Not Dead

I recently received an email from a reader asking if I were still alive. "Alive" being a relative term, in my opinion, I'm not really sure how to answer that. In any case, I'm not dead. Which is probably good, depending on who you ask.

I just wanted all my readers (those that are still left anyway) to know that I'm contemplating starting a private blog. Anyone who is interested in having access to it please send me an email.

For now I will leave you with some pictures of the neediest creatures on earth, also known as "the only things keeping me alive". Enjoy.

If You Lived Here, You'd Be Dead Now

The babies lay sprawled on the ottoman as I go back and forth between them, kissing their bellies, trying to elicit laughter. Bronwyn's buying what I'm selling but Brody is having none of it. Big, liquid eyes full of confusion gaze up at me. "What the fuck are you doing, ma?" I can almost hear the words coming out of his mouth. I have no idea.

Todd comes in from his cigarette with a goofy smile. "Haaaappyyyy Birthday" he sing-songs and I'm a little thrown. Holy shit, it's my birthday and I didn't remember. I mean, I knew it was coming for days because people saw fit to remind me of it by way of Starbucks gift cards, wine, and sweet, sweet cold hard cash. But it's like I don't care at all about it. I'm 35. I am a year older than my big sister. I've got diapers to change, mouths to feed, wash to fold, and a dress rehearsal to attend where I will witness my daughter perform a rousing tap dance to the tune of "Hounddog". I'm going through the motions of my life, the way I have for the past 35 years. Trust me when I tell you that merely participating in my life is not the same thing as joyfully living it.

Lately, I've been doing strange things to my fingernails and toenails. I'm not biting or grooming my nails, I'm like attacking them systematically. It started out as nervous picking at the base and has now graduated to active and purposeful infliction of injury. This is my fucking spare time project. I even have tools for this activity. My thumbs in particular are raw and bleeding. And my toes are so bad that it's painful to walk.

I have a familiar feeling bubbling up again: revulsion. The desire to crawl out of my own skin. I am a snake shedding an old, scaly coat. A skinned rabbit hanging from a tree.

Am I unhappy? Decidedly not. I've said on this blog quite sincerely that my mind is amazingly empty of negative, depressive or suicidal thoughts. But that's just it - my mind is amazingly empty. There is a vapid numbness to my thought processes. I'm devoid of humor - even that dark and vicious humor that sustained me all those years in that virtual hell of my own making. The absence of sadness is not the same thing as being happy. It's like the way you're so grateful for the numbness that novacaine brings to avoid unspeakable agony, but when that numbness lingers and lingers and lingers - well that...that's just a different kind of pain.

Last year at this time, I was sinking into quicksands of madness and despair. When insanity knocked, I answered the door. I invited him in for coffee. And then I hit him over the head with a vase and stole his identity. It's easier to say, "I'm crazy" than to take responsibility for my failures as a human being, to admit that my 35 years have been a series of mistakes and wrong turns and, mostly, of standing still. When you look in the mirror and still don't know who you are looking at and you haven't the foggiest idea of what you believe in, throwing on a cloak of crazy can be pretty appealing. The problem is that once you do that, once you try that thing on and like how it fits you have to really commit. It's a cause you have to be willing to die for.

I'm not saying it's always a choice. But to a certain extent, for people like me, it is. Once I have the tools to combat irrational thoughts and ridiculous feelings, I can choose to use those tools or I can put them away and pretend that they don't exist. I can wallow in the perpetual grief I experience for the loss of my sister. I can feel sorry for myself that I had to sacrifice my breasts for a life I'm not even sure that I want to live. I can be angry for losing my childhood and young adulthood to a cult, a belief system that tortured and controlled me. Or I can try to feel...something else. Maybe it's merely a delusion that there are other options for someone like me, a person so very paralyzed by fear and possibility that I build a wall all around me and then despair that I am lonely.

I think back to last year and I realize that my desire to die was very real. I reached a crossroads and pretended to make a choice. I said, "Gwen, either you will go into that wall at full speed or you will embrace life." What better way to embrace life then to have a baby? But put in that perspective those choices became one and the same. For me, I think that having a baby was just a very clever way to die. What is more life murdering than this - this thing that I am doing here? All day long, a zombie performing rote tasks in the service of others. Two babies and a toddler- a perfect excuse for getting out of doing anything real at all. I am a ghost of a person, a skinned corpse hanging on a meat hook in an industrial freezer. It's sad, really, because I know that something living once hummed inside of me, this huddled wraith who doesn't even bother to crouch in dark corners. But that little heartbeat is gone now, a distant thud. There is only the shell, a person all hollowed out and sleep deprived. I love my children with all my heart - blue eyed, smile faced cherubs - but they have killed me. No...no, I did that. That's the thing with suicide. You have to do it yourself.

