Mammoth

On Christmas Day we got in the car and we drove. And we drove and we drove and we drove. We drove through rain, and sleet. We drove through mountains and snow. We drove through text messages and phone calls from family and friends telling us of the weather forecasts we were experiencing out our windows. We stopped to put on snow chains, and then we drove some more. We drove through the light, and we drove through the white, and we drove into the dark.

And finally arrived in Mammoth.

My sister-in-law's parents own a home in the mountain town of Mammoth, and ever since our boys died, they have been begging us to get ourselves out there for some restoration. On Christmas Eve, faced with the prospect of down time and holiday time, of swarming memories and failed expectations and nothing in the world to distract from it, we finally took them up on their offer of escape.

The drive itself was a punch in the gut of our pain. Memories of the cross-country trip, our last moments of innocence, our brazen misunderstanding of the idea that pregnancy leads to children you can raise, our triumphant march across the country that ended in tragedy, poked us uncomfortably in the ribs like Archer and Pedro's feet.

We talked and we cried and we watched the storm blot out everything in the world but us, and the moment directly in front of us. And we slowed down, way down, and we inched, we crawled, forward.

Mammoth. What a funny name for a town. Pictures of enormous, shaggy, elephantine beasts everywhere, including the key chain we'd borrowed from my sister-in-law. And the mountain, the mammoth mountain that was the main attraction, looming in the background, making everyone and everything feel small.

Mammoth: the task ahead of us, of allowing this year to end without our children being here. As if we could stop it, but still. The screaming out enormity of our rage: how could you? How could you, universe, with your beauty and your mountains, and your holidays about miracles and your new year fresh starts, how could you betray us like this? And expect us to go on, no less?! Talk about brazenness.

Somehow the idea of a new year has ripped our wounds wide open. And we grieve again, as if we were right back at the beginning. Last night I dreamt their birth again, that desperately unhappy pushing with no relief at the end. And I woke up and wondered if we will ever be whole again.

At the base of Mammoth, surrounded by the calmly warm sky and the sparkling crisp snow, I cracked open, and the torrents of my feelings poured out and I surrendered, once again, to that which is more Mammoth than me.

But I haven't mentioned the snowshoeing! Strapping large metal claws onto your feet that make you instantly awkward on the roads planned out by man, but instantly mobile and free in the snowy wilderness. We strapped ourselves in, committed to the journey and tramped over hill over dale, for miles, in the quiet with nothing but the crunch of us marking out a new path, and the heavy swooshing of trees dropping their snowy loads on our heads. And here's the thing about snowshoes: you can only move forward in them. Try backing up, and you end up on your ass.

Hanukkah

I had begun dreading my own Hanukkah party about three days ago when despondency about this year's attempts to start a family was full on and I thought: good G-d, how am I going to have a party?! All our dreams about what this Hanukkah would look like were upside-down. We were supposed to greet people at the door with our boys in our arms, introducing everyone to our two month old twins. The emptiness and the loneliness were unbearable.

On the logistical side, 34 people responded yes, many more than I usually host, and latkes can't be made in advance: they really lose something when they are not hot off the stove. And to top it all off, Bruno was only doing this because I had wanted to: he is pissed off at G-d and doesn't want to do anything remotely religious. He's been making cracks all week about holidays and religion: very unlike him.

And then the day came. And I actually found it very soothing to put my house in order: to clean it up, place flower vases filled with tiny orange Clementines around and scatter pretty foil coins on the tables and window ledges. I draped some twinkle lights through the wine rack and amongst the fruit in the fruit bowl, and hung paper lanterns in the Tiki room outside with lights inside them. I filled our outdoor fireplace with tea lights and watched them flicker through the window. It felt like a slow deliberate adding of tiny amounts of light and beauty to our world, and it felt nice.

My Mom came an hour early, and we started peeling potatoes, until the entire sink was filled with dirty gray peelings and we were left with a mountain of wet white potatoes. Then the grating and the rinsing off the starch and the squeezing the shreds dry. And the onion, oy the onion that left us with tears streaming down our faces. And me up to my elbows in a vat of 10 times the recipe, mixing potato and onion, flour and egg and salt.

