Random Monday

Thank you all for sharing your favorite posts with me. It meant a lot to me to hear what resonated with you. When I began writing here, there was a compulsion to it. I absolutely had to write about Lucy's death, grief, learning how to mother, and my life. Last summer, I cut and pasted my blog into a word document. I had about 650 single spaced pages. It reads like a Manifesto of Grief, with the stubborn earnestness and maniacal urgency of the Unagriever.

I only grieve. And all who don't grieve, don't belong to this tribe.

Not surprisingly, I don't feel that way anymore. I am more than my grief. I think what is interesting about my point of view now, perhaps, is that I see everyone as a griever, even those who have not lost a child, or a parent yet. People grieve work loss, relationships, thinness, health, freedom, innocence. I realized, only after two years of grieving, that the Lucy-grief touched all the grief already in me. It is a feeling of which lit the fuse of the thousand different feelings that I stuffed into an angry little black ball and stuffed into the cobwebbed corner of me--anger, fear, self-pity, hatred, aggression, anxiety, depression, negativity, impatience...you know, I know that you know. And those very human emotions and experiences are not the sole property of the grieving, they belong to everyone.

Whenever I write, it comes back to grief. It has the gravitational pull of the sun. I can revolve out from it, but always slingshot back to grief at the end of the day. Maybe it feels like the only certainty now--whatever happens, I will grieve. I will be happy, but that too shall pass. I will be sad, but that too shall pass. I will contented, but that too shall pass. I will be knocked on my ass, wind gone from my lungs, gasping for the ground beneath me, and that too shall pass. But I will always grieve something. I will always grieve Lucy. It is the constant that factors into every equation of my life. That is okay. Thinking about her doesn't make me sad. That she died makes me sad, and that sadness is in every grey hair and every black one too.

I come to this space now with the same kind of urgency. Urgency to write. I just find less time to sit. I sometimes see that as progress, and other times I see that as integration. I have integrated grief into my life in a way that it simply wasn't two years ago. I sometimes spent all day on the computer, reading blogs, reading the archives of blogs, reading articles about grief and stillbirth and parenting a dead child and art about grief. That was an important stage of my grieving, connecting with the babylost community. I still love this space. The urgency of that has lessened, but it is still there. It still helps to be understood by someone in the world. You. It still helps to be understood by you.

Last year, one of my before Lucy's death friends stopped being my friend. She said that I was not very forgiving, and that I was angry at people whose point of views she understood. She said I was mad at my mom, my friends, strangers...there was no making me happy. She said that one day, she felt like, she too would let me down. So, she stopped writing to me, or calling, I guess. I kind of loathe the phone, so I avoided talking to anyone. Strangely, I read her words with a kind of peace, because deep within me, I knew that I did the best I could. I felt a lot of guilt for those feelings of anger at well-intentioned people. I knew what they meant, but it didn't hurt less. I was an open, pulsating wound, and I had to protect myself. I knew those emotions would change, because the only thing that doesn't change is that things change. And in the end, I felt okay about us departing from the friendship. I wasn't at my best in the first year since my daughter died. The people that are still in my life love me at my worst. They love me when I was most unlovable.

And you, my blog readers, love me too, even at my most unlovable, just as I love you. You made me feel normal when everything in my little world was absolutely abnormal. So, thank you.

NOW, I have some announcements to make. WINNERS. I picked three, as I always do when I give away three things. Call this coincidence or divine intervention, but usually when I have three things, and I pick three people, I usually get three people who want each of the things I give away, which makes everything tidy. This time, the three people all wanted paintings, which is totally cool with me. So, here are the winners:
Ya Chun, Sarah, and Hanen. Please send me an email at uberangie(at)gmail(dot)com so we can work together for a painting that is meaningful to you. YAY!

In other news, one of my paintings The Carnival is in the current issue of Exhale. If you don't know what Exhale is, you need need need to check it out. Exhale is a literary magazine geared towards the ALI community. The magazine is was first founded by Monica LeMoine of Knocked Up, Knocked Down fame. You should also buy her book. It is good stuff. I have had poetry and an essay published in Exhale throughout the years, but this is the first time I have ever had a painting published, well, anywhere. The magazine is now being edited by Kristin of Once a Mother.

