lxforever

“What’s everyone doing at the same time but at different rates?” “Growing older.”

—popsicle stick ‘joke’

“Don’t make me sad, don’t make me cry / sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough / I don’t know why / Keep making me laugh / let’s go get high / the road is long, we carry on / try to have fun in the meantime”

—Lana Del Rey, Born To Die

“There is a road, no simple highway / between the dawn and the dark of night / And if you go no one may follow / that path is for your steps alone”

—Grateful Dead, Ripple

“Late night organ donor, after that he disown ya / after that he’s just hopeless, soul mates become soulless…”

—Kanye West

“You didn’t see me I was falling apart / I was a white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park / You didn’t see me I was falling apart / I was a television version of a person with a broken heart”

—The National, Pink Rabbits

“Hey, love, we’ll get away with it / we’ll run like we’re awesome, totally genius / we’re the heirs to the glimmering world / we’re the heirs to the glimmering world / oh, come, come be my waitress and serve me tonight / serve me the sky tonight / oh, come, come be my waitress and serve me tonight / serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon / we’re the heirs to the glimmering world / we’re the heirs to the glimmering world /oh, come, come be my waitress and serve me tonight / serve me the sky tonight / oh, come, come be my waitress and serve me tonight / serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon”

—The National, The Geese of Beverly Road

“Let everything happen to you / beauty and terror / just keep going / no feeling is final”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

“That’s just the way it is / things will never be the same! / that’s just the way it is / awww yeah”

—2Pac, or Bruce Hornsby, depending on who you are…

2013.

I still have that popsicle stick with that joke, mentioned above. Waaaay back in…1999?…we used to have “Popsicle Fridays” at gymnastics (I know), which I instigated (I KNOW, yeah yeah cheerleader/sugar-addict Lexi I hear ya). The best popsicles, of course, were the ones with jokes on them – double bonus! And of course I read my jokes aloud for everyone (yep).

But that one seemed less like a joke and more like a melancholy statement. I’ve saved it (gross but true) ever since.

We are all growing older, each at different rates, from the moment we are born…and slowly making our way, at different rates, to the end.

—

(No this update is not about drugs despite the song lyrics above, nor was this year…although legal prescription drugs were definitely helpful many a time!)

—

There was a period of time, maybe two weeks (but boy, did it seem longer!), where Baby was having some very rough evenings, crying every single night for a long, long time. We called it ‘the witching hour’. Jenny called it ‘baby witching’. Baby was only soothed to sleep by a person holding her and walking her around the room. Jeff and I tag-teamed this, thank heavens, trading off our spots, and he would set up his iPad and watch stuff while walking her for his shift, while I started listening to music. One of those evenings I was moved to listen to The National, and instead just put “Pink Rabbits” on repeat over and over.

It was a sad song, so melancholy, but here I was, holding my own baby, finally a parent, living the dream for real. She was perfect, even in her crying. What did I have to be sad about? Nothing! I held her close and whispered and just allowed myself to enjoy the sadness of the song despite me being the happiest I ever could have been.

A few days later began the road to my Dad’s diagnosis.

—

It’s totally bizarre to think that Baby has only been in our real, not-womb lives for only half of 2013. I can’t imagine life without her, and it feels like we’ve been at this parenting thing for much longer than 6 months (and yet, how time flies [“My! My! Time Flies!” -Enya], is she really already 6+ months old?!)…but the truth is, 2013 was only half having-the-Baby, being-parents, the other half was waiting expectantly. Half and half.

And I had a hard time with the first part of that waiting, with the anxiety through the roof, the sleep never coming, the hunger never ending, the worrying about my baby over and over and over. I just wanted her (her! February! What a moment!) to be OK, and though I had zero reason to, I felt over and over that she would not be. I was lucky enough though to have some wonderful care, both the midwife and others, and of course Jenny, Jeff, Kristin, Diana, and also CHRISTIE who told me HOW to be a mom (ha!), that helped me start to feel OK again, and be happy and hopeful again. Oh the anxiety. It gets me every time. And though that was only a small part of my 2013, I don’t want to let it go without mentioning it, because it’s real.

Then came spring. Then came kicks and movement and babybabybaby on the waywayway. The showers and the smoothies and the sock game and the tiny Kathy doll remake. The advice and the questions and the lumbering around town. “It’s a boy! You’re due soon!” Nope… The prenatal yoga and the nursery coming together. Sharing the whole thing with Kelly and her twins on the way! Feeling her kick as I went about my day, so amazingly out of this world. I was huge and happy and we were hopeful and so excited. JOY! Rejoice. So so lucky. For some bizarre reason I loved, absolutely loved, that last part of being pregnant…feeling her move like crazy and growing so astonishingly fast. She went everywhere I went and swam in her little dark home. And then one day…

—

BABY! Her eyes so bright and wide, Jeff crying, me laughing, face-to-face with this little creature we had craved for so so long. Her eyes still gape so bright wide open, she still longs to take in every single little bit of the world. But first, us, her parents, the storm, the three of us cuddled in a hospital room, being an overjoyed family. Listening to Caspian on the way home with her little lemon hat on her head. Turning her head, learning the ropes, snuggles and snoozes on the couch, three weeks that were “the best vacation ever!”, three months home with our babybabybaby, falling in love with our beautiful daughter.

