On grief and found joy

This morning nears the end of 2015. I find myself at 7:30 with my coffee in hand, sitting  in my favorite corner of the couch facing the east window. I am ready to greet the sunrise. I am ready to discover parts of my story that do not end in heartbreak and fear.

Exactly a year ago I was pregnant with our first baby. We told our families on Christmas. I miscarried on January 3, 2015. For those of us who have experienced this, we know miscarriage is more than only physical; it is mindful and spiritual as well. Whether someone tells you that or not, the simple truth is, you are not prepared for its complexity. And you cannot be prepared for its longevity.

Gruesome details are not necessary here. What I am concerned about is the mother left behind after the bleeding and cramping and hormonal surges cease. Back in January I thought I was strong enough to rebound from it quickly. But in reality I quickly realized after our second miscarriage in February that grief changes a person and that our losses are now a permanent fixture of who I am. The question is not whether I will forget, it has become a question of how the experience will shape me as a person.

And so, with desperation, I wrote.

I was given a pregnancy journal for Christmas last year, and although its contents are dismal compared to its intention, the journal became my security. Because what I discovered is that my perfectly supportive friends and family could only bear so much of the repetition I fed them; the frustration of another period instead of a positive test, the feelings of worthlessness, the bitter taste of mixed grief and joy at the announcement of each friend’s new baby. How can conversations possibly subsist on just these thoughts? They cannot, and they shouldn’t. But, these thoughts and emotions have become my constant companion. They may emerge out of thin air with any given trigger. Or perhaps I awake one day to realize they will muddle within me throughout the day until I find myself crying on the bed at night mourning failure, despising myself.

I have come to learn a few things this year. First of all, there exists a thing labeled the “Stages of Grief”, and I have walked through them. And secondly, there exists grief, the bastard of loss. And I have learned that walking through the mess it leaves you with is infinitely easier with friends and family around you. But I have also learned I am the only one who can walk it. These truths are no one’s but my own. How isolating and comforting and thought-provoking.

And so it has been a full year now. Like the song sings, “So this is Christmas. And what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun.” And this year, I can truthfully say I have done the entirely unexpectedly and unwelcome work of walking through true grief and loss. I have held a baby within me, twice. And I have experienced losing them both. And I am still working at it, but I am accepting myself more and hating myself much, much less.

The other night as I prepared dinner for my husband and I, as I played on the floor with our dogs, and I saw the lights on our stoop outside reflect in glass, I was at peace. And that feeling has lasted beyond those five minutes, but it was a defining moment that said to me, “You have arrived here. Enjoy it.” And rather suddenly I realized that at some point very recently, pregnant women are a symbol of hope instead of a reminder of personal loss. Perhaps it is the stories of others I have learned from being open and honest about my own. Because at this very moment, I personally know three pregnant women who have either tried for years, or experienced many miscarriages, or never thought they would get to this point in their lives at all. And my jealousy and hurt is somehow redefined as joy and hope. I think of them and remind myself to rest in this moment, for our time will come. And it is well.

But then again, it took me a year of walking through the innermost heartache to arrive at this better, happier place. And the tears still come easily at times, and the lump in my throat still exists all-too-suddenly. But I am content, I am so very content and ready to love the people who are my family here and now. After the seemingly endless subsequent months of a deadened spirit, this newfound peace rejuvenates me.

At the beginning of the year I wrote a quote in my pregnancy journal that reads, “The biggest happiness is when at the end of the year you feel better than at the beginning.” -Henry David Thoreau. When I wrote that on January 20, 2015 I was convinced we would be expecting by the year’s end. But today as I write this I realize how much more depth that statement has as I sit here, accepting what is with not only contentment, but a hope that has not died.

Egg washed

Sitting here on the floor at the last of our miniature kitchen renovation (purging the cabinets and then painting them from a hard, dark pine with knots to a soft eggy yellow) with a small cardboard box. Feeling sick from all the deep cleaning supplies in my airways, so I decided to sort through this box of mostly outdated allergy medicine.

2011, 2013, 2010.

