The New York Times has an article about a new scientific study about the power of prayer (that is, intercessionary prayer by strangers). The upshot is that it does not work.
Ah, science! My dh is going to love this! I must say the results please me also -- i mean, if God tells us that we are supposed to have *faith*, it would be a pretty lame giveaway if you could scientifically quantify such a statement as 'praying works'....
Ok, so i made 6 hospital baskets to donate for Nicolas' b-day (just like
before) but they are still sitting in boxes in my bedroom. I called twice in the last 2 weeks, once to the social worker that i had dropped the baskets off with before, and once to the other social worker who runs the infant loss support group (i actually attended that group, for the first time, last month and also wanted to touch base with her about that). Both times i got voice mail and left my info -- name, number, have more baskets to drop off. So has anyone called me back? No. Last time i had to call twice too, but this will be the third time and i am getting rather annoyed/hurt by it. Are they avoiding me?
Yes, i understand that they are busy and all, but how much does it take to call someone back? Do they not *want* the baskets, that is what i am trying to figure out? Because if they don't want them, fine, i can take them to another hospital or even stop making them entirely. Am i supposed to infer from this total lack of follow-up on their part, that the baskets are not entirely welcome? To my face, they say thank you, they are very welcome. But you never know, maybe they can't just tell it like it is. No thanks, it is too much trouble for us, we hope you just go away and never call again?
Should i keep bothering?
Well, eventually i got sucked into the discussion on suffering over at Rachel's (and elsewhere) and made some comments on the thing which you can read down toward the end of the link if you care to...and recieved some very sweet and kind responses which i promptly printed out to include in Nicolas' scrapbook (if ever the scrapbook gets started...) But still i feel that i did not properly say what i was trying to say, that it got twisted in translation somehow. So here is another attempt. It is not, however, so much about the question of suffering, as it is about the question of life -- Nicolas' life in particular, and the meaning of it, or lack thereof.
You see, i know very well that the child lives, as it is, through me and my family. That he has effected us, and thus we when we effect others, he does so. I know that there are a multitude of 'good' things that i do since he died, that i did not/would not do before, and that these things honestly help other people.
The problem i have is this -- to me, Nicolas was an individual, and he still is an integral part of my life. I carried him for 34 weeks, and i had a relationship with him, since he was my son. He was not an abstraction, he was a person. BUT he was a person that i never really *knew*, because he was 'just' a baby when he died. He had no chance to show himself. Who was he? Who is anyone? What makes you? You -- the older child, the teenager, the adult, the grandparent -- are a self-actualized individual. What makes you who you are? Your genes, your experiences, your soul, your intellect (unordered list). But this child -- my child -- yes, i believe he has a soul, okay he had all of those things. But he did not have the chance to put them all together -- to grow into something more than 'just' a baby. As parents, it is such a source of happiness and anxiety to watch our children grow up -- will they do well? Will they screw up? Will they get hurt (and how?) What will they be, who will they be? For those of us who have lost children, all that is gone -- and the younger the child lost, the less 'data' there is, to extrapolate in *any* reasonable way what might have been. I cannot even tell you what color *hair* Nicolas would have -- it was light brown and curly when he was born, A's was blonde and straight, and C's was nearly black. A's is still blonde and straight, but C's all fell out in the first few months and came back light brown, like mine.
To put it another way, for Nicolas' scrapbook i have a little matchbook thing which says 'It's a boy!' and has the following quote inside:
“A new baby is like the beginning of all things -- wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities.” -- Eda J. LeShan
But that is all he ever was, and will be on this earth -- a dream of possibilities. There will never be any actualities for him. All that remains for him is to be memorialized, by the actions of others. And however beautiful those actions may be, the fact remains very very bitter.
Geez, have i been waiting long enough!? I was really hoping to get one to open for Nicolas' birthday but in fact they did not open until two days afterward. And you have never seen such miniscule, frail snowdrops in your *life*. I know what snowdrops are supposed to look like...but i guess i should be glad that they came up at ALL. Evidently they take some time & care to establish properly. They are just so awfully elegant though. Yes, this one is not fully open, but i was just enjoying the shape of the...uhh....curly hook-thing. Sepal? I don't think that is a sepal, is it? These botanical details were never my strong suit.
