An Anniversary

Over the last couple of weeks, I have had several friends experience the loss of a baby. In the course of reaching out, it made me think of my own loss - and how much the word "miscarriage" is still one of those hushed words that no one wants to talk about. It is one of those things, like post partum depression, that is still expected to be borne silently - and I don't understand why. Particularly when so much good can come from opening up.

I was very fortunate, my miscarriage is, in all likelihood, what created the hospitable environment for conception that I had been trying for for so long. I was one of the lucky ones, too, who was able to bring two healthy children into the world after the loss. So many cannot.

Still, it was incredibly painful - physically, emotionally and mentally. I wasn't sure what to feel or how to act or what to say. I wasn't even sure if it was okay to grieve - and no one had told me that miscarriages were as physically challenging as they were emotionally challenging.

As I thought about, and prayed for, those friends who've suffered losses recently, I went back and read a journal entry I'd written the fall of 2010, after reading an article on miscarriage. It was cathartic to write, perhaps it will be helpful to others - if nothing else to say, "I know it hurts."

------ (October 2010)
Four years ago this month, I lost a baby.

I woke up in the worst pain of my life, in a pool of blood, in the middle of the night.

I had no idea what was going on. Still dulled by the effects of sleep and the searing knife-like pain, I crawled to the bathroom, tried to clean up, took some medication and, too weak to go anywhere (and stupidly, not wanting to wake up Himself who had to get up at 5 a.m. for a 5:30 hour-long commute), I laid down on the bathroom floor.

I was cold and shaking and nauseous and scared to death - in retrospect, my body was in shock. Given the pain and the amount of blood I lost, it's not surprising. All I could think was I didn't want to wake anyone up.

The medication did nothing but make the pain worse. At some point, I lose the clarity of the memory - I was not even able to remember the exact sequence of events mere days later. Himself got up. I told him I was having a bad time of the month, that I must not be pregnant after all. He didn't question my matter-of-fact assessment mumbled from across the room. I sent an e-mail via my Blackberry to my boss who was on a business trip to Las Vegas, telling her I wasn't going to make it into work - that I wasn't sure what was wrong, but I was fairly certain this is what dying felt like. At some point I ended up on the couch piled blankets with a heating pad, bleeding, hurting and crying - not necessarily in that order.

Several hours later, the miscarriage was complete. It wasn't until then, when I passed the tissue that looked more clinical than human, that I realized what had been happening. I called the doctor. Sadly, that morning my least favorite receptionist on the planet (then and still) was manning the phones. She explained that if I hadn't had a positive pregnancy test on record at the office they couldn't see me for a miscarriage. After that, the conversation goes fuzzy. I was standing in my bedroom, freezing and shaking and weak and still in pain - though the passing of what would have been a baby had brought the pain from white hot, indescribable to something that would actually register on the ubiquitous 1-10 pain scale. Not knowing what to do - and still not thinking well - I posted a question to some online friends, who confirmed my suspicions and chided me for not seeking medical attention.

I called the doctor's office back, where the receptionist reiterated that there was nothing they could do if I didn't have confirmation of a pregnancy on file. Summoning any last reserves of strength, I demanded an ultrasound and a blood test. The receptionist grudgingly acquiesced. The only non-emergency ultrasound available that day was in a hospital on the western edge of the known world at a hospital I'd never even heard of, let alone visited. At least 5 hospitals in a 30-minute radius, hundreds of clinics, and I had to drive my cold, shaking, pale, listless self nearly an hour to a clinic in a town I'd never even been to - (with a chirpy reminder by the receptionist to be sure to "drink lots of water and hold it"). Somehow, in my not-thinking state of mind, I decided I should swing by one of my project construction sites to deliver some materials I had promised them that day - a testament to my "trip-chain, thrifty, above all don't let anyone down" self and a reflection of just how much I believed I was being a drama queen. It was, after all, on my way - sort of.

The clearest memory of the day came next - I remember stepping into the construction trailer, the world spinning a bit, and the assistant project manager asking if I was okay. "I'm on my way to the hospital," I said. He asked if I was supposed to be driving. "It's not far," I said, leaving him to believe I was going to the hospital that was mere blocks from the site, not one in another county. He, and another manager, looked at each other, alarmed. Here I was, dressed for the office, pale as a ghost, glassy-eyed and dazed. He said, "I think one of us should drive you." All I could think was "what on earth would people think if I showed up at the hospital for an ultrasound to confirm a miscarriage and evaluate the need for a D&C or other procedure accompanied by a male construction project manager - and how could I explain the need to drive by TWO hospitals without explaining WHY I needed to go to the hospital in the first place?" Above all else, miscarriages were taboo topics of discussion - not something to be broadcast. Never mind there was a phone. Never mind, if given the facts, they certainly would have called Himself or a medical professional or the grandmotherly sales manager in the next office over. Never mind, they wouldn't have accompanied me back into the exam room. Looking back, the fact that I was unable to think such clear, logic thoughts, was clear indication that I should not be driving at all - let alone through the Virginia countryside for an hour.

I said "No. I'm fine. It's not far." And that was that.

I don't remember the drive to the hospital. I couldn't even tell you how to get there now. I vaguely remember the ultrasound, which told me nothing other than, "your doctor will contact you with the results." I found out later that the person calling in the ultrasound order from my doctor's office called it in as an "evaluation of potential menstrual complications" - which explained why I had to drive to the western edge of the universe instead of any of the half dozen closer hospitals. It wasn't important. I was that patient who was all dramatic about something that isn't so.

I vaguely remember going to the doctor's after - having eaten nothing, functioning on the few hours of sleep I had had before the events began, still shaking, still pale, still cold and confused and hurting. I remember paying the $25 ransom (er, co-pay), having the nurse stab me with a needle, taking some blood and sending me away. There was no conversation about what had happened, what I should look for, what was wrong, or that I had in all likelihood just lost a baby. It was cold and efficient and clinical - as if it happened every day.

Thing is, it does happen every day. It is one of the most common, and yet unspoken, experiences of pregnancy. Millions go through some sort of variation on the above theme (usually with more sanity to at least not go through it alone). But it had never happened to me. I was terrified. In pain. Confused. Not sure what to think - what kind of person with severe hormone imbalances trying to conceive doesn't know for sure she's pregnant until her body rejects the baby?

I can't even remember if I spoke to Himself about it. I don't think I did. I did later, when the miscarriage was confirmed. But it happened on a day when Himself worked nearly back-to-back shifts at the clinic and spent the few middle-of-the-night hours between at a friend's house - so he didn't even come home that day. After all, the receptionist and nurse had convinced me it was probably "nothing" - since I hadn't even confirmed my pregnancy now, had I? It was probably just a very bad period. Or a cyst that ruptured. No one asked to see the tissue I had collected - carefully preserved on ice in a zipper bag in my purse. The tissue that an Internet search that night identified as most probably the gestational sac - still almost entirely in tact. I didn't offer it. By that point, I was convinced I was making a whole lot of drama over nothing, even though deep down I knew better. The ultrasound report would be back in a few days and it would tell us. I didn't want to be a drama queen. I didn't want to be pitied or fussed over - how can you mourn the loss of something you didn't even know for sure you had to lose? I went back to work the next day.

Two days later, the doctor's office called. It had been a miscarriage. My hcg levels were still high, but the ultrasound showed a complete spontaneous abortion - such an ugly, clinical phrase. I had been about 8 weeks along. I was advised to take it easy and stay off work for a couple of days - the news conveniently delivered on a Friday afternoon just before a 3-day weekend, after two days of burying myself in work trying to forget the whole thing.

Just after I received the call, one of our VPs called. My boss - still out of town on business - had phoned him after receiving my cryptic e-mail, asking him to check on me. He had been out of town, having only returned that morning. He asked if I was okay. I muttered an unconvincing "yes." He asked if I was sure - unconvinced by my lackluster response. "I had a miscarriage," I blurted, feeling the hot tears prick my eyes. Wanting desperately to take it back, to hide, to sob, to figure out how to deal with the news - the reality I had been fleeing for 48 hours.

