It was even more vivid than last time: the very day Ben stopped breastfeeding, some kind of hormonal veil lifted and I went from raving straightjacketed maniac to unshakable stepford wife.

The other night I said to Justin “You know what?” and he said “What?” and I said “I think I might be myself again. I think I might be back to normal.” and he said “Normal? What, you mean THIS wasn’t normal?” (sits upright in chair clutching imaginary safety bar)

“Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck-tck-tck-tck isn’t this lovely! tck-tck-tck-tck look at the view from up here! tck-tck-tck wait, what’s going on? tck-tck-tck what’s that peak up ahead? tck-tck-tck-aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!! UUUUUGHHH I NEED NEW PANTS WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIIIIIEEEEE!!! tck-tck-tck-tck-tck-tck oh phewph, thank god that’s over… WAAHGGGHHHUPSIDEDOWNAAAARRGGGHH!!”

I guess that means he’s relieved.

+++++

The end of breastfeeding marks the end of gestation, the sideways promotion of what I’d affectionately call a parasitic love. And yet another goodbye to the boy we left behind, the last of Liam's mark on me.

Summoning him can be like arriving at a summer home already warm with company. As soon as I walk up the driveway he yells she’s here! and runs to me through the scents of woodsmoke and cinnamon and mystic. He might embrace me eye-to-eye, gruff and scratchy and with his own stories and adventure. Or he might crawl to me with a dirty bum, grasp the hem of my jeans with sticky fists grinning broadly to say up! then wrap koala arms around my neck. No matter what his form he meets my eye so deliberately, as Ben does, and says in his own way hello again mama, I missed you, and look, look at all this.

Or I arrive to see grass grown to hay, windows boarded up for winter, mothballs and plastic sheets. I try the door just in case, call through the porch hello? are you here? and get no answer. It is not abandonment, just vacancy.

That’s how it is now. He is not with me. I don’t know where he is. Maybe his next, a place or calling that might give him the chance to run to me again in some way, just now and then, I hope.

+++++

1979. At the top of the paper, saved all these years by my parents:

WHAT I WILL BE WHEN I GROW UP.

First up, and most important, when you are six:  to be A TEENAGER. With CURLY HAIR. And mascara, and lipstick (a.k.a. FAST AND EASY).
 

Next, I would be a roller derby star. Of course. DUH. Apparently an Amish one.
 

In addition to all of the above, my life’s ambition? To be TANNED. sigh.
 

The last and final option was the only one in which it was acceptable to have straight hair. And I don’t even know how to say this, in case the publisher falls down a well and emerges with amnesia—but I'm told it’s going to happen, although it’s not what you might think. It’s an adventure novel for kids, and in about 18 months, it will be born.

(What you might think might happen too, if I can pull it together. We’ll see.)

!!!

It’s a good thing I was at the bottom of my fourth rum drink when we saw them wake up. Bats don’t eat pickles.

“What the…”

“DUCK!”

“Holy shit. HOLY shit. HOLY SHIT!”

Roaring fire. Plaid. Moose antlers. Giant rock fireplace. Rum. The friendly, whooshing hiss of a coleman stove. The best frigging supper ever eaten in all of frigging christendom (papardalle, asiago, garlic, garlic, garlic, butter, asparagus, and scallops, which, handily, have no faces). More rum. Bigger fire. Drunken interpretive dance. More rum. Cozy slippers. A clock that strikes midnight. A COVEN OF RABIED BATS HUNGRY FOR BLOOD.

ONE! One wide-awake bat! A-ha-ha! TWO! Two black bats! A-ha-ha! THREE! FOUR! FIVE! SIX! SEVEN! Seven wide-awake black furry swooping bats! A-ha-ha-haaa!

My instincts? Sharp as a tack. 1) Pull sweater up over gaping mouth; 2) Say ‘holy shit!’ fourteen times in quick succession; 3) Lay immobile thinking if I don’t move they’ll think I'm sofa if I don’t move they’ll think I'm sofa if I don’t move they’ll think I'm sofa.

