Kate Mulligan Wolfe

This came from my father, from whom my siblings and I get all our cynicism and misanthropy.

Gratitude is the antidote. It is a specific against a variety of diseases, from something as vague as the discontents of civilization to something as specific as personal grief - but gratitude is the antidote. Thanksgiving is the holiday of gratitude, and I am willing to celebrate it. I haven't always been like that.

We are told frequently that "it is what it is." That's a tautology, of course, and an increasingly grating cliche, but it gained prominence because it's a real reminder of a real thing: What happened happened. You can't change the past. All we have is today. See you in the future.

But regret is real. Sorrow and pain and loss - all real.

I sometimes think of civilization or society or our life as a kind of floor, a patchy, rickety floor in constant need of repair. Much like the hardwood floor in my house. Below the floor is the chasm. Some people know that chasm well - those who have to scrabble to exist in war zones, those who have tried to cope after hurricanes or earthquakes, those who have lost multiple family members simultaneously. For them, the daily comforts of society are of little use. The network of routine, the solace of art, hope for the future - none of it seems real.

Only the chasm seems real.

The chasm is only metaphorical, of course, but sometimes we live our lives entirely within metaphors. Our choice of metaphors is just a matter of taste. There's no right answer on this quiz, kids.

But still we have to get through the day. And, I am convinced, the route through the day is gratitude. Because there is always something to be grateful for, and that something is not in the chasm, floats above the chasm, denies the importance of the chasm.

You choose: sunsets, apples, bedrooms in the morning, Bruce Springsteen, a child's second birthday, the smile on the face of a passing stranger, rivers, mountaintops, cathedrals, Shakespeare, Tina Fey, the curve of a thigh, the curve of a road, a castle on a mountain in Austria, the books of Jim Harrison, the Big Hole river in July, jumbo shrimp, Pascal's Theorem, Ockham's razor, clean restrooms, potable water, French kissing or peanuts.

Can you feel the floor beneath your feet get sturdier? Can you see the holes being patched? For a moment, the bounty of the world overwhelmed you, and you were grateful to be alive at this moment. See? Antidote.

So today, if we are at all lucky, we will gather with family and/or friends and eat food and talk of shared alliances and shared memories. Many Thanksgivings are family gatherings, and family gatherings are often fraught. My suggestion is: Embrace the fraught. You'd miss the fraught if it weren't there.

Besides, there's always the moment of escaping the fraught, going outside for a smoke or down to the store for more whipped cream or out for a walk with someone you love. You can't have the escape without the prison. Be grateful for both.

What I'm going to try to do this year is slow down. What I'm going to try to do this year is to try to understand and cope, if not embrace what goes on around me.

I love you guys.

Dad

Originally posted by neo_prodigy at Spirit Day

Most of y'all know I'm a hard-core proponent of breastfeeding. I breastfed Cora for over 2.5 years, and I'm attempting to breastfeed Fiona, but will pump all her milk for her for at LEAST a year. I have helped several mothers start or continue breastfeeding. I will be donating some excess milk soon. I'm all about the boobie juice.

However...

I have seen a lot of judgement of mothers who don't breastfeed, or don't breastfeed for the two years that is best. That's baloney. (I mean really, there are so many better things to judge people for! Like wearing crocs!)

I am sending Cora off to seventh grade in a few hours. And I gotta tell you, by looking at and interacting with her friends and peers, I cannot tell you which were breastfed or for how long. What I can tell you is which ones have parents who are involved with and care about their education, which ones have parents who make time for them, which ones have parents who think their kids hung the moon (not in a spoiled way, but in a good way; all kids should believe their parents think they hung the moon), and which ones have parents who take an interest in their child's interests.

Just my two cents for the day.

Most of my friends fall into one of two categories: from conventions, and from online. This is not at all meant to be anything against my friends who I met in person. They have been incredible to me, not just during this pregnancy, but throughout my life. This is merely a commentary on the concept of "strangers on the internet" as friends.

So many people say, you can't really get to know someone, or form close attachments, when your main, initial, or sole contact with them is on the internet.

