cribchronicles.com

when i started this blog, i had vague goals, especially timewise.  i thought maybe i could actually keep it going for a couple of months.  maybe.  if i didn’t run out of things to say.  maybe even longer, if i actually found a voice.  i thought it might be cool to try to blog through Oscar’s first year…a record, a witness to that experience.  i thought that was about as far into the future as i could commit, and as far as my ego could imagine anybody actually possibly conceivably reading.  it seemed a lifetime.

and yet it’s been two years today.  and i can’t imagine stopping, not really.  even in stretches like this where i struggle, where my internal narrative runs amok and i do not know, anymore, what is worth saying and what is just better left to die on the vine, unspoken neuroses being so much more charming than spoken.   but i think after two years, dear readers, we’re past charming.  or certainly i feel well past charming, and more in the, erm, “settled” phase of things, where toothbrushing gets a little more optional.  i think we’re in the lounge-about-and-scratch-ourselves stage around the crib.  and my neurotic self thanks you for being here anyway, even with the bloom all off the rose and whatnot.

and since two is the cotton anniversary, and we’re letting it all hang out, please feel free to don a celebratory pair of tighty-whities or something else equally uncharming, scratch, and tell me what i secretly wonder whenever i watch those weird cable makeover shows…are there really women out there who wear lacy underwear, day in, day out, year in, year out?

enlighten me.

this week has not been a pleasant journey.

drowning in work after an unanticipated ‘vacation’ spent getting pretty blue thread stitched into my lady parts, i came down with Oscar’s cold on Monday. then i saw my regular hometown OB, who felt me up and could find no evidence of any cervix left at all, other than the stitch. so my pelvic rest got upgraded to real, bonafide bed rest and we got ordered back to Halifax for another appointment this Friday. and i was not to drive, so Dave booked yet another day off work. i sent copious work emails from our couch, feeling out of the loop and out of control, and tried not to over-research the failure rates of cerclages and the chromosomal risks of fetuses (fetii?) without nasal bones at 12w4d and scar tissue septums (septii?) in uteruses (uterii?), and i waited for Friday with the dread of someone who feels like bad omens are in the air. about thirty hours before we were to leave for Halifax, i woke up in the middle of the night nauseous and wretched, and not the kind of nauseous and wretched that goes with pregnancy. the kind that goes with flu. turns out when Oscar woke, with alarming screams, that he’d been having the same problem. his crib, floor, and wall were newly decorated with memories of the previous evening’s strawberries, and the whole room was pungent with sourness, dried vomit caked in his hair. his father bathed him, washed the contents of the bed, scrubbed. i lay around on the bathroom floor trying to smile at my miserable child whilst moving as little as possible.

twenty-four hours later, with no further signs of illness from O and my own day of retching behind me, Dave packed the car, and i reclined the passenger seat, and the three of us started of for Halifax, where my little family would visit cousins and i would - my doctors had cautioned - likely be admitted, either for another cerclage (for double luck) or to be deposited head-down in a craftmatic without even bathroom privileges for the coming, um, next three months.

it was a sunny morning. i ate an Egg McMuffin and marvelled at its rubbery goodness after thirty-six hours of nothing but the back and forth of juice and bile. Oscar was conducting an elaborate kissing session between plastic ponies and Thomas the tank engines in his car seat, and we were arguing with the CBC morning show. it was the high point of our week. and then, with little warning, a high-pitched squealing noise issued from the back seat, a whine that built in pulses into the gutteral, shocked, wet shriek of alarm that a not-quite two year old strapped into a car seat and throwing up most of what he’s eaten in the last twenty-four hours emits when he finds himself sick in a moving vehicle. one gush. O’s shirt, pants, and the car seat take most of the hit. two gushes. Thomas and friends are showered in half-digested blueberries. three gushes, and half the back seat of the car is awash in puke. it’s a Kia Rio. we pack tight. and we are past the point of turning back, especially since this appointment is so urgent, but we are also still three full hours from our destination.