Meanwhile Justin stood frozen solid as three of them circled his head almost too fast to track and said this:

“In french they’re called chauve-souris. You know, there aren’t many things that really give me the queebs. Mice are one of them. (FLAP! FLAP! FLAP!) Mice with wings are another. I think… (SHRIEK! SHRIEK! SHRIEK!) …yes. I think I’m about to lose my shit.”

Ten seconds later we were in the car headed home, these particular bats having been bred in Sauron’s evil lair to be unafraid of light. Thankfully, Justin had only sipped at a lone beer so as to enjoy the drunken interpretive dance unimpaired, and was able to drive home at mach ten screeching like a little girl until we made the shore.

(confession: that last bit may have been me.)

+++++

We returned the next morning to paddle to Liam’s eddy and I felt strangely blank.

Here is a mother whose baby died, and here she is paddling a canoe, and there she is standing under the tree where the beavers have been busy, and it’s all different now, everything shifted, and look, she’s hungry, and it’s time for rice crackers.

+++++

As we tied the canoe to the roof for the second drive home this trip, a large butterfly coaxed to me

Look! Look! Come and see!

And so I followed, lying on my side on the beach, admiring as it preened and sunbathed on the sand.

I am all joy! My wings, they are mine! They catch wind and eyes! I am beautiful.

We sat together for a while, me and the butterfly, and I cooed to him how lovely he was, how proud he must be of his wonderful yellow. He agreed and then went on to find adventure, and I wondered if in some deep recess he might harbour a speck of my baby and I thought to myself onward, onward, brave son!

+++++

Two hours later we pulled into the driveway. As soon as I opened the door I saw another on the grass, a different butterfly but identical to my preening friend, this one injured and fluttering pitifully. Half a wing missing from some misfortune, he told me

I was all joy, but now I am done

and I picked him up in my hand and cooed to him how lovely he was, how proud he must be of his wonderful yellow. He agreed, and I found a soft, broad hosta leaf in the shade where he went still and I thought to myself onward, onward, brave son!

LALALALALALAAA CAN’T HEAR YOU my brain singsongs, its fingers stuck in its ears as the throbbing, whimpering thing in my chest emotes and aches.

LALALALALAAAA let’s think about HAIR MOUSSE! and MEN! and VODKA COCKTAILS! and A NEW SUMMER SKIRT! and MOUNTAINS! and BUSINESS TRIPS! and THAT WAD OF PRIMAL GOO THAT’S BLOCKING THE BATHTUB DRAIN!

My brain has given itself Chiclet veneers to cover the rot underneath.

I fell apart a few weeks before their birthday. Then that day came and went and in the past six weeks I’ve lamented everything except Liam. What to do with this life. What to do with an unwanted minivan. How to ease off on paying work in the interest of making time for possibly dream-fulfilling work. How to possibly ease off on paying work after losing ten thousand dollars on a minivan that is apparently unwanted by everyone else, too. How to get my mojo back. How to shake this angry pallor.

<BZZZT>

Scratch that last one.

I’ve got grief exhaustion. I haven’t got any more profound left in me.

I’m tired of being honourable. Not as-in ‘sick of it’ but just plain tired. Tapped. There’s the first day he died, then the second day he died, then the six weeks in between: the day of his heart surgery, through his steroid-fuelled bloom, the day his brain began to flood. And one year ago today: the day they tried to fix it and he said that’s it, world. I think I’ve had enough.

Likewise.

++++++

This weekend we go to be with him, just the two of us, to see if we can spot his urn in the creekbed again. We’ll take our red canoe, paddle through the everglades that lead to the gnarly, twin-trunked maple that canopies over his gurgling eddy.

I’m bringing rum.

And after that I’m going to try and honour him by allowing myself to be human, not just some shadow of a human.

