The Kiddie Cocktail

Ten years younger

There are a lot of reasons I'd like to be ten years younger. More time to be with my husband, more time to have children, less creaking in the joints. Eh. Those things are smallish and fleeting, and I make the most of what I have now, as much as I can, anyway.

There's a bigger reason I wish I were younger.

I have this friend, this amazing friend. She's a couple of years older than me. We met almost 12 years ago while doing this utterly godawful contract legal work, after the dot-com crash, when the economy was just in hell in a handbasket. It hadn't happened to me in such a long time, that kind of instant kinship with someone. All it took was her mentioning the Happy Fun Ball, and that was it. Jennifer was my friend for life. Then we cried at the same NPR stories, and she knew all the trick words for Washington Post crossword puzzles, and had a perfect memory for movie quotes, and there was laughing, so much laughing.

Jennifer gave me fun and laughter that I think we both needed, so much, during those hard roller-coaster years of unemployment, bad jobs, breakups with boyfriends and fiances, broken arms, new boyfriends, unbelievably horrible roommates, The Man Who Ruined Thanksgiving, moving, brain tumors, cancer, and family members behaving badly. To combat all of those things, we had girls' nights, cosmos, dancing, Sex and the City, fuzzy slippers, parties, tubing, great food, new friends, crazy dogs, wine tasting, and barbecues.

Jennifer is a true southern belle, impeccably beautiful on the outside, and hard forged steel underneath. She would never put dark meat in a chicken salad, lives by The Preppy Handbook, keeps up with her sorority, and worships at the altar of Lilly Pulitzer. She's also ridiculously smart. The girl has a graduate degree in food science as well as a Juris Doctor, and she's sharp and irreverent and witty. Her eyes are true gentian blue. Her hair always looks perfect, even if she stayed up all night to make a cake. Which she does, to astounding and perfect results. On her wending career path, Jennifer had her own cake business for awhile, Blue Iris Bakery.  First she made me a birthday cake. And then another. And then she made cakes that looked just like Coach handbags and cakes in the shapes of shoes, and she did a course at the Wilton School.

She made my wedding cake, and it will always be the most delicious cake I have ever eaten. It was French vanilla cake, with buttercream icing, and had strawberry-Chambord filling between the layers. It was rich, moist, perfectly flavored, beautiful, delectable. I don't like cake, but I loved that cake.

And it wasn't even the best cake at the wedding. That honor went to the groom's cake that Jennifer made, a surprise for my husband, in the shape of Napoleon's hat, a fabulous chocolate-bourbon concoction. There wasn't a crumb left. I have three regrets from my wedding, and not getting a piece of that Napoleon hat cake is one.

In one of those ways that life works, Jennifer brought her future husband to my wedding. I'd met Adam a few weeks before, when he was in Washington for another wedding. He walked into my front door, and charmed me instantly. Which doesn't happen - I'm a suspicious, doubting sort.  I won't say I knew that he was the one for Jen, but I sure did hope. He'd lived in DC for awhile, and had just moved to Louisville, KY. Which is of course when he and Jennifer finally met and fell in love. They almost missed each other.

Yes, she married the wonderful Adam. Who is still wonderful. And I could not have been happier for Jennifer, even if finding her amazing husband did take her away from Washington, DC and to Louisville. Jennifer went through a lot of crazy and awful things between the time that I met her and the time she met Adam. If she was ever sorry for herself, she did it quietly and privately. The rest of the time, Jennifer was out being her positive self, and doing the things she does best: having fun, making friends, and trying to make the world around her beautiful, perfect, and appropriately attired, preferably in Lilly Pulitzer.

Everyone deserves happiness, of course. But I really felt like no one deserved it more than Jennifer.

Even though Prince Charming Adam took her on a white racehorse to Derby City, and they lived happily ever after with mint juleps and hot browns and a house and furry dogs and incredible cake baking, there was one thing that couldn't be made perfect with love and hard work and optimism and inspiration.

I knew Jennifer and Adam wanted children. Even in her perfect Lilly outfit, Jennifer would never hesitate to hold and exclaim over a drooling baby. She looked so easy and right holding my girl the first time they met. She was always over the moon excited for any friend of hers who was having a baby, whether it was the first or the third.

But there were fibroids and cysts and scoping and swelling and painkillers and surgery and allergic reactions. Hormones and injections and drugs and egg harvesting and sperm counts and probing and insufficiently thick uterine linings. And waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Trying. Waiting. Trying. Waiting.

Jennifer documented the process for a few of us from time to time in her characteristic long and detailed and bubbly e-mails. The e-mails got shorter, and the optimism bled out, and then they stopped altogether, when Jennifer said they were taking a break from trying to get pregnant. 

She talked a little about surrogacy, but the laws in Kentucky require that the "parents" have to legally adopt the baby from the surrogate once it is born. So you could go through all of that and end up with nothing but heartbreak. It seemed too much of a risk.

They didn't really talk about adoption, at least, not to me. I don't know why, and it's none of my business. Sometimes, you just want a child of your body. You have to do what your heart tells you is right.

And what my heart wishes is that I were ten years younger, so I could give Jennifer and Adam that child of their bodies, of their souls. I would do it, I would. I would be their surrogate. I'd never have said that before I had my own baby, carried her in my body for the better part of a year. I know what it takes to be pregnant, what you go through, and I know that I could do that for them. I know I could hand over that baby to them in the end, because I would know how much that baby was wanted and loved. I know what it feels like to hold that just-born tiny, sparkling and loud, new life, and I wish so badly that I could give them that feeling. If I could, I would give them my body for a year, to give them that.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. If wishes were time, I would be ten years younger. If wishes were babies, Jennifer and Adam would have one.

I wish I could do more than wish.

 

So, this happened

The Olive went to preschool. PRESCHOOL.

