The Monitoring System

 I had cancer.  Had.  It’s supposed to be gone.  I knew when it was in my body, knew enough to pester doctors until I got the diagnosis.  I had a double mastectomy at 38 years old.  It’s gone now.  But I’m hyper aware of every little twinge and pain.  Some days a headache.  Is it the fluorescent lights at work?  The hypervigilant monitoring system in my head is in overdrive and it diagnoses brain cancer.  Today a sore right knee.  Did I pull a muscle?  I went to my nephew’s birthday at a trampoline park last week.  But the monitoring system tells me I now have an osteosarcoma, most commonly presents in the knee or arm.  A new cancer, a second cancer.  Or an undetected metastasis of the first cancer, the cancer they were supposed to cut out.  The monitoring system makes it so I can’t think of anything else.  

 I can’t hate the monitoring system, it got me more time with my family, more time to live.  But how much more time?  Because that’s the thing that keeps me up at night.  How much more time?  If the second cancer, or the recurrence, or whatever other illness the monitoring system detects happens in my 80s, that is fucking fine.  But I’m 38 and I have so much left to do that it is overwhelming.  The terrifying thought that I could leave behind 3 children and an unprepared, overwhelmed husband is enough to make me feel short of breath.  Cancer left me with the lingering sensation that I should be doing something more with my life, something meaningful, impactful, memorable.  But everyday life isn’t always filled with these things.  Everyday life is sometimes just lugging around the carpet cleaner scrubbing pet stains out of the carpet for the millionth time while the kids watch their tablets.   And I don’t know how to reconcile these things right now, the gloriousness of having survived combined with the fear of what the future holds. 

Oh, Hello

 One night a few months ago, in the middle of one of the toughest periods of my life, behind on studying, and unable to be productive while also unable to quiet my mind enough to fall asleep, I thought about the silly little blog I used to have that maybe three people read.  I was almost shocked to find it still here, intact though abandoned and forgotten, like the garden I optimistically plant each spring even though I am terrible at plants and know it will end in a neglected and weed-laden failure.  And every summer, something manages to survive in spite of my absent-mindedness, hidden amongst the tangle of messy weeds left to grow unabated.  A random zucchini blossoms or a scraggly cherry tomato plant will make three small bright red tomatoes.

So here it still stands, a scraggly tomato plant that has survived a long, dry summer.  Sprinkled with spam comments and untouched for years.  But my fingers remembered the password to log in as though I were just here last week.  And since me remembering a never-used password on a whim after years have gone by is practically a sign from God himself, here I am.  Still standing.  I spent some time looking over old posts and even funnier drafts from unpublished posts.  It was like a visit with my former selves.  In the same way that a person might leave a flower or a small token at a loved one's gravesite when they visit, I decided to write something to leave as well.  Reese was here today.

Broken Things

Pretty sure I could draw a lot of metaphors between this broken nest and my life right here...but I'm too tired.

This isn't one of those days where I feel like I've got parenting down.  My mom came to town for a brief visit.  She brought the kids a treasure that was found in her neighbor's yard during construction.  A tiny bird nest with two eggs in it.  Roo immediately felt that the nest should live in her room, and nagged at me until I allowed her to stash it in a small wooden box.   Finally relenting, I instructed her to place it on a high shelf in her closet, out of reach of her 4-year-old little brother.  

Not even an hour after my mom's departure, I hear the classic, "I'm gonna tell Mom!"  Of course a four year old can't leave such a curiosity undisturbed in his sister's closet when Grandma gave the nest to both of them.  And so I entered the room to find a nest with two tiny crushed eggs.  

I don't think I've ever been so angry at either of them.  I was angry at Roo for being so insistent on having the nest in her room, when I told her it was a bad idea.  I was angry at Little Brother for taking the nest out of the closet without asking anyone for help or permission.  I was pissed at myself for failing to convey the importance of this gift to my children.  I felt terrible that something so unique was ruined so quickly in my house.  I felt like if I was a better parent, I would have done a better job of making them understand that a gift like this can't be replaced by Amazon.   Of treating such a gift with care.  

So... I yelled a bunch.  I put them both in their rooms and slammed the doors.  Little Brother cried and fell asleep. He hasn't had much experience with being in "big trouble."   Roo, who at 10 is much more experienced with "big trouble," and who obviously understood the uniqueness of the nest enough to want to hoard it in her room for herself, cried a little too.   And I collapsed on the couch and cried the kind of massive hiccoughing sobs that leave a horrible cry-hangover headache to remember them by when they go.  While rage-texting Jerry about the life choices that have brought me to this point, which in my crazed state of mind were obviously all the wrong life choices, and maybe if I had made different/better choices I would have children who appreciated and understood things inherently without needing me, the failed parent, to teach them.  That makes sense, right.  