So far, in addition to all the support, gifts, and help I've gotten from my family and non-internet friendships, from "strangers on the internet" I've gotten:

-Daily support and bolstering
-Phone calls
-help with research
-several boxes of hand-me-downs
-a box of handmade clothes, sewn to the specifications to accommodate Fiona's special needs
-two handknit sweaters
-a box FULL of spare pump parts (really, really incredibly useful)
-various items off our registry
-a special, handmade gift for Cora, pretty bracelets
-a recommendation to the perinatologist I needed to see
-a ride to the doctor
-more, that I've forgotten, because there's so much!

And two women who Drew (and later, I,) met via an online community, and who, with their husbands, have become some of our best in-real-life friends, are throwing me a baby shower tomorrow, unasked, and with no help from me! One of them spent today, and a better part of this week, doing crafty stuff for the shower, and the other one, in addition to offering her house to host the shower, is baking a carrot cake with coconut, pecans, apples, and pineapple as I write this.

One of those women is going to be Drew's support person when Fiona's born, going over to Children's with him, being an extra set of eyes and ears, and helping him cope in those first days when I'll be mostly stuck at the hospital where I'll be recovering from the cesarean. She was also his groomswoman at our wedding.

Strangers on the internet, indeed.

(My mom and I, when I was pregnant with Cora.)

Sixty five years ago today, my mom was born. She would have been 65 today.

Margaret Cary Kauffman was born in Bethesda, MD. I don't know nearly enough about her childhood, but I know there was some moving about, due to being the daughter of a Naval officer. My grandfather had posts (that I know of) in the DC area, the Philippines, Hawaii, Indiana, and probably lots others. I believe he was still off at World War II when she was born.

She went to Punahoe high school in Hawaii, then National Cathedral School for Girls for her last 2 years. She went to a bunch of different colleges, changing her major some nine times.

She worked as a librarian, a social worker, an english teacher in another country, and a couple other jobs, plus grad school, before going to work for the federal government when I was in early elementary school. She continued to work for them, first for the Commerce Dept, then for USAID, until she passed away. She was ridiculously well-liked by the people she worked with. She also went back to school, attending seminary so that she could become a UU minister. She did her internship quarter-time, as the only clergy for a fledgling fellowship nearby, helping them grow over a number of years. She was ordained the same summer she was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer, so she never got her "own" congregation.

She and my father separated and divorced when I was quite young. They just weren't right for each other at that point in their lives, though they had at other points, been ridiculously in love. I was a product of an intense and unique love. For my father, she has always been "the one who got away." My mother, even when she may have been mad at my father, was gracious and kind and knew that my father and I deserved a close parent-child relationship, too. My parents gave me something wonderful and lasting with their divorce and how they handled it. In addition to not screwing me up with the divorce, they gave me a template for how to co-parent successfully, without your child ever being exposed to any of the marital and post-marital hostility.

She parented me with grace and love and fun. She was uninhibited in her love of play, fierce in her defense and protection of me, and I never ever for a moment doubted how much she loved me. She sacrificed tremendously later in my childhood, giving primary school-year custody to my dad, because living in Seattle and with my dad and going to HNA was what was better for me. I was Cora's age when I made that change, and I can imagine how horrible a decision that was, to sacrifice her parenting time, to allow what was right for me.

We remained close even through my crazy late teen years, when I rebelled and kinda went off the deep end. She very cleverly gave me her calling card, so I could call her, or anyone long-distance, on her dime. She used the bills to keep track of where I was and with whom and when, clever mama! She never judged me, just kept on loving me and trusting that I'd come to my senses, and worrying, of course. I think it was that trust in me that kept me from going completely off the deep end. I knew that she knew I could always pull myself back from the precipice, so I did.

Once I got my act together, which she helped me do, we were even closer. We talked just about daily. She was a wonderful parent to a young adult me. She and I really enjoyed each other's company, even when we couldn't see each other much.

That same summer that she was ordained and diagnosed with cancer, I became pregnant with Cora. Initially, she wasn't supposed to live to see Cora born. Instead, she was at Cora's third birthday party.

