3.083333

Della, somehow you are 3.
Magnificent, magical, astonishingly 3.
You have been a miracle since those two cells decided to join up and create a possibility, where, statistically, there was none.
You make me laugh every day. Drive me wild with my impatience and your own. Challenge me to be the best of myself, and to be compassionate when I am the worst of myself.
You are tender and fierce, and have taught me so much about my own tenderness and the surprising depth of my fierceness.

You are so smart
when you act like a 3 year old, it is shocking.
and I catch myself over and over and over again feeling shocked at things that are so completely typical of 3.

You are so eloquent, that I am lost when your fears or sadness cannot find words.
You are so kinetic, and want so badly to share every moment of your movement.
You love to dance and sing, and dance and dance and dance. You climb on daddy like he is a jungle gym. You love to be carried "like a baby", but at 50 lbs, I cannot carry you as easily as I once could.
You negotiate like a diplomat.
You state your needs like a pro when you know what they are.
You come apart when you are tired.
(so do I, so do I...)

You sing your own words so our lullabye now goes
Lullabye, go tonight
sleepy dreams to you
sleepy dreams
sleepy dreams
sleepy dreams come true

You are losing your baby-speak, so I find I am not wanting to correct the ones that are left-- vanilla is something else, like, vallina.  Banana just graduated from buyana. Granola is still something like grallona. Coloring or drawing is Drullering. You know coloring. you know drawing. but you also know you most often do both. hence drullering.
we could all do a little more of that.

You are starting to play a little more on your own, for moments at a time. But always want to engage us, and want us to be on your level. When you sit on the floor, you want us to sit on the floor too. When you dance, you want us to dance with you too. You are flooded with instantaneous sadness when we say no.
We say no.
There is sadness.
We are all learning how to surf this.
It is so not easy.

You are complex and beautiful. You are so smart and strong,
We may never wean, you exclaim that you LOVE NURSING, LOVE MY BOOBS (oy), and while we have cut way back, and want to cut back more, it is so not easy.
We may never potty train. An event at daycare with a scary toilet that caused pain once has set us back years it seems. you are too big for success on the small potty. You will NOT sit on the big potty even with a special small seat... oy, it is hard.  But we are working on it, by offering opportunities, quiet rewards, support.  You do not poop for days at a time, worried about the discomfort, so you hold it, and create discomfort that then causes more concern. So, Miralax. but that is not so easy or magical either. Except yesterday when I took it by accident thinking it was water.
That was easy. And magical. In a sarcastic pooptastic sort of way.
We may never sleep apart. You sleep crazy-- sitting up, talking, lying down in random directions. I have lots of retroactive wishes that were not possible at the time. Like, say, CRIB.  But there we are. Here we are.

You count to 20, know the alphabet, recognize all numbers and some letters. Are starting to see the connection between letters and words, words and reading... I can see the circuits starting to form.

Your language skills are insane, nuanced, complex, sophisticated.  So are your facial expressions, and your mannerisms. You get jokes-- and have cultivated a spooky fake laugh.
I love making you laugh more than almost anything, the real laugh, the one that causes dimples.

You love toast and peas and cucumbers. You love apples. You look at carrots with suspicion and have stopped eating sweet potatoes outright. I am not sure what you think they are, except, perhaps, carrots in disguise.  I wish you would eat food that I remember loving. But you are you.

you are you.

you are you.

Every day is a miracle with you.
I get lost, sometimes, in the logistics-- getting you dressed and out the door, getting you down the stairs and into the car, getting you to do anything that is not motivated by you or chocolate bits...
I get impatient and I am sorry. I do not like my own voice then, my own face, my own impatient body. I want to soften into the moments, since hardening does not create ease, or make things happen faster or more efficiently.

You are friends right now with Lucy, whom you idolize (since she is 4 and has princess dresses). Your best days are at her house.

I cannot imagine life without you except when I do, say, 20 minutes into a crying jag, when I feel  my edges fraying, and I remember that I always wanted to drive cross country alone.


But even a few hours apart when we would normally be together and I feel a pull like gravity, and feel so grateful to walk back in, and see you, hear you say Momma. You are now calling me MOM with a teenage lilt. And Mommy, sometimes. But I want you to call me Momma forever.

with my mom, sharing a scarf

3!!! just. like. that.

fever week

A week of fever finally over, and Della is three, and we are surfacing, slowly, back into a semblance of normalcy.

