We Shouldn't Have to Do This Alone

Four days ago I discovered that I was in the process of losing a baby.
Mind you, a baby I didn't realize was there in the first place, but still a baby.

I've never gone through this before.

I assure you, I didn't want to be pregnant. My youngest son--now six years old--was a surprise occurrence after my husband's eight-year-old vasectomy. Obviously the urologist was a hack or we're just freaks of nature, whatevs.

But anyway. Last week I had a four-day fever, and I kid you not... one day break of feeling semi-okay before I thought my monthly visitor decided to pay me a visit.  Except it wasn't.

It was the beginning of losing.

And here I am, sad that I'll miss out on a lifetime with a child that I really wasn't ready to bring into this world. Upset that I've been strapped into this rollercoaster ride again. Feeling pretty awful, energy and cramp-wise. Mad that I can't deal with the bleeding in a convenient way. Frankly, pissed that the bleeding will never, ever end. Annoyed that my life doesn't wait for me to heal--kids still need to be driven places, animals still need to be fed, grandparents still need someone to watch over them.

Hurt that my husband has yet to ask if I am okay. To say he's sorry.

I wonder if he realizes how big this is? How shocking this is?

I wasn't ready to go through this, but it did happen. No one needs to feel sorry for me, but it's okay to ask how I'm doing. I realize this might not be the same for everyone, and that's okay.

But I think it's also okay to admit that, no matter how a woman gets to this place, it doesn't feel good and it doesn't feel fair to go through the losing process.We whisper about miscarriage, but it's okay to talk about it out loud, too. We shouldn't have to do this alone.

Almost Eighteen

I forgive you for thinking I meant yes when I actually said no,
For letting my calls go to your answering machine.
I forgive you for taking your phone off the hook.
You rearranged everything in my life; I'm sorry I let my crazy show.
He's almost eighteen now.

I loved you with a foolish love.
A flutter at your voice
and
An I-can-change-him determination.
I'm sorry if I let my crazy show.
It was crazy to take a paintbrush to the tiger's stripes.

I forgive you, even if you're not looking for it.
If I ran into you on the street, I would feel sick
Of course I would.
But then I would forgive you.
And I would feel sorry for what you missed—not what I missed.
He's almost eighteen now.

Two Years

It's been two years since I last saw my boy living and breathing.  Granted, it wasn't much left of a life, and I wish our good-bye had been something so much sweeter.  But we were together, where we always ended up.

Moe and I at a schooling show, Hoffman Farms 1995ish

Today I celebrated Moe's memory by spending the evening with his two remaining buddies, Trinity and Fansi.  It's what he would have wanted, for me to be happy with his friends, with the sun warming our skin and the breeze kissing our cheeks.  I even snuck Fansi a few extra treats in his honor, just because he would've been the first one pick-pocketing me for his share.

Wherever you are, Moe, I hope you know how much I'm missing you and that my heart's breaking all over again as I write this.  Peace and love, sweet boy.

Trinity and her new bonnet.  She's thrilled.

Action shot with Trin.

Sunset ride on Fansi.  She is skeptical of the shutter sound on the phone.

Life Keeps Going On. 

Do It Anyway

I am the little sister in the mosaic of my family.  With that title comes a certain reputation: the spoiled one, the brat.  I'm sure my siblings would agree with that stereotype.  I even agree.  It's okay.  I've accepted it because, hey, it's okay to be spoiled.  Being the baby also comes with its own set of negatives, though.  Even though I'm mumble-mumble-mumble years old now, I'm still widely viewed as twelve years old.  

As a perennial tweenager, clearly I do not have a career.  How could I?  I'm a child!  All of my years of working with expectant families hasn't counted as a legitimate job.  Writing certainly doesn't count, either, because I write in my pajamas while my kids (and usually other neighborhood kids) destroy my house.  Plus, I like writing.  People don't like their jobs.  That's against the rules.

But writing is what I want to do with my life.  It is what I want as my career, but I don't want to call it my career because that word just sucks the joy out of all of it.  But this is what I do.  

I didn't go to college and rack up student loans to learn how to write.  I didn't intern anywhere to prove myself.  I merely sat down with a laptop and the words in my head and let them fly off into the atmosphere.  Most days it feels like I don't have a clue what I'm doing, but the words are finding other people and doing something so unimaginably far beyond me.  

This is real.  It doesn't feel real at all, but it's real.

Half of my family and a great deal of my friends don't really understand the person I've become.  They don't appreciate the long nights composing sentences and developing characters.  They don't care.  Well, maybe they care, but in that disjointed way someone pretends to be interested so feelings won't be hurt.  Truth be told, they don't have time for books, they'd rather save themselves the trouble and wait for the movie adaptation.  If I waited for these people to open their eyes and see that this is important, even as their 9-5 office job is important, I'd be waiting a long time.  Forever, maybe.  

Is that discouraging?  Sure.  But I don't let it stop me.  I pick myself up, knock the dust off my sandals, and find people who want to support me--and people I will support in return.  My Cartel.  My Skywriters. My posse.  My kindred spirits.
.  
Conditions will never be 100% perfect for me to write, and people in my own village will never fully respect me because they see me that same old bumbling kid, but I'm doing this anyway.  

What about you?  Do your friends and family support your writing or your career goals?

Today It Was Me

Today I was the one to cram myself into the white zip-up jumpsuit that made me look like the Easter Bunny's long lost sister. I was the one who slipped on the blue booties and hairnet, and tied on my face mask.

