#RedBalloonsForRyan

There has been an influx of red balloon themed instagrams this past week. Out of curiosity, I clicked on one of the pictures that led me to the origin of #RedBallonsForRyan🎈🎈🎈. One week ago tomorrow there was a 3 year old curly red haired little boy who was killed suddenly by a truck when he ran into the street to retrieve a frisbee. The grief I feel for this family is as heavy as a torrential downpour as I go through the pictures of the once happy and charismatically beautiful family. There was something absolutely special about this little boy that has struck a chord with not only me, but a whole community of strangers (over 50k at last count). Perhaps in part by the poignant and intimately precious photography of the mother, we all as a whole in the mommy community seem to be banding together to offer some sort of unification of solace, a holding up of hearts and prayers to a mother with whom we don't personally know - but all know inside. This past week has been a blunt reminder of the wake up call of how precious the time is with our children, and how much the lack of presence from our children can destroy us. It is in the same breath, an affirmation that there really is goodness on this earth, and a confirmation of the porcelean fragility of our being. It is also in this same week that I caught myself, under the clouds of a flu bug and too tired to do much playing and activity time with my 2 3/4 year old. It was a reality smack that brought me back from my doldrums of DayQuil. What time I have with my healthy and beautiful toddler is more precious than words and even his whining and tantrums sound more like a symphony than an annoyance. How lucky am I to be sitting here with him asleep by my side, peacefully dreaming of Mickey Mouse and magic trains? I am so grateful for him. I love my son more than I ever thought imaginable. 

Mothers Day is in a couple days. I will have a lovely lunch with my two favorite guys, and a free keepsake photograph and shopping, to boot...but I can also guarantee you that I will also have 3 little red balloons in my mind. 1 to signify the memory of a life all too quickly taken. 1 to signify the humility I must hold daily for the gracefulness of my son being here, healthy, and strong. And 1 for all the people out there who touched my heart by taking the time to reach out and give to a family not of their own. Humanity has a way of getting you down. And sometimes, little curly red haired angels have such an impact as to change the lives of people for all the days of their lives. 🎈🎈🎈 #RedBalloonsForRyan

"Don't close your eyes, I don't know where to look without them..."

Today is August 1. It's a new month and a new day and the first day of the first period I've had since before I was pregnant (February 24 was my last period).

I felt like I turned a corner and symbollically went on my walk today that I used to do every day when I was pregnant. I was basically put on bedrest for the past month. I started doing short walks with my son last week a couple times but each time felt pain in my stomach and felt the need to take more medicine and go lay down. I wanted to physically move on but my body wasn't letting me. I know it was soon, but I needed to get out of my home to get some fresh air and, truth be told, I hate it here now, so I am grateful to be coincidentally moving in a few weeks. This place reminds me of being pregnant and the sadness associated with that.

So, I loaded my 2yr old up in his stroller with an apple sauce pouch, grabbed my phone to play music on our walk and took off on my path. I ended up playing Ellie Goulding's song I Know You Care about 7 times on my walk. I'm mildly obsessed with it right now. The song speaks to me because the thought that kept running through my mind during this whole process is, "Please, God, just let my baby have know how much I love her. That I've loved her since the moment she was known. Please, God, just let her know that I care. That I've always cared. That I'll always care."

For the first week of my grieving my song was Peter Gabriel's I Grieve. The music helps me. My husband warns of "going there" too much, but the music helps heal me. It's like when you find a favorite food that you have over and over until you're sick of it. Maybe I think that the music will help bring an ending or a closure to the pain. It's worked with exboyfriends, it's worth a try now.

I walked up the hill by my home. It's a short hill, but it felt symbolic. Later today I had my last appointment with my "high risk OB" that I was referred to from my old OB that delivered Greyson. (My husband and I are moving to Florida) It was weird that my last appointment, 2 weeks ago, my Dr. told me during my exam that I looked like I was going to get my period in 2 weeks. Exactly 2 weeks later, I got my period - today. Weird. Also, disappointing. My OB said that my period didn't look normal yet - that the blood was too light and he gave me a little chart to keep tabs on my periods. The usually fantastically wonderful Dr. with bedside manner made me feel rushed today and like I was taking up too much of his time. The appointment made me feel - well, disappointed overall. 

