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It was October 16^th, one of the hardest days of the year for me.

I took off from work, partly to be alone, partly because I didn’t know what to expect from myself and my emotions.  I dropped my daughter off at daycare, feeling a twinge of guilt only for a moment that I wasn’t spending the day with her.  I didn’t want to run out of patience with her that day, and I didn’t want her to bear the brunt of my October imbalances.

Besides, we had a big weekend.  My brother was getting married in two days.  Hank’s birthday was the first evening of the wedding festivities- a big Shabbat dinner for guests coming into town.

We were skipping dinner.  I was skipping dinner.  No way did I want to face thirty people who were happy and celebrating.  I couldn’t.  My heart couldn’t take it.  My eyes were too full of tears.  I didn’t want to be a distraction.  It would be easier for my mom to say that I’d be coming the next morning, bright and early.

After the daycare drop off, I needed to run an early morning errand.  The normal rush hour traffic zoomed around me.  For once, I was not in THAT much of a hurry on a Friday morning.  I did not have the radio on for the traffic.  It was eerily calm, that moment.

I was stopped at a red light, and the car in front of me was stopped too.  We were stopped for more than a minute.  Then, the car went into the intersection.  At first, I thought the car was just jumping the light.  But, the light never turned.  The car moved further into the intersection, with purpose.

The car was hit, and hard, by a BMW going very fast.  The BMW sailed over the intersection, bounced on the ground a few times, and slammed into a boulder on the opposite side of the intersection.  The boulder separated a gas station from the road.  It’s where the kids stand on Saturday mornings with their brightly colored posterboards, glitter and glue shining in the sun, yelling to cars passing by about their high school car washes.

I got out.  So did a few other people.  A group ran to the BMW.  A group ran to the car in front of me, now with its front end tattered in the intersection.  I saw a girl who was a nurse, her badge dangling around her neck.  The woman who went into the intersection on the red light was elderly.  She was responsive and talking and didn’t seem to have any apparent injuries.

Bystanders were saying the driver of the BMW didn’t, either.

It wasn’t until a few hours later that I realized something.  Not everything has to die on October 16.  Some things live.  A lot of things live.  A friend had a granddaughter on October 16.  A few friends (also a bereaved mother) celebrated the birthday of her child on October 16.  Thousands of people around the world had uneventful days on October 16.

My husband was surprised to come home from work that afternoon to find me packing for the three of us.  Puzzled, he asked me what I was doing.

“We’re going to the beach.  I want to go Ben and Laine’s Shabbat dinner.”

My husband asked me gently if I was sure.

“Yep, I’m sure.  We have a lot in our family to celebrate. “

Three years ago today was the morning of my baby shower.

Three years ago this coming Friday was when I was in bed at 4am, wondering why I wasn’t feeling any kicks, rolls, swishes, or hiccups, even after drinking root beer, cold water, and orange juice.

Three years ago tomorrow was when I was lying in bed, calmly wondering if it was possible to have a funeral for a baby who wasn’t born yet.

Three years ago tomorrow I knew my son had passed away inside of my womb.  I just wasn’t ready to have it confirmed yet.

I still wanted to believe I’d hear him cry.  I still wanted to believe I’d hang his artwork on the refrigerator, and put him in timeout, and wipe down the walls after he was done in the high chair.  I wanted a few more hours to cling to the dream that I’d snuggle in bed with him on those chilly mornings when he was a few weeks old, swaddled tight, the two of us tucked together, dozing, dreaming.

Here I am three years later, and so much has changed, but so much is the same, and on days like today I am reminded of the latter.  I have the added benefit of Facebook this year, ever so helpful in showing me memories of what I was doing on this day years ago.  As if I could forget.

I took off from work on Friday.  I’ll never work on October 16.  I don’t think I have the mental strength to do it.  I don’t think I should have to find it, either.  Aside from a few errands on Friday, that day is for Hank, and for me.  It’s for quiet solitude, and reflection.  It’s for honor and love.  I’m not sure yet if I want to be alone.  I’m not sure yet if I want to be with anyone.  I just know I want to spend it following wherever the path takes me that day, with who happens to cross my path.

Happy 3^rd birthday, Hank.  I miss you every day.

