The trip report

I know many of you have been hanging on the edge of your seats to hear about my trip to Maryland with the infant. Those of you who even knew I went that is. I think it's telling that the only photo I have of the whole weekend is this one:

Yes, that's my child chewing on the very common airport chair. 

It started out well enough. In fact I'm quite suspicious there was some kind of bait and switch thing my child did on me but I have no way of proving it. Truth serum only works on those able to form sentences. So, we headed out in the early morning hours of a Thursday to the airport. He slept in the car as I had hoped. He was great in the airport despite the computers breaking down and them having to hand write my boarding pass. Security, no problem. Bad decision to carry him to the gate after that combined with him choosing to roll off the changing table in the bathroom while I dug through the bag for a diaper shook me a bit, but I was more worried about him getting crabby in the waiting area. I am pretty sure we scared most of the waiting room into thinking they were getting on board a plane with a nightmare about to unfold, but I was not sure yet. I knew he was tired.

Thankfully, he fell asleep on take off, let me eat breakfast, awoke, and played and then fell asleep again on my chest for most of the rest of the flight. I was bored once I was done napping, and he left a foot wide swath of drool on my chest but that's better than frantically managing a screaming infant. I arrived on the East Coast in good shape, got lost like an idiot who hadn't lived in the area for over 10 years, but made it to the hotel and collapsed with my favorite chinese food. Folks, I got to sleep in a bed for 11 hours with only one interruption requiring my attention the whole night. 11 HOURS. 

What mom can say that? 

Well apparently you moms with one child. Or maybe one child with an ear infection, who missed his nap and is doped up on ibuprofen. Whatever. 

In any case, one might think that the cough cough sneeze barf that occurred mid-day Friday all over the car seat was a bad omen, but I had a great Friday. I ended that day thinking this one kid stuff was a breeze. This traveling with a sick infant to a place where the temperatures had soared over 100 degrees while maintaining the humidity of a steam sauna and harboring a plague of stink bugs from a foreign land was easy!

Right. 

Somehow the honeymoon ended Saturday. I started crying about 10 am. I had driven for over an hour to try to get the kid to take a nap in the car only to find him just as crabby as if he hadn't had one, found that he had a taste for dirty hay strewn about the floor of the infirmary where I was to spend most of my time cataloguing silent auction items, come to the conclusion that I sure as heck couldn't handle the heat in that area and then realized that this child was not going to let me get jack done without swallowing a stink bug or some foreign object requiring surgery to remove. 

Now for some information you need to understand my tears. For the last 8 years (I think ) I have been the savior of this silent auction. I  usually had the luxury of spending hours there in the 3 days leading up to the event and 12 hours on the very day of the event running the auction while the rest of the fundraiser went on around me. It is chaos I turn into control. I feel like a rockstar and am told how fantastic I am multiple times per day while I'm there. Meanwhile, I get to revisit one of my favorite areas on the planet, the green, leafy, wild animal filled woodlands of Maryland. The old houses, the stone walls, the winding country roads. I love visiting even if I don't get to see friends. But this year I found myself incapable of accomplishing what I come there to do. I couldn't save the day if that infant wouldn't let me work!

In any case, not to draw out a long and boring story, I still managed to make it work. With the invaluable help of some 12th hour childcare I was freed to make it work with the time I had left. It wasn't as much fun as usual but they apparently made 12k off the silent auction alone, so we'll call that successful. But I had spent a lot of hours driving around the Maryland countryside thinking. Thinking about my dad mostly, and how little he knew of what I knew. 

Did that make sense? My father didn't really take the time to find out what I knew. He was such an expert on everything that I guess it didn't occur to him to find out what I was an expert about, something a parent should really do. I think most of you will agree with me on that. I hope to be an expert on what my childrens' strengths and powerhouse skills are. I hope to be constantly amazed by what they know that I don't know. But then I'm the result of how I was raised. Maybe I'll err in the other direction and they'll think I know nothing. Whatever. But the result of all this thinking was not apparent to me until the day after I returned home. I hit full on mourning my dad again. The second anniversary of his death is the end of November. Apparently it's still raw, especially when I'm back where he and I shared such a love of the area and spent hours driving around together and now I'm driving around with MY kid in the car. Heavy. 