His soft, floppy body lies pressed to your skin and no matter your own heat, you can't keep him warm. From the inside-out, he is the still coolness of the end of life. Then his spirit is lifted into mystery, and it is done. And forever after that you take your own breaths under pressure: pressure to be in a state of constant spiritual vigilance, of love, of gratitude.

It’s impossible. I can only be so serene. It’s just not in my nature, except in fleeting moments. So I hope for one, just one, sometime tomorrow night.

The minivan is no more. Finally we decided to eat the loss (thousands) and trade it in, crippled by gas prices and emotional trauma and vanity. We bought the thing—the pentecostal retiree convention motorcoach, the Ferris-Beuller-endcredits schoolbus, the circa 1850s battleship—just over a year ago because we were going to have three children, and three children pushed us hopelessly into peoplemover territory.

We are once again Volkswagen people, our fifth. It’s sturdy-sexy and it smells right. It’s a standard. It is us. And we no longer require those guys in jumpsuits with the orange glowsticks to help us navigate underground parking garages.

As we drove away from the dealership Justin ya-hooed I’m not even looking back! as I turned in my seat to stare at its bulk, a brick shithouse in a lot full of German minxes, my eyes suddenly glassy. Thinking as I do with every step that leaves him further behind us goodbye my Liam, we wanted you.

++++++

The grasses are knee-high now around his blackened ruin, lupins and bramble spreading where there was once hissing smoke.

Now to be a wife again, a friend, a woman. To laugh and mean it.

++++++

FB | Message : night out

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Today at 8:23pm

So girls: I've been thinking lately how great it would be to get out. Not 'out' as in a barf-encrusted sweater and a trip for groceries, but 'out' as in a yummy dinner downtown and drinks, plentiful drinks, and TAXICABS (!!!) and maybe even a few bars—just a chance for a bunch of us to get polished up and whatever else may follow.

I'm wondering just how late I can stay out. I'm hoping I'd be able to make it past 10:30. That would be EPIC!!

so... care to join me? I figured you might be tempted....?
xo Kate

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Reply at 8:30pm

OH I AM VERY TEMPTED!!!!
I may have to make it a full night and crash at K’s—she's away for the weekend, but I am sure she'll be up for it!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Today at 8:36pm

Oh goodie! ...I guess I'd need to crash somewhere too. I plan on being incapable of much else other than giggling and eating, so let’s make a night of it. yay!

K's going to get back from her weekend to find the two of us have invited ourselves for a sleepover. Where do city people go these days to drink and dance on the speakers? Where does it, you know, rain men?

Kidding.

Kind of.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Reply at 8:45pm

HAHAHAHA....no kidding, we'll find that place!!
I am sure she won't care if we crash there!! Plus then when we get up in the morning and enjoy R's fresh muffins and coffee... he set the standard last time I was there!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Today at 8:51pm

YES. This is so great. I'm going to have to find my way to Winners first though, see if they sell all-over body girdles. I'm determined to *not* look like a lesbian farmer as per usual.

although... if I try to not look like a lesbian farmer then I really will look like a cougar. must find happy middle ground.. must find happy middle ground...

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Reply at 8:53pm

you are too much!! ;o)
Yes I may have to pull out the spanx!!!! they do the trick!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Today at 9:02pm

Okay, that's what I need... I've seen them at Winners before but never the right size.

Christ. We’re totally cougars. Before we’ve even figured out where to go and when, we’ve already discussed the required maximum-support undergarments.

Evan:  Mommy, where is the other baby, the baby like Ben?

Kate:  That was Liam, sweets.

Evan:  Is he in the hospital? Can I see him?

Kate:  He’s your spirit-brother and he lives with the stars, and in your heart.

Evan:  I don’t have a heart. I’m a big boy.

Kate:  You do, goose. You are a big, beautiful boy with a big, beautiful heart. Liam watches you all the time and when he does, he’s with you right there in your heart.

Evan:  But I don’t see him. Why can’t I see him?

Kate:  Because he was a sick little baby, and he couldn’t stay with us, so he went up to the stars where they made him all better.