so i swivel in my seat and try to comfort the poor child until we can stop at a gas station and Dave can lift him from the car and carry him through the cold, busy parking lot, drenched in vomit, for a change of clothes and a wash up. i scrape the reeking back seat and its contents with baby wipes, my throat revisiting my McMuffin with displeasure. Dave returns, deposits a now cheery, freshly-dressed Oscar onto my lap in the front of the car, then removes the car seat and takes it away to scrub it. i pine for the vinyl seats and sticky car seats of my childhood, with their uncomfortable but blessedly non-vomit-absorbing qualities. Oscar has a little of his rice milk from the car cooler. Dave re-installs the soaking wet car seat, covering it with a recycling bag so O won’t shiver to death. we set off again.

an hour later, same whine. i swivel again, quicker this time, ask Oscar if he needs to stop. we’ve just missed the exit, but i am nothing if not courteous. he tries to say yes, and loses his rice milk all over himself. we go to the next exit. we stop. we are less thorough this time. we dispose of pukey recycling bag, wipe down seat, change O’s clothes, place him on a bed of Irving plastic, give water, no milk, start off again. the appointment time is looming.

twenty minutes later, same story, except that this time his poor little stomach is going for the big guns, bringing up the deep, undigested bits like he’s auditioning for a part in “Stand by Me” and his eyes are big and frightened and the sun is beating in on the car and the reek is overwhelming and i am on my knees, beltless, in the front seat trying helplessly to calm him and comfort him except i am losing it myself and i start to sob and choke, half-sick, too much, overwhelmed, careening down the highway backwards in a little silver car that smells like a frat house puke party when i am not even supposed to be sitting up straight and i try to say, “it’s okay baby” except i still have a cold and i’m crying so it comes out as gibberish and all i can think is my god, this is the stupidest trip in the world and yet i cannot think of any options we had to do anything differently and this, this, is what really does me in, the utter powerlessness of it all, my inability to help my child or my unborn, to keep either safe and i collapse back in the front seat crying like a baby and then the cell phone rings and Dave, looking for an exit, picks up and says, “vomit express” and i say “no, vomit comet!” and we laugh because hell, what else are you going to do?

so we pulled in, and Dave cleaned him up again, and then the poor little creature, bless his heart, fell asleep in his wet, stinky, garbage-bag covered car seat and Dave cancelled the visit with the cousins and booked a hotel room for he and O and they dropped me at the hospital and in i went, just on time. and my doctor greeted me with a hug and a concerned, “are you by yourself?” and i explained and they ushered me in for the ultrasound and we discussed worst-case scenarios and they called in the med students because i’m special like that. but then she pulled up the screen and there it was, not only that same big round-headed baby with its beating heart but a cervix, with a good centimetre or more still above and below the stitch, not perfect but as good as they left me and fine, fine for the moment and my doctor looked stunned and measured again and there were smiles and congratulations all around the room. we did not see a nasal bone yet again but one of the med students ran to get my screening results and the Down Syndrome risk, all things combined, is that of a 27 year old mother which i most assuredly am not and so i am good with that, far more afraid of my body failing this child anyway than i am of anything else. noses are not the most important thing. and the septum - which is likely a scar tissue product of last fall’s D&C - is not likely to cause any significant problems until somewhere between 28-32 weeks anyway, which if my cervix holds til then will be a bridge we cross when we come to it.

and so i got to walk out of there, still on orders of fairly strict bedrest but not bedpan-style, not head down, not hospitalized, not yet, and i got a cab to the hotel and found my boys, still with the slight stench of vomit about them, and we got to be together and so the week, for all the wretchedness of its journey, has ended far better than i ever thought it would, even in destinations not quite planned.

though i’m not looking forward to the drive home.