He uttered the one thing I needed at that moment: "I'm sorry," he said. "That is a horrible thing to have to go through. My wife miscarried not too long ago. It will be tough for a little while." I hung up the phone and, for the first time since the middle-of-the-night agony, I cried.

Odd that the first conversation I had out loud about it was with someone I had absolutely no personal relationship with. Or, maybe not, since he was the first one to be unconvinced by my false bravado, worn down by two days of physical and emotional toil. He didn't know me well enough to know that false bravado was what I did best.

Eventually, I wrote a letter to the doctor, pouring out the emotional agony and the anger I had at how easily I had been dismissed by her staff. She phoned me from her home the day she received the letter and talked to me for half an hour, recounting her own experiences, which included multiple miscarriages. She told me to wait for awhile - to let my body heal and that it was okay to grieve.

The same day, a woman from church asked me if we were ever going to get around to having children. "You aren't getting any younger, you know - you shouldn't put it off."
A few others shrugged it off - inferring that I shouldn't spend too much time mourning the loss of something I didn't know I had to lose or dwelling on the events. "It is God's will," they said. Or "It's your body's way of sparing you the pain of a child who would have a poor quality of life." Odd thing to say to someone in acute pain.

I stopped telling anyone at all who didn't need it for medical reasons.

It's been 4 years - 4 years last week, actually. I almost never bring it up, except when I have to declare how many pregnancies I've had on a medical form, and I almost never talk about the experience itself. Part of it is that 2 1/2 months later, on Christmas Eve, I found out I was expecting again. It was a harrowing several months, dreading a repeat of that fall's events. There wasn't the energy to think about it. Part of it was not knowing how to feel - feeling like it wasn't okay to mourn the loss of a baby whose humble beginnings resided in the darkest corner of our freezer, wrapped carefully in plastic and sealed - until I was certain no one but me cared to examine it. Physically the experience had been traumatic - a day of severe pain and massive blood loss followed by 6 weeks of roller-coaster hormones that should have earned me the label "clinically insane," but I was certain I wasn't entitled to the emotional pain I felt.

However, I still think about it - once in awhile, on days like yesterday, when the weather begins to chill and the leaves turn and the sunlight loses some of its luster, I remember that fall day, remember the feeling of being totally alone, remember the numb, barely-held-together determination to not be a drama queen. The emotional pain of losing a baby has long since subsided. I have two beautiful little girls. I would feel greedy to ask for anything more. But last night, I stumbled across an essay on a father's perspective on the loss of his baby due to miscarriage - and I recognized so many of my own emotions and feelings in his poignant recounting. I realized that I had essentially shoved it under the rug - quietly mentioning it when necessary, but still feeling like it was taboo to take out an examine too closely.

I realized that while the emotional pain of loss has subsided, that the emotional, raw feeling of terror and being alone and chided for not knowing my body well enough had never gone away.

I am blessed. I have a beautiful little family that makes my life so much richer. And yet, now, 4 years later, I realized it's okay to say I too understand the pain of loss and the hazy, suppressed terror in facing something feeling utterly alone.

I hope this is the final anniversary.

The Women of Tidewater

Today was an odd, reflective sort of day - not quite melancholy, not quite "in a funk," just deep in thought - meditative, if one can use that word when one is dealing with month-end reporting at work and two kids with cabin-fever at home.

Anyway, as talking heads discussed the events of last night ad nauseum and friends and family shared their thanks and support of the miliary community, I found myself reflecting back a decade ago (simply typing that makes me feel old), when so much of what was on the news this morning was part of my every day life in some manner.

10 years ago this spring I was in the middle of so many changes I wasn't sure where my life would end up. I was four or five months into a new job, in a new town (living, for the first and last time of my life, 5 minutes from the beach), among a new community of mostly active duty military families, acting in a leadership role of the children's organization at church (yes - someone actually put ME semi-in-charge of small humans at the tender age of not-much-over-twenty - me! Somehow we all survived and I'm pretty sure I'm a better person for it) and writing e-mails to Himself who was cruising around the Mediterranean in an enormous ship, eating his way through Europe.

It was an era of many defining moments - not the least of which was the horrible, terrifying events that would commence that fall. The events spearheaded by the man whose name seemed to roll off someone's tongue every third word this morning.

It has been awhile since I've taken out that portion of my life and examined it much. Today, I did just that, as I reflected on what the events of last evening meant to me - and how I felt about them. I thought about "the beginning" - where I was the evening I got word of the USS Cole bombing - and how sick I felt, as I had just begun my foray into life with active duty military friends, which made the whole thing seem that much more vivid and painful. I thought about the gauzy, laid-back summer of 2001, spent learning the ropes of adulthood and responsibility and real life. I thought about the pain and confusion that commenced with the terrorist attacks on 9/11. I thought about the people I knew deployed to the heated sands of the Middle East to fight a war without geopolitical boundaries - and of the constant reminders at home that the world had changed - the loaded fighter jets, the naked horizon devoid of ships at port, the startling absence of the menfolk in the church congregation ... And I thought about the day I stood on a cold, windy pier with a restless, 5-year-old Grover, peering into the horizon for the first sight of Himself's massive ship - returning home after a 7.5-month absence and a combat engagement in the Persian Gulf. I thought of the thousands of people crowded onto a little strip of land jutting into the mouth of the James River, crying and belting out the words to the Lee Greenwood anthem that makes me cry every time I hear the starting chords.

Mostly, however, the startling, unsettling news of last night made me think of the wonderful people who became permanent parts of the fabric of my life that year, in the days before the world changed forever. The women - mostly military spouses - who taught me about strength and love and loyalty and faith. The women, hailing from far-flung places, ideologies and experiences, who taught me about true friendship, support and patriotism. Women who shared tears and laughter and road trips and stories and e-mails and testimonies of love and faith and commitment.

Strangely, I found myself today not reflecting on the terrors brought about by the man whose life ended yesterday, but the friendships that came about the year he left his indelible mark on the world - the relationships that grew, blossomed and still nourish me today - a husband, two kids, a half dozen moves, several jobs and a few gray hairs later.

I truly believe God had a hand in helping weave together an afghan of warm hearts and open arms to prepare me to face the challenges that lay far beyond my young adulthood.

It was that, I reflected on today - that blanket of warmth, love, acceptance and friendship - the good things and people that helped shaped me into who I am now, and who I hope to raise my girls to be. Sometimes, out of the ashes of something terrible, a true treasure is discovered.

Today, I thought not of innocence and life lost, but of wisdom, friendship and faith found. To those who played a role in that - you know who you are - God Bless You, every one.

I Would Just Like to Point Out ...

...That I have, apparently, learned something in the last two years.

Two years ago, it took us forever to put together Woodstock's bassinet (recounted, along with the resulting ruined dinner, here). And that was with two people, the box and the instructions (which, in hindsight, might have actually been the problem to begin with!)

Wednesday night, in a fit of desperation more than true nesting (nesting has come and gone - it seems I have neither the fortitude or the energy I had last time), I decided someone had better get around to putting up the bassinet, just in case Pebbles decides to come in the next week or so (highly unlikely, but I am considered "full term" tomorrow). Of course, Himself was working, which left the bassinet assembly up to me.

Of course, I could find the instructions to the bouncy seat (not that it actually needed instructions, the stroller (but not the carseat - ack! - that's the next project, and the mobile, but not the pack-n-play bassinet. I was more than a little paranoid, remembering the adventure last time.

10 minutes later, I was ... done. DONE. DONE!!! I couldn't help but feel like I'd done something horribly wrong and the whole thing was going to collapse in a fit of poorly assembled (or engineered?) plastic, metal and fabric. I kicked it. I put my (half-packed) hospital bag in it. Nothing happened. I drug out the hand sanitizer, the not-at-all-scented baby lotion (anticipating she's as allergic to fragrances as Woodstock and I...), the bottom cream ... nothing happened. It remained standing.

I'm baffled. How is it that it could take us half and evening last time and less than a quarter of an hour this time? It just doesn't seem possible.

