Today is an extra day, so....

I wrote this on FEB 8, 2011. I had not started my blog then, so this did not get published here, though you may have read it as a Facebook "note". I found it in a group of "documents" on my desktop destined for the recycle bin. I am putting it out there today, again, as it is Leap Day, and an extra day to add to the blessings in my life. Seth was one of them. This is how I felt a year ago. I am grateful that I still love him as much, but the pain of reading this no longer drags me under. I have come a long way. On this "extra day" of the year, I thought I would share it with you...and yes, we did the balloons and ice cream.. it was amazing!






I am a woman. That alone is enough to keep half the people out of the sub-set. I am also a mother, so a smaller group still. But then there is an "elite" group to which I belong, whose membership comes with every wish that I did not belong to it at all. It is the group of mothers who have immediate and unfaltering knowledge that babies die. Their babies. Not the news report kind of dying, with a deep sigh at the loss. But the world-has-just-come-to-an-end-and-I-am-at-the-center kind of dying. Dead, before they took a breath. Still. Quiet.

My son Seth would have been ten years old today, February 8, 2011. All the positive thoughts of love and energy, and sadness that grandparents feel, and the wishes of the people I hold dear raining on me with the softness of a summer shower quiets my breath, and stills my heart. I feel it. All that goodness that lives in my life. I get that others feel sadness today, too. They all get to remember the excitement of a new baby, the tingling you get when you know someone you love is pregnant and hopeful, and all of the potential, each with their own kind of pain and loss when all that is suddenly pulled out from under them, like a rug. More like a trap door really, because there is a kind of free fall first, before they hit the bottom. For those in that "potential" group, the tumble is quick, the hit is hard, and there are others who also fell waiting to help you up.

Then there is my elite membership. The one I get by myself. The one that says I know he lived. I felt the little hiccup flutters, and the need to pee. I heard his heartbeat on a little staticy machine. I felt the kicks in the middle of the night, and voiced my annoyance at not being able to sleep, secretly thrilled that this little being picked me to be his mother. I would have plenty of time to get back at him later, with homework, and timeouts, and embarrassing pictures of him naked in the bathtub to show to his girlfriend right before the prom. He would play baseball, and love Barbie clothes, since truthfully, I call him HE now, but then I did not know for sure his gender. It did not matter. I would dress him in red and feed him graham crackers and build blanket forts and read him Harry Potter and Winnie the Pooh. He would know how to change the oil in the car. He would like neon colored band-aids. He could be tricked into drinking his milk if I gave it to him in a cup with a swirly straw, because everything tastes better through a swirly straw. He would like fish sticks.

I talked to him quietly, this baby in my belly. He could already make me cry with my ache to hold him, meet him, start the second phase of our existence together when my voice did not sound underwater to him, and his kicks would be playful under the fluffy white blanket I already had in the crib in the freshly-painted nursery.

Today, I will pick up Seth's brother and sister from school early, and we will go get balloons. Ten of them. We will take Sharpie markers and write love notes on each one while we sit in the car. We will drive to the beach, and release them all at once, and sit, with our toes in the sand and watch them drift away until we can't see them any more. We will play at the beach, write wave wishes in the sand with an old piece of driftwood, and laugh. We will go get ice cream. Four dishes. One for each of us, and one for us to share that would have been Seth's. We will argue about what kinds of toppings Seth would have liked, Haysten thinking that he needed more cookie dough, Mariah thinking he needed more candy, me, just wanting the whipped cream. We will laugh at that, too. We will have invited their dad to come with us, celebrate his son's life. He won't, but we have learned to let that go like the balloons.


I am part of an elite group. At the ten year mark, I would still want my membership revoked.

Today's show brought to you by the letter "F"

I have an hour. Right now. It is a small space of time. What to do? (Tapping fingers on the table) I am in a coffee house. I have coffee, a laptop, and some fun eye candy in the chair nearest me. He is tapping away on an iPad, and has made some light conversation, mostly about computers and coffee, but it is a start. He is not wearing a wedding ring, is not sitting with anyone else, and looks to be about 40. Hmm..

So why am I writing about him instead of talking to him. I have never been accused of being an introvert, so I have the social skills. Oh, he just looked up and smiled. Could it be that I am typing to hard on the keyboard? I peek over. He is on the CNN website, watching.. um. okay, sports news videos, ugh.. yep, I am trying not to notice....

So this is what it feels like to be wanting company. Okay, company is not the right sentiment. I want adult company. Male adult company. It has been too long, and I am lonely. It is not just the sex I miss, that would be easy enough to get if it was all wanted. Sex alone isn’t enough. Damn growing up and respecting my own emotions!

