some bloggers respond

deadbabymama and justinian (see below) have laid it all out for you - enjoy their labors. david needs to get with it.

MB, here are your interview questions. now get cracking!

1. how did you decide to name your daughers gracie and audrey? what do those names mean to you? at what point did you start calling each of your daughters by name?
2. what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like vegas? did you grow up there? why do you choose to live there now?
3. you seem to work from home, maybe in sales - not sure. so what exactly are you up to?
4. how's the paranoia going? be honest - how many HPTs are currently stashed in your closet? how is your anxiety now compared to when you first started your blog? if it's different, what has changed?
5. pardon the gloom, but let's talk about your beloved cemeteries. you should have all kinds of thoughts on what makes a good or not-so-good tombstone. so tell me, what will be on your tombstone? and what factors should the rest of us consider for our own epitaphs?

Justin's Interview

Here we go, Lauras question in italics and my answers in bold. I had fun doing this, and look forward to reading everyone else's contribution.

you came up with the name of our blog, and I was so freaking jealous because I couldnt think of anything nearly as good for my blog so I begged you to share yours with me and because you are generous you agreed. Soo,Id like to know - do you think of Johanneses as a ghost, If so, please elaborate on that, please explain how you think of him in the here and now.

When I first started functioning outside of our 'bubble', after Johannes died, I found that every conversation was preoccupied with him. No, his named was never mentioned, and he was rarely even discussed, however, it was always seemingly on the mind of whomever I was speaking with. Regular conversation became stifled, as folks tried to grasp for conversation not baby related. It was as if an unspeakable being was following me around, everyone could sense him, but he couldn't be seen, sort of like a ghost.

I found the name 'Johannes Ghost' to be most appropriate. We were visibly grieving for something that we could see, but others could not. Not a physical son, but a collection of all of our hopes and dreams for him.


i originally suggested johannes as the name for our future son as kind of a desperate stab at finding a mutually-acceptable j-name to honor your family tradition and was surprised when you latched on to it, although not without trying to get me to consider jaromir, to which i can only say, wtf? when we started talking about possible names for our next child, you brought up isabella, which i found was the 11th most popular girls name (its moved up to 8th since then), and when i showed you that evidence, you recoiled in horror. so what is it with you and unique names?

Jaromir: spring peace. Isnt that quite a beautiful name? I am still not sure why you were so opposed to that. As for Johannes, its a beautiful name, unique to our time and place, while familiarly meaningful (we both have Johannes in our family tree) and most importantly, it afforded me an opportunity to fulfil a tradition that my father had passed on to me.

After we had settled on Johannes, Hans for short, it was only natural that Id choose Christian, in honor of a poet whos work Ive long cherished: Hans Christian Anderson. "Just living is not enough... One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower" HCA

A couple of years after I was born, Justin became a fairly popular name. I myself, thankfully, was never a 'shared Justin' in the classroom or on the ice rink, but I certainly would not want my child to share a common name with a handful of other children. I want to do my best to ensure that our children are unique, and that there is a unique story behind their moniker that, hopefully, someday, they can share with their friends and loved ones.


which of your friendships has most diminished in the aftermath of hans death? what friendship has grown the most? any surprises there?

I suppose that its been a few years in making, but I really do feel as far away from Jim as any two friends can be. Johannes death came just after Jens (Jims wife) mothers death, and they werent really around for any of the pregnancy or loss, so they werent in the best place to understand where we were in life and the joy, disappointment and heartbreak of it all.

I dont blame anyone, obviously, and I will forever have the fondest memories of them, but something certainly has changed, and we just dont 'click' as we once might have.

Not surprisingly, my bond with you, Laura, has grown most since Hans death. My connection with you was fairly apparent on our first meeting, but without getting too sentimental, it wasn until after we, together, painstakingly fostered, and then lost, something that meant so much - that I realized that in our reality, I will never be alone. Because of you, and because of Hans, Ive finally seen that my life is not an island, rather, our unique lives have become interconnected.

you miss creating music, so i have to ask you - why arent you making any? huh?

Its something that gets to me. Often. The time and energy with which I once put exclusively into music is no longer a priority in my life. Lifes gotten in the way of living, I suppose.

Someday, Ill get back to it. Really, I will.

as you know, i do not share your appreciation of graffiti. please explain what the deal is.

I understand that this is entirely a matter of personal ethics and aesthetic, but I myself find that the work, when executed with conscientiousness, can be quite beautiful and beneficial. A rare, unedited, commentary, in my opinion, that livens an otherwise abandoned or neglected place with a fresh coat of paint.

The Cleveland RTA Redline is a prime example of the sort of public art space that graffitti can provide and one that should be embraced. This is prime art, for uninterupted miles, seen by thousands of RTA riders on a daily basis. Id wager to say that this the largest public art collection in the Cleveland area. The city would benefit from championing it.

ladies and gentlemen, start your blogs!

here are THE BLOG-BASED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

to deadbabymama
1. let’s talk about your blog work. what exactly were you researching about blogs before you started deadbabyblog? what have you learned from your research?
2 to whom do you talk most about your daughter? what is the history of your relationship with that person? how did you decide that person was safe to talk to?
3. so, easter sucks for you, huh? how did your miscarriage compare to the death of your daughter? how have the two experiences been different for you? any similarities?
4. i think i saw the blue in your bedroom and didn’t think it was horrible, but hey - it’s your bedroom. so what color is it now and why? and how about that kitchen?
5. what exactly does joe strummer mean to you? elaborate. no really.

extra credit (because i have more questions for you, dammit):
1. did you ever get the freaking washing machine delivered?
2. i was frightened by your dream of attending a yard sale of only cookbooks; you’ve had some time to think about it, so what do you think this dream says about you? do you think you have a fear of cooking?
3. what would your ideal yoga background music be? explain.

*****

to justinian
1. you came up with the name of our blog, and i was so freaking jealous because i couldn’t think of anything nearly as good for my blog so i begged you to share yours with me and because you are generous you agreed. so, i’d like to know - do you think of johannes as a ghost? if so, please elaborate. if not, please explain how you think of him in the here and now.
2. i originally suggested johannes as the name for our future son as kind of a desperate stab at finding a mutually-acceptable j-name to honor your family tradition and was surprised when you latched on to it, although not without trying to get me to consider jaromir, to which i can only say, wtf? when we started talking about possible names for our next child, you brought up isabella, which i found was the 11th most popular girl’s name (it’s moved up to 8th since then), and when i showed you that evidence, you recoiled in horror. so what is it with you and unique names?
3. which of your friendships has most diminished in the aftermath of hans’s death? what friendship has grown the most? any surprises there?
4. you miss creating music, so i have to ask you - why aren’t you making any? huh?
5. as you know, i do not share your appreciation of graffiti. please explain what the deal is.

*****

to david
1. you’ve received numerous recognitions for “i hate this” - in your heart of hearts, which one do you secretly find most flattering?
2. which of your birthday compatriots would you rather be: mick jagger or george bernard shaw? do tell.
3. you’ve created/acted in/seen more theater than most of the rest of us. if you were to recommend one show i should see if i ever had the chance (besides yours, which i’d like to see again), what would it be?
4. if we were going to take a cross-country trip tomorrow, what route should we take to see the best of ordinary america? what would the must-stop stops be?
5. you take your music pretty seriously. is there a frustrated musician in there?

roll call

I'm constantly amazed at the feedback and responses that we receive from doing this blog, especially from folks who at the begining of all of this, were absolute strangers to us. Perhaps it's the experiance that many of us seem to have shared that creates such a friendly interaction, but anyhow, I'm really impressed by the folks that have been dropping in, day after day, to 'view' our life, as it is written, and by those who are wishing us well.