Mi Hijo en el Sombrero

So Liv made this at school today:


And I couldn't resist doing this:



Happy Cinco de Mayo to all those who celebrate it and to all those who just use it as an excuse to overindulge in tacos and get shit-faced drinking Tequila!

The Death of a Blog

My blog didn't just die. I think it was murdered. I was there, in the moment, composing in my head, scribbling ideas on restaurant napkins, looking at the world through a twisty lens, crossing my fingers for strange events and other blog fodder. I was a blogger, not big time, but I had readers - really awesome readers who thought about what I wrote and cared about what happened to me, what upset me, what woke me up in the night.

But something stabbed the heart of me. I found myself abandoning this thing, this glorious thing that had become so precious to me. Something broke inside of me and I could not go on.

Wait. That's kind of a lie. Presently, I'm more fixed than I've ever been. My emotions and thought processes are all spackled and glued and scotch taped up. It not a neat result but a functional one. If my life were a movie and I rewound it a year, I would be standing on the balcony of a tall building looking longingly at the pavement below. I would be holding a bottle of painkillers in my hand and wondering how they would feel going into my belly all at once. I would be driving my car, staring down at my hands and waiting expectantly for the hard turn into oncoming traffic. I wanted to die something awful. It was all my little brain could think about. The end of Gwen. The end of me.

There is a vicious pattern to my mind. It takes me to really gross places at intervals. Like this bubbling up of self-hatred. It makes me want to hurt myself in the sickest ways. I've given up on trying to figure out why it comes. I only know that it does.

But not lately. Not today.

This is the problem. It seems I only have the ability to write beautifully when my soul is in a hideous condition. There exists in me a strange mating of creativity and misery.

I wonder if I have anything worthwhile to say while I am well. If anyone would care to know that part of me.

I know the sickness will return. It is a very reliable visitor and arrives in many forms. But for now I am all OK and boring as hell.

Float like a Butterly, Sting like a Bee

This is what happens when you misbehave in the Jackson house:

Ok, not really. But what you see over my daughter's eye is not purple eyeshadow applied in a game of "Let's pretend I'm an Atlantic City hooker." It's a genuine, bona fide shiner. Some child didn't bother to look before coming down the slide and slamming her fucking foot into my daughter's beautiful eye. A playground is a dangerous place and apparently rife with miniature assholes. If anyone tries to mess with my girl again, they'll have this to contend with:

Devil in a Blue Onesie

This life is a whirl of soiled diapers, milk stained bottles in the sink, Desitin smeared on tiny asses that are too cute for words. But mostly this life is swollen with desperation born of post partum misery and exhaustion.

Behold the face of a torturer -















This photo was taken at 3 am. Gaze into his magnetic eyes - but not for too long. He is a wolf in cute baby's clothing, a charlatan selling torment and crippling lethargy in the guise of coos and helplessness. Here is his accomplice:














Cute bow? Check. Precious baby pout? Yep. Beady, piercing eyes? You betcha. Bronwyn is the biggest bitch to ever don footed pajamas. She plots and schemes from her lair, otherwise known as the comfy swing. My babies chain-suck binkies instead of Parliaments and wail like banshees when they don't get their way. I am a prisoner of war. Their plaintive wails at 1:02 am, 2 am, 2:15 am, 2:45 am, 3:07 am, 3:55 am, 4:00 am, 4:10 am, 4:32 am, 4:40 am, and 5:15 am surely violate the Geneva Convention.

I think Brody actually wrote "I will break you" on the nursery wall with his urine the other night. He will.

Yesterday, I held Bronwyn up, pulled the waist of her red stretchy pants up to the chest of her blue onesie and made her dance like a marionette to the tune of "I can go, go, go in my Hover-round, this way, that way, all over town". This made me laugh maniacally, hysterically like a person driven mad by a peculiar brand of torment. The only way I can exact revenge is to make them look ridiculous.

God Help Me

The first time I heard the word "mommy-blogger" I instantly recognized it as derisive. I thought, "Who are these women who can't stop writing about their progeny? Who are these women who immerse themselves in the lives of toddlers and have subsequently lost their identity? These mommy-bloggers with only their children as blog fodder?" I pictured them as cookie cutter mothers, having nothing better to do but make lego castles and playdough pizzas. I felt instantly superior. Well, maybe not superior but..."otherly". It didn't occur to me that I actually was one, that I was a mommy-blogger - by virtue of being a mother and a blogger. Which is understandable considering that my first year of blogging I barely wrote about my child or the trials of motherhood. Liv was a ghost. I didn't write about being a mother or parenting issues or anything of that nature because my writing was a way to escape that - to escape a reality that was foreign and overwhelming. Including that reality in my writing felt invasive.

