Dribbles of Yes, Drops of No

Is it rude to just jump right back in and start talking again? Can't be much fun to follow a blog that gets updated less frequently than motor oil. But, well, here I am with things to say, so I'll take the liberty of saying them to you.

To start with, we're all well. The kids are, unsurprisingly, growing; Olivia is a big girl of three, and Josh is a compact bundle of nineteen-month-old vigor. It looked for a while like there might be another come November, but a wholly unsuspected pregnancy ended in a wholly uneventful miscarriage at the end of March. (I knew I was pregnant for about ten days. My first reaction was abject fear, followed in rough order by generalized worry, a nervous thrill, tentative acceptance and cautious delight, all tempered by the vague feeling that something wasn't quite right--not enough nausea, some cramping, a spot or two. The miscarriage still managed to catch me by surprise, unprepared and at work; can't think why.)

I've been thinking a lot about three since the miscarriage. I've also been thinking a lot about forty. I just don't know if the two are compatible; I don't know if I have it in me ("it" being an egg or two with tidy chromosomes, the physical energy and the mental fortitude, not to mention the funds if we had to pursue treatment again). The temptation to try, though...god, it pulls at me.

Jeff is in a different place. He feels complete. He also feels like hell, not having had enough sleep or time or peace for three years. He works so hard to keep everything together for us all; I've leaned on him too much, I think, and need to step back and see the terrain here from a different vantage point. I'm willing to put myself through it all again, but should I be willing to put Jeff through it if he's only accepting, not eager? I know the right answer to that is a firm no. I also know that we don't really have time to change our minds later, which is profoundly scary to me.

At bedtime, Olivia has taken to asking for "a dribble" of a lullabye. I start in, a rolling "Rockabye Baby, in the tr--" and she'll chortle when I hit the awkward stopping point. Then she'll ask for "just another drop." I sing another syllable or two and she giggles a bit more, especially if Jeff joins in. She loves that it is unexpected, that she can't predict where we'll stop. When I leave the room, I find myself humming the rest of the tune, closing it out so it doesn't hang there, annoyingly unfinished. I realized today that that's what these thoughts of three feel like to me--like I've reached an awkward stopping point, mid-phrase, and want to complete it. Jeff, being very sweetly tone deaf, isn't bothered in the least.

O, Nadya, have you brought us to this?

If you'd like to read some uninformed, vitriolic bile aimed squarely at all infertiles, look no further than this op/ed piece from the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten11-2009feb11,0,1394657.column

Just wait till you hit the last few paragraphs.

I emailed the fat bastard, but I am still so full of fury at his poisonous arrogance that I needed to share it with anyone out there still reading. Is this really what the general public thiks of us? That we are narcissists motivated by childish wish-fulfillment instead of normal people with a medical condition who dearly want to be parents?

Uncomfortably numb

There is some protected kernel in my mind, some insulated little tablet that is waiting to dissolve its time-release coating and floor me with grief and regret for a day or a week or a month. I know it's there; I get a tiny taste of it every few hours. Perhaps it will wash through me once the anger and horror have receded.

We are not sure exactly when she died; we just know that she wasn't found for several days. She lived with a number of cats who didn't have food. I'm sure you can see where this is going, so I will stop.

Clearing out her apartment is one of the hardest things I have ever done. It was packed several feet high with junk, broken furniture and newspapers. Shit was everywhere, and roaches. The smell...oh, god, the smell.

Though the body was long gone, the trauma scene clean-up service did not arrive till we'd been at it for a couple of days, and then I saw what had been so carefully hidden behind the bathroom door. I wish I could un-see it.

Dealing with the remainders of her life was overwhelming. There were storage units to locate, get into and clean out; countless boxes of papers to be reviewed and sorted; locksmiths to be called; haulers to hire; arrangements with the humane society and arrangements with the exterminator. There were carpets to be pulled up and new carpets to be bought. There was the trauma scene cleaning to set up and the regular cleaning crew to be hired once everything was out. There were unknown garages full of stuff, unhelpful property managers to deal with, bills to pay. Every minute was filled with some task, some grim and depressing task.

There were also a few surprising moments of nostalgia; moments I can't call bittersweet but maybe can call moving: one drawer full of broken pottery yielded bits of a vase my sister made in junior high; a metal box was filled with Kodak slides of us as children; a file marked "Love Letters" revealed correspondence between our parents in1963--before they even met in person. (The idea of my father being a bleeding-heart romantic and my mother being described as "too pretty for a poetess" are hard to reconcile; I hope my dad won't mind talking about them one of these days.)

I am angry. I am angry that she wasted her life. I am angry that I wasted much of my life hoping she would change. I am angry that we have to deal with things someone's children should not have to deal with. I am angry that she didn't admit to her addictions. I am angry that I cannot miss the person she became.