I'm curious if non-loss folks are stopping by, and returning, and I wonder how they react to the content of this seemingly (to those who've never experianced miscarriage/still birth/fertility issues) morbid content. Please do feel free to let me know, should you be lurking.

I guess what I am trying to get at, should you be comfortable sharing this sort of information: how did you come about our blog and, have you followed this over any amount of time. I'm just really curious who may be reading this, and what your impressions are.

how self-absorbed am i???

i totally forgot, after writing a novel about myself, to invite you, gentle reader, to be interviewed by me. anyone? anyone? bueller? bueller?

in which i blather on about myself

lorem ipsum, author of life is sweet, baby, memorably answered the challenge to respond to a blog interview designed specifically for her and is now passing on the challenge on to me, so here you may now find everything you ever (or never) wanted to know about johannes's mom (with apologies to johannes's dad, who will get dragged into this venture by virtue of being part of the story):

1) You and your husband met five years ago. How?
i used to unwind after long, life-draining days of work by hanging out in chat rooms. if you've never been a chatter, you should know that while there are many lovely people chatting, there are also a disproportionately large number of men who would be delighted to send you pictures of their penis, if only you would agree. so one must be judicious regarding with whom one chats - unless you're a person collecting phallic images, in which case you're on your own.

on a rainy, saturday afternoon, i stumbled into a room where the topic was whether a chatter should move to orlando or not (it was a slow day). one of the five or six people in the room used a spanish, feminine nickname, but in the course of the conversation, it became clear the nickname belonged to someone not at all feminine. i started a side conversation with that person in which i made fun of him for the girly name.

and that's technically how justinian and i met. he'll have to tell you why he used a girly name.

instant messaging led to him asking for my number, which led to me asking him for all of his personal information so i could run a background check on him first (romantic, isn't it?), which established that he had never filed for bankruptcy or been convicted of a felony, in case you're wondering.

phone conversations and enormous phone bills ensued. then i went out with an old flame, and mid-date i started to cry and made him take me home. i called justin and told him being out with someone else made me feel unfaithful, which was weirding me out. we agreed we had better meet in person.

we decided to meet in neutral territory, which turned out to be atlanta. when i got off the plane, i saw him, waiting for me directly across from the gate. my thoughts, in order, were:
1. there he is!
2. he could use a haircut...
3. there's my boss!

no, i did not lay eyes on justinian and immediately decide to make him my lord and master. my actual boss from work was sitting with two of my co-workers in the bar directly across from the gate, bizarrely situated immediately over justinian's left shoulder. i said, "hi!" and then "just a minute!" to a confused justinian while i greeted my associates and chatted about what had been going on back in the office that morning before i left on vacation, then grabbed justin's arm and propelled him down the terminal before they could ask me who that was.

and the rest is history.

2) What was your biggest adventure as a single woman?
i wish i had been more adventurous as a single woman. instead, i was career-oriented to a fault in a field for which i had no passion (commercial finance. woo-hoo. feel the excitement). i had no personal life because of it (which is why i was looking for a conversation in a chat room when i ran into justinian, so it worked out okay. but still.).

a few months after justinian and i met, i quit my job and spent a year living off my 401k and trekking all over europe and going to language school in nicaragua and picking coconuts in san blas (justin has reminded me you could read about that one here) and getting the therapy i needed. my mother in particular was horrified, and no one supported me - except justinian, so yea for him. at the end of that year, i started looking for work in cleveland and shortly thereafter moved to cleveland to be with justinian. and that was my big pre-marriage adventure.

making a life with justinian continues to be an adventure, though.

3) What concert do you wish you could have been at and/or which one you've seen is in your mind legendary?
i've never been to concert that i felt was legendary, and in my experience "legendary" concerts tend to be large events, and large events are too impersonal - if i squint very, very hard i can maybe make out the drummer waving his sticks around. not that fun.

i do love small, intimate shows. we saw the futureheads in march and again a couple of weeks ago, and both shows were the stuff of which legends should be made - high energy and personal meaning. the couple of times i've seen michael wolff and impure thoughts live were also phenomenal - he makes music like the sound of rain coming and going on a tin roof.

4) If you had to eat at only one restaurant the rest of your life (and it would be guaranteed to stay open, of course), which one would it be?
this one is easy. san francisco's millennium. hands down. no question. i've rambled on about it already.

5) You were an evangelical as a child. What happened?
this one is complicated. my father was (and still is) a minister. he did some really inappropriate things when i was growing up and was unfaithful to my mom. he's human, and if there's a place that should take in sinners, lord knows it's the church. but i don't think there's a place for me in a denomination that looks to him as a leader.

also, i know i've changed and grown and evolved and devolved, but i really think the church in which i grew up was pretty progressive when i was a child but some time in the late 80s started to take a turn to the right. that denomination's official positions on social issues are actually more conservative now than they were 30 years ago. i don't have the energy for that kind of nonsense.

justin and i have flirted with being quakers. there's room for both of us and our respective beliefs there, their social positions (and actions) are just fantastic), and their service style has worked really well for us, both at our wedding and at hans's memorial service. but i don't feel a sense of community at the nearest quaker meeting, and i need community in my church experience, so i'm still working on it. i hate to think of raising a child without a community of faith, whatever my belief or doubt, because there's no question that the community in which i grew up nurtured me in ways no secular community did. but i'm not going to subject my child to right-wing, politicized fundamentalism.

i'm worn out. and if you're still reading, you must be pooped, too. go to bed already.

a critic explains the penguin thing better than me

read salon's article about "march of the penguins" here.

i need a drink

this afternoon i can't stop reliving the moment when i knew hans was dead. if i could just go with it and cry about it, i think eventually i would feel better, but i can't just let the faucets flow at work, and so the horror just hovers over and all around me. i want it to stop.

i also reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally want to get out of town, and took off this friday to have an extra long weekend with justin, who does not want to go anywhere. i'm very frustrated.

why penguins make me cry

1. we went to a screening of the doc "march of the penguins" today, and it brought back memories of our trip to south america last year, which included seeing two species of penguins and was an awesome experience.

2. the theater was full of children and not of older, academic, national geographic-subscribing couples, like i thought it would be, which made me think of hans and how he deserved to get to see the film, too - nevermind that three-fourths of the children there were not prepared to sit through a full-length film.

3. the film showed the tenderness of the penguin couples quite beautifully - they are monogamous, at least for the season.

4. when an egg or a chick is lost, the penguin parent in custody (they pass custody back and forth so that everyone gets to eat) looks lost and wails horribly and leaves the tribe until the next year. i can so relate.

5. the father holds the egg on his feet all winter, shielding it from the cold with his flabby stomach. when the chick hatches and the mother returns with food for the chick, before he leaves for his turn to eat, he and his chick sing to each other so they know each other's voices and can find each other again when the father returns. how could i not cry at that???

I watched two soldiers come home from war today

I watched two soldiers come home from war today. The first one, only his girlfriend awaiting arrival, dropped his bags as soon as he deplaned. A long embrace. He looked happy to be home, happy to be with the love of his life.

The other soldier had a heros welcome, some 200 people awaiting his arrival; family, friends, local celebrity and politicians. A crowd formed around the aircraft as it taxied in, fire and police cars, special measures, had been taken to ensure that the two bus loads of people, all there to greet the young hero, could welcome him home, without a hitch.

