Mommy, Daddy and Conner

get out of here 2009

i have never been happier to see a year go then i am to say goodbye to 2009. this has been the worst year of my life and hopefully holds that record for the rest of it. it started out fine but went downhill fast and showed no mercy.

in the beginning of may we were happy and pregnant with a boy, but by the beginning of june we were devastated, pregnant with a sick boy and now missing one parent. we found out conner's heart never grew properly on may 26th, my mom's birthday, and then one week and one day later on june 3rd she died. conner continued to grow inside of me and his movements became stronger and stronger. he came into this world on august 22nd, one month earlier than predicted. he was still kicking when he was born and he was big. he weighed 6 lbs 14 ounces and was 19 inches long. he only stayed with us for 5 hours. i remember every moment of his birth. i remember the days before hand when my labor started all on its own. i remember people telling me that it wasn't labor but it was just how it was going to be for the last month. i remember thinking that it couldn't be like this for a whole month. they were wrong. it was time. he was coming whether or not we were ready, but he took several days making his way into the world. i was exhausted and starving by the time he was born. i remember holding him, knowing that my time was very precious and unknown, seeing the nurse bringing in a tray of food and wanting it so badly because i hadn't eaten in days and feeling guilty about my hunger.

i remember his little sounds he made and how strong he was and how he really did try to fight to stay alive. i gave him a bath and he didn't like it so much. i tried to feed him but he wasn't interested in eating. i sang to him a song my mom used to sing to me. everyone who was there to meet him got to hold him and there were a lot of people there. he was most calm in gabe's arms. they seemed to get along perfectly.

i remember not being able to hold my head up because they gave me something for pain, but they told me it wouldn't make me drowsy. maybe it didn't, maybe i was just that tired. so i laid back on the bed with conner swaddled in his blankets, tucked in the nook of my arm. he was barely breathing at that point and i didn't want to miss any moment of his sweet life, but my eyes kept closing and i kept waking up abruptly as i tried to fight off this sleep. i guess i lost the fight because i remember waking up with conner in my arms but he was still and starting to feel cool. it was about an hour or so later on the clock that was hanging on the wall. gabe told me that i didn't miss anything, he assured me that i was awake when conner passed but i really don't know if that is true. maybe it is better that i wasn't. gabe said he held him for awhile and then put him back in my arms before i woke up.

twice i sat with a dying person this year. i held my mom's hand when she left this world, all of us surrounding her bed. she was so tired and it was quick. in many ways i think that prepared me for the death of my son. somehow made me stronger so that i could give him a good birth, a good life, and a good death. but i am ready to leave 2009. i really need 2010 to be a better year. a year with hope and light.

i have an obsession when it comes to christmas trees. i am a bit of a perfectionist. i like things to be a certain way and i honestly cannot stop thinking about something until it is the way that i think it should be. yes, i fully understand that this trait borders on OCD or perhaps it is full blown OCD, but that isn't the point. i have certain criteria for picking out my christmas tree. i am 5'2. i should not be able to hang decorations on the top of my tree without having to stand on a chair. my second nonnegotiable characteristic of a tree is the bottom. i should not be able to see under my tree and should have to scoot on my belly under the tree to water it. also i prefer frasers to douglas fir. i think they are prettier and hold ornaments better.

in years past i have spent ridiculous amounts of money on trees and i hear about all year long from my husband. he loves to tell people how much i spent on our tree. and i always say, "it was a beautiful tree, wasn't?" and he agrees, but then says something like, "of course it was a beautiful tree, you paid $90 for it!" and then i feel foolish. foolish because it is silly to spend that much money on something that will die in a few weeks. i try to justify the price for the ambiance and joy it will provide for that amount of time and usually i can persuade myself. but this year we are calling it "our recession christmas." so i kept quietly reminding myself as i traveled from tree lot to tree farm to tree lot, that this year we must be conservative. in my head i kept repeating "recession christmas. this will be the year that you remember the recession christmas so it won't matter what the tree looks like." even with my mantra in mind i couldn't help but reject every tree the men at the lots held up for me. i would say, "no, its not big enough" or "no, its too fat" or simply, "uh, no." by the time we got to the third place my husband was over getting a christmas tree and i was feeling the pressure to choose one before he nixed the whole trip. and lets be honest, i need him to strap that puppy to the roof and cart it inside. i am an independent woman, but i already told you i like BIG trees.

