AMathay

Ten Blue Bins

The morning I found out my son had no heartbeat anymore, I was at my OB’s office, alone. Still in complete denial something was wrong, I drove myself there while having conversations with my husband and friend that it was just a routine thing and I’m sure I’d be fine. After my doctor said the words “I’m sorry….” and then I became hysterical for a few minutes, I called back both my husband and friend who both came to the office.

Those moments where I waited were very bizarre as I called my mom (to drop everything and come to me, which she did) and my boss (to inform her I wouldn’t be back at work that day, and why). When my husband and friend showed up within minutes of each other, we sat and cried and then my husband went home about 15 minutes ahead of me to do the three things I needed him to do- take the framed ultrasound picture off of the coffee table in the living room, take the adorable snowsuit with bear ears on the hood out of the hall closet, and close the door to the nursery. By the time my friend drove me home, these things had been done.

We talked about that closed door to the nursery for a few days after I came home from the hospital. My husband was gently adamant that we open it at some point; he didn’t want it to become a place of darkness. I wanted to call a contractor and have him demolish that entire room off of the side of my house, leaving an empty, ugly, gaping hole to match my heart.

See, the day before I went to see my OB because my son had stopped moving inside of me was the day of my baby shower. That Sunday night, on a high of love and gifts, I put everything away in that nursery. I unpacked and puttered and folded and shelved books. The thought crossed my mind that I may be packing up this room sooner than expected, because at this point I thought something may be wrong, but I continued to convince myself that he was just sleeping, he was big and slowing down in movements, he was just being a normal almost full term baby.

About a week after I came home from the hospital, we opened that door. I wanted everything out of there, immediately. Looking at it was immensely painful. So, I shoved the high chair, the stroller, the car seat, everything up into the attic. I drove to Home Depot, got ten 30-gallon Rubbermaid storage bins, and in an hour had put an entire baby’s room worth of stuff into them. I left them stacked up in the now empty room and after I asked my husband (rather matter-of-factly) that night to disassemble the crib, we put the rest of the bins away. I was a robot in my actions as I did all of this, militant and fast. I was angry, I was overwhelmingly sad, I was disappointed in myself, and I was physically in pain from doing so much twisting and bending and lifting a few days after a c-section. I didn’t care if my insides ripped open. What did it matter? My son was dead and now I had to put all of his clothes and books and bedding into storage as I tried desperately to tell my breasts that there was no baby and my mind that I wasn’t crazy. An hour later, it was over.

As I was standing in the upstairs hallway, staring at the attic steps, I remember my husband telling me that we should look at it as just being really prepared for another baby. I had a hard time believing that those bins would ever come out of the attic again. We don’t have babies, I told him. We have miscarriages and stillborns.

One of the first things I thought about when I became pregnant again were those bins. I thought for a while that I wouldn’t set up a nursery again. Why bother? The odds of bringing a baby home from the hospital weren’t in my favor. I thought that maybe I’d wait until I brought my baby home and then get it all out. All I’d need in the beginning would be a few things anyway.

I read somewhere, probably on some PAL (pregnant after loss) message board, something that has stuck with me during this pregnancy. I’m only going to be pregnant with THIS baby once. I can’t deny or pretend anymore it’s not happening, and I’m realizing every day that this experience, however long it may be, will be the only one I have with this baby. This is a different baby and a different pregnancy. No matter what ending I get, this time is precious.

So, with that in mind, the bins came out of the attic last week. They haven’t been unpacked yet, but I’m making progress. The thought of opening them and looking inside at what wasn’t brings back so many emotions, mostly of how I felt when I packed them.

I told a few close friends that I needed help opening these up. I can’t do them alone. I know I’ll be sad, and I don’t want to be sad. I want to remember without tears and I want to celebrate what never was with a light heart and look forward to new possibilities with a clear mind. I still have time to unpack them, and I’ll do it at my pace. If I don’t ever feel like opening them, I know my friends will gladly spare me these emotions and do it for me. But my PAL advice comes back and I know that washing and folding everything will be an experience I will have once with THIS baby, and I don’t want to deny myself of that.

Different pregnancy, different baby. Same bins, same nursery. Different emotions, hopefully different outcome.

Passion for Paprikash

This is a recipe from my friend Megan, who was shocked that I had never heard of Chicken Paprikash until yesterday. With Hungarian roots in her family, she told me it was a classic for them. I promptly made it for dinner and it was a hit- so much that we’re having it again tonight (no, not leftovers. We’re actually making it again).

I found a few recipes, each one was a bit different. I tried to stick pretty close to Megan’s recipe so this is how I did mine.