Evan:  Mommy, sometimes I can’t remember Liam.

Kate:  Oh sweetie, that’s okay. Daddy and me will help you remember him.

Evan:  I miss Liam mommy.

Kate:  I know love, we all miss him.

Evan:  What is daddy going to dream about tonight?

Kate:  Mountains. Big mountains with snowy peaks and scraggly trees and black bears all dripping with blueberry juice.

Evan:  What are you going to dream about tonight?

Kate:  Fishotopia, the place where the fish walk around on the land and the people walk around underneath the water and they come out in boats to try and catch us but we’re all too quick.

Evan:  What is Evan going to dream about tonight?

Kate:  Monkeys on ferris wheels.

Evan:  What is Ben going to dream about tonight?

Kate:  Ummm… let me see. How about… friendly tugboats?

Evan:  No mommy. Ben is going to dream about dumpsters and excavators.

Kate:  Oh. Okay.

Evan:  What is Liam going to dream about tonight?

Kate:  You, sweets. Liam dreams about you.

+++++

Justin (whispers to me):  the hook was stuck and then he got hold of it and it was too much time and so we didn't throw it back but I don’t think he knows about l-i-v-e and d-e-a-d and he keeps asking when it’s going to start jumping again and I think he wants to take it into the bath tonight.

Justin (turns to fisherson):  Are you ready to go and get some ice cream?

Evan:  YES.

Justin:  But you have to leave the fish here.

Evan:  NO.

Justin:  But he belongs in the fridge.

Evan:  NO HE DOESN’T. HE WANTS ICE CREAM.

Justin:  But you can’t just walk around everywhere with a fish.

Evan:  OH YES I CAN.

Gravel crunches and spits under the tires as I brake and turn full-circle in the middle of the road, making up my mind. On the way home from the beach I used to stop here, visit yesterday's people on this long-deserted outcropping fenced in on three sides by marsh and on the fourth by the sea.

It’s been too long.

I’m so glad nobody’s left to mow. It’s prettier this way, fitting, somehow. They are reclaimed, and it is peaceful. Weathered, naked stone faces the waves half-sunken, embraced by meadow.

You’re walking on bones, something tells me, and I hesitate. Crunch crunch.

But then something else says they sense your beating heart and they note you, curious.

They are peaceful and not minding me but still ask why are you here? You don’t know us. We are too long dead for even your great-grandparents to know us.

I press my palm through the grasses to the cool mud underneath, through layers of insects and prickles and wildflowers and through that palm I speak back to them because I am of the dead too, and because you have answers I want.

Ahhh, they say. We see.

Then there’s just silence, crashing waves and seagulls, because you can’t get what you want from one dimension to the next. You just can’t. You can only sit cross-legged in front of the gulf, staring at the relentless fog that obscures the other side.

+++++++++++

Just now Evan’s door creaked open and he scrambled into bed next to me bleary-eyed, whispering as he does when he needs me most: hiya nonnie, I cuddle. I wrapped myself around him under thick blankets, cool breeze and a chorus of peeper frogs through the open window, the milky way above our heads as I hummed him back to sleep.

As he breathed in and breathed out the thought came to me one life is one episode in the life of a soul and as I did, a subtle ribbon of light twirled across the black night sky, what I’d call winter’s northern lights if we were north, and if it were winter. Suddenly I could see that it was all alive, breathing in and breathing out. Some just our own flotsam, satellites and jetplanes and junk, but other stuff too, stuff not so easily pegged by the language of quantum physics.

I lust so deeply for magic, I swear sometimes I can will it into existence.

+++++++++++

There’s so much to tell you.

I long for what I can’t have, selfishly.
I feel like I might be on the brink of something.
I want an unchaperoned day pass.
Gym schmym (sigh).

Maybe next time.

Heads up to those with fortitude: Tomorrow night (Wednesday, May 21^st) at 9 PM Eastern, Bon and I will be live on Blog Talk Radio with host Kristen Chase of Motherhood Uncensored. We’ll be talking about cobbling life together again, how friends can support babylost mamas, how life changes post-explosion.

