Sometimes I get so absolutely sick of my own brain: all the writhing and complaining, the neurosis and the litany of put-downs that come toward me. I get sick of battling myself, my fears, my shame. It's good to know that my heart is always safe with God, because there is nothing waiting at the other end of my confessions but Love.
December 10, 2005
There are some days when I feel as though I've been picked up and cradled like a little baby. And there are days when I feel as though I'm forced to walk when I would rather be carried. Wonderfully, today is one of the former. God has been breathing fresh beautiful air in our direction, in the midst of a few trials. I've been a receiver so many times that I haven't deserved, and I need to express how amazing it always is.
When we were in Canada my sister threw a party for us in one of her busiest times. My parents have given us so much I always feel that I have to be stern with them if they want to give us more. My friend Laura rushes around her house to find more and more clothing that she has that she thinks just might look so cute on me, when I haven't even seen her in four years.
Christy bought me glasses when my glasses were so broken they wouldn't stay on my face and I was so broke I just kept putting them back on. Heather watched our kids for free so that my Superstar husband and I could take pictures at a wedding. People let us use their houses when they go away, people let us borrow their cars when we don't have one to drive. Dori thinks I can do no wrong, and I just need someone like that in my life. (Don't you?) Elena gives me her magazines when she's done with them, feeds my fish when I'm away, and always manages to find something for my kids when she's shopping. Megan and Marc bought me a scented candle just like theirs because I was always exclaiming over how much I loved the smell. Our friends Evelyn and Stephen call us to see if we're going to be staying at their house in the City anytime soon, just in case we didn't want to impose—they want to make sure we have a place to stay while we are there.
Crystal gives me little baggies of chocolate if I'm going away for the day. Lavonne opens up her house for me to have time alone, just to sit and be still. Renee and Eddie beg me to play Settlers with them, many people nudge me out of my shell. People slip us little wadded up pieces of money when they think no one's looking. Hundreds of people have given Chinua and I encouragement, many people have affirmed this blog. Our lives are so enriched by the people around us that it's breathtaking.
Lately life has been a little hard. I've been battling my emotions again, breathing deeply to avoid panic more often than I would like. The newest update on the lump is that it is quite possibly cancer and needs to be removed as soon as possible, but after the baby is born. If they find cancer when they remove it, they'll take my whole thyroid out, which is a health issue that involves using thyroid medication for the rest of my life. I think about a new baby, a surgery, two older children who are not quite two and three years old, some misunderstandings and conflict with really close friends, and renovations on the house that we probably won't be able to move into for about another month, and I'm a little overwhelmed. But I want Christmas to be beautiful, and I want to look forward to my Muffin's birth, not anticipate the surgery afterward.
This is why having friends step in again and love us is so good. And why yesterday, after I drove back to the Land fairly exhausted, it was amazing to find a huge box of beautifully wrapped gifts that had been delivered. Our friends Levi and Jessie wanted to bless us for Christmas. It is maybe the most caring, kindest thing that anyone has done for us in a long time. And that's saying a lot. These are the things that I want to remember when my mind turns against me and I grow suspicious and wary. I want to remember all this love around us that swells like an ocean.
December 10, 2005
Just to elaborate on a brief mention of Lump yesterday, here's the scoop.
My surgeon is a 6 foot 4 inches Greek man. He wants me to call him Pete. So we will. Pete sat beside me for an hour and read all of the reports to me, word for word, explaining every piece of confusing terminology. He let me know that he had requested a larger amount of time with me than usual, with no interruptions, because of the sensitive nature of my case. Pete drew me a ton of diagrams on that scratchy crumply paper that they roll out on the exam table and then ripped it off for me to take home to show Chinua.
All of this is very wonderful and a little frightening as well. I'm thinking, why does he want to spend so much time with me? Is it because my case is so bad? In reality it's only because they would usually go ahead and remove something like this right away, just because of the medium probability of thyroid cancer. Pete said it was anywhere from a one in ten chance to a one in four chance. (What?) He gave me the choice, but he doesn't want to operate on me until the baby is born. Fine by me. I'm not that worried, seeing as I've had this thing for five years now.
I've been told several times now that if I had to ask God for cancer, I should ask for thyroid cancer because it's so easily treated and 96% curable. Whenever I'm telling anyone about this, I always say 99% curable, because it sounds better. It seems to me that what they're saying is it's better to lose a toe than a finger. And who asks for cancer? Anyone? No?
But I hear from my mom that Synthroid is great stuff, and she should know, since she's been using it for almost thirty years. Actually, I seem to recall her getting great bursts of energy from time to time while I was growing up. Or maybe that was the coffee. I actually feel really good about all this right now. God is giving me shots of grace and I'm happy to be alive and making Christmas cookies with Kai today. He's the best help ever. Kenya? Not so helpful. Good at licking the spoon that I just scooped the baking powder with, though, (to her extreme disgust) and good at scooping great handfuls of batter in her mouth even when I tell her to stop? Yes, she's good at that. I gave them both a beater to lick yesterday, and felt really and truly like a mom.