Medicine we bought our first year of marriage. We used it in the one-bedroom condo in West Ashley, kept the CVS-brand Benedryl all these years and towed it with us from apartment to house to here; the first we bought together.

It is a small little place that needs more monetary love and updates than we can give it. So we do our best with the little time we have and turn a mostly blind eye to the formica countertops in the kitchen and bathroom, the haphazardly painted trimwork or unfinished ceiling paint. We are as proud as we can be of what we have accomplished in our time here; rewiring the electric and installing a new HVAC being our two biggest (and mostly only) accomplishments. But then again, there was this spring when we discovered how beautifully the azaela bushes bloom, or how tall and wide the banana leaves are on the tree outside the sunroom windows in the summer.

I throw away the expired medicine and I keep the notes from old friends I found stashed away in the box. Notes from five or more years ago, simple hellos left for us by a neighbor, or a thank you for dinner. Perhaps a birthday wish. Missing these people makes it difficult to read any of them, but the comfort in knowing they are nearby is enough. I put the stack back in with the oversized container of Vitamin C supplement and stowe the box in its corner under the sink.

Doorframe

So much of a business ushers in a commercial-grade way of life. It's that bit of it that requires a certain amount of trendiness so that young millennials will come in and approachability so a baby boomer feels comfortable, too. I think it's called relavancy, and it demands a lot of attention.

So what a refreshing change today when an elderly woman and her caregiver visited the shop. She seems to have Alzheimer's, seems slightly confused and, although having been before, gazes around at the place with wonder. She exclaimed with glee when I handed her latte off. I felt her tangible excitement at enjoying the drinks alongside her caregiver.

And right after, a young mother with two children under three; a baby with an easy smile. It made me pause again, to look at that small person who has no care for what is popular, what trends, or to find the cutting edge. A person who just is, who reached his chubby arms toward me and smiled.

And for all the numbers demanding my brainspace this week, for all the future planning to ensure we stick around, in those moments I was here. Serving coffee to an elderly woman and a baby's mother who both wordlessly taught me something in our brief exchanges; we all just were.

The mother opened the door and framed in it was Monday's sunset. I admired the colors until she closed the door. And that was it.

That I might be more like the old woman, that I could find amazement in small things like the baby. This is to be content. Carpe diem, they say. But maybe all that means is experiencing the moments.

The inconvenience of a moment

An overwhelming sense of peace that catches your breath in your throat on a random Thursday around noon; that makes you stop and give thanks, give into relief, briefly step away from any heart aches and wondering. For a moment it pivots you toward wonderment, has you closing your eyes around the shining moment that embraces the broken spirit you bring to it.

Live it, inconvenient though it is. Remember it, tucked under the soft pile of sheets somewhere in your mind's eye, because you will need it to remind yourself later. And be thankful.

Darlings

I lived with my friend Caitlin in college. In our room of our Vanderhorst Street apartment against the dark cobalt wall I painted she hung a photo collage from high school that read, "Life is motion".

Life moves. 

It's a noble aspiration to think a written word could send waves of thought and perhaps tranquility or change or humor through a sea of people on the Internet. But I doubt it's realistic to really perpetuate change en masse through a blog, by whatever measure one could hope. For example, the recent "Starbucks red cup" debacle circulating is a sad marketing joke to drive hoards of people to advertisers' sites for the sake of bottom line. And so many people are happy to shamefully spin themselves around in the mud, digging a rut of ridiculous nonsense that means nothing. Time wasted for nothing but the advertisers. So much of what we filter through on the web exists for them. 

What is its point? This - why do I write, and why do I share? I've contemplated that quite a bit recently, asking myself why I would want to share this blog. One consistent reason is because I began to make too much of it, quietly telling myself it could be useful, beautiful, provoking. But - "Murder your darlings," said Arthur Quiller-Couch, said Faulkner, Wilde, Chekov, said them all. And so here I am, sharing, and murdering these darlings so I can move on from them. Another hope would be that it yielded conversations with others about writing; useful, thoughtful exchanges that may or may not talk about the writing within here, but that goes beyond it too. 