But I feel differently now. I stumbled upon some wonderful moms who are bloggers, (like her and her and her), and some awesome dads who are bloggers, (like him and him and him) who have taught me that writing about the challenges and joys of parenting can be interesting and funny and kind of amazing*. Is there any undertaking more daunting than raising up a baby to adulthood? Kids are strange little creatures that will make you laugh hearty laughs and cry salty tears and sometimes blow your fucking mind. There are a million different ways to be a parent and you don't have to sacrifice your soul in the process. I have three children now. And the truth is that right now I am immersed in motherhood; the kind of immersion that, 3 years ago, would have made my skin crawl. These three little people are the ocean in which I swim. Whether I drown or tread water remains to be seen.



*This is just a handful of the bloggers who have inspired me over the past year or so. There are so many more that I wish I could include!

The Burning Bagel

I don't want to drone on indulgently about my brand new, fucking adorable babies. Well, actually I kind of do. It's not all kittens and rainbows here at the Jackson house, though, what with the sleepless nights and the grotesque, after-pregnancy body and my mother-in-law visiting from Florida. She is simultaneously saving my life and destroying it at the same time. We actually argued the other day about Nancy Kerrigan. Nancy fucking Kerrigan. She was insisting that that washed up hag was currently competing in the Olympic Games. And I kept insisting that unless I inadvertently entered a time warp and was somehow unknowingly existing in 1992, I was pretty certain Nancy Kerrigan was not taking the ice in Vancouver in 2010. I had to actually go on the internet to convince her of my absolute rightness. How many times do I have to prove to this woman that I'm right before she understands that I am always and forever right? Apparently, I must do this to infinity.

I am exhausted in this new reality in which 1 straight hour of sleep is an elusive luxury. But I am not too tired to champion the important causes, i.e. generic ketchup can't hold a candle to Heinz. Don't even try to bring that Walmart "great value" watery "catsup" shit home and tell me it's the same fucking thing as yummy, red, thick Heinz. Because post-partum depression means never having to say you're sorry for stabbing someone in the face for buying the wrong condiment. It also gives me automatic immunity from prosecution for burning a bagel, which is apparently now a capital offense. I watched incredulously as my mother-in-law leaned over the trashcan, sadly but with determination scraping the burnt black shit off the everything bagel I had just burned in the toaster oven. There was much sighing and mumbling under the breath about the "cost of things" until I finally asked why she wouldn't just let me throw the fucking thing away and make a new one. "Oh no", said the martyr, "I'll eat it. It won't taste that bad."

And then today, she is the one who commits this heinous criminal act. But since my mother-in-law is not post-partum and thus does not have immunity, she actually says, "Well I'm just going to have to punish myself by eating it." And I have to ask her to repeat herself because my ears cannot believe the nonsense she is spewing forth from her fucking mouth. "What on earth are you talking about, Tatty? Why would you have to punish yourself for burning a damn bagel? It's just bread?" And she says, "Weeeeell, if I punish myself and make myself eat the burnt bagel then maybe I won't burn one the next time I make lunch." And this is the part where I kind of lose my shit. "Ummm, it's just bread. It's BREAD. We do not live in a third world country ravaged by natural disaster where foodstuffs are scarce." She doesn't say anything but starts to put cream cheese on what is pretty much a lump of black ash. And she eats it, too, just to make a point.

Isn't it amazing that I haven't replaced her Centrum Silver vitamins with cyanide capsules? Aren't you proud of me? She could be easily tricked, too. All I would have to say is that I bought these great vitamins at Walmart, that I got a deal. She would be all over that shit.

But I kid. I love my mother-in-law. She is very awesome when she is not being tight and judgmental and touting the economic value of low-watt light bulbs and reusing dryer sheets "2 and 3 times" or asking me to get my crockpot from storage every 5 seconds or telling Liv to calm down when all she is doing is dancing and laughing like, I don't know, a normal 4 year old. In any case, she's changed a lot of shitty diapers for me. And do you want to know how she knows when the babies need to be changed? Not by sniffing around their asses for foul odors like normal people, but by actually sticking her finger into the diaper. Yet this same woman who has no problem putting her fingers in potentially shitty drawers says that aspirating boogers out the babies noses is "nasty" and would make her "dry heave".

Does anybody know how long it takes to kill someone with undetectable levels of arsenic?

