 'Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.'"

Job 38:1,4,7,12;42:3

One burning question...

Wow. Two nights by myself in a hotel room. Highly recommend it. Moms, for your next birthday; go see just in case it might work! :)  2.5 star hotel somewhere nearby to sleep, swim solo, read and write, watch your very own show, eat slowly while sitting down: very unique experience. I'm not sure I will check out... hmm... :)

Well I managed to check out, been working on this post for days you see.  Apparently it nearly killed me to leave though; I have a accidentally photo from my phone of the light at the end of the tunnel!  :)  Okay, hallway.  You see? Hee hee.

ANYway, as I have been gradually recovering from the shock of my experience (um no, not leaving the hotel), I have found myself left with one pressing question...  My mom never had a miscarriage that she knew of, and if anyone in my family did I'll never know, as the bloodline I was born into simply does not talk about unpleasant things. 

But my mother had close friends who did have this awful experience. And from the age of 9 I just knew, as I saw these women hug and cry their hearts out, that I could never handle such a loss.

Thus ever since I was a kid who had no clue how babies arrived on this earth, through my teens and into my young adulthood, my most constant request to God was a very specific prayer, asked in the greatest faith and trust: that I never would have a miscarriage or a stillborn. It was my greatest fear.  Second to that was sharks of course, but as I saw no chance of me becoming an oceanographer who handfed steaks to Great Whites for a living, it wasn't a continual prayer of mine, though I'm sure it occasionally made the list...:)

Now I find myself having had one of each (well as close to having a stillborn as I want to get). And my heart is asking why.

At the very time when it has never been more necessary for me, and all the while feeling surrounded and upheld by the prayers of many like never before, and in the very midst of experiencing much more peace and calm and even quiet joy then the situation required, and in weeks where I have felt the grace of God more keenly than ever: I still find myself calling the whole process into question.

Namely, what is the value of prayer, of asking God for something, if He is simply going to do His own will anyway?

And not just doing His will, but in this!!! To separate a mother from her child. To have a tiny child die, possibly to have suffered. To have a mother grieve this loss and feel this absence for the rest of her days. To know no family picture, travel, or holiday will ever be really complete. To wonder "what if" and "what would have been," to call to mind so many questions with no answers. As a dear friend of mine recently put it: Lord, why send a child only to take them away?

Why?

I got out my Bible. I thought about everything I'd learned about God's antecedent and consequent will.  Went back to what the Summa says based on 1 Timothy 2:4, that God wants all men to be saved and come to know the truth, but since this doesn't happen, what does this say of God's will?  Seems scholars of Scripture have claimed that this verse expresses God's "antecedent" will, which is the sort of willing expressed prior to considering all the facts of a particular situation. (These terms are used in law, I believe). But what actually occurs at times is God's "consequent" will, which takes all facts into account (such as man's free will).

Naw, that didn't help much, other than to reassure me that God does not like death, that what happened to me wasn't the perfect plan for mankind He had in mind in the beginning.  Just like I'm sure the awful Boston Marathon bombings weren't in the antecedent will of God; it just came to be consequently from the diseased mind of some hapless soul.  At any rate, the study part made tremendous sense when I was in college. But now it's mostly "baby is gone; want baby back." So later I picked up a rosary, and started to pray the first sorrowful mystery, reflecting on Christ's Agony in the Garden.

And I thought of Jesus perfectly praying, three times, very specifically, in great trust and faith and blood-sweating earnestness to the all-good and all-loving Father: "Let this cup pass. Yet not as I will, but as You will."

You know, when I did have the time to study theology back in the day, I wrote my thesis on the "fiat" of Mary, where in response to hearing God's incomprehensible will for her, she said to the angel Gabriel: "Be it done unto me."  The title I used was "Fiat: The Word That Made Man Higher Than Angels."  I was all studious and non-emotional about it at the time.  "Be it done unto me. Not as I will, but as You will."

When Jesus prayed "Let this cup pass" the night before His death, it didn't "work." And He didn't want something that was bad. And He wasn't asking the wrong way. And we wasn't at all lacking in the faith that could move mountains.  And He probably knew the answer anyway, which is way more than any of us do when we pray...

So then why did He bother asking?

