Loss Can Bring Us Together

There’s this almost honeymoon-like period after a loss, wherein you’re so focused on your grief and comforting your partner, everyday difficulties and discussions are tabled until it’s over.  My family recently suffered a loss (two, actually, within the past month-and-change), and today was our day to ease back into “real life” after the devastation.

As we muddled through our morning, I felt a reluctance to move forward. This reluctance, plus the lingering fatigue and other heightened emotions meant there were a couple of snappish or impatient moments.  I noticed them at the time, acknowledged them, and moved on.  Now, though, I realize that they were significant. They, too, marked a shift back to “normal life” because when we are grieving, we are often so caught up in our – or our significant others’ – feelings and immediate emotions, there is simply no room for criticism, impatience, or arguments.

This leads me to wonder, how can we hold on to a piece of that?  How can we keep from losing sight of the feeling that our need to be close is more important than the mundane things which crop up and create distance?

Perhaps that is the purpose of grief and loss – to remind us of the important things.  Love, closeness, family.  And to allow us to put aside petty squabbles, differences, and frustrations while the important things are highlighted.  Yet I’m sure there is a way in daily life to hold those priorities dear, as well.  I’m going to work to try to find it because these things are more important.  Always.

Waffles Aren’t Just for Breakfast

A couple of weeks ago, right around when we started toying with the DC idea, my husband had a phone interview with a company in CA. A friend of his from HS works there and has been trying to get him to apply there since before he even lost his job back in Rochester. Finally we agreed he might as well see what happens. Well, the first interviewer liked him enough to pass his information further down the line, and now he has a second (phone) interview lined up for later this week. If that goes well too, they’ll be wanting to fly him out there to interview in person either later this month or early next month.

This whole turn of events has led to many late-night, long-drive, dinner-time, and telephone (while I’m on breaks at work) conversations between the two of us, weighing the pros and cons of this possibility from every imaginable angle. They say opportunity doesn’t knock twice, but this is definitely multiple knocks at this point. In the past, we’d ruled it out because O already had a decent job, and then because we didn’t want to move so far away. It always felt like a last-resort option. But even though we have definitely not exhausted all other possibilities, I do have to wonder how long this opportunity will realistically stick around.

As I consider this possibility for our family, I hear the voices of other people in our lives echoing in my head. I hear a lot of “shoulds,” and it’s difficult not to let those potential opinions color my perceptions. On the other hand, is “because I don’t want to!” a solid enough reason to say no, if the job is offered to him in the end?

Theoretically this job would offer us the financial freedom to visit home more often than we can from here, even though CA is further from NY than FL is. But how much more hassle would the flights be, especially when compared to our previous goal of moving to DC (from where we could also drive home relatively easily)?

Even if he is offered the job and we decide that he should take it, it doesn’t have to be forever. But how many times do I really want to uproot my entire life and move out of state, before finally settling someplace for the foreseeable future?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

“Hanging” on to Memories

Laundry seems a strange thing to be nostalgic about.  Yet there I was today, out in my backyard (by which I mean the postage-stamp-sized lot in back of the duplex in which I rent), hanging my first load(s) of laundry for this season, and remembering.

Buggie outside at 4 1/2 months

Last spring and summer when I would go outside, it took numerous trips.  I needed to get the laundry, a blanket, some toys, and then finally the baby.  I would put him on the blanket in the shade with his toys while I hung the laundry, and he would just stay there.  He would sometimes play with the toys, but he was also just content to watch the world go by around him.  He loved the change of scenery.  When the laundry was hung, the whole process was reversed – baby inside, then the blanket and toys.  (The laundry would stay put, obviously.)  In the spring, he was only just rolling over.  By summer, he could sit up, but crawling wouldn’t come for a while yet.

Me at 31 weeks pregnant

Let’s back up by another year, then.  Two summers ago, I was pregnant.  As the weather got warmer and warmer, I got bigger and bigger.  I remember the unique challenges in hanging maternity clothes because the seams don’t line up quite the same way as they do in regular clothes.  I remember the end of summer, when I received my first lot of hand-me-down baby clothes.  I washed them and hung those outside as well.  It made me smile to see those tiny garments on my clothesline.  Burpcloths, receiving blankets, and tiny, tiny little clothes.  We never had any “newborn” sizes, which was just fine.  At 8 pounds and 5 ounces and 21 inches long, Buggie would never have fit into them anyway.

Buggie at 16 months old

This year, I have neither a growing belly, nor a tiny little baby.  Now I have a toddler.  Today, he came outside with me again.  This time, we didn’t have the blanket, but we still had toys.  I didn’t have to carry him out to the backyard; he walked there himself.  I couldn’t just park him in the shade because he’s so very mobile, which meant being sure he was slathered with sunblock and wearing a hat.  Today, he kept me company as I hung up our clothes – his (which keep getting bigger!), his daddy’s, and my own.  He “helped” by taking the clothes out of the basket, and either handing them to me or (more often) dropping them on the ground next to it.  Once or  twice, he started to wander off, but mostly he stayed right nearby, finding his own amusements.

By next summer, I expect even more changes.  By then, we hope to have bought and moved into our own home.  Perhaps I’ll have returned to the workforce and Buggie will be in daycare.  Will we be expecting baby #2 then?  What changes will be shown on 2010′s clotheslines?

Not Threatened

Like many Americans, I am elated at the results of last night’s Presidential election. I am proud to live in a country where we have proven that one does not need to be a rich, white male in order become President. I am proud to know that this is the world into which I brought a son – a world of hope and promise, not the bleak misery of the previous eight years.

However, even this monumental occasion has its dark side. California’s Prop 8, eliminating same-sex marriage, has passed. Can you imagine marrying someone and then having that marriage taken away from you? A ban on gay marriage is terrible enough, but to have it eliminated entirely – even retroactively – is unfathomable. And yet this is what homosexual couples in California have woken up to, today. Yesterday, they were happily married; today they are told their marriage is no longer valid because some the voters said so.

Why should this even be a question? What gives anyone the right to judge the definition of family? The most common arguments seem to be based in religion. The problem with this? Not everyone practices the same religion. Even those who do don’t practice it the same way. Not to mention, of course, that religion really has no place in state or federal policy in a country where we are free to practice any, all, or no religion. Such matters should be left to the individual, not forced upon a State or the Country at large.

Marriage vows are as strong or as weak as the couple who makes them. Their strength is not dependent upon who else has made a similar vow, nor on who else is allowed to make them. The vows are between the couple and their officiant, and perhaps their God (using this term as all-inclusive, whatever name may be given) if that is what they have chosen. The only ones who can weaken, or cheapen, or indeed unsanctify your wedding vows are you and your spouse.

As a member of a monogamous, heterosexual marriage, I am standing up to say: My marriage is in no way threatened by anyone else’s.

(Editor’s Note: Apparently previously married couples will, in fact, remain married.)