Standing tall, a couple of marines escorted this young mans coffin from aircraft to hearse.

in which i am forced to make up for not thinking about hans the day before

amazingly, i think i've entered the hospital as many times since hans died as i did before he died. between all kinds of freak checkups and tests and the support group and seeing david's play and now picking up hans's pictures, i'm quite the regular. maybe that's why the parking attendant didn't charge me last night. or maybe because i was in and out in ten minutes. either way. besides, who could get in and out so quickly as someone who's there all the freaking time?????

the pictures the chaplain had for me were the proofs of the ones the nurse took. god help me, they were kind of horrific. i have to keep reminding myself that his decomposing wasn't hurting him - he was already gone. but still, they were hard. and yet still beautiful. he was the kind of baby you couldn't have helped but snuggle close to you.

there were seven more poses (ooo, what an awful word in this kind of case), including a couple of shots in profile. in one of them he was arranged so that he looked like he was snuggling down for a nap.

so they're not really for public viewing, but they're one more thing we have now of him. i'm so grateful.

from the hospital i flew over to bela dubby's to see kath before she left town for a work-related conference, and she had charlie with her. he is finally starting to really respond to me, to which i say - it's about time! you've been making me look bad for months! when charlie was born, i was one of two people (the other being his nurse) who could quiet him, but after he hit three months, he wanted nothing to do with me. now he's come around and even started to flirt with me. lovely little man.

after i said goodbye to them, i got back in the car and looked at hans's pictures again and was overwhelmed with the strength, the sheer force of will with which he must have fought to live. the thought made me cry, hard. poor little guy. i wish i could have comforted him. i hope my voice and maybe the changing light patterns he saw when i rubbed my tummy made him feel a little better. i hate to think of him in such anguish.

discombobulation

i realized this morning that i really didn't think about hans at all yesterday, other than as a reference to marking time (as in, "after i delivered hans..."). one part of me feels excited and fresh - it's a sign i'm getting on with my life! another part of me thinks, "what is wrong with me? how horrible a mother am i??? i must be a monster!" yet another part is sad that at least the most intensive period of mourning is over for me; it's the same part that would like to wallow in hansedness, hansocity, hansismo.

i'm proud of how far i've come, how much i've changed, how deeply i've grieved, how hard i've pushed through it. but have i pushed too hard? i don't know.

*****

the hospital chaplain has some pictures of hans. we already got one that the nurse took and sent off to some company to be developed. apparently, for reasons to which i am not privy, some time later the company sends back to the hospital the rest of the roll. i don't know if it's other shots of hans or negatives or what, but i'm going to pick them up in a few minutes. i'm hoping that maybe there's a nicer picture of him, but then again, if there was, i would think that they would have developed and sent back that one originally. we took many really good pictures - except that we forgot to turn the flash on, so our pictures are all grainy. the portrait we got from the hospital, with good lighting, was taken after he was cleaned up, when his wounds were more obvious. as beautiful as he was, it's not a very pretty picture. but my god, he was so beautiful. he looked incredibly like justin, and maybe just a little like me around the eyes. such long fingers and feet; where in the world did he get those features from? i wish i could have a peek at what he would have looked like now, after four months, had he lived. i will always want to know.

i almost forgot

in my giddiness over posting for a new job, i forgot my even better news - that my tests came back normal! i have the official medical stamp of "healthy" on my forehead again. woohoo!

as soon as i got off the phone with my primary physician's nurse, i called my OB's secretary to schedule a consultation with him. when i asked if we could meet in his office or a conference room, she put me off, so now i've got to figure out how to get around her to get directly to my OB, who i know will understand.

an exam room is a terrible place to have a heart-to-heart conversation. the doctor is crammed into a corner between the exam table and the computer desk. one chair is crammed too close to the computer desk and the other chair is across the room, out of necessity because the room is so cramped. plus, who wants to go back to the place where we formed the action plan for extracting my son's body from mine and where we read the autopsy for the first time? not me. when i'm pregnant again, and have some new hope, i will go back to the exam room. i might even let myself be dragged back into the god-forsaken ultrasound room. but not yet.

i finally did it

i applied for a new job today. and let me be honest: i should have done it 2 1/2 years ago. why i didn't before now is complicated. i've had this job for three years this month. after seven months, a position came open in another department in my division that exactly matched my skills and experience. i applied for it, but wasn't taken seriously as a candidate; the hiring vp did not even schedule an interview with me but instead stopped by to see me while he was in my building and said something like, "i saw you applied; let's chat." he had not even looked at my resume; i had to grab a copy and he read it while i sat there. then he asked me some general questions and basically blew sunshine up my butt and thanked me for applying. that was it - i didn't even get a call back from the recruiter, who was ecstatic when i applied. that should have been a sign to me to move on, but i was in the process of throwing a wedding (plus a series of receptions) and it didn't seem like the right time.

a few months later, another position came open that really was beneath my qualifications but it would add another facet to my experience, so i applied and soared through the interviews - or so i thought. i heard publicly that someone else got the job, so i started asking questions and was finally told that the interviewing panel was intimidated by me and that if i really wanted the job, i should go back to each interviewer and grovel, and maybe in the future, as a woman, i should consider "toning it down" and playing dumb - and i was told this by a FEMALE vice-president in her mid 50s. i was so appalled that i was finally ready to leave - and then i got pregnant with hans. to leave would mean going through pregnancy and delivery without insurance (since pregnancy can be considered a pre-existing condition - un-freaking-believable!), so i stayed.

after hans died, a number of people and books advised me not to make any big changes for 18-24 months, and that was okay with me, because i didn't feel motivated to make any changes. there were no guarantees that any other job would be less miserable than the one i have, so why risk it?

this morning, i finally started yoga, and i've felt so great all day - looser, stronger - and that's after only one session!!! this evening, i was looking at my company's job postings for something for one of justin's relatives, when i saw it. the job. two miles from home (versus nearly 30 that i drive now). for a completely different division of the company. and i felt so good that i tweaked my resume and wrote a new cover letter and posted for it.

who knows - maybe the recruiter will call tomorrow, or maybe i'll hear nothing. maybe when the recruiter contacts my boss (who's been dangling a promotion over my head for months), he will be inspired to fight for me, and a bidding war will ensue. or maybe not. but i've finally broken out of my inertia, and boy, does it feel good.

cross your fingers for me.

airline complaint letter

This is just silly. I've lot's of serious things to write about, but at the moment I only have the capacity for the completely inane ...

Part of my job is dealing with airline complaint letters, most are general petty complaints, some are serious, while others are just freakin' hysterical. A collegue of mine recieved this letter some months ago, it was hand written and had detailed stick figure drawings that accompanied the letter. Here goes:

I am disgusted as I write this note to you about the miserable experience I am having sitting in seat 29e on one of your aircrafts. As you may know, this seat is situated directly across from the lavatory, so close that I can reach out my left arm and touch the door.

All my senses are being tortured simultaneously. It’s difficult to say what the worst part about sitting in 29e really is? Is it the stench of the sanitation fluid that is blown all over my body every 60 seconds when the door opens? Is it the wooosh of the constant flushing? Or is it the passengers asses that seem to fit into my personal space like a pornographic jig-saw puzzle?

I constructed a stink-shield by shoving one end of a blanket into the overhead compartment – while effective in blocking at least some of the smell, and offering a small bit of privacy, the ass-on-my-body factor has increased, as without my evil glare, passengers feel free to lean up against what they think is some kind of blanketed wall. The next ass that touches my shoulder will be the last!

I am picturing a boardroom full of executives giving props to the young promising engineer that figured out how to squeeze an additional row of seats onto the plane by pulling them next to the lav.
(picture of stinky bathroom producing stench)

I would like to flush his head in the toilet that I am close enough to touch (and taste) from my seat.

