Ob-la-di, ob-la-da...

"It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening."

-from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

I ran across this line in the book I was finishing during the week after my surgery. It struck me. I read it again. Yes! I thought to myself. Even when I felt confused and stunned and sad deep down inside (right after the doctor told me our baby had died), I still chose to run errands with my sister. Can't change what has happened...might as well go on... I rationalized. I made my necessary phone calls from her cell phone while we were out and about. The next day I succumbed to my sorrow for a few hours, but life was still happening in the next room. As I lay there crying, I could hear my daughter desperately trying to help with the baby my mom was tending to. "Gran, can I help you change her diaper?" "Gran, does she have a little rash? Do you need me to get her cream?" "Gran, I will hold her bottle to feed her, okay?" My heart broke a little bit more when I realized how ready to step into the role of Big Sister Ava would have been by January. Ava soon came along and lived life with me for a while, comforting me in a way that only a two-year-old can, while the daily sounds hummed around us.

I reemerged later, sorrow and all, blending back into daily life. Having a small child around really keeps things moving. Even though you are sad, she still needs her nap, her snack time, her meals. You can't just drop out completely. After I had given myself some time to feel, it was time to let the current pick me back up and carry me where it would. We ate dinner with my sister's family that night. The next day was phone calls, haircuts and other errands. Breakfast, lunch, snack time, and dinner. Life. The next day was my surgery, which by that point was just a part of life, too. We had a thing to do. It had to be done, so we just carried on as if it were a normal part of our routine. It wasn't, of course, but it seemed like it by that point. After I lived with knowing there was a lifeless person inside me for a few days, I became ready to undo that fact so I could move on. And that's just what we started doing in the days that followed.

A few days later, I was feeling better and moving faster, so I made a concerted effort to concentrate on being a mother to my living child, to play and hug and tickle and laugh. To live. She needs me, even when my heart is temporarily broken. I will not dig myself a hole of self-pity and sit in it. My in-laws came to town that day, and I had completely forgotten they were due. When I got the call that they were here, I felt so disoriented. What day is this? Dinner tonight? Sure. We have to eat. Life goes on. Even when you don't know the day or hour. It just keeps right on moving, with or without you. I choose with me. It's too short to fritter away.

...la la how the life goes on.

Googleable!

I was just reading an article on the blogher website about driving traffic to your website. There was mention of being linked from other sites and how that will eventually work you up the result list on a Google search. I hadn't tried Googling mixed veggies in a very long time because it usually just makes me frustrated that my blog name is a common phrase on recipe websites, but today I decided What the heck? and moused over to my Google search bar. As I typed in mixed veggies, I expected to click page after page hunting for it until I finally gave up. Lo and behold, it squeaked in at the bottom of PAGE ONE!!! I couldn't believe it. Not only is mixed veggies Googleable now, it's also findable! Sometimes it's the simple things in life that keep us interested to see what the next hour will bring...

Sometimes we don't get to choose.

On Friday, July 21, 2006, I was initiated into a club I hoped never to be a part of. The welcome packet includes a delicious popsicle following surgery, a personalized plastic bracelet, a prescription for 600mg Motrin, a brief publication entitled "D&C Home Care Instructions," and as a final parting gift, a feminine pad the size of Montana. I call it The D&C Club. Lovely bunch of women, really. But still, I'd rather not be counted among them. I am there among at least ten women I know personally and can think of off the top of my head. And there's no telling how many others I don't know about yet. I am just flabbergasted at how common this is, at how many women say things like "Oh, we've been through that..." or "...when I had mine...."

Every woman knows those little letters. Until Tuesday of last week, I didn't even know what words those letters stand for, only their very sad implication when they are coupled with that tiny conjuction. And I would say most women don't know. Dilation and Curettage. Those words have kept me up at night, haunting me. DILATION. CURETTAGE! RELINQUISHED!!! But no matter how haunting the words are, life won't let me turn in my membership card. Here I am...a life member. No turning back.