Then again, it does feel sort of nice to realize I have learned something since I've become a parent.

Moon Walks and Vampires

On Moon Walks
20 years ago today, I made my first trek to the National Air & Space Museum in downtown D.C. I was spending the summer at my aunt and uncle's house in Virginia, and was mid-way through indulging myself in what would ultimately end up being a life-changing experience.

We had made several trips downtown in previous weeks - the first being for the not-to-be-missed 4th of July celebration on the National Mall - but we hadn't yet ventured to the Smithsonian museums on the mall's south side.

I certainly didn't recognize the significance of the day until my arrival (with hundreds of thousands of other people) at the air and space museum that day - the 20th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon. I touched a moon rock, gazed at real and replicated space craft and learned more about space in a few hours of reading every museum sign I could lay my eyes on than I had in all my nearly 11 years of life up to that point. It was, after all, only 3 short years after the Challenger disaster, my last real interaction with space, which had left me a bit skeptical and slightly bruised.

I remember feeling kind of important for being in a place so significant on the anniversary of such a great historical event. It was, ultimately, one of the things that gave D.C. such an incredible pull over my psyche. Standing in the middle of history was intoxicating - so intoxicating that it never quite left me, until I migrated back as an adult resident.

It's hard to believe 20 years - and so much more history - has passed. Today, as I listen to the recaps of the 40th celebration of man's walk on the moon, I can't help but reflect that for me, the lunar landing happened not on July 20, 1969, but on July 20, 1989, as I had the chance to re-live a piece of history in a city known for staging some of the most significant historical, political and social acts of the 20the 20th century.

That day, D.C. became my town.

On Vampires.
It surprises me, looking back, that the thing that terrified me most about my first surgery (at age 14) was not the surgery itself, or even the anesthetic (something I learned to fear with the next surgery, which left me in critical care on life support). Rather, my greatest fear was having my blood drawn and typed the week before surgery. It wasn't the needle so much as it was the fact that I had to sit and watch vials upon vials (or so it felt) of my blood leak out of my arm.

Today, as I journeyed to the hospital lab for my fourth blood draw in 12 days, I realized just how grateful I was that I go over the whole thing a long time ago. As it turns out, if one ends up with a blood clot while pregnant, one ends up spending a significant amount of time getting to know vampires phlebotomists on a first-name basis. I have one more draw this week until the doctors determine if I am medicated at the correct level. Then I get to repeat the whole process in 10 days when I begin another drug that may or may not interact with the first one, requiring another two weeks of vampire lab visits every three days.

The whole experience has taught me something though - if you have to go in for frequent lab work, go to a hospital. Himself confessed that hospital vampires phlebotomists generally have more experience overall (not to mention much more experience with difficult veins or people like me who now artificially bleed like a stuck pig upon the slightest abrasion) and are more skilled with a needle. I don't want to risk jeopardizing the streak yet, but so far, 5 sticks with needles (counting the one where I got stuck and didn't bleed - odd) and not a single, solitary bruise. A significant event, given the fact that this medication makes me bruise spontaneously.

It still doesn't make me terribly fond of vampires blood draws, but at least it makes it tolerable. Plus, they give Woodstock a dum dum sucker if she happens to be with me, which makes her find my lab visits downright thrilling. And anything that makes a toddler happy, makes a toddler's mother very happy.

One Decade Ago

Ten years ago tonight, Himself and I first met.

We met at a Murder Mystery dinner. The first two things I found out about him were that he disliked bread and Italian food (we were having spaghetti and garlic bread - the first and last time the two of us ever ate that meal together).

I remember the first thing that came to my mind, "We have NOTHING in common." I was pretty quick to dismiss him as a result (in truth, I was pretty quick to dismiss ANY guy at that point in my life - I did not want to get married, and the surest way to that was to not go out with the same guy more than a couple of times). As it turns out, he was friends with my best friend's boyfriend (who then became fiance, husband and ex-husband - all before Himself and I were ever married), so it wasn't as easy to dismiss him as I thought it would be. And, as it turns out, we had far more in common than I thought.

He was excellent at the Murder Mystery game, and I was intrigued by how different he was from everyone else. We ended up talking for quite awhile after the event. In fact, talking(ironically, given Himself's hermit-like personality) was the hallmark of our early relationship. In fact, my roommates, at the end of my tenure at Warren Hall, gave me an award for being the "Most Likely to be Found Outside at 3 a.m. Deep in Conversation." Let's just say I didn't exactly get a lot of sleep that spring.

It's hard to believe it has been 10 years. Ten years ago, I was on a year-long break from college, trying to decide what to do next - working full-time in educational programming for the national 4-H organization and serving as the resident advisor to Warren Hall - a co-ed house for 24 college-aged youth. Himself was living the barracks at the Navy Hospital, working as a corpsman in the Navy and a vampire at one of the local hospitals.

In the 10 years since, Himself has moved four times, I have moved six times and we've moved collectively four times. We've worked for 16 companies between us, lived in three different states, a total of 10 cities and one aircraft carrier. We've been married six years, had a Siamese cat (Rameses), one child and will welcome a second one this year. We've driven tens of thousands of miles to pick up or drop off Grover and have driven the stretches of I-95 and Route 13 between VA and DE hundreds of times in that pursuit.

We have made and moved away from dozens of close friends ... which probably explains our reticence to work to find any new ones. We have written thousands of e-mails, used up hours on the phone and road-tripped to all sorts of cool places. We have laughed, loved, cried, fought, mourned and celebrated - and eaten our way through more amazing food than either of us probably should have.

More than that, in ten years we have grown. Given the adventures (good and bad) of the last 10 years, I'm looking forward to what the next 10 years holds for us.

I love you, Himself.

The Voice of Angels

The other night I was driving home from dinner with friends and listening to a CD that I had dug out of a massive box of junk that somehow had made the move (and 7 months of habitation) without having been opened. It's not a CD I listen to often, the older I get, the less music I've found myself listening to, as my brain gets too busy to enjoy it (it's one of the hallmarks of my anxiety issue).

The second-to-last song came on, and I nearly had to pull over to listen to it. The song, "Who Will Be the Real Hero?" in and of itself is a rather forgettable song. Easy to sing along to, just sappy enough to make you feel warm and fuzzy. But it wasn't the song that nearly stopped me in my 65 mph tracks headed northbound in The Frontier. It was the memories that came flooding back.

The majority of my high school was a member of a single, locally prominent religion. As a result, the majority of students, during their "elective" period, took religion, offered across the street from campus. Because of the large number of students enrolled in the religion program, they had a council of a dozen or so seniors each year, who planned activities, peer involvement events and traveled to all the local congregations throughout the school year to speak during a church service.

I had the privilege of serving with some of the most incredible people on that council my senior year. Throughout the year, we tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to learn a hymn, which we could perform mid-way through our Sunday program when we visited local congregations. To say it was horrible is probably a little strong, but I'm not so sure I could call it "good" - we had a handful of musically-inclined people and a lot more not-so-musically-inclined people. But we tried. And getting a group of high school seniors to sing for a religious service period is kind of it's own miracle, so no one really complained.

However, the Sunday before graduation each year, the religion department held its own graduation, honoring students who had completed 3 and 4 years of elective religious study (another miracle). It was tradition for the council to sing. This meant we had to do something more complicated that the hymn we had lovingly tried to sing through the year - and it probably had to sound better.

We practiced. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth. At the same time there was some (details now forgotten) drama among the ranks, causing even more stress than normal. Whispers of "this is never going to sound good at all" swirled through the group, as everyone (musically-inclined and not) wished for another option to show our dedication and appreciation.

The night of the event came. During our last rehearsal, we could barely be heard 3/4 of the way back in the congregation - and that was without any people filling their seats yet. We stumbled. We groaned. We sounded ... okay. But no one who wasn't lying (or our parents) was going to come up and tell us that we had contributed to the spirit of the meeting.

