boolar

“It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
Abraham Lincoln

It’s been some time since the last update.  Time, being relative, might not have passed at the same rate for you as it did for me.  For me, it’s either all been a flash, or painfully slow.  I can’t tell yet which, but I know that it hasn’t been any where near the middle.

Oh, the middle.  The balance that should be our number one desire, our biggest ambition, the greatest achievement a man can earn.  How I miss the middle.

First, there was disappointment.  I wasn’t able to get something I thought I wanted.  I worked hard, probably too hard, trying to buy a building that didn’t want me.  I’m under-exaggerating the stress and desire and the sense of loss, I assure you, and also, the threat of small claims court that now looms.¹

Then, there was the grief of loss, the angst and guilt of family drama, and the jarring reminder of one’s own mortality that came with the death of an immediate family member.  It didn’t help that Bradley and his step-father/uncle had been estranged for the last two years, or that their relationship had been so complex for the 36 years before that. It didn’t help that our truck broke down when Bradley was trying to make it down to say good-bye to the old man one last time after the plug was pulled, leaving him stranded in the middle of Oregon and unable to make it in time.

Somehow, though, it did help that this death came right about the same time as the start of another life.  We were incredibly excited by all of the possibilities a third human member of boolar might bring.  We were pregnant.  How can I explain that it changed everything about the world in such an intricately beautiful way?  I can’t.

And somehow, it makes beautiful, poetic sense to me that we lost that, too.  The golden possibility of a brand new human life.  It hurts like hell, I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t.  Nobody is that strong.  But it makes sense.

I am attracted to allowing myself to be a victim of circumstance, beaten, lonely, and with nothing more to lose.  But, like my friend John Whitson said, I don’t need binoculars to see the bright side.  Far from being left with nothing, I have now the ability, from the chair where I am making my physical recovery, to survey the world about me, and to take stock of the richness and luxury of my life.

I have people, so many people, who were willing to share an hour, or a dime, or a tear-filled phone call with me, to run to the store or bring me what I needed from their own private stock. Family, friends, and neighbors all love me more than I ever needed to wonder.

I have an incredibly comfortable home.  I was able to end my physical relationship with the child that never was to be in front of a warm fire in a cozy living room filled with beautiful music and aided by the person I love and trust most in the world.

I have flexible jobs working for people who were willing to let me take the five days my body needed to finish the miscarriage (even though the average is one to four hours, I seemed to need a bit more time, and I’m very glad that I had it) and are giving me another week to recover.

I have the financial resources that allow me to take that time.

I have the courage I needed to fire my nurse-midwives in the midst of an incredibly stressful event and to turn to a real healer, a lay-midwife who helped ease me through the most physically painful, frighteningly bloodiest, and most emotionally difficult event of my life thus far.  She helped me keep the strength to complete my miscarriage at home and avoid the place that scares me most in this world, the hospital.

I have a garden full of life-supporting green vegetables, and one kale plant in particular, a Lacinato Blue Dinosaur, who has been our hero this winter.  She stood tall, keeping her head above the snow, though her leaves were shriveled and frozen.  She thawed herself out and sent up sweet and delicious new leaves as soon as the snow melted and the first sun warmed her green blood. Soon after, she started sending out the shoots that would become flowers that would bear the seeds that would keep her family growing.  They would have, if I hadn’t come along and eaten those sweet shoots, greedily, because they are my favorite part of the kale plant.  Did she give up?  No, she reacted to my plunder by sending twice as many little attempts at procreation out of her strong central stalk.²

Which, of course, is what I will do.  As elastic and resilient as my chlorophyll-filled mentor, I will bounce back.  As Bradley sagely said, “It’s OK.  It’s OK because it has to be.  There is no other way for it to be.”

1. Lessons learned were many.  The biggest?  Don’t do business, or attempt to do business, with people who don’t have a similar value system to your own.  How do you know?  Trust your intuition, or your husband’s, if yours isn’t functioning properly. [↩]
2. Don’t worry, I’ll let her win in the end. I’m a seed saver. [↩]