still life 365

As most of you know, I have explored a lot of creative outlets since Lucy died this year. Art and poetry sometimes gave me the voice I lost in my sadness. Other days painting gave me a moment of peace and calm. As I have shared my work, other women have shared their work with me. And I have been so inspired by your poetry, your paintings, your crafts, and all of your art. I have been kicking this idea around for the past month or so, envisioning a 2010 project extraordinaire. So, I am asking you to participate and contribute as well, because this is a project for all of us. It involves a new blog/website, though this one is not going anywhere. I am still writing here about my journey. My new website is called still life 365.

Still life 365 is a unique art project for, about and by mothers and fathers who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth or infant death. Still life 365 posts a piece of art every day by a poet, artist, photographer, crafter, musician, collagist, paper artist, filmmaker, painter, sculptor, fabric artist and ordinary person exploring grief through creativity. Each piece is an expression of grief, survival, sadness, love and hope. Still life 365 is intended to be a safe space for creative expression, to explore the conflicted and varied emotions after the lost of our babies. Most of us are not professional artists, but simply grieving parents searching for some grounding.

This project will start January 1, 2010, and will continue, hopefully for a year and beyond, but it really depends on you! I need your artwork, your poetry, your music, your films to show on still life 365. It is a great way to showcase your blog, your Etsy site and your work. It is also a great way to remember your baby(ies). 

How to submit

Still life 365 accepts all forms of art and expression including poetry, haiku, photography, paintings, fabric art, paper art, sculpture, collage, printmaking, drawing, music, video/filmmaking and craft. Still life 365 does not want your originals. We are not in the business of "accepting" your art. All work is welcome here without judgment or change*. We do not mind pieces that have been published or shown elsewhere, but please get all rights and permissions before submitting to still life 365. If rights and permissions are not needed, please still give us the link to where it was originally published. We accept only digital copies of your artwork along with title, description, medium and materials used. If we receive photographs that are not easily reproduced, we may ask you to rephotograph, or rescan. Along with your piece, we also love hearing about your inspiration and ways in which this piece of art came to be. Also, if you feel comfortable, include your baby's or babies names. To showcase as many different artists as possible, we will publish multiple submissions from the same artists at different times. For example, if you send me three pieces, we might spread them out and show one in January, one in February, and one in March. We also welcome crafts that seem to be unrelated to babyloss, like knitting for example, but hearing how it soothed you, or helped deal with loss, can make it related.

Please submit your work to stilllife365days (at) gmail (dot) come. Please put SUBMISSION in the subject line. To submit your blog to the blogroll, email your link to the same email address putting BLOGROLL subject. And to submit art-related blogs to our blogroll, put ART BLOG in the subject.

I hope you all will consider submitting something to this project. I am very open to any critical analysis or ideas you might have. You can either leave them in the comment section, or email me at uberangie (at) gmail (dot) com, or stilllife365days (at) gmail (dot) com. I also have a button you can grab, if you are so inclined.

* We will spellcheck and check for major grammatical errors in poetry and writing, though all changes will be sent back before publication.

Nicknames

For how much I am loathe to admit it, Dances With Wolves (DwW) plays a rather large part of the daily language between my husband and I. I dislike Kevin Costner. I have never seen him in a performance where I felt anything from him except pure amazement at his rise to stardom. How the...What the...And yet, he has made it into the daily lexicon of our marriage. This is how: Sam announces, "I'm going up to bed." And I reply, "Yeah, so am I." And he stops and says, "Say it correctly." And I have to pause, and gesture between us, and say, "I go where you go."

But, truthfully, the DwW phenom sort of started before Sam came along. After seeing that movie, I began the curious and somewhat annoying habit of giving people fake Indian names based on watching their behavior. And conversely, I have also been dubbed a few names in my life. My husband suffers from low blood sugar-induced snarkiness is named Lashes Out At Loved Ones. My mother is Travels With Ham, since any visit involves my mother obsessively insisting that we need a ham and she will bring it. Our in-house graphic designer became Dances with Exactos. And I was baptized many years ago as Many Bourbons. My life has changed a lot, and it has been a long long time since I drank even one bourbon. Oh, I joke about it, but that is because I come from Irish people who think drinking jokes are hi-larious. It is the Dean Martin School of Comedy, but truth of it is, I need a new name. I have considered Alphabetizes the Rocks or Cries a River, which sounds vaguely like a Monty Python name. Sir Cry Alot.

