Lighten Up

Some time after my last post, I started a post called "Rainbows and Puppies" but couldn't think of a thing to say on those topics.

It occurred to me this weekend...no, let me restate that. I had an epiphany this weekend. I was talking to a mother of another child at my daughter's school. We were at a birthday party for a third child in the same class. Completely unprovoked, I was spouting off on the following:

• how commercialism is undermining the relationships between parents and children! 
• how D and I do not buy our children stuff (nay, GARBAGE!) that is branded with characters (with rare exceptions for PBS characters, which we're begrudgingly willing to support)! 
• how I am doing my best to vanquish or at least resist the dreaded princess phase! 
• how more enlightened countries have banned advertising to children! 
• how screen time must be limited! 

All of this, mind you, was in response to a simple question about the doll my daughter was carrying around (not hers, I don't much care for dolls).  This defenseless woman, subjected to my ravings, merely asked something about some pink alien-looking doll being loved with abandon by my child (who surely knew the end was nigh). I actually don't remember or perhaps I never heard what this perfectly pleasant woman said because I was deafened by the sound of my own righteous indignation ringing in my ears as I clambered up to my soapbox to deliver my soliloquy.

Ever watch Lost? You know those highly unstable sticks of dynamite that were on that ship that was marooned in the middle of the island or whatever (As an aside to this aside -- don't expect accuracy of recall or even the dimmest understanding of  Lost from me. I watched every damn episode of that forsaken show and I'm still clueless)? Conversations with me can be like that. Woe to the person who jostles me even slightly.

On the drive home after the party, I had a few minutes to reflect, not only on this conversation, which I've admittedly exaggerated for effect (hopefully of the comic variety), but also on my disposition more generally. I am playing the defensive disposition, in case it wasn't completely apparent.

I've come to the consideration (not conclusion, necessarily) that maybe I need to lighten up. My son's not getting a DS any time soon, mind you, but maybe I should work harder to keep my opinions to myself. Mustn't...scare off...other... humans...

As an act of good faith, here's a photo of a normal, happy, fun time that we had watching fireworks on the 4th. I am capable of normal happy fun time with other members of the species. Occasionally.

...but you can call me Cerberus

I moderate a message forum for people who've experienced loss in a mono.chorionic mono.amniotic pregnancy. But we also get people on our site who were misdiagnosed and later found to be carrying mono.chorionic di.amniotic twins.  The biggest risk in a Mo.Mo pregnancy is cord accident. The biggest risk in a Di.Mo  (or Mo.Di) pregnancy is TT.TS -- twin-to-twin trans.fusion syndrome. It is a disease of the placenta wherein blood and nutrients are unevenly distributed between the twins. It can come on suddenly and severely and it can kill one or both twins. 


TT.TS can be caught with vigilant monitoring. Laser surgery can slow its effects, enabling the pregnancy to go to full term or very near. One of the leading experts on TT.TS, Dr. Julian DeLia, advocates drinking 3 cans of a protein drink like Ensure per day and his research suggests that TT.TS may be linked to hypoproteinemia and anemia, particularly in mid-pregnancy. And there are outward signs that the mother can be attuned to, if she knows what to look for.


Recently, I did my daily Loss Forum check in on the Mo.Mo site and found a post by a woman who lost a twin to TT.TS. Her other twin is in the NICU with suspected significant brain damage. In her post she indicated that she had not been to the site much because she didn't want to be scared by sad stories. I understand the need to shut out negative possibilities and just survive. I didn't want to think about the scary stuff when I was pregnant either. I knew I was carrying a ticking time bomb of a pregnancy. The closer I got to the time of delivery the more I felt my grip on the cliff side of sanity loosening. Between that abject fear and the religious tone of the boards, I didn't feel as though I had a place there.  But there's something doubly tragic in the idea that maybe had she stuck around and known what to look for, she might have recognized the signs. She might have taken the advice to consume more protein. It wasn't hard to find. It might have helped.

And too, I realize that I am one of those scary stories and it's odd to think of oneself that way.