under pressure, back to the first lot we go; the lot where the boy scouts were selling fraser trees for $40. i ran to the back of the lot where i had previously seen a tree that i "could" like and started yanking it out of the corner. my husband hurried over and told me to stop yanking it, i was going to rip branches off. he held it up and asked me, "is this the one?" i quickly responded yes and went to get the man to wrap it. when we got back in the truck with the tree strapped on top, i couldn't help but feel a sense of victory. i got my fraser tree that met my criteria for only $40. it was more expensive than what my husband had wanted to spend but after hearing the prices at the other lots he was satisfied with my choice.

there is one last step of the tree saga that i must endure every year- getting it into the stand. it will always go in the stand, that is not the issue. my yearly concern is how many branches will my husband butcher off the bottom. this year he really did her in. my once glorious, criteria-meeting tree is now, in my opinion, more of a potted plant than a christmas tree. mind you, no one else would think this but then again i am a christmas tree snob.

a day in the life

so this week has been more annoying than usual and i admit that my fuse is shorter than usual. interesting combination, no doubt. the sort of things that happen in my life, happen with such alarming frequency that one would have to assume that i may be cursed. or for all of you karma nuts, i must have been horrible in another life. today, after a morning spent venting on my dearest friend, i arrive home and open the garage door and am instantly hit with a seriously strong smell. i mean horrible and it takes me only a matter of seconds to identify the smell- and then terror. terror because if i smell what i think i smell, then it only means that the source of the smell is going to be..... well, nothing that i want to deal with. the basement stairs lead to the garage and in the basement is a dog crate where trevor, my jack russell, stays during the day because of his addiction to sofa cushions. so now you have an idea of what the smell could be, right? and it was. poor trevor was sitting in his crate and he had obviously been extremely ill because it was everywhere. in his defense, he has maybe done this one or two other times in his life and only because he is sick and cannot help it. i feel horrible for him and can only wonder when this happened; he showed no signs of discomfort this morning when i left. the point i am trying to make is that timing is everything. i mean that in every aspect.

first thanksgiving without mom

my mom always hosted thanksgiving at her home. almost all of my thanksgiving memories and traditions involve her in some way. she would wake up very early thanksgiving day and start working on her stuffing. the pungent smell of onions,celery, and sausage sauteing in butter and herbs would creep up the stairs and invade my morning dreams. as a young child i remember not liking that smell very much because it was too strong, but it grew on me and to this day just thinking of that smell makes it come alive and takes me right back to thanksgiving mornings in my mother's kitchen.

the past few years my mother was too sick to host thanksgiving. in fact, it was thanksgiving 2005 that i first realized that there was something horribly wrong with my mom. she usually entertained well into the evening long after dinner was cleared from the table and dishes were washed. she would put on a pot of coffee and sit at the dinner table with my aunts and sip coffee and smoke cigarettes and chat away the evening, never seeming to tire. but that year she disappeared into the living room and sat in the recliner, dish towel still over her shoulder, and said she was tired. i remember my one aunt from my father's side expressing concern to me and i agreed that something was not right with my mom. the next thanksgiving was the last one that my mom hosted, and this year she wasn't there at all.

this year i went to her kitchen the night before thanksgiving and dug out a casserole dish that i always used to make pineapple casserole, she at some point designated my holiday assignment and i now make as if it was always my own. i made that casserole in my own kitchen this year on thanksgiving day. i thought of her with every step of the recipe. i even played christmas music like she would have done.

the rest of the day wasn't as bad as i thought it would be. though there were moments of quiet sadness i know we each experienced, it wasn't as sad as i expected. there was actually comfort in remembering all of the things she had taught me. comfort in following the tasks and traditions of the day she essentially designed many years ago for us and recreated every year. i would love to wake up again to the smell of my mom cooking her stuffing with christmas music playing from her record player. sometimes, if i think about it hard enough, i can almost get there.

abbie and trevor

the dogs.

may i introduce

this is gabe, my husband and best friend. we got married october 18, 2008 at the twin brook winery in gap, pennsylvania. we live in oxford, pa with our dogs, abbie and trevor and our wayward cat, henri.

first time

that's right. this is my first time blogging. i have thought about it for a year or so now and never went through with it. in college i was a creative writing major and writing served as therapy, my emotional catharsis; a tool that i used to wade through the murky waters in life. this past year of my life has no doubt been the most difficult, so this blog hopefully will help me sort through it and keep you all entertained. i promise not to be emotionally gushy because that is a waste of time, and time is something you can never get back.