With this question nipping at the back of my brain for days, I went to a study session on a book by Priscilla Shirer.  This awesome Baptist church down the road has Bible studies with child care that I recently started attending again.  Child care and coffee.  Frankly, I think I might come to a study on the Cat in the Hat with that setup, but fortunately it was on Scripture. Listening to the video segment, I heard Ms. Shirer talk about how everything that concerns us concerns Him, and then she hadta go straight to talking about the sparrow scripture, and I got all choked up of course, and I'm trying to hide it, and I don't have a tissue, so I sneak out....

After I got back with a tissue and checked to make sure my eye makeup wasn't approaching late Goth, the video had moved on to to Ephesians 3:20-21: "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."

Priscilla reflected that however big a miracle we could ever dream up, that God can do way better than that miracle. The discussion revolved around the indisputable fact that God is able to do all things; He can, but sometimes He won't.   That it is our business to believe He can do anything, while it is His job to decide what will ultimately be for our greatest good.  That it all boils down to trust: if God does not do what you ask of Him, do you trust that He has something better in mind?  And He does; He has tremendous "Kingdom" purposes we can't see from this earth. 'He is way past, my way past," Priscilla kept saying.  His best interests for me are way better and beyond what my best interests are for me.  That's for sure... 

I was in the right place at the right time.  I started furiously writing my own notes, the kind I write so fast I can't read them later because my handwriting is atrocious.  But scanning back over them I was saying something about how on Good Friday, the "good" thing which no one could see as a good thing at the time myseriously was the death of God.   Because He foresaw the resurrection.  I scribbled about Jeremiah 29:11, and was thinking that all things are not good, but all things are worked out for my good because I love Him. That if one stops praying, it doesn't limit God, but being closed off in our communication, and our lacking in faith and trust, does indeed limit how we receive from Him.

No I'm not saying "I completely get it now"; prayer is still mysterious to me, with God's plan prevailing overall, yet with Him taking what we ask into account, somehow.  But I know we are tremendously valuable to God, so it stands to reason that our thoughts and desires and words to Him matter too. Scripture tells us He holds every one of our tears (Psalm 56:8). That He loves us, and sings over us (Zeph 3:17). We are paradoxically always safe in his hands while still on the great and unpredictable adventure called a lifetime, the journey we don't get out of alive. After which, we are immortal. Not a bad deal, that last part.

Don't get me wrong: I have not reached some magical place of total peace at a second trimester loss.  I haven't.  I'm deeply saddened, and on this earth I never will fully understand why this happened.  But I believe I will someday understand.  And I trust in the truth of one of my favorite verses from the Lord: "For I know the plans I have for you  . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you: to give you hope and a future." (Jer. 29:11)  I still don't get how Samuel's mother Hannah, after her years of infertility, had the courage to give her son up to a life of service in the temple. (1 Sam. 1:22) But I can believe that Perpetua was called to a life far better than one I could give her here, and that she has a meaningful purpose, summoned to serve in the courts of the Lord. 

In the end, I'm realizing more that prayer is a profound expression of trust, not a list to Santa. And as we trust and talk to God in prayer, by pouring out our hearts to a God who knows us intimately and loves us deeply and feels our smallest suffering: having this conversation keeps us open to grace. Knowing He can do all things, we ask for what we want and need. Knowing that the price is paid and the bill is taken care of, we are very free to ask for any good thing. But while I pray to my God for what I believe I need in good faith, I can confidently add at the end, "Do that, or something better." I want to have that courageous trust in my Father, even while I remind Him to go gentler on me.  To remain open not only to what I, in my limitedness, think is good, but to a good so good as to be beyond my wildest dreams.

Lord, I trust that You love, You care, and You know better than I.  Not my will, but yours be done. Fiat.

For in the end, sometimes, if the cup passes like we ask, we could miss the Holy Grail.

"When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Give us this day our daily bread. 

And forgive us our sins,

for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.

And lead us not into temptation." Luke 11:2-4

**************
(Linked to http://www.catholicbloggersnetwork.com/p/link-up-blitz.html)

The glad game

Darn it.  I really wanted to be blogging about the ridiculous weather, and our awesome Pope (who's living in a hotel!  And just embraced the son of a friend of mine, a boy who has CP!  So much to talk about...)

But I still feel lost in all this.  The "lost" feeling has been making me stare blankly a lot. Anywhere and everywhere I am.  I feel like I'm misplaced... That I should really be somewhere else. It's very similar to the uncomfortable, kinda itchy feeling you have when you go on an errand without your infant for the first time. Feels great to be away and get a break, but you're also antsy. 

