Blind spots

It's the last Wednesday in August, and the packing list for my sister's wedding is growing by the hour. With our extra baby gear and my food allergies to work around, every trip feels like camping: we haul the edibles and other supplies in and hope nothing runs out.

"We should get an RV," D. has said more than once this week. "Seriously, we'd be able to go anywhere."

After this morning's slow progress on our plan, I'm almost tempted to say yes.

Thankfully, my other wedding to-dos are waning. I've written my toast and charted the day-of schedule we'll have to get O. through. My dress and his ringbearer togs are fitted. All I have left is to assemble a slideshow of the happy couple, finalize the reception games we'll subject them to, and figure out which purse to carry. Makeup, snacks, sewing kit, hair pins, band-aids, headache relief -- where to put it all? The diaper backpack's tempting but a poor match for stilettos.

I start gathering supplies for a test-fit. "Oh come on," I mumble -- I'm out of the meds. I was at the store last week but hadn't started the packing list yet, and I'm dreading the back-to-school crowds. But O.'s already at the door to our garage, begging to go out. I don't resist. If he's willing, there's no better time than now to get the job done.

Everything these days is a job, I think as I pull out of our driveway. We are halfway down the block before I wonder if I've closed the garage door. It doesn't matter, I tell myself. We'll only be gone thirty minutes. But these endless tasks, boxes to be checked off -- it's no wonder I feel dull. I can't remember the last time I did something for myself this summer. At least, not without needing to invest as much energy in arranging for a personal stand-in to cover my absence as I was supposed to reclaim in the first place.

Four turns, six stoplights. The route is busy, but traffic moves. O. babbles to no one in particular -- is he telling me what he sees? We've been waiting for words, but even at 18 months, he has none. At his last check-up, we got a referral for early intervention services, which will start after we return. I'm relieved. Between this trip and the last one we took in March for my mother's birthday, we've spent most of O.'s year thus far in planning mode. This wedding needs to be over just so I can focus again on him, to say words like car, truck, and bus instead of accommodations, airline tickets, and aspirin. "Ya ya ya ya!" O. exclaims. I can't help wondering if the outside demands we've been fielding all year have more to do with his delays than any other cause.

I park. There are no carts nearby, so I sling O. onto my hip and start trekking to the corral at the store entrance. As I reach the end of our row of cars, a red SUV comes roaring past the front curb. It blows through the crosswalk and suddenly it's turning head-on toward me. My body freezes. Run, you idiot, the primal part of my brain says, but it's as if the rest of me can't believe the driver hasn't noticed us. Or maybe I'm afraid if I move, he'll swerve the wrong way. "Hey!" I shout. He can't possibly hear me. He goes left at the last second, swinging just wide.

I'm fuming. There's no apologetic wave or even recognition, just the hot stench of exhaust. I consider walking back to the guy's car and demanding an explanation. But I know it's pointless. He's got a wife and a kid in the passenger seats. For whatever reason, on his end or mine, I just wasn't visible.

See me, I scream silently. I haven't felt seen, I realize, in a terrifyingly long time. The work of preparing to move a pop-up habitat for so many events in this year and the last is like a scrim -- it keeps me forever busy behind the scenes and is itself so easy to look past. Not that my reasons for being in this parking lot on this day are the guy's reasons for nearly hitting me. But that don't-you-know-I'm-here moment I had in front of his bumper -- more and more, it feels like an ongoing state of being.

O. squirms in my arms. All this time he's been quiet, and I look at him for the first moment in a long minute. He's watching me, trying to read my expression, which must be anything but reassuring.

"We're okay," I tell him. But I know we both need better.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Sanity, regained

O. is nursing.

At five months, he finally -- finally! -- figured it out and is now able to get what he needs from me without causing either of us trauma. We started giving him the opportunity to nurse without a supplemental feeder just over seven weeks ago, and, within a few days, he was completely off his training wheels. We are ecstatic.

There have been a few bumps along the way since that first day entirely free of the pump -- some frustration on O.'s part, heat waves that have thrown his appetite off, plugged ducts from having to adjust to less frequent feeding demands -- but that's been nothing compared to the brutal routine of juggling so much nursing equipment in the preceding months (see photo). For the first time since O. was born, I've been able to sleep more than two and a half hours at a stretch. This may go without saying, but I have to write the words because I've wanted to for so long: I am a different person -- a sane one -- once more.