What I really want to know is whether they can do a two in one and take my wisdom teeth out at the same time. One is poking through and I think they could save money on anesthesia if they just took Lump and the teeth out at the same time.
December 23, 2005
Kai: Let's run to the restaurant together, mama! Your baby wants to run.
Me: (Smiling) Um, my baby is making my body too heavy for me to run.
Kai: But he wants to run!
Me: Well, he's going to have to wait a while for that, because it's going to kill me to run right now.
Kai: (Shaking his head with his hand on his forehead) I just don't know about this baby and a mama who won't run.
I've been so happy all day because it is as balmy as Spring here and sunny too. This is after it rained so long and hard that the river rose until I thought it would just meander right up to our cabin and take us away. (Where to? I wonder. Maybe it would be an adventure.) Rain makes me feel like I have to slouch, like the sky is closing in on me, as much as I appreciate the green, tender little shoots of fern and grass that it brings with it. We already live in a forested valley, so we see little enough of the sky as it is. It is wonderful to have sun and light.
In the past nine years I've only had two Christmases in Canada, which means that seven of them have been without snow. I'm moving to the other side now: Snow? Who needs snow? We don't have snow, but I did get the kids stockings. I am more excited than I've been for a long time about when they'll open them. (Bright and early Christmas morning. None of this midnight the night before nonsense for us.)
*
Paul, one of the guys in our community, has been watching the song "this beautiful day", or "on a day like today," or something like that, by Donovan on the Brother Sun Sister Moon movie over and over again for days. He puts it on so it will minister to us. I think it's the funniest thing I've ever seen; he'll run into the room, rewind it to the beginning of the song (yes, it's VHS), watch it, and then run back out of the room without saying anything to anyone, leaving me and the other occupants of the room staring blankly at each other. As I said to Derek the other day, as
challenging as life can be around here, we never run out of entertainment.
*
I had a spastic get-everything-done-at-once day today and cleaned the Big House as well as doing about eight loads of Land laundry and cooking my famous chicken soup (okay, not that famous) with homemade noodles for supper. Go pregnant girl! I think I'm getting close to the end, now, as a super crazy burst of energy can tell. Although, my burst of energy with Kai was still weeks off. I just want this yummy baby to be born so I can kiss his face and milky mouth.
Chinua has also been doing some therapeutic cleaning as he continues to sort through the garage. Today it was buckets of assorted nails. Sounds a little neurotic to me, although my dear husband is anything but neurotic.
December 29, 2005
Will someone please come over here and give me a good conk on the head with a blunt object? Please. Really, I'm serious. Not because we got back to the Land and we have no running water. Not because the mountain has fallen on the road in a giant landslide ten miles north of us again, effectively blocking us from the hospital and everything useful. Not even because of the day and night of false labor that I had yesterday.
Well, actually, kind of because of that. Mostly because contractions kept waking me up all night and each time I finally managed to fall back to sleep I woke up again thinking "oh yeah, now I finally really slept," but then I would look at the clock and see that wow, gee, it's only been half an hour. Not only that but I had the stupidest song from a Saturday Night Live skit in my head, and each time I woke it was there afresh in full strength. And I developed a fear that all the hot water tanks were going to explode because they didn't have enough water in them. I was especially concerned for the one in the Restaurant, because not only would it be a bad thing for the whole restaurant to burn down, but our friends who are traveling in India are storing all their worldly possessions in the same room that the water heater resides in. You can see why after a certain point I longed for a simple concussion. It was like my own personal psychotic merry-go-round.
I'm still here today and trying my very hardest for a good day. In candle therapy, this is a five candle day. Maybe we should try seven. How about some hot chocolate? Yup. Soft socks? Yes. Lots of praying, lots of time-outs by myself in the bathroom when the kids have driven me to the very brink. (Really, though, I'm the one driving. They are no different than any other day, so I know it must be me and my sleep-deprived brain.) Who needs water anyways? I mean, we have plenty of river water. The road's out, the water's gone. BUT WE'RE SO HARDCORE HERE IT DOESN'T EVEN FAZE US. YEAAAAH.
My poor Superstar Husband is probably belly-button deep in a waterfall right now, trying to fix whatever went wrong with the pipes. God is always good to us although we are in the midst of a cold, wet Land winter with water problems. When the summer comes, we'll be sitting by the river soaking in the late evening sun. It's something to keep in mind.
January
January 1, 2006
1. Highway 101 going North closed until further notice due to mudslides. Open no sooner than Tuesday.
2. Highway 101 going South closed until further notice due to flooding. They're just not talking about it until Monday.
3. Highway 1 closed South of Fort Bragg. No electricity in Fort Bragg.
4. We are stuck. No going south or north. We could go west, but they have no power.
5. No water. Today was day four. No hope of water until further notice. No hope of water until other guys come to help us, but they can't get here until the roads are open, obviously.
6. We thankfully have power. Apparently all of Leggett is without power except for us and the Peg House (a convenience store to the south.)
