Deep Thoughts – Page 18

J. Michael Flynn

My father-in-law’s name has always been a bit of a mystery. If you were introduced to him, he’d firmly shake your hand and tell you he was Michael. My grandmother-in-law would usually add some warning about never naming an Irish child Michael. But on his passport (and magazine subscriptions), he was actually John Michael Flynn. No one I’ve ever met has ever called him John.

Mike was raised in Long Island — the youngest of three children. His father was an orphan. His sister died shortly before Adam and I were married. He idolized his older brother Jimmy who was the best man at his wedding. His brother had attempted suicide when they were both young men — probably about the age Adam and I are now. Jimmy’s suicide attempt failed, but cost him his ability to function. He died 6 years ago in the nursing home where that same grandmother-in-law worked as a nurse until she retired. Michael used to cry when I sang “Red River Valley” — it had been Jimmy’s favorite song.

During Vietnam, Michael served as an airplane mechanic for the air force. I think it was there that he got his taste for international travel. He returned to the New York and attended college on (I presume) the GI bill. While at college, he met a sweet young thing studying English and Education. They married, graduated, and bought a house in upstate New York. It was purchased for the big bay window and took what little money they had as they attempted to make it habitable. Any time I complain about commuting or driving any distance, I hear about the 9 hours that stood between Mike and Laureen and Laur’s parents in Long Island.

Michael and Laureen’s first child was a girl named Kietha. She was born too early for the technology of the time to save her, and she died very shortly thereafter. Every Christmas, Adam and I hang a small brass angel on the Christmas tree and remember the sister he never knew.

Not too long afterwards, Mike discovered he had testicular cancer. To pass along his own particular wisdom: “If your balls feel like a walnut, something’s wrong.” Surgery successfully removed the cancerous testicle, and spawned a favorite topic for family jokes for the next 35 years or so. Rarely did a gathering pass without someone (usually Peter) getting a good joke in about Michael and his one ball. Soon after the surgery, Mike and Laureen discovered that, happily, everything still worked.

Peter was born on December 10th, 1974. He was also born very premature, but in the years between he and Kietha, medical technology had discovered a way to provide oxygen to tiny newborn lungs. Adam, also born extremely early, arrived two years later at a hospital in Albany. His arrival was difficult enough to make sure that he would have no younger siblings.

When you sit at a table and hear the stories of this time, Mike and Laureen sound very happy, very in love, and very triumphant over their challenges. You’ll hear how the baby boys fattened right up on their mother’s milk, and how she made so much she could share with the other preemies. You’ll hear about Peter’s first words welcoming his brother home, “Dat my baby!” You’ll hear how they made do on the little they had and felt it was bountiful. You’ll likely also hear how both boys were perfect in every way, down to the last red-gold curl.

Michael was working as a technical salesman at the time. Laureen had been a teacher of English, but stopped teaching when the boys were born. When Adam was about two, Michael got the opportunity to go to Saudi Arabia with his young family and work with the Arab-American Oil Company (Aramco). They promptly decamped and moved halfway across the globe, where they would spend the next 20 years of their life.

Mike’s time in Saudi Arabia was happy. They took in lonely soldiers during the Gulf War. The house abounded in pets — dogs and lizards and birds and cats. Mike and his sons would walk the dogs together in the morning and talk. They raced boats in the streets during infrequent Saudi rains. Mike worked 5 minutes from the house, and would come home on his lunch break to share the meal with his family. Mornings and evenings were spent smoking on the back porch, talking about history, philosophy or the best way to manufacture a still for the highest quality homebrew. (Michael could and would give you a dissertation on the best ways to manufacture hooch, along with guidelines on the risks and rewards.)

Michael was a man of great curiosity. He loved to read books, especially about history. An archetypal view of Michael is him sitting at a table with an old printing of a book in front of him. The book sprouts sticky notes from every page. His glasses lay forgotten beside his pen, and he will likely lose both of them and spend the next 20 minutes trying to find them. Mike loved every period of western history, from the Knights Templar through to the Cold War. He took a particular delight in military history. He published articles on a diverse range of obscure historical points. At the time of his death, he was working on an article on Stalin.

