24 hours...

I am ticking off the days until I can sit idly and type away about the throes of motherhood... we are now just one day from conference time... at this time tomorrow I will be wining and dining our guest here in my home as we prepare for Monday and Tuesday's big events. I am so excited, proud and, yes, slightly nervous.

But so what? What if the food doesn't arrive, or everyone doesn't have a pen, or the tables are arranged wrong. I could run out of folders, or my books could be lost, but still, Cathi will come, and the 70 people who have signed up will probably show up, and they will all learn things they perhaps didn't know before.

And then, when someone like me, or you, or someone you know walks into their room, they will know what to say, and will also know what not to say.

And how much is that worth?

I have felt so busy and crazed with all of this; I am so excited for it to end so I can settle a little bit into the life that I love and just enjoy my little folks a little more fully.

You truly are going to have to excuse my brief foray into politics. This is NOT a political blog, and I will return (I promise) to the throes of mothering by tomorrow.

But I have to say it, I just have to-- I am disgusted by California. I am disgusted, and dismayed, and beyond anything, deeply saddened. And this is about family and mothering and everything else, because it's about people's rights to be born and grow up and become grown people who can make independent choices for themselves. It's about people having the right to have the same rights as everyone else around them. It just makes my head spin around in a hundred circles of dazzling disbelief that a nation that shakes its head disapprovingly at the mere mention of women being unable to vote, or blacks being unable to marry whites, would continue to try to justify the fact that marriage is specific to one man and one woman.

It makes me want to cry to think that people would go out of their way to BAN people from sharing the civil rights that their brothers, sisters, parents and neighbors enjoy. Every citizen of this nation should be granted the same basic rights. Is this not the basis of our constitution?

And you know what? If you belong to one of the religions that condones hatred, and is against gays, then go ahead and ban gays from marrying in your church, because guess what? There won't be any gays in your congregation anyway. But do not put those laws on my country, because it isn't up to this country to make those rules (or the state of California).

And this is the thing, you hear these people saying, "Oh, I have gay friends and I TOTALLY support them making their own choice, but I just really think that marriage is just between a man and a woman." Oh, that is such total bullshit. What you are, is anti-gay. You don't support them making a choice. You are denying them a civil right, and you are denying them the human right to choose a life partner and to be respected in that choice.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It just makes me want to wilt.

I am absolutely deliriously delighted today, just reeling and keeling left and right.
I felt like I should be popping Champagne all day. It ended up being a number of cups of strong coffee to keep myself going after such a short sleep but it was all good.

I am so happy. And I'm so un-embarassed by my country right now, which is a new, different, and incredible feeling. I feel so hopeful and pleased.

Big, gentle sighs.

11.04.08

Morning Fog, 7:12 AM

To the town hall

In my booth

I shiver as I x my box

And drive down the mountain in the early morning foggy light

To wait, and to hope.
And to imagine that I might
be delighted
at the thought of my president
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

This conversation arose today that left a funky taste in my mouth, as this topic often does.

I was speaking on the telephone to a new contact at our local hospital who is giving me great help with my upcoming training. She asked about my loss.

I told her, five and a half years, a baby girl lost during labor to a cord accident.
Oh! she cried, dramatically, but not in a bad way. That is so sad. To go the whole nine months and lose her at the last minute.

I agreed. I never know what to say, truly, how do you reply to this?

Yes, this is probably the saddest thing I've ever heard as well.

Yep, my life pretty much sucked at that point.

Couldn't think of a much worse outcome.

I usually piece together something about how it's hard for me to even believe that I've gone through it, much less come out on the other side this crazy advocate for babylost folks running groups and seminars and speeches. (and this is true)

Then she asked me, and your children now?
Yes, I've had two more, since I lost Charlotte, one is four, and the other two.

And are they boys or girls?

Why do I resent this question? As if somehow my answer will tell this woman whether or not Charlotte has been replaced. When Liam was born, I could feel it in some people's voices: the slight drop when they heard it was a boy, as if somehow things might have been better if I'd had a girl right away. People actually voiced this when Aoife was born, they cried with relief, I'm so grateful you have a girl. Thank god it's a girl.