Really? Me? My life is the tragedy you're trying to avoid? 

Well, maybe not your whole life, just this one particularly unenviable situation. 

I just found it unnerving to have someone spell it out like that, in the Loss Forum (MY TURF!!). With no hint of irony! Can you believe that?

In our corner of the site, down toward the bottom of the list, there is a family of us. I got all my sisters and me. A sad, sad welcome to you, newcomer.


It seems that despite avoiding the site until well after Eva was gone, I now have a place there. I guard the gates of hell. I welcome each new entrant with a deflated, toothless smile. There's a look of pity in my eyes that I can't help. Because I know.
     I know she didn't really believe it would happen to her.
     I know what she's in for -- at least its general outline.
     I know it is agony.

And she

is about

to find out.

What She Said

"I have a sister and she's in my heart."

The woman to whom my daughter innocently, even buoyantly, spoke these words looked at me, confused. I stammered apologetically, "she's a twin..." That's as far as I got before she was up, seemingly launched like a rocket from her seat on the low playground equipment. For someone less than a week postpartum, that woman had hustle! She picked up the infant seat holding her six-day old baby, walked over to her other son, and attempted to flee. She didn't make eye contact with me. Her flight was arduous with two in tow and awkward with us trailing behind. Not surprisingly, we were parked in adjacent spaces and there was no pretense of politeness. She pulled that car out as fast as the line of traffic behind her allowed. In the interminable moments of negotiating car seats "cheek-to-cheek", my mind churned and roiled. I had no idea how to interpret the situation clearly and react in a way that would lead to an outcome less shitty -- for either of us. Well into the next day, I'm trying not to think about it, with stunning success as you can see!

If there is any hope of letting it go, I have to write it out. Hey, at least my daughter got off without emotional damage, right? (please agree...) She clearly doesn't understand yet. She has asked me if I am happy that Eva is in my heart. She is fond of telling me that she loves Eva and that Eva is always with her in her heart. Because there are a couple of new babies in our lives, she often mentions wanting to give them baby things and occasionally will add Eva to the list of babies to whom she would like to bequeath some outgrown item. So, no, she doesn't really know what she's lost.

She still has her own hell to pay someday and I dread it like nothing else.

Toward a More Perfect Thirst

If your eyes are not deceived by the mirage
Do not be proud of the sharpness of your understanding;
It may be your freedom from this optical illusion
Is due to the imperfectness of your thirst.

                                                                   -Sohrawardi

I feel I am consigned to an exhaustion of thirsts.

So imperfect was my thirst once that I scarcely knew the difference between one emotion and the next -- thought, in fact, that the shadows they cast were interchangeable. Maybe it is because the emotions I excelled at were of the indifferent kind. Maybe they were interchangeable; my 20s were sloppily oozing ennui, despondency, malaise... meh.

Now there is nothing so passive as that. I am never so detached and clinical. I have a kind of clarity that I lacked before, but I am so deeply deceived by mirages. I will them into truth. I have a very full secret life of secret friendships (Bless your heart! You're there!) and hallucinations of the ghost of a 4 pound baby. A flash of light. She is always a flash of light, reflections of glass, blinking LEDs in my peripheral vision. Momentarily, I am deceived and it is not the deception I despise, but the evaporation of the mirage just as I'm getting close.

Reading List

I finally finished Elizabeth McCracken's secret plan to enable Kleenex to dominate the planet (aka memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir). I have had the book for I-don't-know-how-long. As in, I have an unedited proof loaned to me by a dear friend who got it from I-don't-know-who-in-the-biz-with-access-to-such-inner-circle-treasures. For vast lengths of time, I couldn't even pick up the book. Nay, I could not even look at the book. I had it hidden in a drawer of my bedside table, buried under potty-training stickers, the useless receipts I can't seem to throw away, and other mangled assorted  bits of  my life's shrapnel.

