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The richness of family

I know people say two people can be a family.  I have seen this to be true. I have felt it to be true in my own happy marriage.

But in my case, two makes for a very quiet family. My husband is a quintiscential quiet, geeky type.  I am lively, but need people to feed off of, otherwise I am the quiet one blending into the wallpaper or hiding in the bathroom for the party to be over. Image

Tonight I sit quietly with Spotify running seeded by “Rudy” by Be Good Tanyas (my favorite, and very sad, Christmas song). I have made my Christmas decorations.   Three sets of candle center pieces surrounded by holly and greenery.  One for the kitchen table. One for the music area. One for my bedside table.

I lite the first two and have just sat in the dark for hours. 

Waiting for something.  Peace?  Tears? 

I don’t know what.  Something like peace came. Tears came.  Love came through whatsapp and skype. 

And then I read the latest post from the woman back home who lost her daughters in a hit and run accident.  It was a list of all the things she miss.  My heart breaks for her.  My heart also sings thinking of all those wonderful everyday moments she had.  Her house was so full of love and rituals and laughter.  Oh how I wish that could all come rushing back to her…

And reading that list broke through my armor.  Of how very very much I want a bustling, crazy, loud house full of laughter and fighting and sweet notes to each other and angry notes to “stay out!!” A house where ki dsleave love notes under their parents pillow and sing and dance with their parents.  Where everyone does a happiness journal at night, and sometimes leaves it out for other to read.

 I know that such a household is a special and probably all to rare thing.  But I believe with all my heart that my friend’s house was like this. I have seen her with kids at work. I’ve been with her on outdoor adventures.  She was a natural at being fully present and loving in a lovely and non-suffocating way. I never saw her parent.. just teach.. but she was the type where I sat up and took notes because she ‘got’ it and I wanted to learn as much from her as possible.

I want her to have it all back… and I want to dare to want it for myself.

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Honest friends

A close friend here, who I’ll call Hannah, finally sat me down one night.   She looked me straight in the eye and said,

Claire, I know you suck at asking for what you want. Saying it out loud. But you want kids.  That is okay. You want them and of course you’ll survive without them… but damn it, you can want them and go after them.

And with a few more words about stopping with the bullshit excuses and fretting about details and ethics that aren’t that big of a deal, I realized she was right.  The honest truth is I really want them. I am completely willing to make the sacrifices it requires.  I know I like kids and am I good with them.  I know this might not work.   And I know that not admitting to myself how very much I still want this, won’t change the reality of that desire.

dancing clouds

dancing clouds

In other news, my friend who lost her two daughters in a hit and run just celebrated what would have been her daughter’s birthday.  Her friends came over and had milkshakes.  They had the birthday party anyway. We are all calling Nov 13 national milkshake day, though I think it is safely an international event given that so many people connected to this incredible family are overseas.    She speaks with such forgiveness for the driver.  She shares the most amazing photos with us all.  She stays connected with her daughters’ classes and even went to parent teacher conferences and insisted that the teacher not sugar coat the kids’ progress this far in the year.  The whole town is putting art up in the trees and raising money to build an accessible playground in their memory.  I am in complete awe of this mother.  I am in awe of how positive she is and how much strength she finds. I am in awe of my hometown for embracing them and supporting them and loving them.  I am in awe of the letters to the editor reminding the community to not hate the poor kid who was driving that car.  The kid who was also just playing in the leaves, albeit in a teenage way, when she drove her car through that pile of leaves…

But more than anything, every morning I wake up to see what the mother says about her daughters and about how grateful she is to have had so many years with them.  How much joy she feels in how lucky she was to have held them for those years!    How love drenched their lives were.  How much she wants us all to go out an hug and love on our loved ones.  And in her grief, she somehow manages to connect with those of us longing for kids, loving kids, and grieving kids.    Have I mentioned how much I love this woman.    And with all my heart, I wish I didn’t know that she was capable of being so honest and strong and loving in the face of such loss.

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“is acutely aware that the status quo can be hard to change”

A weird funk came over me these past couple weeks.  I attributed it to the transition from vacation in the states with friends and family back to Europe.  I was to start a new job in Ireland, but the paperwork wasn’t sorted yet, so I ended up back in Italy in a limbo.  It made sense to be a bit out of sorts.  And being unemployed and in limbo.. well that lead to me spending WAY too much time on facebook.

Then facebook began to tell me sad news.

The first was an amazing man from the old guard in my rowing club in New Zealand. He passed suddenly. I don’t know the details, but it sounds like an aggressive cancer caught late. Something about being given 10 days, but only getting 4.  He was one of the first people I wanted to catch up when I got back to New Zealand next year.  One of those classic cases in which  we weren’t close, but I was lucky to know him and wish I would have had more time to spend with him.  I was pretty bummed that I am not going to get to see him when I return to NZ.

Then it got worse.

Two days before the funeral in NZ, I get a text from my dearest friend back home — about a great great colleague from my special ed camp days.   A lady who I often bumped into at the spec ed district office because we both were storming in to bring an issue to light. A person I would have loved to be closer friends with, but she was a single mom and busy and I was off in New Zealand and then Italy being busy myself.  We caught up when we could and openly joked about how she lived vicariously through my travel photos and I through her amazing photography of her incredible daughter.    Then she got THE HAPPY ENDING!  She met this incredible guy, father to 3, and they married and moved in together and began their lives in a boisterous house with his youngest and her youngest and her great — but now old – dog.  The scales tipped.  We both were  still a bit envious of each others’ day to day lives, but I think  honestly that I had a twinge more envy for her life.  I have never known a more happy and generous and grateful person.  She radiated it, even as she continued to battle on with the dramas at work and the everyday realities that is life.

And then the bad news.  Both girls were playing in a pile of lives and were struck by a car.  This world lost both of them.

I haven’t stopped praying and loving and thinking about them.  I have been in awe of the grace an dignity the family has shown, with press statements that were so perfectly worded to spread love and forgiveness.   The entire community gathered to celebrate their lives with such deep respect and love and, when it could be mustered,  joy! Every day this mom posts another photo of the girls smiling and enjoying the short lives they shared.

And so every day I wake and go to facebook.  To see another smile. To see another kind comment from the community that proves that yes indeed people can be good.  To see the world still turning.

And then I went back to my own profile. Just started flipping back through the years.  Back to 2008.  Back to this week 5 years ago.

I found two short sentences I cryptically posted that month.

  • On the day of the egg retrieval: “… is loving the number 19”  in reference to the number of eggs retrieval
  • On the day of the negative: “is acutely aware that the status quo can be hard to change”

But today I read that  last line so different;y.  For my friend back home, the status quo changed tragically forever in a second.  She will never have a day where she doesn’t think about her girls.  I have plenty of days now where I forget about my infertility and in which  I have to actually do the mental arithmetic of how old any possible kid would be if we had had a successful cycle.  Rarely do I cry about it now.  Yet somehow my body seemed to remember the date.  The fog only lifted when I explicitly noticed the date and connected it to the one and only  cycle I got to try 5 years ago.

I would never in a million years compare these two losses.  But I was moved to write when I realized by how differently I see my own journey these past 5 years and wondering what parts of my status quo could I actually change, and how much of this game of life is just rolling with the crushing blows that get dished out and how well we reach out to hold each other up when that happens.