Immediately following the rehearsal, we gathered in prayer. Someone pleaded that we would be able to sound good and bring a good spirit. Then the graduation began, we took our seats and forgot about anything more than our individual tasks.

As we stood to sing, something changed. Something palpable settled down on us. When we opened our mouths, it wasn't our voices at all, but the voices of angels that reached out into the congregation. Our hearts filled with an amazing sense of love and peace.

When the night was over, we were met with astonished exclamations - from parents and our advisor (who had heard our woeful musical attempts enough to know it wasn't actually us singing) to random relatives and members of the audience, stunned by such a performance by an otherwise obviously rag tag group of teenagers.

The song we sang: "Who Will Be The Real Hero."

More than anything, hearing the song again, for the first time in years, brought back what happened AFTER the song had been sung and the crowds had departed. It brought back a memory I'm not sure I'd thought of since that night ... Of a crowd of teens, who had loved, struggled, learned and grown together for an entire year, who had just experienced a miracle. Of hugs and tears and wonder. Of disbelief, of faith, of hope and anticipation. A memory of clinging together in awe over the small miracle, in sadness that our time as a family of sorts was over, in hope that the goodness would remain in each of us.

I haven't seen the majority of that group in more than a decade, though I often wonder what they're up to. It was nice to have a quiet moment to remember such a significant point in time, when I was surrounded by incredible people, whose voices sounded like angels.

One Hundred

Today, if he were alive, would be my grandfather's 100th birthday.

He was born at the tail-end of the lame-duck period of Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, a little more than a month before William H. Taft took the oath of office.

One hundred years ago, in 1909, the NAACP was founded. The first radio broadcast was transmitted via short-wave radio. The Navy opened its base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Manhattan bridge opened. Barry Goldwater, Benny Goodman, Jessica Tandy, Burl Ives, Errol Flynn were all born that year.

It seems a lifetime away - too far back to comprehend, and yet I am only two generations removed.

He dropped out of school in the eighth grade when his father died - to go to work and provide for his mother and his seven siblings. In 1923, it's just what you did when you were the eldest son.

As a young man, he was thinning sugar beets alongside a friend, when a bolt of lightning struck the ground between them. The bolt split and hit both of them. My grandfather lived. His friend did not.

He didn't marry until he was 42 years old and all of his siblings were grown, married and self-sufficient. My grandmother was 16 years his junior. His younger sister had a daughter marry the same year he did.

He loved people and animals - and made a living as a police officer, bus driver and farmer - generally working all three jobs simultaneously to provide for his wife and five children.

He made excellent candy and peanut brittle, never missed a deer hunt on horse and

As a kid I remember him in his big recliner, playing 'I've got your nose' and giggling at our horror-stricken faces. He was a big man - tall and larger than life - who delighted in children. I remember gleefully going to visit him on "the farm" - his big hands lifting me up to right Cheeto, the Shetland Pony. I remember him cutting the grass with a push mower, his penchant for growing huge vegetables and his love of rhubarb.

He was my mom's hero - they had a father-daughter bond unlike any I've ever seen before. She dreamed of growing up to become a policeman and owning horses. Instead, she became a librarian and married my father who really doesn't like horses.

He was gentle and kind and stubborn as a farm mule. My favorite memory of him was two months before he died - at my uncle's wedding reception. He cradled my day-old niece - one just come from heaven, one speedily headed that way. They sat, in perfect stillness, not needing words for their spirit to commune. Someone captured the moment on film, exactly the same way my heart did.

My last memory of him was a week or so before he died - he came down to attend my sister's baptism. He was a skeleton with skin, I hardly knew how to respond to this shrunken giant. On the way home, he developed a blood clot that put him immediately in the hospital - he lost his leg and never made it home.

He died on the day my dad planted three pine trees in our front yard - and every single time I go home, I look at those pine trees and think of him. Everyone else in my family thinks it's odd - to associate those pine trees with a man who never saw them - but I distinctly remember the day he died, and I distinctly remember dad outside planting those trees - grown tall and broad and thick now.

He died three months shy of his 83rd birthday. I was 13 years old - the oldest of the grandchildren - one of the only to remember him before he grew sick and frail. I remember my mom's devastation, my grandmother's steadfast refusal to ever again utter the words "joy" or "fun" after he passed. I penned a poem about his passing the night before the funeral - it was only then that I cried at his passing. He was the first direct relative I had lost to death. Grandpa died knowing only 8 of his 16 grandchildren.

It seems odd to me that my grandfather would be older than most of my friends' great-grandfathers. His grandparents crossed the plains as pioneers, a mere sixty years before he was born. His life seems so remote, so far away, so far removed from the modern, crazy world we live in today. He was an adult through the Great Depression, too old to serve in World War II, a senior citizen when my parents married.

In the centennial year of his birth, were he alive, my grandfather would welcome great-grandchildren #3 and #4. His home and farm have been long sold - after the passing of my grandmother more than six years ago. His possessions have all been divided among children and grandchildren. His siblings have all passed. What remains of his generation, his life, are memories and photographs - fleeting glimpses of the hard-working, gentle man who answered to the name Ed.

Happy 100th Birthday, Grandpa. We still miss you.

Maybe I'm Not Going to Hibernate This Year ... Yet

Two years ago, the crisis of the moment was trying to figure out what to feed a family of six in our congregation that wouldn't kill them (or us). It was a small, ridiculous thing, but the whole month was one of turmoil and uncertainty that lead to a life-changing (good and bad) February.

One year ago, the crisis of the moment was very, very real. Himself was out of a job, I was neck-deep in a personal crisis and my worries the year before seemed rather elementary.

This January, the 10-day forecast on Monday showed 45-degree temperatures and sunshine EVERY SINGLE DAY. Sure we're having inversion and the air outside is bad enough to kill us - but it does nothing to diminish my desire to click my heels and sing each morning when I leave the house and discover SUNSHINE. We've not had three snow storms in a week all winter. The last storm melted off our driveway before we got around to shoveling it. My boss isn't insane. Himself likes his job. The future appears to be bright. Woodstock is as sweet-tempered as ever.

While I still hate winter and snow and being cold, for the first time in recent memory, I am tolerating January rather well. I'm also scared to admit this, because a) winter is far from over - Februrary is the snowiest month in The Frontier and b) I'm afraid that some big trial or challenge will be sent my way just to test my newly minted postive-January outlook.

If you excuse Himself's nearly 3-week mystery illness and my wicked insomnia and our combined total lack of appetite for anything respectable (food-wise), January is shaping up to be a fairly decent month.

Like I said, it's the little things that count mid-winter.

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

It is inevitable that a moment, a day, a month, a year, will end. And, if it is remarkable enough, it is inevitable that someone will comment on it. For posterity, for analysis, for re-hashing the gruesome details for all the rubber neckers.

I listened to a lot of "best of" and "most important" lists today. It naturally put me in the frame of mine thinking about my own past year. Newsmakers indicated that everything indicates that 2008 is ending worse than it began. I thought about my year some more. It didn't take very many brain cells, or a news analyst, to conclude that, personally, 2008 only got progressively better during the latter half. We're definitely ending the year on a high(er) note around this household.

Then I realized, as I sat down to reflect on each month of 2008, I don't remember much of anything about the first half of the year. It is mostly marked by interactions with significant people in my life. At that point, I realized, 2008 was the year of People. People who surrounded me (and us), bouyed me up, made me better. People who laughed, cried and shared.

As I am set to ring in 2009, there are no regrets regarding 2008. I am simply happy it is over and that a new year is beginning. I am praying for less drama, more peace and the ability to savor every single moment with Himself and Woodstock.

2009 will be about simplicity and progress. And next year, I won't have to wonder what happened to the first six months of the year, buried beneath a thick blanket of mental fog.

Each Life That Touches Ours For Good

There are times when people make such an enormous impact in one's life and yet often go about their own lives none the wiser. One of these was a guy at college. I only remember his first name. I'm not sure I could pick him out of a lineup (I certainly wouldn't recognize him now). I don't know where he was from, what he majored in, how old he was. I only know that he brightened my day every Monday, Wednesday and Friday the first semester of freshman year.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday that semester, I walked from my off-campus apartment across the street to the religion building and turned right to head onto the main campus quad. Each time, as I got ready to round the religion building, he would be coming the other direction. Every single time he would say, "Hi Sara!"