She loved being a grandmother. I had a roommate who had 2 kids, and we raised them together, so my mother was thrilled to get three grandkids out of the deal! She was so proud of Cora and the others, she would brag about them constantly. Yet somehow, according to those who knew her apart from the family, she was never one of those boring grandmas when talking about Cora. Her enthusiasm was contagious. We (the whole family, me, Cora, my best friend, her two) had moved back to the DC area to be near my mom when Cora was just under a year old. My mother spent a lot of time with us, and with Cora. She babysat a couple of times a month, and we all spent lots of time together. She always told me what a great mother I was, and how proud she was of me. I think, again, her confidence in me was what gave me the confidence to be a good mother. When I don't feel the strength or ability to be a good mom, I try to tap into that reserve of her endless love of and confidence in my parenting. If she believed I could do it, I can. I really could use her right now. I miss her, and nothing can really replace the support I'd get from her right now. But hopefully, I can channel her strength and grace and make it through this.

My mother's life was her ministry. She blessed everyone in her life. When she died, just over 9 years ago, the very large church was full to overflowing with people whose lives she touched. But she was especially beloved by me. If I am ever half the mother and woman that she was, I will consider that my life has been an unmitigated success.

So, we had an ultrasound, met with the new perinatologist, a tour of the NICU and surgical units, and then met with the pediatric surgeon. The ARNP at the Seattle Children's Prenatal Diagnostic Center guided us through every part, taking notes for us, and was super wonderful. Like, we were her only job all afternoon.

Short version: They're now concerned about the chest size, which is small, and that's a big deal. The fluid in the abdomen is probably not bowel related, but liver congestion. Many, many appointments and ultrasounds will follow. They can't give us a prognosis or any idea even what her chances of surviving to birth are. But they're all really concerned.

( Collapse )I think that's all. I know, it's a novel, it was really a lot to take in and very overwhelming. I wish it were better.

(is there any other kind?)

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is people's reactions to our bad news about the baby. Some of those reactions are why, I think, I'm not sharing about it as much as I could.

First, there's pity/sympathy. This is actually the least unhelpful of unhelpful reactions. It's hard to deal with, but it's not the end of the world or anything. It's just kind of, I don't know... de-personizing? I don't know if that makes sense.

Then, there's the persistent optimism. Usually, this is a result of just not understanding the reality of the situation, for which I can't blame people, and since it's always a result of people wanting the best for us and our child, I can't exactly fault people for it. However, it is frustrating in its absolute lack of helpfulness. This isn't something that appears on one ultrasound, then is just magically gone when the baby's born. We're not going to have a healthy baby (a moderately healthy child, eventually, perhaps, but not a healthy baby.) This kind of wishful thinking kind of hurts to read/hear, honestly. Like, I don't want to be Debbie Downer, but when I tell people what's going on, it's frustrating to hear someone react with denial of our reality.

And finally, there's judgment. The extreme of this would be the "what Kate did wrong to cause this problem" brainstorming session that a few "friends" had, but hopefully that will be a one-time thing. But there's also the unspoken judgments that I can tell some people are feeling/thinking. Like, I didn't manifest a healthy pregnancy/baby, or whatever. I realized the source of this is fear, most likely. If you accept that this can happen to anyone, even if you do everything you're supposed to (whatever you think those things are,) then it could happen to you. And that's scary as shit. I can understand not wanting to be faced with that reality.

I don't blame people for their reactions, especially not the first two. It's all human nature.

I have more thoughts. But they'll come later.

I love nachos and really anything with tortilla chips. Unfortunately, my body does NOT love corn, in any form. A while ago, I got the idea that perhaps Triscuit Thins (the triangular, thin ones) might make a reasonable facsimile. I tried them in place of tortilla chips with guacamole, and it wasn't good. But then I experimented with a couple of ways to make them as nachos.

The way that works is this: lay them out on a plate in a single layer, alternating so they fit together. put a slice of olive on each, then sprinkle green chiles on the whole plate. Drop on a bunch of shredded cheese, evenly covering all the crackers. Add chili powder and possibly a tiny bit of garlic powder. Nuke for one minute. Immediately run a knife between the crackers, because otherwise the cheese will harden and make it impossible to eat. Top with whole milk yogurt (my low-lactose sour cream substitute, really delicious), and/or salsa and/or guac. If I use low-fat cheese or rice "cheese", it's a pretty healthy snack, or exactly the right size meal for a squished pregnant tummy.

Consume with at least 2 Lact-aid pills.

