Heavy Hand-me-Downs

My clothing must have memory. I just sorted through my maternity clothes, meticulously choosing pieces for my newly pregnant friend. I came down from the attic to calm a naptime nightmare from Nori and decided to take a break and make some lunch. I suddenly found myself crying at the kitchen counter, completely confounded at the source of my emotional breakdown. After a little reflection, I realized what it was.

The crated clothing was a chronology of my pregnancy and the months that followed. There was the box of clothing I thought I would never wear because how could I possibly get that big. Then the box of things that fit for the first three months, that I remember looking at, month-four, thinking I would not be able to even get it over my head. Next was the pile of bed rest loungewear; part pajama, part perinatologist prêt a Porte. Then there was the box of things I wore for the three months after the babies were born. In the haze that accompanies a dream that one might have had days ago, I see myself in the Tampa Old Navy, purchasing maternity pants, in denial, perhaps, that I as no longer pregnant. I may have even told the check out girl that my due date was May 13. I needed clothes that would fit the Florida climate and me. Both seemed to not fit me well at all. I wore the same three pairs of pants in rotation for 96 days. It did not matter what I wore because I covered up each day in yellow pliable plastic, protecting my babies from the contamination that may come from my clothes. Now these clothes are contaminated with those memories.

I stopped myself from running back up in the attic and throwing these clothes away, maybe even setting them on fire to destroy their history. Maybe they needed a new memory. Maybe if these clothes experienced a happy pregnancy some of their sadness would be wiped away. The promise of a new life from my friend is a reason to spring clean, to start a fresh and to reassign the sad things to a different place.
Nori is going to CHOP next week to have her PDA valve repaired. (This could also be a trigger for my weeping state!) According to the cardiologist, this is a routine same-day surgery. Being in a hospital with Nori is not a routine that I would like to get into again.

Don't Ask Me About Her

Please do not ask me about the octuplet mom, whose name I do not dare stain this page with for fear that someone googling her will be led to me and anyone interested in her need not apply here. It has been the Whole Foods shopper or passer-byer on the street question of the month: “Not whose eyes do they have,” or “how old are they.” No, it is instead, “Ohh, twins, how sweet! How about that octpulet mom, huh?” Before and while pregnant I struggled with joining the sorority of women made mothers through science. I did not want to be identified with the fertilely challenged, mostly because I hated being a part of the desperation and sadness that so often hung over the silent waiting room of the NJ Reproductive Science Center. We sat, inches from one another, all there for the same reason, eyes glued with shame and embarrassment to the latest issue of US Weekly or The Star thinking, “Hey at least I’m not as messed up as Brittany.” Really, what I was thinking was, “How could that single brain cell star become a mother and I can’t!?” After becoming pregnant with multiples, I played out the many times I would be asked by total strangers if I conceived using IVF, rehearsing ways to answer with poise and grace. I was not over exaggerating how many times this would actually happen, even with just two babies.

But lately, octo-mom has entered the question line-up. A poster woman for the shame, embarrassment and desperation I so wanted to not be associated with. “I am not like her!” I want to scream. Especially because I do not believe she questions her fate the way I do. I won’t say it happens daily, but I often think that the course my pregnancy took was the result of trying to go around mother nature, that perhaps God needs to test me more because I was not meant to be a mother. Then that mania creeps into other things like, “Why buy organic and think holistically about my children when their whole existence is chemically induced?” But I move on and buy the organic bananas because I think they taste better anyway, and I answer each stranger with, “Whew, she really has her hands full,” as I push my double stroller through the door, arms heavy with re-usable bags and a light heart free of shame and embarrassment because regardless of my fate, I believe, that overall, in my way, I am blessed.

Stand By Me

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy Birthday

Gotta Have Faith

On Monday night Bryan and I attended Baptism class at St. James. We chose this church with the hope that its proximity to our house would encourage our attendance, which we learned, is tracked through an envelope system. Not much has changed since I last attended a religion class. Our instructor was the classic CCD teacher. Wearing a lumpy winter white sweater, adorned with a religious pin above her heart, and a beneficent smile that surely could be cracked by a classroom full of rammy confirmation students, she handed out some typed and possibly mimeographed information about the baptism process. She also handed out a colorful brochure while going over the agenda for the class, which would conclude with a video. I turned more optimistic due to the graphics on the brochure and the fact that she used the word “video” rather than “film strip.” I chose a table for us front and center so that I would be forced to pay attention, but right before we began a girl we went to college with walked in. We waved her over to sit with us, so all I really wanted to do was chat with her rather than listen to the lesson. So really, not much has changed about me since my last religion class.

The teacher began with a metaphor (my favorite!) about baptism, saying that there is a difference between a stop sign and a brick wall. I naturally finished the metaphor in my head before she finished her explanation, seeing the baptism as the stop sign, a moment to give pause and reflect on your faith and the brick wall as not having faith at all. Once I came up from my literary head I heard our instructor say, “So baptism is that brick wall. You can chose to go through a stop sign, but you can’t go through a brick wall. That’s it, you’re done.” Hmm.

I became awash with religious memories. My grandmother pinching my sister’s lip with a sewing needle for talking during the televised mass one inclement Sunday comes to mind. So does Sister Mary Grace condemning all those who tuned in to “An Officer and a Gentleman,” on HBO the preceding weekend before CCD class as sinners. I did not need to hear my mom gossiping breathlessly about the film on the phone to a friend to know that she was probably a sinner. That’s the way I like her.

Nori and Charlie will be baptized. Somehow they will navigate the terrain between faith and fundamentalism to be good people. I have faith in that for sure. In the meantime, we say our prayers each day. Yesterday’s was, “teach me faith and caring, teach me wisdom, teach me sharing. Raise me up and make me strong. Be with me the whole day long.” Hopefully, with God and me beside Nori all day long, she will get that whole sharing thing.

January 12, 2009

Some days I feel so comfortable in this new skin. It’s like a favorite sweatshirt or a great pair of boots. But, some days, I feel like I am wearing someone else’s clothes. They fit, but I am acutely aware that they are not really mine. After a while though, too long borrowed clothes become part of my wardrobe and I cannot remember that they were once borrowed at all. Perhaps we are almost there.

I am getting used to the attention we get out in public but some days I am not ready for it. Strangers, like paparazzi, fire questions like camera flashes. I have to gear up for it as we exit the car, ready to do a press conference on my beautiful babies at a moments notice. They smile reassuringly from their car seats, allowing me to represent them the best that I can.
Almost one year ago I began my official bed rest. One month from now, one year ago, the babies were born. It feels like a hundred years ago or maybe just one day ago. I look back on it and search for meaning, more lessons. “Hope is the thing with wings that perches in the soul.” For some reason that quote has been rattling around my head for the past few days. I think back to a year ago and revise it as “Hope is the thing to cling to when all else has flown away.” Without it I would have blown apart. And it was more than a hope that everything would be okay, because I knew that some things would never be okay. It was/is more of a hope that it would not all be in vain. One smile from my superstars and I know that it is not.