If the fake Indian name doesn't work, then I usually go with a rap name. My friend Kathy McGuire* is henceforth known as K-Mac. My rap name is A to the G. My sister is DJ Fancy Pants. My sister many years ago, created an alterego who is Japan's Pop Sweetheart named Sweetie Pumpkin Kitty Cardigan, but it is simply by dint of her fabulosity that she gets a Japanese name.

Anyway, since being cleared in the amnio and finding out we are having a boy, the moratorium on name talk has been lifted. As previously demonstrated, I have extensive experience giving people goofy names, but naming someone, I mean, naming naming them is overwhelming me. We have had some, uh, heated discussions on naming our little bub. The issues surround the fact that I am a rational person with extraordinary taste in names, and my husband is insane. Funnily, we basically picked Bea and Lucy's name immediately, but boy names...oy, vey. Boy names are much more complex, mainly because cute is not so cute on a man with a beard. And quirky ends up being alienating. We are currently stuck on just naming him after our fathers. But privately, we call our fetus Thor. Now that Thor has been normalized as a name in our home, I argue that it would make a fantastic name for him. American convention be damned. It has everything--strength, coolness, pronunciation ease, fun, integrity...you know, everything, except public acceptance. Sam, on the other hand, thinks we should name him something normal, and call him Thor as a nickname. During dinner last night, he went through a litany of men he has known with great nicknames that have nothing to do with their real name: Turk, Boo, Bub, Win...Have I mentioned my husband and I are a multi-cultural family? I am a Yankee and he is Southern. I often stare slackjawed at him as he tells childhood stories, not because of the craziness of the escapades, but because I get stuck on the fact that someone named their child Snookey. In fact, my husband is actually referred to as his middle name, which is confusing to people here, but makes perfect sense in the strange land from whence he is comes. I really have no place. Our male family name is Durward, and my grandmother had two brothers who called her Sis. So, I grew up with much of my family referring to my grandmother as Aunt Sis. The mind reels. I already have a fake Indian name for Thor, which is Scares the Hell out of his Mother.

So, here are a few questions for you. If you had to choose between a fake Indian name and a rap name, which would you choose? And what would it be? And what is your position on nicknames v. name names? And any other insights on naming?

*not her real name.

Randomness

Alright-y, lots of catching up to do, but first things first, the winner of still life's first giveaway is...MK, as is evinced by the random generator screen shot. YAY, MK! Congratulations. After I post this, you will be receiving an email from me. For anyone who said they didn't want to be entered in the drawing, but still left a comment, do not be alarmed that I erased your comment. I do not possess the higher math skills to figure out the random generator without erasing your comments. I did note them, and thank you to everyone who participated, and said beautiful things about my paintings.

I have to say that the paintings came out of a need to find a ritual and image with which I connected. Someone mentioned that this is an image for babies in utero, and yes, it is, partially, but mizukos jizos are protectors of ALL children. In Japan, a child's being isn't supposed to be fully formed until they are six (or seven, I forget). So slowly, through the years, the being enters the child like water; hence the idea of mizuko, or water child. Anyway, I love the images created, and the starkness of zen. This is an image, ritual and bodhisattva created solely by women with a need to recognize their loss(es), and it is a wholly 20th century creation.

Alright, we have had enough jizos for the moment. If you are interested, there are some other artists making jizo art as well. I have one of Mother Henna's jizos on my altar. The beautiful and lovely Mother Henna does some amazing work. She actually recently had a tutorial on making her jizo notecards. If you are not acquainted with Mother Henna, go, get acquainted. She is an art therapist and artist and writer and all things beautiful, creative and important. She hosts many classes. Last spring, I was fortunate enough to take a creativity in grief on-line class with her called Grief: Finding our Way. The "class" was made up exclusively of the babylost mamas, and opened in me in flood of different ways of exploring my grief, my emotions and my art. It was gateway art.