Meanwhile, the crocuses are blooming up a storm. I must say i am quite pleased with these, which were some kind of species -- a package of cheap bulbs that i got at Lowe's or Home Depot, can't remember which. But all of them have at least 2 flowers and most have 4-5 *per bulb*, which is alot more than i expected for the first year. Granted they did have rather alot of fertilizer -- the fertilizer in the lawn plus (on the advice of S) i planted all the bulbs with blood meal to discourage the squirrels from making a quick snack of them.
We are supposed to have a nice warm week, so spring will be in full force here soon i am sure. I looked at my early tulips the other day and you can see the buds coming. Time to get the vegetable garden beds properly made...if i could only catch up on my inside stuff so that my house was less of a complete pit. Hmmm...hopefully it will be nice this weekend...
On Nicolas' birthday i usually make cupcakes, and that is it. Since we have his ashes at home, we can't go to the cemetary or anything. 
This year i got some pansies to plant in his garden, so we all were able to plant one (except C, but she will next year). It was nice to actually do something to commemorate him even if it was only something small.
Julie sent these beautiful windchimes for his garden. Thank you so much Julie!
After planting we ate our cupcakes.
Also i bought him a new orchid. I had the one from his funeral but it died in the last year, so this is it's replacement.
I would say that this year was much easier on my heart than years past. Last year was a nightmare. I am still very tired though...all of this stuff takes its toll, i guess.
This is the last picture we have of Nicolas alive, at his 32 week ultrasound. He died 2 weeks later.
Happy third Birthday, sweet boy. We miss you more than words can say.
Ok, so Sandy i'm not, but i am trying to learn to do this better... here is a tulip coming up, and these are *so pretty*. I have no idea what kind it is, i will have to figure it out when they bloom. I threw away all the labels, i don't know why? I planted these with a whole bunch of those red riding hood tulips , in the rose garden. I am sure it will look cute but i think i need like 3 times the tulips i put in, for a decent display.
Seeds sprouted!
[photo removed]
And here are my two-thirds, reading 'Curious George'.
Ok, so today is my dh's 35th birthday. Tomorrow is the 3rd anniversary of Nicolas' death, the 23rd is the day we found out he was gone, and the 25th is his 3rd birthday. The 24th, we spent mostly staring into space at the hospital, with the tv tuned to CNN and the start of the invasion of Iraq. So, not much significance there for the 24th.
My mother has oh-so-helpfully decided to start talking to me again for this occasion (if you recall, she refused to let me into her house over Christmas when i went to visit her -- i drove 3 hours, talked to her on the phone from her driveway until my cellphone ran out of power, and drove 3 hours back). Which is just so kind of her, ya know? She has great advice too, you would not imagine -- how i should just 'sail though' and not let 'it' bother me, how i should 'forget about things i can't do anything about', how 'think of the glass as 2/3 full'. Oh and then she so kindly forwarded an email from a friend of hers, whose opinion was 'poor A, he must think he is not a good enough child, because she is so depressed over Nicolas' !?!?!?! Oy.
Also, over the weekend C suddenly showed less interest in nursing than previously (by this i mean that she stopped attempting to tear off my clothes) so i pressed my advantage and started eliminating some of her feedings. I have really been wanting to wean her for the last 6 months, and now i am making very little milk anyway. But really now all of a sudden she is weaned, she is done. She cried last night when i put her to bed without nursing, but this morning she did not even remember to ask. And this afternoon, for nap, she was clingly about it but fell asleep in literally 2 minutes, no big deal. So, now she is a big girl, because mommy milk is for babies, and i am sad. Rather rotten timing, eh? I mean, of all the weeks she could have picked!
Well, anyway, i love a good diversion, so here are some pics from the garden.
