facts & feelings

A friend told me this week that feelings aren’t facts. Oh, the great great freedom of those words. I started breathing more deeply the moment my mind grasped them.

It’s a Sunday, early evening, and I should be making dinner, but the boy is cutting a molar and a cuspid, which means he’s in agony, which means he’s taking a desperately-needed-late-nap on my chest. Here, then, are the scattered facts and feelings of my today.

• We have an astonishingly great community. I’ll write it again because it is breathtakingly true: we have an astonishingly great community. There is no such thing as deserving the profoundly generous and loving and empathic and compassionate and ever-present friends and family we’re surrounded with. We don’t deserve you all, which means that having you all is just a matter of grace. Grace. Not God’s grace, but humanity’s grace. We are surrounded by it.

• I am overwhelmed, crushed, by the simple narrative being constructed around the Tsarnaev brothers right now. We are so quick to condemn violence without struggling to understand our own complicity in it. Our willingness to model it in ways small and big. How is it possible that expressing compassion for a no-doubt terrified teenager (a child) can be read as negating the suffering that teenager likely inflicted? I am heartbroken by this tragedy, but I am even more heartbroken by our quick, unconsidered, vengeance-driven reaction to it. People suffer. Even people who inflict suffering suffer. I don’t know how to express what I’m saying. There’s complexity, and I shudder for our fate when I sense that it is being ignored. Yogi’s mama wrote a little about this this week, as did Anna. If I felt more whole, I’d try to contribute something meaningful. As it stands, all I can do is worry, and mourn, and wish. If my writing this makes you angry, please know that I mean no harm, and please let it go. I don’t even know how to process anger right now. I can’t meet it with anything but confusion.

• Nemesis is lonely without her brother. We are lonely without her brother. Saul (who is no longer Saul) is now five months old. He’s been gone for four months. His birth mother refuses to send us a photo. Since he left, we’ve lost my dad, and Love Child, and our puppy cat. We are not in the weeds of despondence, as we’ve been before. Instead, we’re heavy but moving. Walking with grief in a new way that feels permanent (though thankfully I see through that word). I found a list I made in 2009, shortly before our wedding. On it, I name loss as my biggest fear. It was relatively unknown to me then. It is no longer my biggest fear. It is like a friend I didn’t meant to befriend. I’m not even sure how I’d answer that question now.

• Anyway, we are lonely, and I keep having the impulse to bring home a kitten. Or a cat. Another being. A being who is unlikely to be taken from us. A being who is likely to stay awhile. Who will make Bram smile. Who will warm our hearts. Who will in no way replace E, or Sauly, or Love Child. Who could never replace Hades, king of the cottage frontier, cat-king of my heart. But who could be a home for some of the love we have that needs a home. I sense, though, that we’d be judged. That it is too soon. That there are appropriate ways of responding to loss and that we haven’t been appropriate. I’m not explaining this well. I just want more beings to love. Right now, I might adopt a flea circus if I felt that one needed me. Perhaps that is the argument for waiting.

• We went to a SHARE meeting together last week: our first together since B was born. I’m always struck by the gentleness in those rooms. People are fragile. There are spaces where that is just recognized.

• I found teaching! Okay, that’s overstating it. I found two sections for the fall. Media and the Sexes. With that phone call, the absence of students in my life this year came flooding in. Students! Yes! I am more fully me when I am teaching. When I am learning from students. When we are of one another in the way that the classroom makes possible. I sigh with relief from this news, not just because we (desperately) need the money, but because I desperately need that purpose again. The exchange of ideas. The intellectual intimacy. The community. The presence it demands of me. Yes. Teaching. What relief.

• My defense is set for May 10th. PhDs: How did you celebrate? We have to celebrate. If we insist (as we do) on mourning the losses, we must celebrate the victories. We have earned this. As a family. So how did you let in the joy.relief.pride of being done?

• We are interring my dad’s ashes on Wednesday. We will try to make a day of it: eat good food, take Bram to the zoo. A day that is not born solely of sadness.

• Tomorrow, Bram and I will celebrate Earth Day at a bird sanctuary. I never really understood birds before. Lately, I get tears in my eyes watching them fly.

• Here are my true, true loves. There’s no such thing as deserving this life. That I am living it is merely a matter of human grace. Kindness. The kindness others have bestowed on me.

welcome to

It’s a new year.

2012 – year in which we brought home two sons and said goodbye to one – is of the past.