Anti-Depressants

With two screaming, pooping, milk-gobbling preemies at home keeping me awake 23 out of 24 hours a day, it is next to impossible to find time to write a meaningful, worthwhile blog. I'm still "upset about a lot of things" and mighty pissed off at the world. I still have a whole lot of shit I want to bitch and moan about on here to all you fine people. But until I'm no longer a zombie with formula stains on my stretched out comfie clothes and baby shit under my fingernails, cute pictures will have to suffice. Unless you all want to hear about how being a mother to twins is amazing and fucking awful at the same time or about how my 4 year old is still a total bitch or about how I still have a pregnant belly only now it's just not cute because there aren't any babies inside anymore. Because that's the extent of my inner monologue.

You'll be happy to know that I'm staving off post-partum depression quite successfully with the aid of looking into the faces of my adorable babies. Here's a little sample of what makes it all worthwhile.

Where for art thou, babies?

I don't know why this has been so hard to write about. I've stopped and started so many times and yet no words I put down can fully capture the aching emptiness I feel at giving birth to babies and coming home from the hospital without them. What we endure to bring our babies into the world is easily forgotten when we cuddle the thing so hard won. When we smell its soft head, trace our fingers down a chubby, pink body, whisper silliness and love into its ears. But I don't have that now. I sit alone in rooms and wonder about the new lives I just ushered too early into the world. I carry guilt heavy in my chest. Why wasn't I strong enough to carry them to term? What defect brought on labor at 33 weeks?

Also, I carry envy. As I endured an extremely painful recovery from a C-section, I was exposed to the sounds of happy moms and healthy babies in their rooms. Sweet, hungry cries for the bottle. High-pitched mommy voices soothing and playing. My room was eerily quiet at times, nothing but a frigid wind against my window. A phone ringing followed by congratulations that felt hollow and meaningless. The nurses told me to walk. So I did. Walking the long hallways of the maternity suite, I bore witness to a new horror. Affixed to the walls were picture after picture of babies. Pink-cheeked, happy, healthy babies. A baby in a flower pot wearing a crooked hat. Two babies dressed up like purple cabbages. Anne Geddes knock-offs that were even creepier than the originals. Everybody's perfect baby. Everybody's but mine. Thanks so much for hanging these prints on the walls, morons. It's just torture to see a robust newborn baby hatching out of an eggshell, when my babies have tubes coming out of their faces.

I know I shouldn't compare. If we were to really play that game, there are preemies much worse off in the NICU than my little guys. Teeny-tiny preemies that will fit in the palm of your hand. That isn't cute. It's a fucking tragedy. My babies have been given a great prognosis. They will come home in several weeks and most likely be completely healthy. But right now, they are not. Right now, they struggle to do the normal things. Sucking a bottle is a difficult undertaking. Even breathing was hard for them at first. They been here a week and I've held them in my arms maybe 3 times. I've given one bottle to their sweet, hungry mouths. I've changed one diaper.

I know once they're home it will feel like they've always been. But right now I'm in purgatory. I sit at home with all these nurturing chemicals searing through me and strangers are caring for my babies. It just plain hurts a whole hell of a lot. That's about as eloquent as it gets these days, folks. My heart is just broken.

Yellow Babies, Blue Mama

Dorian Brody

5 lbs, 4 oz

1/27/10

&

Lilah Margaret

5 lbs, 8 oz.

1/27/10

born at 33 weeks gestation

Christmas Pictures

"Mom? You know how you said God gave me to you as a present?"


"Yes. Yes, he did. It was the best gift I ever got."


"Well, I hope you remembered to send him a thank you card for that."


What she doesn't know is that there are no words that could ever convey the gratitude I feel for her existence.

Nuvaring Bitches

Am I only one who hates these Nuvaring birth control bitches? I seriously loathe these women. It's apparently girls night with three "besties" sitting around a coffee table nary a wine bottle in sight. The TV is on in the background and the old Nuvaring commercial starts playing. The stupid wavy haired one says, "Ooooh, I love this commercial!" and then proceeds to sing along to the most unimaginative jingle ever penned by a human. I mean how untalented do you have to be to come up with these lyrics? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Everyday, aaaa aaaah. Everytime I see her bob her head back and forth singing along to it I have a strong urge to bash her head into a million tiny pieces of bone and brain matter.

Then her "friend" tries to be all nonchalant, leaning forward pretending to get a snack while asking with a devilish gleam in her dead eyes, "Would you guys try Nuvaring?" But you can just tell that she's been waiting all night for this. This whorebag has some kind of an agenda and it creeps me the fuck out. Like, why is she so invested in her friends sticking a plastic birth control device in their vaginas? The black woman sitting next to her is the least annoying of the bunch but I'd still murder her with my bare hands. That is, if her grotesquely shiny shirt doesn't give me a seizure first. She says, "I don't even know what it is." Don't worry! Because Nuvaring pusher is going to tell you all about it. Her voice gets all weird and affected "It's. A. Monthly. Vaginal. Birth. Control. Ring. That. delivers a low dose of hormones."

