Night-Light

Maddie, Riley, and I got home around 5:00 last night. We played for a while, then I sat them down for some dinner around 6:00. CV and N walked in shortly thereafter, and N joined Maddie and Riley for some Toddler Gourmet. Then, in a revolutionary move, CV WENT TO THE STORE CHILD-FREE while I got the kids their dinner, gave them their bath, and put them in pajamas. CV's mission? Find a bulb of the appropriate wattage and a timer for the lovely star light that we wanted to set up in the kids' room.

We both accomplished our missions. By the time CV got back, the kids and I were snuggled in on the couch watching Dora. CV was able to put the light up, and when Dora was over, we all had a talk about the Magic Light: on means talking is OK, off means time for sleep. Riley, ever resistant to new experiences, was skeptical of the whole thing, but went to bed without a fuss.

At 5:45 a.m., I heard Riley talking. This is already a big improvement over 4:45 a.m.,  but since the star was not set to go on until 6:00, I decided to intervene. I snuck in the kids' room.

"Riley, is the star on?"

"No, Mama."

"Is it OK to talk?"

"No, Mama."

"I'll lie here with you until the star comes on. Try to sleep some more."

Time passes. What seems like quite a bit of time passes. I check the clock. 6:15! Star malfunction! I switch it on manually. 

"Mama!" said Riley, whispering. "That star is beautiful."

"Yes, it is. And what does it mean?"

"I can talk now, Mama?"

"Yes, Love, you can, but quietly."

At this point, Maddie and N were awake, too. I reminded them to talk quietly, and said that it wasn't time to get up yet and that I was going back to bed for a bit. They talked, albeit not quietly, for another 15 minutes or so, and I got them all up at 6:30. I think it's going to take a while for the Rules of the Star to be obeyed, but I think it's going to work. I hope it's going to work. In any case, I feel better for trying something and for keeping my cool in today's early morning hours.

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I was really angry this morning, for a long time. Hours. It's only 9:44 a.m. right now, and I've had many wakeful hours during which to be angry because Riley got up for the day at 4:45 a.m.

"I know I shouldn't be so angry with him," I said to CV as I staggered around the kitchen in an vengeful delirium. "It's not like he knows it's so early. He just knows he's awake and ready to get up."

"It's those things you can't control that are the hardest to deal with," remarked my wise housemate. So true, so true.

Riley has never been a great sleeper. I don't think he needs as much sleep as the average toddler, for starters; he certainly doesn't need as much sleep as Maddie. He also takes a long time to fall asleep and wakes up early. If Riley sleeps past 6:00 a.m., it's a very good day indeed.

But Riley's sleep issues aren't really the problem here. At issue is my inability to control the anger that his early wakings incite. I know that yelling at him to go back to sleep doesn't help, yet that's what I do because I don't know what else to do. Sometimes I take him into bed with me, but he just talks and pulls my hair and asks questions and as endearing as I want to find that, if it's anytime before 6:00 a.m., I just find it annoying. Eventually, his talking wakes up N and Maddie, and that's just not OK since both of them need more sleep than Riley. 

I'm planning to get a timer for a night-light and experiment with telling Riley that if the light has not come on yet, then it's not time to talk and wake others up, it's time to sleep. Hopefully that will help. Hopefully I will be able to control my anger; I hate carrying that feeling around all morning, and I hate the guilt I feel for having yelled at the little man for something that is not in his control. It's not like he bit another kid or deliberately broke something or did something "naughty." He's just listening to his body clock, which runs on a much different timer than the rest of our household's, and a much different timer than I'd like it to.

I know I can't control this. I can only control my reaction. I need to write that down though, see it transfer from my hand to the computer screen, and create a record of it, because just thinking it is clearly not enough. I can't control this, I can only control my reaction. I don't like the way I feel when I yell and get angry. Tomorrow morning, no matter how early, I will be calm, and explain to Riley that it's still night and that his talking is going to wake the other kids. Then I will ask him if he wants to snuggle with me. And even if his presence in my bed keeps me awake, I will think about our meditation from church last week. I don't remember the specific words, but it had to do with peace and accepting each moment in life for what it is.