I’m always a big, big New Year’s person (not for partying reasons – I only leave the house for a walk – but for the sense of possibility that comes with a bright, clean year) and this is no exception. It feels like being welcomed into something, but there’s no way of knowing what. It’s like the universe saying welcome to and not finishing its sentence. I like that. Though the sadness of losing Sauly still comes in waves, I’m full of hope about 2013. I have some specific posts planned for the next couple of weeks, but for now, I thought I’d try to orient myself a little by documenting a few things here. A bulleted list, then, in no particular order.

• We took a trip this last week to visit blog friends. Really, we were running away (the house was so sad after S left), but Yogi’s mama, her wife, Yogi, and Monkey of Love Invents Us welcomed us into their home with generosity and graciousness. It was exactly the kind of spontaneous trip that I’m completely opposed to taking, which is to say that it was absolutely wonderful and totally what we needed. [I think I'm at my best when life forces me just the slightest bit outside of my comfort zone (which it does anytime spontaneity is involved).] Anyway, B found Yogi and Monkey to be delightful. Getting to spend time with other lesbian-led families is always a gift, but these moms are especially thoughtful and caring; we were lucky to have them to run away to. To wit: I came home feeling understood and upheld, and armed with lots of great new parenting ideas. Here’s Yogi teaching Bram all about the world.

• We also received the most amazing gift in the mail on the day before we left for our trip: a hand-sewn mei tai for Bram to wear his new baby doll in. Cricket’s mama at Parenting Cricket made B and Cricket matching carriers, and Bram already adores his. Because he’s been eating Rudy’s hair (which means B needs a few more months to develop his parenting skills before he can be trusted), here he is wearing Mortimer the Moose. But truly: how sweet is this mei tai?!? And hair-eating aside, isn’t Bram quite the proud papa? ;)

• On the Saul front, there’s no real change, and getting home reminded us of this fact. Grieving a child who is alive and healthy is a strange, diffuse sort of thing. I think it might take me awhile to understand it even enough to write about it. I get J’s anger (expressed in her last post), but my dominant emotion most of the time is confusion. I’m not sure L will offer us any more updates. She seems to feel that she’s been wronged by us in some way. I just miss his face and his sweet baby smell and his oh.so.lightness in my arms. This is my favorite photo of him. It will probably be the last photo we post of his perfect, little self.

• J and I have finally decided to start taking regular dates, so that’s a good thing. Our beloved friend Christina watched Bram for our third wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago – which was our first night-time date since B was born – and we liked it so much we decided to make it a thing. A lovely former student of mine – whose long red hair B is IN LOVE WITH – is going to come once every other week so we can have an early evening out. Our second date will be a SHARE meeting (for pregnancy and infant loss), which we haven’t attended together since B came. It will be good to have a place to share our grief over S.

• In the not.so.great.news category, though, I didn’t get any job interviews. Feel free to take a moment to ponder two months of writing application materials almost full-time, twenty-five applications, and no interviews. It’s defeating. I should be on my way to Boston right now, but I’m not. It doesn’t feel as doomsy as I thought it might, though. I’m still ABD, and from what I’ve heard, ABDs did not fare well this year (not that they ever fare especially well). I know that the position I applied for at UT Austin got 480 applications. If even 200 of those were PhD-in-hand, ABDs probably had little chance, right? Fordham got 300 applications, and I made it into their top 40. I am holding onto that piece of goodness with the life-grip of a toddler on…well, anything they don’t want to lose. And anyway: I’m thrilled to be staying here another year. I’m beyond thrilled, really; I am elated. This town is home, and I wasn’t ready to leave it. I got an article accepted to a great journal in the time since my applications went out. Gods willing I’ll graduate in June. And I hope to have another publication pending by the next application cycle. I’m as optimistic as can be expected, I think. Still, scholars: feel free to offer encouragement and cheer in the comments of this post. :)

• Finally, today is J’s first real day back since her maternity leave (which was followed, after one day in the office, by holiday leave), so we’re settling back into a new (old) routine. Bram and I took the bus to a museum with B’s Aunt Madeline this morning, which was super fun. We’re in between two naps and one nap a day, though, which is not super fun. This is made all the worse by J’s return to work, which finds me wearing the boy (after a twenty minute bed nap) in front carry all the way through a nap for the first time in weeks. I often wear him down this way, but I have to transfer him to the bed because he is WAY.TOO.BIG to just sleep like this. We’re both a bit jarred by J’s absence, though, so I’m craning my neck around his head to type. Closeness is just irresistible right now.