So, after an exhausting couple of days in the heat and bugs we returned to the airport with a sense of confidence. The flight shouldn't have been any different than 4 days before. Same time of day, same seats, whatever. It was Not. The. Same. 

This child would not sleep. He teased me with a short nap on takeoff. But then? When I was desperate for rest? Not a chance. I was physically exhausted from the day before at the auction, I was mentally exhausted from caring for an infant 24 hours a day for 5 straight days in weird circumstances, I was emotionally exhausted from dealing with dad stuff. I lost my COTTON PICKING MIND. I was bawling 3 hours into the flight knowing there were two hours left and this child was going to explode any minute and there was nothing I could do about it. I bawled and couldn't stop. I would slow down and then catch a glimpse of a flight attendant or another flyer and think how much they must have been pitying me and I'd start all over again. At one point the flight attendant just walked over and handed me a gigantic Snickers bar. That's how pathetic I was. 

Well whatever, he slept in the car on the way home. While I bawled a bit more. The worst he got on the plane was some loud talking and this yelly thing he does when he's mad. Who knows if anyone got irritated, I was in my own world of self loathing. But we survived. And I had to have some help the next day from the therapist to get to the bottom of all the grief. Knowing it was about my dad made it a lot better and maybe I can just ask my psyche to next time not hit me with a two ton load of misery on a public plane where I have an infant so I can't go hide in the bathroom, Ok? Thanks. 

So there ya go. Something I will never have to do again: fly cross country with an infant while bawling like, well, like an infant. That can go in my life book. Yippee. 

Crying jag

Being pregnant gives me free license to cry about anything I want to, right? And I do. I tell ya. I cry about the kids being sick, I cry about missing a few hours of sleep, I cry about daddy giving me a dirty look, I cry about having to crawl around on the floor cleaning up after dinner, heck I cry during dinner when the kids are told time and time again not to throw their food on the floor and then look at me innocently and do it again.

Why do they do that? Do they have a death wish? They are playing with a heavily pregnant, tired, mostly insane woman here and they don't see the warning signs?

I tell ya, the radio silence you suddenly experienced shocked me. This week is a rough one for many reasons. Small ones like, no nannies on Thanksgiving and Friday, having to sleep with one child at grandma's house, and the kids all getting sick like dogs the day after we can possibly take them to the doctor's office to do any good resulting in the one day I had a nanny being sacrificed to the gods of urgent care just to be told there is nothing they can do for a cough that is keeping my child awake for hours every night. And large things like my dad.

A year ago, the day before Thanksgiving, my dad decided he was going to die. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June and had been a terribly unhappy patient during the whole process but he was done. He was telling me weakly, in a very dramatic way, that he "just wanted to see the kid's faces one last time...." The very next day.

Yes, I was supposed to pack up my 9 month old triplets, take grandma away from her husband, whom she hadn't seen in 3 months as they were still trying to sell their place in Illinois, find a hotel, tickets and everything else, and get my kids to the hospital before he died. Which, according to him was imminent. Strangely, his oncologist said he had months left. As  long as he continued treatment.

Can I tell you what he objected to and what caused him to stop treatment? A blood transfusion. Now I was later told that for cancer patients it can be a more painful process, but I've had 2 blood transfusions myself and I don't understand how this can be too much compared to chemo. But who knows. The fact of the matter is that he decided to die Thanksgiving weekend. And it was a decision he made and I was to jump to it to accommodate him.

I don't know if I sound unfeeling, harsh, or selfish right now, but it seems to me he could have made a choice that helped both of us more. He might have had a chance in hell of seeing his grandchildren once more or at least me if he could have waited. Taken a few more days of treatment. But he insisted. He was done, he was going home to hospice care and no more of any life saving treatments for him. And it was put on me to say that I could not give him his dying wish. I could not force my mother in law to jump on a plane with me and 3 infants at the drop of a hat for a man who, in theory, didn't have to die right then. Truthfully, I could not force myself.