It got to the point where I looked forward to our paths crossing every other day. The university had three times the number of people enrolled as my hometown had residents at the time. What made the difference wasn't the greeting - lots of people said hello. Even complete strangers. Rather, what made an impact so strong I still remember it, was that every time we crossed paths that semester, he greeted me by name and acted happy to see me. What surprised me, was that he had taken enough interest to learn my name - and to use it.

Those small encounters changed my entire outlook. It created a point in my day to which I looked forward. We never had a conversation. I don't know where his life took him. I would guess, he probably doesn't remember me. Certainly, he has no idea that his simple action made such a profound impact on me that it changed my life. A small change, to be sure, but big enough to realize that I, as a person, mattered in the great universe of strangers; big enough to realize the power of one's name.

From that semester on, I have striven to pay forward the little bit of sunshine a neighbor brought into my life that fall, by letting people know, in some small way, that they matter - and I notice.

Happy Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown

Five years ago, I cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner, by myself, for the very first time.

It was utter nonsense. The kitchen in the poorly named Malibu Palms Complex* had enough counter space for a small dish drainer and a dorm-sized microwave (no dishwasher, which meant the dish drainer was a necessity). It had a 3/4-sized oven with one rack, which meant only one pot, pan, or cookie sheet could fit in it at once. The refrigerator door only opened 3/4 of the way, as it hit the stove and could go no further. There was garage shelving in the kitchen, to make up for the lack of cabinet/counter space.

It meant baking the pies, one at a time, the night before, then getting up at 5 a.m. to put the turkey in and start the rolls, which would go in when the turkey came out. It meant that rolling pie dough out on the dining room table, cooking the stuffing in a crock pot on the floor (no counter space, and there was a bird in the oven) and eliminating any offers of help because with pies and rolls on the table, the in-progress or finished sides on one of the shelves of the industrial shelving unit, the cutting board on top of the microwave - where the potatoes, sweet potatoes and fruits and veggies were chopped, the bird in the oven, four pots on the stove, and the stuffing on the floor, there was no room for another human being - helpful or otherwise.

Ironically, it was also the year I decided to make homemade cranberry sauce. As if homemade stuffing, rolls and pies weren't already enough to earn me the title role of Queen of Holiday Insanity.

The five of us (Himself, myself, two stray Navy friends of Himself's and a random girl on holiday from Dover AFB) sat down to eat dinner at the 4-person dining room table in the middle of the living room, because the kitchen (the table's normal place of occupancy) was too small to actually USE the table for anything but a one-person countertop. This meant displacing the pies, rolls, etc. and putting them on top of the stove. Serving dinner was like going to a progressive dinner - each item was dished up from some random location - right down to the stuffing still being on the floor.

Dinner took 15 hours to prepare and 15 minutes to eat. The clean up (due to lack of space, lack of ability to open the fridge all the way, lack of a dishwasher and lack of space enough to cajole anyone else into helping) took another 4 hours. I went to bed exhausted, only to have to rise the next morning and head to work.

I vowed, "Never Again!"

Except, well, I did it again. Twice more. And I liked it. The kitchen in NoVa was larger, much nicer, had tons of counter and cabinet space, opened to the living room (all the better to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade), and I gave up on homemade stuffing, cranberry sauce and having guests. (As it turns out, Himself hates stuffing, Grover only eats the boxed kind and Jane doesn't like onions - why kill myself for something only I liked?).

Two years ago we went to the World's Smallest Townhouse for Thanksgiving - I only had to bring the pies (Pumpkin Mousse and Coconut Cream). Last year, we had The Great Pie Gathering at my Uncle's, and I only had to bring the pies (Key Lime, Coconut Cream) and homemade macaroni and cheese.

As it turns out, Great Malibu Palms Holiday Insanity of 2003 aside, I prefer staying home for Thanksgiving. However, it appears to be the eighth deadly sin to stay home for a holiday now that we're within hundreds of miles (versus thousands of miles) from family. Which means we will be trekking to the Great Frozen North on Thursday with pies (Pumpkin, Key Lime and Coconut Cream - see a pattern?), all of Woodstock's baby gear, festive attitudes and enough clothing for a 2-3 day stay.

Next year, we're having a roast chicken (Himself actually doesn't like turkey), roast sweet potatoes and pies (we don't need anything but the basic favorites), watching the parade, sleeping in, watching football, playing board games and eating leftovers for four days - the only leftovers I truly like. Not necessarily in that order.

God bless the pilgrims for enduring the North Atlantic seas in the fall, learning to harvest a crop and inspiring a president to make their celebratory meal a national holiday more than two centuries later.



*1. Palm trees aren't indigenous to Virginia's tidewater region - or to Virginia at all, as a matter of fact. 2. It was as close to a ghetto complex as you could get without actually living IN the ghetto, right down to having to call the cops on the neighbors. 3. Malibu is in California, not in Virginia.

Partying Like It's 1999

Okay, you thought that Pop Culture commentary only appeared on Bonnie's blog, but once in a great awhile, I snap out of my pop-culture-dummy fog and actually know about something before reading it on her blog or hearing it about it in staff meeting from someone whose oldest child is only six years my junior.

On Monday, MTV's one-time hit show, TRL was on the air for a celebrity reunion finale after a 10-year run. It's funny that the article caught my attention. I haven't purposely watched MTV since Real World Seattle aired 10ish years ago. However, I was a TRL junkie by default during the show's early days when Britney was still an "innocent" teen pop star, Justin Timberlake was better known as part of a boy band, Eminem was still married to Kim the first time, Beyonce was a child of destiny and no one dreamed of being an American idol.

My junkie-as-an-innocent-bystander status was short-lived, but nonetheless very impactful. During the late summer of 1999, my 18-year-old freshman roommate from Arizona* would come home from class every day and turn the TV to Carson Daly and thousands of screaming fans in Midtown.

In fact, it was so critical to her educational and moral development that she (or rather daddy dearest) paid the entire cable bill, just so she could have MTV. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how we even got it. I didn't think the school in Happy Valley let their approved housing have MTV, but we did (shhh - don't tell - we probably committed other horrible atrocities as well!).

I remember sitting on the couch working on my physics homework (it had to be physics - I had physics homework every day for the eight straight weeks of summer term) with "Baby One More Time" in the background and her drooling over Eminem. Every. Single. Day. I have her to thank for the fact that I actually know who Carson Daly is, though I would be hard-pressed to pick him out of a lineup. (Only slightly related sidenote: I also read a story of a woman unable to identify anyone's voice - even her own daughter's - except for Sean Connery's. Long live the sexy Scottish burr!)

TRL was a storied part of that almost-final semester of college. It unwittingly played a small role in my education that summer. In fact, other than the tornado that hit The Frontier and the sudden death of JFK Jr., watching my roommate watch TRL would have a fighting chance as my most significant memory of that moment in lfie.**

Farewell, TRL. Thanks for the memories.

*Said roommate drove me up the wall. However, I now realize it could not have been much fun living with a grad student and a college senior who both had "get me out of here now" attitudes that were probably not well disguised.

**I was stuck in a weird East Coast v. Happy Valley time warp for those eight weeks. I don't remember much of anything, which is probably why what I DO remember is so ridiculously insignificant.

Life as Numbers

I want to know when I got so old.

I'm not saying that I AM old, necessarily, just that I FEEL old. Like the world has been placating me for years, making me think nothing has changed, and BAM! suddenly I wake up and realize that the illusory netting has been yanked away only to reveal significant gaps between what was and what is.

Just as in the story of the frogs slowly boiled to death as the heat was turned up a notch at a time, so as not to alarm them (how's that for a gruesome image of the day?), time seems to lull one into a false sense of "everything is staying the same" as the subtleties of change are hidden to stop the inevitable freaking out and moaning about lost youth, opportunities and the hideous outfit that you swore would never go out of style.