Chicken Paprikash

1 lb. chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
1 lb. chicken thighs, boneless and skinless
3 cups chicken stock
1 onion, diced
3 tbsp. Hungarian paprika
8 oz. sour cream
1/8 tsp. cayenne
salt and pepper
olive oil
1 bag egg noodles

In a dutch oven or other heavy pot, heat olive oil and then sear chicken pieces, turning after 3 minutes on each side. Remove from pot and add diced onions. Reduce heat to medium and sauté onions until translucent, about 5 minutes. Salt and pepper and stir occasionally so they don’t burn. Add chicken stock to pot and raise heat to high. This is a good opportunity to get the bits stuck off of the bottom of the pot with the stock! Add the chicken, cayenne, paprika, and salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cover but leave the lid cracked to let some steam escape. Cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Chicken should be falling apart and sauce should have reduced some. Turn off heat and add sour cream, stirring until combined. Cook egg noodles according to package directions and combine to serve.

Traditionally this is served over mashed potatoes, but we went pasta for night #1 and are branching out with polenta on night #2. This is so good, there may just be a Chicken Paprikash hat trick going on here….

Unexpected I Love You’s

One of my favorite yoga instructors tweeted this via Isabel Abbott, taken from Elephant Journal on December 28 (There! That should cover the whole give-credit-where-credit-is-due thing).

What strikes me about this are the unexpected people in our lives that we’d like to say this to. In 2013, if I may reflect a bit, I experienced a shift in friendship in many ways. People I thought would be by my side in some form or another disappeared. People who have always been there for me stepped up and took on the challenge of me in all of my messy states this year and loved more in spite (or because?) of it. People that I had never known are now ones I turn to when I need help (and I’m trying to ask for it now instead of refusing it).

This is not just for those who know my love is obvious, but this is especially for those who may not know. They need love too, and I hope everyone finds peace and something to hope for as one year ends and another begins.

———

1. Treasure maps. Make them yourself, lines and roads and rivers and words drawn in ink on paper. Maps for the heart, or the apartment, or the city, or the psyche, treasure waiting to be found.

2. Kindness. It’s free. It never gets old or used up or worn out. It is sometimes more important than all the other things, to simply be kind.

3. Laundry service.

4. Letters and love notes written in unsuspecting ways and places. Chalk on the sidewalk. Written in sand and snow. Post it notes on the car windshield. Large poster board taped to the brick wall by the coffee shop frequented every morning. Tucked in the coat pocket or backpack or lunch box. Lipstick on the mirror. Sharpie on the wall and sheets, because some things deserve to be permanent.

5. Time. But not just any time. Time with your full attention.

6. A box of favorite scents: sweetness of orange blossom, rough of worn leather, ponds cold cream, rose water, tobacco and clove, dark perfume, old books, memory of geranium oil, comfort of cotton that has dried in the heat of summer sun.

7. Amnesty. For what was done to survive. For what was done in the fumbling of finding the way. For forgetting dates and numbers. For never being on time. For not being able to make it work. For wanting what we want. For being human, living.

8. A nest.

9. Wake him up. Shake her from the shelter of sleep. Pull them from bed, outside, to where the moon hangs low to the ground. To where the air is cold. “Why”, he says, tugging on sweater and shoes. “What are we doing?” she asks, pulling the door shut behind. “To see the sky”, is the answer. Walk to the backyard or get in the car and drive for as long as it takes. In the night. When it is quiet, and so dark, and the stars shatter and are so, so many. This. This is the present. To be here, to see this. Unable to count their number, and how, forever then, you both remember that night, when sleep was abandoned and the sky was given as gift and grace.

10. The truth. A clear no. A real yes.

11. Paper airplanes, with secret messages penned inside the hidden folds and creases of wings.

12. A new beginning. Not the same as a second chance. This is knowing there is no going backwards. So this is where things now begin new.

13. The gift of seeing someone. And naming what you see.

14. An antique frame, with nothing inside. Four cornered and blank space, hanging on the wall, asking for the freedom of emptiness or the curiosity of filling with whatever is found. An empty frame, and all the words on scraps of paper, and love notes, and question marks that will come to rest there on any given day, an ever changing conversation.

15. A compass. A list of navigation. Ways to remember how to come home.

16. Raw honey.

17. The gift of giving to yourself, whatever it is you want. Taking good care. Treating yourself like someone who is deserving of the things saved for special occasions, and can have them whenever they would like. One who needs good sleep, and good food, and good loving, and is sovereign, responsible for tending to the life that is your own. So give yourself what you want. Take yourself to buy new face cream or beautiful underthings. A trip to France. A hot bath. A week, or month, or year with no obligations. Going to the matinee, alone, eating popcorn and getting lost in another world. The room with the window that lets in the sound of the ocean while you sleep, and wakes you to the feel of heat, where, even inside, you can taste the salt in your mouth.