I feel that way all the time. Like I really must be going, because its high time to get back.  Except I don't know how to get back, and I don't know where I'm going.

I really miss her. 

There are so many triggers! Hiding under the bathroom sink in the form of a stick with two dark and definitive lines. In the restaurant with the sappy music that would make you cry if you lost an umbrella let alone a baby.  Mailed in a cemetery plot deed that came today.  Discovered in notes your kid was writing:

("That's so sweet... sob...")  Inside the grocery store where--last time you were there--you were morning sick and craving butternut squash. And speaking of food, it is awfully hard to remember that snacking in the middle of the night no longer means I'll be less nauseated later.  Darn this awesome candy, and millions of friends who can actually cook...  And as if on queue, a certain Sarah just dropped off soup and pizza... I'm being so spoiled.  And I will get very fat... oh dear... :)

And I'm having dreams.  Some are really great and helpful.  In one dream, I was crying that I had not set up her coffin better, done more for her burial, something like that.  And then this statuesque, strong, beautiful sixteen year old with brown hair and the kindest blue eyes said, "Mom, are you kidding me?"  With such gentle playfulness, and so sheerly, delightfully alive.  Yep, I dreamt a teenage Perpetua was sassing me.  Heck, I'll let her.  She's seen the Beatific Vision of God... I haven't.  So in some ways, she's older and wiser than me.  Outside of time.  Time here is linear: you have to grow from a baby to a toddler and potty train and all that... not so in Heaven.  C.S. Lewis writes some about that... somewhere.  I mean, why can't she be sixteen if she wants, and then be a baby at night rocked to sleep by angels?  I'm sure there are, oh, a bazillion delightful options available to the citizens of heaven that haven't crossed our one track, 24-7 minds yet. 

Then I had another dream that I woke shaking from: I could hear a baby screaming for help, but could not find her and could not get to her.  After I woke, I reasoned that this fear probably stemmed from the poor animal side of my brain of a mommy that can no longer tend to her young.  I then went back to sleep and dreamt there was an axe-welding contest a bunch of women were entering where the winner would get free breast augmentation surgery.  I can't make that up; thank my crazed subconscious.  No, I'm not even going to try to figure out where that came from... :S

And I'm scared.  I'm supposed to find out results tomorrow at my OB appointment, when I have to go back to the office I first heard the awful news at.  I'm afraid they will find out that--somehow--this could have been prevented, and then I will have to fend off the inevitable guilty feelings, no matter how I didn't "intend" or "try" to do anything to hurt her.  I'm also afraid I will find out nothing at all, or that it could not have been prevented... because then, how could I feel "safe" if there is a "next time"??

Ugh.  Pray for me. 

But there's more to life than death. Thus, it's time to engage in the world's most annoying pastime: the glad game. Hey at the very least, it would make certain family members very happy to know that I tried the technique.  Particularly the ones who keep reminding me that what happened was definitely for the best and that Perpetua being in heaven will prove to be such a blessing to me. (These constant reminders may be entirely accurate, but they are equally unhelpful.)

Anyway: the glad game! From a beloved classic book and movie, you know: "PolluANNa! Come out 'n play!  PollyANNa!" etc.

I can be glad because... :D

• I have been reunited with my one true liquid love: iced coffee. So helpful when you can never seem to get enough sleep, so useful to get more done.
• I'm shrinking, and now fit into real clothes.  Well more slowly than I should be, because there is so much CHOCOLATE around... Hmm.  That's bad and glad, so going ahead... 

• I discovered my misplaced ultrasound pics of Perpetua sucking her thumb. Okay that was sad and glad, so moving on....
• I found a place with zero triggers: Twin River Casino. (Yep, that's what I did last time I got babysitting: gambling.) Running a 2-cent slot while getting pickled in the second-hand smoke of a despondent elderly lady is just about close to perfect right now. So completely non-norm and unfamily friendly. And I doubled my money. 10 to 20 bucks. The rush, my friends. The rush.
• I'm becoming noticeably more agile climbing through the driver's side to get to the passenger's side. Yeah, because the mini van door doesn't work with the dent caused by the guy who spun into me whom the accident report says _I_ hit. Okay that's mad and glad... so moving on.
• I have adorable kids, a caring husband, awesome friends, and an Almighty Father in heaven. That's super.  

"And the peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding,

keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."  Philippians 4:7

  

Today, I'm...

...learning about the "new me" in the "new normal."