Though I wish I were just being poetic or flourishy in saying this, it is no exaggeration to confess that every single time I picked up the book, I cried. I might have read a chapter or a page or a paragraph, but I cried every damn time. I don't think I have always been this blubbering a fool, but what the hell, I am now. So it might not have been the best choice to bring the book on a work trip. It was ill-advised to open the book on a plane shared by 3 coworkers. I narrowly escaped their curious glares by being tucked into a window seat far from them, however, and their view of my weepy mess was further obscured by a matched pair of grandparents (and by matched I mean, the same butter yellow sweaters, white polo shirts and pressed khakis). There is something about McCracken's stoicism that brought me to my knees. I felt like we were partners in this story, the way my husband and I balance out each other's moods and weaknesses. I suspect the strength of her writing and her narrative gave me permission? space? to express what we tend to regard as weakness, the betrayal of those tears.

I know I'm not alone in saying that, Pudding, you are missed. You are loved. And you are remembered by so many.

Now I'm reading KuKd. Who knows where all this reading might lead? In a few years I might be ready for Dr. Davis.

Eva Destruction

D and I watched Whip It Sunday night. It made me laugh out loud and want to knock people down, but I am decidedly not the type. One of the characters had the roller derby name "Eva Destruction" and while I managed to enjoy the movie rather than consider the myriad entendre, I slept fitfully. Friends visited with their twins earlier in the day. I love their girls and know them and their complicated history, so I do not regard them as I might the nameless enviable twins that just appear out of nowhere all the time. I used to look at those twins wistfully. I try not to look at all anymore.

But I have no explanation for what I am feeling and why. I am tired of feeling like liquid, like all my structure has left me and I am a puddle. Sunday was a beautiful day and usually that is enough. We went to the playground along with every other family in our town (it seemed). The boy scout troop, ever helpful, offered the rest of their brownies to us. It being pre-dinner, we were responsible and politely declined.

While at the park, I was spotted by the wife of a friend of D's. Last year when we first moved to our small town, we all went out to dinner together. It was an unmitigated disaster. Okay, so it wasn't a catastrophic oil spill, but it sucked nonetheless. We didn't know the place had video games and we do our best to avoid them. So my son went a bit haywire at the sight of electronic games. I think we ultimately had to carry him out while he frothed at the mouth. But his behavior was perhaps more tolerable than mine. Imagine, friends, our first "date" (because really, that's what it was; a date to see if we are compatible as family friends, fit for playdates and birthday parties). The other lady was heavily pregnant and I blurted out our whole sad tale. I felt strongly that to know me you must know this fact about me. I felt that there was little more to know than the fact of babyloss. And she very nearly ready to explode! Suffice it to say, our husbands get together every so often for beers at the local dive. And I hate  feel embarrassed and resentful towards them, begrudge them their normalcy and all the assumptions I have made about their reasons for quietly, politely avoiding keeping me at arm's length.

There's no winning, it seems. I might tell someone and Eva's story is either received appropriately? warmly? but swept aside or the other person runs for the door. You know the desperate trapped animal look a dead baby story can elicit. Either way, I feel alienated. Alternately, I can stay silent and in some situations I have -- either because the context is too "light" or too many people are around (such as the neighborhood gatherings, of which there are many). In those cases, I agonize over the how and when and what of telling. She's not a secret. She's my baby and talking is the closest thing I have to holding. I guess that is why this place is so important to me.

Pick Up and Drop Off

My daughter and I have a 2.5 mile drive together from her preschool to our home. Lately on that drive, she has been telling me, every day, only when we are alone, that she is so sad that Eva can't come back. Every day. She said that Eva is her best friend and that she wants her sister. All I can do is validate and agree with her feelings and try not to drive off the road.

Her grief is new in a way. It is expanding and taking shape as her understanding of what she has lost is just beginning to dawn. As knowledge and understanding have spread their weight over me and become a general pall rather than an acute agony, I have grown accustomed to its constant presence. Certain muscles have been conditioned to bear the load, even as others have atrophied. But this three year old wonder of mine is just awakening to the twin she'll never see. She is just starting to map her life knowing that she should be going to the park and playdates and to bed at night with her other half. And my validation is a pity. It's meaningless and feeble, just as my mother's "no one ever said that life was fair," was such a poor substitute for wisdom or comfort.