18. Give questions. Curiosity. Suspending assumption and the belief that you ‘know’, willing to wake up and no matter how many years it has been, to still be able to be surprised and delighted, asking questions, wanting to know more.

19. Holy water and the savage sacrilege of having no answers, just the seeking of a hunter heart, that will come find you, again and again.

20. The gift that was always wanted, but never received. Track it down. Find it now, and give it. Which is the gift of memory, and completion, and love. The baby doll in the basket. The sheet music to the song whose name couldn’t be remembered, just the melody hummed. The coveted pocket knife, smooth and cold to the touch. The telescope. The charcoal pencils and liquid ink pens, speaking the language of who you were going to become.

21. Stories written on the lines of your palm, waiting to be discovered.

Bill’s Pretzels

The ultimate homemade bar snack in our house these days.

1 lb. little pretzels

1/3 c. Canola oil

1/3 tsp. cayenne

2 tbl. dried dill

1 envelope dry ranch mix

Coat pretzels with oil and spices. Stir occasionally until oil is dry, about 30 minutes. Transfer to airtight container.

X and Y

If you didn’t already know, let me tell you.

I’m pregnant.

This isn’t a post about fear and trepidation and fear and lots of doctors appointments and fear and medications that used to cost a lot of money and now cost even more (thanks, new insurance!), as I could easily ramble on and on about those topics. It’s about X vs. Y.

The personal X vs. Y question came to a conclusion this past Monday, when we found out that baby was surprisingly an XX. I say surprisingly for no reason other than I thought it would be a boy, because that’s all I’ve known. Even though obviously a healthy baby as close to term as possible is my ultimate goal, for a split second it didn’t feel right to have a girl. Then, as I was gently reminded by a few friends, there is no replacement for Hank, and this is not a new version of him kicking furiously away at the moment. Baby 2.0 is a completely new person that will never know her older brother, and may struggle when someone asks her if she has siblings in the same way people for some Godforsaken reason always want to ask me if this is my first baby (how I answer depends on my mood and who asks).

I’ve been reading a lot this week about boys vs. girls, and the differences in raising both. Everyone has advice about this topic, both professional and personal, founded and unfounded. Bottom line to me is that each gender has its own rough patches and smooth seas. While science shows that they develop at different stages, boys and girls all eventually turn out to be adults. Isn’t my job supposed to be the best parent I can be, exposing them to as many different things as I can, in hopes that when it’s time for my XX to make a decision, she makes a decent one? Trucks or dolls, glitter or mud, I hope my child gets a taste of all of it.

So, XX or XY- makes no difference to me (although I hope this XX doesn’t mind a lot of blue clothing). I’m excited at a new chance for a child, period.

Impossible Germany

I had an enormous crush on someone at one point in my life, and said person was a Wilco fan. Do you know what any smart girl would do? You’re right- become a Wilco fan too. Well, sort of. I really tried to like them. I listened to them and concentrated. I listened to them as background noise (on the hopes that it would subconsciously grow on me). I listened to them in the car and at home.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and I was listening to WXPN’s 885 Greatest Songs of the New Millennium. I was excited because I was driving home as the DJ was going through the top ten. Then, number 8! Was it Adele? Was it the Foo Fighters? Nope. It was Wilco with Impossible Germany.

A wave of realization passed over me at that moment, and I realized something. I don’t like Wilco. And, I don’t think I’ve ever liked them. Ever. After admitting this to myself, I felt so much better. It took me this long to realize that I don’t have to like something (or someone) just because someone else does, or just because I’m supposed to.

How many things in our life do we “like” because we think we should? What is your personal Wilco?

*Disclaimer: One of my all time favorite songs is California Stars, which is a song that was previously unheard of before Wilco recorded it along with Billy Bragg on the album Mermaid Avenue, a collection of songs written by Woody Guthrie. Amazing song, so just giving credit where credit is due!

Strawberry Lemonade

At the farmer’s market this weekend, lemons were eight for a buck. I can’t resist a bargain so of course I indulged. Added a quart of strawberries (not nearly as tasty as those home grown in the summer, but they’ll have to do for now since the freezer stash is depleted) and brought my treasures home for lemonade.

Ingredients:

Juice of 8 lemons (I use my juicer attachment on the Kitchen Aid mixer to juice citrus. Totally worth the two or three minutes to hook up the attachment. Perfect for mass quantities of drinks, plus it strains and it’s a good stress reliever to operate.)

1/2 cup simple sugar (take a half cup of sugar and a half cup of water over medium heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved)

Puree of a handful of strawberries

2 quarts water

Mix and pour over ice. Vodka optional. Garnish with sliced strawberries.

This makes a more tart lemonade, which I prefer. If you want it sweeter, increase your simple sugar.

Dos Años Más Tarde

Sticking with my obsession of marking time, I’m thinking back to my life a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. Each year I look back I realize how much I’ve grown and changed.

