Talisman

tal·is·man ~ Pronunciation:\ˈta-ləs-mən, -ləz-\
noun
Etymology:
French talisman or Spanish talismán or Italian talismano; all from Arabic ṭilsam, from Middle Greek telesma, from Greek, consecration, from telein to initiate into the mysteries, complete, from telos end — more at telos
Date:
1638
1 : an object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune
2 : something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects

I have been searching for just the right thing for months. I didn’t know exactly what form it would take, but I knew I’d recognize it the moment I saw it. It would be simple, but it would speak volumes. It would be something that I could keep close always.

After a long hunt, many many websites, and more attempts to make all the letters fit, I finally found it. As soon as I saw the picture on her catalog, I recognized it as mine. I was touched by her own story.

It took me awhile, but I finally have my talisman.

If you would like to see her other pieces, visit Lisa Leonard Designs

Too deep inside my head

It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses. ~Colette

There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.  I don’t wake up thinking, “Today is going to be one of those days.”  I’m not even sure what sets it off, what sends me to look at the photos again, to read the old posts.  Just like I could never leave a skinned knee alone to heal cleanly, I can’t seem to stop poking at this.  I guess I just need to check to see how much it still hurts. This is one of those days.

I guess it’s because I have so little of it available.  So few moments, so many of which were rushed and anxious and now are fading oh so quickly.

It’s not the debilitating, crushing agony anymore.  I’ve managed to climb out of that deepest pit of despair.  I can breathe through these moments now.

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts. ~George Eliot

I don’t know when that happened; when I stopped fighting it, when it just became a part of who I am now.

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. ~Robert Frost

If you’re tangled up just tango on

Second to last dance class last night.  We missed last week to go to Shannon’s company Fourth of July fireworks-watching party.

I’m amazed at how far we’ve come in just five weeks!  While we were waiting for everyone to arrive, she played music for us to practice to.  We must be doing pretty good, at least with the foxtrot, rumba, and waltz.  She didn’t make too many comments about anyone’s technique. We spent a big portion of the class adding steps to our single count swing, then we struggled to add a crossover step and a spin to the chacha.  I’m not cut out for the chacha, I’m afraid.  The class we missed last week was the tango, but she gave everyone a quick review.  Then we gave it a try.

Ok, here’s the dirty truth.  It’s a fantastic dance to watch.  Haven’t we all seen Al Pacino sweep Gabrielle Anwar around that parquet floor, telling her if she gets tangled up to just tango on and wished that were us?  Here’s what I learned last night.  If it feels good while you are dancing it (ladies, I mean) you are doing it wrong.  It’s awkward.  It’s unnatural.  I cannot imagine doing it in real heeled dance shoes and a long skirt.  THIS is the dance that gets your toes stepped on.  I’m determined to get it right, but I’m no longer as dreamily enamored of it as I was.  I do enjoy the swing though.  I think after this, we’ll take one more survey class to get some more practice in on all of the dances…to learn some turns and move beyond just the basic step-step-side-together part so that we wouldn’t be lost on a dance floor, but then, I think I’d like to get really good at East Coast Swing.  Funny, that’s the one I was the most nervous about learning!

Cat photos

Stacie asked, so blame her! These aren’t the best. She’s tiny, she’s fast, and she’s black, which made it hard to take decent photos.

I don’t recommend force feeding a kitten. It gets messy.

Nom nom nom.

And I had to come out from under the couch because…?

A very sleepy itty bitty kitty.

She’s mostly just fluff.

Stuff

Ah, three-day weekends!  I love them. I hope everyone had as lovely a weekend as we did, whether you were celebrating a holiday or just enjoying a couple of days off. I strongly recommend the indulgence of a t-bone cooked on the grill and an ice-cold Sapporo shared with someone special.

We decided to name our new kitten Lucy.  Whether it’s for Lucy Ricardo or Lucy, Daughter of the Devil…well, the world will never know!She’s fearless, she goes non-stop for hours, and after a rough start…eats like cookie monster in a nabisco factory. When she’s hungry and her bowl is empty, she tracks me down and tries to climb my leg, meowing as if her heart were breaking. She likes to be held if we’re standing up, not so much if we’re sitting down. She’d really love to be friends with the kitty in the mirror, but it keeps running away. Our older cat, Widget, isn’t so sure about Lucy and sort of wishes she’d just go away, or at the very least, stop playing with her toy mice.