At the core of "why", though, I am reminded of this quote - Kurt Vonnegut once said, "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia."

And so the answer is, I write for myself. I share it to remind myself so many are capable of piecing words together like this, but I write for my own sanity. Because without even this smallest piece of practice, after awhile I begin to feel desperate. I want to practice listening to myself, want to feel the satisfaction of mulling words and phrases around in my head because I like doing that. It means something to me. It waters my spirit. And that matters.

I think influencing - dare I say "changing" - a person's life is a much quieter, much longer, and less anticipated process than one might think or even hope. I believe we affect other's lives each day with or, often, without knowing it. For better and worse. It doesn't come packaged in a blog. 

It's not this blog that will move a person; it's the kindness shown when pouring coffee, it's time spent alone cooking a meal for a new mother, sending a thank you card seen only by its recipient. I believe change is perpetuated not by broadcasting, but by loving. We as humans are otherwise too fickle a species. 

Life is motion in so very many ways. It is also the quiet capture of these moments that are often only me, a cup of coffee, and my dogs. 

Alone, thinking, writing to appease myself.

Pottery class

A friend sent me an email whose author conveyed her thoughts in a much more pragmatic way than this blog, a way that inspired people outside of appeasing herself through her writing. It was beautiful, a short essay in which she laid out intentions of living each day in a way that includes creating, connecting, and consuming.

In other words, my personal words, that would mean writing, spending time outside, and reading. Different for some, the same for others. Create. Connect. Consume.

: the act of carving out time for important things that water the spirit. 

The author's husband had recently died in a freak accident in Australia. The new widow went on a trip to Napa to practice these three tributes, and I presume, to find something about or within herself to help lift her away from the tragedy that encompassed her. Encompasses her. 

Present tense; because one thing I have learned this year is that grief is not a season you walk through. Grief changes a person, meets you when you least expect it and humbles you as you stand naked in a doorway. Grief does not ask, it intrudes upon your life and strips you. And no person is alone in that experience, though it takes on a different sculpture for us all. This year it is the very real possibility that I could remain unable to carry a child. It is letting go of my deep-rooted passion to be pregnant. It is losing any control I thought I had over us starting a family, it is trusting my husband's words that even without kids I am enough for him. It is knowing some days will be good; deep and rich and full of laughter. And some days will have triggers around their corners. 

But I think this thing of doing - of creating, connecting, and consuming - heals us. We can contribute to the world, sit in the world, and embrace it, too. We are not alone.

Our grievances will not isolate us.

We are not alone. 

1888 and 2015

I realized this morning that for years I have given Ralph Emerson credit for William Wordsworth's penned line I often haphazardly quote:

"[Children come into this world] trail[ing] clouds of glory."

This is the, sadly botched, rendition of it but the sentiment is there. Emerson must have been inspired by that too, because I remember writing those words in the margins of the notebook in American Renaissance Lit class. Then again, I remember a lot of skewed truths.

I have a great respect for poets and poetry in general. I find it incredibly beautiful. But I'll also admit that I tend to more easily connect with ideas presented clearly sans similes. Call me a millenial, and isn't that sad. The work of deciphering poetry has led to some deep and hauntingly alluring insights, but it takes mental energy and time. And ideally a teacher to help dig into all of the historical, literary, and socio-economic references.

However, I would like to know Wordsworth's thoughts about this line he wrote sometime in the late 1800's. Although I've miscredited it, incorrectly quoted it, and overall done a disservice to him; despite all that the point is that his words have stayed with me. I agree wholeheartedly with him that children come into this world trailing glory, agree that we forget parts of ourselves as we age, or perhaps miss the opportunities to remember, am inspired by him to believe we can remember a purer form of a self. And not just remember but to live it.

What would he say to that?

From William Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immorality from Recollections of Early Childhood", verse V, lines 1-7:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come..."

Foggy morning sunshine

Fog on the big picture window in our living room disallows all of the current sunshine through, but it does make for a beautiful suggestion of frost outside. I can almost smell the hard cold air of a winter day if I close my eyes.

