•  Maybe I’ll start with the week before my defense, which we got to spend with an out-of-town guest, a beloved professor/friend from Charleston. She came to our sweet town to run a marathon (!!!), and then to attend a conference, so it just worked out that she was here for my defense. She stayed without complaint on our couch for five days being alternately woken by a toddler and harassed by a kitten. She was a trooper. But what’s even more delightful is that she got us OUT OF OUR HEADS for a while. Things had gotten sort of dark around here: I’ve been struggling more with depression than usual (the loss of a baby, death of a father, loss of a(nother) pregnancy, and death of a beloved cat kind of depression, which isn’t slight) and J has been walking through the default anger that sorrow tends to bring up in her. I won’t say we’re out of the woods (really: we have work to do), but M coming brought us some much.needed perspective. She is a joyful person, and that’s what we needed: less navel-gazing and more lighthearted happiness. When she left, we sort of fell back into the tension a bit, but only for a moment. I think we both realize that as easy as it is to act out of grief and anger, it’s not worth the toll it takes. I’m not 100% sure what the next few months will look like, but I know we’re both devoted to staying grateful and present and kind again, and that, as my dad would have said, is a good good thing.

• And then there was my defense itself. It was intense, but so so lovely. My committee really seemed to like what I’m doing. They basically planned out my next four books, which is daunting (and laughably unreasonable, frankly, given my devotion to a work/life balance), but so exhilarating. One of my committee members said she “fell in love” with my take on vulnerability and wanted to re-read my dissertation immediately after finishing it. I can’t even tell you what hearing something like that does for my sense of… I don’t know… having labored with a purpose? Another said it was the most original he’d seen in a long time, and he called it “courageous.” They had all kinds of ideas about how to use the theoretical lens I constructed (to read history. to understand culture.). I hesitate to include this (and won’t go on) because it sounds like I’m bragging, but having felt like a failure for years in terms of my reproductive abilities, and having labored so painfully twice now with babies who will never be with us, it feels amazing to have actually accomplished this feat. So please forgive the self-congratulatory tenor of this part of the update. I truly needed a personal win to help dig me out of the sense of bodily defeat that has threatened to consume me of late. The feedback I got from my committee (and from J and my mom, both of whom read my dissertation and offered lots of wise insights) felt healing.

• Also healing was the party J threw right after my defense, a kind of open house at a local wine bar, which lots of my dearest friends attended. I always find such events overwhelming (I can never process them until weeks after), but I will remember the feeling of being surrounded by so much love and support for the rest of my life. The everyone-calling-me-doctor part, though? That’s just weird. I expected to find it sort of exciting. I mean, it was kind of a lot of work to get here. But so far, it just embarrasses me and makes me feel extremely awkward. Who knows what that’s about. A sense that it isn’t real, maybe? Because of course I’m not a real doctor, right? Or, to some people, a real mother. These narratives. Sigh.

• And then there’s this damn menstrual period. Oh, gods. It was this way for the first few periods after Emmett too. Every cramp is a PTSD trigger. Every bit of bleeding. Flashbacks. Panic. The constant reminder that we’re not. I’m not. That a lifetime of clockwork-like ovulation will almost certainly come to nothing but loss. Last Friday was supposed to be the first day of our second trimester. I had started to consider which dress to wear (for my defense) out of a box of gorgeous maternity clothes that friends lovingly sent. Now that box sits in our basement waiting for one of us to have the courage to mail its contents back, unused. It is a struggle. But Yogi’s Mama has been helping a friend through loss, and she wrote this about that mom: “she lost her child. Her son. Her second born. She didn’t lose a pregnancy and she didn’t have a 2nd trimester loss. While those things are technically true, they skate around the emotional heart of the matter. Although the mechanisms may be different, this birth will shape her life and the life of her family in ways that are no less significant or far-reaching then the live birth of her daughter.” It is no small comfort to have people in our lives who understand the loss we’ve faced, and who grief our babies alongside us.

