shift

i know that i need to take responsibility as well, but i am feeling this shift in a friendship that makes my heart hurt. nearly 6 years ago a woman came into my life and i knew immediately she was someone i wanted to be friends with and get to know better. we seemed to have so much in common and the friendship was easily forged over coffee, watching over our collective charges, nights out (and even away) without the children, and even vacationing together with our families. laughter and tears both came easily and were always met with the same energy. there were days when we would talk on the phone more than once, and neither one of us apologized for calling for the third time that day about what was going on in our lives (in the last ten minutes). we were always planning the next time we would see each other even when the next was only minutes away. it was effortless. and then m&k were born.

i dont mean that to sound like m&k are in any way at fault, i know they are not. but when i think about how this friendship began to shift, it all points back to that time in my life. spending 5 weeks alone in the hospital can be a very alienating thing. although my friend came to visit me often, sometimes 3 or 4 times in a week, i still felt the shift begin to occur when m&k were born. i felt incredibly alone and isolated during those 5 weeks. my body was consumed with building two lives and my brain was too. when i was finally no longer confined to those 4 bedrest walls, my world only got bigger in drips and drabs. i remember leaving the hospital the first day and physically feeling how loud everything was outside of that room. i had changed, my mind functioned in a new way, even my body was different. physically, i could feel the noise of the outside world. i was now the mother of 3 boys, two of whom were clinging to life in the NICU. i needed my friends to hold me up. i needed someone to sit with me and cry with me. i needed to not be doing that alone in the bathroom at the hospital. i needed.

maybe i allowed the insanity of mothering two premature babies at once, not to mention keeping the schedule of their older brother, offer me an excuse not to pick up the phone as often as i once had done without a second thought. maybe i allowed that excuse to continue even when i was again feeling human, when i could no longer feel the noise physically. there were still shared coffees, and nights out, and collectively watching over our charges, but all of it was less frequent. sadly, all of it seemed to require soo much more effort, on both ends. now when i see that friend, we fill the silence with things like "i havent seen you in soo long" or "i cant remember when i saw you last." somehow the things that we used to share when we talked on the phone for the third time in one day no longer seem worthy of even a weekly phone call. more often than not i find myself surprised when it comes to light that something monumental has happened to one or the other of us, and we are just finding out months later in a sort of off handed way. i find myself saying, "oh, i thought i told you that." maybe i did and she forgot, maybe i didnt and i forgot. maybe it just didnt seem worth it.

now we are at the point where it takes several days to return an email, and even longer to return a phone call. a phone call which almost always goes to voicemail. plans have to be arranged weeks in advance, and then often change at the last minute. i am feeling this shift in a friendship. my heart is hurting and i dont know what to do.

for martha

we all love you! m. has now learned how to say it too!

a reprint: welcome to holland

several years ago, i heard this story retold at a gala benefit for a child who was losing the battle to a debilitating disease known as leukodystrophy. i remember crying at the time at the poignancy of the story. even though i was not yet a mother, and did not know firsthand about the incredible bond between mother and child, i desperately wanted children and had been trying for months to get pregnant. now that i have children and can read that story from a new perspective i would like to share it with some friends who are going through a difficult time right now. this one is for every mom who is taking a course that was not what they had planned. its a reprint and the original author is Emily Perl Kingsley.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

precipitate

toddlers thrive on routine, right? we have a fairly regimented routine established, at least during the week. throw in another adult and it all goes to pot on the weekends. logic aside. it just goes to pot on the weekends. but today, on a weekday, this is what precipitated naptime, from the toddlers perspectives (collaboratively for the benefit of this post).

7:06-7:12am
wake up and immediately begin jumping up and down in our cribs. begin to hurl contents of crib onto the floor. hear footsteps of a grownup coming, smile and proceed to look innocent.

7:13-7:27am
run around like maniacs when released from crib and play "catch me if you can" with mommy, followed by "twirly baby" while wet diapers and replaced with dry ones. intentionally move limbs in directions opposite to shirt and arm holes, as pj's are replaced with play clothes. smile at mommy and proceed to look innocent. head downstairs army commando style. run in opposite directions and see who mommy catches first.

7:28-8:03am
get strapped into booster seat and begin to make requests for breakfast. check range of vocal chords by gradually increasing volume each time we utter the word "yogurt". watch mommy head toward bathroom and take the chance to begin checking the velocity of apple jacks when hurled at direction of siblings and floor. when mommy returns, smile and proceed to look innocent. convince selves that we are being released from boosters because its time to watch cartoons, not because of being caught red handed hurling remaining breakfast across the table.

8:04am (and really this is the precise moment mommy's day went to hell)
remind each other that yesterday we broke the gate (for the third time) which keeps us in the playroom and begin to test the strength and integrity of mommy's quick fix with a bungee cord.