Oscar is pining, for the first time in his short life.

his grandparents, Dave’s parents, were here visiting last weekend. a good time was had by all, especially those under three feet tall. Grandmaman and Grandpapa treat the boy like the sun in the sky, and he rises to the occasion, demanding and beguiling their attention from the moment he wakes to the bedtime story Grandmaman weaves for him, rocking in her lap. between them and his Nannie, my mom, his is an embarrassment of grandparental riches. and this is what we moved home for, really, after all those years of vagabonding…the blessing and bounty of seeing our parents with our child, our children, seeing him loved like that. we got lucky.

’til now, Nannie, the local grandparent, has been the one who got most of the glory from O. he learned to say her name over a year ago, one of his first words, and insists that i remind him that Nannie loves him, every night before he goes to sleep. the two of them go on playdates to her place every couple of Saturday mornings, wherein my serious, proper mother apparently dons plastic fire helmets and cavorts around like a banshee. O came home a few weeks ago telling tales of “wheee!” and “Nana!” and when i asked him, disbelieving, if he was trying to tell me that Nannie drove fast, he was most earnestly affirmative. my mother, who stops three feet early in intersections and pumps her brakes in July. with her grandson, she’s a wildwoman. he adores her.

but poor Grandmaman and Grandpapa, though O’s always enjoyed them, haven’t held quite the same presence in his mind until now. Oscar sees them every month or two in person, and has since birth, and waves to them even more frequently on the webcam. they’re topics of conversation in our house, but until this weekend, Oscar’s filial love for them has been of the “out of sight, out of mind” variety.

no longer.

since the moment they left Monday morning, Oscar has been looking around corners and waking up at night, asking hopefully, “Wama? Bapa?” he had never really had a word for Grandmaman before this week, so that when he first asked for her i thought he was asking for his lovey, his stuffed rabbit…a substitution which affronted and exasperated O most intolerably. he misses them. he feels their absence, and it is new to him, and weighty. there’s a look on his face that i’ve never seen before…he’s wistful, uncertain. he knows they’re not just down the road, somehow…that this is different from when Nannie goes home and comes back tomorrow or in a couple of days. they were here, in our house, and now…they’re not. and the house itself seems as if it’s emptier, for him, no longer sufficient just to us three. i ask him if he feels sad, and he says yes, and there are hugs, and extra webcam visits with New Brunswick, but still…for the first time, i am watching my child cope with the feeling of loss, with the sadness of not having someone you love nearby.

and i know this is a gentle way to learn, and i am grateful. but the high, sweet voice that calls out “Wama!” as if he really believes that maybe we’ve just been hiding her under the cushions all week? it reminds me how much crushing it takes to make it to adulthood, makes me want to lay my body down over him and keep him safe from hurt, keep him small like this, where the saddest thing he’s ever known is that his wonderful Grandmaman and Grandpapa went home for a bit, and will be back next month.

and makes me wonder, too, just a bit, if i was ever that small, and that innocent.

and there i was again in that same goddam room for the third time, that room with its stark, giant clock, that room that has only ever hosted endings for me, or the beginnings of endings, bright with blood. and first the machine crapped out the moment she pulled the sensor towards me, and we waited, making awkward idle chitchat, while it rebooted and i pretended to be composed. there was a nurse there, and a nursing student, though both of them seemed out of place since i’d thought this was a clandestine affair, this visit, date almost, this secret promised viewing in the closed and hallowed halls of Labour & Delivery. ’til yesterday, i had not seen my OBGYN since the week before my D&C last November. no visits to check the drop of hcg levels or confirm the thoroughness of surgery. the followup appointment - delayed due to the holidays - was cancelled in January thanks to a storm. the replacement appointment after the storm got hijacked because my doctor herself was sick. by the time i finally saw her yesterday, it was for another maternity visit…i am nine weeks today. theatre of the absurd. and such a terrifying leap of faith, this try, this shot. so i figured this trip to L&D was a favour, a kindness slipped into her busy delivery schedule because she knows me and my history all too well, even though ultrasounds in our part of the world are hoarded and doled out like prized crumbs and better say thanks.