...dry-eyed in the Target baby aisle, but breaking down in a restaurant.

...anxious to know what happened. What the hell happened. _If_ we can find out...

...still excited to find out the gender. Then sad that I'm excited. Then darn it, I'm excited anyway; I want to name my baby...

...wanting to hold my baby still. To curl up beside wherever they are keeping him/her in the lab. To scream at them to be more gentle, more careful, more sensitive. Because it's my heart.

...so grateful for my husband. More than ever before.

...stunned by the generous, super-thoughtful, overwhelming response of ridiculously amazing friends. Feeling guilty getting so much care. And very grateful.

...staring at nothing. Understanding little.

...forgetting how to sing at church.

...laughing for the first time since I found out. Because my girls are so funny! Trying to show you the video here of Felicity performing spontaneous liturgical dance in the cry room to "Were You There."  Doesn't look like the link wants to work today though, ah well...

...feeling like I have nothing left to fear.

...taking nothing for granted.

...knowing my baby's okay now. And that I will be too.

...believing that God is bigger than all of this. Knowing He loves my baby even more than I do. Loving Him for that.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

I have a lot to fess up to. Remember my last post? Yeah I barely do either. But basically it was me complaining that I didn't have time to write (well) all the things I wanted to.

This was one of them.

We had a day after Christmas surprise this year: a positive pregnancy test. Which was quite funny because, well you've read my Christmas post this year. :) Not a "method" surprise mind you; just one of those stupid moments of "oh you really do have to follow the rules, huh?" I had a whole post planned called "a conception conversation" kinda cheeky you know, with basically like, "How 'end of day' does 'end of day' have to be, huh?  Is there like 5% chance less of getting pregnant with every hour you wait?  Oh well, let's find out!" :) Also had a post joshing about how I had successfully found a way to truly stay a lactating Catholic even after this 18 month old finally weans, as opposed to a figurative the "tlc" Catholic, nourishing, nurturing woman I strive to be. I had posts like "top ten things not to say to a pregnant woman" such as to never say, "Well you're not that far along yet... still got a ways to go."  (Try five weeks of morning sickness and then tell a woman five weeks "isn't that far along." And I was going to announce the news with a post called:"What I really gave up for Lent": Soft cheeses.  Sushi.  (sniff) Shark.  (Okay, that wasn't too hard...) My figure.  Etc. :)

So yes, I've been pregnant. I confess that I hid from you months of intense morning sickness to wait for that magic "you can tell" second trimester. And then I was just waiting for the perfect time to blog the big news and use the line of prewritten posts. Not Ash Wednesday. Not during all the Pope excitement. Everyone was sick on that feast day. No time on St. Paddy's. First day of spring? C'mon, it's snowing. Finally I settled on Easter.

I was pregnant yesterday. Today, I'm not. In other words, this post is long and sad. Dear bloggee, do you like things that are long and sad? Very well. Read on, and read on bravely...

Bored and rushed but determined to keep all my prenatal appointments, I started my 1:45 appointment on Thursday with blood work and the inevitable pee test (Dixie cup and sharpee, really??) at my 17-week obgyn visit.

"Any spotting or swelling?"  "Nope!"  (I'm glancing at my I-Phone.  I could do this in my sleep.)  "Great!  Let's check on the little guy's heartbeat this time."  I hop up on the table, got gelled, and glance at my watch.  Dan's lunch break is over in 20 minutes, and he's spending it in the van with my two little ones.  Hoping this will be over soon, but hey, the heartrate is the fun part.

She slid the wand all over my belly, with no success.  This had happened to me before, and I chuckled with the midwife.  "Aw this just happened to me last week. Little rascals of this age love to swim away from my wand. I'll get you across the aisle to get a quick ultrasound heart read."

Of course I was a little nervous.  You always are in this sort of situation, just for form anyway.  But hey, another ultrasound of my cute little guy or gal! Maybe even to find out if it is a guy or a gal! Hubby needed to come for this! I headed out to van to explain lightly that "either my midwife could be slightly incompetent, or something is horribly wrong." I was being extreme. It's an ultrasound! What fun!!

Wish I could say my little ones were well-behaved as they trooped in with my husband. Games of chase led to chair climbing then to under-chair-tunneling. Then the Holy Grail: a water cooler. With lots of cups. Their behavior did not improve when we were taken to a small room with dimmed lights, where they discovered some tiny ants under a chair. They are such girls sometimes. Ants! Eeek!

