Georgia calls...

I had a reading with Georgia O'Connor today. If I wasn't sceptical, if I wasn't so afraid of being gullible, if I didn't worry about everyone thinking I was a nut-job for paying a psychic to tell my daughter is in heaven then it would have been a really good reading.

I love the paranormal how could I not when I have a daughter who no longer has a body. I love the idea of people being psychic, I understand instinct and intuition and how powerful it is, ask my kids, I have eyes in the back of my head, ask my husband, I bust him a mile away when he is up to no good.

I explore the possibility of alien life, a quantum universe, and metaphysics blows my mind. I have a crushes on a nerdy physicists and all the theories they bring to the table, all ways they explain how the universe works and even if they are scientists they still believe in something bigger even if it is just a universe full of more universes.

Today I was a weeping mother on the other end of a telephone conversation with a woman who claims she can see past the veil. It was out-of-body, there were too many emotions and feelings and fears.

I was excited, embarrassed, hopeful, and cautious. I tapped the top of Noah's cell phone, I picked at little lint balls on the bed, and I contemplated painting my toenails while I waited for the 1:oo call to come in. I was at ease the moment I picked up the ringing phone and she said my name. She was feeding her baby and talking to my daughter and the things she told me started giving me hope. I thought maybe I slipped up somewhere and she googled me and I was chumped.

I wrote down everything she said, I cried, I wondered, I tried to convince myself for just one moment I was actually on the phone to the other side and Stevie was talking to me. I couldn't ask questions, all I could do was listen, I didn't want it to stop, I couldn't get enough. I wanted her to tell me things no one else knew but she didn't. We are all humans and mothers who lose children all share the same pain, we do the same things, we have the same worries and needs.

I remembered to get a new email account, to use my maiden name, to have her call a phone different than my own. I paid with my fathers credit card. My sister later pointed out that the phone I used was a phone I paid for and even though it was Noah's I came up on caller ID. Damn...I will never be a secret spy.

She said a few things that could be googled like Stevie's name, the reference to her brain, the rain, and sipping a drink from a coconut. She also said a few things that confused me, they felt like things my grandmother would say (according to the psychic my grandmother, grandfather, and father in law where all there ready to communicate). Some of the things she told me were things that were important to me but I did not expect her to bring up. I chalked a few of those up to common things that come up for the grieving.

She was kind, she was soothing, she did her best to let me know I was loved, not alone, and that I would be with my daughter again, who by the way was happy where she was. It is more than some therapists have to offer, the price is similar the results are better, I vote psychic.

Was it real? I don't know. I have a lot to digest, too much to think about. If it isn't and I believe it I really don't lose a thing. If I refuse the comfort then I miss an opportunity for healing.

She didn't try to sell me another session or sell me a potion to get rid of a curse. She actually told me that my daughter thought it was ridiculous for me to be talking to a psychic when we had been communicating so well without one. She told me things I knew but needed to hear like: My daughter loved and missed me, that she was happy, that I was her best friend, that every time I asked if it was her, it was. If my little tape player worked better, if Noah's speaking phone was a little more powerful I would have recorded all of it and played it over and over before bed.

I am still processing all of this, I will take what I need and neatly store the rest away in a safe place. Even though I am skeptical I have an open mind, even though I am curious I am not gullible, it was a good reading, a very good reading.

Turtle

I'm coming back to my girl by July...

-andrew mcmahon


It's July, we have had a couple hot days but for the most part it has been a mild summer. I am guessing the heat will arrive late when school starts and Noah wants to wear his new jeans and a sweater to school, I will force him to wear shorts and he will think I am mean.

We had my aunts 70th birthday here last week, it was nice, not sure how she felt about it, it was a surprise and she seemed a little overwhelmed. Her Colorado kids, grand kids, and great-grandson arrived and surprised her a couple days before the party and we had one of her best friends from third grade here. We gave a her a computer, made a video of her life, and bought a big cake with bright blue flowers all over it.

