blessing way
It was supposed to be for the pregnant women, but I felt awfully blessed myself.
Don’t think I’m a freak (even if I am, you don’t have to tell me) but there’s just something really special about massaging your pregnant friend’s hand after her paraffin dip. Our society so rarely allows touch to be comfortable unless it’s between a mother and a small child, sexual partners, or a paying client and a massage therapist. It’s sad. But I’m so acutely conscious of that taboo that I really respect it all the time, even when I’d rather not. My mother’s family, and my Best Old Friend’s family, are touchy. I love it and I miss it in my life.
It’s nice to have a context in which it’s appropriate to just do healing, caring touch because you like someone, no strings or weirdness of any sort attached. Energetically speaking (because that’s what I do) that was the high point for me, I think. That was the moment I could feel really nurturing and grateful for the friendships.
Everyone brought yummy food or craft or gift items. I was particularly proud of the fuzzy slippers, but it was all yummy — beaded friendship bracelets and paraffin dips and foot spas and scrap book pages and flowers and eye pillows and aromatherapy and food food food!
It wouldn’t have happened without the generosity of the attendees… and my husband spent about two hours cleaning this morning– things that bothered me, of course, but I just didn’t have time to fool with it and so was going to let it go. Then he hid away with the kids upstairs for three and a half hours so that we could have girl space.
This is one milestone I really needed to clear before I could get on with my life. And I have much to get on with, but that is fodder for another post.
Now I have to bust my ass to finish the baby quilt for the next pregnant lady event. It will be my pleasure. I got my sewing machine out to do the eye pillows so it’s just a quick step to starting to sew that quilt top. Maybe I have enough for two to even three girl babies, if the one whose mommy won’t find out or reveal his gender happens to be a girl–but I predict boy, let me go on the record as predicting boy, cause of how he sits– hope we get to find out soon!
2x pajamas
I had my 33rd birthday shortly after I found out I was pregnant with shaky baby.
My husband– oh wait, we weren’t married yet– babydaddy brought home a small but loving offering. We were probably broke at that time, we were perennially broke. It was a beautiful dream journal and a pair of pajamas.
The pajamas were from Wal Mart, but they had a small botanical print on them that was lovely, satin trim, and they were so soft. The ADD, or HSP, or whichever, in me is so grateful for clothing that does not rub my skin in any way whatsoever. Such clothes are hard to find.
As he handed them to me with this sweet aww shucks look on his face he said, I know it’s not much, and you aren’t this big, but you will be, and you will need something soft and comfortable for while you are pregnant. It is one of my sweetest memories of our time together.
Fast forward over four years. I’m still wearing the pajamas. The elastic is soft and gentle but tight enough to hold the britches up. The satin covers have come off the buttons. I have stained them with the various fluids and substances of my humanity. I wash them and wear them over and over. The fabric is softer than ever, and I think they are lovely. The crotch hangs almost to my knees.
A while back I forgot them at my friend’s house. I was staying with her on a healing school weekend… her mother runs the school and she’s my best friend from library school and that’s how I know her mother and ended up in healing school. Anyhoo I forgot them on the floor in her bathroom when I got up and left for school in the morning. Now that I think of it… I had run away early when I had a sudden and huge late grief explosion regarding my miscarriage a year and a half before. No wonder I forgot them.
Anyway. I went there last weekend and spent several hours with her and her new precious little baby, born Dec. 31. It was such a special time. I can never spend enough time holding a tiny baby.
She said, I keep forgetting to give your pajamas back to you. I said, those are my pregnant girl pajamas. She said, I know. I wore them to the hospital.
I teared up then, and I am tempted to cry now. I am wearing the pajamas. I finally unpacked them from my trip. They smell sweetly of whatever fabric softener she uses.
She and I have been through many years and many friendship obstacles. Not least, she lives five hours away and has a busy life of her own. If it weren’t for the healing school I mightn’t see her ever. To have her silently reach out and affirm our friendship after so many years, in that way, to need me, I guess is the only way I can think of to say it, when we are so far apart– I had felt like a pretty fraudulent friend, not to be at the hospital for her c section. But she took me with her.
Snif.
this is finally sinking in, a week later
I still can’t believe I heard it.
I think my birth control pills are giving me candida problems. No, not ‘down there’. That’s just about the only place it isn’t bothering me, thankyouverymuch. But it’s a problem just about everywhere else, and I’ve read that candida can even cause depression and all sorts of other cumulatively debilitating and serious maladies. We have a propensity to this problem, and its darker side, diabetes, in my family. We luvs our sugar and carbs. And on top of that, birth control pills are famous for suppressing immunity.
So I talked to my husband about this, and other problems allegedly caused by birth control pills and– he’s okay with natural family planning.
WHAT?
Maybe the tears are what got him, I don’t know.
Natural family planning fails. It fails all the time. It’s what got my sister in law (with beautiful results, it is true, but it was totally a life change she hadn’t planned on). You may can get away with it for quite some time, but not forever.
He’s okay with that!