 
 
 
 
 
 
PRESCHOOL.

There have been some tears. Not an excessive amount. She is in a fantastic small Montessori program where she will get to do eighty seven thousand intellectually and physically stimulating and nurturing things. Her teacher, Ms. Lindeman, is an absolute genius child wrangler. I have seen her in action, and I am so not worthy.

It's funny. I'm all over-wrought about her being away from me all day. But, um, duh, she's ALREADY been away from me all day for two years (and how, how, how has it been that long? WTF, time??). But...but...it was at our house, with our nanny, who coddled and loved and spoiled her, and she slept in her own bed, and....Then this devolves into a bad guilt spiral of "maybe she should just go part time...she's so little....and we'll patch together some childcare....and I will quit my job and stay home with her more...and....and...and...." It's dawning on me that we are never, ever going to be able to really let go of our children, are we?

She's ready. She is. On the first full day, yesterday, she napped just fine on her own little cot with her nap mat. Yesterday, when I got her, she didn't want to leave at first because she was listening to a book. But then, it hit her full on that mama was there, and she came out sobbing for me, the relief and need just washing over her. She asks us several times, just to MAKE SURE, that Mama will come get her from school? She talks in an awed kind of voice about Ms. Lindeman, and her eyes get big, and her face lights up with expectation.

She has cried a little bit at home before she goes, and I can see she is trying not to, trying to be my big, strong brave girl as I tell her she is. She cries when she gets there, but she goes in the room, finds a book, some blocks. Ms. Lindeman told us that yesterday was her "coming out day" when she finally abandoned the book corner to explore all the other activities in the room, discovering the wider world.

But still, when I pick her up at the end of the day, she will hurl herself at me, and I will hold her, and we will end our day, going home, still needing each other.

Monday random

When all the world is a hopeless jumble, and the raindrops tumble all around, it's time do do a random blog...*

Last week, all I planned to do was wallow in post-vacation depression, procrastinate a lot, and work my way slowly up to full-blown panic at the fact that my tiny little baby is going to preschool soon (PRESCHOOL!), but, well, other things intervened.

1. The Earthquake. Holy crap, we had one! I was in my office (probably procrastinating), when there was some shaking, some rumbling. The hell? I thought. The first thing that I concluded was that there had been an explosion at a nearby construction site. We are in a "redeveloping" neighborhood, and are utterly surrounded by huge construction sites. More shaking, more rumbling, the floor actually rolling, light fixtures waving away on the ceiling like perverse flowers in a breeze. Then, the second thing I thought was BOMB. We live in DC. I work on security issues. I am an obnoxious building emergency warden. This is how I think. BOMB. And then the rumbling and shaking kept going, got stronger. I almost laughed, realizing, oh, I GET IT, it's an earthquake! An earth ride, as one of my friends from San Francisco used to call them. I was honestly relieved that it wasn't a bomb, because again, this is DC, this is how we think. Of course, I shot off a Tweet, because I am a social media whore:

@DCZia Roberta

HOLY FUCKING EARTHQUAKE IN DC. Or something. For serious.

23 Aug via web

I ditched my heels for flip flops, and grabbed my handbag, making sure I had phones, wallet & keys. I donned my orange emergency warden vest (which is in serious need of some Bedazzling) and shooed my fellow employees out the stairwell and to our evacuation rally point. Once out there, of course I turned to Twitter, which had all the best info AND kept working fine, thanks for nothing AT&T. I also realized that I had a bottle of champagne in my bag, because I'd done some errands over lunch, including a wine store stop. That's right, if you evacuate with me during a natural disaster, I bring teh interwebs AND the booze.

All kidding aside, everything was fine. I left work when The Powers That Be excused us, and scooted home. I live a mile and a half from my office, so no traffic snarls for me. The worst casualties were a very tired child (earthquake disturbed her nap) who was falling asleep in her tacos at dinner, and some crooked pictures around the house. Nothing even fell off of a shelf in our 115 year old house. Unreal.

2. The Hurricane. Like the rest of the more northerly East Coast, we were in the path of Hurricane Irene. Here is what we did to prep: (a) bought propane; (b) and beer; (c) starting drinking shortly after lunch; (d) charged up all the iDevices; (e) drank too much wine, went to bed early and slept mostly soundly, waking up a few times to marvel at the howling wind and pounding rain. That about covers it. Woke up Sunday morning to gawk at all the downed trees, and felt grateful, since it's exactly six years since Hurricane Katrina. It could have been a lot different.

3. Regularly Scheduled Panic. My wee tiny baby is somehow almost three years old and starts preschool on Thursday. PRESCHOOL. I coped by applying name labels to everything in sight, getting hysterically indecisive about which after-school activities we should register for, and drinking before 5:00 pm.

4. Death, Shock, Grieving. I found out this morning that a colleague passed away on Friday night. He had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his health was not all that great, but it seemed he would stubbornly carry on for a long time to come. He succumbed to pneumonia. I am in shock. This man was like a foster dad to me at work; I'm around the age of his daughters. He was stubborn, and smart, and moody, and prickly, and generous and witty and knowledgeable all at once, and I got along with him well. I learned so much from him. We talked about everything from Jeeps to horses to guns to railroading to natural childbirth (you can't say that about every colleague). It is still that time where it seems impossible for this person to be gone, for the world to never hear his deep belly laugh again, for his office to be still and quiet and empty. My heart hurts for his family, who has lost a father, a grandfather, a husband.   

And so I start this Monday, in a random jumble, trying to just be grateful for what I have, here.

*With deep apologies to "Over the Rainbow" - the little known intro verses.

An eye for an eye

Seth told me as soon as I woke up this morning. He knew I would want to know.

"Osama bin Laden is dead. They killed him. Obama had a press conference around 11 last night."

"Holy shit. Where was he?"

"In Pakistan."