Putting a seat here was a very bad idea. I just heard a man groan in there! This sucks!

(picture of mans butt in mans face)

Worse yet is I’ve paid over $400 for the honor of sitting in this seat!
Does your company give refunds? I’d like to go back where I came from and start over. Seat 29e could only be worse if it was located inside the bathroom.

I wonder if my clothing will retain the sanitizing odor … what about my hair! I feel like I’m bathing in a toilet bowl of blue liquid and there is no man in a little boat to save me. I am filled with a deep hatred of your plane designer and a general dis-ease that may last for hours.

We are finally decending and soon I will be able to tear down the stink shield, but the scars will remain.

I suggest that you initiate immediate removal of this seat from all of your crafts. Just remove it, and leave the smoldering brown hole empty, a place for study, non absorbing luggage maybe? But not human cargo.

the day after

so this weekend was supposed to be all about cleaning house. ha. we managed to evade our responsibilities, as always. hey - we did do a little yard work, and justin did a couple loads of laundry, and i did at least get started picking up around here. we just had other things to do - like looking at hans's pictures, and going to dinner with jim's friends visiting from france, and having father's day brunch at johnny mango's. the house will be here all week - we'll get caught up. one of these days.

the process of reviewing the chain of events leading up to hans's death for my post yesterday left me raw. after i dropped justin at work in the afternoon, i just spontaneously erupted. by the time i got to home depot my solid-colored shirt was all spotty with tears. oh, well - i'm sure they're used to all kinds of people arriving at the store dirty from the projects they were doing before they ran out of something crucial and had to run to the store to get that missing piece. but after i ran my errands, i just needed some down time, so i finally got to settle in with "sunday jews", which has much artificial dialogue but a story so mesmerizing i can't give it up.

we survived father's day, and the obligatory call from the busybody aunt, who was kind enough to call to wish justin a happy father's day, but honestly, on an already difficult day, no one should have to put up with that, so i lied and said he was still asleep when she called. toni and david and zelda and orson stopped by to leave a card and book for justin, which was so, so kind - although the book (by david's own admission) involves a spaceship full of priests, so i don't know. justin can answer for himself how the day worked out for him, but i was surprised that it was more difficult for me than mother's day. i'm not sure why. one of those things i've got to work out and get to back to you on.

i do not want to go to work today, which is, i suppose, why i'm blogging now when i should be in the shower. i really need to get out of town. the itch is growing. if it doesn't get scratched soon, i may scratch someone. we don't have any significant foreign travel planned until december. i don't know if i'll make it that long.

happy father's day, justin

the first morning in our house, when you went downstairs to make breakfast and (unbeknownst to you) i took the pg test that was positive and started screaming, you came running back up the stairs, two at a time to see what was attacking me. i was screaming and shaking and rocking back and forth on the toilet, too shocked to think to get up off the thing, and you leaned over me and wrapped your arms around me and rocked with me and let out a few oh-my-gods and i felt your tears against my cheek and it was so surreal and happy - we were going to be parents together.

later that day, i started to bleed, and within a few days we were on the merry-go-round of monitoring that would be our life for the next eight months. you sat with me in the waiting room of the doctor's office and the ultrasound clinic so many times, fidgeting, wondering: was everything okay? what would our child be like? and maybe other things you kept to yourself.

you were at every appointment except one (when you had to go to newark for work, and you tried to cancel that trip before i talked you out of it), asking more questions than even i did, looking out for me to make sure no one touched me with latex, composing songs in your head to the beat of hans's heart.

at the ultrasound where the tech pointed out his little penis, i thought you were going to jump up and down right there. you cried as you called him johannes for the first time...and i cried a little that i couldn't call him greta any more. i started talking about my hope that maybe he would be a boy who likes girls' clothes, and you were so kind and tolerant of my ravings.

the night before the presidential election, as soon as we got out of birthing class, we ran over to the kerry rally and listened to bruce springsteen and got so tired of trying to see (we were so far back) that we just sat down on the concrete steps, facing the other direction, and huddled in the blankets we had in the car from our class and listened to kerry speak and talked about the hope we felt, for our country and for hans.

for christmas, when we were just at seven months, you (the not-so-into-material-gifts guy) got books for hans (including the spanish version of "bedtime for frances" that we tried to interpret christmas eve) and the thai alphabet chart, with its goofy picture of a queen for the letter Q, and it made me cry.

you painted hans's room (four times!) and re-did the ceiling and hung the butterfly kites from the ceiling for him to watch. there was much cursing, but i suspect it was because it was so important to you. and the day the painting was done and we put together the shelves with the bins and moved everything into the room, we held on to each other and cried a little and the feeling of anticipation kept zinging back and forth between us like an electric current.

even though you didn't want to go, you went to the shower and opened gifts for hans and said thank you to people and drank quite a bit of beer. i know you did it for him.

while i slept you had chats with him, told him things i will never know, but i'm sure he loved the sound of your voice talking to him. he was probably thrilled to have the company while he was awake.

when hans came out, you held him and kissed him and loved him and showed him off to your family, and when he began to grow cold and his skin was getting dark and pulled you didn't want to let him go. i was tired and wanted to remember him the way he looked when he first came out, like any other baby, and pushed you to let him go, and i'm sorry for that.

at the memorial service, when you talked about looking forward to having a sidekick and then realizing you would have been his sidekick, it made me so sad that hans would never get to know his father. he missed out on so much by not growing up to know you.

hans had the best father he could have had. he was lucky that way. and i'm lucky to be with you and to have you as the father of all my children. i can't wait for you to be a father to hans's brother or sister. i know this day is weird for you, but i hope you can come to be comfortable with it. it's your day. you deserve it.

mwah.

the need to know

shoot. my dr's nurse left me a voice mail this afternoon that i missed. now i have to wait until monday to get my test results. it can't be bad, though - she made a point at the end of the message of telling me it was not an emergency. but i still want to hear that the results are good. it's making me antsy. we took a long - well, not too long but definitely arduous, involving many hills - bike ride tonight, which helped, but i'm still wound up. maybe i can channel my antsiness into attacking the morning glory which wants to take over all my rose bushes tomorrow. but that plan doesn't do me any good tonight, when i just can't sleep.

four months

i delivered hans four months ago today. as sad as it was, it was still the sweetest day of my life. i'm lucky to have been his mother.

*****

i am greatly saddened by the response of terry schiavo's parents to her autopsy results this week. their daughter has been essentially dead for years and years and years, yet they still can't accept it. i read a quote recently from her mother, directed at michael shiavo, in which she pleaded with him to give her daughter back. i do understand that feeling. for a while after hans died, when i would be in the car by myself, i would open the sun roof and just scream for someone (god? the universe? i don't know.) to give him back.

this whole sad situation continues to be a reminder to me to keep moving through it, to not let myself get stuck in one spot.