"Hi, I'm Jill. Pleased to meet you. So have you been feeling movement?"

I had to tell the ultrasound tech that I hadn't.  Yet.  But like every other oh so subtle sign or symptom I could have picked up, there was truly never enough reason to get all worried. Not in my former way of sanely dealing with life anyway. Always obsessive about where I should be developmentally with my pregnancy and what to have and what to avoid, I'd looked it up. 16-22 weeks is a big window of time. Besides, I'd seen my little guy move three times before on ultrasound. No, I wasn't worried at all.

The tech's name was Jill. The name of my first best friend. My prayer warrior and fellow sister-mom today. A thought flashed "Gosh if anything was wrong, it's nice to have a Jill here." I noticed the thought, and put it aside.

No chasing needed today, the wand found my little one immediately. Classic profile, fetal pose, facing up. No wriggling around today. Must be sleepy. My last ultrasound I had the delight of seeing my little guy spring to his/her feet and jump!  I'd never seen a fetus stand upright before, so annoyed was my infant by the tap of the wand. After giggling I'd asked the tech to stop tapping as my little one seemed scared.  She stopped, and my baby settled back down to lay back, sucking its perfect hand with perfect lips. There's the baby now.  Perfectly still.  Still perfect.

My initial delight in seeing the sweet little hands and feet with ten perfect digits led quickly to horror. Where was the tiny flashing heart? I asked Jill. I asked her again. I saw the sheer concentration in the tech's face as she gently told me to relax and be patient.

This was not a normal response. Nor was it normal when the blood flow screen showed activity all around my baby, bu nothing within. Nor was the heart rate screen, which flatlined.

That's when I started to sob and beg incessantly for answers. I was suddenly on a tightrope, where one side was my status quo of maternity shopping and summer plans of great girth, and the other a pit of misery I could not see the bottom of. I think part of me still can't believe the side I fell off on.

My husband was there, mercifully and annoyingly. He was not the mini ultrasound afficidando I was. Long past I had fallen into despair, he sought to lovingly reassure me and in self-preservation delay his own plunge. Only after the second tech came in to "have a look" which ended abruptly with pursed lips and "get the midwife" and the midwife came in looking shell-shocked and she was saying something like I'm sorry and it's really rare but it can happen... all the while my preschooler and toddler were ever more loudly bewailing the presence of six ants, my younger one wanting to nurse and crying shrilly while my preschooler sought to enter the hallway. And dear Jill was blowing her nose and drying her eyes.

I wasn't crying anymore.  I pulled a "Office" movie comment on the midwife.  "Um, yeahhhh. If you could get a doctor, that would be great." I had found a tiny foothold in the precipice. I love my midwives. But Nothing was real till the doctor said it was. Not on Thursday.

The midwife seemed all too happy to comply. We were scurried through back halls to wait in different rooms. The looks on staff faces alone was a dead giveaway; they had apparently bee informed there was a "family coming through who's experiencing a loss."  But no, I hadn't seen the doctor yet.

Then we did. Cecilia immediately grabbed and employed the stapler on every available paper surface. The two women in the room didn't care. Nothing is worse for discipline than grief.

She said the words while I was trying to latch on my greedy and thoroughly annoyed toddler for a nurse so I didn't see her face as she said the words. She was blunt. "I'm sorry but it's a second trimester miscarriage."

I had the natural response I think: Are. You. Sure???  Her reply: "You saw the ultrasound yourself." The ultrasound where the techs refused to confirm the unbelievable stillness I saw. The perfect little head that nodded slightly in the ripples the wand created, then settled back between the perfect little hands. Not like my last three ultrasounds of gasp-worthy cuteness (for me): head-scratching and rolling and yes even jumping, and sucking thumbs and flexing feet. Not my bouncing baby boy or girl.  Here's the jumping pic:

"I'm getting you in for an emergency D&C tomorrow morning. Got to rush it because it's late in the afternoon and we have no good idea how long this had been inside you like this. Could have been a week or two.  Bear with me..."

D&C??? Tomorrow morning!?!? No. From then till now the air of unreality set in. I got on the phone with Dr. Carpentier, the only Creighton doctor in the area (two hours from me), but the first doctor I'd ever met to care so deeply about life from the moment of conception.