"I've been waiting almost ten years to hear that."

The reason I've been waiting for such news is that all the evidence shows that Osama bin Laden orchestrated the murder of my friend, Peter Morgan Goodrich, almost ten years ago on September 11, 2001. Peter was killed on United Flight 175, the second highjacked plane to hit the World Trade Center.

That day is crystal clear in my memory. A perfect, blue sky September day. My then-boyfriend's mother calling me, telling me to turn on the TV. I was unemployed, still in bed. Her panicked, garbled words about planes crashing into the World Trade Center made no sense. I gasped and shivered with horror as I watched the black smoke pour out of the Twin Towers, as that second plane crashed. I went over to my boyfriend's parents' house, unable to be alone. An e-mail that morning from my friend Janine, thankful that her friends and family were all safe. Only a couple of hours later, she had to retract it in sickening grief, as she learned her brother-in-law had been on that second plane. There are no words for how numb and stunned and sick I felt. I could not watch the television anymore, not those plane crash images, because it was Peter dying, over and over and over again, in full, sharp technicolor. Then there was confusing television footage of planes bombing something in the Middle Eastern night- Baghdad? Afghanistan? My boyfriend's sister cheered, punching the air, "Yeah! Ooh! Get 'em!"

I crumpled, my energy gone, full of nothing but aching sadness. "No more death," I thought. Please, no more death. That can't be the answer. I went home, huddled indoors with the dog, escaping the eerily silent, empty, perfect crystal-blue skies above Washington, DC.

I flew with friends to Peter's memorial a week or so later, crying as airport security made me take off my shoes in the deserted BWI airport, because I knew I had to take off my shoes because Peter (along with hundreds of others) was dead. Murdered.

We huddled in the box pews of the Old First Church in Bennington, where we'd watched Janine marry Peter's brother, Foster, just exactly three years before. It was their third anniversary that day. We should have been toasting them, but we were listening to the unbearable sound of Foster's voice cracking with grief as he eulogized his only brother, as we wrapped our arms around each other, and ran out of tissues.

Some essential piece of all of our innocence died with Peter on that September day. So many things fell apart after that day, like it was the final blow. We were all so broken. Janine and Foster were absolutely overcome and drowning in their grief. Janine, Foster, Becki, her new husband Chris and I were all struggling with employment and unemployment, all trying to find our footing in this tilted "new normal." I had been knocked breathless by a bitter breakup with that boyfriend, and I fled to my friends in Vermont, who were struggling just as much as me. But we couldn't fix ourselves, or each other. We were all too sad and raw and struggling. That time was so bad; I don't have adequate words. It resulted in Becki and I not speaking to each other for seven years, in all of us feeling nothing but sick and sad and helpless. There was no comfort. I think now that it was the beginning of the long, slow, end of Janine and Foster's marriage.

I am not an advocate of the death penalty. The way it has been done in this country is barbaric, uncivilized and arbitrary. However, anytime after 9/11, if I had seen Osama bin Laden, I would have tried to kill him with my bare hands.

I never thought the U.S. would find bin Laden. Central Command for Afghanistan was, at that time, run out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. A friend was an Air Force colonel there, and he told me that they had technology and real-time information that I would not believe at MacDill, all focused on finding bin Laden. He used to hassle some of the guys working the bin Laden search: "Come on, with all this, you can't find just one guy?" But it was a needle in a haystack; a pebble in the rough Afghan mountains.

Peter's brother and parents felt very connected to the World Trade Center site as Peter's final resting place. Visiting there gave them some measure of comfort. Months and months and months after 9/11, some of Peter's remains were identified, from DNA extracted from his hairbrush or toothbrush. A femur. They had a goddamn femur. All Foster could say, his voice breaking with tears, was, "Where's the rest of him?" Wounds newly raw, opened up by that bone, Peter's wife and family tried to plan yet another service.

I have hated the image of bin Laden every time I saw it on TV, as he looked smug and alive in those videos that would surface from time to time.

I can't believe the U.S. actually found him, that he is actually, finally dead and gone. It is closure, I suppose. I am not one of those people who feels like celebrating, like waving the American flag and cheering like we just won the Superbowl. It is some measure of justice of the oldest fashioned kind - an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It feels somber to me. I am not cheering. I am quietly remembering Peter, one of the most thoughtful, generous and intellectually curious people I have ever met. I am remembering his own copy of the Koran, well thumbed, intensively bookmarked, that he had read and studied on his own, out of sheer curiosity and interest, a book whose text he likely knew better than his murderers who invoked it.

Are we even? No, we never will be. The ripples of only Peter's death immeasurably, irreparably changed the courses of dozens of lives. i can't even imagine what the deaths of all the 9/11 victims has collectively changed forever. Death never makes it even. Never. At most, it closes one loop, an eye for an eye. A femur for a femur. At the end, all we can do is remember, and try to move forward, our boats beating against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.*

 
Peter Morgan Goodrich

*Borrowed from The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Drained

Bad blogger, I know. It's just been a hell of a month, and I haven't been able to drum up the wherewithal to post.

It started with our girls' weekend in March, a weekend in Vermont with my three best friends. A weekend where we could manage to all be in the same place at the same time. J and B, already within an hour of each other, in Vermont and Massachusetts. T, visiting from Utah, doing a guest teaching project at her highschool alma mater, Holderness. And me, able to wrangle a weekend alone, leaving my girl with her papa and grandparents, leaving her overnight for the first time ever.