His interest was not merely academic. He was also interested in the practical applications of what he studied. It’s amazing neither he nor his sons lost any fingers based on the stories one hears about firecrackers, live wires, black power experiments and blast furnaces. My favorite of these is a trick Mike played on his son Peter. Mike took a firecracker and placed it in the middle of a cigarette. He lit one end of the cigarette, placed it outside Peter’s window, and hurried to find himself an excellent alibi in another part of the house. Pete, of course, was rather startled by the explosion, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out who to blame. I can almost hear Mike laughing now.

Mike was a good father. He spent a lot of time with his sons and was very fond of them. He played games with them, talked with them, fished with them and explored the world with them. He called them Idiot Stick (Peter) and Dwarf (Adam), and the nicknames were infused with mischievous affection. Mike was a wonderful grandfather. He wrote stories with his grandsons, took them on adventures, patiently played games with them, sang them “Muleskinner Blues”, sent them notes from the places he would visit and frequently remarked on how exceptional and wonderful he found them.

Mike didnt let being sick get in the way of fishing — Mike didn't let being sick get in the way of fishing

Not long after Mike and Laureen returned from Saudi Arabia to the cold winters of Rhode Island, Michael got sick with stomach cancer. He had surgery which removed most of his stomach, followed by radiation. Although his cancer never reoccurred and he lived for four years after that point, he never fully recovered. His weight plummeted by a third, and he vacillated between nearly-normal and sick as a dog. He was miserable and frustrated by his inability to do the things he loved, but he was still loving, curious and funny. Mike and Laureen moved to Atlanta to be near Peter, Jennifer and Alec (and to get away from New England winters). No matter how sick he was, he could never sit still. Even on his worst days he would run to the grocery store twice, the hardware store once, and strike up a friendship with the postman.

Since the 4 am phone call telling us he was gone, I’ve struggled to find the words to encapsulate the man. The stories are many and funny, but none of them tells you the most important things about him. Michael was a man of energy, passion, curiosity, temper and humor. He was always happy to help with whatever you asked of him. He made friends easily with everyone he encountered. He never passed up an opportunity to tell you he loved you and was proud of you. He had an Irish temperament, to go with his fair skin, red hair and blue eyes, but never let his temper get in the way of making sure you knew where you stood with him. On the last day, he was a man who left this world with no word of love unsaid.

We love you too, Mike.

Sickness and health

My husband’s father has been sick for about 4 years now. I think it was roughly 4 years this month that he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He had surgery and radiation treatment. They believe they got all the cancer.

Unfortunately, they also got the parts of his digestive system that process food.

You might have noticed that food is a rather important part of being alive and healthy.

Mike nearly died around the time Grey was born.

See what I mean? This was Mike a few weeks after Grey was born.

Over the next three years he has swung up and down. During the good times he was nearly back to fighting fit — maybe 120 pounds with energy. He went camping and fishing and played with his grandsons.

During the bad times, his weight drops under 100 pounds. (Note: he’s built roughly along the same lines as my husband — maybe broader in the shoulder — and weighs 30 – 50 pounds less.)

When he gets sick, and none of us have figured out what makes that happen, he can’t eat. What he tries to eat, he throws up, or comes through undigested. (Yeah, it’s fun to live through too.) His weight drops. He gets weak. He gets confused. The doctors haven’t been helpful. Then he’ll try something new. (Dear God, what have they not tried? They’ve tried enzymes and acupuncture and careful diets and chinese herbs.) And then he’ll get better. He’ll gain weight. His energy will return. He’ll sleep better. And that will last for a while and then he’ll get worse again.

But the betters never quite get back to all the way good. He has no reserves of energy, fat, strength, nutrients. He is incredibly vulnerable to anything. And right now, he is on a very low low.

They are putting him in the hospital today. My mother in law is the most positive, cheerful, strong person you’ll ever meet. She bounces back if she ever falls, and she rarely falls. She was in tears this morning. She is exhausted by worry and nursing. Four years of this would wear anyone down. It’s amazing she doesn’t lose hope of a regular life with him. But today her energy is spent, too.

I hope, of course, that this is just one more spin of the yo-yo. That in a couple days he’ll find some new food he can eat. (Fried calamari! It has 9 grams of protein! You never know what the food du jour is. For a while it was eggs poached in vinegar.) That he’ll have time yet to teach his grandsons to spit and curse.