My grief is new in a way. I have long known that Eva's death would be experienced by each of us in a way unique to us. I knew that the time would come when my twinless twin would really mourn. My grief for her loss and her sadness is like stirring a great cauldron, raising those bits that had sunk to the bottom of the pot and started to burn, nearly but not entirely, forgotten.

And Back Down Again

(Wherein I expose some of the fetid thoughts in my brain. Consider yourself warned.)

Were you ever told that if you made a silly face, it would stay that way? I wonder if emotions might function in a similar manner.

I have sought to downplay my birthday since I was a child. My birthday was frequently a disappointment to me. Whether that disappointment is justified or not is beside the point I am trying to make. If I was disappointed, it is no doubt because my expectations surpassed the capacity of my parents or whoever is around me to make it whatever it was I secretly wanted. I think I am doomed to this worst of both worlds - not wanting to make it a *thing* and being disappointed that something about it sucked (and suckage seems like an inevitability).

Yesterday was my birthday. Saturday night, the adults went out for a swanky dinner and I had the best meal of my life. It was a long time coming. I am really trying to hold onto that. Really, I am. But this year, what I wanted was a peaceful, pleasant birthday.

As for the actual day ... let's just say that the cake went uneaten and I went to bed at 8 p.m. The kids were uncooperative and D was sick so there was a lot of refereeing and lots of redirection and lots of talking in a slow, deliberate and stern tone of voice. "Look me in the eye. Do    You   Understand?" And I may have torn up the over-sized birthday card from my coworkers out of frustration when the hellions, er, kids, were fighting over it while I was trying to prepare dinner. Because by then, I. was. done. and counting down to bedtime.

But you know, the truth is that my birthday came downstream of some news with which I am struggling. My kids were probably acting out because they always seem to do so when I am stressed and sad and have little capacity for shenanigans. And too, I overreact and see profound implications in a cup of carelessly spilled milk, like I am reading the proteins for further signs of irreversible disaster. He pees on the toilet seat! A future sociopath! Because I know what we know -- that everything may not, in fact, be alright. May never be alright. With apologies to Leibniz-by-way-of-Voltaire, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

My son was diagnosed with AD.HD a few days ago and I am just in that place where I have to integrate this knowledge and I wish I could say I am bouncing right back, but I am not. Intellectually, I know that this diagnosis does not change the fact of who my son is, and in fact, is a positive development in that we will take what are hopefully the right steps to help him. He will finally and as expeditiously as possible get what he needs. But...
This is heaped on top of a  pre-existing  anxiety condition -- his and mine -- which confounds us and complicates him. Now I can no longer hope that his behavior is normal or a phase or even fallout from my long hospitalization and Eva's death. I can't pretend that the weekly therapy and sticker charts and activities and positive reinforcement and all the accommodations we have already made to our lives to fit his needs are enough. It is time to pay the piper. It's time for a formal plan with his school and for adding a psychiatrist to our growing network of support and [gasp] for the possibility of medication if worse comes to worse. It's time to face one of my greatest fears, that things will go horribly wrong for my remaining children.

So, yesterday I felt beleaguered by their inattention and poor choices. Being an incorrigible brooder, I read into my daughter's defiance and decided that she's probably got the dreaded "it," too. I see hopes dashed and potential squandered. I am, in short, totally wigging out.

But writing helps. Today is my day for wigging. Tomorrow, we start making appointments.

Out of [My] Sight, Out of [Her] Mind

This is not a post about separation anxiety, although we have had some of that lately, especially at night.

No, this is a post about my daughter who is coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs! She is a charmer, a delight, a curly-headed clown who can cross her eyes at will. She's a committed thumbsucker (and I thought binkies were bad!) and weirder still, she likes to play with her navel. When she's doing both, we call it "double dipping." She has the laugh of a diabolical genius. She may be a diabolical genius.