It was supposed to be a weekend full of old friendships and remembering, laughter and wine, and great food, and maybe manicures and spas, and sleeping in, and staying up late, and talking, talking, talking, because nothing is like all of us together, synapses in synch, talking. We tried our best, but it wasn't to be. We were dropped in the middle of J's tangled divorce from our good friend F. We stayed at their house, as they swapped time there with their three boys. They can't be in the same place. She's moving out. We tried to bridge the horrible, the awkward, to project our love to J and F, but it was hard, so hard, as we saw the pieces coming apart in front of us, wrenching our guts and our hearts. We dissected it, talked about other things. We did laugh, we did talk, we did enjoy good wine. But it was exhausting, with the crackle of hurt and anger in the air all around us, where there used to be love. It was amazing to see my friends, and wonderful for the four of us to be together, as we so rarely are, but it was so hard. Instead of leaving rejuvenated, I left drained, emotionally exhausted.

***

And then it seems like it's been one thing after another, and I just can't quite recover from any of it, all of it. Colds, allergies, me feeling terrible and tired and going to bed early. I can't sleep in anymore - I am permanently stuck on Eastern Toddler Daylight Time, wide awake at 6am, listening for my girl to wake up and call for me. I can't nap, even when she naps, unless someone else has full responsiblity for her. I am always half-listening, ready to be there when she wakes, when she needs me.

I had several nights where I just couldn't sleep either, for no good reason. Where 4am and I were becoming all too familiar friends. I wasn't worried or stressed particularly. Just awake. And then I'd start thinking about the book I was reading (Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - really effing good) or whether Bernstein was the other journalist with Woodward, or were those the Broadway writers? No, that was Leonard and Bernstein....yeah, really fucking useful stuff at 4am.

***

I applied for a job, did the first round interview, then panicked, then withdrew my application. It was in-house, for a supervisory job in my office. I felt like I had to apply, and one of my bosses came by my office no less than four times to tell me to apply. Because he thought I'd be a good boss. And I might be. Someday. Just not now. Now, I don't want that at all. I want less responsibility, frankly, not more. If I could work less, I would. If I could go part-time, I would. But it isn't an option. So I'm going to take my bare eight hours a day, the flexibility, the fact I could do this job mostly in my sleep (and I probably sometimes have), so I can scoot out of here every day as quick as possible with no regrets to be home with my girl. But still. It is hard to choose to not be ambitious.

***

The weather has been maddening. We get one 80 degree day, followed by one back in the 50's. Too much rain and wind. I am desperate for sun, for warmth, for summer. For fewer clothes, and water and the ease of just going outside to entertain the girl.

***

I have tired of having another child who is not mine in my house at least three days a week. We share our nanny with another family, and their daughter is at our house with the Olive. I'm sure she is a perfectly nice child. But I only see it when she bullies our girl in a ploy to get attention as all the parents arrive, when she bites my daughter on the finger right in front of me. And I hear from the nanny and find the evidence of this girl throwing her lunch all over my kitchen when she doesn't like it. She also chose to smear the contents of the training potty over our basement bathroom last week. I know children do these things. Except it isn't MY child trashing my house; it's someone else's child, and I'm tired of scraping her applesauce off of my ceiling and walls. It's only until August, then they both go to preschool, another stressor looming in my anxiety closet.

***

We went to New Jersey last weekend, for an early Passover celebration with Seth's family. These weekends are normally lots of fun, and I look forward to having extra adults to entertain the Olive, while I sneak in some book reading and lounging around, and maybe even lunch out. Again, it wasn't to be.

When we got there, we went to visit Great Grandpa Max, who is 94, sharp as a tack, and recovering from a bout of pneumonia in a nursing facility before he can move back to his own apartment. I hate anything...medical. Hate it, viscerally. You can dress it up like a first-rate hotel, and I still feel such an immediate horror when I see the hospital beds, the medical equipment, smell those smells. It took everything I had not to run out of there, and to stop and visit with Max, who is wonderful and a wonder, asking us to plan for birthday no. 95, next March. Max has always been strong and healthy and sharp, but he has gotten frailer in the past few years. He is doing fine after this pneumonia, but we may not have him for much longer, and I am so much sadder and more afraid of this possibility than I thought I would be. Max became part of my family five and a half years ago, on a clear October day. He is a great-grandfather to thirteen, including my Olive, and I selfishly want him around longer, please.

We bid farewell to Max, went back to Seth's parents' house for our favorite Chinese takeout, so much better than what we can get in DC. I ate too much, went to bed too full, and woke up less than an hour later to the Olive crying for me from the next room. As soon as I walked in, I knew what had happened. That acrid smell, her sticky pajamas. Crap. It would be a long night. I called for Seth, who tossed everything in the wash and covered our bed with acres of towels to prepare for the onslaught. I suddenly felt lightheaded, and sat down before I could pass out, holding the sick Olive. This was not good.

But we survived the night. It wasn't as bad as the last time the Olive got a stomach bug, and she was surprisingly lively by midmorning. She napped; I tried to. We made it to the family seder, made bearable only when Seth's cousin's husband Eric brought me a large glass of cabernet. Eric understands me. We made it home after a long drive on Sunday, and the Olive was amazingly good in the car, with a little help from the iPad. And no one threw up. At least not until the stomach bug felled me on Monday. I knew it was bad when i was lying on my office floor at work, unsure if I would be able to get up.

So, I've eaten nothing but Gatorade and saltines this week. I've spent both too much time lying in bed and not enough. I'm still exhausted. I'm behind at work. I actually cancelled an eye doctor appointment today so I can do work. The weather went from 84 yesterday afternoon to 54 this morning. The Olive has been in an ungodly willful state of mind, where she doesn't just say "No!" when she doesn't want to do something, she screeches it at a volume of eleven in a voice that sounds like a baby Nazgul. And she woke up with a runny nose this morning. I almost cried as I dragged my still-sick self to work, leaving my maybe-getting-sick girl who wanted me to hold her, almost cried from the weight of one more thing and the guilt.