But I’m afraid. I’m working on seeing if I can get my husband tickets down to be with his mother and father. I love my father in law. There isn’t anything left unsaid between us all, but you can never get enough time with the people you love.

My truant pen

In many ways it’s ironic that I’m such a happy denizen of the internet. I have this great and passionate love affair with paper and pen. For example, the other day my husband and I went on a date to Borders. (What? You’ve probably done the same thing.) While there, I purchased a gift for my 16 year old self. It’s a black leather journal embossed with a Celtic knot. 16-year-old-me went nuts over it, and promptly began writing poetry about how very alone I am, interspersed with overwrought descriptions of rain. (What can I say? I was raised in the Northwest!) You think that I started writing when blogs were invented? Hardly. I just switched from paper journals to blogs.

In some ways I prefer blogs. Paper journals never talked back.

In other ways, I miss the beauty and tactile fulfillment of paper and pen. There is an intense satisfaction to page after page of imprinted Bic writing in my even, if unlovely hand. The feel of a journal, with secrets, in your hand, lends your words a feeling of weight. You build, literally, upon the pages of the past.

I remember I always had problems when writing my journals with audience. I always wrote TO people. With a journal, I just never knew who those people were, although I pondered. My unthought-of children? My future self? My biographers? Now I know. I write to YOU.

There is a pen at the top of this blog. This is not a coincidence. It is an expression of my fancy and fantasy. I will likely now never write anything of great consequence with a pen. It is far too slow compared to the flying dance my fingers do over the keyboard. But I dream of ink, of creamy blank paper, and of the filling of space with words of import.

24 Notes

I play trumpet. I’ve played in symphony orchestras, brass quintets, pep bands, pit orchestras, regular bands, church… pretty much everything but jazz (I have no swing). At some point during my early playing life, I was asked to play taps at a funeral. I’m not really sure what my first funeral was. Was it Heath’s? That boy who thought he could beat a logging truck on his 4 wheeler? Was it Grandma Finley’s? Some other misty memory of standing on a hillside in sunlight? I’m no longer sure.

For a while in high school, I thought I could make a little extra money on the side by playing taps for veteran’s funerals. I contacted the funeral home to let them know I was available, and read the obituaries to see if any veterans had died lately.

Then I actually got called upon to play a funeral. Maybe it was Heath’s. I remember his best. I don’t recall if he was actually in the army. I think so. He got drunk and drove his truck into a lake and didn’t make it back out again. This couldn’t have been more than a year or so after graduation. He was, I think, in my sister’s class. It took them a while to find his body. I stood across the grave from his brother and girlfriend, and watched their faces during the service.

Taps always comes last.

I hate getting paid for funerals. I remember that they paid me $40 for that funeral. Two crisp twenties. It seemed like blood money.

During my youth I played mostly in the funerals of those I knew. My great-grandmother. My grandfather. The old codger at the American Legion. Heath. I still volunteer my services when folks I know die. Vickie — so young. Theron Lemly — not young at all.

When I moved to Massachusetts, I signed up with an organization called Bugles Across America. The basic idea is this: any service person who has served their country deserves a real live bugler at their funeral — not a CD player or MP3 player. We get requests to play taps at graveside services, and we show up and play. It has been a fascinating and rewarding way of volunteering.

One of the remarkable things to me about this is just how DIFFERENT each service is. Many of the services I have played have been for aged WWII vets. Those feel different. There is sadness and loss, but the grief is muted. At the service I played yesterday, the family seemed to be having a grand time getting together and chatting. I remember distinctly the service of a greatly decorated Chinese-American veteran, in the Mt. Auburn cemetery in spring. They turned away from the casket when it was lowered, so as not to watch. His grandson stood tall and strong with fierce tears in his eyes. They gave me a red envelope with money and a piece of candy — so I would take away good luck from the funeral.

I remember a service on one of the most glorious days of early summer with a stunningly blue sky. I was playing hookie from work to make it. I hung out with the grave diggers and testosterone-laden, big-truck-driving Marine color guard for nearly an hour in the bright sunlight. The transformation when the hearse pulled in and the grave diggers disappear (I always think of how little they have changed since Shakespeare portrayed them) and the color guard goes all rigid is amazing.