I remember a time when having sex was what I wanted first. The sex that came with the first rush of excitement from someone I just met, or had been seeing. The way the lips moved, the way the hands moved, the way the body moved. Drowning, willingly, in the eyes without even caring if there was a chance of being saved. It was on skin, and then...

It is the *and then...* part that is keeping me from talking any more to this delicious man near me. I can't trust myself, not yet, to not spin him into someone he can not possibly be, and myself into someone I couldn’t stay being. I can smile and flirt and be charming. I can giggle and listen and ask all the right questions. I could get his number, and call him obsessively, and internet stalk him, and become jealous and giving and invisible and demanding and self-sacrificing and belittled and victimized and pathetic and depressed and lonely all over again.

Amazing how I have our whole life written in the space of this one tiny hour, and I don't know his name. It would not matter what his name is, I would compare him to all the people who came before him, condemning him to fix them, and my past, and my insecurities, and my heart and my will power. And do it all while giving me space, and understanding me without me saying anything. He is doomed. Our relationship is over. He can go back to his sports videos on CNN and pretend I never existed.

So this rambling is courtesy of my free association and fear. It feels like a public service announcement right out of Sesame Street. It is how I am spending this hour that I have to myself. Whew, glad that is out of the way, now maybe I can find something more productive to do. I wonder if the delicious man next to me that has been watching sports videos on his iPad would like to talk. I only have about 30 more minutes. I think I will find out.

Warmer on this side of the door.

I ended a friendship this week. Yes, by choice. Yes, it might have started out as a misunderstanding, or circumstances spinning out of control. Yes, I can see why the former friend might have been upset. I can even say, with an accurate amount of certainty, that I was not the only one feeling the way I was feeling, I was just the only one who said anything. It happens that way sometimes. I said goodbye, politely, and I don't regret it.

I was told by a mutual friend that she was sad that the friendship between me and my former friend had ended. I asked her why? She replied that it is always sad when friendships end. I wanted to beg to differ, saying that friendships don't end, that isn't the way friendships work. Friendships stick around. Friendships survive. Friendships grow. If they aren't the kind that can do that, maybe they aren't friendships any more, and that letting go is all that is left.

I knew the end of the friendship was coming for months. A series of things had happened that helped me to know this person was heading into something that was not going to be good, no matter what the spin-doctors could have conjured. I could see it, can still see it. I had been there. Depression, sadness, compliance, anxiety, all being masked and fronted by anger and control. On the surface, she looked great. Losing weight, busy, making plans. Changing friends, buying new clothes, new hobbies, errands to run. While on the outside that all looks great. And while I am not pretending for one second to have anything figured out (if you have ever read my blog, or do so now, you would know I am far from having most things figured out on any given day) but this one I got. Depression and me, well, we are intimate. She is heading where I had been. I can't warn her off, and trying, well, that was kinda pointless, too.

I thought about this writing for a long time before sitting at the keyboard. I wondered when the sad was going to hit me. I wondered if it would sneak up on me and leave me crying or angry when I least expected it. It hasn't happened. I don't think it will. I think it is exactly like I had told my other friend; that it was just the letting go part left, and I did that really quickly this time.

I am grateful to this former friend. She taught me some things about the nature of the people I want in my life. I no longer want people who control just because they think they can. Not ones who try from a position of demand, rather than from a position of leadership. I do not think of her as a leader, so I could never have followed. I no longer want people in my life who have no sense of other people. Hide it behind words like "suffering from high self-esteem" really just means self-centered control freak with no ability to see how other people view you. I don't think anyone "has to" live by another person's definition of who they are. Measuring yourself with someone else's stick is just silly. But being able to see yourself though someone else’s eyes is just a skill everyone should try their best to have. Not so you can see if your butt is too big, but to see if your heart is too small. My former friend does not have that skill, and having friends with that skill is essential to me. It allows for communication on anything. And compromise. And compassion. And love.

So don’t feel sad for the loss of this friendship. It hasn’t been a friendship in a very long time, at least not by how I am choosing friendships at this point in my life. And letting go has become easier and easier as I know more and more about myself. Worth a fight to keep it? Nope. High price? Nah. I have definitely come to believe that what is worth the price is always with the fight, and this price was easy to pay, and not worth the fight. Saying goodbye should always be like this, when closing a door just stops the cold from coming in, and relieves the burden. Like I said near the top, I don’t regret it. It is warmer on this side.