***

I can't remember not being tired. The weekend is coming, but it's not so much like a break, because there is still a child to amuse, laundry to do, people to feed. I don't really want a babysitter so I can go out to dinner. I want a day where I can just lie around the house, read books, nap, drink wine in the middle of the day, nap some more, not cook, have other people feed me. What is that called? Because I need it.

Things fall apart

For the second time in four months, I am watching the marriage of one of my best friends crumble. In late November, it was B_____. Nine-plus years of marriage suddenly over. I didn't know her husband all that well; he was only my friend through her. I am heartsick for B_____ and her two young daughters. But it's clear I probably won't ever see her ex-husband ever again. I'm trying to be there for B, trying to help her be strong.

Now, this time it is J_____. It is J_____ and F_____. They've known each other for twenty years; were together for fourteen; married for twelve and change. I've known them both for almost twenty years (how is that possible? How has it been so long? ).

I am the first person that B_____ and J______ each told about the coming apart. Because I am a lawyer, because I would know what to do, would know how to help. I am glad to be there; I would do anything for my friends. I wish it were not this.

J_______ is one of my best friends; F_______ is my beloved friend too. It's shocking and frightening. They are the couple that, out of all of them, we all believed would make it. They are beautiful and optimistic and strong; they can conquer anything.

Except for so many things, all piling up, one on the other on the other, years of accumulation. The horrifying death of F_____'s older brother P_______on United Flight 175, the second to hit the World Trade Center. The diagnosis of F_____'s mother with ovarian cancer, a mere few months later. The perpetual struggle to find gainful, meaningful employment in the Green Mountain State of Vermont, which is thick with charm and tourism, but thin on careers. F______ gone all week long, on the road, traveling for his sales job in high-end construction, coming home exhausted, while J_______single-mommed it all week with three young boys, ending the week also exhausted. Everyone drowning in grief and need. Moving close to F______'s parents, only to find them consumed by their own grief, by 9/11 advocacy groups, by their own charitable foundation in P_____'s name and its work in Afghanistan. Opposite views on money, on personal gratification. The death of F_____'s mother, right before Christmas. Needing things from the other that neither could give anymore.

Many marriages don't survive any single one of those things. And it isn't necessarily any of those things, or all of those things. It's even more complicated than that. It wasn't fair; no one should be asked to carry all of that. But I still believed that they could, and that they would. I believed because I love them both so much.

J_____ and F______'s home has always had an open door. Everyone knew where the spare key was, under the hedge trimmer in the garage. They'd always invite you to dinner, always had a bed you could sleep in. Their home and their generous hearts have been my haven, my solace on more than one occasion. They have the most amazing comfortable house, on the street where F______'s mother grew up. Space enough for three little boys, plus their friends, plus houseguests, plus dinner guests to all gather and laugh and play and eat and jostle. An enormous rolling yard of grass and trees, ready for the Slip'n'Slide and a soccer game.

In my head, I see the house cracking in half, like an earthquake has hit it, broken forever more. I want to pick up the jagged pieces, force them back together, fix it, make it better than new, make it warm and lively again. But the pieces don't fit anymore, and the cold comes in through the cracks.

Everyday longing

I'm feeling melancholy today, like I want something, but not entirely sure why, or what. Perhaps it was the overcast, rainy morning. Perhaps it was thinking about Mandy and Hudson once again, after reading Mandy's latest blog entry. Perhaps it's because a lot of friends have been talking recently about whether they've done baby books, about recording All Those Little Things.

Perhaps it was because my own little Olive was sick for a couple of days, hot and feverish. Her fever seemed to spike on Sunday evening, going up to 103, which scared me, again because of Hudson. We're lucky enough to have a pediatric nurse practicioner in our neighborhood who - GET THIS - makes house calls. I know! We'd called her before when the Olive had her first stomach bug, and she was over within the hour. Same thing this time. I just wanted to know if we should go to the ER. She said no, we gave more ibuprofen, did a strep test (negative), probably ruled out the hand, foot and mouth virus that's going around (ew), and planned for more vigilant dosing of ibuprofen and acetamenophine. (Which I would call by brand names, but THOSE have all been recalled, and none on the pharmacy shelves for months on end now. It's never simple.) And more temperature checking, which is OH SO FUN in a toddler, and by that I mean like wrestling an angry and possibly rabid greased pig. (She now actually runs away screaming if we say anything that even remotely sounds like "thermometer" or "temperature.")

In the end, the Olive was fine. The fever broke sometime Sunday night, and she was unfeverish and back to almost her normal self on Monday. I could tell when we made a trip to a big box baby store, and she refused to sit in the cart, instead running completely amuck, climbing shelves, trying out all the display strollers and carseats, and terrorizing parents of tiny infants all over the store. And I do mean run. Homegirl is fast. She really likes babies right now, and all strollers must be investigated, so that she can peer in, then point out that they have EYES! and HAIR! and a NOSE! and proceed to stab her pointy little petri dish finger at/in all of these body parts, while I try to drag her away and the infant's parents try not to look totally horrified, both at the destructive toddler poking their baby's eyeball out, and the fact that OH SHIT OUR CUTE TINY BABY IS GOING TO TURN INTO THAT.

Even though she clearly felt better, the Olive wasn't 100 percent, and had the fussy/clingy attitude and slight scratchy voice to prove it on Tuesday morning. But no fever. So I dosed her with more ibuprofen, and went to work, feeling more than a little guilty for leaving her with our nanny.

I miss her every day, as I sit in my office. Shoot, we miss the kid sometimes when she goes to bed at night. So after being with her for three days, it's hard to leave again all day. Especially when she was kinda sick some of that time, and only wanted to be held, falling asleep on my shoulder like she hasn't done since she was tiny. I click over to my Flickr page or look on my iPhone at least a couple of times a day to see the last photos of her that I uploaded.

