New Year's Eve

Tonight the world celebrates. They embrace the new upcoming year with optimism and enthusiasm. Because this year will be the year. The year the weight is lost or love is found or financial security is met. The year where dreams come true, 2013 holds endless possibilities and so the world celebrates. I will not be celebrating with them.

I am already dreading 2013. This seems like the year, the hard year of grief that has to happen before the good years start to return. This is the year I was supposed to give birth. To bring my baby boy home. This was supposed to be our year. Now this is my year of grief. About two months ago I was in New York. At Times Square they have this area where you can write down your wish for 2013 on a piece of confetti. At midnight that wish will fall from the sky.I wished for Mateo to be born healthy and happy and that we would have a long life together filled with love. That wish will never come true. In any capacity.

Tonight while the world celebrates possibilities I will solemnly await the beginning of what is set up to be the hardest year of my life. The year all the milestones come and go and I learn to mourn them. 2013 is marked with so many should haves and woukd haves and the disappointment of none of them. The only thing I am dreading more than this holiday is all of next year.

My Weekend in Pictures December

Spent some quality time with friends this weekend riding the ferris wheel, eating good food, ICE at Gaylord Palms and having a Sunday Funday in Winter Park. Ooh also started my Peru scrapbook.

Here are some pictures. <3

Magic

I believe in magic. Not the rabbit out of a hat kind. But real magic. The feeling mystics, prophets and poets have been trying to describe for centuries. It is carried throughout other feelings and sensations. There is magic in love, magic in rain, magic in food, magic in children. I had lunch with Penny yesterday. There is magic in her. For the first time since Mateo passed I felt hope. I miss hope. I miss Mateo. We had a nice lunch and real conversation. We spoke about magic, without ever mentioning it. We also talked art. She gave me the materials she has used for a very long time to create woodblock art. She has prints in her home of art she has made with wood blocks and stencils. I really love that idea. Every home should have art made by its owner. Sure Picasso is inspiring, and photos capture the soul of a moment, but to have your own art on the walls, that carries a hint of magic to it. I will experiment with creating my own woodblock art these next couple of months. I hope to be inspired into creation and having something to display for myself. There I go hoping again.

Oh I am also sharing a picture of my tomato plant, Sherry. I got her about two weeks ago. Even on my hardest days, the days I can't get out of bed for much, I get up to water Sherry. I make sure she is in the sun, that bugs are not taking her over. I cover her at night when it gets cold. I greet her every day with anticipation,will I have tomatoes today? I am proud to present my first sign of a tomato. Those closest to me know I have been wanting and talking about growing tomatoes for years. I am not sure why I have chosen now to do it. Sometimes I worry she won't produce fruit and I'll have to comfort her by telling her " hush now, I know, me either". I worry that she will die and then I'll be reaffirmed in the belief that everything dies with me as its caretaker. For now she is alive and well and some days when taking care of her is easier than taking care of myself I am grateful that she too has a little bit of magic to share with me.

Christmas Day

After spending the last two Christmases in Peru, I could not wait to spend Christmas back at home, in the US with my family. I fantasized about the food I would eat,the gifts I would open.  "Oh for meee, you shouldn't have!" But really they should have, I just got back from Peru! When I became pregnant my fantasy changed, it would be my pregnant Christmas. I would buy a baby stocking, people would put cute little things in it." Oh for Mateo, you shouldn't have!" But really they should have cause he was my baby, and amazing by association. So when actual Christmas came, my homecoming from the Peace Corps marked by my bringing home my baby boy in a casket, what kind of fantasy do I have then? How could I make food or presents matter when nothing matters when your baby is gone? I spent today with my best friend and her family, who are like my family, but less embarrassing. They were kind and giving. No one pretended I hadn't just had life take my son away. No one dwelled on it either. They gave me permission to feel what I needed and surprisingly I felt good. It was a nice day, with kind people. We laughed and ate good food and I came home with bags filled with gifts. Tonight I put on my new Christmas pj's and crawled under my new Christmas fleecy blanket and I said to myself, "Oh for me...Thank You"

Here I am at ICE at Gaylord Palms Christmas Day 2012

Christmas Eve

It has been almost a month since I lost my son. I think it is interesting that that is the language used around the death of a baby, "She lost her baby at 23 weeks" No one says life took him, or he left, I lost him is what they say.

I went to the cemetery and left an ornament and a small tree at his grave. This is all I can do now. Keep his body's resting place kept up, bring small mementos, find peace in ritual. I bring a symbol of peace, leave it at his grave, I come home with a broken heart. This is our ritual.

I recently deactivated my Facebook. Fret not world of social media. I'll be back when its time.

Lastly here is a poem I came across today.

Does the tree at that knot twenty

feet up feel its missing rib, the way

I feel you gone these long years? Loss

plays us like a violin, never free of its rub.

It simply lessens its intensity till only the

one closest to what was lost can hear it.

If you haven't lost something or someone,

this will seem sad, even frightening. But

after a century of heart-time, I went to

the immortals who envy us our ability

to feel and forget. They looked at me

with their longing to be human. And

the saddest among them took my hand

and said, "I would give eternity to live with

what you're given, and to feel what is

opened by what is taken away."