• But then there’s Bram! This kid, I tell you. His words aren’t completely consistent, and they’re not super clear either, but man oh man are they awesome to hear. Cat, dog, mo (for pomo), mama, cow, horse, truck, eeeooooww (meow), oooo (moo), who who (the sound an owl makes), Nemem (for Nemesis), Ice (for Iris), mun (for monkey), no!, hi!, done! (said at the same time he signs “all done” at the table). He’s also gotten super attached to his (my) woven wraps. It used to be that when I wasn’t wearing him in one he kind of ignored them. Now he gets them out of their little basket and wears them like capes or snuggles them on the floor. It is SWEET. He’s never really had much in the way of a (successful) lovey, so I’m pretty sure these are the first objects he’s attached to in this way. Which, if you couldn’t guess this, makes my heart MELT. Also, my mom got him a squirrel feeder for his birthday which we FINALLY put up a couple of weeks ago and he is IN. LOVE. with the squirrels that come to eat corn off of it just outside our dining room window. She also taught him to use the sign “eat” for squirrels. So now whenever he sees one (here or out on the town) he puts his fingertips to his mouth. You know, because they’re always eating. Lovely little being, our boy. He also, though, threw his first temper tantrum in the grocery the other day. Oh, Id-driven little creature. J was alone with him, and I know she handled it wonderfully: she didn’t make it about her, she managed not to care what other people thought, she was present with him, and comforting. But it’s a whole new world. I mean, the trauma when something breaks: a Lego tower, a banana (he WILL ONLY eat the banana while it’s still attached to the peel)… Still, mostly he just loves life and we just love living it alongside him.

Okay, I’m pretty sure this nap is about to end, so I’ll close here. But I still owe you updates on breastfeeding, grief and marriage, night weaning, Iris and Nemesis, Mother’s Day, job stuff, and a tiny little baby named Maya (AKA my craziness). Oh, and I clearly owe you photographs! Soon, soon, soon. I promise. I hope spring has brought lightness to all of you! I’ve kept up with blog-reading, just not blog-commenting. Forgive my failures and know I am with you, if silently.

Okay, little baby gave me time to post a handful of photos!

Iris. J. Bram. As you can see, we’re all struggling to bond.

Celebrating M’s marathon!

We get to look at this face. Everyday. Everyday.

Bram is a peaceful little lover of wide-open spaces. Which makes him different from his (city loving) mama and pomo and exactly like his Aunts C and A (whose land this is).

B wears Bernard (his stuffed rabbit) a lot. This photo is blurry, but I don’t even care. Oh and yes: that’s his pomo’s undershirt. We welcome warm weather/no air conditioning in style, I tell you. ;)

Pre-defense me. Not a maternity dress, but a sweet one anyway, and a graduation gift from my mom. Those gorgeous roses are a graduation gift from J’s mom. I have a thing for roses. And dresses. And graduating. And look closely: this mama even painted her nails! (Which chipped off immediately. Because I’m a SAHM. Which is incompatible with fingernail polish. Still. For that moment.) :)

Me and my wonderful friend Z wearing our left-leaning, sleeping babes on a pretty spring day.

Oh and see! He snuggles his wraps now!

Iris is a (now) 10-week old kitten rescued from a feral cat mill just outside of town. Judging from her ears and paws, I expect that she’ll grow to be a large cat! She’s sweet, snuggly, and super-playful. I had forgotten how much life-force a kitten contains (I had especially forgotten about the kitten life-force between the hours of 1 and 5am – not unlike our human newborns)! Bram is completely smitten with Iris, though we’re having to really work on playing soft and gentle. He wants to throw his toys at her out of sheer delight (ouch kitty!). Our girl-cat, Nemesis, is slowly adjusting. She had become completely withdrawn and had stopped eating after Hades died. She’s been showing some interest in food again (especially the kitten food) and she’s been coming around more and more. So far there’s been no cat bloodshed and everyone’s going to the bathroom in the proper spot, so I’d say we’re doing well! I look forward to watching the two cats (hopefully) grow closer together in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, R and I are finding a baby cat presence very soul-lightening as we finally see the light of spring after this long and dark winter.