I think about yesterday, when I got home, and she ran to the back door at full speed to greet me, like she always does, tiny bare feet a blur, patterpatterpatter on the wood floor, rose-gold curls madly bobbing. "Maaamaaaa!" Then she has to talk about what I've carried in: "Bag!" "Glasses!" (As she points at the sunglasses on my head.) "Bottle!" (As she drags my Camelbak water bottle out of my bag.) "Shoes!" (My work shoes follow the water bottle.) Finally, she's ready. "MAMA! Up!" And she holds up her arms to be picked up. I pick up my girl, hold her tight, kissing her powder-fine cheek.

I think about this morning, when I was getting ready for work. The Olive has been obsessed with washing hands recently, and we are trying to encourge such behavior, especially since we are horribly bad at remembering to wash her hands before she eats. So anytime she asks to wash her hands ("Hands!" she says, as she points at the sink) we wash them. We washed her hands, and then she saw I was going to brush my teeth, and asked for her toothbrush. I stood her up on the sink next to me, and we brushed our teeth together, gazing in the medicine cabinet mirror. I saw my eyes looking back at me out of her face, blue-grey, instead of green. I thought about how I could photograph us, that moment.

I think about leaving for work this morning. I'd made the Olive's breakfast, a spinach and cheese omelet, grapes on the side (her choices - it's amazing to be able to ask her what she wants and sometimes, she really answers. Sometimes she asks for Goldfish crackers for breakfast, though, and then I pretend that she really wants a waffle, and try to be very, very excited about it). She usually sits in her high chair and eats, watching us get ready - making lunch, pouring coffee into travel mugs, finding our phones and wallets and sunglasses in all the places the Olive has stashed them. Today, I had a little time to sit and eat with her. Suddenly, she's done. "All done! DOWN! Bib!" She puts her hands in the air, tries to climb out of her highchair, and yank her bib off, all at once. Once down, she is literally off and running, pushing her Dolly in the doll stroller at terrifying speeds across the kitchen (Dolly is in need of a good chiropractor, I would imagine). Then I have to go, and I tell her I am leaving. She runs to the door, and I brace for tears. But there aren't any. She is happy to blow me kisses, wave bye-bye, and make silly faces at me through the sliding glass door after I close it and stand on the other side, in the drizzling rain. At that moment, I want to run back in, throw my bag on the floor, play hookey, and go with her to the basement where we can play with blocks and color and build railroad tracks and watch Sesame Street and have snacks and drink our milk. I settle for fixing that last radiant smile in my head as I turn around and walk to my car.

It's These Little Things. These tiny, everyday moments. I want to capture them, freeze frame, shutter click. I want to video the Olive all the time, to capture how she says everything, how she narrates her life all day long. My friend Mandy has been writing about her everyday routines with Hudson, because those are the things she misses the most. I like to think that I have always tried to be in the moment of these small, everyday routines, but Mandy and Hudson remind me to really do it. I haven't written enough, taken enough photos, and I've got to do more. Because "Goodnight Gorilla" is sadly not her favorite book anymore; she's moved on to "More! More! More! Said The Baby." Because she suddenly loves watermelon after spitting it out the first two or three times, and hot summer is the perfect time to love watermelon ("Melon!"). Because her wild aura of curly hair grows longer every day, and it's the craziest in the morning, when she wakes up. Because she runs so fast, travels so far, changes so much, every day.

Seasons of Love*

I almost didn’t go to Hudson’s memorial service.  I very much wanted to go, but then when I was shivering out in the chill gray rain, waiting at a crosswalk to walk to my car, I thought wildly that maybe I shouldn’t go.  I didn’t really know Mandy that well.  I’d never met her husband, Ed.  I was wearing the wrong clothes (a stupid white cardigan), the wrong shoes (open toed sandals).  I’d be intruding.  Then, as tears ran down my face, I realized that I was considering not going out of fear.  The fear of all that sadness and grief over a little girl the same age as my own.  Who could have easily been mine. 

I remembered that when my father died, I looked around the room at his memorial service and was touched and grateful for the people there.  My parents hadn’t lived in Idaho all that long when my father died, having spent a lifetime already in Santa Fe.  I didn't know who would come to the memorial.  So when I saw my mom’s neighbors and my aunt’s neighbors and my aunt’s friends there in the quiet room at the funeral home, I was surprised.  People who didn’t know me at all, but were there for me, nonetheless.  I remembered that, and I decided I had to go, to swell the throng, to show Mandy and Ed how many people their daughter’s life had touched, how many people were there for them. 

I always think that it’s unfair when it rains on the day of a funeral or memorial.  We associate rain with sadness in this society.  There is no sun, just gray sky and falling water.  It reminds us of tears.  But would it be better if it were sunny, bright light shining down, illuminating grief?  There is no good weather for the death of a child.

The memorial service was held at the Franciscan Monastery, in St. Francis Hall.  It is supposed to have beautiful gardens and grounds, that on another day would be wonderful to explore.  Not today.  I stood behind a dozen other people on the hall steps under my umbrella, regretting my open-toed sandals as rainwater poured under my toes.  A nun gently took my arm and told me to step up under the awning, to get out of the weather.  I lowered my umbrella and thanked her.  Then I realized why it was taking so long to get into the hall.  Mandy and her husband Ed were standing at the entrance, greeting people.  I wasn’t expecting that.  I thought I’d just be able to slip in, sit down, and just be present.  I started to shiver again.  What would I say?  Would Mandy recognize me?  Would I have to explain awkwardly who I was and why I was there? 

Mandy hugged me as soon as she saw me.  “Oh, Roberta!  Your blog post was amazing.  Amazing.”  I hugged her for a long time.  I couldn’t speak, my throat closing with more tears.  I managed to mumble, “I’m glad you read it.”  I hugged her again, trying to communicate my sorrow in that gesture, as my voice and words failed me.  I thought, no, you’re amazing.  Hudson was amazing.