 

nearly thirty-three weeks with a gestating rabbit

My son is in there! He’ll have been there for thirty-three weeks on Monday. Whenever dance music comes on, he starts to move. I adore him.

We got this guy from my cousin L, and I’ve been calling him Sue. (I like Johnny Cash.) My mom predicted that one day soon, we’ll have to drive back some forty miles when we realize we’ve left him and Rabbit won’t stop crying.

We’ve named this fella Shmuel. He arrived yesterday care of MTB, a SUPER talented (and loving) friend of ours. I alternate snugging Shmuel and Sue. Shmuel tagged along for our maternity photo session today.

This is our clearly mistreated boy cat wearing the rabbity-eared hat that MTB sent with Shmuel. (Alternate caption: Further evidence that it’s time.)

Back in May, I told J that once it was winter again – once it had been spring, and summer, and fall – our baby would come to us. When she walked in all dusted with snow last week, I felt the nearness of his arrival.

Our SHARE Support Group’s holiday memorial service was last night. We hung this swirly purple and white glass ornament for E. (C: This sphere feels like the sea.) Seeing all those ornaments go up on two full trees was powerful/heartbreaking. J watched one man light five different candles. Five. E’s ornament came home with us; I’ll hang it in Rabbit’s room this week.

Between the blogosphere and our natural childbirth classes, we know about a trillion expecting couples. As of this evening, we’re eagerly anticipating the arrival of three overdue babies (two here in our town plus the folks over at Parenting Cricket). What a world.

Happy December, friends!

attachment living

It’s been an intense few weeks. On top of the typical post-midterm craziness of any academic semester (made more intense for me this semester because I’m teaching an upper-level course I’ve never taught before and trying to write as much of my dissertation as possible before Rabbit comes), I’ve been working on applications for dissertation completion funding. I’m applying for three different fellowships, and if I receive one of them, I won’t have to teach next year; I’ll be able to focus exclusively on my writing. This sounds like an unimaginable luxury to me. Really: it’s almost too delightful to consider. Throughout my course work, I thought of the dissertation as a means to an end – one last difficult requirement – but now I find myself deeply devoted to the work itself. I love the female (and two queer male) characters I’m writing about. I sense their power, their strength. But when they’ve been written about by other critics, it’s been to point out how powerless they are. So I feel a responsibility to offer them a different reading. A recognition of what has gone unnoticed. These characters have become real to me, and I love them both as individuals, and as a collective body of feminine power that has been long.long.long overlooked.

This funding would give me time with them. If I don’t get it, I’ll still have time, so the situation isn’t dire. (And I should add: I fully recognize this as a luxury problem. I mean, who gets a year off to just think and read and write? It’s an almost absurd privilege, and I see that.) But I long for it, and that’s disconcerting to my don’t.get.too.attached.to.anything.that.isn’t.yours cautionary self. These are very competitive. I met with a friend of J’s (from the private college they both work at), and she was tremendously helpful. But she also (inadvertently) made me aware of how different my public-school world is from her liberal-arts-college reality. There’s a different kind of grooming. Money begets money. These fellowships don’t just go to the neediest applicants, they go to the best applicants. And “best” means “best equipped to present oneself in a particular way.” This takes training. Grooming. So while it makes sense that I might not get these because they’re competitive – because others may have better (or more important) projects in the works – it makes me sad to think about not getting them because I didn’t go about applying in the right way. Anyway, I came away from the meeting feeling defeated, but I’m still trying. And though it seems dangerous to want this funding so much, I’m letting myself do it anyway. If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s that I can adapt. If (in the spring) I find out that I didn’t get any of them, I’ll go to plan B. Or plan C. And I’ll find things to love about those plans too.

Anyway, this process has made these past weeks stressful, which in turn made yesterday AMAZING. We took our last road trip as a two-person family to a favorite city of ours. J and I are so happy in cities. Every chance we get to travel, we find our way to one, and we eat, and coffee.shop, and people.watch, and stroll and stroll and stroll. Like Clarissa Dalloway in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, I’ll take city walking over country walking any day. Yesterday was even more special, though, because we splurged on a 3D/4D ultrasound of Rabbit River! Seeing him was incredible. Afternoons are his sleepy time, and he adorably refused to lower his hands from his face, but the tech still got some wonderful images. We are both so entirely in love. There is no holding back out of fear. No wishing things were different. There is only the sense that this baby is our son, and that we are meant to parent him, to help him become…well…him.