Della's fever and cough meant nights were long and interrupted, and days were long and interrupted, and I was home too much, too long, too much time indoors.
Yesterday I had child care, and ran out for a morning of errands with a nearly giddy heart. Giddy that the fever was gone, and giddy that I was about to get out of the house.

Della is now 3, I owe you a 3 post and I will.
I wanted to just stop in and say hi, and say we are surfacing at last.

rocked

today is my last day with a 2 year old.
how is that possible? truly... astonishing.

I was thinking back to before, as if it is a different lifetime. Standing at the fridge with the vials of liquid gold. Hoping for the best with each stinging injection, each stylized ritual.
There was a rhythm to it. The cycles, I mean.
And now, it is all downhill wild rush of in-the-moment-ness, yes with moments of foreshadowing and some of nostalgia.
Was she ever little? She is so big now.
Was I ever not this person? This one, this tired one with the biggest most filled and overflowing heart? This one, struggling and blessed, competent, incompetent, flailing, tender?
This one who is loving more and more and more and realizing, bone deep, that love has NOTHING to do with ease, and everything to do with mystery.

I hate when folks talk about marriage being work
and parenting being work
and work work work
hard hard hard
i thought, great, thanks for that. welcome! I wanted to hear, welcome to the best things ever!

and it is the best thing ever,
but to be honest, a lot of it is hard. hard hard. hard because there has never been a me doing this before, parenting this amazing child, learning these things in these moments.
i am humbled and awed and feel as if there is KNOWING that is just over there, that if I could just reach out and touch it, I could socket into a river of knowing, a river of ease, a river of being able to go with the flow of this without so much internal struggle and doubt.

it is the hardest most wonderful thing I have ever done, have ever had done to me, have ever taken part in doing.
there is no ease in this.
there are easy moments, moments that feel like silk, calm water under calm sky.
gentle.

but most of this truly is a mad rush.
a mad rush flying by in a twirly skirt wearing wings
or flashing impatience
or laughing hard enough to reach the very core of the earth and the heavens above.
my earth is being rocked, people. In every moment.

I am learning by the moment, learning how to be(more) centered in the storm, how to create safety, when to walk away, how to get down on my knees, hold my arms out, and welcome a sad being close, when no magic can happen but everything is magical that is happening...
I am learning to hold on and let go of ideas of plans of expectations of self judgement...
I am learning and relearning and relearning.
I am in need of a well to recharge and want quite desperately to build a tiny reserve so my patience does not end like a cliff dive onto rocks bristled with barnacles.
it runs out. just. like. that. and I suddenly hate the way my voice sounds, my chest feels, my face feels, my eyes, my mouth, as if I have been hijacked.
I am learning to get up, or go inwards. I am trying to learn to shut my mouth. Breathe.

but the thing I am learning most is how rarely I give my full attention.
and this may be the saddest thing.
the phone, email, internet, connection with things *out there*, pull at me all the time. I don't want to miss out, and in so doing I am missing out
on this
this miraculous now.

so my intention truly is to spend more time present. even if it is in one minute increments.
the space of 10 breaths.
focus, singularly, as singularly as possible on this amazing person.

I know this is about me me me and you want to know about Della Della Della and that will come, I promise.

Journeys: the day after

waking to a flat cloudy sky

the long dark morning of late fall, the slowest dawn

a stillness

it hits me that it was not a dream

my grandparents used to live on long island sound, on a bluff with a view out over the water. one cold winter, the sound froze.

and where there had been motion, there was suddenly a jarring stillness.

yesterday when I came home, alone, my eyes moved to all of his places-- seeking a glimpse

the kitchen under the highchair

the strange spot on the shoes by the door

the closet

the bed

the bathroom rug

the tub

all night my eyes kept vigil, seeking the tell tale slink or flicker of him.

"I see his tail" Della said once. And then said she was just pretending. But in that moment before she confessed, my heart leapt, as if.

as if.

today, I am busy and grateful for the busy. but my eyes seek the motion that has always been. the quiet company. My friend Lorraine reminds me that he is here differently now, and "here" has expanded into everywhere. But my eyes and heart ache for the familiar, the furry presence, the small reassuring movements of breath and tail and whisker.

Journeys: Tenderness

Being with a being who is dying is profound.

I have dealt with life.

I have dealt, on some level, with the aftermath of death.

But I have never dealt with, been with, allowed myself to contemplate the process, the fact of dying.