Love always,

Mom

She comes in colors ev’rywhere;
She combs her hair
She’s like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

-The Rolling Stones

Red is for passion and love.  It’s for those dark lines that popped up the moment I knew of your existence.  Red is for pride, when my heart swells and pulse races when something clicks, you look up, you see me, our eyes connect!  Red is for scars, some physical, most mental.  Red is for the pillowcase cover I took into the hospital with me to birth your brother, the one I can’t stand to use again but can’t bear to throw away.

 
Orange is for oranges, the sweet smell of happiness, and for me that place is Spain.  The place where I prayed for you, wished for you, the place where I went to find myself, the place where I went after my miscarriage and wondered why babies are lost from people who desperately want them.  Orange is the color of your hair, my daily reminder that my happiness doesn’t reside in some faraway European mountain town but instead running around my living room in a whirl of motion.

Yellow is for the sunshine that streams in your windows, lights your room, your face, your world, my world.  Yellow is for the brightness you bring to my life.  Yellow is the color for that day I thought my world had stopped.  That yellow and gray nursery with the closed door.  The gray was outside with the rain streaming down, the gray was in my heart and in my mind.  The yellow, so bright, so cheery, so ready for baby that slipped away, silently, without a sound.  Yellow and gray, together and waiting.

Green is for me this time, my eyes.  Natural, but also green with envy for so long.  Envy of those with babies, those who could bear life that I couldn’t, those who could succeed where I failed.  Green eyes that always seem to sparkle, but sometimes with tears and sadness, anger.

Blue for the ocean, for buoyant comfort.  We both love the water, we love to float and swim and rest within the salt that holds us up.  Blue for little boys, blue for the big brother that should be three in a few weeks.  Blue for your dazzling eyes that match your fathers, to this day the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen.  Blue for Hank’s Hope, my purpose now.

Purple to complete the rainbow, the last little color.  Tiny, at the bottom, but the rainbow isn’t complete without it.  A blend of the passion and the calm.  A color that only exists because two other colors came together, to mix and create something new and wonderful, and beautiful.

I used to (lovingly) tease an old co-worker of mine because she would constantly say jiggling act instead of juggling act.  She was not trying to make a statement but was just using the wrong context, but I wonder now if as you age a juggling act really becomes a jiggling act.

I think about my gym membership that sits idly by during these long summer months.  Ironic that as the days get longer, I seem to have less time to get things done.  The sunlight teases me, she tantalizes me to do more, and then she suddenly sets and I’m left riddled with anxiety and half finished projects and the clock creeps closer and then sometimes long past when I should have gone to bed.

The gym membership comes with the use of the outdoor pool.  Perfect.  Elise and I have gone a few times.  I realize once we get there it’s impossible for me to swim with a 15 month old.  We wade around in the baby pool.  We bounce around in the big pool.  I delight in Elise’s screams and shrieks and pure joy and sometimes remember to do some squats with her weight as resistance.  Most of the time, I forget or I remember and don’t want to.  I instead worry that I didn’t put sunblock on the tops of her feet, and stare at the sky and show her the birds and airplanes.  My exercise of late is carrying in all of the accoutrements in and out of the pool area from the parking lot.

I stopped playing tennis this summer.  Practice was time consuming, and the team I was on was playing several times a week.  I can’t play several times a week.  I’d rather be with my family.  I’d rather be focusing my efforts somewhere else, like these two nonprofits I’ve got going, or writing, or a few other projects I have in the hopper.  I’m learning that saying no is not a bad thing.  I can’t do it all.  I don’t want to do it all.

I can’t measure my successes against others.  As I pull on the bathing suit from last summer—the bathing suit I had to buy in a bigger size because I was three months postpartum and nursing—I realize how well it still fits me.  I try not to think about the pre-baby clothes that hang in my closet.  I try to make a conscious effort to focus on why that bathing suit still fits me.  It fits me because right now I’m making choices and most of the time I’m ok with those choices.  The juggling/jiggling act I have going on right now is ok.  Maybe at some point, when the sun sets and my projects dwindle and the piles around me subside, I’ll revisit this.  I’m not right now.  I’m comfortable for the most part because it’s my reality.

I like my reality.