2013, you blessed us so. (Even if that’s not the right word for a heathen like me…it’s true.)

At last! At last.

—

For that reason alone, 2013 came so close to being the most perfect year in my entire life, so so so very close. (And even still it might be?) Bringing home our amazing baby and getting to be a mom was the ultimate dream come true for me in every single way. For as long as I can remember, I knew I wanted to be a parent, and to have that become a reality…it can’t even be put on paper, text fails, there are no words…only magic. And to get to parent alongside Jeff is a whole other gift in and of itself…he is an incredible father, and I didn’t know I could love him more, but apparently I can. I fall in love with him and with Baby every single day. They have my whole wide heart for life and beyond.

2013 finally gave me what I had wanted for so long, and it was a million zillion times better than I ever could have imagined.

—

Then came August. Tricky tricky August. August, I never liked you. You were never good to me.

I remember thinking just a few months prior that, eventually, we’d start to have to watch our uncles and aunts die. I didn’t think much of it, just a fleeting observation. And I certainly—somehow—didn’t include my own mother-buffalo-saying-to-her-son Dad in this equation.

Then came the email. ”Ladies…” Then came the MRI. Then came the words. xray mass MRI 8cm biopsy cancer surgery Then came the reprieve. Then came the recoil. ”I thought I hurt it jumping off the deck…”

Seeing my Dad retire from his illustrious career and be so celebrated and admired by all his long-standing colleagues, just as I’d always envisioned, and then later being by my Dad’s side when all of these words and diagnoses and troubles came into his life are two things I feel privileged to have experienced. Obviously, I’d rather have never experienced the latter, but it was something powerful and strange, and the least I could ever do. I will never forget those moments, as painful and raw and awful as they were. And Baby was there to comfort us in her adorable weird baby ways.

Born to Die.

—

And everything just keeps moving along. People were and are so good to us, always. There for us as a family, as individuals, as daughters as parents as whatever we were in that moment. There for my parents as their health started to elude their grasps. Went back to work and oh that was hard. Oh that was rough. Not because of missing my daughter—though I did—but because it was a whole world of readjustment, new priorities, and never enough time for everyone to have their needs met at any single moment. Social life physical activity checking in on family getting baby fed (that damn bottle!) coming out of the gate roaring at work …and we had it easy, with so much support. But it gets easier every day, and having Jeff by my side and my friends I hold dear so near to me makes it a wonderful challenge to move through.

Never enough time to meet everyone’s needs, but enough time to do your best.

And be damn grateful! And I am…I am.

—

The end of the year has been pretty beautiful, if uncertain. Life is crazy but it feels like exactly where I’m meant to be. Work is ramping up and that is pretty fun, actually—a challenge I’ve been wanting for years, I suppose, and finally have. Baby gets more and more creative and fun and sparkling every day, it seems. The new normal is becoming more normal and that gives way to magic. A wonderful Christmas(es), family together. Fewer nights waking up to feed baby and then crying instead, because if anything my Dad is just the guy to beat the odds…right? I hope.

I’ve done an awful job of caring about life beyond Baby, Dad, and my own little world this year, especially as of late. There’s just not enough time and all that there is goes to swimming friends bubblemania (ha!) and who knows what else. But I will say I’m happy to have marriage equality in the state I live in, that’s for sure.

2014. 2014 is inherently bad with that evil 4 in it, but there are a lot of good things on the horizon, too. Many many friends are due to have babies in 2014, and for many of them, it’s a ‘redemption’ baby of sorts. YEAH!! Our two best friends (Diana and Dave) are getting married (but NOT to each other…haha) and we get to be in their weddings. My parents, while still facing health challenges, no doubt, have good medical teams set up and in which they feel confident. Baby is bound to keep growing into her beautiful and enthusiastic self. The jobs keep giving us what we need to make life round. We are so, so incredibly lucky. So lucky. We’re the heirs to the glimmering world…

But here at the edge of 2014 puts me on the edge of uncertainty—a place I found myself at the start of 2013 and hated, but now have learned to live with, like it or not. We can’t predict the future, and I suppose we wouldn’t want to, but I don’t like imagining what next Christmas will hold.

So I just stay in this moment as best I can. Which isn’t great, but I’m getting better.

—

That was my resolution last year—be in the moment, and also to streamline things—and it went OK. At least it was a goal. This year there is an even taller order, and for the rest of my life, too: live the kind of life I want my daughter to see me live. Be the kind of person I want her to want to be. Eat my veggies, be a less angry driver (ha! ha! yeah right), support my family, approach challenge with enthusiasm, be a good worker, practice compassion to myself and others, ET CETERA. That whole damn tall order. And with work set to be a bustling-but-fun crazyland in the year ahead, with a family facing health complications for whom I want to be there, with a baby who lights up our lives every day, alongside the rest of my lucky life, it’s sure to be challenging. But it’s a good test, and I think I’m up for it.

Here’s to 2013. Here’s to Baby. Here’s to my Dad. And here’s to life, and 2014, too!

This journal was posted on Tuesday, December 31st, 2013 at 9:00 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.