• This is my second week at home with Bram when I’m not also writing, and the difference is profound. Even with this tiny bit of space, I can see that writing my dissertation and being home with B was overwhelmingly intense. Trying to fit all the research and drafting I could into the two or three or four hours Bram was with sitters. Revising from the bedroom over the sound of dancing or kitchen play in the living room. Sending B off for bedtime rituals with J only to settle down for more work, night after night (which feels achingly impossible after being on with a baby ALL. DAY.). Wearing him through ALL of his naps so he’d sleep longer, and precariously balancing the computer on my knees, which got harder and harder to do as he grew. [Though full disclosure: I'm still wearing him through naps. Only right now, I'm doing it for the snuggles. So it's selfish.] The hardest thing of all was the feeling I could never shake that I should be doing something else. I never worked when B was awake and I was on alone with him, but I always sensed that I needed to be working, so I always felt a low grade sort of panic. Now the days stretch out before us, and they are exhausting, but they don’t scare me the same way because for the moment, my only job is mom. [This is not strictly true. I need to read my dissertation and plan my defense opening statements and do some formatting, but I'm ignoring all of that, and with an impressive degree of success.] And though I worried about what it would be like to only have this one hat on for awhile (the summer), I am finding that I love it. I feel a new freedom to just be with him. We’ll see how it feels after my defense, when the summer really just stretches out before us, but right now: I am aware of and grateful for the privilege of this tiny moment. Because it will likely never come again, not with B or with our other children. I’ll hopefully be on the tenure track. It won’t be the same. I now know that I could be a stay-at-home-parent for the duration if things were different, but I’m also okay working. I ADORE teaching, and I ADORE being at home with my kid. And I am so deeply lucky to feel fulfilled by both of these things. I hope to find a balance once I’m working full-time, and I do think that, R-1 universities aside, the professoriate lends itself to some balance. What I most hope is that J will get to do some of this with our next child (or children): that I’ll be able to carry us for awhile to give her a little space at home. It is hard, hard, hard work (as so many of you know), and I am dog tired by the day’s end. But compared to the weight of writing WHILE giving my son everything I have, this singular focus feels blissful.

• Oh, and this: I cannot thank you all enough for your communal, resounding GET A NEW CAT message. Y’all are just absurdly kind, and you get us, and we are so lucky. So I think we’re going to get a cat! I mean, that many of you can’t be wrong! :) Our vet feels strongly that N will do better with a kitten than an older cat. And he feels even more strongly that a kitten will do better with Bram because s/he will have just always grown up with an annoying being chasing her/him around, unlike an older cat who might resent the hell out of young children. So we’re leaning in that direction, though there’s a nine-month-old boy cat we’re also drawn to… Anyway, more on this soon. We might have happy news to post in the near future.

• And HUGELY: our dear friends A & C brought their second daughter into the world this week. Little Zora joins big sister Thea, and she is sweet sweet sweet. Thea asked to be with me during/after the labor (heart-melting, by the way), but she was sleeping through the whole thing, so they called me when C was pushing, and I walked in to the darling cries of born.seconds.earlier Z. I kept thinking of that Ani song when she says, “I was there to hear your bell the first time it rang, and the beauty was the beauty of everything.” It was painful because, you know, I want to do that (give birth to a baby who cries after), but it was beautiful. I brought Thea (who is three) home with me for the day so her mamas and new sister could sleep, and when we got here at 7:30, B was still resting. (Miraculously. Likely because he couldn’t sleep for awhile after I left at 4.) Since Thea was a little sleepy, I put her in bed with him. When he woke a few minutes later and rolled over to smooch me (like he does), he found her in my place! J said it was the sweet-sweetest thing. Anyway, welcome baby Zora. You are no end loved.

So, newness!

But there’s also other stuff.

• I went to the dentist yesterday because I have stress fractures in a filling (so, pain), and the hygienist asked (when looking at my medical records) if my son inherited my clotting disorder. I told her that he didn’t because my wife carried him. When I mentioned later that I’m at home with him full time, she said, “Oh, so he’s practically yours then.” So, yeah. That happened. He’s practically mine.

