Stopping to smell the roses...

and the other flowers too.

The lilacs have already bloomed, as have the fruit trees. But otherwise we're being treated to a real riot of color.

We have three rose bushes in various shades of pink. Our neighbors have pale yellow. Today, as I walked down to pick Scooter up from daycare, I stopped to enjoy two bushes, one in a bright yellow, the other a dark red that reminded me of a rose bush we had at our previous house.

Purple penstemon bloom everywhere I turn. White peonies are nodding open their heavy heads. The lamb's ear is putting up dusky green spikes with tiny purple flowers. Wisteria twists itself over a fence and around a tree. Various white and yellow flowers greet the sun each day, their names still a mystery to me.

Each day I take a tour of our backyard, lingering especially over the fruit trees. Little green cherries dot their trees, but now the occasional red one appears. I am attempting a silent truce with birds and insects--they can have all of the cherries high up if they'll leave me those that are within reach of a short ladder.

The apple tree is a bit behind the cherry trees, dotted with tiny green balls of fruit. I do not yet know if they will be green or red when ripe, but look forward to sharing them with Scooter.

I'm a bit in love with the flora here. The fauna too. Bees buzz around the flowers, and lizards of various sizes scurry about as I pass by.

I am enjoying the slower pace of summer in a quiet town.

Bringing a darkness to light

There is a long, self-pitying post that has been rattling around in my head for weeks now. I suspect it has been a significant part of the writer's block I've been suffering for several weeks now.

Today was one of those days when several things came together in such a way as to tell me it is time to write this. I had a plan of how I would present this, all the background and context I would give. But the more intricate a plan I create in my head, the further away the heart of the matter recedes. So I'm just going to dive in. I don't know exactly where I'm going with this and am not sure how long it will take to get there, so feel free to move on to the next post in your queue.

It is supposed to be some sort of comfort, apparently, to tell a woman who has miscarried that there was probably a chromosomal abnormality in the fetus. Therefore, it was for the best. Which, for me personally, felt like the science version of "It's all part of God's plan."

I also, as much as I might have wanted to believe the above, never fully believed it. Again I feel the need to emphasize that I approach most aspects of my life through logic and science. But I do reserve a special place for dreams, particularly during pregnancy. Not as a form of prophecy, but more as an opportunity to get in touch with my subconscious and body and to figure out what exactly is going on in there. And so it meant something to me when I had a dream in which I held my little girl. I believed so much more strongly in that little girl than a potential chromosomal abnormality.

The second miscarriage happened so quickly that I had not quite settled into the idea of being pregnant. But that very fact, the decreasing amount of time my body could hold onto the baby, just convinced me that there was something outside of the random, inexplicable chance event my medical providers tried to assure me was the cause.

It was a moment of confirmation, therefore, when I began to unravel some of what might have happened. I was elated to know that my suspicions were probably correct and that there was someone who was not going to make me go through the process again without any additional support.

But there's a dark side to this new knowledge. And this is what has been eating at me.

There was nothing wrong with my little girl. Or the second baby I never got to know. Either one would have been a beautiful, healthy baby. With me now.

It was not the babies' chromosomes that failed. It was my body. More specifically, my body attacked my babies, treated them as cancerous growths, worked to flush them out as quickly as possible.

My body killed my little girl.

And this is the origin of my recent discontent with my body, the sense that the physical me and the mental me are not in harmony. Because if I had not created that separation, I would have to replace "my body" with "I."

I can write all of this now, because I have started to heal that rift. I recently increased the frequency, length, and intensity of my workouts, spending more time simply existing in my body.

I'm headed to a fertility clinic soon and hope to be trying again in another 6 weeks. Even though I have been displeased with how many times my start date has been pushed back, I am starting to think that this may be a good thing for my mental state; perhaps I will be more at peace with my body by the time I ask it to undertake this task again.

I do not regret the knowledge I have collected in the past few months, even with the twist of pain it has brought. I also recognize the shimmer of stress that attends all my considerations of future pregnancy, restraining my excitement, not allowing me to think beyond the step immediately ahead of me. It constantly whispers, "But what if there's a third time? How will you recover?" And the truth is, I might not; I fear that a third miscarriage would break me.