Sleep has meant the return of coherent thought. Instead of falling asleep while pumping -- not something I recommend, by the way, as the pump doesn't quit when it's full -- I've had the gift of quiet moments to reflect on what the last five (almost six!) months have been. O. is easily distracted these days, so there's no catching up on Netflix while he's eating. He'll even turn a nursing cover into a toy, so we keep to his room, lights down, for most feedings. He grabs at my hair, my shirt, my hands. And I sit, thinking in twenty-minute stints about the road we've traveled.

For the first two months of O.'s life, I felt robbed. Not of the breastfeeding relationship some books tout as sacred -- believe me, we didn't have any holy notions about my providing nourishment; in fact, we deliberately steered clear of any conversations with well-meaning people who were self-proclaimed boob enthusiasts because we didn't want to get into debates about lactation philosophies and politics. We just hoped breastfeeding would work and we could check it off the list of things to learn to do, like burping and diapering and giving the occasional bath.

But as a few days' nursing strike turned into weeks, I felt my ability to handle the expected abnormal of having a new baby leaching from me. I had no emotional energy left to love O. with. What I would have traded just to have fragmented sleep and unstructured days only from an infant's erratic waking, not his middle-of-the-night cries and the demands of the pump. It wasn't supposed to be this way, I kept repeating to myself, even though I knew it wasn't helpful. I'd look at O. in his rocking seat and dread the next time he'd rouse himself and then feel guilty that I couldn't enjoy him when he was awake. Every interaction we had was too fraught with the frustrations of getting him to eat, figuring out why he wouldn't eat, allotting precious time I could be using to bond with him to contact doctors who could help us help him eat. Eat already! I wanted to scream. "If it weren't for that damned risk of food allergies," I repeated to D. over and over, teary and spent, "we could just stop the insanity and give him formula. I don't care about the rest of the stupid benefits of breast milk. This is crazy."

But the risk was very real because of my family history. And putting ourselves through a few months of pumping to avoid a potential lifetime for O. of eating the way I have since we discovered what was making me sick was worth the heartache. Or so I told myself at my lowest points, when I wanted to quit and said so to O. in no uncertain terms. Fortunately, he understood none of it. He'd grin at me while I mumbled obscenities through gritted teeth, a smile plastered across my own face to disguise the misery I was feeling. I was scraping bottom then but still determined not to let him see or hear it after slipping just once on the phone with D. D. was held up at work, I was on my fourth pump-and-feed of the day (flanges attached, bottle and baby also in my lap), and I was fighting what I didn't realize was a nasty breast infection. "I just need you to come home," I all but wailed at the phone, balanced on speaker mode on a nearby table. At the sound of my agitated voice, O. burst into tears -- not a cry of hunger or tiredness, but alarm. I picked him up immediately, apologizing into the impossibly soft crook of his neck as he rested his head against my cheek and sighed a shuddery half-sigh.

If only everything could be fixed so easily, I thought.

As these recent weeks have brought a new rhythm to our days and nights, I've been drawn to the idea of putting O.'s story into a more formal body of work. Partly to process it all with the tempering effect of distance, partly to reclaim and recast some of those early memories in a way that I couldn't when we were in the midst of the chaos. Hindsight is a gift -- especially with a positive ending.

I don't know what this project will become. Maybe some of it will appear here; maybe it won't. I've learned more than I ever wanted to about making decisions for the life of someone entirely dependent on my good judgment when I was the least objective mind in the room. I know, I know -- this is just the beginning, you say. But had I had the words of experience to hang on to from someone who had once been in our position, I think I would have felt just a little less hopeless at the worst moments. That is a reason, if any, to write all this into something coherent.