Here he is, left hand pressed sweetly to forehead:

And sleeping away:

And left hand, right arm, face, skinny ribs and all (I suspect this boy will be long and thin):

I said at one point that I think he’s going to have a big nose, and the tech said, “No! His nose is cute.” She doesn’t know how much I adore big noses. :)

After the ultrasound (which was after an amazing gourmet-Chinese lunch), we headed into the city, and we practically fell upon one of those upscale baby stores that basically amounts to crack for new parents and parents.to.be. We oooohed and aaaahed our way through TWO stories of gorgeous baby accoutrement, test drove our stroller (which J’s mom bought us, but which we’ve yet to see as she’s giving it to us at the shower next weekend), tried out the baby sling I picked for myself after lots of internet research, and purchased Rabbit’s first pair of baby leg warmers and a striped kimono-style onesie that we couldn’t bear to leave behind.

Then we hit a local coffee shop for a chocolate croissant and two espressos (J’s decaf, mine regular), where we watched the seemingly thousand new babies/new parents, and stared and stared at the ultrasound photos of our sweet boy.

After that, we walked around for awhile in search of an ornament for Emmett Ever. Our SHARE support group hosts a holiday memorial every year, where parents can hang an ornament on a tree to remember their lost babies. We chose a blown glass sphere with purple and white swirls that has a distinctive seashell-esque look.

We also discovered an oil and vinegar shop, where we sampled about a dozen aged balsamic vinegars and brought home one bottle of white balsamic (which we learned is less sweet/more acidic than the darker stuff).

Then we ate at a favorite Jewish deli and headed home. On the drive back, we listened to music that made me think a lot about E. I cried for awhile, not because I miss her or because I wish she were here, but because I love her. Because my connection to her creates an ache that is painfully sweet. Because I can love her and be happy at the same time.

So all told, a GREAT GREAT day, and a much needed break. I am so in love with my wife, who is carrying this baby with about a thousand times more grace than I could have done. It’s funny, we thought we knew which roles we would thrive in: I would be a better GP because I’m feminine; she would rock out the NGP role because she isn’t so into the girly side of girliness. But the truth is, all of that was culturally dictated. And none of that has anything to do with what it takes to nurture a child (via either role). None of that was about our particular strengths and weaknesses. In truth, I’m so well suited to non-gestational parenting. The choice it requires. The care it allows me to give my whole family. And J is brilliant at the gestational role. She’s heartier than I am. Less anxious. I don’t believe in an interventionist God, but it’s impossible not to recognize some wisdom to all of this that surpasses our limited understanding.

happiness is:

1. Hearing Rabbit River’s heartbeat! (His or her heartbeat!) Strong, strong beats. Happy, happy mamas. LOVE.

2. Discovering that our new midwife is our dream midwife. Seriously: earth-mama energy, super knowledgeable, endlessly patient with our fears, reassuring, sweet, confident. And she’s queer. And she and her partner have a one-year-old daughter (who is adorable, and who they delivered at this hospital). I already trust her more than I thought was possible. She asked questions about Emmett Ever. She made us feel understood. I believe that she will help us walk through this pregnancy with joy and openness. Maybe even with sanity intact. (And I’m not just saying this because she asked if she could read the blog!)

3. Dreaming about this baby. In my dream, I first went to the crib of a perfect, miniature caveman. A cavebaby, if you will. Lots of facial hair. And I thought: “Okay. I have a cavebaby now. And I love him.” But then I realized that my baby was in the crib behind him, and that my baby had no facial hair. I was admittedly relieved and in love with my son, who had the biggest brown eyes you could imagine, and the sweetest little mouth. I was, however, worried about the cavebaby. So when I woke up, I got J to agree that if this happened, and if no one took the cavebaby home, we could raise him too.

4. Last night’s Summer Supper Club. A dozen wonderful friends. A perfect summer evening. A “southern comfort food” theme. THREE delicious pies (lemon meringue. key lime. southern pecan.). Two birthdays to celebrate. My dissertation director’s kid, L, who is the most fabulous eight-year-old. (She’s smart, and sassy, and precocious. I love her. It’s SO much fun to have kids here at the house.) Community. I couldn’t live without it.

5. A gift for the Rabbit’s nursery from our friend MJB. She was with me when I bought the print that J blogged about last week, and, knowing that I adored one of a bird sitting on an elephant, too (but couldn’t afford them both), she went back and got it while the artist was still in town. Here it is. (What are their names again, MJB? Which one is Walt?):

6. J sleeping for sixteen hours last night! Unprecedented. I think she was just holding herself together until she could hear this little one’s heartbeat. It’s good to see her let go a bit. She’s doing an AMAZING job.