I am not, perhaps, quite as pessimistic as this might all sound. There is enough hope that I will press on. But it is always with a glance backward, aware of the weight I am bearing.

Global Warming Wednesday: Reducing our auto footprint

I was just about to write a post on our recent reduction in car use when I saw that the BlogHers Act Canada June Challenge is about reducing one's auto footprint.

When we first got to Springfield, we found ourselves driving a lot more than we had in Toronto. Not a big surprise. We had walked a lot of places in Toronto. When we had the time, two miles was a fairly standard range. Although Springfield is a small town population-wise, it is spread out. Scooter's school is close by, as are a couple playgrounds, but two miles gets us nothing more than more houses and playgrounds.

Now Springfield does have a bus system, but my initial consultations of the schedule showed that it wouldn't do much for those "quick" dashes downtown to the stores (15 minutes each way to most places). But as we headed to summer and a more open schedule, not to mention more expensive gas, I began to think that maybe I should take another look.

So Scooter and I took the bus a couple times for discretionary adventures--the library, the coffeeshop, fun like that. But trips that were very open-ended in terms of time. As in Toronto, Scooter enjoyed riding in public transit. And I discovered that the Springfield bus system is actually quite pleasant. (Plus, at least for the time being, it's free. Relatively speaking. The system was recently revamped and tax money funds some part of it for now. The powers-that-be want to keep it that way, though they'll probably have to add a surcharge to local utilities.)

I looked more closely at the schedule and determined that I could use the bus system to get Scooter to and from his daycare this summer. The one dead spot was after dropping him off; I had generally been planning to head downtown and work there for a few hours, as I tend to have more productive bursts in the morning, away from the house. But in order to get there via bus, I would have to wait over 30 minutes. So I tend to walk the 2+ miles and count it as part of my exercise program.

So far, most of the trips have gone rather smoothly, with the exception of two legs from the daycare back home. I made it by bus to the daycare in each instance, but ended up calling Trillian to come get us. The first time, I called her from the bus as hail fell thickly upon the bus. It did end by the time I got out of the bus a few blocks later, but it turned out that we were still under a severe weather warning. The second time was a bit more frustrating. The bus passed us by. Even though I was in a pick-up location, even though I flagged it down (first with a smile, then increasingly more frantically). Scooter took it quite personally, so I was relieved when he was willing to take the bus again afterwards. (I also registered a complaint online and was informed by a very apologetic woman of the number for the service that picks up disabled and elderly riders--which would also be immediately dispatched if we get passed again).

We're not the only people in Springfield who have decided the bus might be a good way to go. Even on the neighborhood leg of my trips, I'm sometimes surprised by just how full the bus can get. And the popularity is a good thing--there's talk of increasing the frequency of some routes.

Using the bus extensively definitely means keeping my schedule more open, being willing to adjust my expectations to their timetable, spending a little more time in transit. Starting when we're on summer hours has made this a bit easier. But I figure that if I can switch my thinking over the next few months, this will become habit. I want this to become my default, primarily because of the environmental benefits. But whenever I start to waver, it won't take more than a little math to get me back on the bus.

More than a card

Somehow June has snuck up on me and with it another Blogging for LGBT Families Day. A list of this year's posts is over at Mombian.

I expected that the card from my grandmother would contain congratulations. We had just spread the news among our families that I was pregnant. My grandmother had no computer and much preferred writing over phoning, so it wasn't a surprise to see her shaky handwriting and the return address I'd memorized long ago.

But she wrote much more than a simple note of congratulations.

My grandmother wrote that the combination of my recent announcement and a cousin's upcoming wedding had led her to think a lot about life and relationships. She hoped and expected that I already knew she considered my relationship with Trillian to be as committed as any of the married couples in our family, but she had felt compelled to tell me this explicitly. She also wrote that she wanted to mark our commitment, albeit belatedly, in a way commensurate with how she had and would celebrate the weddings of her other grandchildren.

Hers was the first "wedding" gift we ever received.