My hellebore lives! I actually bought this plant when A went to kindergarden. Hellebores are kinda pricey so i never shelled out for one, but when he left nursery school his teachers gave me a gift certificate to the nicest garden center in town (i used to volunteer at the school once a week or so). So i bought this hellebore and a rosemary topiary which is long dead. The hellebore grew so big at my mother's we were able to split it into 2 but it did not seem to transfer very well, and the first buds got killed off by some of the nasty weather we had, so i was worried about it. Looks okay now though...
I have several more pictures but the thing won't seem to load them up! I will try again later...
This is a phrase which often pops into my mind, when i am in church. Mostly it happens when i am there prayerfully on my knees, and something has started the tears a-flowing. For so many years, i did not go to church, i did not pray -- i guess ten of them, from the point i got pregnant with A & left the church, to the time Nicolas died. Not that my life was oh so perfect or anything, but you know, i was okay, i didn't have to bother, i had no real need of praying to God, after A was born healthy. And i had issues with the church itself -- when i showed up pregnant and unmarried, i was basically given a pamphlet about adoption and told that i should give my baby up to a proper, prosperous Catholic family who could bring him up right, and that to stay with my boyfriend and have a civil marriage was 'nonsense'. Well, i guess that is the Catholics for you! So i left in a snit.
The thing about being a Catholic that i noticed as a teenager is that there are mostly 2 types of people at mass on Sundays. There are the families with their kids, and there are the old women, there alone or with another old woman, who cry. At least it was that way in my parish. Sure, that's a gross overgeneralization, and it doesn't cover everyone. But if you go, you will notice that there are alot of people who fall into one of those two categories. What bowls me over sometimes is that i am now squarely in category two, even though i don't have *that* much grey hair yet. How did that happen, how did i go from being a carefree agnostic naysayer to an weeping woman saying Hail Marys on my knees? Of course i know *how* it happened, sure, my son died. But the larger question remains, and is still bewildering -- how did that happen? How did it happen to me?
Anyway, so i go back & forth with the Church. Sometimes i go, sometimes i stay home. Sometimes i go with C, which means i don't get to listen to the sermon or anything, but hang out outside the place basically. I didn't go for a long time after we moved down here but i did mean to -- dh told me 'there is a beautiful church just down the street, you would like it'...his mother went one sunday. I didn't go on Ash Wednesday, even. But that friday one of my students made a chance comment -- 'oh, noone goes to church anymore, it is just not fashionable' -- which was kind of like a slap in the face to me, and it made me go. So i have been going -- i do like the beautiful church, Gothic in style and built in the 1880's. And i do like Father Mark, who is a master of the guilt trip and guilts us into bring a bag of groceries for the food bank every week. There are *so many* poor people in our area, and i am glad that they are really trying hard to do something tangible for them. And i do like Father Paul, who i did confession with -- he is an intellectual and we had some really interesting discussion, and i learned some things. So it's good, it's good to go. But it is painful too, it is a hard week for me.
This Sunday i went early and by myself, to have some quiet time. There are not that many families in this church, but there are a few, and eventually there was one with a 3-year old boy sitting just a few pews in front of me. Not so easy on me, you know? And the worst thing is not the pain of it, but actually to be happy to see, to be thankful. Because there are not so many 3-year old boys around in my life, and i do *want* to catch that little glimpse of what i might have had, if things had been different. Of course i know, i remember A at 3 very well, but memories and wishful thinking are different than watching.
And then they also have that part of the service where they mention people who are dead, who we should pray for. I thought for a moment that i should have them include Nicolas next week, for his birthday -- and then then i thought not, i will not do so. It is somehow too upsetting to think of hearing his name read in that context. It's the same reason that i don't call the radio show and have them play a little Mahler for him on his birthday -- i don't think i could stand to hear it. I am not ready for that level of 'memorial', maybe i will never be. It just seems so wrong, for a little baby.
I have at least 4 different kinds of shamrocks (oxalis), but they almost all do very poorly inside and are all dead -- er, dormant -- by the time St. Patrick's day rolls around. This one pot seems to be fairly happy for some reason though. When it gets a little warmer, i will put the nearly-dead outside and watch them regenerate. Ah, the magic of bulbs!