Browsing through some old high school photos of friends today, I had one of those moments of sudden realization: things have changed A LOT. I don't remember everyone looking quite that funny. And we definitely didn't look quite that young. We were OLD. 16 at least. Nearly adults. Old enough to know that our parents knew nothing and that we would conquer the world.

Except, it was all an illusion. Now that I am actually growing old (or at the very least speeding into middle age - after all, the life expectancy when I was born was 77.3 - which means sometime the last week of April 2016 I will be exactly "middle aged"), I realize my parents knew almost everything, the world is only conquered in the minds of youth and poofy hair bows were NOT the be all and end all of style.

The kids I babysat as infants and toddlers are in college. Some are married. Some have kids. I reminisced yesterday about the birthday of a friend I met a decade ago - how we, 10 years ago, hit up TGI Fridays for a girls' night out and a round of frozen drinks. The fact that it has been 10 years and a dozen hairstyles ago made me ponder if I was any better off now than I was then. My greatest fear in life is looking back and realizing I was running in place. And then I think about the numbers ... I haven't even stood still long enough for my bookcase to gather dust.

Since the high school photos, I have lived at 16 separate addresses (if you don't count my stint as a semi-permanent basement dweller at Heidi's or the two summers I spent with my parents) in 11 cities and 3 states. I've lived with at least 50 people - not including Woodstock, Grover, Heidi's clan or any relatives. I have lived with people from at least 20 different states (Utah and Wisconsin being the two states from which the most roommates hailed ... ironically, I've never actually been to Wisconsin).

In that time, I have traveled to 20 additional states, held 16 different job titles at 9 companies (including 4 job titles at 3 companies since I moved to The Frontier), supervised just shy of two dozen people, reported to nearly that many different people and broke a personal record interviewing 40 times in a single calendar year on three different job occasions. I have earned a college degree, been promoted and promoted, volunteered, held countless church positions, made friends, dated, become engaged, been married and given birth.

It's a lot to cram in less than 1.5 decades. In fact, it averages out to a new job title and address every 9 months over the last 12 years and a new company every 15 months. It's no wonder people can only track me down via Facebook! The whole thing becomes rather alarming when I realize I've worked for two different companies at more than 3 years each and had a 3-year stint at one address and a 2-year stint at another address. (The statistics looked much better prior to our migration west).

It makes me feel old, as it is likely with all that change that I've become chronically exhausted. Add in Himself's stats and the whole thing threatens to bring my life expectancy down several decades.

Looking at it that way, the change has been rapid and a little jerky - creating a metaphor between my life and the pinball machine that used to inhabit the infamous "214" where Himself once took up residence. And yet, while the environmental changes have been stacatto, the internal ones have been subtle. It seems like mere moments until closer examination reveals enough subtle change to feel like centuries.

Cell phones were only used in dire emergencies, if at all. They were luxuries few people had. I was the first incoming freshman class in The Great Frozen North to have an e-mail account - a laughable, plain text, FTP-access-only, no attachments, graphics, sounds or hyperlinks e-mail account. Debit cards were a new thing, $100,000 could buy a very nice home in a lot of places and the 90s became the decade of the super model, grunge, platform shoe revival, and the anti-80s.

It's no wonder change has to be subtle. Otherwise, the sheer volume of the sights, sounds and experiences would threaten to overwhelm one's fragile persona. Either that, or one would simply feel like 12+ hours of sleep was mandatory.

That's another thing ... I don't remember needing this much sleep before I started growing old.

A Solemn Obligation

"They fought together as brothers-in-arms. They died together and now they sleep side by side. To them we have a solemn obligation." -Admiral Chester Nimitz

It is perfectly silent right now.

I am working form home. Woodstock is fast asleep. There is no traffic on the road in front of the house (sound proof, our windows are not). The wind isn't blowing. It's not raining. The sun is out. My living room carpet is cleaner than it was this morning (carpet spot cleaning - one of those joys you never realized adults got to experience over and over and over). The house is bright and full of sun.

And, there is a flag in my front yard.

Seven years ago yesterday, I stood on Pier 5 at the Norfolk Naval Base with Grover, then only 5, and waited. "God Bless the U.S.A." and "I'm Already There" - two anthems that had defined the deployment of the USS Enterprise, blared over the loudspeakers. Thousands of people huddled together in the unusually cold November air as the breeze blew off the Chesapeake Bay, up the mouth of the James River and across the pier. We barely noticed.

We put our hands up to shade our eyes from the early morning sun - searching to watch the Enterprise make its first debut on the horizon. We first caught sight of the Navy's largest, and fastest, carrier - returning from a scheduled deployment that had ended in unscheduled combat following the terror of 9/11 - a little after 7 a.m. It would take nearly four hours to reach the pier - it's rails manned by sailors dressed in their dress blues.

I cannot begin to describe the adrenaline, the tears, the joy, the pride, the anticipation that filled that pier that day. I absolutely will never be able to put into words the chills that ran down my spine and the tears that coursed down my face as the first sailors set foot on Pier 5. Following ship tradition, they were the "new daddies" - those whose wives had born children while they were out to sea. Gathered in a tent, the sailors met their newborn children for the very first time.

It was a day that I will remember forever. Next to Woodstock's birth, it was one of the most amazing days of my life - not everyone gets to stand on a pier and welcome a shipful of sailors home from combat.

Nearly three years later, my parents and sister stood in the quiet stillness of the California desert. They held signs, wore matching t-shirts and cheered as a bus rumbled down a long dusty road. My brother, a combat Marine veteran, was returning home from Iraq. He had witnessed all the horrors of war and was changed, physically and mentally and spirtually. Relief flooded the family members meeting their Marines in the lonely midnight desert. With that relief came a long moment of silence - a pause to remember the arms that would go empty that night for those Marines who gave the ultimate sacrifice. Twice my parents stood in the California desert to welcome my brother home. Twice he left to battle in the desert - the cradle of civilization - to answer his country's call. Twice he risked everything, beat the odds, returned to fill the arms of those left behind.

Two different experiences. Two different homecomings. Dozens of friends. Hundreds of acquaintances. A nearly four-year sojourn in a beachside community of military bases, squadrons, fleets, companies - family.

A day that means much to me as family, friends and dear strangers are honored for their service, sacrifice and devotion.

Happy Veteran's Day.

Hello, Thirteen

Last week I looked in the mirror and was startled to realize I was looking at my 13-year-old self (13 plus several pounds and some assorted stretch marks - of course!).

There, in the mirror, was the same face that stared back at me at 13, and it made me want to cry.

When I was 13, I had THE WORST skin. Horrible. It began a series of trips to the dermatologist. My mother (bless her porcelin-skinned genes) was worried about acne scarring (and about me eventually blaming her for everything that went wrong in my life because someone had to be responsible for looking like I'd been attacked with a red Sharpie in my sleep).

I tried every single product on the market - including a 2-year stint on a drug now known to cause serious, long-term side effects. The meds helped on Tuesdays, Saturday mornings and every other Wendesday afternoon - in other words, there was no real evidence that they had any kind of measurable, lasting impact.

No worries, my mother said, this only lasts a little while. In 10 years, you will look back and laugh at this.

Except, it has been nearly TWENTY years, and I'm not laughing. I am still looking at the same face in the mirror. Oh yes, over the last decade there have been times when it hasn't been so bad - I went an entire nine months feeling like an adult, as my skin magically cleared up while pregnant with Woodstock. But those times were few and far between.

In college, I tried a new-to-market "miracle" drug. It took care of my skin all right, but I had to sign my life away, traipse into the doctor's every month for a blood test, and it made my joints hurt and my mouth shrivel up for lack of saliva.

It wasn't worth it.

I tried a mail-order solution that works, but only as long as you use it. It was axed in the first round of budget cuts after college (yes, I had more disposable income making $400/month in college than I do now ... go figure).

I have used every single brand of cleanser on the market - drugstore and high end. Doesn't matter. They all work more or less the same. In fact, the ones marketed to teens in the drugstore work the best, because I have teenaged skin.