After my beautiful Lucy died, I scrambled. Sam actually stayed home for a month and we parented together, sort of tag-teaming with Beatrice. One would lead until falling apart, then the other would take over. When he finally went back to work, I found myself full of fear and apprehension. How do I do this again? What I did was make a kind of psuedo-schedule for Beatrice and I. It was winter, and I moved all of my art gear into my warm office space. Beatrice and I set up our easels. I gave her paint, crayons, chalk, markers and some cardboard. She had free reign. And I set up next to her with a book of "How to do watercolor." Now, I grew up going to art school on weekends, and painting, so it wasn't that foreign, but I had never done watercolor. My sister and I often buy each other starter kits for different art mediums or crafty crafts for Christmas to inspire each other creatively. And I received a started kit for watercolor. Beatrice and I would put on some music, mainly Tegan and Sara or Bjork, and paint. I would do a very detailed lesson in my book, and Beatrice would do modern art. It was exciting. I let her paint anything and everywhere. I can say that doing a little art, even though it was so regimented, helped me express myself. I wanted to paint what I was feeling. So, I began painting babylost paintings, like little itty bitty snippets of my really heavy angry emotions juxtaposed with a kind of glorified stick figure. That is from where "She is not an angel" came.

:::

Enough of this arty talk, I have some other things to discuss. The amnio results came in yesterday, and the baby boy is good. Everything came back normal, so no chromosonal issues. Yay! I cannot even tell you what a relief it was. I actually began singing What a Difference a Day Makes. We have some other hurdles this week, but that one has been jumped, and I can relax a bit into this pregnancy. I have found myself distanced from this child, unable to sort of visualize myself holding another baby. Protection? Self-preservation? Just hearing he is fine, I felt that excitement in my chest. We gonna have a baby.

I just want to again thank each and every one of you for your love and support, your words of cautious optimism and your understanding of the pit of despair. I am a situational depressive. And this situation was simply one from which I could not see the light. That all is okay chromosonally is such a huge comfort and relief. Sam woke this morning to tell of the most amazing dream. He dreamt of our son last night with dark hair and olive skin, and full of life. The mood has shifted here at the ranch. Thankfully. And not in small part to the love and support I receive from everyone. Thank you.

:::

In an effort to keep damn busy while waiting for the results, I organize. Clean. Bake. If you walked into my house, you would have no idea, but yesterday, for example, I went through my wrapping paper/gift bag selections, organizing it by occasion, size, and quantity. I also organized my felt in order of the colors of the spectrum. Someone asked me if I am Type-A the other day. Does getting up at 5am and having organized gift wrapping making me Type-A? Then yes. Yes, I am.

I also finished my package for my Gift Exchange partner (can't wait to post my crazy ornaments). And my package to Once a Mother. And just generally organizing things for the holidays. This past weekend, when writing about my crappy moods, my husband and I ran holiday-ish type errands, and I popped into Sur La Table to look for "tossie" pans. Does anyone know what tossie pans are? Or even what nut tossies are?

To be honest, I had no idea how we spelled that word until a year or so ago when I actually read recipe for the first time in my life. They are one of my family's favorite cookies. My mother makes them every year, and I devour them. They are like miniature little pecan pies, except made with walnuts and more runny. Often, you have tossie juice running down your chin, and people stare. Nothing worse than a fat girl with sugar rivulets making their way to cleavage. Well, my sister and I have actually had the discussion. Having vanilla creme hanging from your lip, and powdered sugar on your boobs after eating a Krispy Kreme donut pretty much is the lowest feeling in the world for a fat girl, but the caramel rivulets is a close second. Nut tossies require a special pan, which my mother claims are no longer available for sale. And thus, I have never looked for them. I call bullshit on that one. I found them, in a French place no less. Suck on that, Mom!

Of course, there is no such thing as a "tossie pan," mainly because that is some kind of made-up Pennsylvania Dutch thing. The recipe comes from one of those 1970s artery-hardening church cookbooks from rural Pennsylvania. It does not have an equal. It is one of many in my mother's extensive cookbook collection. I have tried to collect church cookbooks from all over the Northeast trying to find the kind of beauty in my mother's book, but it always leaves me with recipes like "Sue's Spaghetti Delight," which reads something like "Open a jar of tomato sauce. Boil pasta. Cover with mozzarella cheese and put in the oven. Delightful!" This book has traditional Pennsylvania Dutch, Slovak and Polish recipes that came from the pre-Puerto Rican immigrants that settled in and around Allentown, which makes up most of my childhood eating experience.