This is what precipitated the eight things I want to accomplish in the next year post. Because if a natural family planning failure is okay with him that would add sooo much complexity that I couldn’t possibly accomplish some of the other things. At least, a trip to China with my existing baby would be out of the question. The other things might be doable… in fact they may actually lend themselves to being combined with a pregnancy.
Well… I’m going to try to remain centered and intentional. By that I mean, I’m just going to try to stick with my life rather than abdicating and letting chance fix it for me, as it did with my pregnancy with shaky baby. And oooohhh what a fix! She’s the most beautiful little moon fish rainbaby child ever. But intention is what my life is supposed to be about these days.
I’ll keep you posted. No, I won’t, because probably it’s too much information. Just the thought of, er, having a family is pretty squeamish territory. Well just assume that no news is, um, no news, that I’m trucking away trying to accomplish financial and educational goals– and actually believing my husband said this– I’m trying not to get too excited about it, for fear he’ll take it back– before having another one.
blather
I call this post blather because I haven’t a single braincell left, I swear. I am so freaking tired.
My husband and I mapped out our plans for our back yard, as far as raised beds for veggies and, as I put it, a vista, a path, a resting place, and a destination. Now, our yard probably isn’t 200 feet long. Anyway, while it seems huge when it’s time to mow or think about planting and tending it, it’s not nearly big enough for a real vista, or path, or destination. But that’s what I see in my head, and that’s what we’re going to have. We’ll have places to stop and ‘rest’ on our way to the ‘destination’ at the far end, and I’d like to have some herbs and a wild area that will attract bugs and birds and butterflies. I’d also like to let some portion of it grow wild, but we have to leave enough room to play croquet, which needs 100 feet or so, so we may not have enough room for much of a, er, meadow.
Then, we busted our asses tidying up the house and mowing the yard and so were exhausted when our guests began arriving around four.
Tonight we provided the house for a party for a friend of my husband’s, who’d just been promoted. It was a small party, nothing on the scale of the housewarming, but nice. We grilled out and drank beer and the guys played horseshoes for hours– score! Finally someone got some use out of the pits my husband worked so hard to measure out and dig and build. It was hot, but not unbearable, especially with a cold beer in hand. It is soooooo nice to have a place I feel comfortable inviting people. I’m not saying it’s a palace, I’m just saying I am proud of it and enjoy opening my home so that folks can socialize. And… we have worked hard to have a place we feel like sharing.
We didn’t cook or anything. After busting my ass cooking for my vegetarian father last week, I just didn’t have it in me, and we really didn’t want to spend the money on one of my extravagant dos. I felt a bit weird– have friends over without piles of home cookin’ over which I slaved for hours and which broke our grocery budget? But… it was kinda nice. We provided chips and dip, soda, ice, some beer, some hotdogs, just a few basics. A friend brought over his industrial food-service looking gas grill and the promoted guy’s wife brought pasta salad and baked beans. Yum.
One of my husband’s friends just had a baby in May. I was ecstatic to see the baby, I hadn’t seen her since she was a newborn and the mommy was still in the hospital and– I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when the mom said she had to run home to get a pacifier, and casually asked, would I hold her? WOULD I??? Jeez, who did she think she was talking to? That kid was so good, and so precious.
Then later when the baby was fussy and her mom couldn’t calm her, I took her and put the clamp on her, the clamp that used to put my baby to sleep, gripped snugly to my chest with, you know, the bouncy walk? I kicked off the platforms so I wouldn’t fall over holding her and off we went. She conked right out. She stirred a bit and lay her fat dimpled little hand on my chest– I *knew* that low cut sweater was a good idea! That little bit passed right out and I felt sooo proud, and so grateful for the opportunity. There’s just nothing better. I wrapped her in one of my child’s plush Raggedy Ann and Andy blankets and lay her on my bed. It just felt soooo good to fuss over a baby. I got this little jingle of pride when her mom kept her wrapped in the Raggedy Ann blanket the rest of the afternoon.
When the baby woke later and, after an hour or two of adorableness, got fussy again, I had to restrain myself, twisting my hands together to keep from being a bossy grabby mom. I knew I had to let her handle this in a way that was right for her. I want her to like me, and to come back. She gave me a hug when she left. Snif!
I just want to be useful to my friends with babies. Are you reading this, M? I wanted to tell you and our other friend with a birthday this month that for your birthday you each get two free hours of housecleaning and two (or as many as you want, dinner and a movie?) free hours of babysitting from me, good absolutely any time you want. I just didn’t want to tell you in front of people.
The word is out among the friends that I want another one. I guess my husband has talked with them about it, or at least to the new daddy who talked to his wife the new mommy. I had to clarify, did my husband say he wanted one? No, he said I wanted one. I’m not a bit embarassed about it, thankfully. It’s just a fact. I want to stay home and have another one, even though I know I have some spiritual work to do first– not work, like I haven’t earned it yet, but work, like, get in the frame of mind I want to be in.
We, the wives present, talked about it briefly– the politics of our marriage making it just, well, easier for me to work so I can say, I work too, dammit, so help me with this. We’ll see.