*****

other than working on a panic-reduction method or two, my appointment with the therapist last night turned into kind of a wrap-up, a greatest-hits-survey kind of visit. we talked about how much i've grown in the last year; i would prefer that my son be healthy and alive, but i'm grateful for what his gestation and death have taught me and continue to teach me.

one of those lessons has been about letting go of what i can't control. i think that lesson is helping me move toward trying to have another child. i know it sounds crazy - all the literature says i should be absolutely freaking out - but i feel pretty calm about it. i'm doing all i can do to contribute to a healthy pregnancy. i've really already experienced the worst, haven't i? and i haven't just experienced it - i'm surviving it. and i just don't have the will to hold on to the anxiety. if anything, it's possible a second pregnancy could actually be less anxious than the first (which was far, far more anxiety-ridden than i would have liked).

i'm not deluded. i know there will be anxiety. but i feel hopeful, and capable, too. i think it's going to be okay. and if it's not, i can survive it.

crossing my fingers

i peed in the cup and let them stick me three times to try to get enough blood and then i let my doctor feel me up and now i just have to wait a few days. sigh. i'm not very good at waiting.

my doctor and i had a good long talk about hans's death, and then she broke the news that she is getting married and moving to los angeles. i adore her and am severely distressed; i'm just going to have to stay completely healthy; no one will able to take her place.

she asked me a bunch of questions about hans and about how i was handling his death, and we talked a little about the autopsy, which she had taken the time to pull up and read, and then she told me three things:
1. don't feel guilty about hans's death - it's not my fault.
2. my second child deserves as much anticipation as my first.
3. don't unfairly compare my second child to my first.

happily, i've already dealt with these issues, but at least it was another affirmation that i'm headed in the right direction.

*****

i'm feeling pretty emotional about nathan's death tonight. i wish i had kept in touch with him. i loved that when i taught him in sunday school he was still just young enough to be enthusiastic about learning and to want to impress me. one of the local tv stations in jacksonville did a little story about him, and they have some pics on their website, too. i've got to write a note to his parents.

writing a sympathy note is not something i used to do, but now i understand how much it means.

here we go

one of my co-workers came by to see me and started by saying, "you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but...," and i flinched a little. then she told me her next door neighbor's daughter was stillborn last saturday and she didn't know what to say to her. whew. big exhale. i could handle that one.

i encouraged her to just express how she felt (sorry, sad, etc) and to avoid cliches like, she's in a better place, or, i know it happened for a reason, or, you're young - you can try again; the former was really meaningful to me and the latter pissed me off. my co-worker talked to her neighbor once since it happened, but then the next time she saw her she avoided her because she didn't want to upset her. i told her what meant most to me was when people didn't try to dance around the subject and just talked to me or asked me about hans.

i gave her my home number to give to her neighbor; justin and i have agreed that we want to be open to other parents like us who could use support, so it just seemed like the right thing to do. the thing that helped me the most in the first couple of weeks after we lost hans was talking to david, even if the first time he called was awkward for me; i mean, here is this strange floating voice coming out of my phone asking me how i'm dealing with hans's death - wtf? everything was so surreal at that point. but talking with david was the beginning of hope for me, that i would live to tell about it. i hope i can offer one ounce of that kind of hope to someone else.

because we've been so open about hans's death with everyone, and we continue to talk about him, i wonder if we will be a magnet for people who want to talk about the death of other babies. i don't know. we'll see.

reason #1704 why the iraq war is wrong

his name is nathan. in a different time, i taught his junior high sunday school class. if he was late, i knew to look for him in the church's sound booth. he had white-blonde hair in that skater bowl cut and was the shortest kid in the class. he once freaked me out by jumping off the second floor balcony of my townhouse just because he could. i haven't been in touch with him in years, but i heard when he graduated from high school two years ago, he went into the military.

nathan was killed in iraq yesterday.

his name is not showing yet on the casualty lists. i'm assuming he's one of the "name not released yet" casualties from the 13th, which would make him the 1704th american soldier to die in iraq, give or take one.

what a waste.

*****

i'm cautiously optimistic about my doctor's appointment tomorrow. i'll pee in a cup again and try to refute my dr's charlatan partner's false allegations that i'm malnourished. this test is one of the hurdles i have to clear before we try to make another baby. wish me luck.

SBC is satan

This is a conversation that took place between Wayne of SBC and myself, provided as an absurd aside to blow off a bit of steam and to demonstrate that I still get pissed about non dead-boy related things.

Atleast with Wayne and SBC, it's good to know that I am just some anyday, everyday schmuck who can be arbitrarily disregarded. Which provides me with some amusement.

By the point that I'd met Wayne, I'd allready been transfered three times, the last transfer resulting in a voicemail box. I'm trusting that this voicemail box is comparable to the 'beaver damn tube' at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant "where the tube knows what to do with everything."

J: "Hello Wayne, pardon me for being pushy, but I've allready been transfered three times. The last call resulted in me being transfered to a managers voice mail. I'd expected to actually speak to this person, but I left a message. I'm sure he'll call me back ASAP"

W: "ofcourse you got voicemail, there is a VP in town to day, so all the managers are in manager meetings all day ..."

J: "well, duh, how could I have forgot about the manager meetings, your company is so important to my everyday life - now, can you fax me my bill?"

W: "Uh, no - that's a gross violation of your privacy. How do I know that you really are Justin?"

J: "I don't know, but say, if I want to pay my bill, can you accept my credit card for payment over the phone?"

W: "absolutely"

J: "ohhhh, so I guess that you're willing to accept my credit card, and presume that it is actually me paying the bill"

W: "ohhhhhm yeah, I guess so"

J: "Well, I don't follow the logic of that, but OK"

W: "well, you're paying a bill, we'll accept that without question. Who would want to pay someone elses bill?"

J: "Who in the world would want to LOOK at my bill? Ok, so what I'm getting out of this - when it benefits you, no problem - when it benefits me, to heck with you"

W: "Yeah, I'm sorry about your inconvieniance, can I offer you high speed DSL internet service?"

J: "Do you even pay attention to what I am saying, and ask questions accordingly?"

W: "I wouldn't ask these questions if I didn't have to"

J: "I'm sure that you wouldn't - NOW - can I speak to someone who has some authority, any authority? I understand that you have none."

W: "Yes, I'd be happy to, but they are all in the managers meeting with the visiting VP, remember? I'll gladly put your file on his desk, and he'll call you ASAP, probably after 430pm"

J: "Thanks, please do that"

W: "Ok, I will. May I ask you if you've been happy with your SBC service thus far today?"

J: laughing "No, I haven't been happy. Do you even pay attention to these calls?"

W: seriously "Yes, and I assure you that I wouldn't ask these questions if I didn't have to."

J: "Believe me, I believe you - now - shall I expect a call from your manager today. I don't really trust that he'll call, but I do expect him to do so."

W: "Yes, both he and I will call you back today. Incase you have any questions for me."

J: "I really do look forward to that, Wayne, much more than you can imagine!"

W: "Ok, thank you for calling SBC, you may receive a call in the next 48hours asking you to rate your customer experiance today with SBC."

J: "That's rich! I look forward to that, more than you can imagine! Say, do you pay attention to the content of these calls?"

W: "Yes, and I assure you that I wouldn't ask these questions if I didn't have to."

J: "Thank for the laughs Wayne"

W: "have a good day, thank you for calling SBC"

J: snicker

the verdict

so michael jackson was found not guilty. i hope with all my heart that he really is innocent, if disturbed; it would be a terrible travesty for him to go free if he really did molest a child. now i hope he will go live quietly somewhere in france. fat chance, i know, but still - i can dream, can't i?