I walk into the hall, and realize that in my effort to travel light, I have stupidly left my packet of tissues in the car.  Someone has thoughtfully placed a box at the entrance to the hall.  I grab four.  I know I will need them.  I find a seat.  My hands are shaking uncontrollably, and tears keep running down my face. 

The memorial service is done Quaker-style, with some moments of silence at the beginning to reflect on why we are here.  Then, anyone can speak, and we give a moment of silence after each speaker to reflect on the words.  People speak, and we reflect until it is done, I suppose, and there is nothing left to say today.  Mandy and her husband go first.  I don’t know how they can even stand up there and talk.  I still can’t stop crying.  But I remember doing that too, at my dad’s memorial service.  Something came over me, because I wanted to tell those people in that room about my dad, about the essence of who he was.  Mandy and Ed are beautiful and handsome, and poised, and honest, and grieving.  Ed tells us that the form of meningitis that Hudson had was so aggressive that the only thing they could have done was to know in advance that she would get it, and give her prophylactic treatment. I ache for them.  Members of their families get up to speak.  Her father, her brother.  Then friends, and colleagues, and parents of Hudson’s classmates, and the caregivers at Hudson’s daycare.  I cry nonstop; I don’t know how anyone could have kept from crying in that room. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a little girl crawling up the outside aisle next to me, her father trailing patiently after her.  She looks too old to be crawling, and I think maybe she is pretending to be a dog.  She sits on the floor, turns her face to me, and I realize she has Downs Syndrome.  I think, would I have birthed you?  And then I think, she is beautiful, with long tawny hair and curious eyes.  Her father picks her up, to keep her from tangling with the AV equipment.  She screeches, and pushes on his torso with her hands and feet, trying to get down, a gesture that I know very well from the Olive.  He lifts her up to look at some chandeliers in an adjacent breezeway, and she is fascinated as she touches the small lights. 

Two of the mothers from Hudson’s daycare are inspired: they get the entire hall of people to sing “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” one of Hudson’s favorite songs.  My throat closes up again, and I can’t sing, but I whisper the words, and clap my hands, stomp my feet, and nod my head, laughing inside at the comic spectacle of dozens of adults singing this silly song in the austere setting of a memorial service at a monastery. 

More people speak.  I know I won’t get up there.  I’ve already said my piece.  Then, someone decides that it is time to move on, for today, and the photo slideshow of Hudson starts.  I’ve been dreading and looking forward to it in equal parts: wanting to see all of the photos, but knowing how sad it will be.  I almost can’t stand it when Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” starts playing.

They are so familiar, those photos.  The ones we all have of our beloved babies.  The photos of them just after birth, sleeping curled like frogs on everyone’s chests, with favorite outfits on, with the family pets.  And all the firsts: laughing and rolling and sitting up and crawling and walking and talking and eating.  Food and cake smeared on a joyful face.  Living room rugs, high chairs, snow, cherry blossoms, grass, parks, playgrounds.  The photos and video clips make everyone in the room smile and laugh.

After the slideshow, we all go outside.  The rain has stopped, for now.  We all grab tiny plastic bottles, and blow bubbles.  A blizzard of bubbles, rising over the crowd.  You can’t help but smile.  Then Mandy asks us all to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” another of Hudson’s favorites, and I can’t again, so I keep blowing bubble, tears running down my face.  Then we are done; I need to go.  My friend Jennifer’s daughter Emily looks up at the drifting bubbles, and asks for more. 

I walk away and I realize, there will never be any more photos.  The rest of the pages in the album will be blank, and Hudson will always be no more than seventeen months old.  I am walking quickly to my car, to go home and hug my daughter, touch her petal-soft cheek, my little star.  I am glad I came to the memorial service; it somehow brought me comfort.  But it goes on, for Mandy and Ed.  After all the words and photos and memorial services here and in North Carolina, casseroles and throngs of friends and family, it will eventually be quieter and just be Mandy and Ed again, and that will be the hardest part.  Remembering Hudson, celebrating her, loving her always, but coming to terms with the disbelief, the anger, the grief, the stillness, the absence that will also be there.  I ache for them. 

*The theme of the celebration of Hudson's life.

I needed this

After I wrote this post, I went home to one of my favorite parts of the day: playtime with the Olive. I block off that time just for her. I don't do chores (well, maybe a few, but only if she has happily occupied herself with something), I don't cook, I don't get on the internet or the phone. This time is just for her. And for me.

The girl is crazy for OUTSIDE. She bounces out of bed and wants to go OUTSIDE OUTSIDE OUTSIDE. Even the backyard is not good enough. She pounds on the back gate: OUTSIDE! Because I guess you must not only be outdoors, but outside the curtilage as well.

And of course she wanted to go OUTSIDE the other night. The skies were thunderously dark with rain, though it hadn't really started yet. But it was about 74 degrees out. The worst thing we were going to get was wet, so on with our raincoats, and OUTSIDE we went.

She doesn't care that her feet are soaking wet. Or her legs. Or her hands. She doesn't care that it's raining. And raining harder. She loves it, every second of exploration, splashing, more splashing. She says HI! to everyone who walks by, shouts UMBRELLA! when they have one, and bids them BYE BYE (perhaps a little sadly) as they continue on down the sidewalk. And they smile, they light up, they say HI back, these strangers in the rain.

And the weight of the world, all the tiredness, lifts from my shoulders, washes away in raindrops. I smile. And stomp in a puddle.

Party like it's 2009

I'm feeling suddenly overwhelmingly melancholy about the changing of the year. And it must be the sleep deprivation, because it rather escaped me that it's the changing of a decade, too. All of a sudden, the media is full of songs, books, meals, events of the decade. Shit. How did I miss that? It's bigger than I think, and I guess it's making me sort of panic over the relentless passage of time.