Now this particular grandmother lived in Massachusetts. Same-sex marriage became a reality there before her death. The congregation to which she belonged, a very important part of her daily life, went through a difficult time in deciding whether or not they would officiate for the weddings of same-sex couples. I heard about this second-hand, from one of my aunts; she told me that my grandmother had been a vocal proponent of their participation in these ceremonies.

A few months after my grandmother's death, I received a packet of papers and pictures. The aunt who had been given the position of "family historian" had gone through the papers from my grandmother's house and sent relevant items to each family member. I flipped through my items: my senior portrait, letters I had written to my grandparents, a picture of Scooter, a newspaper clipping from when I won some prizes in a math contest, and copies of two letters my grandmother had written. One to her local newspaper, one to her congregation. Both about how ridiculous it was to fear same-sex marriage, that nothing could take away from the marriage she'd had with my grandfather, that her granddaughter's family deserved all of the same protections.

Scooter only got to meet her once, and he probably remembers nothing of the visit. Luckily, there are moments from that time that I will never forget. One of the things I requested when it came time to divide the material goods from her house was a set of wooden nesting blocks. We had all played with them whenever we visited their house, but they gained special meaning for me. I remember my grandmother sitting in a chair as Scooter played with them. He had another wooden toy and the different blocks with their open sides facing up. He would knock the first toy around inside each block in turn, obviously paying attention to how the quality of the sound changed, depending on the size of the block. My grandmother was enraptured and exclaimed emphatically over how smart he was.

Those blocks, those letters, that card--I've kept them all. I have pictures and other things from my grandmother, but those are the items that bring back the strongest memories and make me feel a connection with her.

Standing on the edge of a new world

It is in my nature to employ a scientific approach to most aspects of life. And so it happened that I would get excited when Scooter would do something like roll over for the first time, but would not feel comfortable checking off "rolls over." I needed replication of the initial results in order to claim with confidence that Scooter could roll over.

I am not ready to say that Scooter is reading, but it's become quite clear that he knows a good number of words in reasonable context. I also find that I have to walk a fine line with him on this topic. He is adamant that he can't read--I think that he, perhaps taking after me, is unwilling to consider anything less than total mastery as "reading." But he absolutely glows with the right sort of praise. So I don't say, "Good reading," but things like, "Wow, you know a lot of words."

A few nights ago, he "helped" me read his bedtime story. If he knows what something is supposed to say, he can generally match up the beginning of the spoken words with the printed ones, as he demonstrated with the title. Then as we read, I would stop a couple times each page on a content word. With the context of the story and the picture, as well as sounding out the beginning of each word, he was able to guess with pretty good accuracy. Even when he was wrong, he picked either a synonym or another word beginning with the same letter.

Tonight, I made a new potty prize card. (After a frustrating period of increasing accidents, we returned to bribery and keep track of what prizes come next so that he knows what he's working towards. He finished off his second one last night.) He was eager to see what was in store, so we placed the card on the bathroom counter to look it over. I pointed at each night in turn, and he faithfully read off each prize, including the big prize nights that usually include an "or" (e.g., "train or Lego"). To be fair, he has a good idea of the range of prizes at this point and the words are different enough that he can probably figure most of them out from the first letter of each word. But still, he knew them all and only needed my help in tracking across each line. Because the words weren't in story-form, I suspect that it never even crossed Scooter's mind that he was doing anything new.

Considering what I know of my most frequent visitors, I don't think I have to explain how thrilling it is to be seeing this new world open up for my son. In my eagerness, it's hard not to grab his hand and pull him along, but for the time being I'm slowing down and following his lead, matching his steps, and savoring the details.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiii

When the Nintendo Wii first came out, both Trillian and I didn't get the big hoopla surrounding it. We're not big game players and make do with our now-ancient Playstation 2--which, in fact, serves mostly as a DVD player for Scooter's videos.

I have read accounts by several friends (blog-wise and otherwise) about the fun they had playing various games on Wii. It piqued my interest, but was still not enough for me to consider forking out a few hundred for a console. Or, more commonly as the news stories reported, dealing with the difficulty of finding one in stock.