She breaks my heart every time I look deeply into her eyes of improbable, uncategorizable color. I feel this incomprehensible, indescribable tangle of sorrow and joy that there is probably a word for in another, more emotional language than ours. I swell. I celebrate and mourn for who she is and for the possibilities lost for who she represents. Shared DNA. Shared amnion. But not the life they should be sharing still and beyond.

In utero, she was sedate and impassive, the buddha of the womb. Eva was the tiny wild woman -- twin-climbing, kicking, administering "noogies," practicing rope tricks with her umbilical cord. But Twin A was named for her demeanor at the time, my beautiful, gentle baby. She was meant to be the easy baby my mother promised (eh... not so much, actually).

She is not so gentle anymore. Even (perhaps, especially) in her role as little sister, she gives as good as she gets.  I am guessing that this might be part of Eva's legacy. Eva means "giver of life." Okay... but don't go too far with that. I just mean that Eva might have left some of her bad-assedness behind, not that she fulfilled her purpose or anything, 'k? I'm just saying, I am not there yet. And maybe, like the mothers of intact twins on the momo message boards say, they just switch up their personalities. It is probably that simple.

So, last night, we were eating chocolate cake. Cuz screw it. We like chocolate cake and sometimes that is reason enough. And yes, I am having to wear my fat clothes today...thank you for noticing.  This child asked me for some of my frosting. Friends, I never thought I would utter these words under any circumstances that did not involve the threat of bodily harm, but I gave her some of my frosting and damned if that isn't pure love. She looked up at me,  having just smeared herself silly with chocolate buttercream and breathlessly said, "I lufff you, Mommy."

She has stripped me of all my defenses.

Exercising Diplomacy

A few weeks ago, I acquired via Craigs.list what is currently my prized possession, an Adams Trail-a-Bike, for a mere $70. Making the deal sweeter still was the fact that I was buying it from Bikes for the World. A few days later, the weather was right to go for a spin and my son, who does not ride a two-wheeler independently yet, did very well. The trail-a-bike has given him confidence, improved his balance, and has made it possible for us to go on longer rides than we could otherwise accomplish -- 8 miles or so before the complaints become deafening. I feel better because I can get some exercise with my son while our daughter naps and at the same time, D can get his run in on the treadmill. It is also a way for our active boy to stay out of trouble and for us to wear him out in order to try to keep him out of trouble (a post, or a book, for another day)!

On our ride this past Saturday, my son made an observation from his perch. You see, he likes to talk during our rides. Apparently, (and unlike me) he has the breath to do so, probably because he's not pedaling. Come to think of it, that might be the cause of the bemused grins I get from other adults while we ride (and here I thought we were somehow charming). I have, in fact, caught him with his head down on the handlebars, resting. Anyway.
He noticed, he [loudly] informed me, "that some adults have large butts."
"Ohhh?" I asked. "Like whom? Whose butts, pray tell, have you been observing lately?" The boy is sitting right behind me.
He starts.
"Like..."
Abrupt stop. Even while we ride, I can practically hear the gears in his head grinding laboriously, trying to divine the correct response. He chooses to be prudent.
"Like Dad. He has a big butt and it is hairy, so that means that when I am big, I will have a big, hairy butt too."
Ever the diplomat.
For the record, D's butt is not big. Ehem.

This is the Day. Let us Rejoice.

[Regarding the title: What can I say? I did my stint in Catholic school.]
Sometimes peace seems as attainable as my goal weight, which is to say (need I say it?) not very. But there are times -- and I don't know it's coming until it's upon me -- that my chest is lighter and more open. My breath is a little fuller and deeper. There it is for a fleeting moment -- the feeling that all  90% is right with the world. 90% is my maximum capacity for joy and rightness, but what I've lost in joy, I have more than recovered in other capacities, which is a paradox of loss, but one that has taken me 3 years to understand.  90% is as good as it gets, but it is more than welcome when it arrives. I am always surprised to feel "rightness," but I didn't chase it off this time. Instead, I let D drive the car. I let the kids eat as many Munchkins as they could stuff into their faces. I  looked up through the moon roof and smiled back to the tree limbs that swayed at me in greeting.