Be not afraid of our snakes. We'll be wrapping lightness around the dark, not intending to go all babyloss on your ass. Then again, we may. I kid. Sort of.

So here's my call to you: leave a comment here telling us what you'd like to see us talk about. Don't be shy--we're open books, for the most part. Do you have questions you'd like answered?  (...and not about the fetish party. Those will have to wait for the C-Section Pooches and Perversion: Can They Co-Exist? podcast)

Click here to listen live, or to check out the archive anytime.

That’s uhh…. all for now. Be umm… k-k-kind, willya?

Me write better than me speak.

I’m here, muddling along.

I haven’t got much to say, but feel the need to bump that last one down the line.

It's been blowing the dog off the chain here lately, literally and figuratively, and I'm dishevelled and turned inside-out. Thank you, huddle. Your words make me feel normal.

+++++++

On May 12, 2007 we lay Liam and Ben side-by-side for the first time—Liam with ventilator tubes and tape obscuring his face, Ben with his oxygen, and we took a picture, terrified, desperate, overwhelmed. Poised to sell our souls.

Hello brave boys. Here we are.

+++++++

Liam calls for me sometimes. And sometimes I call for him, needing him to let me mother him. Needing to carve out some portion of every day to parent each of my children, living and dead.

God, how I despise that word.

Mamas like me work to reclaim it perhaps like bitch or queer, diffusing it by bringing it out in to the open, putting it in front of the word baby.

I understand why. To force people around us to acknowledge, to listen, to remember despite the discomfort. To challenge don’t you dare tell me to get over it. Don’t you dare rush me. Pretending it never happened may work for you, but not for me.

I’m just not quite ready for that word. The pitifully hopeful, whimpering thing inside me bristles, needing to hold out for parallel worlds and pearly gates and cosmic mistakes. Dead is too final, too finite. Lost at least leaves room for reunion.

+++++++

Evan: MOMMY I WANNA COOKIE!
Kate: What do you say?
Evan: MOMMY I WANNA COOKIE NOW!
Kate: What do you say?
Evan: MOMMY I WANNA COOKIE NOW, NO, I WANT TWO!

And then he looks at me grinning, bats his eyelashes and says PWEEZE!

And then Ben projectile-barfs peas and hummus and I don’t get there in time with the bowl and the moment the digestive hose is emptied he cracks himself up, spitty pea-goop dripping off his chin.

Then suddenly there’s this on the radio and Liam waits for me patiently, as he always has, and I run the dripping cloth back and forth across the white plastic with tears in my eyes, wishing I had twice the highchairs, twice the barf.

+++++++

I worked until 3:45 AM this morning on a presentation for a client. Evan climbed into bed with me at 6:30 AM and said

MOMMY!

and I said uuunnnngggghhh and he said

DON’T WORRY MOMMY, I ALWEDDY GOT MY BWEKKFIST

and he curled up next to me under the blankets, munching in a pleased-with-himself sort of way, and I drifted back to sleep. By the time I woke up he’d plowed through four chocolate chip cookies and was nose-to-nose, blinking earnestly and shout-whispering

WHAT DID YOU DWEEM ABOUT MOMMY I DWEEMED ABOUT MONKEYS ON FEWWIS WHEELS MOMMY, MONKEYS ON FEWWIS WHEELS.

+++++++

Now and then I can see peace, a clearing through this claustrophobic tangle, and awash in gratitude I would do it all a hundred times over for the honour of being mother to exactly these children, all three.

Today is their birthday. 

Last night I thought I’m going to look back at those pictures, see just how small Ben was when he was born and was aghast as the rest of the world must have been. Now that I know him beyond the abstractions of the NICU—his giggles and his big brother idolatry and his koala bear hugs—the realization of how close we came to losing him is a vice around my throat.