Can I disagree? No, I am glad that I did have another girl, eventually. But I'm also glad I had a boy, and there was a huge sense of relief when Liam was born that I was not going to simply replace one girl with the next. When Aoife was born I would have also been glad to have another boy, although I will not argue that having another girl did provide me with a sense of relief as well. Something lifted to know that, at the very least, I would be able to experience being the mother of a girl, though she would not be Charlotte. This piece of my identity, the girl-mother, was re-established, and I was grateful for that in its own unusual way. But not for her being a girl, per-se, as if I must have the girl to right the Charlotte wrong, and to establish the American ideal of the boy-girl ratio that had been lost.

But of course I answered the woman, and I told her, I have one of each now, one of each here in my home with me. My elder is a boy and the younger a girl. (Note, elder, not eldest. Although is she my eldest? She never did grow to be any older than unborn).

Why does that question always send my mind spinning?

Two hands working together... my little boy and girl

Just a quick post to say that it is driving me to near insanity that in only 37 hours and 11 minutes I am going to walk up the front steps of the old town hall, have the nice lady with the curly grey hair check off my name with her pencil on the printout, and take my short, many-times sharpened pencil up to the stage at the front of the hall. There, the six wooden partitions, each retro-fitted with its own bare light bulb, stand tall and proud-- waiting for the town's residents to come and cast their votes. I will check the box, so excitedly, and then hand it to the policeman who will undoubtedly let Liam and Aoife help to turn the big, metal crank on the side of the box. We'll hear the ding, "Ding!" and see the number change. Maybe we'll cast among the first votes in our tiny town.
And can you believe it? It's remotely possible that in fifty-two hours or so, we'll feel with certainty that by 1-20-09 we'll have a president who can actually string together a sentence. I am feeling so hopeful, yet so anxious all at once. I have never felt so drawn into an election before.

And one of the reasons I want my own guy to win? Because little Aoife, two and half, can read his name on the signs.
"Yook!" she shouts from the backseat, as we pass one of the many signs along our road. "Oh-BAMA!!" She sounds jubliant. I hope I will be, on Wednesday, too.

Aoife is working through this so hard. It slightly breaks my heart.
In the past week it has probably been eight times, either at dinnertime candle-lighting or when she first gets out of bed, and she says it: I'm sad because I miss Charlotte. I want Charlotte to come back and live with us.
First, you must recall that she can't say her "l" sound, so we hear Char-yitte. Which is so cute. Next, you must imagine how little this all makes sense to her.
Last night, after a wonderful, cozy evening of trick-or-treating, she worded it perfectly, in two-year-old lingo: What does Charlotte mean?
What does Charlotte mean? I don't get this, Mama. I don't understand what this all means. Who is this person you are talking about? I don't know what it means to be dead. I don't know what you're talking about when you say I have a sister, because I've never seen one. How can you be born and then not here?
I tried to explain to her, again, to make it as much on her level as I could. A baby had grown, tucked in Mimi's belly, and we were so excited to be her parents. I painted these stars on the nursery ceiling for Charlotte, we set up this crib that you sleep in for Charlotte, we bought her clothes and planned to bring her home to be our daughter.
But something very sad happened, and Charlotte died, which means that her body didn't work anymore. So we couldn't bring her home, and we were very sad about that.
Yet here we sit, under those very stars, and we remember that tiny baby who might have grown, and if she had grown, she would be bigger than you now.
I am lucky, she says, her eyes half closing as she lies in my lap, curled under a knitted blanket. I can look up while I'm sleeping and see Charlotte.
Yes, I tell her, yes you can.
I feel so sorry for her, missing her big sister. I mean not so much now, because she's just grappling with what that means. But she may never have a sister to live with, and I wish she could have a big sister to be there for her. I feel sorry for her later.
I miss you, too, Charlotte.