Warmth in the Cold

Friday afternoon I weeded the front garden where Elise's rose bush is. There are only a few of her daffodils braving the erratic spring so far, but I'm always heartened when I spot another coming up. And they are brave: this morning it is 15 (15!) degrees out and snowing. On April 20th!

This morning I was lying in bed with one eye open, drifting in and out of dreams, when Felix came up to me in his blue footy pajamas. "I will hand you your glasses, Mommy," he said as he gripped them, lenses and all, with his oatmeal-sticky hands.

His face is right at eye level when I'm lying in bed. He pretended to be a spider and tickled my face by "crawling" his fingers up my cheeks. Then he decided my mouth was a fun toy: he wiggled his index finger on the inside of my cheek, fascinated by its smooth wetness. He giggled and giggled as I nibbled on his fingers with my front teeth like they were corn on the cob. He laughed as he pushed on my chin and the top of my head to close my mouth, then demanded I open up again.

Then he climbed up the bed and lay on my back like a baby koala. Our dog Ghenki, seeing he'd vacated her morning greeting spot next to the bed, came over and hopped her front paws on the edge. She licked and licked my hand, as she has always done and always will no matter how many times I say "no" (so I've almost given up after eight years), and I hugged her head to me and patted her back.

What a great way to wake up.

Lightness

This is a picture I took of Felix at the end of a Tuesday we spent together. He likes these rainbow-colored gloves because he can put them on all by himself. Before bedtime, he stood brushing his teeth with one rainbow hand while waving at the mirror with the other.

We have Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons together, and today I was determined to just enjoy him and not worry about meeting time deadlines. These days Felix gets really upset when it's time to stop playing--get off the swing, park the Thomas trains, stop riding his bike--so we can get to the store /make dinner /get ready for bed. Even if we warn him ahead of time, he still mourns in his high-pitched wail when the fun is ending.

I can't blame him. How much do we tell ourselves to enjoy the moment? So I pushed him on the swing today for well over an hour, then we bought him a new bike with training wheels, his first. He didn't ask for one. He just had such a ball trying out the next-door neighbor's, and loves riding his tricycle so much that he pedals all the way to the library and back, which I think is over 1/2 mile round trip, that we wanted to see him on a bicycle. He rode it over to the neighbors' and again we spent as much time having fun as he wanted.

It was soothing for me. I was able to rest my spinning mind just hanging out with him. I started reading Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now, and it really resounds with me. I still am figuring out how to have Elise as a part of my life without letting the pain of losing her define me. I know her death has changed me, and in many ways for the better. But I want to access the peace I know is in me, bring it to the surface again and have it always at hand, just like she is always with me in everything I do.

Thaw

The sun is out in brilliance this morning, melting the snow with a vengeance. Felix cheerfully put on his swimsuit and clothes for his swimming lesson this morning, even though he was absorbed in playing with his Thomas trains. Thank goodness for small favors.

Dan made me a wonderful birthday dinner with ribeye steak, mashed potatoes, asparagus (it's asparagus season!) and box brownies complete with a candle. I got e-mail birthday greetings, phone messages, and even a card from my sister Monica that arrived right on my birthday. She called this morning too.

Spring will come in its own time. This being Montana, more snow will fall in the coming weeks, but Elise's daffodils are poking their green spears through the mud.

Surrender

Fly, Fly
Little wing
Fly beyond imagining
The softest cloud, the whitest dove
Upon the wind of heaven's love

Past the planets and the stars
Leave this lonely world of ours
Escape the sorrow and the pain
and fly again.

Fly, Fly
Precious one
Your endless journey has begun
Take your gentle happiness
Far too beautiful for this
Cross over to the other shore
There is peace forevermore
But hold this memory, bittersweet
Until we meet

Fly, Fly
Do not fear
Don't waste a breath, don't shed a tear
Your heart is pure, your soul is free
Be on your way, don't wait for me
Above the universe you'll climb
On beyond the hands of time
The moon will rise, the sun will set
But I won't forget


Fly, Fly
Little wing
Fly where only angels sing
Fly away, the time is right
Go now, find the light

--Celine Dion


I meditated almost two hours this morning. I cried during much of it. Today is my birthday. I asked for healing and acceptance in my meditation. I bought a bunch of tulips, and daffodils, and a little flowering campanula plant with purple blossoms.

There is a thick blanket of snow outside, and snow still falls. But the sky is growing brighter, I heard a robin's chirp, and the nuthatch visited my feeder again.

Tests and Omens

This morning I had my hair cut, then visited the hospital phlebotomy lab for a blood test. I'm taking the "Clomid Challenge."

I assume the terminology refers to something medical--I haven't bothered to look it up yet--but that name makes it sound like I myself am being challenged. It feels that way too.