Though it has gotten cold, the promised 6 inches of snow has not appeared (yet!). So there might be some more nice pictures soon...
A fitting picture for the 100th post! This is the first flower of spring to bloom in Nicolas' garden. I thought the snowdrops would be first but the crocuses beat them. The crocuses are planted in the lawn around his tree....i only planted one package (25 bulbs) but i will put in alot more this fall so next year we will have an excellent display.
Forecast for tonight/tomorrow is 4-6 inches of snow, so enjoy the pretty pictures while they last...i hope the snow doesn't kill the crocuses entirely...
One day last week, we were visiting S. and her family. C. loves their house and was having a grand old time -- she crayonned on the table and squeezed out a whole juice box on the carpet and opened all the kitchen cabinets and pulled out everything from pots to play-doh. Then, out of the detritus of S.'s son's room, C. extracted a baby doll.
I took one glance at this thing and said "Loo
ks like C. found Satan doll" S. and her hubby, who (unlike me) are proper Christians, were a bit shocked by my choice of adjectives. Yet, since the doll was filthy, and it's head was on backwards, and someone had written with *red pen* all across the forehead -- there was no denying the aptness of my description.
Of course you can guess the rest -- Satan baby came home with us. S.'s son has long since given up playing with dolls, trains being far more correct for big boys who go to kindergarten. That may have something to do with why he was practicing writing his E's in red pen on the doll's forehead. And, although C has a beautiful doll baby that i bought her when she was born, and a beautiful doll that was mine when i was a girl, which doll does she now prefer now? That's right, the dirty scummy one!
So, i turned the head the right way, and tried to scrub off the pen marks -- they are lesser now though they are not gone. But still after watching her play with it for awhile, dh said 'that thing is an embarassement. At least get it some clothes.' And, just that same day i got an email coupon from the toy store with the big doll section! Granted, it was only 10% off, but surely they had a little cheap onesie to put on the doll baby or something. So, A, C, Satan baby, and i all went to the toy store.
However, there did not seem to be any cheap doll clothes at *this* toy store. All the clothes ranged from $15-$25 an outfit. The little onesie & socks was like $18. They were all handmade or imported from France or something! The lady helping me obviously thought i was crazy to try to dress up this dirty old doll, but she did have some good suggestions -- 'Well, you'll want something long-sleeved to cover up the, uh, dirt' and 'no, that won't work because the doll is narrow in the neck area' (she was a woman of experience, in dressing dolls anyway). I asked C 'is the baby a boy or a girl?' and she said 'ba', so i thought that was meant to be boy. I gave her several outfits to choose from and she did choose a boy outfit, so i guess i understood her right. The outfit she chose was $17...well, at least i had that 10% off coupon.
Then, of course, while i was working with the lady and the doll outfits, what do think C was actually doing? Why, she found a doll's umbrella stroller. (i knew this was going to happen though, seeing as the last time i had left there with a screaming toddler and no doll stroller) So, now we had the expensive outfit, and there was no detaching C from the stroller....the $22 doll stroller....well, at least i had that 10% off coupon.
'Okay, let's go', i said. 'Uh mom', said A, 'what's the occasion, why is C getting all that stuff?' See, A, whatever his faults may be in the realm of language arts, is very good at math -- and he can add pretty fast...and he knows i am fair. 'oh all RIGHT', i said,'what do you want?'. 'An arc-170 starfighter' he said. 'a what now?' i asked. There followed an explanation that i cannot possibly reproduce, as it contained words such as Mos Eisley, Naboo, clones, and Jedi knights. Ah, a Lego star wars thing....a $45 lego star wars thing...well, at least i had that 10% off coupon...
Luckily, they honored the coupon, because otherwise i would have gone ballistic. B
ut still it was 80 bucks total ..... i do admit, however, that the doll looks alot better now, in fact in his fancy french overalls he is kind of sweet. We cannot call him Satan baby any more....i suppose it just goes to show that redemption is possible for us all...
