A month in...

We're a month into 2012, and frankly it doesn't really feel like it to me. I think part of that feeling is due to the weather here - we've pretty muched missed winter so far, with above average temperatures and below average snow fall. I have grown unaccustomed to seeing brown lawn for most of January, and it's starting to be a little disconcerting. Snow is predicted for Thursday, but the weekend is supposed to be on the warm-ish side, so even if we do get a good few inches of snow, there's no guarantee it'll stick around for long.

I never did get around to posting my goals for 2012. Here they are:
1. Read at least 12 novels (one a month is the goal, but some months aren't as fiction-friendly as others. I had so much fun with this last year that it just might be a goal for life).
2. Read at least 12 non-fiction books (got to keep things balanced. And setting a goal makes it more likely to happen, I think).
3. Give away 366 things, one per day - remember, this is a leap year! I've got a big rubber maid bin as my current collection site, saving things for our annual church rummage sale. After that it'll be off to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. I'm keeping track of the items on a list on the box lid. I'm only 3 shy for January. Gotta get busy.
4. Write a handwritten letter, card or postcard for every day the USPS delivers mail, which was 24 days this month. I've still got 2 to write tonight, but there's hope... If you start getting prodigious quantities of mail from me, now you'll know why. If you'd like to get some mail from me, let me know in the comments... (This goal is a spin-off of the 52 weeks 52 letters challenge (which always seemed a bit of a weenie challenge to me) and is a result of the success I had sending a postcard every day for a month last fall).
5. Find a place for everything in our house. And then put everything in said place. This is related to goal #3. We've still got too much junk in our house. I still have too much junk in our house. And the Munchkin's growing stash doesn't make things any easier. If any of this year's goals prove bigger than my determination, it will be this one.
6. Get back in slightly better shape. I know, aim high, right? If I could lose 100 pounds between now New Year's Eve that'd be great. But that might be biting off more than I'd actually get around to chewing. So I'm going for 20 pounds or so, and some increased cardio endurance. My gym membership got re-upped this week, after a nearly year-long hiatus, which followed a 10-month-pregnancy-and-post-partum hiatus. It's time.
7. Knit something real. And I'm already on this one - I signed up for a "First Sweater" knitting class at a local yarn shop. At first I thought I'd tackle a husband-sized sweater, but then I found some great orange-purple-pink yard and decided to go with something for the Munchkin instead. I'd hoped to find a new friend or two among my fellow students, but I'm a good 10-15 years older than all four of them. If I'd been looking for Saturday night drinking (and knitting) buddies, I'd have been set.
8. More date nights. We're working on it.
9. Write something every day - if not a card, a blog post here or on the church blog, in my journal, something.

Now that I'm all the way to number nine, I'm feeling like I should come up with three more to get all the way to number 12 for 2012. But I won't.
There is, however, one more thing we're really hoping for - a second child. I miscarried again at Thanksgiving. It wasn't nearly as traumatic as the first time, but dashed hopes and dreams are never fun. There's more to say about that, but I'll save it for another day.

For now, I've got to go write a couple of postcards!!

*8 Things I Fell in Love with in 2009

Rachelle at Magpie Girl has another *8 Things list - of things she fell in love with last year. Here's my list of *8 Things I fell in love with in 2009: 1. The baby I lost. 2. The house we now live in. 3. Car camping - who knew? We had a great week on the Olympic Penninsula in August. I highly recommend the Fairholme Campground on Lake Crescent. 4. Our CSA - Cloud Nine Farm. 5. The Bozeman Public Library, and my trusty library card. 6. Writing - National Novel Writing Month and National Blog Posting Month. It hasn't always been pretty, or even readable, but the discipline helped boost my creativity... 7. Having a piano in my house. 8. Thanks to Pandora, English folk musician Kate Rusby.

The Unhelpfulness of Words

My head has been full these last weeks. And my heart, too, despite the gnawing emptiness that follow me wherever I go. Sometimes that raw emptiness gets just enough ahead of me to surprise me with a surfacing so quick and so violent that there's no stopping the tears. I've been told I look a little stronger each day. I'm not sure what that means, exactly. Maybe it doesn't matter if I do. One thing I do know is that I am very sensitive to words these days. Even before we started telling family and friends and then parishioners what happened I was dreading the words people would use to try to console me. There is no consolation. We told my sister and brother-in-law back in June that I was pregnant. I wanted someone to confide in, and given that she's two states away it seemed safe enough. We told them we weren't going to let the rest of our families in on the news until August, after my first trimester, "just in case." And my sister, even then, said, "Even if you miscarry, at least you'll know you can get pregnant." She said it again when we told them I lost the baby. "At least you know you can get pregnant." True - but "at least" doesn't help much, thanks. I was pregnant this time and look what happened. Besides, getting pregnant is not the point, the point is to have a baby. And I didn't. I don't need people to try to dismiss the grief I'm feeling, or to make it better, because that's not possible. Just acknowledge it. Say you're sorry. Say you don't know what to say and then LISTEN for God's sake. Of course unhelpful words come from all directions lately. It's Vacation Bible School week here at Christ the King in Bozeman. Last week a mom came into the office with her three year old daughter, and another not quite a year old, to fill out a registration form. She asked me, "Do you have kids?" And I answered quickly, "No." She didn't let it stop there, "Oh, so you can go out to dinner or go see a movie whenever you want and..." I could have throttled her. Or made her feel like shit, which was tempting. I refrained from asking her if she'd like to trade her two beautiful girls for the freedom to eat out whenever she wants to. To tell her just how much I'd give up not to be living in the realm of statistics where "these things just happen." I know she had no idea, but I think it would do everyone some good not to assume that the facts and circumstances of others' lives are necessarily the facts and circumstances of their choosing. Fortunately, not all words have proven unhlepful. I've found, and been sent, lots of great writing by other women, and a few men, who have experienced something similar. One blog in particular has been helpful to me, even though the author went through something I can only imagine: the stillbirth of her first child. The Happy Sad Mama writes about the hurtful encounter with someone she thought would bring her comfort:

