falling down is also a gift

hard to believe anyone would leave this paradise

No drama here. Much. I've been without internet at home for most of the week. Twelve hours after it was restored, I lost it again and it took the home telephone line along with it. *

I was planning on writing something tonight, but Annika just threw up shortly after I fixed the title on the last post**. And Frankie is crying because she doesn't get to stay home, and it's not fair because Annika throws up all the time, and you say it's not awesome to stay at home because you're throwing up, but it really is and everybody knows it.

* The Internet Dude (as Annika called him) was very kind and completely adorable in an I Can Fix That Problem, Ma'am kind of way. If that is not the best sign yet that I need to be in therapy, I don't know what is.

** Hat tip to Greg for pointing out that my naming convention made absolutely no sense. It's good to have friends who can notice these kinds of things.

 

enough, again

I enjoy my lawyer. She is catholic, has two kids the same age as mine, doesn't mind if I swear, and is simply brimming with common sense. She gave me a hard talk two days ago about letting go, about recognizing when plans change radically, about making choices in an unfair situation that aren't based on emotion but on a recognition of reality. Also, she is big on cost-benefit analyses.

So I need to take a few of these early morning writing sessions to think. Everybody already knows that being left out of the blue for another (younger, I can't let that one go) woman when you have two young kids, one of whom is frequently sick, and when you've worked all your life, but never at a full-time job with benefits, is going to be hard. Everybody already knows it's unfair. Everybody already knows that you're really sad, and now that the first month has passed, veering more toward really angry. Everybody already knows this story because it's happened to them, or their mother, or their best friend from college. It's not new or unique or even particularly awful, relatively speaking, although it feels that way to me most of the time.

But there are things that not everybody may know, such as the fact that we have a new kitten! And while kittens are always hilarious, ours is extra hilarious (probably because we are in sore need of extra hilarity around here). Yesterday Cleo ran to the window and began barking in her Big Dog voice at a little weiner dog walking by with its owner outside. Tinkerbell the 4-lb kitten shot from the living room to peer out the window beside Cleo, just in case she needed back-up.

Oh, the amusing ferocity!

And have I mentioned that when she stands to look out the window she stands just like a little meerkat? She crosses her front paws in front of her chest, like a girl at her first dance, wearing a dress without pockets and unsure of where to put her hands and still look lady-like. Then she swivels her head back and forth with a serious expression, because that is the great thing about cats. They always look serious, no matter what. It's why we project so much dry humor on them, I guess.

It's probably also why Annika keeps trying to dress her up, because Cleo just looks pitiful when Annika dresses her up. It's hard to imagine a princess with sad sad eyes and droopy ears, but our kitten makes for fine angry royalty.

Frankie was excited about getting a kitten because she was too little to participate in the naming of Cleo, so the puppy-naming was all Annika's choice. Cleo was part of a stray litter of puppies, and so she didn't even have a name (besides maybe The Black One) when we got her, but the kitten had been kept at the Humane Society for two months before we adopted her, so they had given her a name already. Frankie knew that she could change the name, especially given that cats are not especially attached to such nonsense things as "names," but the kitten the girls chose was named "Tinkerbell" at the shelter, and Frankie decided that that was actually her perfect name.

I'm not sure if Frankie only took this route so that she could later argue that she hasn't technically gotten to name a pet yet, and so she is still owed that right in the grand cosmic accounting of fairness that is continually updated by my two children.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what she did now that I think about it. I'm constantly suspecting that Frankie is smarter than I am, but don't tell her because she suspects it, too.

So, yes, we have a kitten and she is adorable, and now everybody knows, too.

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What I don't know at this point, and maybe nobody else knows, either, is why this has happened. I mean, yes, there's the story and all, with its awfulness and betrayal, yada yada yada. But there has to be more to it than that; there has to be something I did or didn't do and that I am having trouble facing. And I'm not sure at this point if it is even worth facing or not. That would have been the hard work of marriage counseling or therapy, but now I have the hard work of divorcing without too much anger because we have kids, and recriminations are not helpful in that case.

Tonight I sat with Frankie and we started to read "Mom's House, Dad's House: for Kids" together. We didn't get farther than the first pages, where there was a pencil-drawing of a house being split apart with a dark rain cloud hovering over it. Of course there was a path leading to two houses with the sun peeking through, and then to another two houses with the sun shining fully down.

I was expecting logical Frankie to say, "Wait, you mean we're going to have four houses now?" But instead she teared up a little and said, "I don't like the pictures in this book."