Last night I realized how everyone else must have seen our doom when we could not. We were too busy doing what we were told, too busy straining to see beyond the wires and the tubes and the swelling, too busy trying to give them love through the portholes of a hot plastic box. Thinking in desperation Liam is just mellow, a patient, old soul. Last night I felt like a fool.

Last night I sought out Liam, mute and still, his limbs and face buried under an impenetrable web of wires and ventilators and sensors, tangled up next to Ben. Pulled magnetically to fish beyond the highly edited flickrstream for the outtakes, searching for something of my son that perhaps I hadn’t seen before. All I am given is undiscovered angles of horror and heartbreak.

Last night it occurred to me just how gravely injured he’d been. Always grimacing as if in pain or at least in purgatory, his face relaxed only when he was in the deepest of medicated sleeps. When his eyes were open his face was screwed up into an expression of frustrated shock as if to say why am I still here?

Last night I hated my body, hated it so much.

Last night I vaguely considered a tattoo for the first time in my life. Earlier in the day I’d opened the sailmaker’s chest to see a few snips of Liam’s hair in a tiny zip-lock bag. It’s darker than I remember and it dawned on me that I was looking at the hair of a dead baby, cut from him after he finally stopped breathing.

Then I looked at Ben who sat in his highchair grinning broadly with one solitary cheerio stuck to the spit on his chin and with Liam’s hair between my fingers I went to the car to get the camera and Oh lili, isn’t this lovely, you’ve never been outside before. It’s sunny and the birds are chirping, and soon the peeper frogs will start to sing, and doesn’t that breeze feel wonderful and I felt pathetic, standing there in the grass holding a zip-lock bag containing all that’s left of my baby, holding it up to the sun so that he could feel that the winter’s grip is gone, that the warmth has come back.

I wonder if they could put his hair into some ink and brand him onto my skin somewhere, somewhere secret, so he would always be with me. I hope it would hurt like a sonofabitch.

Last night I stood in the bathroom with Liam’s ceramic hole-in-heart. It has started, so I’ll put his heart on a new string and I’ll wear it for his six weeks and that will give me something to hold on to but the new string didn’t fit through the hole and I thought well shit, maybe not, and maybe that’s just silly anyway and I put the heart back inside the sailmaker’s chest and went back to bed and just lay there next to Justin’s breathing, goggle-eyed and clipped short like a hunted animal hiding in the dark.

I'm often amazed that you're still here. I'm going to try and be myself again, I am. I've got other stories to tell you, if you care to hear them, about pirates in the forest and 10-foot swells and fetish parties and aliens and past lives and the smell of gunpowder and the deserted farm up the cove that we skulk past, eyeing hungrily with financial hopelessness and unrequited love. But today I have to cry. So thanks for your patience and your presence, strangers and friends.

I’ve never done much for any purpose outside my own needs and impulses.

Tonight, I feel like I’m a hundred feet tall.

When people create something bigger than themselves the analogy is always birth. Labour of love, my baby, gestation. But this was easy. The women, the concept, the plethora of ideas and must-dos and insight and reflection all clicking into place beautifully, as birth has not always done for us.

Go to Glow in the Woods today and wish us a happy birthday, won’t you?

Link to us and subscribe and spread the word. Tell your mama-friends about us—those mamas of lost babies who may need our company, and whose company we need too. Help us reach out through the storm, to bring another inside-out soul some warmth and companionship.

Because if I can pass on just a sliver of the light that you've sent into my darkness in the past year, I will have done a good thing.

For mamas of still babies, tiny babies, lost potential of all kinds.

In the beginning you stagger, disoriented, through this storm.

We want to be a glow through the trees, a golden refuge of log and glass. Stumble up the steps, shake off the snow and the crust and the stiffness, cross the threshold to be encircled by figures welcoming, nodding, easing you to a roaring fire and piping hot tea and wine and whoopie pies and whatever else warms you from the inside out.

Sink into a battered old sofa, tuck your feet under your legs, a woodsmokey quilt around your shoulders, fingers wrapped around a hot mug,

and be with us.