*****

i didn't go to the family barbecue yesterday. i guess i didn't have any talking left to do. on the way to my mother-in-law's, justin and i fought, and it exhausted me, so after i dropped justin at work, i went back home and worked in my yard and planted a new rosebush that has the same old-fashioned and unusual name as my mother.

it's just as well. justin's cousin and his wife are expecting their first child. he or she is due the same week as hans, just a year later. my mother-in-law told me last night that she felt like she was being "handled" all day but didn't know why. as everyone was leaving, one of her sisters (the grandmother of the impending new life) pulled her aside and said she needed to talk to her, and then started to cry. i guess everyone else knew but didn't want to upset my mother-in-law, who was pissed that she was excluded. so i'm glad i didn't go; i can only imagine how tense my presence would have made everyone, under the present circumstances. i love justin's family and how they have made me feel like i belong, but sometimes they are just stupid. of course, they treat each other stupidly, too, so this bit of stupidity just makes me feel like i am truly one of them. nice.

i'm glad for the prospective parents and wish for them a blissfully easy pregnancy and a long, happy parenthood. i just hope we're not excluded from news of developments or ultrasound pics or showers. that would just be even more stupid.

William Scott

A co-workers 9 month old son, William Scott, died yesterday. He had Spinal Muscular Atrophy <http://www.fsma.org/booklet.shtml>.

When she was pregnant with Will, she and I often compared pregnancy notes, as Laura was only a few months behind. He was diagnosed around the same time as Johannes death, so we've both been away from work for some time, and when we both were at work, we've been occupied in our own issues, so haven't really had a chance to talk.

Folks have been really weird about talking about Will death, around me, at work. I suspect that they are afraid that it will open my own wounds. Anyhow, there's an office collection going around, and everyone is signing a card.

I think it'll be better if I send my own card.

dead baby daddy blogs?

Dead baby dad's don't really talk much. I've yet to find a book exclusively dedicated to dead baby daddies, and the few web related things I've found have been dad's that are writing on behalf of their partners: how can I understand, or help, my dead baby momma?

This is all fine and good, infact, it's all very noble, but how are you? What's troubling you? Why haven't you been compelled to express your own feelings? If for no other reason, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

I can't be the only dead baby daddy that's been a wreck. I can't be the only one who's compelled to tell my story.

Let me know if you've got anything out there.

PS. For anyone who's peeking in, the David Hansen Play I Hate This is pure genious. Really the only compelling still born father story that I've come across.It really captured many aspects of my own experiance. Plus, David's just a gem of a man.

talk therapy

i'm about talked out.

i talked with justin's grandma last night over skyline four-way and later over hot chocolate. i talked to justin this morning in bed. i talked to dyan over accountants (two parts tea:one part cranberry juice, over ice) at talkies, while greg and justin discussed guitar chords. i talked to kath while we played with charlie at bela dubby's this afternoon. justin and i stood on the sidewalk for an hour when we got home, talking to our neighbor ron, who was sitting on his steps to cool off. i'm riding with my mother-in-law and her husband to justin's aunt's house an hour south of here tomorrow for a barbecue while justin is at work, and i'm sure it will include much talking.

who needs a therapist?

one thing i've realized his weekend is that i feel pretty good. i think i'm over a hump, if not the hump. to continue the caravan of cliches, i've turned a corner this week. i'm just not as overwhelmingly, paralizingly sad any more. it's not that i don't miss hans or want him back. he will always be with me. but i'm moving forward and i'm living. and i'm ready to start trying to have another child. i feel as emotionally ready, as prepared for the anxiety of a subsequent pregnancy as i can possibly be.

part of that readiness is hans's gift to me. my pregnancy was such a roller coaster that it became an exercise in letting go. i thought as i rode the turbulent waves of those nine months that all those things that were happening were an opportunity to practice letting go of the things i couldn't control so i could be a better parent to hans and allow him to become an increasingly independent person as he grew.

i just didn't realize i'd have to let go of him so soon.

but because i had already had to consider his death several times during the pregnancy, i was better prepared for his stillbirth - horrible though it still was, and is. but the whole letting go exercise was also good practice for a subsequent pregnancy and the stress it will bring. i know it will be tough. but hans taught me how to ride it out.

another gift from hans is the affirmation of my gut instincts. from the moment that we found out hans was gone, i've been operating on instinct to grieve the way that i've grieved and to honor him the way that i've done it, and the fact that i feel pretty decent and am starting to feel at peace with and accepting of his death tells me that my instincts have directed me well. as a result, i feel a new confidence in my own voice. when hans died, i felt like an adult for the first time ever; being able to trust myself actually makes me an adult. i think. i'm still working that one out.

happy and gay

there was a lovely blurb in the new yorker last week about golden bowl, the company that makes 40% of all the fortune cookies in the world, and the guy in charge of updating the fortunes originally written in the early part of the last century, such as "find someone as gay as you are." i think it still holds up as good advice, don't you?

*****

i'm pretty happy tonight, if not exactly gay. the work week is over. i ate wonderfully crappy party food all day at work today. and justin and i are headed out to take his grandma for skyline chili and to see the movie madagascar. i've got some stuff brewing i need to write about this weekend where hans's death is concerned, but i'll have to get back to you on that. right now i'm just going to go concentrate on justin. have a good weekend.

the world's shortest review

excellent show. futureheads rocked. hard. so tired now. reek of smoke. must get up in a couple of hours. pictures here. good night.

p.s. where were you, david???

my ghost pregnancy

i read all of the literature about women still feeling their babies kick after stillbirth, but i never felt that stuff. and then suddenly this week, i have weird stuff going on like i'm 13 weeks pregnant.

weird spasms in places low and high and inbetween, unbearable tiredness, and much urination are driving me nuts. and no, i am not pregnant, at least according to FOUR tests. anyway, it would be a miracle considering we've been basically doing double the birth control until this week and even then we've just relaxed to one form of b/c at a time.

so what is this stuff i'm feeling? it's too bizarre. it's six days until my physical, but i don't know if i can wait that long if this stuff keeps happening.

johannes recommends:

the futureheads show is finally here! the show is tomorrow night at the grop shop, and i am soooooo excited! we actually called and bought our tickets within minutes of when they became available, because we are just big geeks like that. mike and i are going together, and jim and david (and of course justin!) will meet us there, as well as greg and dyan's friend tom, whom we've been meaning to contact.

i think of the futureheads as johannes's favorite band, because he responded so strongly to them. when we read hans books in utero, we got nothing. when we played other music, he responded, but gently. but when we played the futureheads, he went nuts. the first time the three of us listened to the cd and i felt him rockin' out was one of those rare moments of pure, unvarnished happiness.

three weeks after hans died, we saw their show at slim's in san francisco, and it just rocked. we cried through most of the show, but it was still great. i had to sit on the sidelines, perched on a speaker, since i really wasn't supposed to be pogo-ing three weeks after delivery. but tomorrow night i can dance all i want to, dammit.

(blogger, wonderful blogger - it won't let me create hyperlinks today without sabotaging my text, so you'll have to google the futureheads for yourself - on their site, you can listen to their stuff. do it. really. at least do it in honor of hans.)

after dinner at parker's

self-explanatory

before dinner at parker's

is it just me or does justin look worried?

and now, another restaurant review

i haven't reviewed anything in probably two months, so a review is overdue, don't you think?

first, parker's is air conditioned, despite occupying a building even ten years older than our house (which is 130 years old), so they could have served hot dogs on paper plates and i would have been thrilled. happily, they did a little better than hot dogs.

service was excellent but much more informal than i had been led to believe. since it was a one-night-only, fixed menu vegetarian dinner, the only thing we had to pick was the wine. we ordered the '01 la cadalora pinot grigio, which accompanied our early-spring dinner pretty well, i must say. justin usually lets me pick the wine because i have a knack for it, which i admit is mostly based on luck, but hey - it works.