:::

Also, this week, I am helping my friend Kevin Patrick promote his new album Hi Fi Heart on a Low Fi Budget. Kevin and I went to university together, and he is an amazing man and musician. He used to play in the Philly band Divine Lorraine. Kevin is a cancer survivor, writer and musician. He also volunteers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to play music for the kids, and he is also involved with Camp Cranium where he volunteers his time to put on shows for children affected by brain injuries. I know that really doesn't change the fact that his music is just plain ol' good, but my point is that he is a great guy on top of being a talented musician. Kevin needs "likes" on his Facebook page. So, if you have a moment, and a Facebook account, check out his page and "like" him.

Dear Lucy,

I have never actually sat down to write you a letter. For some reason, it just didn't seem important. I don't talk to you in my head, or in my prayers. I used to cry and call for you, but nothing happened. It was still silent, and so that ritual fell away, like so many others. I wish I even had a sense of what someone so little and dead would want to talk about. Maybe I thought the talking was more for me than for you, and that felt selfish. I'm sorry, love, if you felt abandoned by my silence. I have wanted to talk to you and feel you around me since I knew you were no longer with me. Even before that, mijita, even before that.

I think the pain of not talking to you aches in me as much as the shock of your death. I don't have a sense of who you are or who you would be. It is easy to talk to my Nan, because I knew her, and I knew her humor and we can laugh together, or I can share things I know would be important to her too. I miss knowing you and all the little things that make you Lucy. I miss that part of being your mother. When Beatrice and I are cleaning, I ask her all her favorite things. Her favorite day is Tuesday, and her favorite colors are pink and orange, and she thinks that people falling over is about the funniest thing, but only really if they laugh about it too. Would you like that too? What is your favorite day? My least favorite day is Monday. That is the day you were born, and for many months after than, Monday seemed cursed to me. I think my favorite day is Thursday.

I feel tender when people tell me that you would be proud of me, or what you would want for me, or what I should do in your name. If I don't talk to you, sometimes, I possessively think no one should talk to you. I know you never belonged to me, but still sometimes I feel like you did. I feel like that about all my children, actually, like each of them belongs to me, and then realize over and over again, that they belong to themselves, and I just am blessed to watch them figure out their lives and their favoriteness for themselves.


Yesterday, Beatrice explained to me that even though you are naked and dead, you are still cute. I think that is when it occurred to me that I should tell you that more often.  Lucy, in the list of people I think are cute, you are there, right on top, eternally little, beautiful, perfect, like a wax figure of love in my mind.That is what you are, and what you taught me, and what I know about you, you taught me about what love is and how to love in every inch of me--from my tearducts down to my aching, engorged breasts, from my brain, (no matter how I explicated it, I loved you) to the state of pure energy that resides in my chest. I love you without even a breath from you.

I'm not going to sign this letter. I think you know it is from me, because I whispered it on the wind to you, and typed it directly on my heart, and published it on the internet in case you are visiting India and can only access my thoughts in a cafe which charges the US equivalent of ten cents a minute.

Have fun seeing the world, my little beauty. Wish you were here.

Happy Blogoversary to Me.

Almost one year ago, to the day, I was 32 weeks pregnant, helping my husband home from surgery. His cut 6"4' frame balanced on my squatty, imbalanced body full of Thor and anxiety as we worked our way up the front steps of our home. We knew it would be a challenging time for our family, but he needed the surgery. We walked into our front porch, and the smell of freshly created vomit wafted into our nose. My mother was frantically cleaning up puke and sheepishly confused as to why Beatrice was throwing up. The stomach flu visited our home at the same time that Sam had surgery. And so, the next day, I was sick too, as is the way of the puking virus. I was cleaning my puke, Beatrice's puke, and Sam's pee pee. I was supposed to be on modifed bedrest, honestly, and all of this, I feared would kill Thor. It was a whirlwind of suck the like of which I feel I am still recovering. Honestly, the last year, I can say that I have had a bit of post-traumatic stress disorder. Any hint of norovirus amongst friends and family has met with a fierce and unwavering shiver and then distance. "Good luck with that. See you next month."