8:05am-11:07am
take turns running full force into the compromised gate. watch mommy answer the phone and begin screaming as is routine. scream banana at the top of lungs. begin to beg for cartoons by screaming "toon, toon, toon, toon, toon, toon, toon, toon, toon, toon, toon." realize that 4 screams ago, mommy broke down and turned on the tv. alternate between screamming: "gabba, gabba, gabba" and running full force into the now severely compromised gate. wonder what mommy means when she says "check facebook and email".

11:08-11:37am
launch selves one final time into the gate and enjoy the ride as it collapses. proceed to watch in amazement as mommy totally freaks out and breaks out the big guns: the superyard and 2 more bungee cords. begin to giggle as mommy moves furniture in an attempt to secure the superyard to something, anything. sit down with bowl of animal crackers and watch mommy rig a new gate. begin to disassemble entertainment center armoire in attempt to escape superyard. enjoy quiet moment to ourselves, which mommy calls "timeout," while mommy re-assembles entertainment center armoire. rinse, lather and repeat until granny calls.

11:38am-12noon
talk to granny on speaker phone. say "huh?!?" when granny asks if we are being good boys and proceed to smile and blow copious amounts of kisses over the phone. hope granny will continue to think mommy was conjuring images of sweet baby animals when she called us monsters. say bye to granny and get strapped into boosters for lunch.

12:02pm
explore texture of grilled cheese and fresh strawberries by rubbing them in our hair and squishing them in our hands. wonder why we have been abruptly removed from boosters and hastily transported to our cribs. smile, proceed to look innocent and settle in for a long winters nap.

sacrifice

there has been a ton of speculation this week surrounding the mom who gave birth to eight babies on monday, at once. yes that means octuplets. funny, as i type that, the spell checker doesnt even recognize "octuplets" as a word. that gives us an indication of just how rare it is. apparantly there is only one other living set, who are now 10 years old.

i feel for this mom, because, like it or not, she has been thrust into the public eye. now everyone feels the right to comment about her life, her choices, her method of becoming pregnant, how many children is too many children, why doctors allowed her to proceed with such a plan, etc. privacy as she once knew it, has disappeared. and what of the poor innocent children?! they did not ask to be brought into this world. yet they will go through life, probably spending more days feeling like a spectacle than not. they will go to drs. appointments or the shopping mall and watch their mother be peppered with inappropiate questions. they will enter kindergarten, and their siblings will likely take up half the class. one day they might even google themselves and get exponentially more hits than the average person would if we googled our own name.

although i understand all the speculation about how and why, i still feel for her. as a mother of twins i am constantly fending off personal and inappropriate questions. complete strangers think it is perfectly appropriate to ask if i took drugs to become pregnant, if my children are natural, how long it took to become pregnant, are they test tube babies or did i use a turkey baster, did i have a vaginal birth, did i breastfeed, etc. i have been forced to engage in a debate with a minimum wage worker in a big box store about whether or not my children are identical. a debate which was then followed by a lengthy discussion where i fruitlessly attempted to kindly point out the differences in my children. followed by further discussion on how i tell them apart. all because i wanted to buy a ceiling fan for my 5 year old's bedroom.

as parents we make sacrifices for our children, its part of the territory. sometimes we give up things that are important to us, like careers, sleep, money, a social life, the ability to complete a sentence, dining in restaurants that dont have the word "highchair" in their vocabulary, and yes, privacy too. we give up privacy first. sometimes we take medication, give ourselves shots every day, and visit a dr. every other day for seemingly months on end to have blood drawn and have large probes put in sacred places to measure tiny follicles. sometimes, in utter desparation, we lie in a bed on our side for 5 weeks straight just to give babies a chance to actually be able to take a breath when we birth them. all in the name of love. and sometimes those babies are born and shit and piss all over us. and sometimes they grow up and figuratively do the same thing. but you know what we do, we find a way to make another sacrifice. it is what mothers do. we sacrifice. all in the name of love.

mommy, which box is my snow saucer in? i dont know bud...

implausible utterings

lately i find words coming out of my mouth that i thought i would never utter. here is just a small collection:

• could you please stop putting train tracks down your shirt?
• please take your finger out of your brother's ear.
• stop licking the television.
• no, his name is barack obama, not iraq obama.
• stop hitting your brother over the head with your milk cup!

there are also those things that slip out that i am certain i rolled my eyes to when they were no doubt directed at me 30 years ago:

• where are your manners?
• did you flush?
• no you can not have french fries for breakfast.

lastly, and somehow now unabashedly...

• yes, i do, i love my minivan.

what do you find yourself saying that you once thought implausible?