• In terms of wanting to give birth to a healthy baby, I’ve been letting myself fantasize about a number of things this week, and it needs to stop. When I lay down at night, or when B is napping, or when I’m washing dishes, I find myself imagining calling my dad, and hearing him answer, hearing him call me sweetheart or tell me to have a good good day. I imagine him at my graduation. I imagine seeing him proud of me, with tears in his eyes. I fantasize about being huge and pregnant and feeling the baby move inside of me. And about pushing, which is what I most wanted to do, most of all, like desperately. Desperately. I fantasize that Hades will run into the room, meowing his disgruntled old-man meow. That he’ll push his head into my mouth for kisses. I’m not sure how to stop letting these fictions in. It feels impossible to me that these things can’t happen. And I feel so peaceful and happy when I’m playing them out in my head like a movie. Maybe writing this down will help.

• Also, probably because of all the loss, I’ve been (and J has been too) obsessed lately with B’s health. Like, checking his breathing every ten minutes at night like you do with a newborn. And asking our NP to run a CBC on him. (Which she gladly obliged, and everything looks great. And by the way: Bram LOVED having his blood drawn, the weird child. He sat on my lap, and they prepped me for how to keep him steady, but he watched the whole time and never even flinched. And then he wanted to go to one of the techs after!) We’ve always been worriers on this front, but the last couple of weeks have been newly bad. So, trust. Something else to work on. And thank the gods because I was bored. ;)

• One good thing, though, is that other than the wanting to be pregnant, and to give birth to a big, breathing baby, I’m not all that sad about the fact that I probably won’t try to carry again. When I got pregnant this time,the emotions were just different than before. And I was deeply sad to be losing my NGP identity. I LOVE this role. I feel like an ambassador for NGP-hood. I think about the misunderstanding out there, about how many people believe that the only way to truly be a parent is to have a child who carries your DNA, and I think: I can help undermine that. I think that at this point, adoption would be even more profound for me than carrying to term, because then J and I would SHARE the NGP role. That sounds just mindblowingly great, doesn’t it? But of course, that requires being chosen by another birth mother. So we shall see. It could happen, right? Anyway, the peace I feel in this regard is surely nice.

• Okay, that’s all. Thanks for letting me ramble. I’m glad it’s finally spring. I’m sure I join most of you in welcoming the sunshine.

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.

Thank you all for your hugely loving responses to our loss of Love Child. That is still ongoing. Love Child’s heart likely stopped beating nine days ago, and I started spotting pretty much immediately. Spotting turned to bleeding within a couple of days, but we’re still waiting for my body to let go of the baby. We are hopeful (I am hopeful) that this will happen naturally, but at some point we will turn to Cytotec. I hope to avoid a D&C. I delivered Emmett Ever at home, and I hope to do so with this baby too. For me, the sense of failure is great. It would mean something to be able to do this well, to lose well. For anyone who wants to know what natural miscarriages can look like, here’s a good account. And by good I mean sad, but honest. This is not unlike our loss of E, though in her case, I was told that it wasn’t happening, so the pain just made me crazy. And I fought it. Resisted every single contraction. And the agony of that resistance nearly broke me. Now I’m having contractions every day, though usually only for two or three hours. And I don’t fight them. I ask for them. I breathe through them. I don’t tell myself that they aren’t real because I wasn’t further along. I don’t dismiss what I’m feeling, nor what J is feeling as she loses another non-gestational child. Mostly, we just wait. We feel paralyzed. We want to grieve, but it feels impossible while we wait. I have rarely felt more stuck.

And then, last Thursday, the day after we didn’t hear a heartbeat, our beloved boy cat Hades died very suddenly. I was working in Bram’s playroom while he and his babysitter A were playing, and A called me from the bedroom. Hades was dead. He was curled up in my armoire with his (litter-mate) sister, which was exactly his favorite place to be. He had been sick for a year with kidney disease, but we’d been giving him subcutaneous fluids every other day and, though he was vomiting liquid frequently, he seemed to be doing better: he played his favorite game of make-the-bed every week, he chased B’s puzzle pieces around the room, he dragged his favorite orange mousy up the stairs twice in his last week, he was eating. We opted not to do an autopsy on his little body since knowing what happened wouldn’t bring him back. So we’ll never know. He left in peace. And he left with mystery, not unlike E and Love Child. The many mysterious creatures we love.