No turning back the clock to before. Before we waited extra months to get pregnant again (which might have allowed time to try again for a 3L baby--that's lingo for a baby during third year of law school, an optimal time to have Daddy around). Before I agreed to go to the doctor alone that day. Before I kept my thoughts to myself when the doctor didn't hear a heartbeat with the doppler, even though I was dying inside and wanted to hear him admit it was bad that there was no discernable heartbeat with doppler at twelve weeks. Before I said, "Everybody think positive thoughts...I would rather not go through twelve more weeks of nausea," just as he began the ultrasound. Before I witnessed his determined stare and morose silence for three straight minutes while he studied the ultrasound image to make 100% sure my baby was dead before he told me so. (He didn't have to say it. I knew before he even confirmed it.) Before he turned the monitor my way and allowed me to see the lifeless little bean, still and silent, no flashing heartbeat where the little dark spot (heart) is. Before that image was etched into my mind forever. Before my stunned and disappointed response was "Well, that's a bummer." Before he said the size of the baby indicates it was only seven and a half weeks along. Before the words, "So my baby died over a month ago and I didn't even know it?" passed from my lips. Before the only ultrasound photo the doctor could give me--the only tangible thing I will ever have of this baby--got crumpled in the bottom of my bag. Before I had to call my husband to deliver the news. Before the day of sorrow that followed, and the day of feeling full of death that followed that, and the day of resignation that followed that, and the day of emptiness that all of these days were leading up to. Before I signed my name below the words "Any and all claims to the contents of my uterus and/or the fetus I hereby relinquish," pausing after only four letters of my signature to absorb the reverberation of that horrible word--relinquish--and pour out some sorrow as I completed what had to be done.

After my surgery, I remember nothing before I felt a tear fall down my cheek, and I became aware of the finality, of my emptiness. I was deeply sad, and my husband finally gleaned that I was regretting that I didn't get to say goodbye. Afraid to see, but more afraid to regret not doing so, I requested to see, to know what happened to "the contents of my uterus." The nurse was right. There was really nothing to see. Our baby was the size of a pinto bean, and amidst "the contents of my uterus" it was nothing seeable. But I needed to know that. To feel like I had the last word. To feel like I got to say goodbye. To let go. To relinquish.

I relinquished. I relinquished my own flesh and blood, and God didn't ask me for my opinion in the matter.

Goodbye, Baby. I miss you.

Life Lesson #3,982: Always Remember Your Purse

When we made the trek to Texas back in May, I brilliantly left my purse hanging on the back of a stall door in the ladies room at a Burger King in Tennessee. It was an easy mistake, as I was focusing my attention downward to the tiny human I frequently accompany to the restroom. Unfortunately, I didn't realize my purse was missing until the next day, in Arkansas, over five hours away. I managed to track it down by using phone numbers on our receipts (see, sometimes it pays to keep up with receipts). The store manager who had the misfortune of having my predicament heaped upon her to deal with was less than pleasant about my request that the purse be mailed to me in Texas. First she shot off at me, "How do I even know you are the owner of the purse!?" I proceeded to lose my cool and express my knowledge of every last detail about the purse's contents (all the way down to the little birthday verse I copied onto an old receipt to use on a birthday card for my sister) until she stopped me with, "I hadn't been IN it to know any of that." I think my furor coupled with my obvious knowledge of personal effects convinced her that a thorough investigation of my identity was not necessary. She agreed to take down my address in Texas and talk to her manager about whether or not she was even allowed to mail the purse back to me. She did not repeat the address to me, nor would she listen to further requests from me. I asked that she please call me back regardless of her answer from Corporate so that I could double-check the address with her and discuss mailing options. She agreed. Well, that call never came. I called the next morning and confirmed with a different store manager that the purse had been mailed C.O.D. the day before. I was frustrated that the lady hadn't called me back so that I could direct her to the fifty dollars cash I had in the purse (drawn for travel purposes...lot of good that did us on our trip, eh?) and urge her to pay top dollar to get the package to me as quickly and safely as possible, with a reward for her to boot. But what could I do? The deed was done. Now I just had to hope it made its way to me.

