who would've thought? a poem for my mother

giver of life, mother.
you are such a mystery to me.
little do I understand about you.
your inner workings
confound me.
your sense of spirit
eludes me.
your passions & priorities
completely pass me by.

but here, now,
in this moment of motherhood,
somewhere in the distance,
I hear you,
and I know you understand.

giver of life, I
now give back.

written sometime in the summer of 2002,
belly full of baby, head full of reflection

i have not slept

you crawl through space and time
to reach me
moving slow enough for
fate to catch you.

invisible to swords and samurai
untouchable by wands and wizards
stopping the movement of planets
long enough to grasp my hand.

did i dream it all one glorious night?
through midnight blues and scarlet reds,
through jade and tourmaline,
through bone and skin,
bringing together air and water
in a brilliant cascade of color,
exploding in the night.

did it wake you too?

i have not slept one night since
the visions keep me dancing
all night through.

7/14/02

time to write

all this time on my hands. not sure what to do with it.

took a few days off work to get this thing removed from my right breast. last remnant of a part of motherhood i may never experience again. it was a lump that evolved from an amount of dried up milk which was never expressed when Sophia stopped nursing very abruptly. it gave me quite a scare while we were up in portland, part of what drove me back to the sunny shores of santa barbara and to the arms of people i love. well it never really went away, and finally i was told i needed to have it removed.

so i'm on a borrowed laptop from work and finding that Sophia will actually fall asleep to the dim light of the screen if i am lying in bed next to her. so now, after weeks of crazy hectic full days at work, i can actually find time to blog at night. and listen to new ani difranco music. and find some alone time (well mostly alone, if i can ignore the incessant snoring from a certain small person in bed next to me!).

spent similar alone time this morning while she snored, in the time between dawn and when my sleepyhead wakes up. a morning of reverie, rather than rushing to pack a lunchbox, getting ready for work. i spent it re-reading old journal entries from around the time sophia was conceived. i'll post some of my writing next. i think i'm ready to actually share some of my own writings. but before i do that, wanted to share what happened when sophia woke up. in this journal, there is a folder pocket, which contains scraps of things from that time: post-it notes with Ricco's cell phone numbers in Europe, business card from my midwife, a train ticket, receipt for my EPT tests. and among all that, are the ultrasound photos. the only photos of sophia's lost twin. i was staring into these distorted images, finding a face for the first time staring at me thru the technology. it was a strange moment, i think i'd always just tucked those photos away, trying to tuck away the loss at the same time. when i found out i was carrying twins, i was a 32 year old single woman, overwhelmed already by early pregnancy, trying to continue to run a business thru the haze of morning sickness and hormones, as well as coping with the fact of loving someone who was, in one way, all i had ever dreamed of, but on the other hand, was likely to never show up for me or our child in the ways we really wanted him to.

add to that whirling swirling head space not one, but two babies. and one of them with something severely wrong with it physically, only one fifth the size of the other. well it just felt like good news to find out a few weeks later that the smaller baby did not have a heartbeat, would not survive. at that time, i felt some loss, but mostly relief. and not until now, nearly 5 years later, do i pull those ultrasound pix out again and really feel that there was another life in me which never made it out to see the light of day.

oh my baby, my small small child. you join so many other of your brothers and sisters who passed into me, but not through me. i told sophia, your big sister about you today. showed her your photographs. she wants to know why we never saw you. she thinks maybe she saw you inside once. thank you for accompanying sophia on part of her journey to this world. we're sorry we never met you, sorry we couldn't hold you and help make your passing easier. we hope you are safe and warm and loved somewhere. i am sorry as your mother that i did not see your face any sooner than this. i was so sad about losing you, i think, that i just couldn't open my eyes or my heart to you before now. we love you little one.