It did not keep the stomach bug from visiting the ranch almost exactly a year later. Thomas Harry started middle of the night from Sunday to Monday with explosive diarrhea that was (hell, still is) bright green. (It is such an interesting color, I had to note it). Then about twenty four hours later, his Exorcist-like puking began. Projectile. All-encompassing. We actually had to change our bed sheets until we had no more bed sheets. Tuesday night, I literally sat on the couch all night watching Thelma and Louise, Giant, Fiddler on the Roof, as he slept on my lap. I started puking sometime on Tuesday. It ended quickly for me, except for this math.

Check it out:
lack of sleep + puking + caring for a puking child + one high-energy/cabin fevered not sick child + a dog + a cranky, sleep-deprived husband = me fucking losing my mind.

Actually, Sam has been amazing. He took off work to care for me and Thomas Harry, because I simply haven't been able to rise very much. Or rather, maybe he took off work to care for Beatrice while T.H. and I writhe in crawling-out-of-our-skin-itis. Last night, lying in bed, inhaling the sour smell of psychic and physical defeat, I remembered and concluded in pure monkey style: the pukes might be the harbinger for my blogoversary.

This week is my two year blogoversary.

TWO YEARS! Whoop! Yee haw! Yippee! WONKA WONKA WONKA!

Two hundred and ninety five published posts. Forty unpublished posts. Amazing. I don't know what I thought this space would be two years after starting it. I don't know what I thought it would be the day I started it. But all I can say is that I would not be the person I am today without this blog and without you. You have loved me, supported me, made me feel like part of a community and helped me more than I could rightly express. So, thank you. Thank you for reading here and writing here.

For my two year blogoversary, I will give away something. It is actually your choice. One: a mizuko jizo painting of your choice painted by me with your baby in mind. This is the listing from my etsy shop. I will work with you to create something you will love. (If you are not interested in a mizuko jizo painting, you can also request a meditating mama painting, or a small painting of your children/child.) Two: a jizo statue for your altar. The jizo is shown in the Remembering section of my sidebar, right in front of the Buddha. I actually ordered it from this Etsy shop for this giveaway. or Three: They Were Still Born, which is a book in which my essay Mothering Grief appears.

And so to win one of these three things, please comment below. Tell me which of these items you would like to win. And, to steal borrow this idea from the lovely and very talented Lori Lavendar Luz from Write Mind Open Heart, I would really appreciate you leaving ME a present in return. That gift would be to tell me which of my posts made an impression on you and why. You don't have to link to it, but just mention the idea of it. (Or you can link to it, if you want.)

Happy blogoversary to me! And thank you, again, for your love and support.

Monkey mind

Breathe in through the nose. Out through the mouth.
Stop thinking about breathing and just breathe.
Monkey mind, Angie, monkey mind.
I just want to cuss now. Fuck, my skin is uncomfortable around my soul. And my belly binds up in lotus position. Frankly, it always did. Why does meditation sitting have to be so fucking uncomfortable? I mean, shouldn't it be in a comfty chair? The comfty chair?!?! Nobody expects the Spanish...Thinking, Angie. Thinking.
Oooooooooooooooooooom. Can you chant in your mind? I am chanting in my mind. Maybe I should use Fuck as my mantra. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Thinking. Fuck, Angie. Focus, dude. You are not supposed to do anything and you can't even not do anything. Oooooooooooom. Om. Nom. Yum.
"Mommy?"
Ignore the girl. You are meditating, for goodness sake. Keep. Your. Eyes. Closed. Keep them closed. Ignore her. She knows what she is doing. She is working with the monkey mind.
"Mommy? Mommymommmymommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmy."
Go away, little girl. Ask your father.
"MOMMMY?!?!"
"What, child? I am meditating."
"Do you want me to hit the gong now?"
"No. I will tell you when to hit the gong. Now go."
"Okay, but Mommy?"
"Yes, baby."
"Can I meditate with you?"
"Of course, but this is a non-talking meditation."
"So, you won't tell me to breath in love?"
"No. You will have to tell yourself that."
"Oh, sure. Sure, I can."
"Okay."
"Can I ring the gong now?"
"Yes, you may ring the gong now."