A week passed. No purse. Two weeks passed. Still no purse. Having lost packages in the U.S. postal system before, I knew better than to bother barking up anybody's tree for a whole month. If it's lost, it's just lost, it seems. A month passed, so I called Burger King again and asked the store manager who mailed the package exactly how she mailed it (not C.O.D. after all--that was too much hassle--just "straight mail" because it was gonna cost her twelve bucks just to do that!), exactly what address she wrote on it (are you kidding! that was thrown away as soon as it was on the box!), if there was a return address on the package (no, why would she put that?), if it was insured (of course not, it was just someone's purse full of credit cards, cash, and identity), if there was a tracking number or anything (have a way to TRACK a package full of prime info for identity theft? What a waste of money!), etc. Had she only called me back before carting off to the Post, she might not have been so prone to send it so ridiculously, as it would have been my dime not hers.

There are so many moments I replay in my mind and wonder if things might have turned out better IF. What if I had made her repeat the address to me, even if she was fussy about it? What if I had called back immediately after I hung up and my husband said, "You didn't tell her to use our cash to mail it." I expected her to call back, and I didn't want to tick her off any more...she could decide to just be mean and not mail it, just to spite me. She sounded like the volatile type. What if I had asked her if they had a safe she could keep it in all summer, and we would pick it up on our way back through Tennessee in August? (Though that seemed riskier than mailing it.) What if we had asked our family friends a few hours from there to make a special trip on our behalf just to retrieve my lost purse and mail it to me themselves? Maybe then it would be here, and I wouldn't still be hassling with it. But regardless of all the what-ifs, the fact remains that it isn't here and it's not likely to ever find its way to me. So the credit cards must be changed, the gift cards and cash are lost forever, my driver's license must be replaced, I'll never be able to use the new exercise ball I just bought whose plug was being "safely" carried here in my purse, that birthday card for my sister will never be created, and on and on. As I told my angry husband at the truck stop in Arkansas that day after The Dawning, if that's the worst thing that happens to our family on a cross-country road trip, maybe we should count ourselves lucky. None of us was sick, injured, or dead. Our car wasn't stolen. Our keys and cell phone were not in the purse, nor was the checkbook. I already have a fraud alert on my credit from that time several years ago when my wallet was stolen right off my desk at work, so while this is indeed annoying and frustrating, it is not the worst that could happen.

After my disappointing conversation with the BK manager, I made all the necessary calls to the postal system to find out exactly what form I needed to fill out, etc. Eventually, I made my way to a surprisingly helpful and cheerful postal employee at the local station, who looked all over the post office for the package, in case it got stuck there for some reason. Then he told me what to do to file a loss report but not to get my hopes up that the package would be recovered. It's probably at a wrong residence, and people don't often return those...at least not any time soon. That's pretty much what I thought.

So I'm sitting here filling out the Mail Loss/Rifling Report to turn in to the U.S. Postal Service, and it occurs to me more acutely than ever that there's no way they will ever find my purse with the sketchy information I can provide them. Article was mailed by: Some lady named JoAnne. Return address on article mailed: None. Article was addressed to: Me, but who knows if she had the correct address. Place of Mailing: Main post office, station or branch, etc.? Unknown. I guess Branch. Name of Place of Mailing: Middlebrook Heights...at least I thought that's what JoAnne told me, but it doesn't come up on the web as a branch in that city. Zip Code of Place of Mailing: Yeah, right. I'm not even sure it's in the same city. All I know in detail is what was inside my purse. And though I know it's terribly unlikely that I will ever see that cute red purse again, I will file the report on the hopes that I will one day be reunited with the plug for my back care exercise ball. That's about all that will still be of use to me by then.