Then the oil and the heat and the friends. And the noise and the children and the eating. And the taking turns at the stove and the smells and the warmth and the crispy salty fried under the cool sweet of sour cream and apple sauce. And the children drawing and reading and playing. And the chaos of the dreidel as children aged 2 to 10 learned to spin and played for pennies. And the quiet moment with the candles. Four Menorahs lined up with four children at the helm: jewish, christian, muslim. And the chanting of the prayer, and the crying of the hostess, and the attempt to find the light, to find the miracle.

Miserable

I am so miserable this morning. I am trying to remember that some of it must be the hormone shift happening in my body, but I woke up at 5:30 this morning, hungry, like I did every night of my first trimester with the boys, and now again with Curly Five, and I just felt this complete sadness that there was no reason to get up and eat. But I was so hungry that I couldn't go back to sleep, and I tried to calm my mind, but I just couldn't; I kept yelling in my head at everyone and anyone causing me angst, from the managing agents of our house who won't come fix my closet, to the Ben Hur assholes who messed up our move, to everyone who has ever succeeded in bringing a child into the world. And when I finally got up at 7:00 to go to the bathroom, I found I had bloodied the whole bed, down to the mattress, my nightgown and everything, and I thought, this is Curly Five, spilling out of me. And I was so profoundly sad and I missed all my lost children so much.

I am wallowing in self pity. I know it. I am so sad about the past and present and so scared about the future. How many more losses to come. How much more agony, and will there be any children for us at the end of this road. How long will I be out of joint, not pursuing my career, gaining and losing weight, making and draining hormones, bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.

The HAND meeting last night was pretty intense. There was a new couple; well, they were new/old. They were back for a meeting, after attending about a year ago during their loss. They had twin girls at 25 weeks and 4 days. They opted to try to save them. Both made it to the NICU, but one was discovered to have severe brain bleeds after 9 days on life support, and they decided to take her off. She lived for two more days. The other was in the NICU for four months and now is home and doing great and just celebrated her first birthday.

As you might imagine, I found this story incredibly hard to listen too. I was sobbing, and trying to shut the hell up because this was their story, not mine, but it brought me right back to the hospital, to all those statistics and conversations and decisions. We know why we made our decisions: our boys were boys (statistically lower survive/thrive rate) and a whole week younger (every day makes an enormous difference at that point) but still, I saw Archer's sweet little face, his mouth open taking breaths, and wondered what would have been his fate if we had tried to save him. Arrgh. That is probably why I'm such a wreck this morning too.

I talked last night about how lonely I am. I am one of the only people in the group without a live child. And I feel fucking lonely. I especially feel lonely in contrast to how surrounded I felt being pregnant again. I forgot how glorious it is to always have someone with you, a companion to talk to, to steer the eating and the resting, someone to take care of. I have never been able to muster it to simply take care of myself; I always need a reason: I'm sick or I'm in a show, or I'm carrying twins. I guess I've just found the next lesson.

I think I need to walk away from all this, catch my breath. I thought I'd be able to jump right back on the horse, but I am bruised and I don't think I can tolerate more trying and angling and counting and tracking and hoping. I just need to walk away for a bit. I feel like I'm back at the beginning. Wonder if it will take as long to claw my way into the middle again.

Bye

Yesterday I bled all day long, but no cramps.

This morning I passed something that wasn't like a period.

An ultrasound revealed no more Curly Five.

Bye, my love. I'm so sorry

The Beat Goes On

Heartbeat, that is...

Oy, what a ride. Today's sonogram revealed something inside the sac with a beating heart. I saw it on the screen, and I thought: is this really there, or do I just want it to be there so much that I am making my mind see it.

The doctor said, "There has definitely been growth; there is something in that sac, and if I use my imagination, I can almost see it moving".

I said, "Oh, I have a great imagination! Let's imagine, shall we?"

