On Life and Loss

The start of a new year always gets me thinking about what's to come, while simultaneously playing the "where was I a year (or two, or three) ago today?" game.

I work in a school in which 70% of the staff is my own age or slightly younger (late 20’s to mid 30’s).  I have attended numerous bridal showers, weddings, and baby showers for my co-workers, and I must say, it makes a little more authentic the “We are a family” mantra that administrators have attempted to force upon us over the years. 

When I was pregnant with my first child, six other staff members were expecting too.  The shared joy of expectation turned to sadness when I lost my baby, but I still feel a special connection to those people, as though our children are all of a “set.”   A few months after my loss, a stillbirth, one of those staff members lost his daughter in childbirth as well.  And then the daughter of a coworker lost her baby.  It was staggering, so many children lost, all within a single work community, all within span of months.   (All girls, too: Camille, Persephone, Aurora.) 

There was one woman, a counselor, with whom I had had no connection at all – save that she was also expecting a girl, on almost the same date.  An administrator had knit pink hats for the both of us, and given them to us at the same time, in a classroom after school one day a few weeks before my loss.  When I returned to work after a four week medical (“maternity”) leave, circumstances kept seating me next to this woman, hugely pregnant still, as I should have been, at staff meetings.  Her daughter arrived that Spring – I knew as much by the fact that I’d not heard differently – and the counselor eventually took a job at another school, in a different town.  I never even knew her daughter’s name.

I received word a couple of months ago that a second daughter had been born to this woman, and had died of SIDS at the age of two months.  Even though we had never been friends, I felt like I should send a card because of the terrible connection we shared. 

I am now pregnant with my third child – I am mom to a beautiful and precocious 17-month old girl - and some of the people who went through the first cycle with me are pregnant again, or have recently had babies (including the ones who experienced losses before).   Yesterday, one of those people, my people, my set, miscarried.  She had apparently just started to tell people; she felt like it was “safe,” like she had come past all danger. 

Part of what makes life special, though, is that we are never past all danger.  Every day, every new life, is a miracle.  Shared joy, shared loss, bind us to each other. 

Today, I received an email from some friends, retired teachers whom I have known my entire career, and with whom I have remained close.  Their daughter, pregnant also during that first time around, delivered her second child this morning: a healthy baby boy.  God bless him.  And all of us.  

Santa Baby

I have always loved Christmas time – the lights, the music, the time with family, George Bailey, Linus and the Grinch – but I don’t think any December of my life has felt quite as special as it has this year.  We moved into a new house the first weekend of the month, and having twice as much space, and a mantle from which to hang stockings – not to mention weekends suddenly free from showings and house hunting – certainly feels like a gift.  But what’s really made this Christmas season a stand-out is seeing it through the eyes of a toddler. 

Though she is just-shy of 17 months, Olive already has an extensive Christmastime vocabulary.  A few days ago, I told her we’d be going to her grandparents’ house, and asked her who we might see there. 

“Mor Mor?  Papa?  Uncle Jeff?  Aunt Devon?”

“Jingle Bells!”

She talks about toys, wreaths, stockings, elves and angels…and of course, the big guy, Santa Claus.  Any older man with a beard is Santa.   Any person or cartoon character wearing a red furry hat is likely to be greeted, “Hi, Santa!”   Her standard exclamation these days is “Merry Santa! Ho ho ho!”  When we moved, we unearthed some “nesting” Santas, which she loves – particularly the littlest one, which she has dubbed “Baby Santa.”  Sometimes when she’s in her crib, waiting to be picked up, or getting her diaper changed, she’ll call out “Hi, Baby Santa”!  We took her to see a real Santa, at the Salem Riverfront Carousel; she loves horses though, so I’m not sure she even noticed the man!  At any rate, when we returned home and showed her the pictures on the computer, she was excited.  “Hi, Santa!”