Long-form work and I have had a tenuous relationship in the past (think: the MFA thesis that almost wasn't). But the story I was writing then had no resolution. O.'s does. I'll take it as an auspicious sign that I've actually acquired nearly two dozen books from the library just to read what's already out there for mothers who face what we have. There are a surprising number of resources from those shelves that provide information on what we had to learn the hard way or gather in fragmented fashion from so-called lactation consultants. Interestingly, all of the books I requested were readily available -- no waiting lists for holds -- unlike the majority of the popular pregnancy and childbirth books in circulation. I may be jumping to conclusions based on our experience, but I suspect they're hanging out in the stacks because no one knows they exist -- or knows to go looking before they're needed. I certainly didn't.

I hefted my finds into two big canvas bags at our library on one of the hottest days of the summer, wearing O. in his carrier as I bent to remove each title from the holds shelf. He squirmed against me, eager to be free of his constraints or just hungry; I wasn't sure. But he was motivated and so was I. So I'm putting whatever this is -- brainstorm, project, as-yet-formless cloud of inspiration -- out there to give it weight. Matter, in its many senses, because it does matter. And I'm actually a wee bit convinced, dare I say it, that I can carry it for a while.

P.S.: For those of you who have asked how that trip to Florida went, it did indeed get postponed -- and relocated. Stay tuned for our first plane trip coming up in September, as we fete Troubadour Dad's 60th in the Texas panhandle ...

Upside down

Cake, that is. I'd found yet another recipe in the inspirational binder to try, but I needed some help because (a) I'm allergic to raw stone fruits and (b) a 12-inch skillet is hard to flip when every bit of it is oven-hot.

So D rescued me. He peeled the peaches from the farmer's market and sliced them into a pile of juicy, golden wedges so I wouldn't get hives all over my hands. And when the cake came out of the oven, he gamely clapped a chopping board over the pan, palmed it with ease, and inverted the whole mess with a daredevil grin. I loved him for it.



In the past, I counted on him to be that rescuer for bigger things, things with greater emotional stakes -- family and all its traps, especially. I leaned on him because I (understandably) couldn't lean on myself. Then our own problems began to emerge, and I was alone, still unpracticed at being there just for me. We learned to avoid conflict -- easier to step around each other, swallowing our frustrations so as not to have those all-out fights, ones that would leave me waiting for him to patch me back up.

It's not sustainable, that dynamic. And I've known it for a while but haven't had the resources within to draw upon. But I'm working on that now, relearning, in a topsy-turvy way, how to repair myself.

I won't lie: it sucks. On many days, I'm not sure which end is up, and figuring it out leaves me spent and spread-eagled. And let's not forget afraid -- I fear that after so many months of emotional wreckage, D will have reached his limits. He has reached his limits. I've felt his patience wear long past thin, and it's terrified me. I can't learn quickly enough.

But he's still there, waiting, willing to offer a hand if I really need it. I think we both sense there's a new equilibrium to be gained for me and for us.

For that, I can only be grateful.


For the original recipe, click here. Modified recipe to come.

The view from above

I want it.

And today, I got myself a guru who will help me get it: a dietitian.

I'd been mulling over the idea for a little while -- a year of unexplained creeping weight gain will do that to you, particularly if you have a complicated relationship with food. There is, of course, much more to that story, but suffice it to say that after these last two weeks of eating a traveler's diet and seeing the results on the scale, despite my best efforts to manage the damage while I was away, I decided I'd had enough of going it alone. I have too much on my metaphorical plate to worry about -- thesis, marriage, family -- to make room for food anxiety.

Not that food anxiety is totally separate from all of those things; I dare say it's a common element among all three, even if it's not at the surface of each. In the here and now, though, I need a guru who will take on the day-to-day questions and concerns about food with me so I can focus on the less straightforward business of sorting out my life as a whole.

For just shy of a year, I've been talking to a different counselor about the things that have gotten me down. And despite multiple attempts to ask him to show me the bigger picture, the map -- hell, even the path -- he's managed to get around my question: what are the problems and what do I do with them?


I didn't see the pattern for several months, which baffles me. But it's been a confusing year, one in which I second-guessed my instincts many times over. In recent weeks, I started bringing up the food anxiety in our sessions, outlined its severity, its years of entrenchment. "I know it's easy to focus on that since it has a handle that's easy to grasp," the counselor said. But nothing more.

So on Monday, I told him I was going to find a dietitian.

