Is Forever Enough?

 

 

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Today marks the one year anniversary of discovering I was pregnant. I had taken a pregnancy test every three days since we learned the vasectomy had failed. So far, all negative. I took the last one as a silly joke, mostly because I didn’t want to “waste” it and throw it away unused. I used it, set it on the counter, and waited. A faint plus sign popped up. HA! Hilarious! I contacted a friend, who said the blue ones are generally less reliable than a pink dye one. I slept fitfully, hoping the test was a false positive.

In the morning, I offered to run “for donuts” before my husband left to take an important test. I bought a pink test, only one question, but far more important to answer. I stared out the window at the clump of tulips that had somehow survived tilling. We had tilled everything smooth since we knew we would be selling the house and moving to Georgia while my husband attended military school there. These tulips lived and their presence confounded me. I looked back at the test. There it was. Two lines, firm, no mistake.

April 14th, 2015.

Eleven days short of my baby turning one. I was horrified. We had so many plans. Being pregnant with a third child was not one of them. A few days later, I confessed to my husband. He was so tender, a bit excited, and I cried into his neck.

 “Hey, hey, it’s okay. We have two kids and they are pretty awesome. This kid will be awesome, too.”

With each birth of my boys, I had picked out a special song to sing to them at bedtime. With my oldest it was Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.” During a good amount of Dane’s babyhood, my husband was attending a military school in Georgia. The lyrics spontaneously came to mind as I rocked my nursing infant, exhausted and lonely, and running a solo show. “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?”

When my second son was born after a challenging delivery, my husband excitedly announced that it was another little boy. My momstincts were already pointing toward boy so I wasn’t terribly surprised. As I stroked his sweet red face and inspected his every crease, natural birth hormones washed over me. John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” came out of my throat. “Beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful boy.” That was the only part I knew but that was all I needed at the time, on repeat as we snuggled and nursed and got to know one another. I had to learn the rest of the song to sing it to him at night.

I remember having a particularly trying day and standing in the kitchen of our first house listening to what Songza labeled the “Lullabye Mix.” A song came on and arrested my attention at the chorus.

“How long do you want to be loved?
Is forever enough, is forever enough?
How long do you want to be loved?
Is forever enough?
Cause I’m never, never giving you up.”

I stood, my belly just starting to poke through under my apron and knew this was Reece’s song, our bonus baby. Tears came to my eyes. I was not ready to take on another baby. I was scared, but this song came to remind me that it all boils down to love, even the hard stuff.  I have never picked a song so early before, especially since we had so many unknowns. But I learned the lyrics, and sang and sang and sang it. Sometimes I would offer it to the boys during bedtime, rubbing my growing belly as I rocked or lied next to them. Sometimes I would just hum it to Reece and occasionally in the car while alone, I would belt it out at the top of my lungs. He would wiggle from the volume, probably trying to get me to shut up.

Now when I hear this song, I hear it with a new perspective. This was the lullabye song I had picked out to sing to my last baby, to hold him and rock him, and watch him sleep. To soothe him when he’s teething or sick or just restless. I don’t sing it much anymore, now I just listen.

“As you wander through this troubled world
In search of all things beautiful
You can close your eyes when you’re miles away
And hear my voice like a serenade

I just listen because sometimes I feel he is singing to me. He is sending me a lullabye to soothe my aching heart. He is sending it back to me to fill in these places where there are no answers for why he isn’t here.

“How long do you want to be loved?
Is forever enough, is forever enough?
How long do you want to be loved?
Is forever enough?
Cause I’m never, never giving you up.

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She Mothers Us, the Aching Mothers

Dear A.J. and Joy Sommers,

This month you were born. In the years you have been gone, the impact you created has made deep and lasting ripples. Losing you changed the course of your mother’s life forever. There is no early spring party with balloons and bubbles and cake. At least not Earthside that passersby can see. Losing you broke open your mother’s heart that would only heal when she learned to fill in the cracks and crevices with love for others: your daddy, your brother, for herself. And for mamas like me whose heartbreak was painfully familiar. Losing you caused your mama to live in honor of you. She keeps you real by sharing her grief, by calling you by name, by walking in shoes she doesn’t want to be wearing. Grief strips the veneer and leaves a person more authentic. Your mama did not choose this path but embraces it nonetheless.

Your mama was there for us when our family lost our Little Brother, Reece. She scooped up my mother’s heart from the side of the rollercoaster, holding the pieces together like a shattered egg, and rubbed a gentle layer of love into it.   The love she would have lavished on you was shared with us. She mothered us. Her heart healed a bit more, too.