Today I was the one sitting on the bench in the hall while they wheeled my writhing, sobbing partner into the unknown.  I was the one who wondered if the anesthesia would work or if they would need to knock her out and the next time I saw her she'd have a baby in her arms.

An older man sat down next to me on the bench.  "You doin' okay?" He asked, and he genuinely cared about my answer.  I could tell by the way his gentle eyes rested on mine.  My bootie-covered toes tapped the carpet.  "Yeah, I'm good."  Because I was good, protected from terrifying reality by the distance of professionalism.  She was not my blood or my reason for being, but rather someone who knew she would need help when her child was born.  It's easy to be good when you don't stand to risk it all.  Then I asked the concerned gentleman about the newest addition to his family.  It was a granddaughter, his son's first child.  He beamed, then busied himself texting and grumbling at his new-fangled phone.

I wondered if that muffled cry was her.

"I promise they won't forget about you.  It just seems like it," said a nurse who had passed me twice now.

"I'm just hot."  My body heat collected within the kinda-sterile clothing.  The rise in temperature brought my stomach to a boil, a particularly unpleasant feeling for someone about to step foot into an Operating Suite.  Pictures flashed in my mind of passing out on the OR floor, or vomiting on the face of the expectant mother.  I unzipped the bunny suit and fanned the air between my layers.

Eventually they called me back.  I was no longer on the verge of heat stroke--for that I was thankful.

"Sit on the grey chair next to her head," the nurse said.  "Don't touch anything blue."

I sat in the grey chair.  My partner barely acknowledged me.  Almost immediately, the smell of burning flesh filled the air.  Then it was gone.

We don't see a thing, just a giant blue tissue curtain.  Somewhere beyond that the baby floated in a sea of instructions and chatter.

My partner wished to relay a request to the surgeon, the last two items left on an X-ed- out birth plan. Her voice failed from long hours of struggled breathing.  She turned to me to be her voice.  Neither of us knew who was there or who would hear us.  I turned to the anesthesiologist, who clearly didn't want to interrupt the surgical team.  She could see the team, though.  I was just guessing.

"Lots of pressure,"  Someone said.

"You're going to feel some tugging.  Just concentrate on your breathing," Someone else said.

We stared at the blue abyss and waited for the next thing to happen.

The baby cried and gurgled, cut off by someone's bulb suctioning.

"It's your baby!"  I smiled.  Tears filled her bloodshot eyes.  "Congratulations, Mama!"

The baby traveled to another end of the OR, X-ing off the rest of my partner's wishes.  A nurse remarked about what a sweetheart the baby was, and how adorable.  We saw blue while a stranger spent those first precious moments with my partner's baby.  This didn't upset the mother nearly as much as it upset me.  I wanted to brave the gore and hospital policy to grab the little one and put her where she belonged--cheek-to-cheek with the one whose body took care of her for nine months.  But I didn't, because today I wasn't the doula.  I was something else, entirely.

So You Want To Be a Writer...

Photo credit, CreateSpace

I'll start this post by admitting that I am, by no stretch of the imagination, an expert on writing. If you came here looking for a secret formula or the nuts and bolts of wordsmithing, well, I'm sorry to say you've come to the wrong place. Crafting a story, and doing it well, entails a lot more than could ever fit on one lousy blog post. Rules. Punctuation. Plots. Dialogue. So much to know before you can actually write. This doesn't align with our instant-gratification world. 

You should probably stop here. It's too much work.

But what if I told you that you could pick up your favorite pen--c'mon, you know you have a favorite!--or your laptop and GO? You don't have to have the perfect beginning, middle, and end.  It's not likely that you'll sit down with a cup of coffee and plunk out War and Peace on that first go. What stares back at you from the page might suck, and "suck" might be the understatement of the century. But even stories sucky-beyond-all-reason can be shaped into something more. A blank page cannot, at least not until your words end up there.  

Though I've always written for my own enjoyment, I never considered anything would come with it. Writing would be nothing more than a hobby. In 2011, my attitude changed. I wanted to take writing more seriously, to write books instead of rambling blog posts about coffee and kid-induced nervous breakdowns. And then came that day when I said, "Enough! I'm writing a book!" I didn't even have a story in mind, I just followed Chris Baty's advice and wrote the book I wanted to read. My first words after my attitude adjustment were, 

"I'm what you would call a simple girl, a chameleon."

If you think about it, that sentence doesn't make sense at all. Simple girls have nothing in common with ever-changing chameleons. And, if we're being real, it's a bit cliche to call yourself "simple". But those flawed words led to over 200,000 more. With a lot of hard, literally hands-on work, they have grown into stronger, more flexible versions of themselves. That never would have happened if I'd let the blank screen call my bluff. I wade through the suck every time I sit down to write, and you will, too. In the end, it's not about whether the writing is excellent or cringe-worthy. It's about letting the ideas out of your head and seeing what happens. It's getting past saying, "I always wanted to write a book/story/article/whatever" to actually doing it.

I can't read through that first manuscript without feeling sick to my stomach at its sheer awfulness, but I didn't let it stop me. That sheer awfulness became the first of three books in my Hope Creek series, which gained the attention of a publisher. While that might not happen for you, you can't possibly know for sure if you don't write that first word. And then the next. And then the one after that, and so on.

My advice to you? Go forth. Write all the horrible, wrong words. Laugh at yourself, and don't give up. 

That's truly all it takes to be a writer.

Winner!

Just validated my word count for Camp NaNoWriMo. Over 31k words edited and revised in April for my upcoming Young Adult novel, In the Middle.  
Can't wait to share it with you guys!  It's a cool, creepy story... but that's all I'm going to say right now. I don't want to give away too much.  :-)