But...I stopped taking the NorCo a week ago, am taking less xanax and am coming out of my fog. The pain still makes me well up with tears on a daily basis, but the pain of losing my baby is not as incredibly crippling and overwhelming as when it began. The physical pain is mostly gone, it's just the memories now. My heart feels like a piece of aluminum foil that's been balled up and tried to smooth back out again. It'll never be the same. 

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. What will I say when my kid(s?) look back on pictures of their mother when I was pregnant? I will say there was a beautiful angel who lived inside of me for a moment in time, and now that angel is one of the birds flying in the quiet of morning, singing, that she'll always, always be with me.

[Ellie Goulding's I Know You Care]

Look at your life as a movie

"Look at your life as a movie."

I once said this to my mom, when I was trying to calm one of her hysterics.

I said that she needed to tell herself that her life was a movie, and she had the power to choose whether she was the victim or the heroine.

Um...accidentally the wrong thing to say to someone who is...well, a life long heroin addict now living with AIDS. 

I quickly realized what I said and tried to replace my statement with "hero". It was an unintentionally funny moment, but definitely good for a laugh when I look back. 

You have to laugh at life or it will swallow you up.

What's my story, morning glory?

The post below was written in January, Ohio was on our possible places to move to because our son would have his grandparents. In the past few months, we've decided that a move back to Ohio would cause more conflict with the in-laws than it was worth to move back. We thought of Charlotte, NC, near a cousin, Arizona, to be near a scattering of family and friends on both our sides, Austin, for friends, and Florida for family. After the economy decided that we were going to move to Florida...it seems, folks...we're moving to Florida.

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The time has come, and its one month until our lease is up in our apartment and we decide to make another go at Northern California, with no friends and family around, or make the journey to the concrete jungle of Los Angeles or the heartland of Ohio. 5 years of living together in our own little world up in the foothills of Lake Tahoe has been quiet and a lot less chaotic than either one of us, my husband and I, had experienced in the years leading up to us moving out to Sacramento.

I'd like to think that it was worth it, this Sacramento Solitary Confinement Experiment. It was an accidental, self imposed experiment, at that. What do you do with a spunky Catholic girl and an Antiochian minded Jewish boy? First. you leave the schanenfreud landscape that is my inlaws, to a foreign landscape and a foreign concept: selflessness. Having our son has taught us by osmosis that we are not young forever, and that even the youngest at heart have to grow up sometime.  Keeping a youthful optimistic spirit, but letting go of the dark recklessness, is the mark of true growth.  We've let go of a lot of our 'isms and grown more tolerant of each other and ourselves.

In the course of our time in Northern California, I planned a wedding, got married in LA with friends (and the proverbial horrible Mean Girl drama that always entails with weddings, of course) and family, and decided we wanted to try to have children together.  We were pregnant the first month of trying.  We both knew.  The first sign for me was red wine tasting like tomatoes, and a violent aversion to garlic, steak, eggs, and any Thanksgiving dish. Don't ask.

My pregnancy was healthy and I was a glowing, joyful, happy little mama. I dove right into decorating my son's room in a whimsical, bright, softened primary colors with monkeys, frogs, and other storybook type characters.  I stood daily by the canopy that draped over my son's simple white crib, and sang songs to my belly while rocking in my rocking chair in the nursery.  I took the dog for walks and wore bikinis to the pool, soaking up vitamin D and the last moments of my bulbous miracle in my once treadmill ripped body.