I find it so hard in situations where I recognize that I need to teach my children a life lesson.  I mean, how mad should I be at them?  How can I make sure I get the lesson translated in a way they will remember and understand?  On the scale of screw-ups in childhood, this is pretty low and accidental (although careless), right?  

Yet... I feel like something of great value was lost with those little crushed eggs.  I felt grief well up inside me and start to spill over.  I grieve those little eggs and the baby birds they will never be and the delicate boxed treasure they will never be.  I wondered if I actually could order "replacement" eggs on Amazon, but stopped short of searching it because how screwed up would that be?!  I think I really need them to know that those eggs aren't replaceable.  Do regular parents feel like this?  Parents who don't have a dead child, I mean.  Parents who never stare at their 27-weeks pregnant belly at 0300 when they should be sleeping and they have to be up to work a 12-hour ER shift in three hours, but they can't because they are wondering if this 27-week fetus could breathe if it had to come out now.  Because the first one couldn't.  Those parents.  Do they have crises of conscience when their children wreck an abandoned bird's nest treasure in their innocent-but-careless curiosity?  

I just don't know, and I guess I never will.  

After I knew Little Brother was asleep, I sneaked into his room.  Stepped around the Legos and pulled back the covers he had tucked over his little blond head.  I stared at his freckles and long eyelashes, and I felt my heart turn to mush like any "normal" parent's would.  I opened the door to Roo's room to find her staring up at the ceiling.  I hugged her.  I couldn't find any words to say so I said nothing.  I took her to the kitchen and fixed her a snack.  She didn't say anything either. 

Baby Vegas

I never thought I’d write here again.  When a year went by, then two, and I hadn’t written anything consistent I figured I was probably done.  If the blog is just catch-up post after catch-up post, there really isn’t any point anymore, is there?  Life is too busy to have yet another task to catch-up on that isn’t a necessity.  I don’t really know why I want to post here so badly now, just that the feeling of needing to write things down has been nagging at me for months.   

Jerry and I went to Las Vegas and got legally married on our 10-year anniversary.  We brought the kiddos, we brought a few family members and friends.  Then we went back a few more times on our own.  I probably love Las Vegas more than he does, but he’s usually up for an adventure and it was nice to get away for a long weekend here and there with just us.  We went to Las Vegas in January.  We had fun.  A week later, I complained to Jerry that I didn’t feel right.  He said, “We’re getting too old to drink like that.”  Definitely.  But when I took a pregnancy test to ease my mind, the stick turned positive instantly.  

We tried for a long time—over 3 years.  I tracked my cycles religiously.  I cried when other people got pregnant.  When that didn’t work, Jerry went to the doctor.  Then there was a varicocele repair.  Then it was my turn.  A preconceptual appointment with a rude, condescending OB/GYN who was blatantly judgmental of my desire to carry another child.  An MFM who was considerably more understanding.  An appointment with the fertility docs.  An HSG.  An excessive amount of laboratory tests.  It got to the point where getting pregnant was becoming as difficult as staying pregnant used to be.  It was sad, scary, frustrating.  It got to the point where we wondered if it was worth it.  We stopped talking about it.   I started researching foster parenting.  I think we both assumed the door for that imaginary baby was slowly but firmly closing of its own volition.

So staring at that blatantly positive test was…exciting and terrifying.  Moments like those are some of the strangest moments life has to offer, aren’t they?  I left the test on the counter, laying it down like it was an unstable explosive.  “It won’t stick, “ I thought.  I curled up in bed next to my husband who let a few minutes pass before remembering to ask if the test was negative.  

“It won’t stick,” I thought with every passing day.  But here we are.  It stuck.  It kept on sticking.  We are excited and terrified. 

Car Shopping When You Don't Know How Many Seats You Need

I have a Nissan Maxima with 213,000 miles on it.  I love that car, its sunroof, its leather seats, its peppy engine.  Two weeks ago it started idling funny, as cars with lots of miles on them do.  The mechanic is starting to seem skeptical when I drop it off to fix it.  

The Oregon coast is one of my favorite places in the world.  In the summer, we pack the kids up and stay at various coastal spots all the way down to northern California.  We explore the beaches and the lighthouses and attempt to gain massive amounts of weight as we eat our way along.  Then I entertain my husband the whole way home with my petty and childish whining about wanting to live on said Oregon coast.  He's definitely lucky to have me.

