The inevitable

There are some moments in life that just can't be absorbed. Moments that require reflection, with distance. I am certain that this is one of those moments.

The events of the past 5 days have left me sort of hollow. To recap:

I started bleeding on the 9th - nothing all that serious. I went about my day as usual. Went to a talk at NIEHS with my friend, J. Got home, started feeling worse, cramping some, went to the ER. At the ER, they did 2 ultrasounds, one internal one external. Met a Pentecostal lady who told us she "couldn't wait for Jesus to come back." Had some blood work done. Got an hCG quantity of 1260. That's pretty low. Got some antibiotics for an infection. Went home. Sent an email to my supervisors at the school where I teach. No response.

Saturday, the 10th - bleeding lightened up. Played with the guys. Good times. No big deal. Still no response from my supervisors.

Sunday - feeling worse, bleeding back and more severe. Still no response from supervisors. Send semi-angry email that I'm annoyed no one checks their email over the weekend.

Monday morning - arrive to teach my class, talk to supervisor when she arrives late. She informs me she has a hurt back and she just can't find anyone to teach for me. I teach for 5 hours, while totally distracted and bleeding much more severely. Pissed, now.

Monday afternoon - have another blood test. Meet the man who would have been my OB. He's not hopeful.

Monday night - Miss the call from the OB while I'm teaching. Again, with the teaching. Apparently, there ARE no substitutes or policies for sick instructors. Damn.

Tuesday morning - Get the call. hCG falling to 300s. Go in next Monday for a follow-up blood test.

So this is miscarriage, right? Seems like I should have known this. I wanted the kid. I really did. And it feels like that was my last chance. Maybe it's some sort of karmic atonement for lying about the abortion I had. Whatever it is, I can't find the right words.

Someday, with some perspective and some time, I'll write more. Today, there is only absence. And some pain.

Spicy noodles or Baby3Blog1

The day before THE TEST

April 1st, 2010

On March 28th, a Sunday night, I took two pregnancy tests. They, of course, came back positive. A glaring "what-did-you-think-was-going-to-happen, stupid?" sort of response. It was as if the test was yelling at me. I did not respond well. In fact, I sat on the side of the bathtub and contemplated the conversation I'd had with Andy three days earlier. It went a little something like this:

Andy: "I think I should get a vasectomy."
Me: "Really? I mean, what if we want more kids...I kind of want a big family but I guess you're right, I mean, it's totally irresponsible to keep having children. So I don't think I'm totally on board with this. Maybe we could get it reversed someday, right? I think they're reversible. I wonder if it'll hurt, I don't want them to make you hurt. Yeah, I think you're right. Two kids is the responsible thing to do. We should be done. Okay, let's get you a vasectomy.!"
Andy: "Okay, then."

See, I'm sort of a verbal vomiter. I have to talk things out or write them out. But we'd made this decision, right? The responsible one. And then, three days later, I'm sitting on the tub, wondering how I'm ever going to tell him about this. He knocked on the door and asked if there was a reason I was hiding from him. I responded with a "yes."

And now, here we are. Pregnant with our third child. And we're happy...if apprehensive. Aren't parents always apprehensive? It's scary. Three kids under the age of 5. Three kids to clothe and feed and put into some sort of credible child care. It's actually sort of terrifying. But joyful. I have always wanted a big family (and if we were rich, I think Andy would too)...and others have done this. So here we go. Maybe it's for a reason. I don't know. But I'm grateful for a third baby. I'm grateful for another companion for Archer and Aidan. Another precious child. Another joy. Another year of sleepless nights.

And then I'm going to be grateful for Andy's vasectomy. Because, oh yeah, he's getting one now. Trust me!

The Story, with Dick Gordon

The Story

If you don't listen to Dick Gordon's "The Story", on NPR, you really should. It'll change your life.

So, I'm submitting my story to "The Story". Being raised by wolves and by the sweetest little old ladies in the world might be a good springboard for a conversation centering around why it is that so many people are having their aged parents care for their children. I'm not judging: there were real positives and real negatives for me, being raised by a woman in her 60s, but no one is talking about this and I think we need to.

Here's my submission:

The New Geriatric Generation of Babies

As I drove to work this morning, I was thinking of my great-grandmother, who raised me on a farm in rural Oklahoma. I have long thought that the impact of growing up in a world of women who are on their way out of this life has been detrimental and beneficial to me. I spent my youth raising my own food, pumping water from a well, wearing dresses straight out of "Little House on the Prairie". I didn't know that there was a modern world beyond the one I lived in. We spent lots of time in church, there were unspoken rules about how much more important to the world men were than women. I went to funerals, but never parties, quilting bees, never playdates. I was alone all the time, except for my older male cousins who had little time for me. I was surrounded by medical issues pertinent to women in their late sixties: mammograms, colonoscopies, high blood pressure medicine. I spent my youth in worry and isolation, but I always dreamed of a different world. I spent my days exploring biology (though I didn't know that's what it was called). I eventually educated myself off the farm and now I'm in Cary, doing research at NC State, living with my gorgeous husband and my two delicious squishy children. I see, more and more, grandparents raising babies and I wonder if anyone thinks about the way those children will see the world. The rapid pace at which they age...or maybe it's just me. I don't know. But it's worth a conversation.