she laded me with blue jelly. the chitchat stumbled to a halt. i looked at the screen and saw only fuzz, and looked away. i stared at the clock, instead, that trusty abominably ugly clock that has witnessed too many minutes of me lying in that bed, fearful and waiting. she tried. she twisted, cocked her head. i looked her in the eye and realized hers are almost the exact colour of my own. and she met my gaze and said, “you know what i’m going to say. i’m not seeing what i’d like to be seeing here. but that could just, umm, be me.”

it is an in joke, of sorts. three years ago, this same kind, frank, capable doctor “snuck” me into L&D for one of these sly side ultrasounds because i’d seen her twice for what appeared to be an unfortunate, mortifying bladder issue, and she wanted to make sure instead that i was not leaking fluid. that sunny April morning, she pronounced all well with the fluid surrounding my 23-week baby, and after a little begging on my part told me she was 90% certain we were having a girl. six days later, i found myself in the room with the clock, blood and fluid all down my legs, waiting for an airlift. Finn, our son, died ultimately of the lung complications suffered because i had, indeed, been leaking fluid for a month unchecked before the sac gave way entirely. she knows this, my doctor. i know that had she caught it, there was still nothing she could have done. so we live with this between us, this sad, wry truth that she may not excel at ultrasounds and yet is the only one who has ever gone out of her way to try to give me peace of mind with them. and i trust her because she is honest, and human.

but when she said, “it could just be me,” i could not hear her, not really, because my heart had already sunk into that stark, certain, brutal helplessness of having one’s fear realized, yet again. she left the room to call down to the radiology lab to see if they could see me. the part of me that weighs and measures and never took my eyes off that bleak, institutional clock face registered what a gift it was to have these strings pulled, to actually get in for a vaginal ultrasound ASAP. most of me, though, was scrambling to hide. my brain tore through sad little shreds of narrative and metaphor wherein i tried to tell myself i could do this again and come out whole on the other side. i refused to believe myself. i would have thought that the prospect of loss, like so many things, gets easier with practice…instead, for me it becomes more intolerable, more surreal.

the nurse insisted that the student nurse walk with me down to radiology. poor little soul, all of twenty-one and chipper. they let her come in with me to the tech’s lair, when they would not let even Dave come in November, not even when we were almost sure that the news was going to be bad. she had the good sense to sit in a corner and not try to hold my hand.

belly ultrasound and the tech said nothing except that my uterus seemed tilted back and sucked her teeth and asked if i’d mind the transvaginal and i nearly leapt off the table trying to get my damn pants off, because what the hell is dignity for if you can’t shove it aside now and then for things more important? then the probe, and she sucked her teeth again and turned the screen and there it was, hiding in the back, way away in that pelvis that seems to be spreading daily, a little round head and wiggling limbs and a heartbeat, 170 bpm. and i said, sweet fucking merciful Jesus and my legs began to shake like a small dog’s and then i would have let that little student nurse hold my hand, i would have, but she was trying very hard to politely not notice me spread-eaged on the table and was instead smiling intently at the screen.

never once in my reproductive history before today have i had a doctor say, “uh oh” and had anything but the very worst case scenario turn out.

i said to Dave that maybe my luck in this department is like Brigadoon. it hides in the mists, and i needed a leap year - a moment out of the ordinary ordained calendar - to bring it out.

so badly i hope that it holds.

i am thirty-six years old.

i have been now, actually, for almost two weeks.  the birthday was ushered in at the Queen’s Hotel in Leeds, art deco palace extraordinaire, with the queer early-morning wakefulness of jet lag.

off kilter and groggy, but curious about hotel lobbies and the  wet shadows of English streetscapes at 5:30 am, i went downstairs and had porridge.