the amuse bouche was a tiny spinach quiche, between 1 1/2" and 2" in diameter, which at first seemed a little chintzy. but what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in taste and texture. the crust was perfectly flaky and fatty, and the filling was the creamiest i've ever had - creamier than the sublime quiches we got for breakfast every day in paris from the bakery across the street from our hotel. it may have just been the quality of the eggs (parker's uses only seasonal, organic ingredients obtained fresh from local farms) that made the taste so good, or maybe just a twinge of slow-sauteed shallots. just a guess.

the second course was cream of asparagus soup with watercress. the texture was silky but substantial, and it tasted perfectly green - there's no better adjective for it. the next course was seared tofu with julienned zucchini, sitting in a shallow puddle of juice from the zucchini, garlic- and thyme-infused olive oil and (i suspect) lemon juice. the zucchini absorbed the tart juices (we picked up the rest with our bread), which were a nice balance for that flat taste tofu has. the tofu, actually, could have been infused with a little more flavor, but i suppose if it had more flavor it would have just made the dish too busy. the tofu was in three, golden cubes, surrounding the cloud of zucchini in the middle.

next came the arugula salad, topped with russian fingerling potatoes (with skins crispy like roast duck), then a doily of melted white cheddar, then sauteed killbuck valley farms mushrooms, then roasted asparagus, all topped with a butter and truffle dressing that made all of the flavors even richer.

the dessert was a rhubarb pound cake with a strawberry-rhubarb compote and strawberry coulis dotted with creme anglaise and topped with crystallized lemon peel. the cake had a nice, crunchy crust and a slightly-nutty taste and was both appropriately weighty and light in texture, and the lemon peel finished it perfectly. my capucchino was a little too acidic, but justin liked it enough to finish it for me as well as his double espresso.

if i had a complaint, it would be the pace of the dinner. i felt a bit rushed, like i was at an oversized wedding dinner (although the dining room only seats about 25), where the staff is under pressure to serve every course to everyone at the same time. it seemed unnecessary in a restaurant that purposely only does one seating per night - which leads to my other complaint: the only seating time was 6:30. it was a little bizarre to be enjoying this dinner in the full glare of afternoon sunlight. granted, we eat later than most people (usually around 10 pm), but this kind of meal should be in a dim room with low, warm lighting; tonight's dinner was lighted like a 4th of july picnic.

after dinner, we picked up our laptop and books (mine was one of the subsequent pregnancy books i ordered last week that arrived today), and we walked up to metro joe's for soy chai (me) and root beer (justin). the book (i can't remember which title i started) is promising; i'll review it here when i finish it.

other than coming home to a 95-degree-house-temperature to perspire in a most-unladylike fashion, it's been a good evening.

*****

i've made the leap.

justin is a long-time vegetarian. when we met, i didn't even know any other vegetarians, and he wasn't just a vegetarian, he was a vegan (for the uninitiated, a vegan eats no animal products at all, not even dairy or eggs, and some even exclude honey). less than a month after we started dating, we went to waffle house for hashbrowns and i had mine "chunked" (i believe that's the correct term at waffle house for "with ham"); as we walked out through the parking lot, holding hands, i was feeling the fresh thrill of new love, and i turned toward justin to kiss him - and he turned his head. in that moment, we almost didn't make it.

justin never saw himself with anyone other than a vegetarian - i was a real stretch for him. (he was a stretch for me, too, but that's a story for another day.) but we worked it out and lived to tell about it. he relaxed from veganism to good old garden-variety lacto-ovo-vegetarianism (meaning he would eat dairy and eggs), and i learned to cook vegetarian, although for the first year, it was mostly the meat-and-two-sides kind of meals i'd cooked all my life, based on a boca or gardenburger or morningstar farms fake meat product. eventually, i learned to cook new things and create whole dinners that didn't revolve around meat or its substitutes and expanded my repertoire to include chinese and indian and italian.

but i've never crossed over to vegetarianism myself. i agreed before we were even engaged that i would raise any children we had as vegetarians, and i cook exclusively vegetarian at home, but i still ate meat out.

now, i've reached a couple of new points. the first one is that i've stalled out at losing weight; i'm 20 lbs under my weight when i got pregnant with hans, but i've been there for about six weeks, and i need to lose as much weight as i (safely) can before i get pregnant again. the second point is that i've been exploring every possible thing i can do to eliminate any risk in a future pregnancy, and there are just so many horrible things in our meat supply in this country. so i'm crossing over to the veg side.

i do have two exceptions. one is argentina - when i'm there, i'm eating the beef, which is the finest-tasting (and purest) in the world. the second exception is fish - with certain exceptions, the fish supply is fairly safe, and there are so many nutritional benefits that i would be missing if i didn't eat it. plus, i freaking love sushi.

if my skin starts to have a greenish cast, you'll know why.

good news

The life insurance company, prompted by my doctor who called them "moron's" has finally decided to approve my life insurance policy. This is about 6 months after filling out the initial paperwork (twice), pissing in a cup, explaining to the nurse that i might be a bit anxious seeing as my son had died just that morning, and finally having it out with some random chick on the phone who had the beans to suggest that anxiety is the reason for my denial.

For once, apparently, anger and insistance got the job done.

Which is a good thing, because it's freakin' hot outside and I'm tired of all the extra precautions I've been taking, not wanting to leave the world without having something to leave Laura.

Finally, I can take this hockey helmut off as I cross the street!

hobo

I've an overwhelming desire to just say fuck it all, and run as far away as possible.

i'm ready to pull the covers over my head

i bought my first pair of post-maternity jeans saturday. as i was finishing up work today, i walked to the ladies' room, and along the way i basked in that first-day-of-school-stiff-jeans feeling as well as the just-starting-to-get-broken-in-new-jeans feeling. then i walked in and faced the full-length mirror on the opposite wall and saw that (1) the way my jeans bunched up, i looked like i had a penis, and (2) my shoes are inappropriately small in proportion to the flare of the legs of my new jeans. honestly, i was so happy to find a pair that fit my butt that i didn't even notice they were somewhat flared in the fitting room; i think i still imagine when i choose casual shoes that my jeans are still cut the way they were when i was in college (when i was thin and 501s were in).

as i washed my hands, i noticed that my hair is doing strange, big, wavy things. why is it that i never notice that i look sloppy and like i'm wearing a toupee and have a penis until the very end of the day???

*****

in further news of my crappy day, one of my co-workers on the west coast, with whom i have enjoyed a long and friendly if occasionally exasperating relationship, freaked out on me today. i picked up the phone to tell her how unacceptable it was, and then decided that (1) i should cool down first and (2) any conversation we had would likely be unpleasant anyway. but then i decided i didn't want to take my anger home with me, so i sent her a carefully-considered e-mail telling her how surprised i was at her responses to me today and how disappointing it was after the rapport we've shared for three years.

i've been angry at work so much lately. some of it is absolutely justified, for reasons i don't have the energy to list right now. but i wonder if it is all justified or if some of it is the result of my anger about hans's death. i gave this situation this afternoon much thought and concluded that it would have been just as disrespectful for her to have acted as she did before or while i was pregnant with hans. but is my justfiable anger magnified by my other anger? that question is hard to answer. the truth is, for most of my adulthood, there's been one thing or another hanging over my head that could have the same effect, so i don't have any sane periods to which i can compare my anger now, with the exception of maybe the first year of our marriage, and even then, that year was a different kind of abnormal.

add this one to the list for the therapist next time.