I can change how I react. I want to change how I react. Writing about it here helps to make it all real.

Time Management

I always get a little bit annoyed when people say they are too busy to do something. For the most part, I believe that if you want or need to do something, you will make the time for it to happen.

I'm starting to revise my stance on this.

The past week has been INSANE. One week ago today, CV and I were congratulating ourselves on getting all three kids to bed in an efficient and timely manner, and I was unpacking a minimum of stuff before collapsing into bed in a sniffling, snotty heap after a long, busy day of lugging stuff down my two flights of stairs and up the matching two at CV's. Just one week ago. That's all. Seven days.

It already feels like a lifetime ago. I've been back to the condo almost every day since, picking up last-minute items or putting things out on the porch for Freecyclers to pick up. When I walk into what Maddie, Riley, and I call "the old house," I either feel no emotions at all or a rush of negativity. All I can see when I'm there is what I have left to do before the first open house this weekend, and all I remember is the bad. I'm sure some of this is self-protection. I've made a decision to move on, and my mind is wise enough to make sure I think my decision is the right one. But m0re than that, I think it's sign that my decision is the right one. It's telling that the only time in the past week that I've really lost my shit with the kids was back at the old house. Sure, the kids were underfoot as I was trying to accomplish some last-minute packing, but the anger I felt and the negativity I spewed was disproportionate to the situation, and I'm sure a product of the setting.

We've settled into an easy, if hectic, routine here at CV's. All three kids are doing amazingly well with the transition. They are sharing a room with mimimal issues and, in fact, some benefits. CV's daughter, N, seems to enjoy the company in the morning and, rather than screaming for CV upon waking, is content to chat with Maddie and Riley for a while before getting up. The kids seem happy for either CV or me or both of us to come get them up in the morning, allowing one of us to shower or make breakfast or whatever while the other pulls kids out of cribs. Bedtime has been equally pain-free; we all pile into my bed for stories, and then the kids get tucked in, songs are sung, and sleeping ensues. OK, sleeping ensues after a few reminders to pipe down. But still. There have been a few night wakings, but Maddie and Riley both have pretty wicked coughs, and I think the wakings have more to do with that and less to do with having three kids in one room.

We do laundry constantly. We run the dishwasher almost every day. It's going to be a good while before all of my boxes are unpacked and all of my stuff finds a home. I need to repaint my room. There's plenty of work still to be done. But I feel so comfortable, and Maddie and Riley clearly do, too. They have never asked to go back to the old house, and fully expect that we'll be headed to CV and N's after school. When Maddie, Riley, and I arrive home before the others, they are clealry disappointed that we're the only ones home. Maddie has been wearing N's clothes some days. They have hilarious converstaions when they wake up in the morning: "You yell 'Mama.' NO! Not like that! LOUDER!" It's a little crazy, but a good kind of crazy.

After months of being bored during the day at work, I'm now flat-out, with more to do than one person can realistically accomplish, but not enough overflow to justify hiring a temp or another employee. Murphy's Law that the timing would work out that way, but so be it. At least I have some job security.

I confess to having underestimated the amount of time it takes to get a house ready to put on the market. I really like my agent, and he's been very supportive and understanding. But you know how it is when you pack up a house. The first three-quarters of the packing goes great. The last quarter? Disaster. Stuff starts breeding like rabbits when you're not looking. You run out of boxes that are just the right size. You run out of boxes period. You can't decide what to keep and what to get rid of. Your stuff multiplies again. You seal the box of summer clothes, lug it to the basement, then find a pair of shorts. Sigh.

As if that weren't bad enough, I met with a professional house stager on Friday. Oh, boy, was that torture akin to getting my nails pulled out one by one with rusty pliers. The stager was just doing her job, but I was overwhelmed by the cumulative stress of a busy week at work and the realization of just how much remained for me to do. And while yes, the stager was just doing her job, she could have been a little more . . . tactful. Is it really necessary to say, "That kitchen rug has to go. I mean, if it were a nice rug, OK. But not that." A simple, "I don't think you need to leave that rug" would suffice, thank you.