Most of it is related to a hormone imbalance, but it doesn't make it any easier.

I have an odd plea to the universe: Just once I want to look my age instead of 13. Just once I want to look in the mirror and not see painful little bumps. Just once I want to proclaim - to hell with the make-up I'm going naked (on my face)!

Maybe I should dress up as a teenager for Halloween this year.

Thinking Out Loud, Part V

A continuation of this ...

It doesn't really matter what the summer was like. There were two blissful weeks where I felt absolutely perfectly happy, as long as I didn't think about the future. I worked part-time at The Factory. Turned off caring about anything related to it and enjoyed the warm summer afternoons I got to spend with Woodstock - swimming in the backyard kiddie pool, mostly - in an attempt to beg her to tolerate water/bathing.

There was a 7-day period where I didn't work at all "between jobs" at The Factory and The Office. Grover had arrived, along with a friend of Himself's from Virginia, and I puttered and took the kids swimming and went to the zoo and rejoiced in life as a stay-at-home mom.

Himself remarked about the light in my eyes. The panic attacks that were coming almost daily decreased. I had only one.

The rest of the summer zoomed past too fast - the best laid plans went awry and summer ended with me feeling like I had gained so much early on and lost it in a flurry of moving, Himself's out-of-town trips and work schedule, my new (respectable and stable, if dull) job and Woodstock's dramatic foray into her first real illnesses.

Now it is fall. On the brink of winter's onslaught. This week marks my 1-year anniversary returning to work following Woodstock's birth. She is 1 year, 7 weeks old. I can feel the terror start to take over again. The anxious static in the background beginning to wake up after a lazy summer nap. I see myself slipping here and there - clinging to Woodstock, smelling her babyfine hair, holding her close to stave off the inevitable nightmares.

I've gone through weeks of insomnia, nightmares, nights where I can do nothing but drag my feet down the stairs and into bed - all the things that marked the post partum downward spiral.

This time, I'm fighting back with everything I can muster. I am walking, doing yoga, eating well, forcing time with friends, saying no when I know I can't handle something - even if it seems petty or awkward or, dare I say it, disobedient. On the advice of my former headshrinker, I am writing it out ... where it will be read. Not because it doesn't tear me up to have someone know what is going on inside my head, but because, in her words, "there has to be an accountability factor." I can't talk about it yet, out loud, so writing to an invisible audience is the remedy.

This time, there is a small support network of real-life people I see beyond my office or computer screen. "You need to make friends," everyone told me in my darkest moments. "You need to get out." I couldn't. I was paralyzed, crippled by the absolute inability to string together one coherent sentence without crumbling to fine dust in a spectacular display of snotty, tear-stained weakness. I felt as if I was hiding some terrible secret ... in reality, I was.

The change in employment, the passing of Woodstock's infancy (something I mourn daily - there are whole periods of time, weeks of her life, where I remember nothing but what I captured in no fewer than 300 photos of just Woodstock - as if I could cut out the darkness and just preserve the light), the move, the brief sunny respite in this desert at the top of the mountains all helped. I had something positive to talk about, something interesting to share. I began to read again - newspapers, books, anything I could get my hands on.

I got to know my next-door neighbor, we met a couple at a class we are taking, I forced myself to face the disasterous fallout from the weeks and months of not opening the mail or answering the phone. There is a plan in place. I am working to gain control of what I can and not caring about what I can't.

I am healing. Slowly, one day at a time, I am coming back to life.

Thinking Out Loud, Part IV

A Continuation of This...

Spring came in fits and starts - teasing with warm weekends and sunny days here and there - enough to keep hope that the snow wouldn't last forever. With spring, the backyard of the Hobbit Hole came alive in color - tulips, blossoms, the first hint of green in grass.

With spring, came news that the Hobbit Hole was up for sale. The news felt as if I had swallwed a grapefruit whole. Coming from the real estate world, I knew what it took for a home to sell - pristine cleanliness and staging. The Hobbit Hole regularly looked like an F5 tornado had struck inside, since I could barely make myself cook dinner, let alone function enough to keep my house clean every, single day with only an hour's notice. I spent much of the season on pins and needles. I felt the weight of the world beging to press down even harder. Wife, mother, employee, chef, maid ... and what about that stack of mail that hadn't been opened ... ?

Using the excuse "I forgot" about mine and Woodstock's hospital bills was ridiculous. No one in his right mind in the billing office would believe I had curled up in a mental ball and hibernated for the entire winter. During the course of the winter, I hadn't answered the phone either. I went three weeks without answering it at all. I would sit and stare blankly at the wall and listen to the machine click on. Only rarely would the fact that someone had left a message even register. Himself would answer it if it turned out to be someone he knew - otherwise, he let me ignore it.

He let me ignore everything. During the course of his unemployment, at the urging of my head shrinker, he spent a lot of time with Woodstock. He spent more time cleaning and cooking. He tolerated my sharp recoil at the thought of being touched or held as well as could be expected. He deserves far more credit than I could ever give ... for just hanging on.

The first really warm weekend - one warm enough to wear bare feet outside - came in late April. With it came the Hobbit Hole's first open house, following a week of hell at The Factory. I cleaned and panicked. I stayed up late and got up early, scrubbing and organizing - frantic to make everything perfect. Woodstock had an allergic reaction and wasn't feeling well. Himself, who by now was employed, worked late, then had to work Saturday too.

An hour before the scheduled open house I had a full-blown panic attack - calling the landlord's wife and sobbing on their machine. "I just can't do it." Their house was perfect. The one I was renting from them would never look that way. I knew they needed it to sell. It had to be perfect. The agent showed up and I was feeding Woodstock in the nusery - showered, but still in messy pajamas, a look of frenzied desperation on my face. My The show went on. I came home after the open house and realized I had nothing to do - the house was clean. I had no hobbies. No mindset to relax. And no cleaning to do. I paced the house for an entire hour. Woodstock was sleeping. I began to feel like a caged animal. I felt like I was suffocating.

Spring continued. While I started to feel again and have some hope that I could return to "normal," The Factory continued to crumble - I would put in my time at the office, come home, fix dinner, take care of Woodstock and work long into the wee morning hours after she (and Himself) had gone to bed. I was sleeping 3-4 hours a night, if at all. There was no time to continue to heal, and the anxiety portion took control - the background static of life drove me to the brink of my sanity. I was working 12-to 14-hour days trying to juggle ridiculous Wicked Witch requests that got in the way of clients. I couldn't keep up with the ridiculousness of what was being asked. I kept most of what I saw and heard to myself, trying to protect my team. Scathing editorials of my performance were a weekly occurance because it was impossible for me to do what was asked/expected. I walked on eggshells.

I made promises - to my friends, my family, myself, random people ... and I couldn't keep them. Breathing took almost all of my effort. I continually thanked God that He, in his infinite wisdom, had sent me Woodstock - whose happy little soul seemed never to need more of me than I was able to give.

And then, for the third time in just over a year, the bottom of life as I knew it fell out. It was the worst day and the best day - as sometimes liberations are. I could not keep up with the demands The Factory put on me, nor was I willing to play the ridiculous game. Even a healthy person wouldn't have been able to put up with it long. I felt like I had failed my team - that I hadn't been able to protect them from The Wicked witch. In the process, I had failed myself ... I cried because I had begged to leave, and always the answer was "not yet."

At that point, the entire summer stretched ahead of me, deliciously sunny, hot and bright ... if I didn't care about the bank balance.

To Be Continued ...

Thinking Out Loud, Part III

A Continuation of This

It snowed and snowed and snowed. The valley became thick with fog, heavy clouds, inversion and perma-snow. We went nearly three months before we saw our lawn - only to have the snow return. People said it was the worst winter in years - in nearly a decade. Funny thing, all of my winters in The Frontier (all 4 of them) have been "record-setting" winters in the snow/cold temps/storms categories. I must have some sort of mighty influence on Mother Nature. If so, I'm calling in a favor this year. I'll conserve water, let my lawn die, whatever if only we can have a mild winter.