I am tender in the tenderest ways. Teary and broken open. Wanting to not fuck this up, wait too long to intervene, not wanting to intervene if intervention is not necessary.

I want to honor this creature's innate wisdom and cathood.

I want to honor our relationship and the vast love I feel and have received.

I want to honor ALL of this, the being and now, the transition into whatever is next.

He feels more and more internal now, quiet and often sleeping. He has stopped eating. I have stopped forcing him to try. I feel he is spending more time on whatever is next, and less time here, on being here, staying here. But he is still here, still jumping up onto the bed, still drinking water, still looking at me in a way that shows he is still here with me in those moments.

I know everyone would make different choices, but I am trying to make the right ones here and now for this person (me) and this amazing creature (Finn), and navigating this feels like the most awesome space of not knowing, wishful thinking, and something like intermittent acceptance. This sucks. But this is what it is. In this moment, he is curled up, not too tightly-- I can see the fluff of his surprisingly white belly, and the stripes that curl down his sides that are the deepest black. I can see the white line down the bridge of his nose, his white whiskers, how his breath moves his sides so slightly I can barely see it.
He seems peaceful, in this moment. In this moment, I am not. I feel all tied up, knotted with grief, and so very unsettled since I am allowing myself to be present in a way I would not have expected.

I am astonished at the depth of what I feel, the complexity one moment, the simplicity the next. LOVE< I keep telling myself, move from there. Witness from there. Choose from there.

And sometimes it means running in circles wailing. And sometimes it means sitting and not poking him, but enjoying his quiet companionship, even just in this moment. Even if it is just for this moment.

Stay

day 3 of our homeopathic hail mary for Finn and

we are holding even as far as I can see from out here.

I have journeyed to explore in there, and the innerspace is respectfully held off limits, and so I stay, out here, witnessing only what I can witness

which is stasis.

now that I type that, I realize that is not the case. There is moment by moment motion-- my waves of hopefulness and despair. He eats a bit and then does not eat again for hours. then eats again. he is moving morning and night but then, during the day, does his best impression of a sick cat who is very, very sick.

The new-to-me vet said that his numbers mean he should be much sicker.

Since he's not sicker, well.., maybe his numbers are not telling the whole story.

HEAR ME SELF: the measurables, the quantifiables, do not tell the whole story.

so, we are doing *something*-- homeopathy for nausea and organ support and detox and circulation. Kidney function supplement. Reiki.

I have turned into a frustrated pesterer. This reminds me of watching my daughter sleep as a baby, I would panic between breaths.

I have started to call Finn by my last cat's name, as he has aged 10 years in one month. Now he walks and moves and looks like Paco. He seems ancient.

But today, a purr (he is not a purring cat). A tiny vibration in there when I was scratching his neck.

And when he is up and about, I pick up him and put him by his bowl and put my hands on his sides with healing intention. And he eats.

And then, after 10 seconds or 100 he walks away.

And then, later, I do it again.

I am pestering,  yes. But not in every moment.

And in this moment, it feels like a temporary stay of execution of uncertain duration.

Hopefulness and despair. Bite by tiny bite.

Losing Finn

I am losing Finn.

Advanced kidney failure, and rapid decline.

My heart is breaking, broken. He is only 7, barely mature for a cat... and I am stunned by this news, nearly breathless with it.  A day with a bite of food makes my hopes soar. And then, today, a quiet day, where he looks at his food then walks away, over and over and over. I can feel myself coming apart.

Grief, grief. Yeah. I get it. I will drown in you slowly and quickly and over and over and over.

But there are shifts this time. I am not doing the frantic avoidance dance. I am feeling horrid and allowing myself, at least sometimes, to fully be with my horrible sadness.

I also have a child, who declares, Finn, you are DYING, many times over and over in a way that is both funny and not funny at all, but reminds me that this time, I guess this time is about the anti-avoidance. It is about witnessing and being present and holding space and being compassionate as I flail about wanting to do anything possible to change what is.

Losing Finn. Unimaginable. My relationship with him opened my heart to risking true connection, true relationships. My choice to first seek him out at the shelter, and then bring him home as a companion... a companion who spent the first year torturing me with nights of fierce attacks on my feet and head, of knocking things off, of being almost entirely nocturnal and naughty.

My ordered life needed to be knocked about, broken open. I needed randomness, chaos, Finn. I needed this once enormous now skin and bones being.

And now, here I am, facing the loss of his amazing companionship. days maybe, or maybe weeks. It is just so raw.