Sometime soon, I hope I can mourn her, the real person who nursed me as a baby and stood smiling in the background of some of those slides. I hope that coating dissolves and I can feel something other than this bitterness, this mourning of the way she wasted her life.

Reluctant Eulogy

My cell phone rang today as I was hoisting Josh into a Trader Joe's cart. I had my hands full and my sweet boy needed buckling, so I let it ring.

Jeff's phone rang a minute later. He handed it to me without answering when he saw my brother's number.

My sister-in-law's voice was utterly steady, even chilly. She asked where I was. (What's wrong?) I hate to tell you this, but...

My first terrifying thought was that my dad had died. But it wasn't.

My mother had.

I was relieved.

The last twenty-five years of her life were a blur of unrepentant self-indulgence, dishonesty and bravado. Her ego--good god, her ego. Unparalleled.

She was also an accomplished writer and a gifted public speaker, with a scortching intelligence and a peculiarly compelling charm. She wrote books and essays and published newsletters. She hired dozens of people and had hundreds of friends. She was generous. She was an engaged listener.

And then there was the wildly addictive nature of her personality.

Drugs--first pot, then ecstasy, then 2cB and ketamine and finally meth and prescription narcolepsy medications--became central to her life. It wasn't that she was depressed without them; no, she was never depressed. That wasn't her nature. It was different: she was bored, she was uninspired, she was out of synch with the higher powers without them. She thought that she had been selected for some sort of greatness; that she was entirely different from the other unwashed women of advancing years with too many cats and no income. She thought that drugs put her in touch with her greatness, society's conventions be damned.

Her myriad friends disappeared, to be replaced by hangers-on who milked everything they could from her. She, in turn, used them to prop up her ego and provide the adulation she always craved. Finally, the hangers-on had nothing left to gain, so they left.

There was a selfishness to her that precluded a warm kind of love. It's funny to say that about a generous person, but it was true. Her generousity didn't encompass the kind of self-sacrifice or humility that the word normally conjures up; it was more limited--money, things, praise. The way I loved my mother--and I did, in some primal way--was the kind one might have for an engaging teacher who singles you out for approbation.

Over the last month or so, my mother overdosed three times on the Schedule C sedative-hypnotic prescribed for her dubiously diagnosed narcolepsy. She was using more than twice the therapeutic dose because she couldn't come down from the adderall binges she so enjoyed. My brother had to have the authorities come and get her when she started making wild threats and accusations. Each time, the hospital physician recommended a psychiatric treatment facility, but each time she lasted just the 72-hour minimum. She didn't think she belonged there.

I have been trying to remember the other mother, the one from the early '70s who wasn't more in love with herself than she was with her children and her intellectual pursuits. It's hard. There are a few dingy memories of a mother who found me a new yellow dog when I had thrown up on my first poor stuffed mutt; the mother who put flashcards up on all of our household furnishings when it was time for me learn to read; the mother who...but I've run out. I'm sure more positive memories will come, though perhaps not as easily as the bitter, angry ones.

I stood in that store and listened to my sister-in-law for a moment, stunned. Then Josh looked at me, seemed to understand that I was upset, and beamed the gentlest, sweetest smile. My thought in that slow-motion moment was a simple one: please let me be a better mother than she was. Please let me be the kind of mother I wish she had been.

Did I mention that the sky is blue?

Today is one of those days that just begs to be shared with nice people and your favorite beer. It's Friday, the weather is mild and pleasant, the canna lillies are in bloom (bright orange! Bright red!), Olivia hugged her brother without prompting and I managed to hold my own in the fast lane of our local pool for four whole laps. (To be fair, the fast lane of our local pool is not precisely fast. It would, I am fairly certain, be the medium lane in any pool that was not primarily frequented by the brown-and-leathery over-sixty set. But still! I am not all that far from AARP membership myself, so I feel rather chuffed.)

I'm starting to get a few daily whiffs of energy and optimism. I'm guessing that it might have to do with the fact that Josh started sleeping through the night right after he mastered walking last month. I have also decided to stop blaming myself for his first 10.5 months of bad sleep--something I had regularly beat myself up over, lo these last six or seven months. Seems to me that Josh and Olivia were both just naturally opposed to sleep till they hit that same age, and that there wasn't a good goddamned thing I could have done about it. Funny how getting a little sleep allows me to stop blaming myself for the kids not getting any sleep. Sleeplessness is a cruel dictator.

Speaking of cruel dictators, time is just such another, especially when it comes to the sour wrinkles and age spots on my rapidly deteriorating skin. I'm guessing the sun and chlorine are not exactly helping me turn back the clock, but I have a small dilemma: every form of waterproof sun block I've tried causes me to break out in full-on fourteen-year-old-boy zits. I've tried all the hypoallergenic, non-comedogenic, oil-free options I can find in Target, but still the zits. If any Wise Internet has a recommendation, please take pity on me and my deepening brow furrows.