My aunt is a planner, a little OCD and likes to hold the pencil if you know what I mean. I didn't think about that when I planned this gig, I just knew that she would thing no one remembered and I wanted her to feel very remembered, make her queen for the day. I think we blew her mind, and stressed her out but all in all I think she felt the love.

I found a little houseboat on craigslist. I am always looking but have never ever found anything that we could afford. This one popped up and I jumped on it. The price was right and I really expected it to be scary when I drove to Oakley to look at it. I was surprised that even though it got big prizes for being funky it was a good boat; the engine is in good shape, it has been well taken care of and it was just the right size for us (28ft).

It sits in the Delta, not my favorite place but the property where we will be renting the slip is very nice, pretty, green, quiet. The boat has faux wood panelling on the inside, a terrible green carpet, a golden harvest stove and dusty old seat cushions. It smells like...a cabin. We went out last week and removed all the old stuff and put in new stuff like aqua dishes, cups, floating silverware, new pots and pans, pillows and blankets. We dusted and cleared out cobwebs, washed it down, and did a little happy dance on the dime sized deck.

It is cute in an old boat way I think we will have some good times on it. Noah is a good age. I wish Stevie was here, oh she would have loved this thing and I think she helped me find it. If she was here she and I would be decorating it and escaping to it every chance we got. She wouldn't let me change a thing, she would want to roll with the retro. We would buy party lights, fuzzy gnomes, find a record player and blow up furniture.

I talked to her before bed and said, "Stevie a boat needs a name, I want you to choose it, tell me what to name it, but I won't name it Freakin-Unicorn" I woke up the next morning and "Turtle" popped into my head. I know it isn't "me" because I would not have chosen "Turtle" The other night I was thinking that it was a silly name for a boat and wondering if I had lost my mind (again). A couple hours later I was watching "Never been kissed" with Noah. This is a silly movie the girls liked, Drew Barrymore who plays a sweet geek, in the movie she has the cutest apartment and a pet turtle. Stevie popped into my head and I said out loud "all right Turtle it is" I realise I have lost my mind and our boat will be named "Turtle".

This is my last month trying to have a baby. I am not even sure if I am going to go through with it. The universe has been telling me no, and maybe I have to listen. I am bummed about it, feel like I need to give it one more shot, then let it go. I will be 45 in August and I promised myself I wouldn't try after that age.

Stevie, I tried...

Thank you for helping me find the boat, the name, and I know you will be with us on the water. You always loved the water, it calmed you. As a baby you had no fear, loved, loved, loved to swim. I hear you when I can stop being sad long enough to listen. Stay close love, I need you.

Come to me in my dreams and show me your heaven, tell me secrets, let me know that you are still you.

I love you so.

Mama

It is May, the roses are all blooming, fading and making more buds, there is a pretty rose bush by the back window of the sun room that I planted after Stevie that is an odd shade of pink and lavender blended together, she would have loved it. I wonder if it was her kiss from where ever she is that made it explode with big fat flowers this year?

I took a week off, a week away, disappeared to Washington State to be with my boy, my thoughts, one of my best friends and old memories of a little house on an island where it rains all the time.

Last Thursday I decided for no particular reason to load up the car, the kid and my CD player and make the long drive down I5 past Lake Shasta, through Oregon and into Olympia where I spent four years with my girls. It was here we learned how to drive in the snow, how to pull ourselves out of the snow we slid into, how to fish, live in the rain, appreciate a sunny day, a hot bath, a good fire, make friends and be happy without the things we thought we needed before.

It was a difficult time financially, it was a lonely time, and a time of change for us but in the end the three of us (me, Aly, and Stevie) agree that it was a perfect time and we would not have changed a second of the time we spent there.

I took Noah to Steamboat Island where we lived where there is an oyster beach with a harbor, park and water for as far as the eye can see. I took Noah to our pic-nic tree, the beach the girls played at, the dock we crabbed off of and the house we once lived in. I wanted him to be a part of our history, it was hard having him there and Stevie being gone. She would have loved to show him her old fairy hang-outs, the little holes in logs she use to leave treats for them, the best flowers to make fairy dresses out of the crack in the wall down at the beach were she and Aly use to hide stuff and see if it would still be there after the tide went back out.