Hades and his sweet girl-cat sister Nemesis came into my life when I was only twenty years old. I found them in Japan, behind a door that said, “Caution. Feral cats. Do not enter.” I entered. They each fit into the palm of my hand. They purred and hissed at the same time. I knew they needed love, not caution. When J came into our lives, she signed a contract vowing to share their care with me. She adopted them. We even notarized it. Those were sweet sweet days.

Though I very much hope to have many other much.loved animals in my life (and though I deeply love Nemesis), I have a theory that you only get one soul animal. One animal who looks you in the eyes and understands, one animal you just get. Sort of like your daemon, if you’re a Pullman fan. Anyway, Hades was mine. Now there’s a hole in my heart and our home is full of sadness. Bram is confused. He walks around calling “cat” and “Hadie” because when he did that, Hades always came. And Nemesis is lost. She’d never spent a night without her brother until now. Her eyes are one of the saddest things I’ve ever ever seen. I’m not sure she’ll make it through this, though she and J have a special thing, and J thinks she will. I’ll write more about our puppy-cat soon. And post photos.

And then, last Friday, I finished and submitted my dissertation. After eight total years of graduate school (MA, teaching, PhD) and two and a half years of writing, I am done. And right now, that feels pretty empty. We were going to celebrate. Celebration feels impossible. I was waiting to submit my dissertation to even begin grieving my dad. Grief feels a little overwhelming now. As our friend Jessica says, we have grief fatigue. It is a thing.

There’s an odd stillness here. J and I feel stuck. Slow moving. Trudging, as if through heavy water. This almost.baby is holding still, and always will be. Hades is still. Ever still. Only Bram seems truly full of life, and thank the gods for his joyful self. But for his smiles, these days might be unbearably dark. We have waited for spring, and now spring has come, but it feels like more winter. And so we wait still.

I said there would be no poetry, but I do have this, Mary Oliver. This is where grief can carry you if you let it. So I guess mostly right now, we pray for the courage to let it. Thank you for being here with us. We know you are, and that is something larger than I can explain.

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hands in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?

Mary Oliver, “Heavy”

So, Bram at fourteen months. In no particular order.

• This morning, right before J left for work, I said: “Bram. Can you say pomo?” And clear as day he looked at his pomo and said: “pomo.” Then he smiled.

• He also regularly and appropriately says “mama,” “cat,” “dog,” “uh-oh,” and “truck,” and occasionally “goat” and “cow.” He still signs “please,” “milk,” “water,” “more,” “all done,” and sometimes “thank you,” and he shakes his head vigorously “yes” or “no.” Especially no. The boy knows what he does not want.

• Often (though not every morning), Bram wakes up, rolls over to my side of the bed, pulls himself up onto me, and smooches me straight on the lips to wake me up. Then he sits up, pats the bed (pat, pat, pat), and calls: “CAT!” About half the time, a cat comes. These are the most delightful days.

• He can correctly identify his head, hair, nose, mouth (usually), ears, eyes, belly, belly-button, hands, feet, toes, and badonkadonk. Well, he thinks his badonkadonk is his upper right thigh, but sort of around the back. And if you ask him to shake it, he shakes his right leg. We have to get video of that soon.  Oh, and he can point to identify pomo, mama, Bubbie, Aunt Kippie, Hades, Nemesis, trucks, cars, almost all barnyard animals (in books), squirrels, rabbits, specific Lego pieces (the goat, the farmer, the horse)… just about anything we’ve defined for him once.

• The child is obsessed with books. He has very definite opinions about what he wants to read, and how many times he wants to read it. So far, his favorites have been Barnyard Dance, Caps for Sale, Jamberry, Good Night Farm, The Wizard of Oz, Hug, and Hug Time. (My apologies for not including authors… I sense this nap is coming to a close…) Who knows what tomorrow’s favorite will be, though. His loyalty is fierce but shifting.

• He is walking-fast-all-the-time now. It matters not a bit to him how many times a day he bites it. He just gets right back up (which he can now do without any support!) and takes off again.

• His favorite foods this month: anything with curry in it, carrots, (ethically sourced) chicken, (wild caught) fish, broccoli, peas, mango, bananas, Mexican stir-fry, the gluten-free bread J makes us, oranges, blueberries, pomegranate seeds (when my mom brings them), spinach smoothies, potatoes, egg yolks, lentils… He still eats incredibly well at most meals.

