Another Day

Bitching seems to be a given these days. A rite of passage in many career paths. In a time that we are blessed with so many opportunities and resources while our time and energy seem to be the limiting factor... why waste it complaining? Especially when it makes you feel worse not better. Commiserating? Yeah- being miserable together. I'm going to try to eliminate this from my way of being. My inspiration is here. Every day is another day. Join me?

Four Short Years

Four years from now....
I will have aided hundreds of women in bearing their children
been with them, held their hands as they faced their mortality
ran to their bedsides to attend to their fevers, pain, bleeding
witnessed their last moments on this earth
shared their euphoria as they saw or heard their baby's tiny heart beat for the first time
heard their dark secrets and deep fears
delivered babies who had already passed from this earth.

Four years from now...
Silas will be six
Jeff will be nearly forty
and I am desperately afraid their hearts will be harder for this time.

Four years from now...
I will have cried rivers of tears
Spent more time at the hospital than at home
Lost my shit and gathered it
Been taken to task in public and private
Become an obstetrician and a surgeon.

Four years from now...
I hope to retain my sense of humor and my humility
my wonder at the true miracle of birth
I hope I can maintain my most valued relationships
without straining them to the breaking point.

Three days from now I start my residency. I am scared shitless. I am excited beyond belief. I am realizing a dream hatched, squashed and reborn. My heart is heavy with the weight of "this one last weekend" but excited for that weekend with my family (at my brother in law's kick ass new studio open house). I am worried I don't know what the fuck I'm doing and I have patients booked into my clinic Monday morning. Mostly I'm worried I'm going to lose my sense of self and my way home in the madness of my training. I worry I'll lose the wonder for the paperwork. That the demands of a full list of people to care for will overwhelm my ability to be fully present with each one. That my heart will slowly close itself.

"Worry is a prayer for bad things to happen." So I am going to take a breath, embrace the four years a moment at a time, give myself the permission to fall apart and get back up and do it again. Reassure myself that my family will thrive even with a smaller piece of me. That I will remain whole as I am enriched by this training.

Priceless

I love Stephen Colbert but don't have cable and don't often think to watch his clips. This one had me laughing until my belly hurt. So much good stuff in it. Enjoy. Maybe empty your bladder first, depending on your mood and the state of your kegel practice.

Boobs

I hate them.  Mine.  I hate my boobs.  I know I'm supposed to love them, embrace them (literally or figuratively?), be grateful for them.  I am none of those things.  Mostly I'm annoyed by them.  I have been for almost as longs as I've had them.  As far as I can tell- other than attracting my husband and nursing my son- they have been nothing but trouble.  

I am not a small woman.  Never have been, never will be.  The years of baggage, volumes of words, hours of tears and frustration allow me to write that phrase nonchalantly- even as I feel my heart well up in my chest just a bit.  I have struggled with the body love/hate relationship as long as I can remember.  At the end of the day, I can cope with my thighs, my belly, my chickenwings.  But I want my boobs to pack up and ship out.  The infamous boob sweat, the impossible to find supportive sports bra, the fact that they are in my face during yoga class.  I said when I was 16 that after I was done breastfeeding (how I knew that was in my future, I'm not sure) I would go under the knife.  I resolutely hold that position.  Can't wait.  Take 'em and run.

But there are moments that I wonder... why?  Why do I have this driving desire to part with a piece of my body?  If it's not for vanity, than what?  There certainly is the practical part (the fit of dress shirts, the incessant bouncing, the need to wear a bra at pretty much all times).  But if I'm honest it's also about the "accidental" two hand frontal plant during touch football, the adolescent guys who would ask for just a feel, the junior high teacher who once asked me to "jump once and bounce twice", the hundreds of men who feel like it's appropriate to stare at my chest as I walk by as if there were googley eyes pasted on my nipples.  I want that gone too.

And then it returns to my body image struggle.  The struggle all women have- expressed differently, felt similarly.  The fact that I so stubbornly wanted to "magically" be the same size I was prior to getting pregnant that I refused to go and buy new bras.  I wore stretched out, uncomfortable ones for a year- ultimately so I wouldn't have to face up that my boobs were EVEN BIGGER.  I mean, seriously.  So when I finally faced up to the fact that I am days away from having no time to go shopping and I'm doing myself no favors my strapping the wrong bra on- I found myself being measured and studied and tucked in by a lady in a bra store.  The same lady who tried to sell me a nursing bra that turned my sore, overworked boobs into torpedos a la 1954 was sizing me up- and selling me a bra a size bigger than the one I was wearing.  Ack.  So I swallowed the lump in my throat and paid up.

I have been sitting here- trying to tie this post up with a neat little bow.  Some upshot, something profound.  And what I'm left with is more of the same.    These "beings" attached to my chest which have taken both physical and emotional tolls have also fed an nurtured a child.  There is also nothing particularly mystical or magical about having them taken away as I know much will still remain even in their absence.  For now, nothing more to do than pack 'em into pretty, supportive containers and take them with me.  That and work on letting the rest of it fall away- loving them a little more, accepting them a little more, caring a little less.

And finally- a video amidst the thousands of "naked tits hardcore boobs porn" hits that I got on you tube (I should have known better).  A video that pretty much sums up the tenderness as well as the struggle to find public acceptance of nursing.  It's sweet.

A single Cheerio

Just one.... that's all it takes.  A single cheerio, staring back up from the floor.  Tempting you.  Taunting you.  Pushing you close to the edge of losing it.  Ruining a perfectly good afternoon, evening, moment.  Losing your cool.  Feeling that everything is just shit.  The house is out of control, there is nothing in the fridge for dinner and you're not sure what bills have been paid.  We're all on the verge of falling apart.  A cheerio.  And a floor that needs sweeping, mopping.  A room that needs organizing.  A tub that needs scrubbing.  The laundry that needs folding and putting away (but didn't I just do laundry?!).  It might as well be that my whole life is on the verge of a breakdown.  So why even bother picking up this one stupid fucking cheerio?  

And then, in a rare moment of grace- I breathe.  Pick up the cheerio.  Avert the crisis.  Refuse to ruin my (and my family's) evening.  Acknowledge that all of the other things will get done.  Or they won't.  The world is not falling apart.  My house is not falling apart. I am not falling apart.

I just returned from a visit with my grandfather.  An amazing man, a powerful influence in my life.  He has been caring for my grandmother for the better part of a decade.  She is losing a long struggle with Parkinson's disease.  Struggle might be an overstatement in some ways.  In my harsh assessment, she pretty much took the diagnosis and laid down with it.  Left my grandfather to do the heavy lifting, the researching, the pill-crushing, the meal-prepping, the care-giving, the diaper-changing, the mouth-wiping.  He is tired but he has not wavered in his love for her.  He looks at her with sincerity, calls her beautiful, kisses her good-morning and good-night, shows her family pictures, tells her stories, shares his pie.  He tells me with no bitterness or irony that she gave him three beautiful children and made him breakfast and dinner every day without complaining... that this is his turn.  He is certain that this is the path chosen for him, even though he can't always make sense of its meaning.  He does not curse the cheerio.  It is what it is.

And so I return again to the understanding that every adversity, no matter the size, is an incredible opportunity.  Our reaction is our truth. 

I think there is choice possible at every moment to us, as long as we live.

But there is no sacrifice.  There is a choice, and the rest falls away.

Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

~Muriel Rukeyser