I'm taking a half day off tomorrow to deal with the last-minute clean out before the photographer arrives on Wednesday to take pictures to post on the Internet listings in anticipation of the first open house this coming weekend. A price has been determined. I'm so ready for this to be done. I would love, love, love to get a reasonable offer this weekend and just put this all behind me. Keep your fingers crossed.

Settling In

We moved.

As Dora would say, "We did it! ¡Lo hicimos!"

It was a long, busy, tiring day, but so far, I'm feeling very happy with the decision. I learned to enjoy being the only adult in the house, but the truth is that I prefer the companionship of other grown-ups. On the productivity side, it was novel and nice that even with three toddlers around, CV (the roommate's Official Name) and I were able to get some unpacking done and get dinner cooked. On the emotional stability side, the presence of another adult keeps my temper in check; it's amazing how simply knowing that someone else understands just how much I don't feel like reading that book again can make me relax a bit. Also, it's more fun to eat dinner when you have someone to chat with and more fun to watch TV when someone hears your comments. 

There's still much left to do. A fair amount of non-essential stuff is still at my condo, some of it for staging purposes, some of it to be removed before the staging can happen. Riley was up a couple of times in the night, ostensibly because he couldn't find his lovey, but I think more just to be reassured that this new place was where he was supposed to be and that I was there, too. Unpacking must be done. Things must find their places. Routines need to fall into place. And oh, yeah, my condo needs to sell, which means that it first needs to get listed.

But this is a Good Thing, I can tell already. It just feels right.

Saying Goodbye

We're moving this weekend. This coming Monday, President's Day, while Maddie and Riley are at daycare and I am off of work, I will spend the day lugging essential stuff from my house to my friend's* house, and then, when I pick the kids up, we'll go to our new home.

Yesterday, on the way home from school, I told Maddie and Riley what was happening. The back of the car was filled with moving boxes, and the two of them wanted to know what the boxes were for.

"What those boxes for? We gonna put our toys in there?" they queried.

"Actually, funny you should ask. We are going to put your toys in there, and your clothes, and Mama's stuff, and we're going to take it all to S and N's house and we're going to stay there for a while," I explained. "We'll take you cribs, too. And you'll get to sleep in the same room as N."

"We can sleep in the same room? Duckie and Froggie are gonna come? The cats are gonna be there?" The questions came fast and furious from both Maddie and Riley.

"I LOVE cats and dogs!" added Riley, for good measure.

"We'll share our toys," pointed out Maddie.

Overall, both Maddie and Riley seemed excited by the idea, but the toddler mind is nothing if not mysterious. For starters, their concept of time is rather loose. Maddie and Riley seem to understand past, present, and future, but five minutes ago and five days ago are the same to them: past. Anything in the future is tomorrow, or after nap. So when I tried to explain when we'd be moving, they didn't quite get it. For now, it suffices that it's not today. The other thing about toddlers, at least Maddie and Riley, is that they often claim excitement about something in the theoretical, but are then much less enthusiastic in reality.

It's going to be an adjustment, no matter how you slice it. I hope that Maddie and Riley's initial enthusiasm remains. We'll see next Monday.

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As for my mind, I've been all over the place. I feel good about the decision to move and to put our condo on the market. Yes, I'll lose money, but I'll also be in a position to start saving again rather than slowly bleeding out, and in a position where the loss of my job would not be financially catastrophic to my family.

Equally important, I'll be freed of a huge emotional weight. It's not possible for me to express how stuck my house makes me feel. The burdens and sorrow of the last few months of John's life are everywhere. I go to bed every night in the room—in the bed! on the sheets!—where he died. I feel like a slave to the life we had, and even more so to the life we didn't have. I feel like I can't move forward from a physical position of so much pain. 