So, I had to call my mother to 1. admit I was going to try to make nut tossies without her and break her heart and 2. beg ask her for the recipe. To be frank, she really didn't care. I often think my mother will be heartbroken by things, and she is non-nonplussed. But my sister happened to be there. With awe, she asked, "You are making nut tossies?" We waxed poetic about the cookbook, which is ripped at the taffy recipe when my sister and I tried to make taffy at age 10 during a snow day. Some taffy got tragically stuck on the page tearing it and causing ripples of panic as we realized that cleaning up our clandestine cooking experiment was beyond our capablities. My mother returned from a full-day of work to a kitchen full of stickiness, ruined pots, torn cookbooks and sheepish girls.

While my mother dug out the sacred cookbook, my sister and I talked about how awesome and unrivaled it is in the realm of local church cookbooks, my sister suddenly, and I might add rudely, screamed to my mother, "Can I have this cookbook when you die? Quick, say yes." Son of a bitch. I have been tempted to copy and rebind it and sell it as the bible of regional Pennsylvania cooking. The recipe for nut tossies itself is great. It calls for a pound and three tablespoons of butter. A "box of brown sugar." (What size box exactly?) And yields 100 cookies. ONE HUNDRED!

All this cookbook in your will stuff reminded me of this beautiful bright orange Betty Crocker cookbook I inherited from my grandmother. Well, inherited sounds official. I asked my grandfather if I could have it, and he said, "Sure, kid, take it." And so, I have it and cook from it often. It works like this. Sam says something like, "You should make Turkey Tettrazini with all the Thanksgiving leftovers." And I look at him like the Victor dog, and he says, "It's a casserole." My mother was not big on casseroles. Panamanians don't really bake many dishes with cream of mushroom soup. And so, I pull out my 1971 Betty Crocker cookbook, and lo and behold, there it is, in technicolor brown, calling for lard and a quart of heavy cream.Alright, not really, but still, there is a lot of heavy this, and fat of that.

The inside cover reads, "To Mary Lou from Mary Lou. Christmas 1972." My mother received the same cookbook from my grandmother, Mary Lou, with the same inscription except for "To Linda from Mary Lou  . Christmas 1972." So, I grew up with a lot of the same recipes. Food photography today is very very very different than it was on Planet Betty Crocker circa 1971. The colors of all food can only be described as unholy. And often the food, often casseroles, are pictured in what is supposed to be the food's "natural environment," like the Broiled Lobster Tails are pictures on the sand with a big rope. Placing food on the sand, even on a plate, never works out well. Ever. There is a recipe in the cookbook for Instant Coffee. Which is a bit mindboggling because, well, doesn't instant coffee come with directions? And the fact that it says "instant" in its title and description sort of imply that you just, you know, add water? Escoffier this ain't.

Yet I delight in it in a way few things make me happy. Cheesy + Delicious + Americana = Good Afternoon. So, I went through it, like a depressing, snarky little Mystery Science Theater 3000 making comments about the worst of the pictures. Then I googled something I vaguely remember from my corporate days. My grandmother also had these: Betty Crocker Recipe Cards.  Oh, they were terrible, but my grandmother used them. Often. But on this cold weekend, when I could see any light, it brought me some joy to read and remember the 1970s through its food and colorizations.

One day, when you are feeling low, perhaps you will remember this post and the link, and click on it, and get a few chuckles and gross outs. Enjoy this one: 1971 Betty Crocker Recipe Library. Click on the recipe section on the side to see the sections. It actually starts a bit slow, so don't get too discouraged and think I have no sense of humor. I have to say, I am partial to the idea that there is even a "Men's Favorite" section, and that it doesn't start with sausage.

25 Days of Giveaways

Today, we are in day 11 of Living without Sophia and Ellie's 25 Days of Giveaways.  The giveaway today is sponsored by Mallory at Mother of an Angel. Go check out her giveaway, write a comment, then come right back. I'll wait here.

tap. tap. tap.

Hi. Now, welcome to day 12. Technically, when I started this post, it was around midnight thirty December 8th in Auckland, New Zealand, which is how I am justifying my impatience posting my giveaway on December 7th. I actually am terrible about missing deadlines when I only get one day, so I am opening this up to the worldwide day of December 8th which gives everyone a  fair chance to get their comments in. Always thinking of my Aussie sistahs and brothahs. Hollah.

My giveaway is an original watercolor painting of six mizuko jizo. The painting is entitled "Six Prayers." It is 6" x 9" (easily frameable in a 5" x 7" frame) and painted on cold-pressed 140lb. watercolor paper. I generally paint my mizuko jizo painting with a purple swirling background. Purple is Lucy's color,  but it is also a beautiful cooling color. My mizuko jizo paintings are usually done in one sitting during/as meditation. I sit. Meditate. Then paint. They have been very soothing and healing for me to do during this year. I have copy and pasted the expurgated description of mizuko jizo below from the other day. I know most of you have probably read it before, but I didn't want to leave out newcomers from describing the subject.