Two years ago, I was packing my bags (not really, as I always pack frantically at the last minute) and preparing to journey to Spain alone. I was teetering on the edge of a lot; mostly turning 30, trying to decide what I wanted in life, dealing with a miscarriage, lots of relationship stuff, and infertility. So, I did what any normal, sane person would do- I walked a marathon and the next day took myself and my blisters to Spain for a week.

I thought I learned a lot from my trip to Spain at the time, but I realize now, two years later, that those lessons are still being given. I learned how to trust myself, how to stand up for myself, how to be ok with myself. I also learned that I can go a week without my cell phone and computer (I did cheat a bit, but come on, who wouldn’t?). I was able to get myself around the little village where I stayed, I walked by some wild horses (terrifying, honestly), attended a birthday party full of strangers, and meditated as I climbed thousands of feet into the air to a monastery. All of these experiences are still giving back to me, two years later.

Last year, I was struggling but in a different way. I was three weeks out from having a stillborn, but I wasn’t depressed or angry or sad. That would come months later. I was in a mind numbing state of shock, but one thing was clear- this was all my fault. In my mind, who else was to blame? So, I called on my Spain lessons again. How can I be ok with the world around me? How can I accept what is happening with strength and grace? I took a few deep breaths, flipped through my photos for some inspiration, and found yoga, which saved my mind, and friendships, which saved my soul.

Now that I’m two years out from Spain, I understand more and more every day why it was so important that I went. A lot of people don’t understand why I went, or why I had to go so far, or why I had to go alone. Those are the people that will never understand, and that’s ok. But for those of us who have ever stopped, looked at our life, and realized that our happiness and sanity was more important than a facade of “everything’s fine, honest!’, we get it.

Seasoned Pumpkin Seeds

Tis the season for all things pumpkin. Here’s a good recipe that’s a little more natural and a little less chemical.

2-3 cups pumpkin seeds (raw, unroasted)

2 tsp. brown sugar

1 tsp. sea salt

1 tsp. cayenne

1.5 tsp. smoked paprika

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp black pepper

Toss pumpkin seeds in 3-4 tablespoons olive oil. Toss with spice mixture. Spread on slightly oiled baking sheet and bake 20-30 min at 350. Check every five minutes to make sure they’re not burning. They’re done when they’re browned and crunchy.

Leading By Example

What is the best way to be a good parent?

Funny for me to actually have an opinion on this question, considering I have no children. Basing my potential parenting skills on how well I’m doing with my dogs isn’t a good idea (they look so cute on the couch and in my bed and barking incessantly for food at random times in the night!). However, I’ll do my best. Maybe this entire thought process will become very funny and ha ha, she was soooo naive before she had kids! but in the meantime, here what is what I think.

How many people encourage their children to read, yet don’t read themselves? How many shuttle kids from soccer to dance to art to music lessons, yet when you have free time at the end of the night you’re sitting on the couch watching TV? How many parents stress values like sharing, and treating people kindly, and giving to others? Are these the same people that have never volunteered their own time (and not their company mandated four hours a year) to help those less fortunate? How many parents stress the importance of religion and faith- even going as far as to put their children in parochial schools- but can’t seem to find the time to make spirituality important to themselves?

Do as I say, not as I do.

I understand that parents are more complex than children. Children don’t have nearly the amount of demands that adults have. No bills, no mortgages, no figuring out when to grocery shop and call the plumber and are we contributing enough to our retirement accounts. I just find it ironic that people are shoving all sorts of things towards their children to make them into “good” people but would never think to do these things themselves. Are we also sending a message that it’s ok to stop personally growing when you’ve reached a certain age?

If and when I have kids, I’d like them to look at me when they write their own blogs as adults and see me as someone who was there for them, who shared great experiences and opportunities with them, and trusted them to make their own decisions when the time was right.

My parents were (and are) great parents. I look at my dad, who worked a full time job and several part time jobs when I was a baby so my mom could stay home with me as a child. I see my dad who coached our teams and taught me Roman Numerals and about classic rock and being a good person. I reflect on my mom, who, after spending the day with both a morning and an afternoon session of kindergartners, always came home and wanted to hear all about what we did at school. If we wanted to do an activity, we did it- like ice skating. If we loved it, we got to do more- like tennis. If we hated it, we didn’t have to suck it up and stick it out (Well, sort of. But we didn’t have to go back the next year. I’m talking to you, Girl Scout Camp!). My mom never yelled, never lost her patience. My parents weren’t at every single game and they didn’t sit through every dress rehearsal- but they were there an awful lot. There were also plenty of times they could have made all of my problems at the moment go away, but they didn’t. They let me figure them out for myself, which mad made me strong and (mostly) self-reliant.

Lead by example, right?