We spent Eva's day in the mountains, closer to the sky and to her. In quiet. In the muted browns of the woods before Spring arrives at that elevation. We saw Red Buds throughout the day. Eva's tree is a Red Bud. Seeing so many of them, those violet buds set to unfurl... sigh... I want to imbue that experience with some forced spirituality and meaning. But we picked a native tree quite deliberately, so it is no wonder that we would find this tree in our native land. And anyway, it's not necessary. It is good enough that we were all together. It is better still that everyone was peaceful. It was enough.

Having performed my rituals of love and memory, I was and for now remain, at peace. Now, I just need to hit the gym.

Eva's Day

I want to mark this day in some way. I want to parent her, so these rituals are a proxy for holding her, raising her. I had wanted to have this finished last year, but couldn't. I fell to pieces each time I tried. This year, I could face this project and finally finish it, though seeing the picture of my husband reading Goodnight Moon to Eva just about guts me.

Knowing

Tomorrow will be the anniversary, not of Eva's death, but of her first operation. On this day, three years ago at right about this time of day, I sat by her isolette, crying. Those tears came as a surprise, but once they started, I couldn't stop them for a long time. I didn't know why I was crying at the time, and I have only scarcely a clue now. I think it was just nerves, the mounting pressure, postpartum hormones and the sheer effort of having held my breath in anticipation and fear for those many months. I remember that I was sitting next to a woman who seemed kind and chipper. She was with her eighth child, I believe, a boy who had been in the NICU for months and months. I felt self-conscious crying next to this woman, and weak, while from her phone she doled out chores to her older children with pleasant efficiency and matter-of-factness.  The other possibility for why I was crying is that somehow I knew that rather than being at the nadir of this road, as I had consciously believed, some part of my being suspected that I had not yet learned what a nadir truly was.

On this evening three years ago, I held my daughter. Her head was in the crook of my left arm. The cords were draped over my forearm. She was a heavy 4lb 9oz baby (though by then she probably was a little less). I was surprised at how she seemed to sink into me when I held her. I was smiling, beaming really. I was confident. She was holding her stats steady, so I was allowed to continue to hold her as the doctors stood over us and informed us that her surgery would take place the next morning, first case. They would be doing a less invasive surgery because they, too, were confident about her chances. We were relieved and excited. We would finally start our climb to higher ground and put the nightmare behind us.

We never believed in anything other than a full recovery for Eva. We fantasized about bringing her home. It was all we fantasized about. I've never felt complete conviction like that before and I probably never will again.

---

Last night, our carefree Pro.ject Run.way viewing was interrupted by a commercial that rehashed the well-worn "fighter" conceit. You know how it goes. We're fighters, so we win. We beat [choose your disaster]. We conquer [fill in the calamity]. It reminded me of how one of Eva's doctors in the PICU called her that -- a fighter-- said he'd never seen a baby so small fight so hard.  And that word and that commercial became a trap door that I fell through last night, because calling her a fighter meant fuck all in the end. In the meantime, here, all around us, are fighters who did win/conquer/succeed/overcome. I am attacked by those stories of gut-listening, those gloating successes that pose as cautionary tales and I want to do violence, but of course, I am not enough of a fighter. I just didn't need any further reminders.

The dark clouds brewing within think that all the fighting and listening and advocating are probably unrelated or at best only tangentially related to one's outcome. The universe is random and cruel.  Faith is a waste of time and energy. We have no control and we do not understand. I have no control and I do not understand. In this case, with this child, we did not conquer. We were conquered. All that remains is what we do now.

Fun and its Antithesis

Parenting's best moments are the carefree ones. Unbridled joy, discovery and wonder. Being childlike. Existing in a pure moment. That purity means a kind of blindness to larger patterns, themes, realities, reactions, obligations, consequences, histories. Just a moment and an emotion without regard for what came before and what it might mean for the future.