To enter the random drawing for the recipient of this mizuko jizo painting, please leave a comment below. In the early morning of December 9th, I will use random.org to randomly select someone.  So, please try to leave your email either linked to your name, i.e., sign in to comment, or within the comment itself. It is all very exciting. I did attempt to take another photograph of my mizuko jizo painting so the colors would be more true to life.  *sigh* Photography is not my strong suit.

I have painted mizuko jizos for many babylost mamas this past year. I often customize them with personal messages, prayers and wishes for the babies. Mizuko jizos are said to carry the name into the afterlife so that the ancestors can recognize the baby. So, I often start a painting with the prayer, "Mizuko jizo, we name her Lucy." And I follow up with prayers for comfort, guidance and calm. Here is my own Six Prayers for Lucy painting.

While the painting I am giving away today does not have any prayers on it, I wanted to sort of give the full picture of what my mizuko jizo illustrations and paintings can be. But if you would like your own jizo painting, I am happy to paint one for you too. You can always visit my Etsy Shop called the Kenna Twins to see which paintings move you, or you can order a customized one. I have done custom painting of my "She's not an Angel" painting (see on right navigation bar), mizuko jizos of all shapes and sizes, and Meditating Mamas, as well as custom illustrations of children and families. I do love collaborating with someone about paintings that are meaningful to the person. During custom meditation paintings, including my meditating mama paintings, I meditate for the person ordering the painting. Part of what I meditate on during the meditating mama ones is "Bathing (insert mama's name) in a warm light. Seeing (Mama) full of life and baby." Those paintings are great altar paintings to meditate on during pregnancy, labor or conception. With the jizos, I meditate with general compassion, calm and grounding specifically thinking of the missed baby or child. The 4" x 6" size is a great size for altars. My prices for custom paintings are the same as my other paintings. 4" x 6" - $20, 6" x 9" - $25, 9"x 12" - $30, 11" x 14" - $50

Alright, enough shameless self-promotion. Good luck and have fun.

Mizuko jizo are bodhisattvas unique to Japan who specifically guide miscarried, aborted and stillborn children into their next life. "Historically, Japanese Buddhists believed that existence flowed into a being slowly, like liquid. Children solidified only gradually over time and weren't considered to be fully in our world until they reached the age of seven. Similarly, leaving this world -- returning to the primordial waters -- was seen as a process that began at 60 with the celebration of a symbolic second birth. A mizuko lay somewhere along the continuum, in that liminal space between life and death but belonging to neither. True to the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, it was expected (and still is today) that Jizo would eventually guide the mizuko down another pathway into being. The idea behind the offering was to bid the mizuko farewell and wish it luck in the life it would have to come.” (from Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein)

When I began reading about about Mizuko Jizo, I was fascinated with the image of Jizos. They are usually portrayed as happy little monks with a red bib. A pillar of rocks standing next to the statues, as well as offerings of toys. They are often childlike, yet wise, in appearance. I began painting jizos as a form of meditation and my own Mizuko Kuyo or ritual. I paint them from my soul, giving them blessings and prayers I want for my own daughter on her journey. I am particularly fond of the six prayers paintings because each prayer is associated with one of the six realms—Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Humanity and Heaven. 
  

Impatience

I had a terrible day of snapping bitchiness and impatience. It was snowing here. The Christmas music was echoing through the house. It is the formula for my happiness, and yet: The dog. The kid. The husband. Lack of sleep. Dust bunnies. Things dropped and broken. Being smacked across the face with a stuffed tiger. I  could not manage that "Up With People" kind of attitude you need with toddlers, so I put my apron on and made her some cookies, just to, you know, buy her love with chocolate. Maybe a little. Beatrice asked to help, and for a while, that worked. We stayed present and focused on Laura Bush's Cowboy Cookies. (They really are good.) But after the last batch began cooling on the rack, I barked at the dog and girl for being underfoot and wrestling in the kitchen and sent them both for naps, muttering cusses under my breath.