Breathe in love. Breathe out impatience. Maybe I should be listening for God. Or for my intuition. Wait, my intuition tells me to drink sixteen bourbons and eat a gallon of ice cream. My intuition is an asshole. Monkey mind, Ang. Monkey mind. 




















Breathe in love. Breathe out criticism.
Breathe in love. Breathe out anger.
Breathe in love. Breathe out fatness.
Breathe in like. Breathe out loathing.
Just like. Just breathe in like if you can't breathe in love yet.  My fucking knees hurt.
Breathe in tolerance. Breathe out starvation.
Breathe in tolerance. Breathe out monkey mind.


Breathe. Out. Monkeys.


Gooooooooong.
"I rang the gong, Mommy, because I was done."
"Thank you, love."

The Art of Surrender

My only goal this year is to make peace with my body. Not write a novel, or even a blog post. Not to paint a picture every day. Not to run a mile, or lose fifty pounds. I didn't vow to read a book a week for a year. I didn't promise to quit drinking. I didn't make resolutions about eating no meat, or dairy. Just to make peace. Just to come to accept.


This path has been more complicated and intense than I ever imagined. I realize that the body I inhabit is built of shame and anger and self-loathing. My daughter died in me. My. Daughter. Died. IN. Me. In my fat belly. The first thing I did when I got home from the hospital is google stillbirth. And there in the first list of things that are correlated to stillbirth is weight. Obesity causes stillbirth, it said. I killed my daughter with fat? I finally built up the courage to ask my midwife about it a few weeks later, because it became this festering nugget in the back of my brain. I would say, "We don't know what killed her." And I would think, "But I know, it was my fat." Deep down, I started integrating the blame into my being without really realizing it. When I did finally ask my midwife, she laid her hands on my shoulders and said, "Fatness did not kill your daughter. You did not kill your daughter." She explained that it was just a correlation, like being Latino or African-American. I cried and told her I gained so much in my pregnancy and maybe that killed her, maybe. She could tell me, I begged, the truth. I can handle it, I promised. She promised me she wasn't just being nice. But I didn't believe her.

Making peace with my body means I need to start believing her, or even if I don't believe her, to forgive myself for killing her. Forgiveness has always seemed like a powerful process  to me. I have gotten to places where I have forgiven people for breaking my heart, stealing all my things, for hitting me, for cheating on me, for stealing my identity and for betraying me. To be honest, I don't really know how to forgive myself. Somehow, there is a sense that this forgiveness is wrapped up in changing my body image and relationship and so I am starting there.

Part of this process is quitting drinking, mindful and moral eating and learning to integrate my body, mind and soul again. I know it sounds weird, but I feel like each part has been a separate entity. I have made a commitment to try to pray and meditate every day. To bend on my knees and give it up to the universe. To ask for help. I have a problem asking for help from people and even more so from God, or the universe. Mainly because I don't know how I feel about those things. God? Creator? I don't know. I think I have always been the quintessential definition of a deist. But maybe the kind of God I am praying to isn't the point, even if it is just asking for help in the dark, in the abyss. Maybe it is the art of surrender. I cannot rationalize my way out of this cycle of suffering. I cannot write it out. I cannot starve it out. I cannot drink it out. I cannot. And so, that is part of this year.

Praying and meditating every day is not something overdone or elaborate. I read a prayer, I ask for help and inspiration and specifically name something I want to do better today. When I meditate, I listen, instead of the Buddhist emptiness that has always accompanied my meditation. I am listening for my own voice. It is a strange thing to have to relearn how to trust yourself. To refind intuition. This process has given me focus and the quality of not having to reinvent the wheel. I just do it, and then it is over. I always imagine these things impossible to integrate into my life. But when I do it, it is simple.

So far, 2011 has been really amazing. Hard and scary, but also amazing and insightful. I miss having meditation and prayer as part of my ritual. I have drifted a long way from my spiritual center. Anxiety and grief like an winding, dark path off the road. Meditation and prayer and peace of mind felt too much like making peace with Lucy's death, when really that are simply making peace with myself.

about the boy.