And we kept looking at the screen, from this angle and from that, and we kept seeing something moving. Beat Beat Beat...

Now, before we get our hopes up too high, the doctor said he is still not happy with what he is seeing. It is still way too small for the age it should be according to my blood tests (sometimes I think we know too much), and, it looks weird.

Ok, the doctor didn't use the term weird. That's me. But I asked him if it was just that the growth seemed small, or did it seem weird too. He said "weird too".

He thinks the egg is still a genetic dud, and will miscarry within two weeks.

But he also said maybe not.

So I'm left trying to figure out how to keep putting one foot in front of the other while I walk around pregnant with my weird egg. Honestly, I'm beginning to think that we know too much. If I'd been less vigilant with my pre-natal care, I wouldn't know a thing except that I was three weeks late on my period with a positive pregnancy test and a miracle in my womb. Instead of walking around trying not to feel like a doomed time bomb.

As far as I can reason it out, there is no choice here but to be hopeful. It won't hurt any less if I'm not. All I can do is be thankful for the life that is doing it's level best to start inside of me, and hope that my weird egg turns into a happy, healthy, wonderful, wacky, weird child.

Weirder things have happened.

Everything That's Not Nailed Down

Today is not a good day. I am anxious and unhappy, and so I do what I always do when I'm this way. That thing that makes my husband happy and other women jealous. That's right: I clean.

Bruno calls it an "everything that's not nailed down" day, meaning I seek to wash, scrub and otherwise control everything that's not nailed down, sometimes to disastrous effect. This time there weren't too many casualties, just a dark sweater that got washed with a light colored, fuzzy blanket and is now irreparably covered with light colored fuzz. Ah well: all the in the name of restoring Lisa's sanity.

Our days have been getting easier. We can now laugh without guilt. We are choosing to do more things, to engage more in every day life. I went to my first audition out here, I was invigorated by it, and, what's more, I was OK about that. I've started to read again, and, most of the time, I actually answer the phone when it rings.

But today, I feel right back at the beginning. I am furious at the injustice of life. I am pissed off about my loss. I miss my children, I want them right here where I can hold them and raise them. I feel uncertain about the future, robbed of hope, angry about the past and the present. Wronged, with no one to strike out against.

And so I clean. I scrub the kitchen floor, finding the rhythm, enjoying the exertion in an almost masochistic way. I am moving my body in punishing ways, and am thus somehow punishing the universe for treating me and my boys so badly. I am creating order out of chaos: I declare this dirt will not remain on this floor. I proclaim these smells will not remain in these clothes. I will wield the power of machines, of products, of tools and of my own hands and I will make order out of all this mess.

I sit back, glazed in sweat, looking at my sparkling handiwork, and realize it is not enough. It is not nearly enough. And I start to sob.

There. That was what I was after, after all.

Over before it's begun?

Oy Vey. As if we haven't had enough of a ride, it looks as though this pregnancy may not be viable. We had our first two blood tests, and the numbers were doubling the way they were supposed to. Phew. Thursday was our appointment to possibly see the heartbeat for the first time. We were scared and cautious, but excited. During the sonogram, the nurse hands the wand to the doctor. Yikes, you know that isn't a good sign. It gets quiet, and then the doctor tells me I can go ahead and get dressed; he wants to go check my numbers.

I assure my husband that everything is going to be alright, and I get dressed. The doctor comes back in, and tells us both that he is so sorry, but this is not a viable pregnancy. He says he sees no yolk sac, and at this point in the pregnancy, there should not only be a yolk sac but there should be a heartbeat. He tells us he is not 100% positive, so he won't tell us to take a pill to hurry things along yet, but he'd like to see me again on Monday to see if there has been any more growth, and confirm his diagnosis.

I AM SO ANGRY!!! Why is the Universe relentlessly shovelling shit in our direction? Haven't we had enough? How much loss am I supposed to take before I crack under the weight of it all. I am fighting so hard to retain my positive outlook, to find my lessons in all this misery, my glimmer of higher truth that I can cling to in this sorrow storm. AND NOW THIS!!! WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM, G-D!! ARRRGHH!