: the bright pink chill that creeps across the cheeks and nose the longer one stands outside.

The attempt to warm your face by covering it with a knit scarf and breathing hot breath into the fabric. And then, that warm dewey fabric resting on your nose and skin, making everything damp and soon thereafter cold again. And maybe you repeat the process. Snot runs out of your nose and now the scarf is even wetter, and your nose is still cold and even brighter.

Then, taking the scarf away from the face to just let the brisk air hit it. Laughing, running, screaming through the snow drifts. A steady "crunch, crunch" through the hardened snow, a billowy sinking into the fresh powdery snowfall.

This powdery snowfall is what came down heavily in April around Easter the night before my Grandma Helen's funeral in 1995. It coated the branches ever so lightly, made the whole of Rosholt, SD look like a snowglobe that had lost its music. And indeed, we had.

This picture window here, now. That funeral day.

Coffee, clean, repeat.

Sipping mediocre coffee on a Sunday morning from a mug my cousin unexpectedly gave me for my birthday. The mug reads, "Uff Da!", a favorite phrase among Midwesterners that simultaneously embodies humor and foreboding with its use.

"The cows got out of the pastures again? Uff da! That's the third time this summer."

We watch the dogs wrestle around. And I'll begin cleaning when I finish writing.

These mundane times together are some of my favorites. Perhaps they are not the entire meat of what constitutes a life, but stacked together after years they could be. To this day, every time someone opens a Diet Coke, I think of my mother who poured herself a can over ice every Saturday as she prepared her Rainbow-brand vaccum for cleaning the old wooden floors.

Not so different, she and I.

There is something to be found in these quiet, routine mornings, a peaceful monotony I can draw from when life envelopes me like a rickety wooden roller coaster.  

Year of the Cyclone

This year is like the first wooden roller coaster I ever rode at Six Flags in Atlanta, GA on a hot summer afternoon around the year 2003.

The old wooden beast's white paint had long since chipped and it was rumored for being especially creaky and rickety, as thought it would break at any moment. Perhaps it's named the "Georgia Cyclone", I seem to remember that.

The coaster was the first one inside the gates to the right after ticketing. We were brazen, a group of young teenagers daring each other to jump on it first thing, although for many of us it was our first experience. I joined the group exhilerated, scared. And we rode.

I felt the usual emotions one might expect: fear, awe, and aderenaline. The Cyclone was true to its name; full of spins and divets and drops. Of course every motion also had a low, wooden rumble beneath it that kept me wondering if the entire coaster was liable to just fall apart on us. Specifically, I was terrified of the eery "click, click, click" at the ride's onslaught as we climbed high for the first big drop.

After the ride we giggled at one another wide-eyed and gulping in the air around us, thankful to be on solid ground again. We went on our way, weaving deeper into the park and leaving the Cyclone behind. For the rest of the day I was queasy. It was the first time I discovered I'm prone to motion sickness but it did not stop the pursuit of more rides.

We probably ate turkey on sticks and drank sugary soda. We probably stood in line as many hours as we spent actually riding the rides. And we likely did a lot of joking around. But I don't remember the rest of the day as vividly.

117th Ave

What is it about the nostaglia of a place that has the power to grip a heart so heavily? Is it because I was just a litte girl when my world was uprooted, when life asked me to refind footing, to adapt?

I was so scared in those days. We arrive to our new home down South on August 3, 2000. Barrington Avenue. The world shifted incredibly for all of us, my parents bold in their attempt to show us life outside of the only kind we had ever known. My parents, some of the first in our family to move so far away from the home and land our great-grandparents imigrated to settle.

They were ready to fly and took us along. For that I am grateful. Because despite the difficulty in going back now as an adult, despite how those raw emotions so easily flow, I cannot imagine what would have been had we remained had we stayed. And isn't that the cliche. Isn't that how it is for all of the decisions we make; "I cannot imagine if..."