This year has left me absolutely unsure of my ability to be a decent friend, good mother, and adoring wife. I'm not even sure I can be a good me anymore. I went into my corner and licked wounds this year when I could not be generous with my listening and with my spirit, but somehow, I just never fully came out of the corner. About June, I began feeling friends become less and less patient with my grief, my sadness and my sensitivity. Maybe it is that their defenses went down and they were ready for the old Angie, though my heart was still raw. Or perhaps it is just that I began telling people my truth, and I seemed too impossibly hard to read, or deal with. Somehow things haven't really recovered. I read blog posts about women talking about girl's nights, or getting together with friends, and I don't even know of anyone I could or would call anymore. I am simply a vessel now. A vessel for emotions. A vessel for babies. A vessel for grief.

Early in this journey, someone said to me that I would "feel" Lucy all around me. "Just wait, you will. Lucy is everywhere." It made me angry to hear that then, and I almost rejected this community wholeheartedly because of it, as though they knew this supernatural essence of my baby when I didn't. I miss not knowing her soul or her spirit. I miss not feeling her aliveness enter a room.  I still haven't felt her. Not the ghost of her, not the memory of her. I feel like I even fail in being a dead baby mama when all these women feel their babies or see them everywhere. I can't imagine Lucy as anything but what she was and is now--dead. I am somehow incapable of visualizing her, or conjuring an imaginary future for her.  I can't even imagine her smiling, because she never breathed and I never saw her face move. I conjure her in symbols, but can't even develop a mythology elaborate enough to make her responsible for the symbol I created. I pretend for a day or two, then abandon the endeavor to poetry and allusions.

I stopped looking at my pictures of Lucy. Not because it hurts, or reminds me of what I have lost, but simply because she looks dead to me now. I am disgusted with my inability to be a proper mother to Lucy. I used to will people to say her name. I wanted to speak it aloud right next to the phrase, "My daughter." I wanted to write it across the sky in big loopy letters. I wanted to be asked the questions about myself, so I could tell my story. Now, when people speak of my daughter, I recoil. Everyone seems to know her better than I ever did. They imagine her, what this one year old little stranger would be doing. And I just hold a dead baby lost amongst disturbing nightmares and fearful realities. There is a sinking resignation in the complexities of having to talk about Lucy. I didn't just lose a daughter. I lost everything, except the facade of our life. Last year, I was exactly right here, sitting on this couch pregnant, yet things couldn't be more different.

This past week or so, I have been writing my depression, my anxiety, my insomniatic inarticulations and self-pitying rants on this blog. And the emails have been coming in, "Are you okay?"

I am okay. Nothing has changed, sadly. Nothing. Has. Changed. I have no insight. No enlightenment. No deep knowledge or insight into the universe. My daughter is still impossibly dead. I am still waiting for results and answers about this new baby. My other stuff is still there, the same as last week, and the week before, and the month before, but I'm just exhausted and overwhelmed. Everyday I pull it together for the life and joy of a two year old girl who needs a whole mother. I simply have nothing else left. This past week, we remembered my father-in-law on the one year anniversary of his death. (God, we miss him around here.) There is a distinctive pallor of grief around both Sam and I, and the bubble of ignorant bliss around the girl. When we cry, she still wants milkie. We just miss our people and our feeling of safety. I sometimes just want everything else to pause, so I can go have a good cry somewhere, and a night where I fall asleep easily with no nightmares, or interruptions of oppressive anxiety and grief. It is the same as everyone else in the community of sad people. It is just another in a series of bad days.

In two weeks,  we remember the day that Lucy died and then we remember the day she was born.  I don't really know what to do for Lucy's day. Part of me wants to do some elaborate ritual, and the other part wants to treat it like every day when I ache for her and miss her, but manage to exist without reliving the trauma, grief and pain of that day by immersing myself in snips of her hair, her pictures, her footprints on a piece of paper in a box. There is no ritual to commemorate the death and birth of your child. I crave something automatic and unthinking. All the creativity of trying to discern where I will be emotionally on that day seems too impossibly cruel. I just want to kneel. Stand. Sit. Stand. Cross. Sit. Stand. Shake hands. Cry. My children have given my life a deep sense of meaning and essence. In Lucy's birth, I gained a sense of God and lost my faith in the same moment. How can someone so beautiful be so dead?

What kind of cake do you bake for that?

25 Days of Giveaways

For those of you here from Living without Sophia and Ellie, today is not my day. Visit Jill over at Footprints on our Hearts.