I met with her today, and from my first impression, I think she's going to be great. I felt better after talking to her, felt like we could tackle the anxiety, felt like she had a plan for me even if we didn't get into the nitty-gritty details all at once. I know she can't be the person to answer the larger questions on life for me, but she'll help me clear away some of the debris on the path. Which is what I've wanted all along from the other guy.

Maybe it's time to clear him away too, in favor of someone else -- a search process I'm hugely reluctant to begin, especially since it's taken so long to determine how dissatisfied I am with my current counselor. How can I prevent this from happening again? What if the next person -- and the next one, and the next -- are worse? Am I really willing to throw away a year's working relationship? I don't know.

But that view.


I want it.

Photos taken at the High Line, New York.

Measure by measure

"I think I've got it," D said, and he pulled the piece of folded silk taut between his fingers, waiting for me to pin it just so. When I was done, he moved his level a few inches to our left and started on the next section of curtain hanging from the rod he'd installed earlier with the help of the same level. Fold, level, pin; fold, level, pin. All in the name of perfecting a hem.

These curtains are going to hang in our bedroom, which means no one but us will see them. If any part of their hems happens not to fall exactly one inch above the carpet, only we will know. So I was more than a little amused, sprawled on hands and knees this afternoon with D and his level, our chins practically grazing the floor as we measured on.

But these curtains -- something we started the weekend before with D's aunt, who came out to help us make them as her housewarming gift -- they are for us. Our first home decor project to dress up our most private space. It feels right somehow that we're taking the time to make it as close to perfect as we can. Even if using a level is kind of hilarious.

I'm sure that if we were more experienced, we'd know some sort of trick not involving carpenter's tools to do this properly, but we're also accustomed by our nature to making do with what we have (within certain limits). There's fun in improvisation, seeing if our inventions will work. There's a little high I get when they do. And of course, disappointment when they don't.

I've been improvising around here a lot in the wake of the last month or so, letting parts of my old routine fall away in the hope that I will open myself to invention, some kind of insight on how to treat myself, a self that feels foreign. "You're getting your bearings," a friend said to me. "You won't always pick the right tools for coping, but trying them out is part of the process."

So a level it is for now.

Tuesday

... was hard.

Well, for that matter, Monday was too. I had my follow-up appointment with my local GI doctor to talk about the plan going forward after what he lightly referred to as the Million-Dollar Workup.

I was glad he wasn't put off that I'd gone to someone else for all the testing. I'd planned to be forthright about discussing the findings, no matter how he seemed (I did have all the new data sent to him). But it was a relief all the same that we didn't have any awkwardness about it.

The good news he had for me: my liver enzymes are completely back in the normal range. Which means I can drink again -- at last! -- with continued monitoring every few months.

The bad news I had for him: this little problem called depression is not going away.

It is not the fault of any single thing. But we were supposed to start trying to have a baby this month. That was, in essence, the plan D and I framed up last summer, which was why we were so intent on getting my health issues fixed -- or at least properly examined to see what kinds of risks and other concerns we needed to take into account before trying to get me pregnant. We went to a reproductive endocrinologist, who ran the usual blood tests to get baseline readings, which revealed the abnormal liver numbers (you know the rest of that story). He also discussed the things I ought to consider to get my body in the best shape for this new adventure -- including tapering off the antidepressants I'd been taking since mid-2008. Commuter marriage? Not good for someone who's been dealing with chronic blues for a long time. But D and I were done with that, and I was working through family stress in my writing. I felt ready to move forward.

So I timed the step-down very carefully, waiting till after the holiday season to attempt it. The process seemed to go well; by the first week of February, I was done.

But the combination of things that was the rest of that month -- I didn't anticipate how they would affect me. I thought I was in a better place; really, I did.

No.

Of course, it's not just February I'm trying to work through. February was just a month of triggers. But, given their effects, it's clear that there are underlying griefs I haven't found a way to manage completely. And knowing that, knowing I haven't yet achieved that goal is what kills me now. Because I wanted to be ready for motherhood (at least, as ready as one can hope to be). The reality is that there's no way I can look myself in the eye and say, "Sure. You can handle it." I know at least that much about where I am, even if I don't know much else.