My cycle started Thursday. On a side note, as Felix's tumbling class got underway I slipped out to a clothing store I like nearby and happened to buy a RED pajama top and a pair of fleecy, fuzzy RED flip-flops, totally unconsciously, as if the newly pubescent girl inside me were celebrating her initiation into womanhood or something.

Anyway, my period started Thursday, so I called the OB to get some fertility drugs. On Friday I had an ultrasound to make sure I had no cysts on my ovaries. They were fine. I was given directions and prescriptions for blood tests on days 3 and 10, taking Clomid days 5 through 9, testing my urine for signs of LH hormone that indicates when I will ovulate, etc, etc.,etc. To give us a better chance of conceiving, they will also do an insemination.

"What a nuisance," Dan said. But I still appreciate that it gives me a sense of control, even if it's illusory.

So today I got my first blood test. As the phlebotomist was finishing up, a music-box lullaby played over the loudspeaker. "Awww, a baby was just born," she said with a smile. They play the lullaby whenever there's a new arrival in Labor and Delivery. I thought, I wonder if they played it when Elise was born.

And I thought, I am going to take the timing of that song as a good omen.

Still Here

Felix had his Tuesday morning swim lesson today. Most of the children in the class have a younger sibling, so Elise's absence looms as I sit around the pool with the other mothers. Last time when I sat near 3 others as they talked about their multiple children, I read a book and discreetly stuck my index finger into the ear that faced them.

One of the women lost a 20-week old baby last summer and is 21 weeks pregnant. Her son is in Felix's swim group and is about the same age as Felix. I've spoken a little bit to her about the pain of Elise's death, thinking she could probably relate, but she never talks about the baby who died, maybe because it died from complications of Trisomy 13. I don't even know if it was a boy or a girl.

This morning the first thing she told me and another woman with a 3-year-old daughter and 6-month old son on her lap was that at her ultrasound, she found out that this baby was a girl. I was genuinely happy for her, and happy that the baby is all right. She and the other mother went on to chat about the age differences between their children, what a challenge it is with two little ones, etc. etc. etc. I turned away to watch Felix and discreetly stuck an index finger in my ear.

Then I went into the empty women's locker room and said out loud, "Elise, you are still our daughter, and you are still Felix's little sister. Others have forgotten you, but you will always be our baby." Later I said out loud again, "Elise, we can only see what's in front of our faces, and sometimes we even miss that. Our world here is so limited, we only acknowledge or speak about those who are here with us in our tiny little plane of existence. I know you are with me even when these poor eyes can't see you."

Changing Into Wine

Monday afternoon, I found out that a very sweet couple, friends from the university who are generous, lighthearted and of course, love children, lost their baby at 25 weeks of pregnancy. Her name was Isabella Ann. Her heart stopped beating, so delivery was induced, and she was born the night of March 9th.

Her mother, my friend Barbara, called last night after I'd left a phone message and some flowers. Just 2 weeks earlier, she had called me after we hadn't seen each other for a couple of months. She was saying her husband Robert happened to be in Japan, and recommended a book she'd been reading called Spirit Babies.

When we spoke last night, she related all sorts of meaningful coincidences with Isabella's death: that she'd been reading this book avidly, which talks about connecting with the baby you are trying to conceive, the one you are pregnant with, and even the ones you've lost; that she never quite brought herself to think she was "out of the woods" even when her doctor assured her that she could be more at ease now that she was past the first trimester; that Robert arrived home from weeks in Japan that Friday, and they went to the hospital the next day to find that Isabella's heart was no longer beating.

I'd been struggling with vulnerability again, not wanting to see another friend's new daughter, feeling like every pregnant woman or ones with second babies were in my face. I go into Victoria's Secret on a Wednesday noon, I'm the only customer in the store, a hugely pregnant woman walks in. I wanted to throw the bra and panties I'd been carrying at her and stomp out the door. But today I had a massage with a woman who'd been treating me since Elise died, and she gently told me to let "the story" go, the rational side of me that kept searching for reasons. She didn't say what kind of reasons, but my thought was about the reasons for Elise's death, for Isabella's death, for why we haven't had another baby, why others get to have theirs with them.

When I got up from the massage table, the bitterness had evaporated. This evening I picked up a book of Rilke's prose and poetry and opened it to a random page, only to come across this from The Sonnets to Orpheus:


Silent friend of many distances, feel

how your breath enlarges all of space.

Let your presence ring out like a bell

into the night. What feeds upon your face



grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.

Move through transformation, out and in.

What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?

If drinking is bitter, change yourself into wine.



In this immeasurable darkness, be the power

that rounds your senses in their magic ring,

the sense of their mysterious encounter.



And if the earthly no longer knows your name,

whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing.

To the flashing water say: I am.