I remember a service where I played up on a hill and never actually spoke to any member of the funeral party.

The saddest of the funerals I have played for them was for an active duty army officer on leave from Iraq. He committed suicide. It was last winter around this time. The snow was thick and deep and the world was caught in iron bars. The army folks vetted me about 3000% more than usual. (Apparently the last active duty funeral they had, their MP3 player malfunctioned to the displeasure of an attending general.) They were afraid I was a protester sneaking in to screw up the funeral. The patriot guard (the intimidating folks with motorcycles who fend off the nutjobs from that Baptist church) was there in full intimidation mode. They had actually plowed a path for me to the flagpole where I stood to play. I was too far away to hear the service, but not so far I couldn’t see the destitution on the faces of his family. I was afraid that one person would throw themselves into the grave with him. He had a 21 gun salute, too.

Taps is 24 notes. Not hard to play. It’s very simple. It’s also the part of every funeral where the stoics start crying. As the last part of the funeral, it truly marks the end. If that space between death and interment is a halfway point between life and death, the tape on the very last space of being runs out with the 24th note. The hardest part of taps is not crying yourself.

I do not volunteer as often as I might wish. Most of the requests are a bit far for me to get to. I have a full time job and two little boys. There’s often not a ton of warning. But when I do play, it is an honor and a privilege.

What I want

One of the great tensions of being a person is finding balance. I have so many things I need to balance with a finite set of resources: who I am as a mother, a wife, an employee, a church member, a homeowner, a citizen. Most of these identities make demands of my time and energy. It is terribly easy to get wrapped up in those concentric circles of need and not create the space at the center that is none of those things — that person who is me. Without knowing who I am and taking care of my core, all those offshoots of my energy suffer. They need a strong, centered, joyful person in order to thrive.

But it IS hard. There are two ways I’m bad at it, and if they appear to conflict, well, maybe they do. The first problem I have is guilt. It’s hard for me to do things for me, that I enjoy, without feeling guilty for not spending that energy elsewhere. Last night, for example, I thoroughly enjoyed reading a novel. Hardly high crimes and misdemeanors. But I still feel like I should make up for this transgression in some way — work extra hard today or apologize or something. I certainly don’t feel like I have the right to read another novel this week (which I’m dying to do!) The best way I have around this is to turn a pleasure into an obligation. But the problem is that I have obligations enough. I actually enjoy (looks at list above) all of my obligations. I love being a mother. I am a delightedly happy wife. As much as is possible, I enjoy my job. I like going to church. I get satisfaction out of a newly painted wall. I take pride in being an informed citizen and exercising my responsibilities as such. It’s not that my obligations are onerous, it’s that they are tiring. But guilt is tiring, too. The time I take to renew my spirits carries a cost that it shouldn’t — a counter-productive cost at that.

The second hard thing is to really figure out what *I* want. That’s pretty easy on the scale of an evening. Heck, you can pretty much lay money that on any given evening I would enjoy doing one of the following:
*reading a book (preferably in the bathtub, especially in winter)
*watching a baseball game
*working on crafty/papery things
*goofing off online
*playing games with friends (anyone want to come play Agricola with me?)
*playing video games

There are maybe, uh, 5 nights a year I don’t want to do any of those things, and none of those nights coincide with Red Sox games.

But in a longer span context, it’s harder. What do I want to do with my career? What about continuing education? Do I ever want to go back for a graduate degree? (My problem there is that I’m not well suited to pursue my passionate hobbies — no Latin — and a graduate degree in those areas would be decidedly un-useful. But fun. I loved what I got to do in pursuit of my BA.) What sort of activities would I want to do to be healthy and active? If I had the desire and commitment to pursue a dream, I could doubtless make it happen. I just don’t know what dream that is.

This is all very long background for a revelation that’s been creeping up on me lately. The revelation is small and simple. Perhaps even anticlimactic.

I want to learn how to take good photographs.

(Waits for howls of astonishment and amazement from the crowd.)

You see, I really enjoy doing … well, this. I like to write. I think I would like to write fiction too, but I find that such a big bite to chew that I never seem well-rested enough, ready enough, prepared enough, with time enough to tackle it. But this informal, first-person, day-to-day writing and the sense of community and communication it brings are pleasant and sustainable. I write this for me, although I need the sense of audience in order to find my voice and to capture the urgency and need to report in.