On a recent trip to Target, I spied a Little People nativity set (a “Target Exclusive” – marketing jargon for “buy this now, or you’ll never have another chance!”), and thought I’d balance out the commercialism with a little spirituality.  (In the form of toys, but whatever.)  She loves it, and can identify all the different people and animals; she calls each of the wise men, “Man.”   I held out the figure of Mary to her one morning, calling her by name.  One of Olive’s cousins is named Mary, though, and in response, she said “Lucy,” the name of another cousin.  Last night at the home of some family friends, she was overheard saying, “Hi, Baby Jesus!” to their nativity.

Our morning ritual this week has been to go directly to the Christmas tree – which she calls a wreath – to identify and greet all the ornaments.  “Hi, rabbit!  Hi, clown!  Hi, bird!”  There are some, a stuffed dog wearing a Santa hat, for example, that must be taken off the tree and carried around the house.  Luckily, we’ve managed to limit the number of “traveling” ornaments to just one or two.    

And now I’m off to wrap some presents; an important job, as Olive will probably like the paper and bows just as much as the toys this year.  What a festive pile of trash we will create! 

Merry Santa, and a joyful holiday season, to you.

Making the most of TIME

My 14 month-old daughter, Olive, is fascinated by clocks and loves to hold them (in the case of my alarm clock or watch) or otherwise point them out.  On a recent outing to Denny’s, for example, she yelled “CLOCK!” across the dining room, at the top of her tiny lungs, to describe a timepiece barely noticed by mom and dad.

I commented recently to a colleague who teaches Spanish, “Wow, I need to get one of those foam play clocks you use to teach time to your first year students.  Olive would love that.”  And it looks like, if I did get one, she might be at the top of her class 15 years from now.  Let me explain:

My own classroom clock, which I’d had for the past four years, was broken.  It was obviously very cheaply made to begin with, as the numbers were just printed on an inserted piece of cardboard, which had begun to warp over time from classroom humidity.  Additionally, some student had written “POOP” across the plastic face two or three years ago.  I had cleaned the plastic with soap and water, but at the right angle, “POOP” was always visible.  The poor clock finally gave up the ghost this August; when I returned to work from summer vacation, I noticed it was no longer keeping time.  I changed the batteries – twice – but to no avail.  In the first couple of days of class, my students would comment on it: “What time are we out of here?  11:04?  Why does the clock say 5:17?” and so I turned it around (as kind of a placeholder), and vowed to buy a new clock over the next weekend.

Olive helped me to pick out a new clock from an entire row of them at the store – “Clock! Clock! CLOCK!”  It was pristine and shiny and I brought it, with a pack of AA batteries, to school on Monday.  Only then did I realize that the clock was actually screwed into the cardboard packaging.  As the mother of a toddler, it took me the better part of three weeks to find the time to put a screwdriver into my school bag.  As someone who teaches six classes a day, and has only 49 minutes of prep time, it took me another two days to actually unscrew and assemble the clock.

“Finally,” I said to my fourth period class that day, “there is a new clock!  Everyone can put their cell phones away, as you can now look to the clock for the time.” 

“But that’s hard,” came a chorus of voices.  Of course.  The same Spanish-teaching colleague has mentioned several times how difficult it is to teach time in her class, mainly because students don’t know how to tell time in English either.   Many students in 4th, most trying to waste time, some truly ignorant, asked about the different sized hands, and “what the little lines are for.”  Telling Time 101 soon gave way to a more fitting discussion for a high school English class: diction and syntax.  Why do teachers say “weird” things like, “we’ll work on this project until a quarter after twelve,” or “class is out at ten ‘til.”  Who talks like that?  What does that even mean?!  After my explanation, one student argued that “quarter after” still didn’t make sense, because a quarter is 25, not 15.

And so, if you see me reading with Olive sometime, and you hear me paraphrasing “Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock.  The clock struck one-fifteen, the mouse ran around until a quarter to two,” now you’ll know why.