Wavy haired, dumb commercial loving woman finally gets it. You can see how it just clicks and she realizes that this is the birth control you have to...Gasp!...put in your vagina! "Don't you have to...put it in" she says while making odd hand gestures. But Nuvaring pusher won't let her go there. Because for her it's easy. "It's small and comfortable, plus" (she leans in conspiratorially) "you don't have to take it every day." And there it is, folks. There you have it. I don't know how feminism has survived all these years, how we women have managed to lead meaningful, productive lives while attached to the oppressive tether that is swallowing a pill every day. But Nuvaring will set us free from this tyranny. Indeed, Nuvaring pusher has declared, "Let my people go." She is Moses parting the Red Sea, except the Red Sea is more like the labial lips of women everywhere.

If Margaret Sanger were alive today she'd be slapping some bitches. Not even a century ago, women weren't allowed to vote for our leaders, obtain a legal and safe abortion, or maintain any control of our own reproductive powers. The Comstock Laws made illegal the dissemination of information on contraception and the distribution of contraceptive devices. That is oppression, Nuvaring pusher. I don't know who you sold your soul to or why, but you are obviously in league with some Satanic element. And if I never see your smug, creepy smile on my TV again, it will be too soon.

Twins in utero

My sweet, baby boy















Girl parts. I'll just take their word for it.

















Money shot: Boy parts

























Twins touching hands through the membrane.

Thankful

Tomorrow I will celebrate Thanksgiving for the 7th time. Out of my 34 years, I have spent only 7 Thanksgivings seated at smooshed together dinner tables over-eating turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce with my family on the 4th Thursday of November. Only Jehovah's Witnesses could find something satanic about such an innocent celebration - eating delicious food and expressing gratitude for the myriad of life's blessings.

Indeed, my Jehovah's Witness childhood was full of what I could not do. Traditional celebrations were forbidden:

Birthdays
Halloween
Christmas
New Year's Eve
4th of July
Valentine's Day
Easter
St. Patrick's Day
Mother's Day
Father's Day

I could not participate in after-school activities, such as sports or drama. Because my participating in these things would bring me into contact with people who were not of my faith and thus under the influence of Satan and destined for eternal destruction. I could not attend school dances, homecoming, or prom for the very same reason. I was not permitted to go to college because Armageddon was imminent and I needed to concentrate my efforts on preaching the so-called "good news", which was really an ultimatum: join us or die. Saturday mornings I spent out knocking on doors, dreading that the next door I knocked on would have someone from school behind it. When this inevitably happened there are no words for the humiliation I endured, the gut-wrenching shame I experienced.

My thoughts, my feelings, even my dreams did not belong to me. It is so painful to visit that now, the memory of those empty years. I was forced to make so many sacrifices and it was all for nothing. What they called "The Truth" was a complete and total lie.

Who knows what I would have become if it weren't for that fucking cult and it's brutal influence over my family. I struggle with so much anger and grief. I think about the little girl that I was, so full of potential for great things. And then I look in the mirror at what I have become and I want to spit in my own face. I have spent the past 10 years trying to make sense of what happened to me and attempting to undo the damage. I don't know that this is possible. I can't go back and retrieve memories of what never was. I can't have Christmas mornings tearing open presents. I can't have dressing up in a princess costume for Halloween. I can't have exchanging Valentines with secret crushes. I can't have sparklers on the 4th of July. I can't have pictures of me in a terrible, taffeta dress arm in arm with my prom date. I can't have living in a dorm and figuring out how I'm going to change the world over a dozen cheap beers.

What I had was not enough. I feel like I have these huge gaping holes inside of me, paths not taken, wounds that won't heal, abilities never realized. This emptiness is nauseating. I wonder what it would feel like to be a whole person. What does it feel like? Tell me. Somedays I want to crawl into the skull of someone else. Just for a little while. So that I could know.

Tomorrow I will pretend to be whole as I dine with my family, celebrating Thanksgiving as if it always was this way with us. Pretending we are normal and that we have memories tucked inside of us of so many Thanksgivings past. My daughter will never know any different and sometimes I resent her for it. I watch as she circles things in a catalog. "I want all these things for Christmas, mom!" She doesn't notice the tears gathering, the deep breath. "Anything you want sweetie. Santa knows what a good girl you've been."