But a truth I have learned about blogging is that if the words are the peanut butter, pictures are the chocolate. A well captured, well chosen picture illuminates the idea. I take literally hundreds of pictures. I took 300 this month. All of them were taken with my (quite nice for what it is) $200 point and shoot snapshot camera. I have some idea how much I don’t know about photography: shutter speed, aperture, focus, lighting, framing… there are a thousand things that go into taking a photograph that I know exist to be known, but that I do not know. These days, there are about two thousand after the photograph has been taken, but one thing at a time.

I could do something about this. I could decide to become a competent photographer. What stands in my way? Well, I’d like to take a course in it. I have taken no courses whatsoever since I graduated college. But it needn’t even be a long course. A few evenings. A long weekend. I suppose a book would do as well, but at this point in my life I think the commitment of a course would do better.

But then there’s the sticky part — the camera. Some of my friends and loved ones have real cameras. I am rather aware that they are what you might call a pretty penny. And to learn about all those fancy words above, you need a camera with, like, lenses and more than two settings.

Thus we come back to guilt. I would have a hard time justifying either the time (for classes and practicing what I’ve learned) or the expense (for classes and hardware). Justifying both seems downright greedy — but the one isn’t much good without the other. It seems like I should be happy with my point and shoot and my little blog and the myriad other things I need to do. But I so rarely can articulate what I want on any grander scale than this week or smaller scale than “at the end, looking back” that I feel as though I should take this impulse and run with it.

Please mom, learn how to take better pictures!

Euphoria

I’ve been pretty euphoric the last week or so. I have reasons for it. I was just blessed with a healthy, sweet, handsome, perfect baby boy. I have physically recovered from the birth in what I consider to be record time. I’m frankly stunned that I feel as great as I do. Other than a certain paunch, not even I can tell that I gave birth less than two weeks ago. My eldest son has dealt with the transition phenomenally. He wants extra hugs and attention, but that I can handle. He clearly fell in love with his brother just as quickly as the rest of us did.

My choice for president won in a spine-tingling fashion earlier in the week and the air feels full of hope that this time it really will be different. The tarnish of cynicism has been polished off our souls — just a bit right now. It feels epic, or at least as though it might be epic.

My husband is home and my family is around us and I have enough of everything I need and everything I want. Thanks to the inlaw phenomenon and sleeping in until 11, I even have enough sleep.

The problems of the world — the economy, the war in the Congo, the sorrows of humanity — they all seem far away from me now.

I’m even doing a pretty good job of not borrowing trouble about how much harder this will all be next week when my support structure poofs away into the ether.

It’s a wonderful time for me. I just want to take the time to say that now. I am more than free with complaints when things are not completely perfect. I should take the time to be deeply grateful and acknowledge it when things actually are as close to perfect as they come.

Funeral baked meats

This weekend was overlaid with the patina of soft-grief, of the loss of a friend who has been sick for a very long time. I had a lot of interaction with those who were strongly affected and a lot of “touches” with the funeral preparations, so I ended up spending a good bit of time thinking about funerals, death, and comforting the young in a rather concrete way — but distant enough from me that I could bear to think about it.

The woman who died, Lynda, had been very ill for about 2 years. She’d had cancer for near 30, but it was sort of a chronic cancer. Every once in a while she’d get chemo or surgery to remove some tumors, but most of the time she was pretty healthy. They were slow-growing and while not exactly benign, they weren’t doing a lot. Then two years ago, the cancer changed and got much more aggressive. She never managed to fully recover or get back on even footing. The doctors put in a stent — she was getting fed entirely through IV — and that got infected and in the end, it was the infection that did her in. They simply could not clear it up, so she’d go home for a week and it would re-ravage her and she’d head back to the hospital… over and over and over again. It became clear that she was losing ground in the fight, but she had two children — a 20-something young man and a 17 year old girl. So she kept fighting. Once she gave up the fight, once she relinquished and admitted that she was done, she died within two days. It was her will that had been holding her, and once it turned from the task, her body gave up easily.

