Grizzy and I were in a whirl of preparations for our soon-to-arrive baby.  Just one month before, we hadn't even known we were having a baby, and after twenty years of being childless, if anyone had told me that a prayer of decades would be answered with just six little words--"YOU'RE Going to Have a Baby!"--I would never have believed it.  And now here we were, trying to get letters of recommendation, and go through all the classes and counseling and physicals and more classes and shopping, shopping, shopping.  We'd fall into bed each night, crazed, dazed and amazed.

But we were going to be parents.  WE were.  All those years of watching everyone else with their babies,  watching them walk their little ones to school, going to school programs for our nieces, helping with homework, buying them books and cool school supplies 'just because,' and now we would have all those things to do for our own child.  And so I was sitting at the table going over a list for our next trip to Traverse City, a trip we made each week to attend to more details.  I had blackberry tea steaming beside me, and a kitty purring in my lap, and I was happy clean through. 

And then....newsflash.

I was glued to that television for the rest of the day, shocked and horrified and grieving, watching terrified children running from their school, watching a terribly injured boy falling from a window into the arms of those waiting to help.  Different channels showed different opinions and....body counts.....and no one really knew what was happening, but everyone seemed compelled to keep talking, to try and make sense of something that made no sense at all. 

I was suddenly so terrified for our baby-to-be that I could hardly breathe.  I didn't even know yet if we were having a son or a daughter, and the only real fear I'd had so far was that I would fall hopelessly in love with this child, and the mother would change her mind.  I knew that to have this child--and then lose him/her--would be pain that transcended all the previous twenty years: watching a baby become a little person, watching talents and personality emerge, seeing so much potential and promise, and then gone? just like that, gone?

The parents of those students that terrible day were undoubtedly praying, hoping, waiting for the phone to ring and hoping it was the voice they most wanted to hear, freezing at the sound of a doorbell, not wanting to see who would be on the other side.  They had to be thinking just the same things: but she's all set for college, we haven't even taken the prom tux back yet, oh my God, did I even tell her goodbye this morning?  What was she wearing?  Where would he be in the building this time of the day? Is he safe, will she come home, I don't care what it takes to get her back on her feet, we'll do whatever it takes but oh please, please, please God don't take my baby.

In the days and weeks that followed, more and more information was revealed, some of it accurate, some not, and some would never be known.  All that was real was that 13 innocents died that day, and one valiant teacher.  You couldn't look at those pictures and not see the terrible cruelty of being taken too soon, of having those last moments not in the arms of loving parents, but all that fear and pain.  And you couldn't help but knowing that not a parent among them wouldn't have gladly laid down their own lives if it would have saved their child.  My baby wasn't even here yet, but I already knew there was nothing I wouldn't give if it would give her what she needed...even one more day.  Anything, anything I had or would ever own, it's yours, just please, oh please, please don't take my baby.

And I thought about the parents of the two who had perpetrated such hate and madness, and I hurt for them just as much.  They were not just dealing with the loss of their child, but with the knowledge that their child had taken so many others.

Can it really be ten years?

Doesn't time stand still when you mourn ?

No. 

Even if you wish it would, so you could freeze that moment just before...and make it not happen. It moves on, inexorably, and what was a living, breathing essence of joy--what a child truly is--becomes memory, becomes 'she would be 21 today.'  Most of these children would be married by now, and parents, even, experiencing for themselves the wonder and magic they had been for their own parents.  I read a quote about this from one of the  mothers, about how the hole in her heart where her daughter was...was just the same size as her daughter.  It would never grow smaller, and so you had to make your heart grow bigger. 

I can understand that.  All those years, there was a hole in my heart where my daughter was supposed to be.  For twenty years I lived with my arms around the emptiness of her, and the feeling of her in my arms for the very first time is indescribable, even now.  I looked down at her tiny, perfect face in those first few hours, and knew that no matter how many years I had with her, it would never be enough.  I knew that I wanted the world for her, everything she wanted to be I wanted to make available for her.  I knew that I was already so in love with her that no words could define it.

I also knew to be true something I'd read years before, that to be a parent is to walk around with your heart permanently outside your body.  My heart clutches whenever my daughter leaves my sight, and even now, ten years later, every time there is yet another story like this--for, sadly, Columbine was not the first school shooting, nor the last--I find myself praying oh please, please....hoping that our town is indeed as smalltown and safe as it seems.