I felt like a heathen praying desperately for sunshine and clean air last year when the rest of The Frontier, trained from childhood to pray for moisture in this high-altitude desert wilderness, prayed for snow. But pray I did. For sunshine and sanity, mostly.

The darkest day came in mid-January. The details are seared into my memory forever. Himself had just lost his job. Woodstock was sick with a bad winter cold. I felt as if I was weighted down by concrete. My boss at The Factory had a tyrranical fit over some perceived slight that would not have even been an issue had she not spent the entire prior week galavanting with stars and power brokers in the ridiculously over-the-top film festival up the canyon. I was driving in a blizzard to pick up Woodstock. I had nearly slid off the road trying to drive a stick-shift up a long, steep hill in stop-and-go traffic. My nerves were frayed, my hope was shattered, my soul was drowning.

I did something I have never done before, or since: I pulled over and called my mom. I started to cry when she answered the phone. I cried for nearly a full 5 minutes before I could compose myself enough to plead,

"Please come."

The Parents live 300 miles away - through three major mountain passes and some of the highest (ie snowiest) terrain in the state. My mom works full-time. The weekend forecast was for more storms.

She and my sister came. Bless their bosses who didn't question when they called in over the weekend to say the storm (forecast well in advance) prevented their return for a couple of days. Bless them - who spent the weekend cleaning, organizing and working to make The Hobbit Hole a refuge instead of an anxiety-ridden lair.

I sobbed the day they left. I wanted to fling myself at the end of the snowy driveway and beg for them to take Woodstock and I to the sunny respite of their homes in the south. Every ounce of adult sensibility was called into play to keep me from getting into my own car and following them home.

The mailman came daily, but not a single piece of mail was opened in our home for three months. NOT ONE. I took it, in its piles and let it build up. I couldn't bear what its contents might hold. I couldn't even bear to get up in the mornings. The Frontier felt like the Arctic Wilderness - barren, unforgiving and isolated.

Work got worse. The Factory was a web of lies and deceit and broken promises. Any chance I had at getting anywhere was eliminated when I refused to call my contacts in an attempt to make them potential clients. There was no way I was going to put my reputation on the line for things I could not control. And still the answer was, "Not yet. Be patient. It's not time to leave."

Eventually, I started head-shrinking. Talking it out helped. Realizing that I was sick helped, but it wasn't something I could admit out loud. It would have been easier to declare I had cancer than to say my diagnosis out loud: Post-partum depression and severe anxiety disorder, on top of my typical seasonal affective disorder. My entire adult life had been dedicated to cultivating the impression of a put-together, strong, independent woman. Even under the weight of wanting to just disappear, I couldn't admit I needed help - from anyone. In my world, asking for help meant needing to reciprocate. I couldn't ask, because I couldn't repay. I couldn't ask, because I couldn't be weak. I had to keep it together - to earn a living for my family, to take care of my baby, to survive. Admitting I needed help went contrary to everything inside of me - wise or not.

I scratched out each day, waiting in an eternal state of suspension for spring - for the tulips, the daffodils, any sign that my winter prison would thaw and leave me better able to heal.

To be continued ...

Thinking Out Loud, Part II

A Continuation of This ...

The problem was ... it is all I did. Ever. I worked. I thought about work. I hung out with people from work. I loved what I did, I didn't have any kids, my house would be messy whether or not I was actaully home to clean it, I didn't exactly have any hobbies and Himself's schedule was never predictable.

It wasn't so much that work was an idyllic life - far from it. It was more that work was where I felt the most comfortable - in my element. I was good at what I did. Adulthood did nothing to diminish my love of learning - whether it was about motorcycles, construction or new technologies. Going to work was like going to school - a place to learn, be challenged, meet friends and think.

Then came the pregnancy, numerous upheavals in our already topsy-turvy life and an almost spur-of-the-moment move to The Frontier. No worries. I had a plethora of interviews with good, solid, name-brand firms. None of the jobs would be in real estate, but the writing was on the wall - the economy wasn't going to sustain a huge real estate employment base for much longer, and I was up for a new adventure.

After a weekend of nerves and prayer and reflection, I took a job with "The Factory" a small tech start up, which weeks later rolled into another start-up - the kind of things that The Frontier is known for. I broke my previously iron-clad rule of working for only medium-sized and larger companies. Himself found a stellar job with even better benefits (no matter that he was bored stiff). I didn't actually like my job, but it didn't worry me. It typically took me six months to acclimate to a new situation and I was seven months pregnant.

Woodstock came during my favorite month, at the beginning of my previously favorite season (it's hard to love fall in The Frontier when you know winter is coming right behind it). The first few days of her life were perfect - light and sunny, I was surrounded by family. And then everyone left me. Himself went to work. The Family went home. I remember the sunlight streaming through the Hobbit Hole's windows ... longing for Woodstock to get big enough I could take her outside. At the ripe old age of 2.5 weeks she made her first trek to the grocery store. At 3 weeks, she made her first road trip. Never one able to just sit at home, I took advantage of Woodstock's perenially sunny, even-tempered nature and made it a goal to set out on an adventure each day, even if it was just around the block in my pajamas with her in the Snugli.

Between outings, feedings, diaper changes and middle-of-the-night 'naps,' I worked. Part-time, it was supposed to be. Part-time, the pay was. Part-time work, it wasn't. I was expected to be available at the drop of a hat, take calls, answer e-mails - feel guilty if I wasn't accessible. Heaven forbid I take a nap. Sleep depravation and desparation to keep a job I'd only held for weeks drove me to the brink of insanity.

I sobbed the day I dropped Woodstock off at Miss Jan's for the first time. The leaves crunched under my feet, the air blowing down the canyon nipped at my nose, my heart felt heavy and my eyelids felt like they'd never open if I let them droop closed in slumber.

I cried when I sat in my car and listened to Radio West (in the mornings) and Fresh Air (in the afternoons) while I pumped. I'm not quite sure if it was for leaving Woodstock at 7 weeks old or the hormones or because I was so utterly miserable every day. Maybe it was because The Wicked Witch chose those times to try and track me down, leaving messages that told me I needed to be "more accessible," as if I was out joyriding in the company car.

And the snow began to fall...
To Be Continued ...

Thinking Out Loud, Part I

Once upon a time, I was an awkward little kid who had to run around the building at recess because I was so klutzy and had a phobia of falling off of things that I didn't actually play at recess. I'm probably the only kid in the universe who could have listed recess as my most-hated subject.

Even at 6, I was well aware that I was odd. No one else had to run laps around the building. No one seemed to understand that I didn't exactly hate running around the building, I just hated being singled out. I still do. Let me plan the party, dress
in black and manage logistics. Don't make me play hostess.

In my small town back-in-the-day, sports were everything, which is why recess was such a big deal. Athletes were worshiped. I spent many afternoons crying after school because I knew, even at 6, that I wasn't designed for anything requiring athletic ability. My dad taught me to play baseball and basketball and croquet (not sure how that fits into this, but it is humorous that he taught me a lawn game during a time we didn't actually have any lawn). It wasn't that I didn't like sports or activity - I loved playing with my family. I loved watching Braves baseball games and Cougars football games with my dad. I just didn't like recess. At all.

One day, after a particularly showy display of snot and tears after school, my mom told me, "People have different talents. Some are good at some things, others are good at other things. No one is good at everything." She told me that school was my talent.

I spent the rest of my life pursuing school with every ounce of talent I had. As it turns out, I was pretty talented musically as well, but, blessed with a practical brain, it was a side project and I never put much work into it.

The academic pursuit propelled me through a series of jobs that were just perfect for me. Jobs that were chronically underpaid, but full of opportunities and mentoring and growth beyond my wildest dreams. Jobs that allowed me to travel, manage teams, manage multi-million dollar budgets, develop and execute campaigns, meet some of the most talented people in business and grow exponentially. All things that were worth far more than the abominable salary I made my first five years out of college.

And I thrived.

To be Continued ...