Last Thursday morning I went back to the home I spent the first 13 years of my life. I walked the land, saw the garden my mom tended to the night her water broke when pregnant with me, the garden we harvested for years. I revisited the fort James and I built. Of course it is cleared out now, a small space of a grove amidst the elms. Standing along the line of lilac bushes I observed the Pederson's farmland. The emotions were there, but it was reaching out and holding the crab apple tree branches that brought the tears. Of all things! And I keep asking myself, "Why is this so emotional? Why is it so hard?"

It is multidimensional, but maybe it is mostly because of how distant childhood is from me now, and how easily I feel small again when I stand in that tract of land off the Kathryn Road in Valley City. Because memories stand frozen there and so is the ideal of the state of my heart, so pure in its innocence, so trusting that the world would give me my greatest dreams. How I long to return to that blind faith full of joy and contentment. And perhaps that is why I cry. Perhaps that is why I return.

To Valley

Back home.

I was embarassed to tell my childhood friend Shautay that when the sun shone on my face as I sat in the airplane on its decent, I wept. It is a difficult emotional response to dissect because the emotions within me were so convuluted. It was contentment I felt; happiness, relief to be back, despair at the life I do not have there, incredulity that it has really been so long. These emotions stirred themselves violently within me as I looked at the patchwork prairie fields from above and the sun still shone, steadfast. And I leaned my forehead on the dirty plane window, accepted the moment, and wept.

She giggled when I told it, her own incredulity asking why anyone would be so happy to be back in North Dakota. That's when I faultered with a lack of response because in that moment I was lazy at explaining how different the cultures are, how impactful the land is, and perhaps mostly, how a part of me only truly comes alive when I return. It seemed so wispy and trite in that moment, so I laughed too.

We got into her car, oooed and ahhed at her puppy, and began the short trek to Valley City as the sun set over I-94. The semis buzzed by and cut the red blaze of the sun in two parts, disrupting the flat horizon. And we talked about the last several years of our lives as we sped 75 mph toward a home I should no longer claim as my own.

Fly to the highest place

This Wednesday I travel back to where I spent the first half of my life.

North Dakota seems like a different country, what with the travel to get there, what with the culture of the people within it. It is a place that once fit my like a glove. How much has that changed, I wonder?

My childhood best friend will pick me up at the airport and we travel from Fargo to Valley City, where a large part of my heart still beats, for so much of who I am is rooted in that small town of 7,000.

Shautay even organized it to where we can go visit the house I grew up in. I realize, it perhaps seems materialistic. But when I stand in the parlor, if it is quiet enough I will close my eyes and see Dad decorating the tree late November while Celtic music plays throughout the house. I can remember evenings spent eating and cleaning together in the kitchen before dishwashers. The bathroom, brushing our teeth in over-sized adult shirts given to us by Aunt Deb after each marathon she ran.

Those foundations of what shaped me.

I want to embrace them again, and being in that house, albeit alone without the rest of my family, can give a tangible remembrance from the past.

We lived it well.

Lyrical tithes

We used to sing "Peace Like a River" in the church I grew up attending. Dressed in skirts, nice pants, and our best shoes and standing in rows altogether with our voices lifted in unison. This part might not be true, but we sang it during the tithing portion of the service, or at least right after. 

"I've got peace like a river/I've got peace like a river/I've got peace like a river in my soul."

I would stand and read the words projected onto the wall above the alter, dutifully raising my voice alongside Mom, Dad's, and everyone else. It is a thoughtful song, a somewhat slow song that asks you to draw out its notes against the backdrop of a lighthearted piano accompaniment.

Whether you sing in a church or under your breath during work, or while cooking with wine in one hand, the lyrical mantras we express are soothing. Song offers its sense of peace to us whether or not that word is even in the lyrics.

Our mantras. 

This morning the pregnancy test I thought would be positive came back negative, again. It's been six months without succeeding and the deficit I feel stings deeply. 

And so I make myself a cup of coffee and hold it between my hands. The dogs play together. My husbands awakes from his sleep. And I keep reminding myself, "I've got peace like a river."

Because I must. 

The start of a Tuesday

A college professor visited the coffeeshop with his wife yesterday. He ordered a mocha, she a macchiato. I was not sure if it was okay to hug them or not, and so I decided against it. But perhaps they could read my eyes and see it resting there.