I've never forgotten the names of those lost that terrible day, nor will I.  They live in on in memory, even in the memory of those, like me, who never knew them.  Their loss that day demands increased reverence for life, and insists that more care be taken at every turn.  And...I have never been able just to think 'thank God it wasn't me.'  Because when a child dies, something dies in each of us.  You spend all that time debating a name when your baby is on the way, wanting it to be just right, something wonderful and special, something you'll see on report cards and letters and diplomas--something you never expect to see carved in stone.  Much as you hope your child will achieve great things, this is not a way you'd ever want your child's name to be nationally familiar.

In the name of:
~~Rachel Joy Scott~~Daniel Rohrbaugh~~Dave Sanders~~Kyle Velasquez~~Steven Curnow~~Cassie Bernall~~Isaiah Shoels~~Matthew Kechter~~Lauren Townsend~~John Tomlin~~Kelly Fleming~~Daniel Mauser~~Corey DePooter~~

...hold your child extra close today, protect their innocence, and say a prayer for innocence lost.

...well, no.  Not really.  (Although I do have that song stuck in my head, now....thank me very much. What was I thinking?)

But you know how they're saying Facebook is being taken over by my generation, and I believe it.  In the months since I reluctantly joined, I've become completely addicted to it--not in a harmful way, it's just that it's brought back so many people I have loved and lost through the years.  You can't move around as much as I had to, and be able to stay in constant contact with everyone.  Just doesn't happen.

I've never been someone who romanticizes her past--some of it, in fact, has been the stuff of nightmares, all the more nightmarish for being true.  I have spent a lot of time thinking about it, though, mostly in the ache to understand what seemed unfathomable.  Some of the answers I will never know; some have been lost to time, some lost, sadly, to death.  But as I've said here before, I need to be able to come to terms with things, even if the 'terms' end up being something I've worked out for myself in the absence of the other involved, shape it into something I can live with.  (Sort of like the logic in the Water Babies books of long ago--'if it isn't so, it ought to be.'  Works for me.)

If I had been inclined to think things were better, sweeter, than they were, some of the things I've learned in the past months would certainly have knocked it out of me! And yet, for all that, there has been a much needed peace that could only come from finally learning the answer to not just 'how could you...' but 'why did you?'  If you have thought, all these years, as I have, that you were unlovable, unloved, and so could be left behind...it is wonderfully healing to know you were loved, and very much so.  I never thought of outside influences coming between me and the boy I loved, only of a lack in myself. 

And if you moved around as much as I have, it's amazingly sweet to learn you are remembered when you didn't expect to be.  And to find that the 'cool' kids who wouldn't have spoken much to you then, are very nice to you now; time really is the great equalizer, and almost none of us are living the lives we thought we'd be--the golden girls got kicked around, too, and the nobodies, like me, are remembered much more kindly than I'd have expected. It makes me think all over again of the book I'm reading again for the kabillionth time (see below!) because it shows with painful clarity how high school was a rollercoaster ride of purely wonderful and purely agony, often in the same week, sometimes even in the same day.  How you couldn't breathe for laughing...and couldn't breathe for weeping.  It makes me remember, too, a thought I read some years ago about 'how painful it is to be fifteen, when you feel so much and know so little.'  A few e-mails exchanged with an old boyfriend brought me right back to those days of uncertainty, of knowing that all  I knew for certain was how I loved him--never how much, or even if--he loved me. 

We had a poetry contest at the library a few weeks ago, and I was one of the judges.  There were good poems and bad, but reading them I was right back there in those high school halls.  It astounds me that after a certain age people think that those were the best days ever, because there was as much angst and heartache, the very same 'no one understands me, no one hears me' that I remember writing in my own poetry--some of which was good, and some of which was bad, and all of which was true, and truly felt.  I couldn't laugh at a teenager's heartache if my life depended on it, remembering my own so well.

And another thing....remembering the secrets I buried, it saddens me now to learn how many secrets my friends had, too.  We didn't know enough to trust each other then, I guess; I'd like to think I was always open to the 'you can tell me anything' mindset that good friends have.  But somewhere, somehow, some of them didn't know that about me, and I wish they had.  Some of what we kept secret shouldn't have had to be; how much easier might our lives have been if we could have told the truth many years sooner.  Who can say....

But it isn't all sadness, of course.  It's been a wonderful time of sharing pictures, then and now; of conversations about parties and plays that have multiple input, of creating a whole and vivid memory that shimmers in the now as much as it did then.  It's celebrating each other's children and pets, marriages and accomplishments, and comforting and uplifting through all the hard times, too.  That's what friends really are, what we always were, what we still want to be.  It's seeing one another again and not really seeing lines and extra pounds and scars, but only who we were then. 