Then I read about Wii Fit. And so did Trillian. And we both admitted that we were intrigued. Trillian did a little searching online, just to see if she could locate a console. Pretty much everybody was sold out, or asking a couple hundred over the list price.

A couple days ago, we had to make an extra trip to Capital City. Trillian and I took the opportunity to slip into a Best Buy. Our primary purpose was to look at cell phones, as we've just about decided to get a second one. (Still haven't; Trillian's still debating bells and whistles vs. the monthly bill.) Then we walked around a bit (tech porn for geeks, really).

We ducked into the video game section, but only saw games and accessories. At that very moment, a sales associate walked by and asked the standard question about possibly being some help.

"You wouldn't happen to have any Wii consoles?" Trillian asked, expecting to be told they were sold out.

The surprise answer: "We just set up a display table towards the front."

Seems that their stock had been replenished, in conjunction with the release of Wii Fit.

So guess what's sitting in our living room now?

The first thing that had to be done, of course, was to create our Miis, the little avatars that look vaguely like us. Though I will be secretly tweaking Scooter's, since the glasses--both frames and tinting--he chose for himself make him look a bit like a skeevy 70s lounge lizard.

Both Trillian and I put in 30 minutes plus on Wii Fit. I'm partial to the Yoga, she prefers the Strength Training. But both of us have dabbled in Aerobics and Balance too. We'll see how long and consistently we use this, but I'm fairly optimistic. In the guise of games, I found myself eagerly tackling exercises I wouldn't otherwise do.

(Of course, Scooter had trouble doing the few things he tried, so he was very upset it wasn't really for him. I think we may be picking up a game for him.)

Grounds for commitment or just a coping mechanism?

For weeks, possibly months now, Trillian and I have been saying that we need to go through Scooter's closet and dresser so that we can weed out the clothes that are too small and reorganize everything. We haven't done this for at least a couple years, not systematically at least--removal of what was obviously too small, addition of new things, but everything crammed together.

Today I decided to do a couple drawers, at least figure out what shorts and T-shirts would still fix him. Trillian and Scooter were off at the park, and once I started I just kept going. Each drawer was going to be the last, but I just kept going. I managed to be ruthless most of the time, but there were a few shirts I put on the 'storage' pile reluctantly. Afterwards, the clothes I had weeded out fit into two large Space Bags.

I also informed Trillian that I plan on putting the crib together tomorrow or this weekend. Right now, the pieces are sitting against a wall in our bedroom, and have been for several months now. There's no reason to put it together yet (no secrets here). It's just that I want it together before I'm pregnant. Sure my father-in-law could do it, but this is something I want to do.

So far, probably not too crazy-making in your mind. But here's the context. The outcome of an appointment I had yesterday means that my attempts for baby #2 will be pushed back by at least one more cycle, after I'd already delayed a cycle or two. A result of logistics and the fact that I'll now have to go to Big City for any help in conceiving.

Still not too concerned about my mindset? Here's the other thing, the thing that will be fodder for a few posts. It has only just hit me that I can no longer claim not to have a fertility problem, that I can no longer use my "supply issue" line, that in fact I need the services of a fertility clinic.

And I've been reading. About recurrent pregnancy loss caused by immunological factors. About the fact that, with each consecutive loss, the body is preparing new defenses, upping its response to each future pregnancy. About the fact that the combination of my age (35) and number of consecutive losses (2) is enough to qualify me as having recurrent pregnancy loss and to concern medical professionals (some, not all).

So I know that a third loss would mean that it would be that much harder for me to carry another pregnancy to term. Of course, I already have thought that three would be my limit, so a fourth might be moot anyway. But now I'm that much more aware of the fine line I walk and how close I am to falling on my face.

Somehow, putting away Scooter's too-small clothes as if I will be getting them out again in a few years seemed very important today. Somehow, putting the crib together instead of looking at it in pieces seems very important. I recognize this as the kernel of hope--the idea that if I press on as if there will be another baby, there will be another baby.

From this side, it doesn't seem too crazy, but there remains the nagging voice that wonders if these acts of faith will metamorphose into a mockery.