Thomas Harry is ten months old. Well, two days ago. He enjoys being naked, pulling his sister's hair and playing the maracas. Both literally and figuratively. He is a fast crawler, and chases both the dog and his big sister. He also likes appropriating abandoned juice cups. His one grey eye and one brown eye have morphed into this amazing greyish brown color. He's got really cute boobies, as Beatrice points out. And he has eight teeth. He is 26.5 pounds, 30 inches and has the head circumference of a two year old. In our house, we say that the boy leads with his head. It is his form of affection to head butt your nose like some kind of football hooligan. He is very good at throwing a ball directly to you.


He is the Thornado, bringing a flurry of joy and overturned trucks and play kitchens, where ever he crawls. I didn't imagine that when we were pregnant. I was caught in this swirl of negativity, fear and inactive panic. How hard it will be. How jealous Beezus might get. How sick/hurt/damaged he might end up. How we don't have enough bedrooms on the same floor. How my love seemed not to be boundless. And then he was here, and he slipped into our lives like he's always been there. And he makes us laugh until we cannot breathe. And my love for him bottomless and encompassing and absolutely terrifying.

Ten months later, Beatrice doesn't remember a time before Thomas was here or a time when Lucy wasn't dead. And I think that is it. Lucy has also found her place in our family too. She is in every list we make about the most beautiful babies. She is in the invisible sister brigade that marches through the kitchen with pots and pans. She is in the rainbow we draw. She is the other baby in our family. She is the little sister. Perpetually, the little sister.

being and nothingness

When I studied kung-fu, my teacher used to always say there was nothing more dangerous than a student of three months. He had just enough training to think he had enough training. Push him past that point and he learns that he knows nothing. The more training he has, the less he knows. In the end, the true warrior avoids conflict anyway. Somedays I feel like spiritually I am perpetually three months out in life.


I don't know why I am telling you this. I just want to write and I can't write. I spend a great deal of my spare time reading about what other people think about God and humanity and life, and I have never quite made up my own mind. This fucking koan is stuck in my head again: if you have a stick, I will give you one. If you don't have a stick, I will take one away. I took it once to a philosophy professor. I meditated on it all the time, but it never came to me. "This is not a logical argument," he said. "It is a riddle." And that made me more determined to figure it out. What do you think it means? I finally took out stick and put in truth.


If you have truth, I will give you truth. If you don't have a truth, I will take your truth away.


Maybe it should be God. Or confusion. Or wisdom. Or baby.


The funny thing is that I used to balk when reading these Buddhist stories of monks who meditate on the same koan for years, and I have invested a decade on that one and have nothing.


:::


The only authenticity I have is to admit that I am human. I adapt to my surroundings. But even my adaptations are flawed. And when I unravel my humanness, I realize it is all based on something flawed-fear, reputation, pain, sadness, grief. My experiences seem to lead up to this one point in my life. It is a point of acceptance that I am the sum of all the great flaws of humanity. It doesn't make me special. We all are the sum of flaws. I said that like it's a bad thing, but it's not. It is not bad or good. It just is.


I know nothing. I am nothing. Peel away the layers of me and it boils down to that. This month, I have been absolutely humbled. All of my wisdom, a lie. Well, maybe not all, but I am in a place of absolute bones and bareness. But in this place of absolute vulnerability and fear and nothingness, I am kind of happy. For when I stripped away the things I thought were holding me up, I realized that I had already been standing.

Enlightenment

“Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.”
Dogen(Japanese Buddhist monk and philosopher 1200-1253)

I am over at Glow today, writing about my enlightenment, or lack thereof.

Fibs and prayers.

This post is almost solely about parenting my living children. I'll give you some room to leave.








While you are waiting, I will give you a little Connery.

Good evening, bitches!

Honestly, I have no idea what is wrong with me. I am sober, actually. I am just in a weird Connery codpiece kind of mood. Alright, onto the post.









My daughter talks about her vagina now. She makes jokes about it like a frat boy jokes about his johnson.

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"My vagina."
"Don't be sassy, Beatrice."
"I'm not sassy. I am funny."
"Well, actually, that was kind of funny, but it is also sassy to joke about your vagina."

She draws it too. There is her head, then her body, then her vagina and then her legs. I actually thought she was drawing a thorax, but no, she assures me it is her vagina. It is a lot like performance art with her these days.