oatmeal.  before dawn.  i am so totally ready for middle age.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

i was always the youngest in my group of friends, just a bit younger in times when age was measured in quarter-years rather than decades, a January baby in a province where the cut-off date for starting school demanded you be 5 by January 31st of your kindergarten year.  i was 5 on January 24th.  i was 17 when i graduated and moved away.

i always felt like i was running double fast just to get old enough to count, to do something interesting, to be heard.  to be worthy of being heard, to have enough life under my belt to stop being treated like an ingenue.  i never felt like an ingenue, not inside.  under the chipmunk cheeks that got me carded until i was 25, i was an old soul afraid i’d miss some corner of the human experience, trying to suck out all the marrow of life…right now.

funny, but after a couple of decades of marrow and human experience, some self-inflicted and some totally random, like train wrecks, i’m full up.  i am weary.  more raw than i like to admit.  sitting there on the morning of my birthday, sedately spooning up my porridge and looking back over my neglected but beloved journal as i dribbled cream all over the fancy linen tablecloth, i realized that if i could look ahead and see no more loss, no more despair, or grief, or desparation…only quiet, domestic pleasures and a unglamourous, undramatic life ahead of me for the rest of my days until i fade gently into that good night with my affairs all in place (and preferably a few grandchildren), oh my god i would be so fucking grateful.

i used to want to be a rock star.   i used to want to be older and more experienced.  i was young and stupid.

now, i’m thirty-six years old and terrified.  that there’s more.  i just want to hide under that linen tablecloth, with my live baby boy and my other blessings, and pray to all that’s holy and unholy for Passover.

it’s been three years.

three years since we got up at 5 am on a frosty morning and rushed by cab to the bus station and then across the street to the other bus station, dragging luggage like a wedding train, because we could never remember which place sold the Express Bus tickets. and then i found out that the Express Bus was sold out and was flabbergasted because it was 5 in the bloody morning and i’d never seen an Express Bus sold out but hey, there was a tour group and all my righteous indignation wasn’t going nowhere. so we caught another cab to the train station, Plan B…you lugging the bags and stuffing them in and out, bless you, and then you put me on the train bound for Seoul and by transfer to Incheon airport and i made it in time and changed plans at Narita outside Tokyo and then Vancouver, i think, or Toronto, and diverted to Montreal in a snowstorm and all the while i had an ultrasound photo stuffed in my passport just in case the opportunity arose to show it off and maybe get myself bumped up to a seat that reclined - hey, i’m pregnant, you know, and isn’t that special and just out of my first trimester, this trip is 36 hours door-to-door and getting longer all the time, any chance of an extra blanket and getting my pillow plumped? - and i was moving home, coming home, prodigal returns and kill the fatted calf.

my mother came out in that snowstorm by cab at 1 in the morning just to make sure i had someone to meet me. i had been gone almost sixteen years.

but i was coming home to make good and i had sent so many resumes on ahead and you would follow two weeks later when your contract got tied up and we were going to have a baby, a baby, a baby finally, and for the first time in my life i felt like i’d made choices rather than just being buoyed about by opportunity or lack thereof and i was so goddam happy and filled with possibility and grateful that you were willing to risk this small, insular place, this place where you’ll always be “from away” even though “away” is a four hour drive, in your case, and not really so foreign. and i woke up that first morning on the hide-a-bed in my mother’s apartment to a world that was snow white and blanketed three feet deep and i felt young again, surrounded by the childhood things of home, and safe.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
it has been three years, and you made it but so much else didn’t that i thought for a long time we’d drown in the water under the bridge. and yet here we are, still here, with this house and that blond boy upstairs sleeping and tonight it is snowing again. and i am happy and filled with possibility again and grateful just to have you with me, the two of you…father and son.

but the memory of that morning is like a snapshot i revisit every year, when its anniversary comes up…when i remember all that hope, that fleeting glimpse of a simple, steady life, for a second, for a season. and i wonder who the girl in that picture was and why i feel so dead inside when i try to look at her, to imagine being her again, on that first morning. it is her naivete that i find so incomprehensible, an affront to my eyes. i can see her glee and her relief and her tentative sense that surely if we just put our minds to it and work and endure, from here, it will come together, because we’ve got the important things in place, you see.