Dad was always a drama queen. I remember fondly him handing me the keys to the car with the tank on empty and saying 'I hope you make it' when I was 16. I learned later that empty doesn't really mean empty. I also know that he lived for creating drama. This dramatic death was just another moment in life. I could not submit to this emotional sabotage and abuse myself for him this one last time. I told him I'd be there Monday. That was the best I could do, so he knew how fast I could get there.

I bought a ticket for my aunt, his sister, to get out there asap. She arrived to assess the situation and said, yes, he really is dying. I needed to come. She agreed the kids didn't need to come because dad wasn't really aware. I bought the fastest ticket I could to arrive Monday morning. On Saturday night dad was told I'd be there Monday. He died Sunday morning at 6 am.

The anger of having someone play such a game with you is hard to explain to those who haven't been in a screwed up family quite like this one. A lot of people will think he had no choice, or I'm being too hard on him, or even that he spared me. No, he did what he did because he chose to make a point. He couldn't even wait for his only child to get there as fast as she could. It didn't matter that I had 3 infants at home who took precedence. It didn't matter about the impossibility of what he asked me to do. He made his decision and I know why he did it but it still makes me mad.

I'd have liked to say goodbye.

So Thanksgiving will be tainted for a while. And that's frustrating too. It seems the older you get the more days and months and holidays get screwed up by tragic deaths and events in the lives of people around you. Didn't help that a fantastic guy died before Thanksgiving and I had to go to his funeral Friday either. The world has lost enough great people in my opinion. I need a break.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I am grateful for what I have, it's just hard to see through the clouds this week. I'm sure next year will be much better.

Music to live by

My life definitely has a soundtrack. I'm one of those people for whom almost every song has a memory and most of the people in my life have been assigned a song at one point or another. I imagine I inherited this gene because I remember very clearly setting out each summer for our rental home in Michigan to the sound of Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" which my dad had popped into the tape deck of the car. I loved things like that. Later, after my brother died and one of his friends used a Pink Floyd phrase to memorialize him ("Shine on you crazy diamond") my dad would lay in the living room with that album playing mourning the loss of his son deeply. So, clearly, here is where I came from.

As a kid I used to compile 'depression tapes.' Oh yes, I called them depression tapes, growing up in a household with a mentally ill woman will give you a vocabulary of illness that others rarely use. I'd tape all the sad love songs I could find and then turn on the tape and get myself crying. I used to think of it as a sort of healthy therapy. I mean, nothing wrong with crying, right? And why not pick a specific convenient time to do so? I had a lot of sadness in my life, so I found plenty to cry about. That's sad in itself seeing as how I was 11, but whatever.

In high school, of course, every boy had a song. I religiously wrote down every song I slow danced to with my main crush, and any time any other boy asked me to dance I also wrote those down. At this point though, songs weren't really sticking as strongly as they did later. The transitory teenage mind I suppose. And the random choices of slow dance songs picked by high school djs also made it complicated because they just weren't right for the situation. But the 80s music as a whole can transport me right back there, Madonna's "Crazy for You" reminds me that I actually had the lyrics to that song taped up inside my locker door that year while I was pining away for that damned boy. Oh the hours I spent in angst over that silly boy who was just not interested in me. So much emotional energy!

When my brother died, the soundtrack that had defined him as an older brother would be my mourning tracks. Early on any of the music he used to listen to, which was a little more sophisticated than my taste since he was in college, would make me smile. Psychedelic Furs, Stray Cats, Adam Ant, and many others I'd seen him air guitaring to. Later, one in particular, "Melt With You" by Modern English, would show up in the oddest places right when I needed a little help, driving to have dinner with the parents or heading to the doctor with a scary lump in my breast. Seeing as how it's heyday had long past it became my song to know he was out there looking after me, because it was uncanny when it would come on the radio.

Nowadays the songs get less assigned but sometimes you're in a space in your life where you keep hearing a song and it just fits your feelings. For my mom, several years ago when I was struggling a little harder than average with relating to her, it was "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac. It was hard to even understand why the lyrics made me tear up, but they did. So it will always be about her and me.