She sat today with namaste hands, eyes closed, cross-legged under her princess canopy.
"Excuse me, Mommy."
Sam and I look up from our heated conversation about how we envision the children's room, bunk bed and loft reading spaces. Thomas joining in conversation by screaming here and there.
"Yes, my love."
"I am trying to meditate, so you need to be quiet, or leave my room."
You are three, daughter.
"Oh, I'm sorry, honey. We are going." But I wonder what happens in meditation for a toddler. And then I realize that I taught her that. I taught her about the meditation and the vagina.


I had all kinds of ideas about the kind of mother I would be when I was a single woman. I'd get lost in the 100 yard stare, imagining a thousand "what if" scenarios. I have never really encountered a scenario for which I have been prepared. I mean, sort of, but not really. Not conversations about death, or birth, or vaginas or meditation. She comes at it with her own perspective, interest and questions. It is disarming and comforting to know that she will always be unpredictably herself. And I will never be a lecturer. She will always be someone I am getting to know.


I watch my daughter with equal parts amazement and wonder. She is so much like me as a child. Her little way of being, her diligence, her generous spirit and curiosity. Her desire to talk and connect and be part of the adult world. All of it is straight me, and when I see an adult get impatient with her, I pull her on my lap, and kiss her eyes. "My angel," I whisper. "Don't change."

It is the ultimate healing to love this girl. I find myself being more forgiving, compassionate and loving towards myself as a child. I always thought I was a bad kid. My mother assures me now that I was nothing close to bad, but in my head, I hear her admonishments and annoyance at my imperfections. I've always been notoriously hard on myself. It is no different now, I guess.

My parents' main parenting style, from what I can parse out by questions over wine, is primarily shame, not in a wholly unkind way either. Maybe that is a Catholic thing, or the way parenting used to be. I was ashamed when I misbehaved in public, and so I didn't. Shame is still a very close companion for me. Shame motivates me in a way that nothing else can, and in the same way, abandoning shame feels like finding that child again, pulling her on my lap, kissing her eyelids.

We drove upon the aftermath of an accident a month or so ago. Ambulance. Police cars. Lights. She watched a man strapped to a board being taken aboard the ambulance, and she said, "Who is that, Mama?" as though I know everyone in the world. I could only see that it was a man in his thirties, perhaps.

"I don't know, my love."

She paused, and said, "Maybe it is one of my friends." I turned around quickly. It caught me up--my breath and my parenting both. It was a moment where I needed to say something profound, something important. "This is the time when I teach a lesson about compassion," I thought. This is the moment I imagined before I ever had children, when I would imagine a scenario and how I would deal with it. I said something about how it wasn't her friend, but that it was good to see everyone as someone's friend. And then I kept going until I made no sense anymore. I am just winging it. I am just making this parenting stuff up as I go along. Maybe I am even making this life stuff up as I am going along too.

This year, I have made one resolution--to forgive myself and forgive my body. To learn to love this shell of me, because it is just a shell that I need to keep strong and healthy, even though the shell is not me. And I am not my shell. Forgiving my body, and learning to live in this skin is exceedingly hard, especially when you realize that you have been lying to yourself for so long you suspect you may be built of fibs and prayers.

But still, I am working hard these days on healing, on forgiving myself, on being a whole person honest with my faults, my shortcomings and my defects of character. It feels like a little like being skinned alive. I want to crawl under something which provides warmth and darkness, like the stove, until my skin grows back. And yet, some days, when I hold my girl on my lap, I realize that I am still exactly like her on some level. I am still little somewhere in me, even if I have found destructively adult ways to cope with the littleness.

Leper.

I used to think that I would heal from my daughter's death, but I am a leper. I will never really heal. I am always in some kind of dull grief pain, so much so that I rarely feel it anymore. My skin itches. My eyes run. But it's okay, really. I mostly live my life with others of my kind. In a colony. Or a virtual colony. And because I live with others of my kind, I feel normal. I sometimes venture into the non-leper world--mommy blogs, or play dates and the such, but I realize I don't belong there. It is as though the healthy, non-leper people are pointing at me and saying, "Ack, a leper."