As the party wound down– a couple of hours of poker ensued once it was too dark to hurl heavy pieces of iron through the air– I was thinking about my birthday party, which will be in October when the weather will probably be lovely. It’s two months away, my birthday, but I’ve already started thinking about what sort of theme I want and what I want to serve. I’m not a tea party girl, but for some reason the idea of a tea party popped into my head, maybe from thinking about playing with my child and her little girlfriend who was over tonight, so maybe I’ll do a bad girls tea party or a moms on the lam tea party. But no, I want a house buster like our housewarming was, so I will have to invite spouses and guys in general as well as girlfriends… Anyway, one item will be wonderful tiny sandwiches on white bread– cream cheese, herbs, a paper thin slice of onion, cucumber or tomato, salt and pepper. Mmmmm. Isn’t that an odd choice, and an odd thing to be thinking about?
Blather, I tell you.
Oh I cannot tell you how happy I am that it’s Saturday night and tomorrow is Sunday.
I have to be on the road Monday through Wednesday this week, and Sunday through Wednesday the following. I’ll be travelling a lot more for my job, from now on. It will make it harder to blog, I think, but it may actually make it easier for me to write, lots of time alone. That is, if hours on the road driving and being nice to people don’t rob me of my few remaining brain cells.
Speaking of time alone, guess where I get to stay in my travels? When on business, I get half off at our state’s parks– I can get a ‘cabin’ or chalet, an entire house really, for fifty five dollars a night. All to myself! Out in the middle of lovely Appalachian foothill nature nowhere, ALONE. How nice will that be????? I forgot to make my reservation today, worrying about the party, but the lady assured me on the phone that they have plenty of room. Oh it’s going to be soooo nice.
I’m no psychic
Or, not so’s I can use it at will, anyway. I worked very, very hard on my predictions of girl babies for two of my girlfriends and I was wrong on both counts. (And of course they are ecstatic to have babies, regardless of gender.)
I haven’t seen one pregnant friend, but the other friend definitely had a ‘boy’ tummy, pooching out way up under her ribs. But I wanted her to have a girl so bad, I just went on and called it a girl.
Well, heck. There are two good things about this (besides the simple joy of beautiful babies).
1. If I keep predicting a girl (I also predicted a girl for my brother and his wife and was very wrong) eventually I’ll get it right. Right? I haven’t gotten one right since I predicted my own baby was a girl and predicted my LLL Leader friend’s baby.
2. If my friends keep having boys, statistically speaking, my chances of having a girl are greatly improved, right?
It’s very sad to me to admit that whether one gets a boy or a girl is a completely random process. I can’t accept that. If nothing else, there is scientific evidence that sperm carrying boy vs girl genes swim faster and slower or are weaker and stronger, such that the time of the month supposedly makes a difference. So, in a way, perhaps it’s not random, and perhaps it comes as well from the spiritual and emotional state of the parents– their needs, their desires, their level of closeness to each other at any given time, their spiritual destiny.
My two girlfriends do seem like the quintessential parents of boys, when I step back, but I know, of course, plenty of women who have some of each. So there’s just no saying, is there?
another unexamined article of faith
(And this one I’m definitely okay with)
Babies must and will be spoiled, cuddled, and exclaimed over, long and loud.
I have done my duty this weekend. We went to Louisville to see my brother and his wonderful wife and their completely adorable seven month old baby. Of course all babies are adorable to me. But this kid is jollier than Old King Cole. He has wonderful fat thighs and a beautiful shiny white round bald head and he sings and talks all the time, dab dab dab dab dab dab DAAAAAB! He moves his mouth around in the most adorable ways, and when he smiles, which is at least twice per minute, his whole body convulses with good nature.
He is loved half to death by his parents, who work different shifts to keep him out of child care [I cannot imagine how they do it! and I am so proud of them!] so he’s not missing any love, but still, my mother and I did our professional duty and spent the whole weekend coo-ing and cudding and dab-dab-dabbing back.
You know how they pay people to mourn at funerals? Well I could definitely do professional exclaiming over, cuddling, and admiring babies, long and loud. I am good at it. I’m cheap, too.
I love all babies. I never thought I would say this out loud… I used to love newborns. Holding a newborn on my chest, long before I even had or even thought I’d ever have one of my own, made my blood pressure instantly drop and my ocd resolve into tranquil understanding of What Really Matters. Aaaah.
So… I’m exhausted.
My parents since Tuesday. Sixteen hours worth of road tripping since Friday- absolutely worth it but oooohhh soooo tired. And now it’s back to work. I’ll be glad to just sink into my week, with no comment, nothing constructive or negative to say, just, the slide.
In other news, thank you M and M for your wonderful support re the marital aid. I am beginning to get over it. I’m just thanking my lucky stars it did not arrive while my parents were here to intercept the mail man.
Tuesday night my general smart cool people book group talks about AS Byatt’s Biographer’s Tale. Thursday night my mom’s group has our monthly craft night, which is really gossip, giggle at our husband’s expense, and commiserate/support/catch up, eating night, with a little crafting on the side. Busy week! And I won’t talk about the sparks flying at my job. Til later.
