Monday's Evening Walk
Sunday Brunch
We love to go out to eat, as you probably well know by now. Since our days of spontaneous, non-children meals are numbered, we are taking full advantage of it. Sunday mornings are usually spent at our nearby diner, but today we decided to splurge and try something new. Good Gods of Cuisine. Tilth delivered and then some.
I ordered the Dutch Baby Pancake with Arugula, Grapefruit Syrup, and Pistachios. It was so surprisingly good! Joel had the Corned Beef Sandwich with Mornay, Choucroute, and Duck Egg. We added a side of their homemade bacon, and I had to stop myself from licking the plate.
Have a delicious Sunday,
The Heavy
The doctors tell us to prepare for the end, but my being fights it still. I chide myself heavily for denial. I berate my desire to swoop in and save her. I sit uncomfortably in moments of guilt where I forget that anything is wrong.
The only truth I cling to is that there is no correct way to grieve. There is no manual for death, no perfect thing to say to the family, and no ideal way to endure. We are as we are. We survive, we compartmentalize, we create coping mechanisms, we lash out, we drink too much, we don't sleep enough, we find faith, we lose faith. No analysis, no questions, no higher road to travel.
We just have to be.
Red.
Mooney.
Madame.
Saint.
As I stare at the kitchen window,
looking at nothing and everything.
Suddenly, I realize how perfect the flowers are.
How fragrant the wind is.
And how all is a gift to help us endure
the unthinkable.
I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone
Rainier Maria Rilke
I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough
to make every minute holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don't want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
And I want my grasp of things
true before you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
like a saying that I finally understood,
like the pitcher I use every day,
like the face of my mother,
like a ship
that took me safely
through the wildest storm of all.
Musings of a Mum: 21-23 Weeks
Baby of the Femme Kind-
Your father jokes about how I have basically morphed into three big bumps. C'est vrai, c'est vrai. You are taking over and I keep reminding myself this means you are a healthy little bugger! You are roughly 11 inches long and just about the size of a large mango. Yummy.
I've begun the initial diagnostics on the room you will be occupying. Someday I will show you the diagrams. I've decided to leave most of my books in that room, since that kindof counts as a theme, right? Well, it's not a surprise that you will have the most beautiful room in the house - you will just love the morning and afternoon light and that wonderful purple/gray wall.
We've started our 7 weeks of birthing classes. I've was quite nervous at first - as I always am at new social situations - but the people are so nice and like-minded. We are doing these ice-holding practices which are to teach ourselves about pain management. Your dad has found that interesting. You know, sweetie - as with anything hard in life, it is so very tempting to ignore fear or block out negative feelings. Sadly, the avoidant personality will be well-taught to you, it's in your DNA. Humans do not like unpleasant things, and while I wished I could be one of those "I'm so looking forward to birth" kinds of mothers - the ones who look gorgeous sweating and exude an other-wordly peace at all times - I simply am not. I dread and fear birth, but one thing I've already discovered through these classes is that we learn much of how we feel about birth through our culture, and this culture depicts birth as this sudden, comical thing that happens to women while the idiotic dad is fainting in the corner. In realizing that it wasn't my fault that I dreaded it or couldn't visualize it, I uncovered a new little pebble of hope. That pebble will serve as the beginning of the cairn I plan to build as my defense against the dread of birth. I refuse to go through life, much less pregnancy and birth, without sifting through every possible richness that experience presents.
Have you felt this delicious sunshine through my skin? Seattle has given a true Spring, and the air is fragrant with Daphne and Azaleas. I find my my mood lifting and hope returning more and more. I am rather suddenly craving things like blow-pops and starburst. Chocolate sounds kind of gross, and I cannot GET enough protein. Pineapple, ice water, and the strange green smoothies your father makes are on my radar - and always cheeseburgers. My headaches have subsided, to be replaced with the awesome tearing of abdominal muscles. It has become increasingly frustrating to confront new incapacities. Last Saturday, I had an ambitious list that resulted in a tear-soaked husband and a nap. But when we find weakness inside, we learn to rely on others. Joel was fully capable of assisting me with the household duties, but I hated asking him to give up his days off to do so. These are the nuances of communication and expectation that change with each stage of life, no less pregnancy and child-rearing. Dear Pride, let me introduce you to your demise.
So much love from up above,
The Voice.
Let me leave you with this:
Already my gaze is upon the hill, the sunny one,
at the end of the path which I've only just begun.
So we are grasped, by that which we could not grasp,
at such great distance, so fully manifest—
and it changes us, even when we do not reach it,
into something that, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a sign appears, echoing our own sign...
But what we sense is the falling winds.
A Walk - Rainier Maria Rilke
a toast to the circles
When Joel leaves, even for one night, I get the smallest taste of how different my life could have been. I realize how incredibly hard it is to fall asleep without him snoring next to me, and while that other life would have certainly been full of its own treasures, I know more and more that a life without Joel - well, I'll have none of it.
I am usually the one travelling away from home, and in that circumstance, I think it's easier to be distracted from how much you miss your lover. When you are the one left behind, new mysteries of self-independence await. All at once, you realize how simultaneously capable and incapacitated you are without your partner. When I hadn't heard from Joel for the entire day, the self-pity began to gnaw at my pregnant heart (for those of you who are interested, pregnancy actually re-situates the heart chakra, exposing your vulnerabilities to everyone you meet. It's not just the hormones that make pregnant women emotional, but the energy shift).
"Why isn't he calling me? Worse yet, this means he's not even thinking of me. Why doesn't he read my to-do lists? Why doesn't he bring me flowers, why do I always have to buy them for myself?"
After a few hours of this, I stopped. Something inside me saved me and I determined to remember Joel's needs above my own. Considering what I really wanted was for him to refresh his soul, how could I begrudge a day where I am not his first thought; a day where work doesn't consume all of his words; a day where his very best friend - the forest - nurtures him back to himself. A day where his huge hands don't have to carry all three of us.
I began to feel a slowly increasing empowerment, for it was in this realization that I found my hands big enough, strong enough to hold us. And then I remembered that on his walk home from a 11-hour work day Friday, he picked me a small cherry blossom. Marriage is very rarely about grand gestures; it is more the desire to share beauty in small ways throughout your days. I don't want him to think of me as something to do, a relationship to upkeep, a woman to romance. Instead, I want him to romance himself and in so doing, truly make me swoon. Who knows if he picked that blossom because he was overwhelmed with appreciation for me. Perhaps he picked it because its beauty struck him, and if beauty reminds him of me - I am romanced to my very core.
Where there is a stone of discontent blocking your path, there is its underbelly of lasting happiness. You must pick it up to discover its flip side.
I'd like to propose a toast. Mimosas Up (I wish):
To the odd realizations that your breakfast has many, many circles. I count 25 in this photo, you?
To knowing who you want.
To the solitary midnight baths where the poetry flows.
To the blessed gift of waking up adjusted to your current life exactly as it is and in full acceptance of how it will change.
To music's way of filling the emptiest of spaces with nostalgia and hope.
To finding a way to live with and learn from depression.
To coming home to zero junk mail and two letters from your best ladies.
To the fruit toppings bar at Portage Bay.
To kissing babies.
To cooking for yourself.
To you, for being so strong.
Sometimes I swear I can see my atomic particles.
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