That's all I can do now - Live through her. And I know that despite my past, I do have the present to be thankful for. My wild Liv, two babies having a party in my womb, a mom who's cancer was caught early enough to treat (stage 2), a husband who loves me despite what I am. I guess most of all, though, I am thankful to have control over my own mind and freedom from psychological tyranny. I know how precious that is. I will never take it for granted.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Kick Me

There's nothing in the realm of my experience that compares to that first swoosh in the womb. I'm not talking about those soft flutters or the quick ticklings or the questionable bubbles. The quickenings. Those can all be explained away in my mind as something else: hunger pangs, gas. I'm talking about the moment, the feeling, the unmistakable proof of life. The rolling and tapping of a tiny life that is moving of its own accord within my body. Before this movement, of course, I was aware of the pregnancy. I had taken the test and seen the plus sign. I suffered through the 1st trimester nausea and fatigue. I took the blood tests, even saw two little human-ish figures flipping me off in black and white ultrasound photos. Twin gestation confirmed. A baby boy and a baby girl.


But everything is different now. The image has come into focus. The lens has been defogged. This is the beginning of a lifetime of knowing. A lifetime of discovering what they like, what they dream, who they are. Two people are alive inside of me. They are attached and dependent, but they are separate from me in every imaginable way. Baby A, the girl, is already making me laugh. She is positioned over my bladder and tickles me with her rolling. Baby B, the boy, can't make up his mind. He is jabbing me on the left one minute and then jabbing me on the right the next. One day he plays hard without rest. The next day he is lazy and making me worry.

I like to shake the twins awake when they are sleeping. This is a sort of pre-revenge for all the sleepless nights that are surely in my future courtesy of the two of them. I grip my uterus on both sides with my hands and shake it firmly, but gently. Without fail those two creatures start up their distinct activity, no doubt flipping me off in the process. Why does it delight me to irritate them? Because it's my way of saying, "I love you". Liv will vouch for that. Everytime I tease her by telling her that I've changed her name to Willis or Barney or Leroy and then proceed to call her that for the rest of the day, I am actually saying, "I love you enough to take this time to irritate the shit out of you." Also it makes me feel powerful to pick on someone smaller.

These sweet fetal movements fuel my optimism for a joyful future. Without them, pregnancy is just a miserable, desolate experience. Before my physical awareness of their existence, I felt cursed. Sickness, exhaustion, heartburn, low back pain, deformity. Yes, deformity. Because let's face it: I look like I have a beach-ball sized tumor growing out the front of my abdomen. I would say, "Men are lucky sons of bitches...no, saints. They are sons of saints." But the fetal movements change everything. They remind me that my body, no matter how deformed, is performing a miracle. The blessing, the privilege of carrying and making human beings far outweighs the discomfort and the agony of pregnancy and childbirth.

The kick and the jab of my unborn babies' feeble limbs are my reward for enduring so much annoying shit. So if I have to wake them up to get my fix, they'll just have to fucking deal with it. They'd better get a thick skin real quick if they are going to be my kids.

Best Case Scenarios

"Do you feel it?"

I'm standing in my mother's kitchen pressing my fingertips against her right breast looking for the thing that left her sleepless the night before. Searching in a circular motion, the way the brochures they hand out at the gynecologist tell you to. At the 2 o'clock position, I find it. Nestled against her breast bone, a tiny object - a cross between a pebble and a marshmallow. I've felt similar things in my own breasts, when I still possessed them. I remember laying supine on my bed, topless, doing this private work. Every ridge or bump causing my heart to beat faster, my mind to orchestrate the worst possible thoughts. In the moment of discovery, I am already in a chair with an IV pumping chemotherapeutic chemicals into my body. I am already composing my last will and testament. I am already the deceased mother of a motherless child.

But for everyone else I offer best case scenarios.

"Yeah, I feel it." My brow furrows. "It feels too soft to be cancer."

"Would you be worried? I mean, if you found this in your breast?"

I almost laugh because when you have a BRCA2 mutation, you don't even need to find something suspicious to worry. You spend every moment of your life waiting for the axe to fall. You are on high alert, tensed and pretending to be ready for the inevitable moment your body betrays you.

"I would definitely get it checked out. I mean, I've had similar lumps that were biopsied and turned out to be nothing. Just get it checked out. It couldn't hurt."

It is October 1st. The first day of Breast Cancer Awareness month. In my family, we don't need a government sponsored month to remind us of the horrors of breast cancer. I don't need to buy a pink kitchen appliance or a ribbon magnet or hot pink M&Ms. Nothing I could see or buy could make me more aware. Because I am constantly made brutally aware of breast cancer by what is not there. My breasts and, more terribly, my sister. The savage memories of Amy's death and my mastectomy linger tenaciously in the brain.