Reformed theatre kid seeks a life less dramatic

A poem from 2000- ihateyou by: Candi Timmerman

You can reach inside of me and pull out the pain.
You can grab my rage and pull it in to you
But
Push me away
Pull me back and
Look past the me you see
I hate the way you see me
I see the way you hate me
I hate the way you love me
I love the way I hate you
I need the love you give me
But I want it all to end
I need it all to end
I can’t see myself for you.




I met this girl last week. I don't remember her name. She was sitting outside the coffee shop down the way from my lab. I'd gone with one of my best friends to have a cup of joe and talk. Now, don't be shocked, but we often have a cigarette or two on these pretty rare occasions, and so we were sitting outside to get some sunshine and talking and smoking and drinking coffee.

Girl-in-question plops down in the chair beside us and asks if she can have a cigarette...then launches into a 10 minute ramble about how she's "really quitting but you know one won't hurt and I'm an engineering student who does photography and did you meet my friend with the camera? I'm from North Carolina it sucks here how are you? I wish that the weather would stay so pretty...do you have a light too?" You see my point.

She was me. Only 10 years ago and a little less angry. And I told her so.

Ten years ago was 2000 - ten years ago, I left high school and struck out on my own to begin life in the late teens, early twenties. A time I have always called the wasteland. I had blonde hair, a flat stomach, a negative balance in my checkbook, a car full of books. I didn't own a plate or a purse or pearls or a toaster. I was working at Applebee's to pay the bills and drinking breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I began the first adult romance of my life late that year, with an abusive alcoholic who turned out to be the first person who ever called me on my bullshit and forced me to start growing up. I spent those years furious at him, at myself, at the world. I poured out that fury into journal after journal of mostly mediocre writing.

I spent an awful lot of time, those first years, at a coffee shop on the UA campus. I had to sit outside, smoker and all that, and I did for HOURS in between classes, before classes, after classes. I met boyfriends there, girlfriends there, friends there whose friendships endure long after I stopped being a fixture of the place. I wrote while I sat there...hours and hours of poetry and prose. Most of it was bad, but a few choice words came out just right. I learned the art of SEEING people. The art of eavesdropping and stealing phrases out of context. It's a good skill to have.

So I told you that, to tell you this: I explained most of this to the girl I met the other day. She looked just bewildered at the idea of becoming me. But it's okay, I told her. Life doesn't turn out the way you think it will and that's okay. You'll be okay.

Experience, the body's cartographer

I once, ONCE loved a man more than he loved me. I sat, hours at a time, rapt at the music of his voice.

The calluses that develop on a soul, wrought from years of aching for the hand that dangles out of reach, form a foundation. The heart grows firm. The intellect sharp. The body declines as we pass from bloom to bloom, sampling what nectar falls on the lips. But the mind toughens, gathers mass and expands to embrace all experiences. All joy. All sorrow.

As we age, the music that once seized us grows trite. Irrelevant and pedestrian. Poignant and pointless. And yet, the calluses remain. Reminders that once, we were tender and pliable. Waiting to take shape from the ephemeral. Constantly pushing against the world and not realizing until too late that the world pushes back.

Impossible Choices

I was raised by people who believe in the Old Testament God. I recall vivid images of fire and brimstone. I was often frightened when I left church. I didn’t sleep well (still don’t) because I was afraid God would return to earth and I wouldn’t have time to wake up and repent before I got left behind. Kirk Cameron’s movies were scarier to me than your favorite zombie flick. I lived in a world without television but I didn’t need it. I was imaginative enough to envision the apocalypse (or the Rapture) as you like it. Forgiveness was not in my vernacular, only sin and repentance. So, the big sins in my life, the ones that, when you’re older, you look back on and cringe? Those sins I’ve not only repented for, I’ve also atoned. There haven’t been many. I’m not a thief, I don’t worship things, I have always tried honoring the adults in my life, I don’t covet, I don’t lie very often and definitely not about big things, I don’t cheat or invoke God’s name to justify things like war and I’ve never worshipped any God except the one I was taught to worship. And when I’ve slipped, when I’ve done something REALLY wrong, I’ve made my case to God through prayer and tried to find a way to do a penance. Because I believe words are empty without action.

I tell you that to tell you this. I’ve lied to the lot of you, for a good reason, and it’s time to come clean. Before you go on, let me tell you that I know your opinion about me is about to be irrevocably changed. I can’t do anything about that, in fact, it’s part of my penance. I didn’t lie to you because it was fun. I lied because I couldn’t find it in myself to tell you the truth. I was bereft of feeling and strength of character and thought I was without options. I figure a lot of people in this situation feel the same way and so I consider my penance for this sin to be frank discussion and an attempt to guide others through the situation I was in, for the rest of my life. I do not yet feel forgiven. I don’t know if I will ever feel forgiven. I don’t know if God forgives for a thing like this.