I had my consultation with Dr. T last week. It went well. We met with the genetic counselor and, after going over our family history, felt pretty confident that neither Shannon nor I brought any high risk of DNA wonkiness to the table. She explained CVS and amniotic testing (I know they get a lot of young women in their high risk practice who haven’t researched these things to the nth degree, I really do, but I wish there were some way for them to tailor their speeches to the audience a bit) and how, because of my age at the time the eggs were collected, either of those was an option. I explained that unless a non-invasive test indicated cause for concern, I’d be passing on having a needle stuck into my uterus, thanks. Just satisfying curiosity isn’t enough to justify the risk of miscarriage to me, at this point. When Dr. T joined us, he fully understood my feelings and promised to support my decision either way when the time came.

I like Dr. T. He’s probably about our age and very personable. Throughout my stay on his service in the hospital, he did a great job of explaining what was going on, why they were doing what they were, and answering any of our questions, even the truly strange ones*, without talking down to us or over our heads. The first thing he stressed when we met with him last week was that if anything good could be said to have come out of what happened it’s that he feels fairly confident that an infection most likely caused, not just the premature labor, but the original rupture. The most likely scenario is that my cervix shortened enough to expose the membranes to the normal bacteria of the vaginal canal, which then crossed the membrane. If that was the case, and it would seem to be the best candidate (we’ll never know for sure. There was DEFINITELY an infection when Lennox was born.) then we know to start watching my cervix very early on and to keep a close eye on it. Dr. T only uses cerclages in extreme cases and he didn’t rule me out as a candidate for one, given my history. With my history, I’ll get to skip the OB-GYN and go straight to him as soon as Dr. N releases me from her care. He’ll start measuring my cervix at 16 weeks and will start FFN (fetal fibronectin tests) at about 20 weeks. Beyond that, the single embryo transfer is strongly encouraged. He did say that this doesn’t mean I couldn’t necessarily have a normal pregnancy with twins, but given the additional strain of a multiple pregnancy and the added difficulty in monitoring, since we had control of the situation it was a wiser decision to go with the singleton. He had no recommendations pre-conception beyond what I’m already doing…prenatal vitamins, metformin, exercising. Post-conception, I think the majority of his work will be of the hand-holding variety as every twinge sends me to his office…at least, I hope that will be the case. He reiterated that nothing we did or didn’t do caused this and that gives him confidence in saying that we have very good chances for a normal, healthy pregnancy and delivery.

So, there we are. I’ll keep popping the handful of pills every morning and either dragging my butt to the gym or wearing myself out on the WiiFit (that thing is surprisingly effective! My thighs were shaky for hours after doing lunges). I’m about due for my annual physical where they’ll tell me my bad cholesterol is still too high and my good cholesterol is still too low and I’ll try to figure out how to fit MORE salmon and flax seed oil into my diet (I did the Lipit*r and niacin…what a nightmare!). Hopefully, the anemia I had when I left the hospital is improved after all of those awful iron pills. I’m considering asking for another 3hr GTT, just to see. I’ve been on the met for a long time now, I have been exercising and I’m curious to see if things are better. I know I don’t have the blood sugar level issues I did. Dr. N will do another infectious screen (last year, we learned I wasn’t immune to Rubella anymore and I had to spend two months getting that taken care of.) Then, Shannon and I have decided to celebrate nine years of marriage with a week in Vegas. One big grown-up blowout. After that, maybe, I think, I might be ready to tackle trying the frozen transfer. In a perfect world that thought wouldn’t make my stomach tie in knots, but I think at some point I’m going to just have to take a deep breath, squeeze my eyes closed tight and jump.

*After my c-section, I had a problem of hearing my pulse in my left ear. Sometimes it was so loud, it was like having a white noise machine playing right in my ear. We kept mentioning to any nurse or doctor who would listen, but all of them just sort of shrugged and ignored it. He actually listened as I tried to explain it and suggested that it was just a post-op blood pressure fluctuation and that it would most likely go away on it’s own in a few days. Aside from making sure that my pulse was the ONLY thing I was hearing that no one else could, he took the complaint seriously and at least tried to come up with an explanation.