Joy, you are the reason for your mama’s good work. The  hugs she would have given to you were spent on us, the aching mothers. Every time you would have fallen on the sidewalk and needed comfort, she saved it and offered comfort to us. Midnight wakings to be at a bedside, not yours, A.J., but ours. It was saved for us. Tangled thoughts, and worries, and going above and beyond, it was saved for us. Time, money, energy: it was saved for us,
the aching mothers. Your legacy lives on in all our hearts, your mother’s touch is there, her fingerprints left where she held the pieces together.

The work she does is so important to the world. Bad things happen to good people for no reason. Grief is deep and dark and long. Losing a child is such an unnatural tragedy, no parent should experience it. But we do. Death is part of life. No one should walk this journey alone and your mama makes sure no parent does. She mothers us, the aching mothers.

Happy Birthday, sweet babies. Thank you for sharing your mama with us.

For Sale: Maternity Dress, Size Small.

There is an urban legend about Hemmingway placing a bet with fellow writers that he could write the saddest short story. His story was six words long.

“For Sale, baby shoes, never worn.” Legend goes that he won that bet.

After the first vasectomy, I cried about no more babies and consigned all my maternity pants. When I become pregnant with Reece, I had only a handful of shirts. I am so blessed to have a sister who loaned me three boxes of maternity clothes. Doing so came to my rescue in so many ways. Financially and physically, since I didn’t have to buy new pants, the “new” clothes arrived just after she birthed her third baby and I was demanding elastic waists. Then again emotionally and physically, when the pregnancy came to a slam-stop and I had boxes and boxes of clothes that made me cry. I could load them up and send them back to her. I didn’t have to worry about pricing or condition or the ability to sell each piece. It was an emotional relief to just send them away.

I have kept a few pieces of course: the shirt dress I labored in (hope you don’t miss it, sis, it’s not coming back to you!), the coral dress I wore to Reece’s funeral (maybe worn twice prior to that day), and the shirts I bought with sassy sayings that only a mother with many children or a post-vasectomy conception can own like this.

Some of the pieces I will be able to wear again, like this maxi dress.

Perhaps some day the maternity shirts and some of my most loved baby clothes can be sewn into a quilt. Some day. But what do I do with the pieces like elastic belly pants and dresses made specifically for pregnant bodies?

Pieces that were bought special just to cover me and Reecer-man. My mother, early in the course of my pregnancy, wanted to take me shopping for FUN maternity clothes. The first two pregnancies I had worn many solid tops due to continuing work as an interpreter. My wardrobe was very drab but it was work appropriate. Now that I was not working, she wanted me to have prints and bright colors. I bought grey pants, that bright coral dress, a handful of maxi dresses that could pull double duty, and this little gem.

I loved this dress. I know, interpreter friends,  I know. It’s a dark solid color (once a terp, always a terp?) but it was my “fancy dress.” I wore it here.

For Ryan and my 10 year anniversary dinner date. That was late July, so Reece was only a little bump then, about 20 and half weeks.

And here, at my dear cousin’s wedding in September. I was about 27 weeks pregnant. I added a band of sparkles at the waist to kick it up a notch.

 

 

A week ago, I pulled this beloved dress from the closet and stared at it longingly. I stroked its soft layers. I tried it on. It looked okay in all places except the chest. This dress was build for pregnancy breasts. I didn’t even have nursing breasts. I had retired breasts. It wasn’t a good fit, cherished as it was. So I let it go.

“Size Small Motherhood Maternity Dress in GUC. Navy blue, ties in back. $15 OBO.”

In three days, it was sold. The buyer was beautifully pregnant and the dress would surely be stunning on her. Goodbye, lovely dress.

It hurt to let go, more so than letting go of the baby toys and clothes.  If we had bought Reece his own outfits, they would never have been sold. It’s difficult to sell any baby item under these circumstances, used or not. Hemmingway knew it to be so. But why was I struggling to let go of dresses and pants that didn’t fit my ever-shrinking body? What woman wants to keep a dress that makes her tiny chest appear tinier?? I reached out to other mamas who knew this ache and this is a summary of what they said.

“Maternity clothes represent for me the last time we were all together. I was happy in a way that will never be the same. All three of my children were with me, our baby kicking away.”

“These clothes covered my baby and me, when we were still together, and he was still alive. It’s my connection to him, in a way.”