Anyway, I think that 4 or 5 years ago, I would’ve been looking at this from her daughter’s point of view. I would’ve been thinking how horrible it was to lose a mother and the huge gap that would create. How lonely it must be. And how many practical things will be difficult… can they keep the house she grew up in? (Her parents were divorced.) Is there a chance she’d have to change school districts? Who will help her with her college applications? Who will go prom-dress shopping with her? When a wedding comes around, how badly will she miss her mother?

I’m thinking of those things too. But for me now, I see this from Lynda’s point of view. How unready I would be to die now. I’m not wildly afraid of death — it comes for us all and I truly believe that while death is the end of what we can know from where we stand now, I do not believe it is the end. For me, I am less afraid of death. But I am terrified to leave behind those I would leave behind. My sons! My husband! I, too, would fight against leaving them with all the strength I could muster.

My mother told me not long ago that she felt much freer now. With all her children well-launched into their adult lives, while parting would be sad and we would miss her greatly, we are all standing on our own. I really understand her point of view. Most of my family has been thoughtful enough to die in the fullness of time, after having completed the tasks to which they set their hands and with few regrets. (My grandmother’s only regret is that she’s STILL HERE.) I am not at all afraid of that. But I cannot bear to think of leaving now.

And then there’s the little boy and the practical aspects. I really wanted to go to the reception-thingy. (Wake? I dunno — it seems like a very New England thing to me. You make the bereaved stand in a line and hear for three hours straight “I’m sorry your mom died.” I’m surprised the Geneva conventions haven’t outlawed this practice.) Mostly I wanted to go because I wanted to give the daughter big hugs and tell her I was there for her when she was ready. The issue was that I had sole custody of a Mr. Greypants. Worse, it was the Napless variety of the Greypants.

So I got out the neat photo-album scrapbook from Grey’s baby shower. (He is in a “loves looking at pictures of baby Grey” phase.) I showed him my belly and how I was pregnant with him, just like I was pregnant now with baby-brother. I showed him the picture of Lynda and I together. I explained that she had left (I did use the word die), and that her family and friends were very sad because they would miss her. I told him we were going to see her family and friends and give them big hugs to make them feel better. I told him we needed to be very polite and quiet.

And I put him in the car and took him to the wake. He stood very nicely and politely in line until it was our turn to express our condolences. He *did* give big, comforting 3-year-old hugs to the bereaved. And then I sat with the other church-mothers (mostly the moms of my teens) and we talked about Lynda and the kids. I critically failed my “be welcoming to other people” roll, though, I realized on my way out. It can be so nice to sit and talk with your friends that you forget to talk with the people who don’t have as many folks to talk to. May I be forgiven for it.

Tonight is the funeral. (Very fast!) Part of the unspoken role of the church is to provide snacks to the mourners afterwards. I remember that when my grandfather died — after a very long and protracted Alzheimers-decline — the church my grandmother attended put on quite the spread for us. It was especially kind as none of them would have known my grandfather when he could, you know, talk. The funeral baked meats and funeral feast stretch back into the mists of time. If memory serves, Gilgamesh had a funeral feast. And that story is one of the first ever written down. They’ve changed over time of course. But it is a sacred obligation, a continuation of a story, a link to our history and tradition, and a very real and present comfort in a time of tears.

Somehow it seemed wrong that I should take up this sacred burden and acquit it with funfetti cupcakes, but by then I was really, really, really tired. I thought about a tea ring (which seemed to me like an appropriate funeral-food), but weariness won out over symbolism. I do wish that I’d had frosting other than the pink stuff I used for the Patrick cake.

Lynda wouldn’t mind.

I’m a little sad that I’m far too pregnant to play for this funeral. Much of the time I end up getting called on in my role as a trumpeter for funerals. I play “Lord of the Dance” and taps. (Lord of the Dance is apparently my church’s gold-standard for funeral music. It pretty much always shows up. For the record, I prefer “How Great Thou Art”, “Abide With Me” and some of the evening hymns. Also, I’d like the funeral to happen before I die so I can enjoy it and plan it out properly.)

I wish I had a good way to tie this up — to talk about the Christian confidence in redemption. In our church we do not pray for the dead, for they are the care of God. We pray for the living who are left behind. I truly have full faith and confidence that Lynda is where she belongs. I pray for the rest of us wisdom to know how to reach out and comfort and support those who will miss her every day for the rest of their lives.