"What? Me?" I stare at my scabby, oozing sores. "Oh, right, yes. A leper, but we all knew that already, no?"

When you are past two years, maybe it is time when you should not be still writing, arting and talking about grief.  A new babylost mama said to me recently that she didn't want to be someone whose whole life was about the grief from her child's stillbirth, and then I realized that my whole life is about the grief from my child's stillbirth. I wasn't offended, and she wasn't being offensive. It just was a moment where I reflected. This feels like the authentic me, though. I know, authenticity is such a bullshit word to so many people, but in a wholly existential way, it feels authentic. This is the real me. One who lives on the edge of the living and the dead, straddling both worlds, not truly part of either. I think that has always been my place in the world. A liminal place between worlds--white and Latina, masculine and feminine, mainstream and punk, artist and poser, sacred and profane, dead and undead. It feels right and good to make art and write about what comes up. But then again, maybe I am stuck. Maybe I am not supposed to still feel sad. I don't know. I. Don't. Fucking. Know.

Actually, maybe this leper talk is kind of creepy, or plain unfair to people with leprosy. But I think the analogy is good. Did you know that 95% of the human race have a natural immunity to leprosy? And that while I was mostly healthy and a good conversationalist, my kid still died in me. It was like a one in 160 pregnancy chance. I don't know why I am comparing statistics. When you have been a one, no other number of the other side looks big enough. And statistics kind of feel like bullshit. Still, leprosy and  full term stillbirth have their similarities.

My daughter asked me tonight why we can't have a girl baby that stays, and I have no response that feels adequate. I just stammered and then she said we can name her Lucy again, since we all like that name so much. It broke my heart open again, like it is the first time someone suggested that we can just have another baby. She is so earnest about it, so logical, I feel silly for arguing that Lucia is the only sister who gets that name. And that we can't just have girl babies because it seems like a girl baby should nurse with the boy baby.

Thomas turned nine months on January 1st. Nine months. Today I received the travel journal after its harrowing journey through Europe, Canada and the United States. Ines included a bag of hand-carved pebbles. Skytimes included a little handmade journal, and everyone wrote diary entries from the Travel Gnome's point of view, and it made me feel like crying. I mean, if I were a different person, I would have wept. Last year, I would have wept. But this year, I just laughed, and my soul did cartwheels like the first time someone wrote a goofy haiku with me and thought it was funny. I read the whole thing with a glass of amazing red wine. It is perfect to have others put their hearts and souls into something you also put your heart and soul into. I don't know how else to describe it.

As my Facebook friends know, someone kept the journal for a month and a half. I know she would argue at that categorization, but let's just say, it was mailed in mid-November, and didn't arrive on the next person's doorstep until the end of December. We exchanged emails about it, since I felt she should apologize to all the women and she felt like I was being a controlling bitch. She acted entitled. I don't know, I reacted, and shouldn't have. I have no defense except that I give a shit. I gave a shit about the travel journal being the last piece on still life 365 for the year and it wasn't and it upset me. She said her family was sick, and she gave me a load of excuses. I wanted to tell her everything I had been through this year, and still managed to publish a piece of art every day of the fucking year. I wanted to tell her that the day I was in labor with Thomas Harry, the day I went to the hospital, is the day I mailed out the journal. I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning the night before sending off emails to every person participating, and packed it up and waddled to the post office. Then I birthed Thor.

Maybe it is just me who is a leper. You know, she isn't the first person to call me a controlling bitch. Probably not the last. I am not even offended by that, really. I get things done. Some call that controlling, others efficient. I have thick skin for that sort of insult. But it reminded me of the betrayals of my life. This is a drop in the bucket, yes, but still, that feeling of someone saying, "Your desire to have things a certain way betrayed you, not me." It is a truth I can never seem to learn. I have to stop desiring things.

In a separate note and question, how long is it supposed to take a couple to finish a bottle of port wine? Sam claims this should last us more than three days. And that I am perhaps drinking it more like wine, rather than port. But it is so dang good in front of the fire while wearing my big heavy woolen grief socks. I also promised an excerpt from my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) novel. Maybe tomorrow? Anyone coming to the reading on Sunday?