I am so hung up on sorting, organizing, connecting, understanding, that I am not so good at childlike. My response, pathetically, is to want to work at it. I am earnest if nothing else, but I think it might be hopeless.

I can watch, though, and I can try to record it and I can try in my cerebral and impotent way to let go. I can, as my husband says, try to be more duck-like.

File under progress: We survived the tea party. But really, actually, and somewhat surprisingly, it went well. I might go so far as to say that it was a success. No, they did not let me finish my forensics-style reading of Perfectly Arugula, which was the inspiration for this event. And mostly they just ran in a crazed, locomotive procession of 2 and 3 year-old girls (led by one 6 year-old boy) in a loud and tireless loop through the main floor of the house. But I think everyone was happy. Food was eaten, crafts were made. Eager not to drink alone, I plied the ladies with wine.  Silently, a candle was burning for Eva on the family room mantel.   When the candle wicks stopped smoldering and the insulin was cresting in the children's bloodstreams, we said our relieved and pleasant goodbyes.

Waddaya know, it would appear that the third time was the charm.

In Response To Death (and kate)

My mother lives
in another state.
She does not want me
to move there.
It lacks quality of life
she says.
She is right
about that.

My mother stays
in that state.
She is held there
by my brother.
Her grief
is in that man
who lives
but not well.

That is a death
that does not quit dying.
She hates blood
But prefers it
to 36 years
of limbo. She said
Eva's death is better
than my brother's life.

Rant Time

I waste time. Every damn day, I waste time. But you know what, I do it on my own terms. I waste time on things in which I am or could potentially be interested. I don't have any spare time, therefore, to donate to hopeless causes about which I care not a whit.

I donate my time willingly and dutifully to children because there's hope for them.

I do not like to give my time to trifling people over the age of say, 22. I believe that if you are over 22 and your mind is still trifling, then well, go in peace, but not with me.

So, you can imagine my outrage at have just spent 10 perfectly good minutes of my life discussing with a coworker the optimal number of beverage cans that should be cooling in our community fridge at any one time. Let's pause while this thought washes over you. Consider how hair was falling out, cells were dying and synapses became permanently disconnected, collapsing in a withered heap within my cranium while this conversation took place.

Oh, it would be one thing if we were having a light-hearted, enjoyable conversation, punctuated with a knowing shrug, a giggle, a roll of the eyes, maybe. But that was not the case. It was, rather, the kind of stultifying diatribe of beleaguered martyrdom that affects your lifespan, or at least your precious, irreplaceable today.

The Charm?

My first and second attempts at throwing birthday parties for our daughter were frantic affairs utterly lacking in the qualities that are supposed to define a party -- you know, like fun, for example. If one were to witness these exhausted, cooped-up, late winter birthday parties at our house, one would feel rather sorry for the child being, "celebrated." And one might suggest prescription meds to the host.

But you can cue the Rocky theme music because this year will be different! I have been baking and I have been shopping and I have been planning.

There will be a tea party.

There will be crafts
and scones
and cucumber sandwiches
and hats!

And if those aren't the ingredients in the recipe for three year-old fun, I don't know what is! Gentle reader, does "scone" not equal "fun" in your world?

I'm not fooling anyone, am I?

Do I know what I'm doing? Hell, no. But I am going to feign some confidence, even as I second-guess my every choice and decision:

Am I sending the wrong message to my daughter about gender roles? Will the girls sit still and do a craft? What do I do for Eva? What happens when someone asks about Eva's pictures? Where will I find the watermelon tea that the birthday girl requested? How can I make a handle for the teacup cake I've imagined? 
Mainly:

Will I hold it together or will I be deported back to Angstganistan from whence I came never to return to HappyPartyFunLand again?

Missing

My daughter woke up today screaming, "I miss my sister. I need my sister."
I figured that she had had a nightmare and I figured this was a long time coming.

My living children have made more frequent mention recently of their dead sibling. This day was bound to come. In some ways I have willed it here because I want Eva to be a part of our family, not just my private thoughts and fantasies.