And like my other doctor, though with much more evident sorrow, he was recommending a D&C. Dilation and curettage, scraping and suctioning out the womb I'd carfully vitamined and avoided herbal tea for. An abortion procedure. I mentioned this weeping to the rushing and scheduling doctor, on hold on two phones. "No it's not an abortion procedure. The fetus is deceased." She should really bottle that bedside manner...

There's an odd blur that's takes over when you're rushing towards disaster. Turns out time flies when you're terrified too. The blur held on while I called my parents to come. Now. Take my kids. Please!!!! It held on while I told my oldest two at the kitchen table where I grew up that their sibling had gone to heaven. I held my 9 year old while she sobbed, so disappointed there would be no baby in August. I tried again and again to refuse the dollar my oldest was utterly determined to give me, until I realized that in her grief, she grabbed the dearest thing she had near her to console me.

Dan and I then drove slowly through tears, somehow ending up at Chelos for a soup and a sandwich. Only had till midnight to eat, and my Crohns is cruel when I have to fast. I choked on my favorite soup and stared my burger into a chilled, hardened mass. Putting food in my mouth seemed every bit as unnatural as trying to put it in my ears.

We went to church. To kneel and weep before Jesus in the blessed Sacrament in exposition. To pray aloud for ourselves and each other and our separated family. To give the baby God gave us back to Him, who held my child in heaven as surely as I still carried the tiny body on earth. I have rarely been so grateful for my faith. For having a God who is big enough to handle my rage, fatherly enough to hold me through it, and good and wise enough to know exactly the right thing to do for my ultimate happiness, even when I could not disagree more.

Yesterday started normally. I held an empty hope it would continue that way. But then my parents came. And my husband drove me to Women and Infants hospital where we valey parked our ancient car and admissions gave me an "s" tag for surgery beside the nursing moms' store. Pink balloons were being carried while I walked past the spot I had put my youngest in a cars seat for the first time to take her home. We went to floor 2. The non-delivery floor.

I was first informed that my husband could not come with me since they had been having problems with men fainting during their wife's IV insertion. (Guys, really? :) But fortunately God had picked out an angel of a nurse for me. In my rather vast experience of nurses, it seems about a third are heavenly beings of comfort that somehow walk this earth. And Dan got right in and handled my IV very well.

I don't think I stopped crying once while conscious at the hospital.  So when the D&C surgeon/abortionist asked, "How are we doing today?"... I mean, I originally was hoping to say something profoundly pro-life or something.  But it came out very simply.  "Oh, we are so sad!" He put on a convincingly sympathetic expression; "I understand."

I smiled a bit. "Please be gentle with my uterus doctor; I might need it again." He grinned. "And please be gentle with my baby. We love him so much."

He consented to a last ultrasound; my angel nurse had insisted and was already pulling the little machine in. It was a smaller and briefer glimpse, but just as conclusive. "Nothing. I'm sorry." He couldn't give me a picture, but Jill had. "Are you really sure though?" she had asked. Of course I'm really sure. This is the last picture of my beautiful kid.  If I had my way, I would crash a computer full of photos of their birthdays and trikes and laughs and Christmases. I wil gratefully take what I can get.

After I'd wept in the arms of two strangers, the nurse and the (female:) chaplain who both wept with me, I was finally given a sedative. Well it was supposed to be. It seemed to relax me just enough to quiet my sobs and weaken my body and relax my intellect to let go of the chief inhibition I'd been fighting while rendering me most unable to complete it: to fight to save the baby I had already lost.  In other words, to make a run for it.

So when I was wheeled away to the OR and away from my husband, my rational brain that sadly knew my only other option was to wait for a sudden and incomplete labor, delivering my baby sometime and somewhere soon and then going for a D&C anyway.. Well that part shut down. And my reptilian, primal brain stem which sensed my symptom-free body (no spotting, no cramping, no nothing) was being wheeled in to evacuate the beloved contents of my womb, I panicked like a child and fought like a mother bear to leave, shaking uncontrollably, too "sedated" to stop. (I really have to get the name of that most useless drug.)  Man, I'm both totally embarrassed and proud to think of it now... like seriously, Katie? You go girl!!" Every cell of my body screamed that this was totally uncool, completely not kosher, and SO WRONG. 

So I guess I can't really blame them for flat boards suddenly rising from under the table to strap me down, cruciform. My hands were pried from being clamped around my belly and strapped down. Ankles too. Doctors and nurses were scrubbing down and suiting up, some vaguely sad, others slightly annoyed, all committed to the task at hand. The D&C specialist's face appeared through my wild tears: "You have to cooperate. Deep breaths!" And my nose and mouth were cupped.