The babies we never had

So most of you who know me know that I had two miscarriages between Grey and this pregnancy. Apparently October 15th was Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I think I did pretty well dealing with my losses, and it helps a ton to have a happy healthy son and hopefully another one on the way at any moment. But the loss of a pregnancy, even at an early stage, can be very difficult and sneak back to haunt you. And I can hardly bear to imagine losing an infant.

I’ve also been thinking about my pregnancy losses a lot with the debate last night. Apparently the presidential debate involved the abortion discussion. Plenty of feminist bloggers are just a touch irate that John McCain used air-quotes when talking about “the health of the mother” as a reason why a woman might need an abortion.

While I have always been pro-choice (and always hoped that very, very few women would ever need the choice), my experience with my miscarriages changed how I looked at abortion. With my second pregnancy, everything seemed swimming. I got to 10 weeks rejoicing that the morning sickness wasn’t so bad and that maybe this meant I was having a girl. Then I noticed a bit of spotting and in the “it’s probably nothing to worry about” vein got sent in for an ultrasound to make sure everything was hunky-dory.

It wasn’t. Where there should’ve been a 10 week old embryo with a beating heart, there was just a darkly silent womb.

They told me to come back in a week in case my dates were off by a month. They weren’t. In a week it was still as silent as a tomb in there. The baby had probably stopped growing/died/whatever you want to call it at about 6 weeks and my body hadn’t gotten the message.

I was told to report to the OR for an abortion (same procedure whether or not there’s a living baby). I didn’t. Instead I fought to take abortifacent drugs because I wanted control over how the pregnancy ended, and if it wasn’t going to end itself, I didn’t want someone DOING something to me — not when I had a choice. I did need to terminate the pregnancy because I ran the risk of infection if it didn’t clear itself out. (Also, let’s talk about the mental health of a woman who knows she’s carrying a baby inside of her who is not alive. Or maybe let’s not, because that’s not a thing that bears lots of thinking.)

The pro-life tagline is that abortion stops a beating heart. Sometimes it doesn’t. I assume that even the most ardently pro-life out there would be ok with my terminating a pregnancy that didn’t involve killing a baby. You can be pregnant with a non-viable child, or one who has already died, and still be pregnant. But now I wonder every time I read about abortion laws… would they have prevented me from being able to terminate the non-viable pregnancy I had? Would my doctor know how to do the procedure? Would my doctor have to provide some sort of evidence that the pregnancy was not viable? Would I have had to wait even longer?

What about situations that aren’t as cut and dried as mine was? What about a child who can’t survive outside the womb but can inside it? (Like anencephaly). What about ectopic pregnancies? What about severe preeclampsia/eclampsia, where if the mother doesn’t cease being pregnant right away NO ONE is going to come out of the situation alive and the baby just isn’t old enough to make it?

I’m not sure what percentage of abortions are of perfectly healthy, viable pregnancies. That’s all the political discourse seems to talk about — someone who just doesn’t want to have a baby period. But in my experience of abortion, it was about pregnancies where there was some issue or some reason that the end outcome wasn’t going to be a baby anyway, and the only question was when.

Like so many issues in life and politics, abortion is painted as a black and white issue. And like so many issues, while there are situations that fall into black and white categories, there are also a lot of situations that are firmly rooted in gray.

(PS — be nice. This was a real and difficult loss for me. If there are any comments that are cruel, they will be deleted.)

Mental zephyrs

I’ve been moody lately, for me. By moody, I mean that my general emotional tenor has not been logical or consistent based on external stimuli. Some days I’m just cranky as a bear with a sore tooth, while other days I’m Ms. Sunshine and Light. Today is a Sunshine and Light day. Wednesday? Bear needing a root canal.

This morning, as so often happens, my son climbed into bed to snuggle me. He even says, “snuggle”. He nestled into my arms, his butt against the bulge of his baby brother and his fuzzy-head at perfect kissable height and we drowsed there together for 10 minutes. How can that fail to bring joy to the heart? On a perfect clear October commute where the highway is lined with the slow fire of the dying year (really, the colors are magnificent this year), I listened to him discourse at length about whether Jesus had ever used bad words like “ca ca poo poo head” and gotten a time out.