So we put the book away and I said, "OK. Let's talk, pumpkin." And I promised her that she could ask me anything, and that I would not cry because I was feeling better and stronger now, but that it was OK for her to cry because being sad is a part of life. I told her that maybe I would cry again some other time, but that would be OK, too, because stuff that is hard just makes you feel like crying, but you keep going and then you're through the other side.

Then we talked. And I realized how much it meant to her that her daddy had come tonight to her holiday program, to watch her be a Sugar Plum Fairy. And I had to admit that some day she will realize what a big deal it is that he agrees to wear shorts and a polo shirt in order to be an official at her swim meets.

So I told her that this was not all her daddy's fault. That it was true that it was a big surprise to me, and that I didn't know that daddy was unhappy with me, but that I did some stuff wrong, too. Being Frankie, she asked for specifics. Of course she did.

It was not my favorite conversation in the world, but Frankie went to sleep more easily tonight. Cost-benefit analysis: Win (my lawyer really is a smart woman).  And it makes sense: no kid wants a Bad Guy for a dad, or a Poor Victim for a mom.

Enough.

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I've been going back through my entries, trying to figure out what happened and when. I don't think I'll find it there, but I've been reminding myself of some things I had forgotten that I knew. Like that I once knew how to grab moments, and magnify and expand them until they were more than just a moment, until they stood for a decision about everything that was to follow. Even if you forget that decision, and have to keep making it over and over again.

Enough.

 

where I'm at

Given that the girls are old enough to use a search engine, it seemed a good idea to password protect the current content. Not, mind you, that they'd even know to search for this blog, but silly just to trust in the unlikeliness of it. Not many of my readers know the girls in real life, and it seems, again, almost silly to say, but of course the point of the password is that I don't wish them to be privy to me working this out.

So I'll be here:

http://moreena.typepad.com/shesaid/

and you can email me at moreena@gmail.com if you'd like the password.

White Sox and Sock Monkeys and Stuff

At the White Sox-Tampa Rays game tonight in Chicago Annika will be on the pitcher's mound with IL Secretary of State Jesse White to throw out the first pitch! Photos will be posted!

Also, the girls just got the very most adorable sock monkeys the world has ever seen. Photos will be posted!

Also, my last final is Monday! Maybe I will be able to catch up a bit then. But I also have a garage full of cheap craigslist furniture needing to be refinished and/or reupholstered. I can't believe Joerg isn't as excited as I am about using these treasures in a living room re-do, but I guess I'll have to settle for making our basement super-awesome.

video update

the tale of love

Annika: My story is going to be called "The Tale of Love!"

Frankie: My story is going to be called "Love Tale!"

Annika: You can't call your story that. I already chose that title!

Frankie: No, yours is called "Tale OF Love".

Annika: It's pretty much the same thing.

Frankie: OK. Then I'll call mine...hmmm....

Frankie: I'll call my story "Midnight Love Action!"

Frankie: Mommy, stop laughing! Stop it!

Annika: I don't even get it.

Frankie: Mommy, stooooooop laughing!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Last summer the girls were both obsessed with the whole topic of having babies. We have a couple of children's science books that explain about egg and sperm and the baby growing in the mother's uterus. The girls would bring me those books to read to them every night before bed. Every night I'd try to guide them to another topic, and every night they'd tell me that they wanted to read about making babies. Again.

The books' descriptions of conception and fetal development are as dry as their descriptions of digestion and respiration, but with a surprising degree of detail and lots of illustrations. The one facet of the whole process that gets short shrift is how the sperm actually arrives to make its long journey up the fallopian tube. Which is just the way my little chicken heart liked it. Not that I necessarily believe sex needs to be kept some Mystic Secret from kids, especially since I firmly believe that Sex as Mystic Secret combined with Crazy Adolescent Hormones is a Recipe For Disaster. But it's hard to know when your kids are old enough, and I also know that my kids are already masters of the inappropriate. So I was dreading what sort of public conversations we'd be having once the kids were armed with accurate (and complete) knowledge of the miracle of life.

After many weeks, I was really getting tired of reading about the sperm and egg and fetus. I mean, whatever happened to good old dragons and princesses for bedtime reading?

Then, on the way to the pool last summer, Frankie asked me (out of the blue, but in a tone of voice that let me know she'd been thinking on this for a while), "This doesn't make any sense. If the egg is in the Mommy, and the sperm is in the Daddy, then how does the Daddy sperm get to the Mommy's egg?"