It was drizzly and cold, everything was so green, the water and sky so gray. I didn't cry until we left, it felt like a loose end, a place I needed to visit and remember, almost like she asked me to come. I did the right thing but it wasn't easy, remembering is so hard but it is also life-saving.

Stevie learned to ride her bike there from house to beach, and had the most terrible fall, a scar on her thigh marked the day forever. She went to fast down the hill and fell, the handle bar gouged her leg and she rode home bleeding the whole way. She was a trooper and proud to have made it home, down the hill, on her own.

Noah took it all in, I was glad he was with me, it made sense in a way I can not explain.

One of my very best friends welcomed me home, fed me, made sure I had a place to stay, shared her little boys with me and reminded me how kind and giving people are, how distance does not affect love.

It was a good trip. I needed the time and space, I needed to think, to cry, to drive until I couldn't stay awake. I needed hotels, swimming pools, gas stations, long roads, and the pink sky and sun setting behind MT. Shasta. It was a small adventure but just the right size for the two of us, three counting Stevie, she was with me, I know it.

I am tired.

I think I am entering another stage in this process or repeating one. My emotions are all over the place, change is coming and it isn't the change I want but the universe laughs at my plans once again.

I have to trust, have faith, surrender, it isn't easy.

I drove all those miles, now I am home, a new journey is begining, I wonder where it will take me.

525600

She still counts the minutes that I am not here... -Andrew McMahon

Three is a magic number, it doesn't feel magical today even though I keep looking up at the sky, over my shoulder, and into mirrors hoping that heaven will break a rule and let me see my daughter one more time. Three years, how could that be? It was like yesterday that it was her sitting here at this computer playing a marathon game of Literati eating a bowl of nuts and a pile of grapes. She would leave the bowl and the stems for me to pick up and I would act like I was pissed but I really wouldn't be. It wasn't that long ago that we were at a bookstore looking for something she had not read yet, at Target looking for the perfect T to wear to a concert or in Berkeley at Sweet Dreams wandering around touching everything. Now here I am at this computer alone and if feels like a million years since I've heard her voice or smelled her skin.

Today is the day I am allowed to have a full blown pity party. Today I get to count years, months, minutes...525600

There are a few red tulips up in the garden, stragglers, and the lilac so much of it I love the way it smells, it is a female smell; warm, like home. The Trees all have their clothes back on and the apple blossoms arrived just as the pear blossoms blew away. The cherry tree is gone, Stevie's tree, the one that did not make cherries until the year she died, the one I bought her as a present after radiation therapy. She wanted to be able to see cherry blossoms from her window.

I should plant a garden but I can't seem to do it, to put myself out there, invest in any more hope. I will, I always do and since Stevie left it has been mostly half hearted, a habit, an act of caring when I am still so mad at God. My little vegan isn't here to graze my veggie beds stealing the fattest tomato's the second they became ripe. She refused to get her hands dirty but you never knew a child who loved produce as much as she did.

The seasons change and I watch it all happen. Time moves the way it will, it does not stop, it will not turn back. I am not like time...I am forced to move with it but I dare it to stop me from remembering. If I were smarter I would find a way to move backwards through it and find the exact moment I could have done one thing different and saved her life.

Today is a day for tears...

I can't seem to bring her back and I tell myself it must be because she is so happy where she is, that she has long since forgotten this little house and these people she shared a short life with. In some other place she is reunited with people she has known before time who missed her even more than I ever could (not sure how that is possible) and they surround her with the most complete kind of love, a bigger love than I can't remember but I must have known.
My girl.

I survive, I am here, and she is somewhere...too far away.

This is fucked. I know ugly words make me look ugly, that is what I tell the kids but this thing I feel is kinda ugly and the word fits, there isn't another in this language I know.