Recently, my older daughter (well, by a minute, anyway and just now I realize how strange an idea that really is) came running, exclaiming, "I found Eva! I FOUND EVA!" and brought with her a doll with no face dressed in a hospital gown. The social workers gave our son two of these dolls to prepare him for his twin sisters' birth and NICU stay (the other doll is in Eva's box).

My son, ever-obsessed with and taunted by villains in his cut and dried world of good vs. evil recently chided his sister because he does not like to talk about real death, which makes him sad. Last month, we resurfaced his worry dolls and he told them that he wanted them to help him not think about "villains, sharks, Eva and death."

But then my daughter, who is not yet 3, told me that she wants to die so that she can cuddle her twin. I have no response for her. I am utterly bereft.

And my son told me that he wants to find a scientist who can turn him into a wizard so he can bring her back, and that one kind of made me smile.

All this was scrolling through my mind as I walked down the hall to my daughter where I found her, "looking everywhere" for her ... slipper.

Stations of the Cross to Bear

The process of getting to you was both one of steps taken individually and one of seeing nothing but the destination, which was your broken body lying in a cold place without your family.

To see you each day, I would get in the car, buckle the seat belt, pull out of the driveway, K-turn to the street heading in the right direction -- towards, away. I was always headed in the wrong direction for one of my babies and the right one for the other. Each step required sure footing (impossible) and my thoughts were both a precise recipe leading to you and an eye chart too far to make out, such was the state of my postpartum brain in survival mode.

Traffic lights were excruciating. Speed up to make the yellow. Force the car to stop for a red. Merging was an act of stoicism. No one needed their destination as much as I needed mine. If they could hear me crying, they would have known that. If they heard me screaming, they would have pulled over. I was the ambulance, such was my urgency.

And then, after elongated minutes of hurling myself around the ring road at destruction speeds, I could see the building. Here was the final test. Pull in to the parking garage. Get a ticket. Maneuver around other scared people in this obscurity -- the dimness of this structure, darkened by the smoked glass of the cars and the people inside could see even less, such was their anguish.

Around and around until I found a hole in which to leave my machine. Find that bridge from the parking structure to the place where some are getting sicker and where others are healed. Cross the bridge, and hurry down the stairs, incision burning, to the hall, to the elevator, up to the floor for very sick children, wait at the call box for admittance, briskly enter, wash my raw hands, ignore the stinging because it is a price and at least I have found one to pay. I want to pay, to make a deal (will you take my limbs?) and that burning is nothing, really, such is the futility of my negotiations.

To your bed and your sweet face. I am useless and this shames me, but I am with you now.

I would have paid but in the matter of your life and death, I had no form of currency.

Too Much Sorrow

In another place, I try to support women who have been through loss in a mono.amniotic twin pregnancy. In most of these cases of loss, the women lose both babies to a cord accident in utero. Then they must deliver. And whenever that happens, I feel my chest constrict for all the women I know who have had to go through labor knowing their babies are dead already. Labor's reward and justification? There is none for these women.

I just think about that and I feel my skin go cold and my eyes sting. and my nose. How could it not? I just have to sit with that every so often. How does one come back from that place of horror?

At other times, the circumstances are less finite. Lately two women have come into our circle who have each lost one of their twins in utero and have each been given such horrendous information, such shoddy care that I want to rage at their incompetent doctors. I want to spit nails. Into their faces. One woman was told to abort her surviving twin because the baby may end up with the same defects that the lost twin has.

The other woman was told that she didn't need to see a specialist because she only had one viable baby now, so it was essentially a singleton pregnancy.

Wait. What??

Yes, yes, pay no attention to the dead baby in the uterus. Don't worry about the extra set of umbilical cords. It's nothing. really.

I have to write this here because there is no other place to express my disgust . I try to remain measured and constructive over "there" but they don't know about this. So, here, I can bubble over with fury at these shitty, dismissive so-called professionals who with their ignorance and neglect alter the trajectory of lives from this point to infinity. Those babies are never coming back. Those mothers are never coming back.

Even from my own small vantage point, I, too, am never coming back.