*****

i must go get my hair colored so i look decent for our hoity-toity dinner at parker's tomorrow. i'm so excited to be getting dressed up to go out! we eat out all the time - far more than we should - but tomorrow is special because parker's is one of the best restaurants in america (according to gourmet magazine) and they are having a special vegetarian tasting menu, and it will be the nicest thing we've done intentionally (as opposed to spontaneously) in a while. plus, it's nice to have something to look forward to, especially after this half-assed day.

to the powers that be:

all of that complaining i've been doing about how it's barely spring, let alone summer? i take it all back. no really, bring back the 50 degree highs. please. i'm begging you.

after i took justin to work, i went to metro joe's because they have wi-fi and an air conditioner, which make a nice combo when it's 95 out, and i hung out for three hours while kath and charlie and then jim came and went, but i couldn't stay there all day, so i headed over to dave's for a few groceries. i thought some pineapple would be nice in the heat, and so, as is my custom, i headed to the salad bar to get just the right amount of pineapple for the two of us to eat tonight. as i approached, a boy of about eight stepped up to the pineapple, opened his already-assembled salad bar box of assorted fruit, took the pineapple out of the box, with his bare hands, put it back in the pineapple bin, and picked some different pieces out with his fingers.

i will miss the salad bar at dave's.

i headed over to the pre-packaged fruits, finished my shopping and headed home. on the way, i promised justin by phone that i would try moving downstairs to what would have been hans's room for the summer before going out and buying an air conditioner. and then i walked inside the house, where it is 91. inside. downstairs.

when we were dating, we never even considered justin moving to florida, because of the heat. i came to cleveland to escape the heat. i want my money back.

the official car of soccer moms everywhere

driving down the highway in the white volvo station wagon we bought the month after we found out we were expecting hans, i feel like the old stereotype of the crazy woman walking an empty carriage down the street and asking passersby to see her baby. i suspect some of my co-workers that arrive or leave work at roughly the same time that i do look the other way from the site of me in the carseat-less family wagon. and who can blame them - it's just pitiful.

look, i still like my car, which is vastly superior to the old volvo on which the bumpers were just barely still attached. i still expect to re-install the carseat at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later. it's also ideal for hauling the tons of mulch and plants that i've been dragging home every weekend.

but even when it's full, it's empty.

adult themes

hans as a young adult is in my thoughts this weekend. he was so responsive to music in utero that we thought of him as a musician - perhaps a violinist or pianist. i would imagine there is a certain amount of groupie-ism for "serious" musicians, too, just as for rock stars, and i wonder how he might have handled the advances of orchestra patronesses.

we learned from the autopsy that one of his testicles was already dead before the rest of him died. how would that have affected his sexuality? his interest in sex? his willingness to be naked with another person? his ability to father a child?

he will never have a first kiss with a girl - or a boy, for that matter. no one will ever have a crush on him or make him one of the future husband candidates in a game of mash. we will never like (or dislike) someone serious enough for him to bring home. he will never be an object of lust. he will never know the thrill of his first time or the comfort of the thousandth time with the person with whom he wants to grow old.

poor johannes - he died a virgin.

*UNSUBSCRIBE*

i had to do it. i sent the unsubscribe e-mail to SPALS this morning. i couldn't take it any more. every e-mail has the writer's bio-o-loss, and i was scrolling down and reading the bio each time, and it was killing me. writer after writer had multiple losses, and the thought that i could be one of those people with so many losses was unbearable.

i complained this week on someone else's blog that i am about angel-ed out, sick to death of all the angel talk in the perinatal loss community, but i think i understand why it is so prevalent, especially among mothers with multiple losses - how else could anyone survive the recurring horror without some sort of divine answer, some magical consolation?

i understand that a woman who has a single loss and then goes on to a subsequent successful birth is likely to leave the SPALS group, whereas women with repeated losses are going to stay around much longer, so the group is disproportionately weighted with women with multiple losses, which gives a distorted view of the group of women who've lost a child. i get the math.

but the reality is that i'm reading over and over again the posts of women who've lost five, six, seven wanted children, and it's freaking me out. what i understand intellectually doesn't matter in the face of all that anecdotal data in front of me. i have been the most regular menstruater (is that a word? well, it should be.) my entire life, and last week i was three days late (and no, i'm not pregnant; believe me - i checked. four times.), and i believe it was because i was so anxious from reading these posts from SPALS.

if there was something helpful in these posts, i would stick with it. but there hasn't been a single message that has benefitted me. and at this point i don't have any experiences to offer anyone else trying to conceive - especially anyone with fertility problems (another disproportionately-represented group on SPALS). so i just can't see any reason to stick with it and keep making myself sick.

i have enough fears on my own (such as the fear that my eggs are defective as a group, or the fear of going back to the non-stress test or ultrasound rooms where hans's death was found and confirmed). i don't have room for any fears that don't belong to me.

it happened again

i stopped in at the walgreen's at 117th and detroit to pick up a toblerone on my way to kath's last night after work. as i fiddled with my wallet, the cashier suddenly said, "did you go to lamaze classes at metro?" i stared at her. for a minute i couldn't figure out what she was talking about. then i couldn't place her - i knew she wasn't a mother in the class.

and then it dawned on me - she was the coach/friend of the one mother in the class who didn't have a father with her. i asked her how her friend was. "oh, great," she said, and then told me in excruciating detail about her friend's daughter. as she talked, i thought to myself, maybe i can get out of here without her asking THE question if i keep talking, so as i closed my purse i said, "be sure to tell her i said hi!"

and then she said, "but how's your baby?"

i looked down a little and said gently, "well, my son died."

there is no way to cushion that blow to people, no way to say it honestly that isn't shocking.

there was a long pause and then she turned to look at the cases of cigarettes and said, "god, i feel like such an idiot!"

i assured her it was okay and that it was a natural question. i asked her again to say hi to her friend for me and got out of there. "take care of yourself!" she frantically cried after me.

i hate that.

*****

i hung out at kath's house and cried a little bit and we had the same conversations we seem to always have, or at least talked about the same topics, but it made me feel better.

then i picked justin up from work and we met greg at the winchester for acoustic jam night; it was midnight when greg went up, but it was worth the wait.

i took the slow way home, down detroit, since i had been drinking a little, and as we passed cleveland public theater, justin and i both spontaneously waved and greeted calvin, or at least his brick. it was pretty cool.

azalea 39480

Sounds like a street address, eh? Well, it's our son's flower - seen in a tree that my mother brought to us in his honor - and our son's number from CSI. His ashes. No name, just a number. Presented to us in a ziplock bag, in a tiny white box.

I spent the morning with as much of Johannes as I could. Myself, his ashes, and his tree: basking in the sun. Our first picnic.

botanical therapy

what keeps me sane and occupied is my yard. i planted two flats of coleus and weeded everything and spread 15 bags of mulch and cleaned my porch and its ceiling and its blue adirondack chairs and washed all the windows i can reach while justin was at work sunday and monday. the more my garden grows, the giddier i get, and so the unsteadier my hand and the worse the pictures get, but i'm proud of my floral children - they're the only children i get to actively mother for now.

the state of perfect hans-ed-ness

i'm so torn.

on the one hand, i would like to be able to cast off my grief, anything but the merest wisp of fond memory of hans, and move on with my life, unaffected by his death. i'd like to have other children and not think about hans's absence. i'd like to have a blissfully ignorant second pregnancy.

on the other hand, i want to wallow in hansedness (that's my contribution to the english language today - you can pronounce it "HAHN-zed-nes", thank you very much). i don't want to have any other children because they would distract me from all things hans. i want to just dwell in the land of hans.

neither extreme is a good plan - i understand that fact. at any rate, it's not like i had a blissfully ignorant FIRST pregnancy, and i don't want to be a creepy person, either. but the extremes look appealing from afar - they seem direct and clear and absolute and wonderfully unconflicted. just illusions, i know, but lovely ones.