#500

I’d been trying to think of something significant for my 500th post.  That just seemed like a milestone that deserved it.  Then, just the other day, I realized what today was.  I’m not all that good at what I call “circular math”…that is, calculating how long it’s been on a calendar or doing math involving time.  I get all mixed up.  Plus, I’d reached a point on all of my calendars where I hadn’t filled in any “special” dates.  There weren’t any reminders of what today was.  I’m not even sure what triggered the realization that today was anything special.

Today, the twins would have been six months old.  I’ve been without them for as long as I had them now.  That’s hard for me to wrap my brain around.

For the most part, I think I’m doing really well.  I still cry at the drop of a hat, but I’m better at recovering from it and at distracting myself from the triggers.  I haven’t had THE nightmare in weeks.  While there still hasn’t been a single day I haven’t thought about Lennox and Zoë and what happened, there are sometimes stretches of several hours when I don’t think about it.  We’re laughing again and it doesn’t feel wrong, or fake.  I don’t feel quite so guilty when I realize we’re being happy.

But today.  Every day from now on means that they have been gone more than they were here, inside me, under my heart. Every day I lose a little bit more detail.  I have to work hard to remember the shape of Lennox’s mouth, or the feel of Zoë’s toes in my hand.

I miss you both so much.  Today should have been a much different milestone.

#499 - Show and Tell

For this week’s Show and Tell (and the first one I’ve participated in) I’d like to introduce the newest member of our family.

She doesn’t have a name yet…well, her foster family called her Nani, but since she still hasn’t figured out that that thing she keeps chasing is firmly attached to her own butt, we’re pretty sure she isn’t so used to being called Nani that we can’t change it. Not sure what it will be yet. I wanted to name her for the soot sprites in “Spirited Away,”

but Susuwatari might be a bit too big of a handle for her tininess.

She’s 12 weeks old. Widget isn’t sure about her yet. There’s been lots of growling and hissing as she stalks down the hall, past the bathroom where the little one is living. I think they will get along well though, once the newness has worn off. Very similar personalities.

Now, if we could just come up with a name.

#498

NPR has had a series of interviews during “Morning Edition” this week that I believe they are calling “The Mothers of Section 60.” Section 60 is the part of Arlington National Cemetery where the soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq are being buried. The mothers there all know one another and have formed their own group.

It’s a hard series to listen to on so many levels, but yesterday and today, as I was lying in bed with the radio on, trying to drag my brain to some level of awareness, I listened. Their interviews, the words they use, the emotions they describe…they are the same words and phrases I’ve seen over and over on the blogs of the medusas*. They talk about those dates that Mel, at Stirrup Queens, calls terrorversaries…birthdays, deathdays. One mother this morning talked about how she is just starting to be able to use phrases like, “my dead son.” I may have imagined it, but I think another mother, new to the group, kept shifting from past and present tense, something I had a hard time with. Another reminisces about asking one of the other mothers when it got easier. “It never does.”

Every question the interviewer asked these mothers, I knew how they would answer before I heard the words. Their answers were the same as mine would be. Empty. Lost. Angry.

There was one more similarity that wasn’t lost on me. The group that they have formed, they email, they meet. They have formed a relationship based on their shared experience, one that a great many people never have and can’t fully understand.

“When mothers and family members join the group do you see them going through things that you’ve already been through?”

“It’s interesting because you do. But at the same time, when we talk to each other, so much of the time we feel like we’re at the beginning because you feel like you’re losing it completely many times.”

“You feel like you’re in a different world than everybody else. You don’t speak the language and you can’t explain your language to them.”

“Then it must have been amazing for you to find each other, people who do speak your langauge.”

“Absolutely. And you feel like you’re alone. I mean, I came to Arlington thinking, knowing, rationally that you’re not alone but feeling like you are the ONLY person this has happened to, then you meet that first person that’s priceless.”

“So you feel such a relief that you can be who you are, and if someone comes up to you and says, “How are you doing?” you can really tell them how you are doing.”