I'm part of a medium-sized online community, a message board, made up of mostly moms. I spend a lot of time reading there, and a moderate amount of time posting. They're smart, funny, kind, and lovely women. I've made friendships there.

They've all been privy to all the details of this pregnancy, and have really bolstered me throughout. It blows my mind how many of them have been so kind, so thoughtful, and really invested time and energy in sending me prayers and positive thoughts.

But it's not just prayers, positive thoughts, and other intangibles. One is knitting a sweater for the baby, and one poster's mother is knitting a sweater, as well! Her mother!

Another sent me a message today that just totally blew me away. I sat here and cried as I read it. Her son was born with a serious health problem, and they spent a lot of time in the hospital. There was this one blanket that she'd wrap him up in, and hold him and rock him and ponder their life. This blanket has a lot of meaning. He (her son) said at one point that it had helped because "babies in Bob the Builder blankets don't die." When she was reading online about giant omphaloceles after our baby was diagnosed with it, her son came up and looked at the screen and asked about it. She told him that she had a friend online who's baby had this condition, and explained it. He wants to send us this blanket, so we can wrap our baby in it and rock her!

I'm completely stunned at that. It's shockingly kind. So much for "strangers on the internet," eh?

corasmama's Holiday costume party:

activegnome dressed as Jack the Ripper in a time machine, complete with gory knives.
artvixn dressed as a third baseman for the Marlins, though it looked more like Anna Nicole Smith.
avt_tor dressed as Guy Fawkes but the exploding barrel of dynamite didn't go down too well, and it suited them disturbingly well.
azalea581 dressed as Mary Queen of Scots ... without her head. Most convincing.
bjorker dressed as Kirsten Dunst riding a moose.
chaosqueen dressed as Osama bin Laden.
crazedcamel dressed as a extinction.
crypticangelx dressed as John Adams.
cyano dressed as Millard Fillmore.
errhead dressed as Chevy Chase.
firesika dressed as the resurrected dead -- complete with the most convincing coffin, though it looked more like a new superhero: Hawk Woman.
gene_007 dressed as a Big Mac.
girljim dressed as Hurricane Colleen.
goldfishnut didn't dress up, spoilsport.
green00goddess dressed as the main character of "Bringing Up Baby".
habibekindheart dressed as Nosferatu the Supreme Vampire.
heddalee dressed as Mde. Lachienne Foutue d'Enfer -- you don't wanna know.
helix90 didn't even show up and doesn't get any candy.
igrokme dressed as blues legend Peg Leg Sugar Smith, though it looked more like Karl Rove.
immortalsofar dressed as a cross.
jaxi dressed as a ghost, and it suited them disturbingly well.
jaylake dressed as Elizabeth Regina on steroids and roller skates.
jhulten dressed as a new member of the Wu-Tang Clan, Amateur Conqueror.
kmarier dressed as a sympathetic equation.
latras dressed as Josephine Baker but the banana "skirt" didn't survive the night.
laughingcoyote dressed as Pavlova the ballerina -- dancing on point too.
lemmingmik dressed as Camilla Parker-Bowles when she becomes Queen.
marahsk dressed as Anna Nicole Smith.
moonrock dressed as a associate bastard operator from hell, though it looked more like your grandfather.
pacfenspotlight dressed as Optimus Prime, and it suited them all too well.
paxamillion dressed as Ivan the Terrible of Russia.
pir8fancier dressed as a penguin.
racitrack dressed as Anna Nicole Smith - tarred and feathered, though it looked more like a sub-adjunct bastard operator from hell.
retcon dressed as your aunt.
rev_blacky dressed as a KWAX-AM 1022 employee.
saphyre_blue dressed as Sandra Bullock, though it looked more like the Governor of North Dakota.
sarmonster dressed as Mary-Kate Olsen with her very own conjoined Ashley, though it looked more like Camilla Parker-Bowles when she becomes Queen.
sidefx dressed as the Viscount of Old Station.
smarier dressed as the Governor of South Carolina.
sporkgirl dressed as a linebacker for the Rams, though it looked more like legendary space hero Gristle Largemeat.
trauma_hound dressed as legendary space hero Smoke Manmuscle.
twistedm dressed as a surface pixie.
xmasmourn dressed as a Level 10 barbarian.

Throw your own party at the Hallomeme!
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