It is now Sunday night, and I go back in tomorrow for the follow up appointment. The days since Thur have been rough! I've been trying to keep myself busy, maniacally cleaning the house, washing everything that's not nailed down. I went back to exercising, half for stress relief, half to say "fuck it" to the Universe: if you want this baby to stick, you better give me a miracle, 'cause I'm through helping and hoping. Driving is the worst: as long as I keep myself busy I can keep it together, but when I slow down enough to step into the car, to sit still, I lose it. I keep bursting into mouth-wide-open sobs as I'm barreling down the highway. Not the safest thing, I bet.

Yesterday, I had a break from all this pain, mostly due to my brilliant husband. As I took the doctor's pronouncement as law, Bruno took it as a possible last call to get to know and nurture Curly Five (as we're calling it). I wanted to spend today moping on the couch, but he insisted we get out into nature and celebrate our pregnancy. We drove to the Santa Cruz mountains and hiked for two hours in the redwoods and pines and fuzzy, mossy mountains. We ate apples out of a wild apple grove and talked the whole way and at the end of the hike it started snowing. It was magical. Then we drove down to Santa Cruz, had thick luscious cups of dark chocolate and drove by the Pacific at sunset, talking to the boys and Curly Five, spending "family time" as we have it available to us now. I did have one morbid thought of wondering whether I would ever have any babies that are alive to talk to, but mostly I rode on Bruno's hopefulness and had a decent day.

Tonight, however, he is on his way to Japan for a business trip, and I have never felt more alone or more insane in my life. I tried to stave it off all day. I went to the gym: that was good for a few hours. I went to Safeway and tried some retail therapy: I bought an organic chicken with the idea of roasting it for dinner (ha ha! I wound up eating corn chips and black licorice instead.) I knew I would pig out at some point, so I got myself some "health snacks": organic whole grain chocolate cookies, veggie corn dogs, and the aforementioned organic corn chips and black licorice. I had finished half the box of chocolate cookies before they ever saw the pantry shelf.

I watched several hours of bad TV and then a bad movie: The DaVinci Code. I must be pretty far gone, because I didn't think it was so bad. I rejected offers to see friends and family: I just feel too raw to concentrate. I talked to old friend: comforting and distracting, although one hinted that she might be pregnant, which is maybe not the news I needed this particular night. Oy, I so don't want to turn into that person.

And so the night is almost over. It is 8:45pm, which I think is almost a time with which I could get away with getting into bed. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Our Little Pisher

Today, Archer (that little pisher) got himself signed up on our family's insurance policy.

I'm over at my parents' house, when their phone rings, and it's for me. It's Bruno. What's wrong? Who died? What's wrong? Well, it seems that Providence St. Vincent Hospital, where the boys were born in Portland, has called Bruno at work (because they didn't want to upset me) to tell him that they are having trouble getting our insurance company to cover one of our hospital bills.

The bill is for "Baby Boy 2 Morse Hospital Stay".

It's for Archer, for his two hours alive with us in the hospital. And they've called Bruno out of a meeting at work to tell him that since we didn't sign Archer up as a dependent under our insurance, the insurance company can't process the claim. Bruno is now ripshit, torn apart, needing to go back into a meeting, trying to hold it together, and calling me to ask if I can pick up the ball. Of course I can.

I hang up the phone and pause for a moment at my parents' dining room table. I am right back in the hospital, in the moments after the birth, seeing Archer's little open mouth, his little furrowed brow (I'm not sure he loved his bath: oh well. We tried.) I miss him so much, I feel like my chest is going to burst wide open. I want to kiss him, to press my lips against his forehead again. I can't believe we ever let them take our boys out of the room.