It is those hands, reaching out of the darkness. The voices that seem to know when to be silent, when to speak softly, when to be boisterous and irreverent. Is it that we find strength in numbers? Does it make it easier to be lost in a crowd of others who feel equally out of phase with everyone else? Whether you had nineteen years, three weeks, ten minutes, or no time at all, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. It doesn’t get any easier.

I don’t have any answers. I don’t really have any point to this post. Consider it a random brain dump of thoughts that have been circling like ill-tempered sea bass (a virtual cookie to whomever knows the source of that) for the two days I’ve been listening to these interviews.

*From the first moment I read their description, I loved the concept of being a Medusa. It feels…right. You tuck the snakes up under your cap to try to get through a day. You watch those around you take sidelong glances, afraid to catch your eye, worried of saying the wrong thing. At the end of some days, it’s all you can do to get through the front door before you let the snakes writhe free, as the paralyzing bolts of light shoot from your eyes, taking down any innocents who get in the way. This trying to pass for normal, when my new standard for “normal” has shifted 180 degrees, is exhausting.

#497

Dance class number 2 was last night. We spent a big part of the evening reviewing the foxtrot and rumba, then learned the waltz and the cha-cha (nope, no swing yet). We all probably would have done better at the waltz if the guys were more comfortable with “steering.” There were more than a few collisions on the dance floor. With each dance, we switch up partners to get practice dancing with different people. In theory, I can appreciate that, but for some reason almost all of the men in the class are at least 6 inches taller than me. By the time I’m done dancing, my arms are shaky from holding them up over my head and my hips are sore from trying to match their long strides with my short legs. She also makes the women dance with their eyes closed part of the time so that we HAVE to rely on the men leading. That’s incredibly hard to do! I need to get some shoes I don’t care about too, since I left last night with some footprints on them. One woman forgot to bring a change of shoes and couldn’t dance in her sandals, so she was dancing barefoot. Brave lady!

The cha-cha threw almost all of us. Going in a box was easy, but trying to do the progressive step, which is all in one line was more than my poor brain could handle. It doesn’t help that the instructor is calling out the steps for the men “Forward rock, right, left, right” and I’m having to do the opposite. It was the aural version of patting your head and rubbing your tummy. Also? I seriously need help remembering my left from my right apparently. The classes are held in the lobby of a public library, which is still open during the first hour. We had a HUGE audience sitting outside watching us trip all over each other.

Still, tons of fun. We’re definitely going to have to do better about practicing at home. I wish we had a larger space for it. Although, one of Shannon’s partners complimented him on how well he leads because she realized he’d taken them in a full turn and she’d never noticed it, so maybe the small space is more helpful than not.

It’s been a fun challenge to find music to use at home. I’m not sure I have anything to cha-cha to, which means my next iTunes purchases will be a little odd. Anyone out there with more social dance experience, song recommendations are REALLY welcome! Lurlene used the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” for us to cha-cha to and while I appreciate the really clear, slower rhythm, I hate that song and I’ve been humming it all day.

Next week, she’s either teaching us to tango or swing. She hadn’t decided which last night. I’m sorry I don’t have any way to get pictures for you all. They would certainly be good for a laugh.

#496

I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but this is post number 496! It doesn’t seem like I’ve been at this for that long while at the same time, it seems like it’s been forever. Two years and seven months. So much time has passed since my obgyn first assured me that I was a good candidate for clomid. Ah, to be so naive again…

Almost five hundred posts. Aside from my marriage, which is approaching the 9 year mark, this may be the longest commited relationship I’ve ever had!

Of course, isn’t just like my life that would be just a few posts away from landmark #500 at a time when there isn’t much going on for me to write about? It may take weeks for me to get four more posts. Ok, yes, I could just make a few throw-away posts but isn’t that cheating?

Part of me feels like I should do something out of the ordinary for #500 and part of me feels like it should just be a post like any other…whatever is on my mind/going on in my life. The side of me that is constantly amazed that anyone in their right mind would care what I have to say/write about feels incredibly silly about making any sort of fuss about reaching the five hundredth post. Being a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl, I’ll probably just make it up as I go. After all, it’s gotten me this far.