And yet. No matter how wise that decision, for me and for the little life that will be utterly dependent on me, it is still heartbreaking -- because of the delay, because of the reasons for the delay, because there is no clear mark on the horizon to tell me when the delay will be over. And the irony of it all: the antidepressants were quite likely the source of the liver damage.

I know I shouldn't be hard on myself about this as it certainly won't help. If there's anyone who needs to be in my corner with me, it's me. "You've got a lot going on," the GI doctor said sympathetically as I confessed to him that I'd relapsed (with not just the GI problems but also depression) and what that meant for our plans for a family. He urged me to take care of myself first.

I spent much of Tuesday trying to write this post, but it was still too hard to put everything into words, so I gave up and cuddled our foster kitties for a while. They seemed to know I needed their company and stayed close. Today, to my relief, felt better -- even though what I've described isn't a fraction of the way it all feels, at least some of that was writable, which means I'm working through it. I am taking care of myself here.

I just wish I didn't have to.

I knew it wasn't time yet

Remember that little rose plant we saved from near death back in November? It was touch-and-go for a while, even after it started putting out new leaves. Some curled up and fell off; others started out looking fine but became slightly deformed as they grew. We couldn't tell if it was planning to stay or go.

Well, last week it bloomed.

There was a bud when I got back from my February trip, but I didn't know if it would survive -- the plant had put out buds before but couldn't sustain the energy to bring them to full flower. So I watched and watered very carefully, sneaking some photos when it thought I wasn't looking.




I almost decided to plant this outside after its blossom was spent. When I picked up the gerberas two weeks ago, the florist at the grocery store tried to sell me another miniature rose. "They do wonderfully in our climate," she said -- which is true. I've seen many a happy rose in our neighborhood in summer. But I wasn't so sure about mine, given its rough start. How I understand those.

It's not so much the individual stressors -- an aphid here, a chillier night there, a few too many cloudy days in a row. It's all of them at once, too many things to react to, that would keep it stunted, possibly preventing it from ever making a full recovery. So my rose and I are staying indoors until we're ready.

Good thing, too, because it snowed today.

I am not this person

... who has suddenly lost the ability to do -- well, almost anything. I’m not, I swear, this person who is letting the weekly dinner plan fall to only what comes out of the freezer in vacuum-sealed packages: tilapia fillets, mixed vegetables, pot stickers. Not all within the same meal either.

I’m not this person who crawls back into bed after breakfasting on coffee. I used to do laundry and dishes and file the innumerable bills and other important items from the mail. I would read the news over my cereal, then start my workout. I’d shower before lunch. I'd even floss. I could go about my daily responsibilities without feeling like each small task required so much will. And pleasurable things -- they were effortless to pursue, not these chore-like endeavors they've suddenly become.

It will get better. It has to. But this person who's taken over my body in the last week since I got back -- you're not welcome. You're no stranger to me; I remember you all too well from previous dark times. I'd just forgotten how sneaky you could be. I mean, twelve days ago, I really did think I was fine. I was up to my elbows in revisions; I was chasing down thesis committee members. Hell, I even managed to sell a TV and a microwave on Craigslist to two different people and get a foster cat adopted by a third while I was three time zones away (thanks, D, for doing the in-person follow-up for all that).

And then, some time in the early morning of the last day before I was to fly home, you showed up. You hopped into the bed while I was in the hospital and curled right up under the skimpy white sheet like a delighted child who had found a new playmate. I'm sure I told you to go away. But you knew I'd been worn down, knew my defenses were gone. You'd been watching me for days, waiting for your moment. I realize that now and wish I'd recognized you sooner. Maybe I did and was just in denial.

I understand that you've decided to sojourn here for a stay of indeterminate length, but I'm not cool with it. Do what you have to do (or don't, as the case may be) -- I'll give you that. But tell me what it is you really need, tell me how to provide it, so I can send you away again, this time, I hope, for good.

Because you don't get to stay forever. One way or another, I will figure out how you work. And when that day comes, I'll be the person in charge again. Yes, me. And I won't make it pleasant for you to hang around. So do us both a favor. Help me help you so we can go our separate ways. Really, it'll be better for everyone involved.