We had a pastel fuzzy kind of extraordinary experience in the hospital after I had my baby boy, Greyson.  As sad as I was that not one family member or friend made the journey to be there for me, even coming to town to visit afterwards, I have to say that the time I had with Greyson and Murray in the hospital, and the time at home to bond with Greyson these past 18 months is irreplaceably precious in my heart.  The doctor that delivered Grey was amazing and made me feel confident with my life as well as my son's baby life in his hands.  Maybe it was all worth it, this stay out here alone, to have been blessed with a doctor and brand new facility available to me that was probably the best of any place I could have dreamed.  I hold on to that those days when it almost breaks my heart to see the gleeful joy my son has in his eyes to communicate to everyone and every (dog) thing around him.  He's so eager to know and be known, that its now apparent to me that the best thing to do is to get off this Gilligan's Island, and move to the Island of Misfit Toys.

Where is the Island of Misfit Toys? Well, for one it's a make believe place in that yearly Rudolph tv special, but namely for what I speak of here, is to say that it's a place I'm looking for that will have our peers.  If you're kind of rootless and floating, yet still optimistically trying to blossom and thrive, that's me.  I'm a lily pad, and this is my lily pad family.

They say that no family is perfect and every family is weird.  Well, I believe that's true to the point that I think most people would say that most parents at least, fit into a specific assumed structure, ours did not and so we do not.  When you have children, one of the things that comes to the forefront of your mind is having that child around trusted people that love him/her and will protect your child, and help mold your child in the ways you see as right.  For lack of a better way to say it, you want to be around your parents and you want your parents to be proud of you as parents.  You want little cousins and friends with little ones around for play dates.  You want to usher your child into a tribe.

And so here we are. Its go time. Do we move back to Ohio? Do we move to LA? One thing is for sure.   Our little man is growing mighty quickly.

Greyson new: squints his eyes in some kind of mock smile (hilarity), slowly spins in circles, wants to walk over being in his stroller, is bored and slightly manic in restaurant (greasy spoon) environment, is size 2T (but legs short so some 12 mo still fits him snug) and we almost have to go up again in diaper size.  Grey has taken to chasing the cat around, and insists on saying hi, bye, and goodnight to our pets (along with the books, toys, chairs, walls, candles, etc.) Grey has started to become more finicky about eating (just as I was getting smug!), and his favorite way of self entertainment is to walk around with the broom, dustpan and various rugs, shaking them out.  He also loves my mixing bowls, tupperware, and mixing spoons.  He's mommy's helper. :) Grey also holds Murray's iPod/Pad in his hands and turns like a steering wheel like daddy's gaming. He's daddy's little buddy.  Grey still says "nahnah" as mama, and though I correct him, a part of me is holding on to that last little bit of baby.  He's just so beautiful and perfect and I know this time with him like this is going at a faster pace than I feel comfortable with.

My hikikomori hiccup

It takes a great deal of sadness to be me. And a great deal of optimism. And therein lies the dichotomy of a summary of me.

Why does it all matter? My pull to write my story. Maybe my full force timid life will inspire myself and others to keep gathering joyous and grateful sunrises.

I'm sitting here looking at my increasingly aging hands in terror of never becoming who I'm supposed to become. 33 is the year I've become obsessed with face creams, vitamin c spot fading creams, not dying of a heart attack, and trying to cut chemicals out of my life. Having my son has never made me want to live so much in my entire life. My heart aches with how much I love my son that it changes me for the better every day. I know I'm blessed in a lot of ways, but trying to rectify my heart and my head when it comes to my relationships in my life is another story. A long story. I want my son to know my story and in the process, I want...to move on with my story I suppose.

How did I get here? I ask myself this all the time. The head says that not planning takes on its effect rather swiftly and drags you down. The heart of me says it's never too late if you're still breathing and healthy. 

What is the lasting impression I leave on my children? 

Do I break the chain of the Phantom Tolbooth doldrums...a resounding YES from both my head and my heart. 

There IS light at the end of the tunnel - but it doesn't charge you rent for hope

Here is why I'm agnostic.
In the movie Jeff who lives at Home, the character of Jeff, played by Jason Segel, is pretty much how I feel about God. I believe in signs. I believe in hope. I believe in "more".
What I don't believe in is the darkness associated with the word religion.