Combined with the funny noises, the high mileage, and the impending road trip I would really hate to try to reschedule, we decided it was time to shop for a new vehicle.  New vehicle purchasing always seems to stress Jerry and I out.  This time it's worse.  This time it feels irritatingly fraught with tension as we attempt to answer the age-old question, "How many children are we going to have?"  

I think every couple goes through this to some degree.  Money, time, so many factors to consider when you are attempting to plan a pregnancy.  But we've been trying to get pregnant for a few months shy of two years.  We've seen the doctors, the specialists, the specimen cups, the blood draws.  Husband got a day surgery, and I got an HSG.  I've read research papers, printed them off and highlighted the sections that apply to me and my used-up, battle-scarred uterus.  I've cried in the bathroom at work when I had myself convinced I was pregnant, only to find out that the pregnancy was imaginary.  I'm trying not to do that anymore.  The crying or the imagining.  

We try to picture our lives with our two living children.  And it's not a bad picture.  One of each, and there are so many people who are forced to get along with less.  I'll have to be drunk to go through the bins of baby paraphernalia piled up in the basement and decide what to keep and what to get rid of.  But shouldn't everyone be slightly inebriated for that exercise?  I can take them on more vacations.  I love vacations.  I can be there for each of them without feeling spread too thin constantly. 

And... I can keep the two kids in a normal sedan car.  Unless, of course, I have another baby.  I think the uncertainty of it all gets to me sometimes.  There are so many life decisions that hinge on whether or not we have another baby.  Like whether I should go to nurse practitioner school, and when.  Or whether we should buy a car with 3rd row seating.  

"How many kids do you have?" the salesman asks us politely.  I feel the familiar clench of my insides as I answer "Two."  I never pictured myself in a minivan or an SUV.   Mostly I picture myself in something small and red with a manual transmission.  So I already feel like I am compromising.  If I knew I would have another child, the matter would be simple.  But it's never really simple, is it?  

I clamber into the back row of an SUV that costs more than my education did.  I picture where I would put the imaginary baby's car seat,  along with my son and daughter.  I test whether or not I could hand the imaginary baby a toy from the passenger seat as we drive along.  I can tell my husband is trying to picture what cargo room would be left after the imaginary baby's car seat is installed.  

I move on to the cheaper options.  No need to go deeply into debt and feel regret when all the seats aren't filled in a couple of years.  My husband maintains that the extra space would be useful, no matter who might or might not show up.  I nod and say nothing.  He loves cargo room so he doesn't really understand.  To him, it wouldn't be an empty seat, but for me there's a chance that extra seating would always be there, mocking me and my imaginary baby.  

The Other Side of the Wall

Its 0433 on the morning of April 10, 2016.  Today is Matthew's 10th birthday.  Today, nearly to the minute, marks ten years since his brutal entrance into the world and my entrance into parenthood.  Ten years feels like such a long time.  It's long enough to move a few times.  Long enough to have more children.  Long enough to acquire new lines around my eyes.  

Yet, a scent or a thought can bring my reality screeching back to those moments ten years ago, and it's like no time has passed at all.  

One of the great ironies of my life these days is that I am a nurse in the hospital where Matthew was born.  I am literally sitting on the other side of the wall from the operating room.  Where he took his first breath.  Where my first c-section incision was hastily made.  Sometimes I can hear babies cry as they take their first lungfuls of air in that OR.  Thankfully, tonight it's quiet.  

It's not where I thought I'd end up working, but here I am.  There are times, like tonight, when the divide that separates me from that 22-year-old girl and her baby seems as thin as a veil.  Like it's a curtain I could sweep aside.  If I wanted to I could step across the last ten years and talk to them.  What would I even say to that girl?  Have I learned anything in the past years that she didn't already learn in the most tragic, brutal, bloody, horrible way on this night? 

I don't feel like crying tonight.  I'm not really sure how I feel.  I know that 22-year-old girl hoped that ten years down the road she wouldn't feel like a huge chunk was missing.  But she probably could've guessed that the missing chunks are permanent.   Actually I know what I would say to them.  I'd tell them both how much I miss them.  It never goes away.  I miss her.  I miss that stupid, ignorant, optimistic person.  I miss her un-scarred heart.  Frankly I miss her un-scarred uterus.  And him?  I miss him physically, every moment, always. 

I have one hastily taken video of Matthew in the NICU.  In it I am narrating and joking, talking to him the entire time about someday when he is bigger.  I watch it once every couple of years.  I listen to myself babbling.  "Be quiet," I think to myself.  "Just be quiet and watch him."  Then I hit the mute button so I can't hear my falsely cheerful voice and the beeping of the machines that are keeping him alive.  It's the only way I can really see him.