Two Days Out

Today at breakfast, Bruno mentioned that he saw Pedro squirrel bury a peanut in the flower box. I didn't know that Bruno bought into my delusion about the squirrels, and for some reason it made me really happy. A little in joke, a little way to connect about the boys, to experience them together. I know it is weird, but I'll take the joy where it comes.

Speaking of joy, this weekend I got to reunite with the cast of Best of PlayGround to do two of our pieces in the San Francisco Theatre Festival. I don't know what is it about this group of actors, but when we get together I laugh like to lose continence. Oh my goodness. We met up to rehearse, and I was laughing so hard my body actually hurt. I think I'm out of practice. The show went beautifully despite some sound cue disasters and was a pure joy to revisit. Again, I'm taking the good where I can get it.

As we get ever closer to the boys' birthday, I find myself beginning to feel ready. I've been thinking about them a lot lately; I talk to them more than usual, invite them to come cuddle with me at night when, as I hold my pillow, I imagine it is them in my arms. I don't think this is unhealthy. I can't be sure, though. I hear them in songs as I'm driving, and I cry and sob and wail in the sanctity of my car, and then I feel a little better, a little cleaner. There is something that is just killer about this mish-mosh of longing for a new child while mourning the old. And the weird thing is, the times I've felt closest to Archer and Pedro after their loss were the two times I've been pregnant since then: I talked to them practically non-stop, begging them to help me nurture these new lives. I think I've been afraid they'd be jealous.

I don't really believe in heaven, so I don't know where, exactly, I think they are. This troubles me. I try not to think too hard about it, not worry too much about the how and what, but rather just try to feel. I feel them most in nature: in a pair of birds winging across the sky, in the black and gray squirrels dashing through the backyard, in the hummingbirds that appear out of nowhere and stop to eye me: in anything that is free and playing. And even though I don't believe in heaven or reincarnation, and I don't know where I think they are, I worry a lot about whether they get along. Whether they like each other and play well together and are taking good care of each other. I worry about whether they are alone or lonely.

I guess I really did become a Mom.