Today I will take Noah to the orthodontist and let her torture his poor little mouth so that one day he will have a Hollywood smile to go with his black guitar and his beautiful voice. Then I will go to the cemetery and sleep on my cowboy blanket over the place my daughters body is buried. I will talk, sing, cry and wait for magic to happen. Three is a magic number.

Orion makes his way across the sky

Oh and here comes spring...The lilac is in full bloom and it's scent fills the yard, the lone pink tulip is here and brought two little sisters so now there are three. I am not sure why but it made me cry. The daffs and red tulips have finished and the roses are beginning. All the trees have leaves and the fig has tight little baby buds just waiting to get enough sun to turn into grown-ups.

My yard is it's own little universe. When we first moved here I tended it like I was it's mother and it needed me. I planted dreams, ideas, and nurtured growth. It was a simple yard with low maintenance shrubbery, a couple rose bushes and a big lawn. Over the years it has seen a pond (which we covered when Noah was born) A huge veggie garden (Which is now a small garden bed) new trees (because I love fruit trees not because we actually have room for them) Two small buildings (garden sheds converted into an office and a studio) and a little hot tub (which turned into a very big hot tub). The shrubs are long gone, the lawn is much smaller, the trees are much bigger and I just put up a little awning to keep the afternoon sun from beating us to death in the summer.

Steve tells everyone I am Sarah Winchester because I have taken our small yard in suburbia and turned it upside down every spring. For me life is about moving, changing, growing, evolving. We now have gardeners who mow the lawn and kill the weeds, and the yard no longer requires a mother it knows how to take care of itself. It has become my invention, a history of our life here.

Spring is a time of new beginings, when everything wakes up and blooms, buds, and lives. It is a bittersweet time for me because it now marks the end of my daughters life here but maybe somewhere it marks a different kind of beginning something so awesome and breathtaking even my imagination can not conceive of it.

For those of you who have asked for a baby update I guess this is as good a time as any to report that there isn't much news. I do have a family that has contacted me regarding embryo adoption. They have (adorable)twin girls that resulted from IVF and there are seven embryos remaining. I am just waiting to hear from them in regards to a final decision. They have many parents to choose from and they need to make a choice based on what they feel is best for their family. They would like an open adoption so that the children can know each other. I think it's a great idea. This process is about building families, and there are so many wonderful ways to do that.

To be honest I had just about given up. Steve and I had a melt down while we were going through the clinics donation program and I started feeling like maybe I was pushing something to happen that wasn't meant to happen, that maybe the universe was telling me to just let it go. It has always been my opinion that if you have to use force it is a sign to just be still.

So I stopped. I cancelled appointments and I decided to be still. I cried, I contemplated, I questioned, I meditated, and I made a plan to not have a plan. Two days later I got an email from two families who were interested in us.

The other family is wonderful and all the embryos they have are girls (extra terrific) all four embryos have been genetically tested and they are preparing for the birth of thier son. It feels like they have a very long list to choose from and although I am on that list it still feels like a long shot.

To be honest it was a blessing just to be chosen at at all. There are so many families waiting and so few donors, those emails made me feel like the universe does have it's own plan. I am not sure where all this will lead but I am full of hope and I am sure it will take me where I need to be.

For right now this moment is about watching the stars in the night sky, following Orion as he makes his way to a place where I can no longer see him, watching the moon through her phases, waiting for the morning glory to climb the fence, listening to the new birds sing the same songs they always have.

This life of mine, of all of ours is filled with such magic and wonder, it is bigger than standing in line at Starbucks, getting to work on time, trying to decide what to make for dinner. It has a rhythm, promises, and heartbreak. There are beginnings and endings and we live in between them. There is a time embrace life, to fight for it, to let it go and a time to just be still and experience it happening all around us.

Stevie, I am still here buttercup, still waiting and listening, still your mom, still your buddy, still in love with what ever it is you have become. Thank you for being my girl, my heart, my spring.