The tears started before she spoke, tears of appreciation that soon turned bitter at her words to me, uttered with a soft hand stroking my hair, "It will be allright. Everything is going to be allright."

All right? EVERYTHING?

"It is not all right. My baby girl is gone, how can that ever be all right?"

I do not remember her response, if there even was one. And I write here not in dismay at this person, because now I can see with complete clarity that she was doing everything she could to try to help me, but she just didn't know what to say. The emotion I seek to extract here is not anger towards a person, but this pervasive feeling that we, the bereaved, feel when someone who we trusted and care about comes out and says the wrong thing. It has happened to us all. Everyone has someone who has said something that may not have been outright hurtful, but has made our heart sink into our stomach, because here was someone we hoped would say our baby's name, and hold our hand while we cried, and all they can stomach is to try to fix it with one simple sentence.

Nobody knows what to do, nobody. Nobody knows what to say. We are all speechless in the face of loss, of grief, and especially when birth and death, life's two greatest mysteries, intertwine. We the bereaved have all due respect for this not-knowing what to do. But say it, say it. Know not what to do, be speechless with your thoughts, and say so. Let us grieve, let us grieve. It is the only way out, it is the only way up. We must grieve in order to grow, and we must grow in order to live.

Amen, sister.

And then I wasn't

I was pregnant. And then I wasn't. Two weeks ago today my husband and I headed to my first pre-natal appointment, half-way through the ninth week of our first pregnancy adventure. Due to schedule constraints this first appointment came a couple of weeks sooner in my pregnancy than my doctor normally sees pregnant patients, which was just fine with us. We had looked forward to this appointment for weeks already, feeling that seeing my doctor would somehow make it more "official," paving the way for us to share the good news with family in August, then with friends and the congregation. Everything seemed fine: plenty of first trimester symptons of the healthy and the unpleasant varieties, and plenty of excitement and hopes and dreams of (finally!) being pregnant and anticipating parenthood. We couldn't hear baby's heart beat on the Doppler, though Dr W wasn't worried about it - "it's still so early," she reminded us. She could just see baby on their in-office ultrasound, and sent us home with smiles, joy, and another appointment scheduled 4 weeks out. Two days later, I slept in on a lazy Saturday morning, but quickly discovered that things were not okay: blood where there should be no blood. I headed downstairs and told my unsuspecting husband, through a faucet of tears, that we needed to call the doctor. The office staff told us to go to the Emergency Room and that they'd fax over any needed records. The short drive to the hospital, only a few miles away, felt like a hundred, as we held hands and cried and made nervous jokes, not wanting to jump to conclusions. When we arrived, I headed inside while he parked the car, and the waiting began. After the physical exam (thank God for good ER docs), we were cautiously optimistic. "Maybe I'm just a paranoid first time pregnant lady," I said. "Neurotic like me. Let's hope so," the doctor replied with a smile. After another hour-plus which felt like ten, they wheeled me down for an ultrasound. The ultrasound tech was very nice, but the bearer of bad news, "I'm sorry, but I don't see a heart beat. I'm so sorry. And the baby is smaller than it should be for almost nine weeks. It looks like growth stopped at about six weeks," she told us. Our hands gripped each other's even tighter, I thought I would be sick, and my heart broke inside my chest. I have no idea how long it will take to mend. Last week was a living nightmare. After two doctors visits on Monday - one with my regular doctor and one with an OB/GYN I'd never previously met, we decided on the pharmaceutical option to help my body do what needed to be done. Who knew it could take so long. It wasn't pretty or fun, but after a week+, most of the physical ordeal is over, and my body no longer thinks it's pregnant. The emotional ordeal continues. Unfortunately, too many people who don't know what to say (because there is nothing to say, except "I'm sorry," or as my best friend from sem put it "Dammit!") end up saying things that not only don't help, but hurt. It is a real struggle to remember that people are trying to be helpful when all I want to do is scream and say "my baby died, and it's not okay!" I have found some soul sisters online, and in the book the OB gave me - people who have put into words the raw emotion so close to the surface in me. Considering the statistics on miscarriage/pregnancy loss, it's amazing how little it's actually talked about. At the same time, I'm not that surprised - our "fix-it and forget-it" culture doesn't do grief very well, and giving people the time and space they need to mourn is especially difficult when we have such a low tolerance for pain, maybe even more so when it is someone else's pain and we are helpless to change it. I am learning again it is okay not to be okay.