Oh my god, ten years. Ten years ago, I had just visited my parents in Santa Fe for a week, for my last Christmas in Santa Fe ever, because my parents were planning to move to Idaho in the summer. I was devastated, because they were moving away from my home, the place I had always (will always) come back to, the place that was my bones and soul, entwined in me and who I am as only your true home can be. I had so many plans for food to eat, friends to see, farolitos to marvel in, snow to play in, revelry to be had, sunsets to watch.

It was awful. Despite having gotten a flu shot, I got the most godawful flu ever, passed on from my mother's little germ-monger second graders to her to me. I laid in bed or dragged myself to the sofa the entire week. I tried to go out and see friends, only to bail at the last minute, because I got woozy and had to put my head between my knees every time I got off the couch. It was nothing like I had planned.

Then I got on a plane to New Orleans for Act II of my winter vacation. I was meeting my boyfriend John and my close friends Steve and Paula to say farewell to the millenium as only the City That Care Forgot can do. I was sure I was going to marry John, that we would live in Bethesda, that I would have a baby before age 30, that I would stay at home and be a pampered suburban mom, while he followed the footsteps of his father and became partner at the same law firm. John and I had met in New Orleans, at Mardi Gras. I was in law school at Tulane, and one of my classmates had a twin brother who was John's good friend from Vanderbilt Law. The brother and his Vandy friends were doing their annual decampment from NYC to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I'd met John briefly the year before, but he didn't really register, and I'd hooked up with the twin brother instead, leaving a trail of shed clothing and beads and plastic krewe go-cups across the floor of my Garden District apartment.

But somehow, John and I were destined to meet again, and we did, successfully dating over long-distance as I took the Massachusetts bar, and then a judicial clerkship in Florida. His mother loved me because I loved New Orleans, and she was a Crescent City native. His father loved me because I was smart, and also a lawyer, and because his father was the best of southern gentlemen.

So, New Orleans was our city. I forsook a millenial New Year's night under a cape of stars by a bonfire with my oldest friends in Glorieta for the man I thought I loved forever, and a debaucherous, gluttonous, glorious weekend in New Orleans. We Bacchanaliaed at Bacchus, at Galatoire's, sucked down oysters by the dozen, wandered the streets of music, took refuge at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, dallied with the Hand Grenade, had the best martinis in town at the Bombay Club, and toasted the New Year with a bottle of Dom Perignon on the banks of the Mississipi River. We went highbrow and lowbrow, and had ourselves a grand old fais do do. We waited to see if the power grids and ATMs would go down, because of all the binary code and its inability to process four digits in a year. It didn't. Nothing at all happened. Even if it had, New Orleans would have gone on like always, lighting hurricane lamps, and opening another bottle.

I look back over ten years and see how my path branched, and forked and wound and branched again, leading me to somewhere else than I thought I would be, but better than before, righter than before. I did go to Washington. I discovered that John didn't love me, might be incapable of love, that the southern belle mother was actually crazy and selfish and controlling, and that the southern gentleman father just muddled on being pleasant because he did love his family and didn't know what else to do. I was unemployed, gutted and horrified and grieved beyond comprehension by 9/11 and the death of a friend on one of the hijacked planes, battered by a bad economy, temporarily homeless, taken in by friends who became like my family. I found a new home, a new self on Capitol Hill, as I obsessively played Ultimate, looked for a job, tried to be strong, tried internet dating, real life dating, and gave them all up out of dissatisfaction and decided to set the goal of buying a house and getting a dog. I made friends, lots of friends, great friends, went out, and had a great time. I stumbled onto a great government job, and started a real career. I made true friends, good friends, at my new job, and the path wound its way around to meeting my husband. We met in a time-honored way - in a divey intern-laden bar on Capitol Hill.

We hit it off. We dated. He decided to marry me. We bought a house, one of the Capitol Hill rowhouses that I had craved, coveted every since I first laid eyes on them over ten years ago. Our first week there, we sat amongst boxes drinking wine, and I said I couldn't be happier. And then, to my shock and surprise, there was a dazzling ring, a family heirloom, and I was happier.

We ate and drank and traveled and explored. We survived injuries, illnesses, deaths, including the sudden death of my father two weeks before our wedding. We carried on, we married, we spend two magic weeks in Hawaii, drifting in our honeymoon bubble, in a safe and stunningly beautiful place where I could enjoy my new husband and remember my father and be both joyful and grieving.

A wonderful life is what we managed to build, full of love, family, travel, good wine, amazing friends, exotic places, food, and adventure. We had fun, so much fun. We decided to (finally) have a baby, before my advanced maternal age advanced any more. She was probably conceived on a Leap Year day, and I realized she existed after a weekend of carousing, friends, Brie, sushi and wine.

The long months of pregnancy, heaviness, and heartburn were only lightened by the feathery kicking inside that gave way to outright rebellious pokes and punches. Nothing could prepare me for how much I would love my daughter.

The last year of this decade has been blurred by sleeplessness, but colored by delight, and I can't believe that I wake up in the morning and that I am a mother to this tiny person with so many new thoughts and skills and preferences every day. It is the relentless march of time that makes me melancholy today, at losing all of the things I loved yesterday and now, that they are lovely and beloved and fleeting and gone.

It won't be Dom Perignon and debauchery at midnight to mark this new decade. It will be takeout and champagne with friends at home, and bedtimes at a baby-friendly hour. I hope that all of us will be fast asleep at midnight, dreaming the dreams of the past, but not lingering there too long. The future beats on, rolling at us in the soft light of new dawn. It's a little scary, that future, because I don't know what it will bring, and I love the now. But that's just it: I don't know what the future will bring, and the now is so much better than I ever imagined in the past, so much bigger, and brighter and fuller and lovelier, that I have to embrace that new dawn light, meet it head-on and run with it.

Happy, happy New Year.