Bubble guppies

I've been counting the days, willing that tight crampy feeling, frantically checking ovulation calculators, could it really have swung nine days!? What secrets were in my womb? I was so preoccupied and fatigued during my sessions today, I couldn't imagine ever returning to do this again. I found myself totally zoning out and counting, forgetting to breathe. When the first line spread across I smiled with initial relief and then watched in horror as the second line began to darken. What no why it's not fair!!! I tried so hard to be careful! I wildly wanted nothing more than to race back in time and put on the condom. Augh!!! Three??? Things have finally become so perfect now, this was supposed to be my year of no pregnancy, maybe we were going to stop at two kids anyway, this was The Year of the Racher! We were going to get married again next year and go to the DR for our five year anniversary. I felt all those wispy dreams of freedom crashing around me. Worse still was that Jonathan was right there already frantic and devastated. It made me feel awful, disappointed. It's not that I expected him to be excited, but I was there apologizing to him and I didn't feel like we were connected. I don't want this to be like last time. There are the stinging reasons I don't want to think about--how am I going to go anywhere? I wanted to just walk next to my two and hold each of their hands for a few years, WHY? I don't want to make Sparrow a middle child. I don't want to waste this tiny time having to push them aside for a needier child. I don't want to swell up and ache again and have to ask for time off work (will they just ask me to leave?) and pay for another rhogam shot and who knows whatever else and hold my breath again that a homebirth goes perfectly? It's not time. It doesn't feel right. WHY am I so fertile when people I love struggle and weep every month? Three kids under four seems trashy, too eager, sloppy. I'm so frustrated with myself. But some of the best people I know are third children. Even Jonathan is a third child. I know that as jarring as this might seem, we can be wiser in the future and it will just take a couple more years to get to our dreams. We can get married our seven year, maybe. The younger I have them the healthier they'll be. I shudder to think what my family will think. I don't want to tell anyone. I don't feel so much of a desire to be a birth rock star right now. I just wanted to enjoy life with my two and maybe look into PhD programs. Jon came home full of confidence about selling tech and combining an account for bills and I do think if we could just develop a couple of good habits we would be in a better position. I also need to stop doing conferences and going to things for free. I'm rallying, though. I'm not going to spend these nine months moping. I am going to go hard. I will manage my disappointment and try to be open to what lessons this experience has for me. I will be happy that I gave Sparrow two more months of development than Chai ever had. I wish I didn't have to, but I can decide to embrace this journey.

There would have been gentle hands in my hair.

My heart should have broken the day I asked, "But Mommy, what if you die?" and instead of spinning reassuring tales of Never Lost and Always, I wish I had been taught the gospel of All Things Go. It would have been terribly hard to bear, but in that moment I could have become alive to the tiny heaven in each second of awareness; a slice of sunlight, a falling leaf, and recognized I live in heaven as I open my eyes to a morning, exist inside an embrace. There is a layer past hopelessness that melts into joyousness. "I hope we get a long time. But no matter how long, it won't be long enough."

"And all the lights that lead the way are blinding"

When I enter the house, I can smell the stench of what they've said about me. It hangs heavy in the air. If they were interested in shaking the hand of introspection whatsoever, I could be a most menacing symbol. But I'm afraid and disappointed and full of loss. Once again my relationships have slipped out form underneath me, more completely than I could have dreamed. I feel such cold eyes on me. I feel that all my interactions are carefully stored away so they can be pulled out later as stories that illustrate how miserable, how incompetent, how defensive I am. I definitely keep my pockets lined with stories, too--living as an outcast from the tribe is very painful. You want to explain to someone why your being alone is not your fault. They didn't understand. My brother told us about an essay he wrote for the Caged Bird about pressure to serve a mission. He shared it with my sister who took it to our parents. They called him in and told him if he printed it, his paper would be done, no one would read it, and that it was against everything he was trying to accomplish. When he disagreed, he was told, "Get out." It's just birds and birds and cages and cages.

"But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you"

Jon just came home from work and pulled me into his arms and said, "I have to tell you! I was thinking about how amazingly good our life is and it's so weird I can't even believe it. We just have this life together! Like, I met you and we had a lot of fun together and we just started hanging out all the time and then we hung out even more and now we have kids together, and they come from us! They just run around and love us and want us to hug them all the time and sometimes we get frustrated and we're like, 'Kids!' But they're so wonderful and beautiful and they look exactly like us! And we have a good life, I'm telling you, it's really good. And YOU exist, and I have you, and you're so beautiful and clever and fun! I'm so lucky to be married to you and we just hang out all the time and fall asleep on the couch together and it's so awesome. We have such a good life. It's a strange life we're living." I told him that I hope we don't have to let go for a long time. I remember how clean and triumphant I felt when I let myself fall in love with Jon. I remember it so well, we were so gleeful in our discovery, and that's never gone away. These precious things. I am so lucky to have lived this long, already.

Right before he got back, I was listening to the MoSto Sunday School podcast with that dismaying spiraling insightful quote from the Brothers Karamazov, and Jared's thought that if we could visualize the suffering occurring in just one minute sweeping over the planet, it would "just break us." It's a fearful thing to have the anesthesia wear off, but I am glad it has, because after working through that first blinding pain of disillusionment and fear, I have come to some powerful conclusions, about what I want to do with my life, even in the face of all that suffering, regardless of what comes next. I know that I have an extraordinarily beautiful life. I am not one of the frozen kids. I don't want to let the fear of pain freeze me.

I want to be mindful and present and appreciate the moments of my life so deeply.
I want to create and enjoy and draw my dear ones closer to me.
I don't feel the same desire I used to, to immerse myself in woundedness, and in some cases I feel myself taking an indignant step back, but I still want to be a safe person, a supportive presence, a listener and teller of stories.
I want to own the light and dark of myself and embrace my "dark passenger."
I feel so much freedom in exploring archetypes and rituals. The canon is OPEN.
I want to just feel the ebb and flow of my life without intellectualizing it or pathologizing it. 
I want to be so kind to my sweet children.

I'm too porous. Poor us.

Why can't I remember your snarls are sadness,
your stings are jealousy,
It's you that you despise.
I meant the most when I made you proud of yourself
You don't see my face now
Wasted shell
The bright crawled out long ago.
I had to burn you to find me.
Like the spiderlings, eat you alive
You expected it, no time for you
Each bite of flesh existed to serve our existence
our unseeing uncaring survival
We sucked unfolded devoured and scurried away
The core of every mother eaten by her young
Some gnawed by teeth others by disappointment
Trampling corpses, we charge onward
You who were my first home.
I can't find home in you now.