and i do not know if it is her that i feel so sorry for, knowing how the pages of that story unfold…her or me…who will never feel safe like that again.

we have stayed longer than i ever thought we would. we are peaceful here, i think, for now. nothing has been as i’d thought it would be…and yet, i am glad we came. and i would not go back to that morning for anything. i cannot imagine what it would be like to live in that time, anymore, everything open and possible still.

dear David Bowie,

dude, your birthday again…many happy returns.

because this little torch i carry for you is a flame of true and undying fidelity, and because some small, secret part of me still believes that one of these days you’re actually going to show up on my doorstep and beg relentlessly for my charms (note: i go to bed earlier these days, so if you could kindly start the anticipated wooing production before eleven whenever you’re coming, that’d be great, thanks), i wanted to let you know that we did something really special here at my house for your birthday this year.

nope, i didn’t eat an entire cake for you this time…much as that was a very good year in our relationship, David, the old college-era stomach just ain’t what she used to be. sorry.

no, i didn’t sing you my own acoustic version of Ziggy Stardust on guitar. my neighbours threatened to call the authorities if they caught me ‘making a joyful noise’ ever again. apparently, when you do come to woo me, you should bring voice lessons.

nah, didn’t go to school in my best imitation of you from the Blue Jean video. dude, i was thirteen. and makeup’s never been my strong suit…looks better on you. let us never speak of this again, ‘kay?

actually i got the whole family in on the present for you this year, David. more of a ’shower’ present than a usual birthday present, i suppose, but you’re an unusual guy. and i bet nobody else has honoured you in quite the same way, at least in recent decades, so really we’re all quite proud of ourselves here at Chez Crib.

Oscar tinkled in the potty tonight, in honour of that most special of holidays, David Bowie’s birthday.

it was a pretty random bit of business, methinks…but kismet and the generous heart of a child, they’re like that, surprising you with joy and firsts when you least expect them.

probably won’t happen again ’til next year. mama don’t care. mama just wants to offer up the gift.happy birthday, o celebrity boyfriend. in the nearly twenty-four years i’ve been faithfully stalking venerating you, i can’t say i’ve ever clapped more on your birthday.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

and in other shower news, less tinkly but still celebratory, i’m totally heartened and excited by all the willing responses to my shout-out for potential co-cribcasters. i will call. if you said yes, then i will call. um, as soon as i set up a schedule and stuff. and get your numbers. and, uh, learn to webcast properly. yeh, that. topics for conversation? suggest at will.

but we’re going to start with a shower. i’ll bite the bullet by starting this up waaaay earlier than i’d ever planned, in honour of another special upcoming holiday. this Thursday marks the thirteen-month anniversary of the Just Posts, and Jen & Mad are being thrown a social justice “baby shower” of sorts, brainchild of their Maid of Honour, Andrea.i’m going to webcast the party. 9 pm EST, Thursday January 10th, you can listen live here…and join us in the chat room to talk about social justice and non-consumption and community and volunteerism and, erm, probably kids. there will be virtual wine, i promise.

you are so welcome. you too, Mr. Bowie. you know you want to.

and in keeping with the brand-new all-technology all-the-time motto here at the crib (don’t worry, i can’t keep this up), i present to you my son. twenty months old. on his first skates.

yes, we are so Canadian it hurts. now go coo at my offspring, y’hoser.

um…please.

snowbound on this New Year’s Eve and it is naptime, sweet silent naptime. the flakes float down like feathers, nesting on us, forcing us to nest in on ourselves, and there is coffee aplenty - with Bailey’s Irish Cream, to be festive - and oatmeal on the stove in this yellow kitchen.

oatmeal’s for remembrance, isn’t that how Ophelia rhymed it off?