I took a deep breath, trying to get my thoughts in order, assuming that I had reached one of those Big Parenting Moments.

But then Frankie went on in her serious and bemused tone, "Unless...Does the Mommy eat the Daddy? Then the Daddy would be inside the Mommy...But, no..."

In the rearview mirror, I saw her glance down the street in the direction of Jörg's office, where he was working and where he was also most definitely undigested.

I thought another moment while the girls waited in silence, Frankie's frown telling me that she was still trying to work it out.

So I told them exactly how it works. Nothing graphic; no indication that this stuff might have to do with anything other than making babies. Totally straightforward.

A few seconds' stunned silence, and then the backseat erupted in gagging noises and shouts of

"Ewwwwwww!"

"That is so gross!"

"Disgusting! I cannot believe that!"

As I drove on to the pool, I realized that they probably would have been less revolted had I explained that, yes, the mommy does in fact eat the daddy, who then fertilizes her egg by spitting on it, and then the mommy poops the daddy back out and he's back to his normal self a few days later, none the worse for wear. Although possibly a bit stinkier. 

After that, they quit asking to read about the sperm's long journey up the fallopian tube.

love note

Happy Valentine's Day!

There's just something about a bunch of friends getting together to sing that I love love love. After our wedding, friends and family crammed into the tiny living room of our rental duplex and we sang Nanci Griffith songs together. My first niece was just a baby crawling around after our cat.

Now that niece is a teenager in her first "relationship," and Jörg and I haven't sung together in years.

Love, old and new and in-between. This video gave me that old nostalgic-melancholy-but-warm feeling:

Yours Truly Presents: The Morning Benders "Excuses" from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

And for those who like their love uncomplicated, I give you a note from Annika I found in Frankie's bed a few months ago:

bees stole my soul

That's the name of one of Annika's favorite songs for going to sleep. OK, actually it's "Be Still My Soul," * the old Lutheran hymn set to the tune of Sibelius' Finlandia. But she's loved this song since before she was old enough to realize that she just might possibly have misheard the refrain.

Of course, I never corrected her because I enjoyed my nightly giggle when she asked for Bees Stole My Soul.

Maybe I should have wondered about the fact that she adored a song that her strange little head evidently interpreted as some sort of apiarian nightmare. But we've always been OK with Annika's extra helping of childhood weirdness.

I include it on my hospital playlist because it's easily her most requested song at night. Which was all fine as long as it was being played for regular sleeping on the regular floor, and not for that unnatural and scary sleeping of the PICU, where it feels like life is so fragile that even something weightless, a negative thought or less watchful attitude, could break through to the other side of disaster. "Be Still My Soul" has lyrics that are entirely too comfortable with the notion of death for any parent in the PICU, where death is the enemy guarded against every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

But I still played it for her, because she loves the song and because she fell asleep to it on many quiet nights at home. Fell asleep imagining the constant hum of fuzzy bees brushing soft wings against her chest, swarming jealously?

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Ever since Annika's last transplant I haven't been able to relax my guard. I remember after Annika's second transplant, right around the time we decided we'd have another child (Anni's liver disease isn't genetic, so there wasn't much to worry about on that count), how I had a feeling of safety, like I had some rough idea of what our lives would look like. Don't even bother telling me that no one actually knows how their lives will follow along, because we mostly all act like we do. Otherwise, there'd be a lot less long-term planning and a lot more hying off to California in search of the perfect shell on the perfect beach where the perfect wave is breaking.

But that was over 7 years ago now, and I suppose I've just gotten used to holding my breath. There's no lightheadedness and no crying, but just the waiting. I thought this waiting feeling would be over after Annika was transplanted, but it's not and I can only think it's habit, because there's no reason to keep on without exhaling.

On the other hand, the waiting is a whole lot happier now than it was before her third transplant. So that's progress, anyway.

Then Annika's liver enzymes go up like damn (ALT: 3-freakin'-80), and we have absolutely no clue why, and my cheeks puff out a little more. 

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On a more rational note, please share in my celebration of Frankie finally conquering her terror of robots (thank you, helpful Pet Robots book) with this delightful video from Thao and the Get Down Stay Down:

Frankie strongly disapproves of the implied Smurf-stomping, but agrees that Twizzlers are indeed delicious.