God is the light at the end of the tunnel, not the darkness that urges to guilt and name call ("sinners", "wretched"). Exalting Jesus life vs glorifying his death is how I choose to look at my tradition of Catholicism/Christianity. I do pray "to a man in the sky" (as George Carlin would say as well), but its because that is the tradition that I was raised with and feel comfortable with.

The following quote spoke to me in a way that made me believe again that there may be people out there who don't wear the Cloth simply to have an air of supremacy, or as a cloak of armor to hide the true shame of their lives (people living in the closet, people cheating on their spouses, people greedily ciphering church funds or all of the infamous Catholic claims). Right after I received my First Communion in our Catholic Church back home, the church sent my grandparents a bill. ( A BILL!) The bill was not anything related to my First Communion, or my Catechism, or anything of that nature. It was simply letting my grandfather know that he wasn't giving enough of his paycheck to the church. My grandparents were rightly horrified. They were on a fixed budget and raising me, with the help of my dad's social security, and though we did okay, it was a tight household. My grandparents gave what they could afford, and we attended church, and gave to the church basket every single weekend.  I think that was the first time that I ever saw the church in the light of a money making business, and it changed the way that I thought about God. It was around that time that I started losing my focus in life, the comforting warmth of my God in heaven was tainted with a human greed that I couldn't rectify.  

Years later, in meeting my Orthodox Jewish father-in-law, I learned of certain "laws" that I thought were akin to a psychotic Dr. Seuss book. No cheese with meat. Use different cook wear for dairy foods and meat foods. No pork. No crab or lobster. No keeping your son's penis in tact. You must cut and make your baby son bleed in front of people for no other reason than the enjoyment of a party and for the title of being "Jewish". You must give Thousands of dollars a year to the temple, and if you want to belong to their Community Center, then you must give Thousands more. You must now look at Christmas lights as "white trash", and Christmas as a blasphemy to your soul. 

Born-Again Christians wanted me to turn my husband Christian and have my husband renounce his tradition of faith for the sake of...? I don't know. To maybe look more favorable to their church? I'm not sure.

I took my husband to a couple of church services and found myself hiding my head in shame as the pastor felt the need to throw fire and brimstone at "The Jews" in the sermons. I was horrified. I went to church to find comfort and maybe a positive, uplifting message for the week, and then left in the middle of the service, more embarrassed than anything else. My husband was not nearly as upset as I was - because I was the one who brought him to the place to hear such prejudiced bile be spewed from an ignorant person's mouth. 

We've also had prejudice thrown in our direction from my father-in-law's temple. My husband and I had joined a charity organization, hoping to do good in the community, and dropped out after a couple of meetings after my father in law's Cantor abruptly came up to me what I was doing there, asked me how old I was (for the record, I'm 4 years older than my husband), how old my husband was, what religion I was, and why I was with my husband. I should point out that this organization was a multiple faith organization and that multiple faiths were represented in the meetings. There were Catholics, born again Christians, Buddhists, Protestants, etc. Luckily, as I was seeing red and about to flip out on the Dbag Cantor, a protestant priest walked over, led me away, and calmed me down. The Protestant Priest reassured me that I was there to try to do a good thing for the community, and be a good person, and that the Cantor was being highly inappropriate and unnecessarily cruel. I agreed. I also decided to find another charity organization and remove myself from a situation that made me uncomfortable. My father-in-law took the side of the Cantor.  

My husband and I decided to go to the local Folsom ice skating rink one Hanukkah season, where they were having potato pancakes and little booths open to the public for crafts and information on the local Temple. It was certainly an icy environment, but not from the ice rink. We had people turn their backs to us, give me dirty looks, give my husband sneers. Very unwelcoming. Very odd. Ironically, that was the one and only time that Folsom held a public event of that nature. Maybe my husband and I weren't the only ones treated like lepers. Maybe people complained. Can't say that I would blame them. This was a PUBLIC event, and not only for people belonging to the Temple. 