for me, at least, oatmeal is “Auld Lang Syne” and snowfall, all wrapped up in one: thick hearty scotch comfort food to line one’s ribs in case of power outage and call up all the days and generations gone before, making one misty with the smells and textures of childhood, of heritage, of cultural memory.

or maybe that’s just the Bailey’s in my coffee. really, i’m a shame to the race and ought to be drinking the single malt Dave’s got squired away in the cupboard with the Tupperware that doubles as our liquor cabinet…but i come from a long-line of Methodist teetotalling Scots, so my drinking genes got stunted in that regard, and i struggle to appreciate the liquid gifts of the old country and its usquebaugh quite in the way i appreciate oatmeal.

i suppose a New Year’s resolution to learn to like Scotch whisky isn’t really concordant with the rest of my procreative hopes for 2008…

but it is still 2007. and not only do i have drinking on the brain, but i’m not quite ready to look ahead to the new year, to forge blindly and boldly forward, with hope or trepidation. i am not ready for New Year’s resolutions. rather, here in the last hours of 2007, a different sort of resolution calls me…a looking backward, attempting to pull together the threads of the year gone by, to resolve and cohere what is being left behind.

because when this year is a long-ago memory, deep in the realm of the bygone, its legacy, i think, will be mostly one of contentedness and coherence. of the events of the year, last month’s miscarriage still resonates heaviest right now, a fresh footprint and a scar on the plans i’d stored up in hope and wishfulness. 2007 contains within its bounds the brief existence of the little Junebug who will never be. and always, in looking back on the year, i’ll nod to that little wish, raise my glass. but the year itself isn’t summed up in melancholy. overall, it has been a good year, in its quiet way, a year of healing and growth in which Dave & i’ve gone from two tired, grateful, frazzled people with a baby to a fully-fledged, integrated family of three.

last January 1st, Oscar crawled forward for the first time, scooted his way across a friend’s floor early New Year’s morning. 365 days later, he runs and shouts and plays in the snow, lines up his farm animals and firemen in an orgy of pretend play, expresses wild indignation if his demands for more milk are not met NOW. he kisses (sometimes bites) and pats and generally interacts with us as a member of whatever group we happen to be in, which was not so much the case back in far-off 2006, which seems, suddenly, a lifetime ago.

and on January 1st last year, i had no idea most of you existed, those of you whom i do not know in person. now, you feel like friends, ringing in the New Year around the world…not auld acquaintances, perhaps, but true ones, fine ones. cherished ones.

happy new year to this old world of ours, spinning faithfully. may the year bring you all good things, and may tonight bring you all a little fun, however you celebrate.

us?  we’ll be the ones partying with shovels and oatmeal.  wheeee.

for big and for small.

three little boys here all together at Grandmaman & Grandpapa’s house, the whole clan, Catholics and Jews and a lapsed Protestant and the atheist all overeating in fellowship, playing with trucks and trains and sleds and plastic duckies, chocolates hidden away until darkness falls and the babies are asleep. 

Oscar has discovered - probably at the babysitter’s - that there IS such a thing as Santa Claus.  joyous greetings of “Sha sha!” fill the house, discoveries of fat men in beards and red suits around every corner, as Grandmaman is well-decorated.  the snow continues to delight.  snowmen, built by older cousins, are better than Christmas itself.

and yesterday morning, watching Oscar and his cousins, all born within two years of each other, race firetrucks around the basement like small, happy banshees, it struck me with an urgency that i haven’t felt in ages…the ache, the absence of the little second-born cousin who should be there in that pile.  my first child, darkest-haired of these four boys, forever smallest.  and the tears welled up and spilled but i could swear i felt him there for an instant, felt him in that longing, knew him all over again, celebrated him.  and that was a Christmas gift, that instant where i could see him, almost, a wee shadow with the other boys, all laughing.

may you all have joy this season, and peace.  we too, are blessed, every one.