After all...love remains.


i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

I told Jason I'd blog if he would, and he did, so here I am. It's only right!  

I really should've been here sooner, but I just haven't had a lot of time.  What's been keeping me so busy?

--Mom and Daddy sold their house on a Monday.
--That same week, on Friday, we bought a house, one we can share with them, which has been the plan for more than two years.  Wanna see?
It combines the best elements of the carriage house I loved and lost, and the house I was happiest in as a child, so the minute I walked in, I felt at home.  And that's a feeling I haven't had since 2002.  It is as if a deep, painful wound within has finally healed.
--The Kid had a mother-daughter tea which, for the first time, was attended by more than me; every year she's always said this would be so perfect if only Grammy could be there.  This time she was, along with the 'sisters' we 'adopted' through the church; our table was full and so was my heart.
--The Kid had her Christmas program at school, sadly the last one, at least as long as she's an elementary student.  I don't know why, but her school doesn't have 4th, 5th and 6th graders participating--and I was not ready to be done beaming in the audience at my gifted girl! So I'm seriously hoping she takes up some sort of music, band or choir or both, when she's old enough...
--The Kid also had her Christmas program at church.  Alas, she muffed a line, which devastated her and she was distraught through most of the show, but we reminded her (more than once) that everyone makes mistakes and no one will remember by the time the next show rolls around.
--The woman who was my maid of honor years ago came back for a visit to her parents, and came here for Sunday breakfast and then church; she is now a pastor's wife and she loved our church, especially our music ministry.  Later, we grilled steaks for lunch and talked and talked and it was as if all the years between then and now simply vanished...I am grateful all over again that she is a part of my life.
--At the last minute, we were asked to narrate the Christmas music program at church; Griz is much more talented than I am and we did get a different script every night for the three nights we practiced....but in the end, the music was so incredible and we loved it so much that we did a reasonable job and the message was powerful and beautiful.  And, as always, watching my husband perform anything, anywhere, made me love him still more, and fall even farther into love with him.  That same weekend we also took on new church duties, learning how to man the coffee bar for three hours on Sunday morning followed by library duty after church.  I cannot tell you how exhausted we were by the end of that weekend!
--Christmas.  Lots of last minute things, gifts that were better than we could have hoped to find for each other, a wonderful time with my parents as we began the plans for this new, shared life.
--New Year's Eve, which we spent in Michigan, getting ready to move Mom and Daddy down for good.  Three days later, a 26' truck, two 16' trucks, a pickup truckload and our van, well-loaded....we made it back.  Mom is so conscientious that we cleaned each room and shampooed all the carpets and left an immaculate house for the new owner.  But the best part of it all? Watching the Kid take her assigned chore very seriously: she was supposed to try and keep RedKitty as calm and soothed as possible.  When he went into the carrier, and immediately began cursing fluently, she picked up a Beezus and Ramona book and started to read to him.  And it WORKED.  He calmed down and listened to her sweet voice, even managed a catnap or two.  I am now calling her the Cat Whisperer.
--The kids had an unusually long Christmas break, and most days at the library quickly became round upon round of fighting, biting, page tearing, hair pulling, screaming tantrums and so on...But they've gone back to school now, and I've promised to behave better....

I've found more old friends on FaceBook than I could ever have believed.  I have found dear people I've sought for more than twenty years.  I have even had fun with applications where I garden, and raise crops on the farm, because these benefit the rainforest and world hunger and all that.  The sweetest part of this is learning that Grizzy's friends became my friends because they liked me, not just because I was his girl. 

I'll leave you with one last thing, because what happened yesterday was too cool to condense as the aforementioned and I need to wrap this up: I have cut my hair for the first time in three years, from waist-length to just skimming my shoulders.  Yes, what was cut off was long enough to donate! The new look, a sort of early Lauren Bacall (a look I have always loved, with my passion for all things 1940s) is most successful, and everyone is telling me they didn't realize how blonde I was (it's hard to tell when my hair is French-braided) and that I even look younger.  Now what's not to like about that?

But for now...sleep beckons.  After all, this is just the tip of the iceberg as to what's kept me away from you all....and my day started before 5 this morning, so the Sandman is beating me to death.  And I work tomorrow.  And pack and move all weekend.  I'm tired just thinking about it!

But more tomorrow. Really.  I mean it!

(How'd I do, Jason?)