I've experienced prejudice and closed minds from different perspectives, but the perspective that I choose to live with is that God is not prejudiced. PEOPLE are prejudiced. God is warmth and open arms. God encourages you to do better, to be better, not to judge and be judged. Sure, I judge those who have judged me, but only to say that it hurt my feelings, and that I choose not to show my son that easy of life. I choose to raise my son (and future TBD child in my tummy) with the love of God and that there is more to life than waking up, cleaning the bathroom, being stuck in traffic, etc. of the daily grind.  I heard something once that always stayed with me. How did 1 come out of Zero? Why do we start our numbers from Zero? Zero is round and is infinite...and I believe, as strange as it sounds, is the beginning of the mystery of where God lies. God always was and always will be. And that's all I think I know. The rest...is a mystery. I will raise my children with both sides of my husband's and my traditions from growing up. I will not convert. He will not convert. Converting is about lying about who you are and I don't agree with that. I don't agree with the symbolic shutting off of a part of myself for the sake of my husband, nor would he ever want me to. I love him for that. We are a multicultural household because we are a multicultural world. I am Swedish, Puerto Rican, Irish, English, and French. My husband is Russian, Eastern European, and Irish. I was raised Catholic, and my husband was raised Jewish. Neither of us agree solely with all of the traditions and prejudices of our past traditions. We celebrate Passover, and we celebrate Christmas. We celebrate each other, and we celebrate being true to ourselves. 

This quote sums up my Agnostic beliefs beautifully:

"Religion is always in the control business. The church doesn't like for people to grow up, because you can't control grown ups. That's why we talk about being 'born again'. When you're 'born again', you're still a child. People don't need to be born again, they need to grow up. They need to accept responsibility for themselves in the world. EVERY church claims that 'we are the true church'. The idea that the truth of God can be bound in any human system, by any human creed, by any human book, is almost beyond imagination for me. God is not a Christian. God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems, which human beings have created to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I think it only points me to God. You and I are emerging people, not fallen people. Our problem is not that we are born in sin. Our problem is that we do not yet know how to achieve being fully human. The function of the Christ is not to rescue the sinners...but to empower you, and to call you...to be more deeply, and fully human, than you've ever realized was in the potential within you to be. Maybe salvation needs to be conveyed in terms of enhancing your humanity...rather that rescuing you from it. Life is a startling and wondrous experience, and eventually I think we're going to discover that God is enfolding through the life of our consciousness, and is not a parent figure up in the sky."

 ( - Bishop John Selby Spong)

Tummy Time (Greyson update from January 2013)

My Journal entry for Greyson's growth update from January 2013:

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This last week was a rough week with Grey's teething making him frantic and not his usual happy boy self.  He still managed to melt my heart on a daily basis, with as much as he has been wanting to yell and not play or eat or sleep...he also is getting more demonstrative with his affection.

Grey wants to hold my hand as he goes to sleep still. He reverted this past week with wanting to nurse more as a comfort for his mouth/bottom tooth coming in. I think it's one of his "eye" teeth.

Grey has been experimenting more this past week, as far as using high pitches to his unhappy/cranky/telenovela/dramedy cries.  There are his real cries, and there are his telenovela cries.  He also imitates/fake laughs in almost a sarcastic way that is funny.  He already has obvious sarcasm in his expressive eyebrows movements. If he could, I bet he would say, "Oh, yeah?" a lot.  

Greyson continues to squeal in delight at chasing the cat. I can't tell if he just wants to pick her up or wants to ride her like a horse, or both.  Probably both. 

I was in the garage with Grey the other day and he spotted his old baby play gym.  He looked significantly different than when that play gym was a regular player in my living room. Grey laid underneath it for a minute, pointing and batting at the butterflies and lights, but 20 seconds later he was up and trying to pick it up to carry it around.  My, how times have changed in such a little amount of time. Always a cliche and always true. 

2012 (during first tummy time):

(Striped outfit he's warming up to his play gym a few weeks later)

February 2013: My big bean