This is why I hate Breast Cancer Awareness month. I don't need more reminders of the things I have lost. I don't need to watch perky women recount how they've conquered breast cancer and reassuring doctors sing-song how early detection saves lives. I don't need to see shelves of pink goods at the grocery stores. It is infuriating that some corporations are exploiting a disease to increase their profits. Breast cancer cannot be represented by a cutesy candy pink Kitchen-Aid. Breast cancer is a horrible, disfiguring disease that destroys lives and the emotional health of families. Fuck Breast Cancer Awareness month. How about living Breast Cancer Awareness life?

In the kitchen, there is a quiet. We are both thinking the same thing, my mom and I. Not this again. Please God, not this again. Cancer has taken his seat at the table. He is sticking his dirty finger in a fresh wound.

"Just call Dr. Kr--sher. Tell her what's going on and I'm sure she'll order a test right away."

"I'm scared."

"Don't be. I'm sure it's nothing. Just for your own peace of mind, get it looked at. You're due for a mammo anyway. You'll get the test and it will be nothing and you'll feel better." Best case scenarios.

But it isn't nothing. It's cancer. Confirmed by biopsy. My mother has breast cancer. My stomach does a sick flip to see that in writing. I had lied to her the way I lied to Amy a million times.

You're going to be fine.

I'm sure it's nothing.

It's probably been caught early.

They have so many medicines and treatments now.

You won't die. You can't die.

Sometimes I lied so well that I even convinced myself. What I want to know is, Why? Why is this disease attacking my family? Why doesn't it leave us the fuck alone already? Haven't we given enough? Haven't we lost enough? Haven't we cried enough? Haven't we watched a beautiful, young woman deteriorate into a sallow, dead shell enough?

For my mom's sake, I will keep spinning out best case scenarios. Maybe this time they'll turn out to be true.

Fun with Names

Choosing names for the aliens is not easy. I have 5 months (hopefully) to work on this but it really is an important decision. I still haven't found out the genders, so I'm considering multiple options for each sex. I'm going to throw some names out there and get your opinion on some of these.

I noticed how many people are naming their daughters boy names these days. Ryan, Evan, Charlie, Tristan, Drew. So I thought - why not Richard? I could spell it Rychard. The Y makes it feminine, don't you think? Y is really a magical letter. It can change any boy name into a girl one. Bruce turns into Bryuce (the Y is silent). Michael turns into Mychael. Stephen turns into Stephyn. Of course, I could just do it the old-fashioned way with this one and call her Stephanie. But who wants to be traditional? I want my daughter to be Uneeeeeek. I mean, if I give her a normal name how will she know that she is special and different than everyone else?

Another name I was considering for a girl was Lillith. But it's just too common. So I wanted to make it different. Y to the rescue! Lyllyth. Now its a totally different name! Lylly for short. Lily is getting too popular. But Lylly will surely set her apart from any Lilys running around the playground.

Now for possible boy names. I noticed names like Gunner and Hunter are fairly popular. What about Killer? Murderer has a great sound to it but it's too long and I can't think of any good nicknames for it. Can you? Another one I'm thinking about is Bladen. At first I wanted just Blade. But Bladen is so uneeek.

A lot of people I know have given their sons a surname for a first name. What a cool idea! I mean, who needs a first name when you can have two last names? Carter, Walker, Cooper, Sawyer. These are all great but just way too popular. What about Zakowski? It's not a family name or anything. I'm not even Polish. I just think it sounds cool. We could call him Zak for short.

Oh sweet Jesus, I can't do this anymore. I'm actually in physical pain after writing that. You want to know what the truly scary thing is? If you go to any number of baby name forums on the internet you will find the same kind of pathological reasonings as would be mothers contemplate and decide on names for their offspring. I'm terrified after reading some of that shit. Can we, as a culture, band together and stop trying to be unique when naming our children? These are not housecats or hamsters we're naming. They're human beings who will one day grow up and have to live in the world with these monikers we've so lovingly and thoughtfully bestowed upon them. These names will be on test papers and ballots and driver's licenses and resumes. Your 5 year old little girl named McKadylynn is adorable now, but what about when she grows up? Can you picture a federal judge with this monstrosity for a name? I don't even want to think about a future where that happens.

Childbirth is Nasty

It's weird the way we mothers look back with fondness on an experience that is (for the most part) quite painful and horrific. I'm talking, of course, about the experience of giving birth to our children. I'm specifying children here, because in about 6 months I will be giving birth to a couple of aliens, as evidenced by the ultrasound pics I posted last week. My first baby was a human but she was hell to get out of my body.