• He also LOVES the broom. [Does anyone know of an affordable, real, kid's sized broom for sale? The child likes to sweep, which I would like to encourage.]

• At the end of bath time, J now gets Bram to pull the drain himself and say goodbye to and thank the bath water. It is sweet sweet sweet. She then asks if he’s ready to get out, but he never is. So she patiently waits while the water drains, asking every few minutes if he’s ready (to which he shakes his head “no”). Eventually, though, he gets cold and consents. I love that she gets his buy in this way. It would be jarring to just be pulled out of the bath at random times, no matter how much you were enjoying yourself!

• Finally (not because I’m out of things to write, but because I’m almost out of time and I want to include some photos!), I am on the precipice of being home with him alone thirty-seven hours a week with NO DISSERTATION TO WRITE. I’m wondering how those of you who are home full time approach a schedule. For example, how many times a week do you do play dates? Other activities? Do you have days where it’s just you all day with no outside interaction? Do you find that a routine helps? Lay it on me, whatever you got. Even though I’ve been home with him full time, I’ve scheduled some much of these fourteen months around writing that I’m not sure how to approach the openendedness!

And photos!

• Bram usually helps me make lunch from my back. Here, he adds paprika to paella.

• An old photo, but a beloved one: one of my favorites of my boy with his Grandpa Jack.

• With an eggplant. Like normal.

• Bram adores all of these things.

• Morning smiles.

• Robot-Bramble.

• I finally got J in a ruck! For all your babywearers out there: this is PHI v2, and J and I both LOVE it. I think it’s her first favorite wrap.

• In the letter jacket that a close friend of the family passed down from her son. The last little boy to wear this is now twenty-two years old.

• First spring day.

• Fourteen-month Bram Grows! shot!

 
I came out as a lesbian in 1995 at the age of thirteen, years after the outset of the AIDS epidemic, the year after Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was implemented, and the year before DOMA was signed into law. I witnessed the deaths of peers to bashing and suicide. I was in hot water with every high school principal I met ;-) And now, eighteen years later, I sit with my wife and son awaiting a certain something from the highest court in the nation (not validation, certainly, but a certain degree of recognition; of contrition, perhaps?). Because I came out so young, I’ve always felt a certain parallelism between my personal growth and that of the gay and lesbian movement. I’ve found comfort and camaraderie in the shared struggle for identity, for equality, and for a welcome place at the table of life.

 
I think of those millions who came before that are not now here to see this monumental shift. And I think of the millions who will come after to see a world that is beyond our current imaginings. And I think how lucky I am to be alive in history. Despite its challenges, I am so grateful to be here now.
And then I picture our children as young adults moving through a world that strives to be more and do more for its brothers and sisters. It’s an ideal, yes, but isn’t that what the living is for? I treasure the daily trudge to higher ground and more fertile dialogue as it’s masked in family, marriage, career, and activism.

I began research during a pregnancy that ended with EE in our arms but not breathing, drafted my way through the worries of J’s pregnancy with Bram, wrote on through that first year of parenting wherein the precarity of loving someone that much is almost unbearable, and began to revise as Saul was placed in our family, only to be taken back by his birth mother one month later. Just as I began my final round of revisions, I got pregnant again. The next day, my dad passed away. What I’m saying is: this work has been with me through some things. And three weeks from tonight, I will put it down for awhile.

This is (as my dad would say) a good good thing. We need some space from one another. Some breathing room. And in truth: I’m not sure I’d advise someone to write about vulnerability. The universe seems to take it as an invitation. Still, I don’t know who I’ll be on the other side of this work. I sure as hell won’t be the girl I was when I started it. I have less optimism than she had. I am more cautious than she ever was. But then: I have a son. She wasn’t a mom. I am a mom.

Anyway, I’m tired tonight, and I guess I wanted to reach out so that I wouldn’t just feel alone there. I am tired from the ten thousand hours I’ve labored with this project, from the lessons it has had to teach, which are heavy. I’m tired from fourteen months of not sleeping through the night. I’m tired with grief; I miss my dad terribly, and I worry for the boy who isn’t Sauly. I’m tired from the start of early pregnancy exhaustion and from the work of staying detached for fear of trusting this being inside of me. For fear of trusting myself with him or her. I’m just tired. And I’m feeling so fiercely, desperately, needily in love with what I have: my wife, our son, my mom, our family and friends. The byproduct of spending years thinking about precarity: it all feels so damn fragile.