They were able to so beautifully articulate the ache I couldn’t describe. Maternity clothes represented my innocence about pregnancy and a time when we were all still here together on Earth. I was happy in a way I will never be again. All alive and blissful and unaware that shit happens to healthy people for no reason. Letting the clothes go recognized a hard fact: growing our family is really done. The facts were real and cold.

This was a dress, a thing of fabric and thread. The physical thing represents a time in my life, like those “skinny jeans” in every woman’s closet. She holds on to the jeans, maybe for years, hoping that one day she will be thin enough to again wear those jeans. What I hope for isn’t coming back. The sweet memories made in it aren’t gone. But my innocence is. Keeping the dress in my closet doesn’t prevent me from knowing that, and it definitely doesn’t carry enough warm sentimental value to outweigh it.

Next month, my husband and I will be attending a military formal. I will be buying a new dress. And I have just the spot for it in my closet.

 

The Tale of Two Gyms: Flashing Back to Last Year

The pine wood ceiling was blonde and beautiful, the boards stacked evenly, knots glossy and dark. From my position on the floor, I breathed in and tilted my pelvis. Everything about this gym was nice. This is where I made my first friends in this new city. This is where my oldest son goes to preschool. This is where I came three days a week for yoga as my body rounded with growing Reece. This gym is the last place where I felt him kick me while I sweat on a stationary bike. I relaxed my hips, and lifted my head, pressing my fingers lightly into the gap that was unmistakable. Diastasis Recti, the thinning of the abdominal walls. It was a mark of being pregnant.

I was suddenly struck with a flashback from the previous year. At this time a year ago, I was merely paddling to keep my head above water with my two young sons, one of which was a fitful sleeper and very demanding otherwise. Our nursing relationship was rounding to a year and I was finally coming out from under the weight of mothering an infant. I was working with a personal trainer, Julie, to regain strength I had lost in my pelvic floor and core from being pregnant and delivering babies.

A year ago,  I was on the floor of another gym, staring up at the aging drop-tile ceiling while I did my tiny exercises to close the gap in my abdominal walls. I had lived with diastasis recti for years and had no idea. It was finally healing and regaining full strength just as my baby was about to turn one. I remember sitting on a yoga mat later with Julie and asking her if she thought it was fully closed. She checked the gap and said I was really close.

Then I told her. I was six weeks pregnant. She guffawed in good nature. I was terrified and angry to undo all my hard work but she assured me to wear my brace and be mindful and I could prevent damage. Julie had become a friend, my fitness guru, and a mentor of sorts. When we discovered Reece was a boy, I was in grief. Surely the one baby that barged in on our lives would be the daughter I didn’t know I needed. Not so. I contacted her to guide me through mothering three boys: she had three of her own and lived to tell about it. She assured me female friends and girlfriends would be waiting “for adoption” as I raised my sons. Like all my challenges in motherhood before, she assured me that everything would be fine.

Suddenly, snapped back to now, a year later, I felt myself melt into tears, lying there on my back. We had conceived Reece one year ago. Everything was supposed to be fine. But it wasn’t. Same condition, same exercise, different gym, different woman. I am different now and not all in good ways.

When I was recovering abdominal strength the first time, I was in a big hurry to complete it and be strong again. Now as I tilt my head to see the slight bulge between the muscles, I freeze. This is my last marker for pregnancy with Reece. My arms are empty. My breasts are empty. My abdomen is empty. Some days it is as if he was never here. There is no physical evidence, it seems, of him being here. Just a squishy midsection that could just as easily be too many donuts.

Recovering strength that’s been gone for many years is not easy or simple work. It takes diligence and determination. Pair that with the sense of “erasing” the proof of my pregnancy and it’s really hard to even get started. It sure is easier to take time out to lie on the floor when there is a squishy baby gurgling nearby from his bouncey seat. Reece would be my good-natured scapegoat for all my woes: loneliness in a new city, driving a giant vehicle, having to rework all my abdominal strength. And in another year, he would be coming around to weaning, my body finally mine again. Ryan and I would raise our strong cups of coffee in a toast to our haggardness, our exhaustion, and our happiness having made it through Reece’s infancy. But it will never be.

So for now, my stomach has a baby pouch but there is no vanity in it. I’m not competing in a world’s hottest mom competition; I’ve got better things to do. My vanity about my “mom body” left when Reece did.

Julie assures me to take my time, to start when I feel ready. Until then, my body, in all it’s softness, will wait for my heart.