In the week before I finally expelled her, I wound up in the Labor & Delivery emergency room three times. Twice for false labor. It was my first baby and I didn't really know how it felt. If I had known how it felt, I probably would have killed myself before I ever had to actually do the work. The third time I wound up there, I thought for sure that this was it. I was in so much pain - gnawing, unrelenting agony. What I had thought for sure were labor pains, turned out to be a nice size kidney stone working it's way down my ureter. The doctor gave me scripts for Percocet and Ambien and told me to "go home and have a beer." I loved him. I think I still do.

Hurricane Katrina was raging on the Gulf Coast, and I remember sitting at home watching the news footage. I couldn't really emotionally connect to what was happening in the world, to the awful things that were happening to those poor people, I must admit. My personal world was in turmoil and I was high on painkillers. It was completely surreal.

I was scheduled to be induced the day before my due date. But I had heard so many horror stories about inducement that I wanted to go into labor naturally. So I said to Todd, "You know, sex can induce labor. What do you say? You want to do it?" He was totally game, my horny husband. It must have felt like fucking a manatee.

Hours later I was having active contractions and out of my damn mind with pain. Todd held my hand tight as an inept nurse tried to stick an IV into my arm to administer pain medication. My dear, sweet husband said, "I'm here...You're Ok. I'm not going anywhere." As the nurse stuck me over and over again in her futile attempts to find a vein, Todd stood up and sauntered right out of the room. Like, he just left without saying a word. I was in one of those rooms that just has a privacy curtain as a wall. Seconds later I heard a loud crash and under the curtain I spied Todd laying on the ground unconscious with a small pool of blood gathering around his head. He had fainted, and taken down a large metal cart along the way to the floor. I just started screaming. Like obnoxiously screaming.

It took a team of people, including my obstetrician, to calm me down. My OB explained that men faint all the time when their wives are in labor. I thought that was only something that happened in stupid sitcoms. Apparently not. They took Todd to the ER and I was assured that he was going to be fine after he got a few stitches. Then the doctor ordered some strong sleepytime medicine for this crazy lady. God bless him. Did I tell you that I'm in love with this guy?

Waking up from my blissful coma to godawful pain was just indescribable. You know, pain that makes a woman beg for someone to stick a fat needle in her spine must be pretty fucking awful. Todd had finally returned to me with fresh stitches in his chin and was full of apologies. He spent the rest of the day on his cell phone doing his Fantasy Football draft.

Twelve hours later, I was still not fully dilated. My epidural had worn off and when I pleaded for another one, a fucking snooty nurse said, "You're supposed to be in pain. You're in labor, hon." If I wasn't catheterized and partially numb from the waist down, I really think I would have attacked her like a wild animal. I hate those fucking people who think that childbirth is supposed to hurt. I especially hate those woman who think they are somehow superior human beings because they gave birth without pain medication or an epidural. What the fuck does that prove? If someone said to me, "I had my appendix removed without anesthesia. It's just more natural that way," I would think that they were insane. That's kind of how I feel about these "natural" childbirth women. Don't get me wrong - people can have their babies any way they damn well please. If somebody wants to endure excruciating pain for absolutely no reason, then godspeed. Just don't expect me to admire you for it. It doesn't make you a superhero or even a better mother than someone who opts for pain management.

When my OB came to me at 2 am and said, "We're going to need to do a C-Section," I wanted to kiss him. After 16 hours of labor, I knew that I wouldn't have the strength to push the baby out. I was relieved that my vagina would remain intact. I had had nightmares about needing an episiotomy. Yes, I'd rather have major abdominal surgery than be sliced open along my perineum. Then and now and always.

For my C-section, they laid me out on an uncomfortable bed with both my arms strapped down on extended boards at my side, I felt like I was being crucified. Why it's necessary to restrain a woman during this process is baffling to me. Helpless feeling. Paralyzed from the waist down, arms tightly strapped down, a blue sheet hung down between my eyes and some truly gruesome activity. When they cut, I could feel the blade opening my abdomen. It didn't hurt at all; But I could feel it happening. I could feel my doctor's hands inside of me tugging Liv out of her warm, snuggly home. And then: silence. For a brief moment after she was born into the world, she was quiet. I felt this sick panic and screamed for her. I heard my voice yelling "My baby - is she ok?" And finally - I heard her crying. It was the last time I'd be happy to hear that.

Childbirth is just nasty. I think that's why God made pregnancy so horrible. By the time we're full term, we're willing to go through anything for it to be over. Why am I telling you all this? Because Liv had her 4th birthday yesterday. Four years ago I became a mother. And I'm about to do it again and again. I feel insane right now - more so than usual.



Me and Liv 9/1/05

Aliens

My kids look like aliens.

They even look like they're flipping me off with both hands. I love them already.