I should have a three year old son or daughter. He or she, we’ll say he, because in my mind, he’s always a “He”. He was conceived around January 22nd, 2007 and should have been born on October 15th of that year. We made the decision to have an abortion on a Monday. On February 22nd, a Thursday, I was no longer pregnant. I don’t remember much about the procedure itself, the medication is really good at making a person forget such a thing. My best friend, Rachel, and my husband went with me. (As an aside, this was the day that an unmarked envelope landed on the doorstep of the clinic and the bomb squad had to be called. I have a fuzzy recollection of being interrogated by the police as I was the person who brought the envelope inside). The staff was kind, helpful, impersonal. The doctor was efficient. The clinic was well-appointed and benign. The act itself, the abortion, was 15 minutes of discomfort and now, a lifetime of what-might-have-beens.

We didn’t consider, before, what we would tell the people we had already told we were pregnant…so we just told them that we weren’t pregnant any more. The first one who assumed a miscarriage gave me an idea to side-step this whole nasty discussion, and so I went with it. I’m sorry, I lied, I did. I told everyone we’d lost the baby. In my mind, I had. I’d lost my child. I just didn’t yet know how it would break me.

You see, I made the wrong decision. I know, now, that I DO, in fact, consider a fetus a life. I believe that the soul is imparted at conception. It isn’t a belief rooted in logic. Logic has no bearing in this discussion. The choice is personal, as are the ramifications. And for another woman, perhaps the choice is the right one and no regrets are there. For me, there are regrets. And make NO MISTAKE: I am pro-choice. There ARE situations where, even if the fetus is a life, a desperate and awful choice must be made. Greater good and all that. I refuse to consider taking that choice away from physicians or the women whose bodies are in question. I consider it my duty to help them make more informed choices and to encourage everyone to consider adoption. Just consider it! If you aren’t in the right place to have a child, someone desperately wants it. And it’s surely painful. It’s got to be terrible, knowing there is someone out there with your face who you could have loved. Could have cared for. Could have cuddled and snuggled and tickled. But it’s worse knowing that there’s not.

So, for the last three years, I’ve marked in my mind 2/22 and will again, this year, remember 10/15. Because those dates, those numbers are the only thing I have to snuggle. I look at the gap in the years between my two beautiful children and I wish that I’d been brave enough and tough enough to try and make it a go. But a person will go crazy considering the butterfly effect. I cannot change the past. I am seeking spiritual forgiveness in a very personal way and part of that way is to share my story. To let you know that if you need help with a decision like this, when the clock is ticking…when, in my mind, every minute gets that lump of cells closer to being a baby…you need to know that there is no easy answer. There is pain in the carrying and the birth and the parenting. There is pain if you choose adoption. There is pain if you choose abortion.

There is a hole in me that will never be filled. You need to know that. It isn’t an easy choice. I’m glad it’s a choice you can make. I’m grateful I live in a world where we have choices. I just don’t think abortion is the right one for everyone, or mostly, anyone. It can crush your soul. Rip away any feelings of comfort you ever wanted. Don’t do that to yourself. And if you do, be aware that you might never sleep well again.

Requisite holiday blog

The holidays have always made me, like many people, kind of sad. For a number of reasons, at this time of the year, my expectations are always a little too high, my loneliness a little sharper, my nostalgia a little more distinct. "That's a part of getting older, Candace," you might say, but you'd be wrong; it was worse when I was younger.

I think, for me, Christmas has always been a symbol of the kind of life I wanted, but didn't have. I spent much of my youth living with my Grandmother, who, though she loved me more than anyone in the world had a right to be loved, didn't understand the chemical signals in my head are all messed up. Who did?

So, I'd get deliriously happy when I'd see little white twinkling lights sprinkled out over the world. Blankets of snow, the red Salvation Army kettles, the bells, the way your breath feels heavy on the first frosty day, the smell of evergreens, the warmth of looking into my Grandmother's home from outside on the porch, where I would always end up...

And really, that image is what sums up my holiday melancholy: I have always been out on the porch, bundled up in my favorite red dress looking inside at my cousins and their moms and dads and my grandparents and siblings and they always seemed so genuinely happy...and I wanted to be happy there with them, but I was still there, alone, on the porch.

This is my first Christmas away from that porch, and it's a lot more difficult than I anticipated. Andy and I have started this amazing life together. Two kids, moved away to the land of prosperity. We've got friends and family here...people who love us and care for us and who make us want to reciprocate. And isn't it interesting to note that I've never, not once, felt like an outsider with them. I don't hide from these people...my family and friends. I don't hide from my husband when I'm sad. He knew I was broken when he asked me to marry him, to spend my life with him. He keeps me inside the house.

And our friends, our beautiful friends, who compel us to be better people every day: they also know I'm broken, and they love me anyway. I think my family would have, had they known that I needed something more, had they known that my holidays were spent out on the porch, but I never gave them the chance. And I'm sorry for that, because the time has slipped away from me, like time is wont to do, and I cannot get it back.

I hope that I've loved them the way that they needed to be loved, but I cannot be sure. So, please, let me ask you to spend your holidays paying attention to the people on the fringes...sometimes you don't know they're there, but they are. And they need you.