I gather myself up, remind my parents to think of what they are grateful for, because life could be a lot shittier, get in the car and grimly head for home. I'm not looking forward to these conversations. First call is to the hospital, to verify what the problem is. Yup. A very nice woman named Joanie tells me we need to get Archer on our insurance. She tells me that our boys were automatically covered for thirty days after their birth, but that they aren't anymore. I ask her why the claim is only being processed now, so long after the fact. She informs me that legally the hospital has 180 days to process claims and..... I interrupt her to announce that I'm really glad that legally the hospital has its ass covered and I'm going to say goodbye now to go try to get my dead baby registered on my insurance. And I hang up.

Drat. I thought I was done doing things like that. Shoot. Grief induced sainthood is frickin' fleeting.

I call her back to apologize. She tells me she was just picking up the phone to apologize to me. We have a big ole' lovefest, she makes me promise to lean on her for help if we run into any more trouble, we agree to be friends for life and hang up the phone.

Next call is to the insurance company, who puts me on hold while they try to do everything they can to put Archer on the policy. All attempts come up bust, and the only remaining option is to call Bruno's old company. I was hoping to avoid this. I can almost keep it together with anonymous people, but I know these people at his old company, and I like them and they like me, and we all know that adds up to a sob storm. Alright, well, there's nothing else for it but to do it.

I call the HR woman, a lovely fabulous friend of ours, and mercifully go straight to voicemail. I explain what is happening and what we need, and I make it halfway through before the shaking starts, leading quickly to the voice cracking, and soon it is just all out speaking through sobbing with a little apologizing thrown in for good measure. But I make it through, and hang up the phone.

And I swear to you, I have barely returned the phone to it's cradle, when it rings again: it is the insurance company: they have been contacted by the HR saintess, she has told them she will take care of everything right away, we aren't to worry, and she's called the hospital and told them to stop calling us. She also wants to know if there is anything else she can do to help.

We are so blessed. We are so very very blessed, to have encountered and to keep encountering so many people who are doing everything they can to help keep us from feeling more pain.

And did I mention that as I was pulling out of my parents' driveway, a little hummingbird came and winked by my car window?

Hello Archer, you little pisher.

A good day

Yesterday, I had a good day. Today, not so much, but yesterday was a good day. For the first time in what feels like forever, I went through the day without heaviness in my heart. I still thought of the boys, even talked about them at length with a dear friend, but that weight, that heaviness, that slight, quivering, gray shade that permeates most of my minutes was absent for a whole day.

It was weird.

I didn't know what to make of it.

I felt I should analyze it, try to understand what caused it so I could replicate it, or, if it was unworthy in origin, if it was escapism instead of healing, I could properly excoriate myself and make sure this sort of thing didn't happen again.

My mother suggested that maybe I should just be glad. Take it as a gift.

Interesting.

For those of your keeping score at home, that would be Mom: 1, Neurotic Overthinker: 0

How Quickly They Forget

This is shameful, but I am still mourning the loss of my twin sons, and yet I have also started to panic already about becoming a Mom to this new life, all the freedoms I'll lose, all the body shape I am already losing. Where is that wonderful selflessness and grace I'm supposed to be filled with, the sense of "nothing else matters but bringing this new life into the world". How is it I'm already feeling grumpy about not being able to workout anymore and about how long it will be before I finally get to be an actress again. Why don't these lessons stick longer.

Or maybe they do. Maybe the learning is in the fact that I notice now, the fact that I'm not a sobbing mess on the floor about these things, I just am aware of the mild panic I feel, and more importantly, aware that in the not so distant past, I was filled with a clarity about the weight of each of these concerns, and about what really matters.

I remember during the early days of living with losing Pedro and Archer I thought, "Boy, remember how much time I wasted worrying about everything I'd give up to become a Mom. And how silly that all is, because now I understand that what you gain is just so so worth anything you might lose." But I guess the point is that I do remember that, even if I can't totally get on board with it as I watch my ass expanding at an exponential rate. I think I really thought tragedy would allow me to transcend being human and jump right to enlightened saint. Ah well, looks like I remain staunchly human and I'll have to keep fighting for my glimpses of understanding, clarity and perspective just like everyone else. Well, maybe not quite like everyone else.