7. My sweet mom selling jewelry this weekend at a Pride festival north of here. Adorable. Doesn’t this make her a PFLAG champion?

8. SHARE support group meetings (for parents who have experienced pregnancy or infant loss). They convene in our town once a month, and they are a lifeline. In some ways, the two hours of that meeting have become the most important two hours of my month. Though I wouldn’t wish inclusion in this group on anyone, I can’t tell you how much it has meant to me not to feel so alone. I’ve been in an e-mail conversation with a SHARE father (a dad who lost his first daughter, O, three days before she would have turned six months old). He wrote me this, which I’m sharing here because it’s exactly the kind of insight that I need as I endeavor to understand who J and I are now. Thank you, B, for your openness and generosity in the face of unimaginable loss:

“One thing you said last night struck home with most likely everyone there. When you talked about being disconnected or not being able to see your previous self, I knew exactly what you meant. It triggered me to recall reading ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ by Thomas Kuhn in College. The general gist is that science evolves gradually until there is paradigm shift in thinking which can go completely contrary to all previous understanding, ripping out the established paradigms in one fell swoop.

Taking license to apply this theory to human emotions, all of us around that table last night underwent our emotional and psychological paradigm shifts when our children were taken from us for whatever reason. That’s just not supposed to happen in this world, babies don’t die, parents don’t bury their children! Well we all found out that these commonly accepted ‘truths’ are not so and have been ‘enlightened’ to know horrible truths.

In the process of our paradigm shift, I believe our ‘old self’ is destroyed, it can’t ever be found. Sure I can remember people, events, and feelings from ‘before,’ but I can’t process them though my ‘old brain.’ Everything I look at now is colored by my paradigm shift, attempting to find your ‘old self’ is frustrating, painful, and in the end fruitless (in my belief).

On the other hand the positive changes that come out of such trauma can also be beautiful. I think I’m a more compassionate, giving, understanding person than I was before -mind you I’m speaking almost 2 years out from my shift.”

support

Last night, J and I went to a support group for parents who’ve lost babies during pregnancy, or soon after birth. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but I think we both found the space to be of comfort. Here are a few things I noticed/learned:

• Child loss – whether your child was full term or only fourteen weeks – is crushing; we’re not just dwelling or overreacting.
• We will be grieving this for the rest of our lives. There were women there who, five years out, came to meeting because they were having a particularly difficult time this month. It seems that this will come and go in terms of its prominence in our daily consciousness, but it will never stop hurting us.
• This kind of loss changes you. Lots of women talked about how they’re whole different people now. It made me wonder what it might have felt like to sit among them before.
• Though the other people there were (apparently) heterosexual, only one father came. I don’t think this is because fathers aren’t devastated. Their absence (no doubt largely culturally produced) made me sad. The one father in attendance seemed to relate to most of what the women shared. I felt an immense amount of love for him (as I did for each and every mother in the room).
• Lots of women get bad news about their own health concomitant to pregnancy loss. As I’m finding to be true, it takes many of them a long time to even begin to look at scary diagnoses because they must first grieve their child.
• Grief is an equalizing experience. I don’t think anyone cared that we’re gay, and I didn’t care what other demographics might set us apart.
• I am beyond blessed that J and I have processed this together, that neither of us pulled away.
• Lots of women lose friends, or feel like their friends judge them for being so heartbroken (for not just getting over it). This made me newly grateful for our friends. And it made me want to hug everyone who shared that they felt this way. To ask the questions their friends never ask. To listen for hours.
• Most of the women who attend this particular group have college educations, but I don’t think that most women who lose children necessarily do. That indicates to me that there are lots of grieving parents who lack access to support. This is no less terrible because it is obviously true.
• Losing E will likely change our relationship with our future children even more than I had anticipated. (And it will certainly impact our feelings throughout J’s future pregnancy/ies.) There’s little to do beyond accepting this.
• My theory about the upside of grief being the degree to which it can increase compassion seems to hold. These people were loving and generous in the face of much sorrow.
• I will probably never carry another child, but carrying (and losing) Emmett put me into a club of strong women who have nurtured, and labored, and loved. I’m fiercely proud to be among such women, and as I consider their varied experiences (those who have never spoken of the pain, those who’ve suffered loss again and again), I am in awe. Not for nothing: women are tough.