I am definitely participating in the 25 Days of Giveaways. It is slightly confusing because the 25 days did not start on the first of December, so I am Day 12th, which is December 8th! I will be posting the giveaway a day early, so you can have some time to get your comments in. I will be giving away a mizuko jizo painting. I have a few descriptions of Mizuko Jizo around this site, but here is the latest description with a faded picture of the ACTUAL painting.

Until then, please visit Tina's blog for the other participants. And good luck and godspeed.

Insomnia and tonglen

When I need it most, meditation seems impossible. So very far from me.

It isn't simply about quieting my brain, it is about quieting the cellular terror of silence and being alone. I fidget in a way that feels like physical pain. Since simply sitting has seemed absolutely impossible, I have been listening to Pema Chodron's Good Medicine, which is subtitled "How to Turn Pain into Compassion with Tonglen Meditation." It is amazing, truly, and yet last night, five minutes into the meditation, I couldn't do it. It overwhelmed me, and tears fell thinking about the my father and his suffering. About mothers who have lost their babies too.About illness and suffering. Fires and tragedy. About all that could go wrong this month. My guilt over my good life, my warm house, my health (ha!), my marriage, my beautiful, clever daughter...I grabbed my belly pillows and headed down to the couch to find something to divert my attention. Anything but thinking about the possibilities of what could be in our life right now. I turned on the television to Truth Be Told, which featured mothers of children with special needs. Not. At. All. Helpful.

Some nights, I wish I could open the roof of my house. I watch all our fears blow into the night, the cold rains of December baptizing our home, cleansing our dark sadness. A winter purgation.

I feel silenced right now, unable to talk about all that is going on in our home, because of loyalty. Because of fear that speaking my worst nightmare will make it true. Waiting for our amnio results are only one part of our stresses. That is enough. I miss finding solace in a place, in ceremony, in saying my fears and giving them to the Other to mind. I feel in touch with the divine through the profane act of respecting its place as separate from our lives, yet I miss the smell of incense. I miss the repetition of prayers and movements that allow my brain to go into auto-pilot as I feel the collective energy of hundreds of years of ritual.

One part of Good Medicine that stuck with me as I headed to the couch reminded me of touching that energy through cultivating tonglen thinking in one's life around both pleasure and pain. When things are painful and difficult, the quality of difficulty should remind us to have the thought, "Other people feel this." Isolation in our pain and the loneliness of our burden reminds us of our shared humanity. "This," Pema says, "is what heals the darkness and desperation we feel." Even if the sentiment of "Other people feel this" isn't a genuine feeling at first, it shakes up your complacency, she says. The tonglen thought can go further when you are ready. When you have the discomfort, just think the sentiment, "Other people feel this." And then furthering the thought, "May we all be free of this." And when that feels comfortable and you are ready to move even further still, "Since I am feeling this already, let me feel it for everyone, so that they may all feel free of this."

And as I listened to her lecture, I was strongly reminded of this community of grieving women who in their darkest moment visit other grieving mother's blogs and share their pain. Who say, "Abiding with you in this moment of darkness." Or who send emails that say, "I share that ugly thought you are having. I am sad too. I am jealous too. I feel isolated too. I feel like the only woman to experience this loss too."

Still, as I lay in the dark in awe of the beauty of this sentiment, embracing the truth of what she said, I turned off the lecture and avoided thinking about other people's pain. It was too overwhelming, too intimidating to think about taking on more suffering. To be honest, when I think of suffering, I think of my father. Though our little family has faced many hardships and much suffering this year, I still remain guilt-ridden, sad, and overwhelmed with thoughts of my father. It beats up all the other stresses, perhaps because it has resided in me longest, it is the strongest anxiety. A jealous possessive anxiety. I still have these haunting thoughts that I should be taking care of my father full-time, even though that would leave not five minutes of attention for my Beatrice. So, in the midst of all these big anxieties, my heart and brain still rests on the guilt of the last twenty years. Is it the devil that I know? It is so overwhelming that I literally cannot lie still. I would run if I were a runner. I would take drugs if I were a drug addict. I would knit a blanket to cover the house if I knitted. But I am a lazy ass, so I watch mindless television. And try to remind myself that it is one fucking step at a time. I cannot bend time to my will. I cannot fast forward through the discomfort. I must simply move through my grief and pain and anxiety, moment by moment, until it becomes bearable. And it will become bearable. Other people feel this too. Other people survive this too. Perhaps that is its own meditation.