One never knows just how much theology to teach a three year old. But I’m pretty sure the gospels are silent on Jesus’ use of the phrase “ca ca poo poo head”.

I remember part of why this stage of pregnancy is so tiring. You KNOW that you might have up to (by my count) 30 more days until you are holding an actual real baby. You know that the odds of going into labor today are very small. (Less than 1 in 30.) You know that likely you have a long hard slog ahead of you. And yet you think that maybe? Just maybe? And some of my friends are every so slightly more pregnant than I am and they are having labor pains and it’s days or hours until they will have babies and I could too! Or, well, it could be November.

Hm. What if I am in active labor on election day? Hm hm.

And thus you see the pattern of my thoughts, scattered high, low and in-between by the autumnal zephyrs like so many crisp new-fallen leaves.

Extraordinary Time

I always feel the need to announce it is fall, as though perhaps everyone else has been too busy to notice and the moment might pass them by, and this is too tragic to be borne. It starts in August, as I see the swampland trees — first to turn hazy green in the Spring — turn a premature scarlet. Then the trees further out begin to turn, in ones and twos and small patches. The world is still predominantly the deep strong green of summer, but like gray hairs in the dark head of the aging year, a few strands show that time is indeed moving along.

Something happens to the air. It becomes sharp and crisp and delightful. Even the old metaphors seem new and important — walking through September sunshine with a cool wind on your face and a few early leaves falling about you is like biting into a crisp September apple. There is nothing fuzzy, hazy or indistinct about September air. It is precise and glorious.

My mind turns to poetry in September. This would work better if I knew more autumn poetry, but September seems like a time when words themselves carry more meaning. September is when you set your hand to a big task, unafraid of the toil in front of you. September is for realizing that the world is a strange and marvelous place. In autumn, the boundaries between what was, what is and what shall be blur, and you realize you are not so far removed from either your ancestors or descendants.

In the church liturgical calendar, the year is broken up into seasons. You may be familiar with Advent — the four weeks of waiting before Christmas (purple), with Christmas itself (12 days – white), with the long preparation of Lent (purple again), the joyfulness of Easter (white again), and the flash of color for one magic-filled day on Pentecost (red). The rest of the time is called Ordinary Time. The color for Ordinary Time is green. I love the idea of Ordinary time, because it so perfectly expresses for me what much of the year is like.

For me, January through September is Ordinary Time, where the days are those days and nothing more. The weather is good or bad. The world is lovely or not. I always feel as though spring SHOULD feel more potent. Instead, it’s a relief like taking off your high heels after walking all evening. It’s a wonderful feeling, but there is nothing of magic to it.

September through December, though, is Extraordinary time. The time in those months feels special and set apart, even more of a precious commodity than time usually is. Where the time the rest of the year is water running through our fingers, this time is quicksilver — even lovelier in its passing. I am deeply enamored of the beauty of the beginning of the turn, in September. I love October for the fullness of autumn that is in it. I love November for the contrast between the warmth of what is inside and the coolness of what is out, and for the grace with which it accepts the passing of what is living. And December for me is overlain with the brocade of music, joy, love, friendship, color and contrast that is truly Christmas.

Before I moved to New England, I already loved fall and Christmas best. But I didn’t understand the bitterness and fear that could accompany winter. I was like a child, enjoying life but knowing nothing of mortality. In New England, winter strips the joy from life. It steals your breath with icy winds. The world stays dark and cold and barren far too long and you wonder how you can endure it. Sometimes despair arrives and it feels as though you will never be warm or joyful again. Against that fear, this season apart becomes even deeper in its meaning. You must find a way to rejoice in the falling of the leaves without letting your cup be embittered by the gall of the winter to come. You must watch that first snowfall hopefully around Christmas without thinking how you may not see that patch of ground again until May. You must take the joy of the dying of the year without accepting before-time the sting of the long dead period.

I understand now how it is possible to truly dread winter. I understand how you might dread fall as the precursor to winter. But I choose, instead, to revel and rejoice in this time apart. I will bring new life into the world just as the door shuts on the year. I will not let the fear of future cold diminish the joy of the present.

And next year, around this time, I will probably say nearly the same thing again.