Music helps. Just give me one thing that I can hold onto. To believe in this livin’ is just a hard way to go.

And A man needs something he can hold onto. A nine pound hammer or a woman like you.

And There’s no use in trying to deal with the dying, though I cannot explain that in lines.

And the little boy asleep upstairs with my beautiful wife. He helps too, and so does she. None of you warned me how much it was possible to love. They are, as the cliche goes, the sun and the moon. Two days ago, Bram climbed into my lap, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “mama.” Then he smiled. He’s clingy in the mornings, and so am I. We have a thing in the mornings. We cling. Then we find our footing on the day. He is just so much joy. And we get to parent him. I get that privilege. And with it, all that risk.

Maybe I’ll write about something happy next. Or you know: at least something less honest.

These are my great great loves on the day J brought Bram into the world. So, yeah. Vulnerability.

I’m currently at home sitting out a rare sick day with acute mastitis (sidenote: Ouch!). I’ve never had any kind of breast problem throughout the 14 months I’ve been nursing Bram, but I awoke Thursday morning with tenderness in my right breast (which I chalked up to PMS). By 9am, though, it had grown intense, and by the time I pumped at 10am, I was really miserable. I left work early and by lunchtime was running a 102.5 degree fever while taking extra-strength motrin, so we decided to go get it checked out at urgent care. I was prescribed antibiotics and motrin and told to keep nursing, massaging, applying heat, and taking it easy. I’m supposed to go in for a recheck tomorrow. The rest of Thursday, I was out.of.it. I was delirious with the high fever, had tingling and numbness in my joints and neck, and was just beside myself with discomfort in my breast. My heart goes out to the many new mamas who experience this multiple times early on in their nursing relationship. It’s really the pits. So today I am feeling a little more like me. The fever has abated and the prescription motrin seems to be keeping a handle on my pain. Bram and I aren’t showing any reactivity to the antibiotics (a fear given his recent bout with penicillin allergies). Still, though, I can’t move any milk through the left quadrant of my right breast. It’s red, hard, and warm to the touch, which makes me think that there’s still a plugged duct(s). I really hope that I can get this worked out myself, as the idea of more aggressive treatment sounds really unpleasant (and makes me worry about keeping our nursing relationship consistent). So: Heat-Massage-Drain-Rest-Repeat.

In much happier news, how about R’s last post!?! We are so so so excited by our new Love Child. Early Days, yes, but I’m choosing cautious optimism over debilitating fear and anxiety. We just miss out on so much living because of the latter. R is at the outset of nausea and fatigue (though that could also be the byproduct of it being less than a month before she goes to committee with her dissertation). Our first appointment with our midwives’ group will be in April, and we think we’ll be able to see our beloved friend and midwife, C, before she’s out for maternity leave with her own new bundle-of-joy. We really do love our practice and are very encouraged to think that we’ll be able to birth at the low-risk hospital again! And I for one am hopeful and excited about becoming an NGP to a baby that R carries. I look forward to the many things that I missed out on because I was so locked into my own bodily experience of our pregnancy with Bram. I caught glimpses of those benefits during our time with Saul, but I am curious how those dynamics will play out for me over a lifetime of parenting.

And I would be remiss to not offer some recent photographic evidence of our toddler (Toddler!?! How did that happen?). R has had to handle all of the big news and heavy pronouncements on the blog lately, so I’m bringing some lightness!

Storytime with Bubbie is the level-best:

Bram and I handle our co-op shopping together every weekend. He’s getting really sweet about interacting with the other customers and carrying produce for me…

Bram planking with Uncle Buddy:

B still adores being worn everyday:

Bram’s snow adventures in our backyard:

And he’s up! Bram started walking at right about 13 months. It was a shy skill at first, but he’s walking more and more each day:

This is our beautiful, sweet, goofy, earnest toddler (photo credit: Aunt Kippie at the Children’s Museum):