* Annika's version is from State of Grace by Paul Schwartz (with Lisbeth Scott as vocalist)

but the heart wants more

Ever since my discovery last year of Julieta Venegas and Emily Loizeau, I've spent hundreds of hours listening to women singing in languages I don't know. I keep thinking I'll start learning so that I can do more than just hum along. I suspect that middle age is exactly when one needs new languages, if only to prove that such a monumental restructuring of our aged brains is still possible.

But I've yet to take advantage of our library's free online language training. And I've come to enjoy the way that I can treat the sung portion of the songs as yet another sound layer, making wild guesses at the meaning or enjoying the moody nonsense of complete incomprehensibility. Then there's the delight of happening upon a translation, so that it's like listening to the song for the first time all over again.

Frankie shares my love of Julieta and Emily, telling me what she thinks the songs are all about and listening so intently in the car that she refuses to let me turn off the engine until the final notes have played. The same cannot be said of Annika, my girl who frolics with words like meaning is a shimmering bubble she can bounce between her fingers. Anni refuses to enjoy music with lyrics that she can't understand (even though she gets maybe 2 out of 6 words right in the chorus of her current favorite song: "It's soprano! Bare bone become one!")

But not even Frankie got the appeal of Lhasa De Sela, another of my discoveries last year. I finally decided that the reason is that Lhasa's voice was meant to be heard through headphones while walking alone through snowy woods. Or, I guess, along the beach at high tide. But central Illinois is not exactly the place to live for beach walks.

I read a few days ago that Lhasa died earlier this month at only 37 (cancer). So I bought one of her earlier albums that I hadn't gotten around to listening to yet, put it on my player, and went for a walk alone through snowy woods. 

The High Tide (translation from sendereando.com)

The road is singing
When I set out
I take three steps…
The road grows silent

The road is dark
As far as I can see
I take three steps…
The road is gone

I climbed up
On the high tide
The head is full
But the heart
Wants more

Hands of lace
Wooden face
Body of brick
Eyes that sting

Hands of lace
Wooden face
I take three steps…
And you are there

I climbed up
On the high tide
The head is full
But the heart
Wants more

~~Lhasa De Sala

I love the smell of robots in the morning

A few nights ago, Annika asked me to explain where all her scars came from. Annika has a lot of scars. Besides the two gigantic incision scars (they usually follow the old scar lines for subsequent abdominal surgeries, but they had to make a brand new one for her last transplant because the old one was no longer usable), she has scars from JP drains and chest tubes and central lines and on and on. The jump from one scar to the next on her trunk is usually only a few inches.

Usually, I can identify the cause of the scar by its size, shape, and placement. So I was able to satisfy her curiosity pretty well. She wasn't disturbed by any of this, mind you, just curious.

One of her biggest scars was left by a JP drain placed after her first surgery, when she was just 6 weeks old. It's much larger than it really should be, and the skin there actually puckers in like a second belly button. Telling her about that scar, in particular, brought back some of my angrier memories.

When your child is diagnosed with a serious illness, you're mostly scared and there's just no room for anger. But sometimes later, looking back, the anger rushes in when you recognize all the stupid stuff that could have been done better. Like, for instance, not sending in a first-year resident who apparently had stitching skills approximately equal to my own to pull a JP-drain on my baby.

Having had that conversation right before bed, and then finishing off the final Harry Potter (I'm nothing if not timely) with its recurrent theme of sacrificing one's self to save those you love, it was not surprising that I dreamed that night that I went through all of Annika's many surgeries instead of her.

What was surprising, though, was how lighthearted my dream was. In fact, when I got home and unpacked all my stuff from the hospital, I discovered a strange ON-OFF switch tucked in with all my at-home medical supplies. When I flipped the switch, nothing happened. So I put it on the bathroom counter and forgot about it.

A few dream minutes later, and I was naked in the bathroom going through all my scars with Annika when Frankie flipped the switch. Both girls collapsed in giggles when a bright light suddenly shone from my rear.

It turns out that in dream surgeries, the surgeons have to install a light bulb in your abdomen so that they can see what they are doing in there. Evidently, they had left mine in.

Yes, so that light could shine out of my ass.

The next morning, I wasn't sure whether my mind was weirdly self-deprecating, or just plain weird. Then I went to wake up Annika and Frankie for school. Annika climbed down from the top bunk, gave me a hug, and said, "I love the smell of robots in the morning."

Then she went and brushed her teeth.

In the Weird-in-the-Morning Tournament: game, set, match to Annika.