Yay! Power! Let's focus on our blessings. Happy New Year!!!
January 3, 2006
And... we have water again. We got it back approximately an hour before the Superstar Husband and kids and I left the Land to visit with my parents at their timeshare. We were only six days without water. No PROBLEM.
But actually, it's like the saying, "Water water everywhere and nowhere a drop to drink," because really, we had lots of water. We had a whole river that was coming closer by the minute, threatening to carry us away, plus a creek, plus the rain that just kept falling. But, we're 21st Century wimps who don't like hauling water. I should say, 21st Century North American wimps, because I've been in plenty of places where they haul water every day.
Like Nepal, where they carry extra-enormous loads of things balanced on their backs by a strap on their foreheads. I think they do it for effect. I mean, Nepali people are mostly tiny. I can't tell you the number of times I cracked my head on a doorway in Nepal because it was just too short and I couldn't seem to remember that I should bend double to get through. So it really is stunning to see a Nepali man who is half the size of you—because you're an inch away from six feet tall and a giantess in the land of Nepal—running down the road with a refrigerator three times the size of him strapped to his forehead, dodging a few dogs and the giant bull lying in the street. I am not exaggerating.
The worst is when you are trekking in the Himalayas and you never ever thought that you were so incredibly out of shape but now you are thinking over and over, please someone just kill me NOW, as you climb stair after stair, and all these Sherpa porters keep skipping past you up the hill barefoot with piles of bricks tied to their foreheads, smiling cheerfully at you as they call out, Namaste! Every time. Namaste! To every single trekker. Once my Superstar Husband and I (when he was just my superstar boyfriend) saw a group of Sherpa porters taking turns carrying an elderly woman up the mountain to medical help. She was also sitting in a basket, which was resting on one of the porters backs, tied to his forehead. I guess you can bear a lot of weight that way or something.
The point is, we are so civilized that it kills us to haul a little water.
That knowledge doesn't keep me from being very very happy that I:
1. Had a shower today.
2. Gave my kids a bath.
3. May sneak into the hot tub at my parent's timeshare condo tonight.
If we had kept on without any water I may have been forced to do my laundry in the river, like I've seen people do in the Ganga in India. Although it probably would have taken all my clothes away, rushing the way it is. Where did our lovely lady river go? Our pretty green darling? She's gone, and a monstrous mud torrent has replaced her.
One thing I saw a few days ago that I have never seen before: three kayakers cheerfully being swept along. They must have been out of their gourds, as my Superstar Husband commented seconds before he yelled out to them, "You're all gonna DIE!"
"YEE HAAWWW!" one of them yelled back.
January 10, 2006
Really, if I had any more contractions I'd probably just explode. I'm torn between just wanting to have this little Muffin baby so all this can be over and wanting just a few more full nights of sleep. Not that I really sleep all that well.
My new birth plan is to go to the hospital right before I need to push, which will force them to simply catch the baby and we can skip over all the drama. This plan was formed after I was kidnapped and held hostage, strapped to the monitor for two hours while I was forced to listen to my baby's heartbeat in stereo. I love to hear my baby's heartbeat, don't get me wrong, but something's gotta be off when I'm talking to my dad on the phone and he asks, "Who's doing construction over there?" And I have to reply that I'm actually sitting and tapping my feet to the rhythm of my unborn child's heart. It seems a little like stalking.
All I wanted was to have my cervix checked. A strange request, but because of my endless days of contractions and the fact that I happened to be near the hospital, I thought it might be good to see if I had advanced at all. I've been walking around at 2 cm. But they couldn't just check my cervix. I should have known better, known not to even darken the hospital door until transition. But I didn't get it until I saw the nurse avoiding my eyes when I asked when I could leave. I'm not in labor, I tried to
insist. I really know I'm not. TRUST me. She seemed to think I was going to have the baby on the side of Highway 101 in Weott, something I would totally never do. Maybe in Myers Flat, but never Weott.
That's when I found out their protocol: 2 hours of monitoring if you even think about being in labor. I was pretty furious, since I really believe that I know my body better than anybody. But, not wanting to get the BAD PATIENT rap before the big day even comes, I sat like a lamb and drank apple juice through a straw and listened to the washing machine hammering that is keeping my baby alive.
So, I'll go right at the end, push the baby out, and then the nurses can bring me warm blankets and food. Everyone will be happy.
January 24, 2006
I haven't left my cabin since I got home from the hospital on Saturday, but today I finally emerged. Just for a minute. Soon I'll be creeping back to the relative peace of my little room. The last few days have been pretty momentous and intense and my parents have been absolute angels, taking the kids out so they can get all their crazy energy out while I bond with my little baby.
Salif was born on January 20th at 4:41 in the afternoon. He weighed 8 lbs 6 oz and was 19 and a half inches long. He is beautiful and sweet and the kids love him and I am so happy and sad and overjoyed and in despair. I cry a lot. But I have a lot of people who love me all around me and know that this crazy mess of hormones will only last a while.
Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1) Page 5