So I keep trying...

For those of you who have asked here is the skinny on the baby stuff...

So far no luck doing things in this strange-ill-timed way with donors and the local Obstetrician. The insurance company continues to say no to IVF unless I can prove I have unexplained infertility.

Do I give up? Heck no. When I started this I was so sure I could do this easily that I promised Steve I would only try once. I didn't want to be one of those desperate women who took all the equity out of their house to buy a donor egg and put themselves through years and years of injections and heartbreak. I told myself "Hey, if it is meant to happen then the fertility gods will drop a big fat baby in my lap, if not I move on, I am a big girl for goodness sake."

Instead the universe has chosen to teach me a little lesson about what it feels like to walk in anther's moccasins. If I had equity in my house I would have used it without a second thought. If I had a savings account with lots of zero's it would be gone. Do I feel silly and desperate? No. I feel like there is a child out there who is waiting for me to figure this out.

Unless you have ever been in this moment it's hard to understand. Some of my friends who have kids, that are mostly grown up can't wait for them to be off to college so they can get back to a life that feels a little bit less like a circus. The friends I have who do not have children by choice think this is animal instinct and what I need is a good vacation or the loan of someone elses screaming baby with colic to cure me. The friends I have with small children look at me with eyes that say, "you have got to be kidding?" I get it, I have had days like that too.

Some women are designed to be mothers some know it and some don't. I am not a great mom, I give my kids chocolate cake for breakfast, pancakes for dinner and let them run around naked all day. I kinda like kiddie chaos, especially in the backyard in the summer, or Christmas morning, or even late at night when everyone wants to wiggle and have one more story, one more story, one more story. I am perfect in my imperfection, we all are, Some women embrace it, some fight it, and some women have to fight long and hard for it.

There is a laundry list of the comments people make, and I have made them too. I am here to tell you that wanting and waiting for a child is big, it isn't like wanting a big wedding, or a better house. This is deep, it consumes you, it feels like a mission, it feels like an obstacle (obstetrical) course the universe made just for you to figure out how badly you want this and what you are willing to endure for it.

A houseplant, puppy, or the loan of a neighbors child won't cure or satisfy this longing, this need, this knowing. Adoption is not as easy as it sounds and just for the record adopting a special needs child or doing foster care takes a special person, deserves a special person, that is it's own journey, it isn't what you do when you have run out of options.

So here I am...

I found a clinic that offers embryo donation. I know, I know, it sounds sci-fi and creeps you out a little but it is actually a beautiful gift. Here is how it works...

A couple who can not have a child without assisted reproductive therapy (ART) has IVF. IVF is when all the magic happens outside the body rather than inside. A woman's eggs (or donor eggs if she does not have her own) are mixed up in a petri dish with the sperm from the partner (or a donor if he does not make his own sperm or she does not have a partner) and embryo's are created.

I know you are visualizing tiny little babies floating around in a laboratory. These are not quite baby's yet but more like baby seeds. They are cells that have just begun to divide, they are baby hope. Because this process is so very expensive, and painful (to the woman) they make as many embryo's as they can to give her a really good chance.

If she does not get pregnant there will be some frozen embryo's waiting for her to try again. If she does get pregnant she can store her remaining embryo's for another pregnancy later on. When she is done building her family she can choose to donate her remaining embryo's to science, let them expire, or she can offer them to another family.

Many families pay to keep these cells in cryopreservation because they are not sure what do or what the options are.

There are several pro-life Christian organizations who are on a mission to save these "babies" and God bless them. The problem is that they are becoming the middle men in what should be a donation and turning it into a formal adoption. The great part of this is that Christian families are able to connect with other Christian families and get matched in a way that makes them happy. The not so great part of this is that there is a lot of expense generated in this process, and more hoops to jump through than a person should have to. It excludes recipient families that do not have the 11,000-18,000 dollars to make this happen.