I told my baby I loved him. I breathed His name.

No sooner did I sense light from under my heavy eyelids then I realized I was sobbing again. (I overheard, "Oh no, here we go again...") I was empty. My belly was deflated. My baby was gone. I begged to hold him/her and was told this was both impossible and undesirable. I begged to differ, to no avail. Someone handed me a rolled up warm blanket which I rocked and pet and hugged and cuddled till chaplain Nancy cradled me in her arms. She joked that she wasn't a priest but Pope Francis might change that. She prayed that God would make my baby into an angel to watch over me. She promised me He wouldn't have let my baby suffer. She said she sensed my little one was an imp, and that he was now playing with his sibling Gabriel whom I'd lost to four years ago in a very early miscarriage. "You see! They're not alone anymore, they are together now! Maybe that's why this happened even..." Nancy theology was quite iffy. She was just perfect.

Dan came. Meds wore off. Nausea came. And lots of vomiting. Sleep came on and off, cuddled by Dan's side, cradling the quilted teddy bear memory case I'd been given to take home.

I got home. I staggered through the door, flashed a bravely fake thumbs-up to my kids, thanked my parents, begged my mom to tuck me in, said "it was so... Awful" and went to sleep.

It was awful. This is awful. But I fully see the many ways it could have been more awful. I came home to four beautiful, healthy girls to cuddle. My grieving husband was somehow at the fateful ultrasound. I had the best possible nurse, Catherine J (ask for her if you go to Women and Infants, she rocks!) I didn't physically suffer at all, or suddenly go into labor in front of my kids, or have to birth my baby alone, without warning, in a rush of blood on a toilet like I had last time, like most miscarrying moms have to. Yes, a woman's heart is big enough to somehow survive even that.

I don't think my little one suffered either. In life I got to see him or her looking so playful and happy. He or she was always surrounded by love. I held him to the end and longer still. And forever will in my heart.

I'm also keeping the Puffs company in business. (Note wimpy attempt at humor)  Tears are leaking from my eyes even when I don't notice them. I know things will get better. I'm not sure exactly when.

Please pray for us. But don't worry excessively for me. I am trying hard to bounce back with every inch of my everyway deflated self.  Doesn't bounce very well but I'm at it.  I know wonderful people. Like yourself.:) I have lots of kids to love on. And if it comes to it, I know there are better products than "cookoo sedative." Heck, I applied for a job last night.  Okay, then I couldn't sleep because every thought makes me cry (how I was going to tell that person, survive that shower, how I can lie on my stomach, where to return my new pregnancy clothes, to donate or store the infant clothes, how my poor Nana was so excited about this.)  And so I stayed up till four writing this... But still.  I'm trying.

One last sad but sweet moment. Well two.  One was that the choir and orchestra was practicing the songs of Easter in the main church as we knelt alone in the chapel: "He has risen up in triumph from the darkness of the grave." And before, as we finally exited the obgyn office with our awful news and awfully behaved kids, the two little one suddenly started to sing. Together. I'm not joking, they don't do that... Instead they fight over whose turn it is to sing or what to sing. They learned that trick from their older sisters. But instead today they sang together in precious lisping voices "tickle tickle wittle stah" all the way down the hall. And I felt like they were singing an innocent baby-friendly dirge for the sibling they don't know they lost but will get to know in heaven.

I miss you tonight, little one. You aren't inside me anymore. I'm so empty, like a tomb. But in a week we will celebrate the glory that comes from the tomb. The end of death. Eternal life. With you, dear one, and your equally dear sibling.

Twinkle twinkle, little stars. I'll always wonder what you are. Sensitive? Athletic? Witty? Mellow? What your smiles look like, your laughs sound like, your skin feels like, and the color of your hair and eyes. How much I want to hold you. How certainly I will. How grateful that I believe I will with every fiber of my fractured heart.  Pray for us as we all long to go Home someday with you.

"He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8

I used to think the above verse was God being a trifle obnoxious.  But I finally think I "get" this verse and find it very comforting.  It reminds me that God truly knows what is good, as impossible as His version of good is to understand at times.  My job isn't to figure out what's best for the universe; that's His job.  Mine is to be just, and merciful, humbling holding my Father's hand as He walks with me on the journey He has chosen for me.

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