When I was pregnant with the triplets I found a song about three babies by Sinead O'Connor of all people that made me bawl like nuts even though I have no idea what she intended it to be about. Might be three dead babies for all she meant, but for me it was a great tune to anticipate my future triplets. I listened to that sucker all day every day for weeks.

What I need to find now is a song for my dad. The anniversary of his death is fast approaching and I realize I have no song. I have a great soundtrack of Merle Haggard, Anne Muray, Crystal Gale and so on, but no song has stuck for his passing. Our relationship was complex, filled with lots of fun and interesting conversations, but also stressed by handling our individual relationships with my mom. He was definitely not always great, I struggled plenty dealing with his way of parenting, but he was a good friend in the end. So it's odd I haven't picked a song. I don't get a lot of radio time, true, but it only takes one song. Perhaps this weekend while I'm away scrapbooking and listening to all of my music it will hit me. Perhaps it's just too raw still. I need more distance before I can pick some lyrics to just mourn a bit while driving down the road. Because it's definitely hard to just mourn a bit yet. Still feels like a ton of bricks.

I'm back and I'm good

sorry sorry sorry! I hope none of you thought anything was wrong. It was terrible to leave you hanging with the ultrasound post (the kid is fine btw) and then drop off the face of the planet. But the next day was no nanny, two cats to the vet during nap time, then an afternoon of sick babies. Then Wednesday, I had to do 87 loads of laundry, pack, write up instructions, and go to the dentist to get a hole drilled into my head as well as 2 hours of gum torture.

Busy much? And then I hopped on a red-eye to come to Maryland. Sick, exhausted (sick kids equals no sleep and mommy gets sick too) and feeling a little abused, I nevertheless honored my commitment to come to Maryland for the annual fundraiser of an animal rescue group I go way back with. Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary is the happiest place on earth for animals. Farm animals that is. If it fell off the back of a truck on the way to the slaughterhouse, got abused by an owner, neglected by a collector, abandoned in a truck in downtown DC, or was just walking down the road and found by a good samaritan, it ends up here and lives out its life in comfort, companionship and with good medical care until it dies of old age.

My job is to run the Silent Auction. Around 300 items get donated each year. I get to sort through that collection, write it up, set it up and harass people into bidding for each and every item at or above their intended limits of spending. I am good at that last part. Is anyone surprised I can harass? I thought not. I love this job because the director of the sanctuary sits all weekend and tells me how wonderful I am and because I know I do a good job. You know how infrequently a mom hears she's wonderful or feels like she's doing a good job? I think you do. Not often.

So this is supposed to be a delightful break for me and some relaxation comes with the deal. But then I had to get sick the day before I came? How unfair was that? So instead of catching up on sleep like I dreamed about, I am sleeping to heal. Would be nice if I could breathe at night, but not so much these days. And being limited by what a pregnant lady is supposed to use while sick basically sucks. Ah well. I'm eating well, have read one book so far and am enjoying the scenery. Wish I had the energy to visit old friends, but not this year.

The hardest part was memories of my dad that hit me like a cement truck when I arrived. For those who don't know, my dad died last November of pancreatic cancer rather suddenly as he was predicted to last 3 or 4 more months but he gave up. He just gave up and quit all treatment and died within days. So fast that I couldn't get there in time. But dad loved the area in Maryland and Virginia. And as I crossed at Whites Ferry (an actual ferry for cars across the Potomac) I was just so sad that he chose to give that up early. True, he wouldn't be here now, but it takes a while to forgive someone for dying on you, no matter the way or reason for the death. And how I wish he could meet this new kid or even just watch me mother my kids. He's missing my greatest accomplishment. That sucks.

So, on with the show. I should have some amusing anecdotes from this weekend as animal people are all pretty strange (myself included but I'm not the weirdest) and they usually lend themselves to parody quite naturally. I'll let you know if a cow decides to follow me home too. Thanks for hanging in there during my absence.