Then there are clinics that lay out the options very clearly to their patients and if the family chooses to donate then embryo's are kept at the fertility clinic and a true donation to another family happens through the clinic. It isn't warm and fuzzy with phone calls and photos, it is clinical, but it is simple and there are no middle men with hands held out for large sums of money, no giant hoops.

There are over 400,000 embryo's in storage. Many of those would be donated to families if there was more education about this option and if more of these stories were told.

There is a website called Miracles Waiting that offers a forum for donating families and hopeful parents to connect on their own. I think it's a happy middle ground. It's a well screened and monitored community, a small fee is involved but it is mostly to weed out people who would try to do harm, or not serious.

So I am waiting for an embryo. I know this may be a difficult solution for many people but the way I see it conception is it's own little world, we can't control it, the universe will give us the child that is meant for us. Biology offers a connection but not much else. I love the idea of adopting a child I get to give birth to, how beautiful is that?

I don't know why a woman as fertile as I have been has been led down this path, I don't know if a baby will be at the end of all of this but I do know I am changed by this process, I have grown in so many ways.

To my new friends who have been working so hard, waited so long, and have endured so much thank you for being my teachers, my support and guiding me so well, you have offered light...

Happy Birthday Gram...

My Grandmother passed away this morning, early before the sun came up...

I was up because I had gone to bed early the night before, I meditated and prayed for her passing. She had lost consciousness the night before and I was wishing her transition would be peaceful and she would not have to linger in a place of hearing and feeling but not being able to communicate.

I got to spend time with her and got to tell her I loved her. I am not sad, I am grateful.

My gram lived a long life and many of the years of her life were spent caring for me and my siblings because our parents could not. She wasn't warm and cuddly, she was strong and good. We could depend on her to come and rescue us in the middle of the night from a sleep over we were not ready for, to get us to a doctor when we were sick, to make sure we always had something to eat and a safe person to call when we were afraid.

My gram was my mothers care-taker, my mother never quite got that, still doesn't. Gram spent her whole life worrying about and taking care of her. Without my gram my mother wouldn't have survived. My mother has always dealt with mental illness and drug addiction, gram never judged her and was always took her side. It is sad that her life was spent giving to her and there are times I have been angry about how much sacrifice that was but my gram knew how to love unconditionally.

My gram did not shower us with gifts, she didn't kiss us good night or tell us she loved us. She didn't braid our hair or take us to Sunday tea, she didn't make us dresses, fuss over us or own a brag book. My gram was not our cushion, she was our protector and our rock.

What gram gave me was good advice, she taught me cook, garden, honor family, work hard, play cards, fish, and showed me how to make something beautiful from almost nothing at all. She told me stories that would last my whole life.

She believed in simple things like a good meal, a night sky, the sound of the ocean, that a long drive could clear your head, and a good nights sleep could be found in a comfy chair with a book on your lap. A party was not a party without lots of food and music, the best place for a party was under the big tree in her yard. A pic-nic table could be made from an old door and comfort could be found at the kitchen table. Family first...always.

At Stevie's funeral my gram took my hands in her delicate brown hands that looked like leathery road map, looked at me with her magnified mosquito eyes and said, "It should have been me, I am ready to go, it should have been me" She told me she loved me very much. She never had to say it before because I always knew she loved me but hearing it on that day split me down the middle. The unfairness was obvious but as it turned out my gram still needed to be here and losing Stevie tought me how to care for my gram in her last days. She lit a candle everyday for the last three years for my daughter.

Before Stevie died she had a dream that my grandmothers house was beautiful, filled with light and vases of baby pink roses. Stevie said that in her dream they were preparing for a birthday party and Stevie's job was to find my grandmothers baby and bring it to the party. She searched and searched and finally found it under a big tree.

I believe that at five this morning (on my grandfathers birthday) there was a house full of pink roses and healing light, guests waiting anxiously for the arrival of the birthday girl, and my daughter holding the baby my grandmother lost in childbirth so many years ago. The nurse said the last thing gram did was reach her hands out to embrace someone.

Happy Birthday gram, thank you, and I love you too.