Professor Lott told me that one year from now the College of Charleston will offer an MFA program in writing. My heart soars at the idea, but I wonder if it is worth the expense of more student loans. More debt, and for how long?

My father said to me recently, "I have seen you live others' dreams for a long time, Laura. I want to see you pursue your own."

I needn't ask myself what it is that makes my heart glad; it is refining the way I explain to you the experience of interacting with a child, how it feels to pour a latte correctly for a stranger or a friend, details about what it means to travel through this life. It is explaining the human experience in a way that becomes tactile enough that what I present to you from my heart can be easily grasped and if you like, you can carry it, too.

Leeks and leaks

Here. This is the life that was given to you. And now is the only moment you are promised.

To hear these dogs growl and spurn at one another as they nip the air with their teeth and tilted jowls, this is to be me in this moment now. To have watery eyes from cutting leeks with a dull knife, to walk away from the chopping board thankful yet again I did not maim my fingers with my poor slicing habits.

In ninteen days I will board a plane from Charleston to Chicago and onwards to Fargo. It has been four full years since I have been back to visit. It has been fourteen years since my family has gone together to the place where our lives began.

All I am promised is this moment I have before me, a velvet candle lit and effects from an Atlantic hurricane angrily thundering above. Sneezes from those leeks and another surge of thankfulness for use of my fingers.

The more I learn the less I know. But in this most difficult year of loss without recoupe, I've begun to embrace how much more similar than dissimilar are our collective human spirits. Perhaps this is most oft discovered through sharing pain and loss, for our hearts feel deeply and find compassion for each other when met with these stories we share. And once we realize that is so much the same, then we realize the lighter parts of us are not entirely different, either.

At any rate; here. Now.

Thoughts from a foggy sunrise

It's that song from your youth you sing in the shower on a weekend night when you realize you are still alive and can still acheive that thing in this life which makes your heart pound. It is not "too late". It's that inner peace that comes from accepting you have within you the tools to refine the skill. It is capturing the pure energy that arrives with the release of creativity and, every once in awhile, knowing that what you can produce is good. And it is knowing the rest of your life can be a climb toward becoming better, and whether you ever do become better, or best, or just okay at this thing you love, you have spent the commodity of your time well; for your spirit is watered. And your mind is alive. 

This is what it is to pursue that thing in this life that brings your bones and your spirit closer together, and dare I even say, what you were created to pursue.

To have and to hold

I was a mother once. Briefly. Or, at least I carried life within my womb.

And I lost our first baby, so we tried again. And I lost that one, too.

This year brought with it the unsurprising circumstance of my genetic disorder - a rearrangement of cells and chromosomes that disallow the ease of starting a family. Or, at least the odds are less favorable. I prayed for good news when they drew blood for testing back in February, but it is as though I have expected this news my entire life. My heart did not even drop when the counselor told me I was a carrier.

But even so, in December I forged ahead and convinced Matthew that announcing the news to our families before 13 weeks was okay. And when the miscarriage happened, he convinced me to let him tell family and friends. By then I was complacent anyway. We hardly told anyone the second time around.

I have cried both aloud and silently as I try to ride the waves of nausea and guilt. I have hugged my body and heaved, either standing or maybe sitting in the shower with the hope the water could clear away this new reality of knowing more miscarriages are likely to come. How long do you wait to celebrate life while anticipating death?

I've stood at the grave of my hopes.

And I have also emerged from under the clouds. We have tried again. And then again, with no luck. I've spoken the words aloud to friends and heard the story from my own mouth. I have filled my arms at night with our dog. And then the second one we adopted in early Summer. And our beautiful nephew who came in May. And next, another child who I will love dearly. Life moves forward.

By now I have come to expect that life will give us these turns that force an adaptation of our expectations. I suppose I must remember we all experience these things and my hurt is not so unique. This is perhaps the definition of strength; to love the potential fruit of something so much that you look its hinderance in the eye and demand yourself to try, try again.