The crocuses came up in the front of the house
and the snowdrops are starting to peek through under Nicolas' tree.
His tree (a weeping pussy willow) is starting to put out it's pussy willows,
and on saturday i bought three of these white pansies to plant in his garden on his birthday. I actually prefer violas (the little pansies) but they are hard to find in Michigan in March in white.
I started some tomato and eggplant seeds, and it was so warm that i was able to do it on the porch, so i did not even have to mess up my kitchen. They are now sitting on the windowsill in our bedroom, i impatiently await their sprouting...
Of course, on tuesday it is supposed to snow. But hey, the weather was beautiful this weekend.
So, today C was looking at a piece of paper which she pulled out of the trash -- it was an advertisement for the Curious George movie. I think it came on a Netflix envelope. Anyway, she was really loving the picture of the monkey with the glasses. So i said to her, 'Do you know, we have a Curious George book?' Which she would not know, as it is not a board book, and she still has a tendancy to tear the pages out of non-board books. 'Let's go get it', i said, and she nodded, and we left the room together. But as i was going into A's room to get the book, i noticed she was going toward the kitchen. Okay, i got the book and met her back in my room, next to the Curious George advertisement. I was showing her the book when i saw what *she* had gone to get from the kitchen -- George Bush !! I thought that was just awful clever of her, at 18 months of age, so i am bragging. Hmmm, a future as a pundit perhaps?
(Yes, we have George Bush dress-up magnets on our refrigerator. I bought them for my mom to make her laugh, and they ended up on my fridge. Usually he is wearing the dress.)
Well, after playing with the laptop for a tiny bit it becomes clear that it is the *wrong* laptop. I mean, it looks the same, but the screen is lousy, and the processor is the slow one, and come to think of it i was supposed to get more memory too....sigh. I guess i will have to send it back...
My new laptop finally came!!!! Our secretary in charge of ordering said, "Gee, it's the first time i have seen you smile in ages!" Ya think?! I ordered it what, 6 weeks ago? My dh has had his for more than a month. And he was to the point of mocking me daily -- "they are waiting for the Thinkpad egg to hatch...then the Thinkpad mommy must walk 70 miles to get fish to feed it so it grows..." (we had just watched March of the Penguins on HIS laptop....sigh)
No time for a long blog post...must go play with my new toy ;)
Thanks to Kristin for this one. While you are at it, stop by her blog today & tomorrow, and send her your support.
Putting in "Catherine needs" into Google was a great idea! Look at all these exceedingly interesting statements!
-Catherine needs a sanctuary, periodic retreat from the world and long luxurious baths.
-Catherine needs to integrate spiritual energy and is nourished through sweet dreams, romanic love, and poetic dishes.
-Catherine needs another yacht! (even a first yacht would be good, if you ask me)
-Catherine needs many things to grow.
-An Editor’s Report is what Catherine needs.
-I like Catherine. Catherine is random. Catherine needs the constant support of her love ones.
-Catherine needs to let go of one person, her father, in order to be able to fall in love with another... (yeah that happened long ago...)
Oh, and see, if i do "Kate needs", i get good stuff too....
-Kate Needs A Priest.
-Kate needs a cocktail!
-Kate needs a new display name.
-Kate Needs A Shave
-Kate needs to talk about the colour of the paint
Ok, these are ALL true i think...
Just to post something pretty! This amaryllis finally bloomed. These are those cheap ones from Home Depot -- i have been watering those blasted bulbs since early November, and the box promised bloom in 6-8 weeks. HA. I was just about ready to return them and ask for my money back when this one finally showed a bud coming up. It is the only one of the three so far, but then i had some hope and could not return them. Because of course if i returned them, those people would just throw them in the trash.
Well, Chloe seems to thoroughly enjoy the hardwood conic sections (and other interesting geometric solids)...."Chloe, hand me the truncated cone with the parabolic arch...no sweetie, that one is hyperbolic" (don't worry i am just kidding!)