Of course, I'll still sleep in the same bed in our new place, and my mind will still hold on to the painful memories of John's illness. But I hope and believe that being physically elsewhere, changing our scene, giving us a new experience, will allow me to be more open to ways to move on. That emotional freedom along with the financial freedom of being out from under the house are important steps in moving on, steps towards building a life that honors the time Maddie, Riley, John, and I had together while creating something new and more grounded in joy.

Anyone in the market for an awesome condo in greater Boston?

*I need a name for this friend, as she and her daughter will likely be coming up a lot more in the blog. You know who you are: what should I call you two? Real names? Something else?

Memories

The mind works in mysterious ways. After yesterday's post, I had to go back and look at those last photos of John and me with the kids reading bedtime stories.

The pictures were actually taken on 8 April, three days before John died. And, much to my surprise, he's holding Riley. Our bedtime ritual with the twins was always that John gave Maddie a bottle while I breastfed Riley, they we read them stories and tucked them in. Because of that, Maddie spent more one-on-one time with John before he died, and I've often wondered if that's why she seems to have a stronger connection with him, more memories, a feel for who he was and what he meant to her.

Here is our first family photo, in the delivery room on 22 June 2006:


And here is our last, taken on 8 April 2007:

Bleeding

My cell phone rang at work yesterday, and the caller ID showed Maddie and Riley's daycare. My heart and stomach sank. Daycare doesn't call to tell you the kids ate a good snack or had fun playing in the snow. Daycare calls to tell you someone has a fever or someone is barfing or someone broke an arm.

This time, daycare was calling to say that Riley had woken up during his nap with a bloody nose. The staff had it all under control, and Riley did not seemed disturbed. He just wanted to go back to sleep. I'm sure the bleeding was caused by the terribly dry, cold air of New England winters. We run a humidifier full-tilt at home, and there's one at daycare, too, but even that's not always enough for those with sensitive, delicate baby skin. I asked if I should come pick Riley up, but the consensus was that there was no need.

I breathed a sigh of relief that everything was basically OK, but I was afraid. I'm no stranger to bloody noses. John got them a lot towards the end of his illness. By the last few months of his life, the chemo had so damaged his system that he couldn't produce enough platelets for his blood to clot effectively. He'd just bleed and bleed and bleed. And bleed. It was scary, and gross, but mostly just scary. Every time he'd get a nosebleed, I'd think, "This is it. This is the end." Ultimately, a nosebleed wasn't the end of it all, but when you are watching a substance that should be inside your sick husband's body gush out of it, a substance that sustains his life, it's hard not to feel like a nosebleed could be a harbinger of death.

Riley's nose bled a bit more during the night. "Mama! I have boogers!" he cried out. I cleaned him up and that was that. His nose wasn't even really bleeding, just dripping a tiny bit, which stopped as I wiped it away. Thankfully, there was no river of blood that couldn't be stopped, even with ice packs and pressure and every single one of our spare towels. There was no need to throw together a bag of stuff to take to the ER (a task I can accomplish in about 2 minutes, maximum), no need to call 911 for an ambulance (something neither John nor I ever thought to do when he needed urgent care).

Riley went right back to sleep. Not me. All I could think about was the last few months of John's life and how awful they were. Things I remember from those months, in no order whatsoever:

• The nosebleeds, oh, the nosebleeds.
  
• The frustration of John not getting treatment due to low platelet counts.
  
• Test results bringing bad news.
• Fear. Constant, oppressive fear.
  
• John sleeping.
  
• John vomiting.
  
• Me never sleeping.
  
• The hospital.
  
• Hearing John's beloved oncologist say to us, "I don't like to talk about how much time is left, but at this point you need to recognize that it's going to be weeks, not months, not years."
  
• Taking a nap with John in his hospital bed
  
• Lugging my breast pump to the hospital every day and pumping in John's room while my in-laws watched.
  
• The absurdity of registering for hospice
  
• Liters of belly-bloating fluid being drained from John's distended abdomen.
• Calling my mom from the lobby of the hospital and saying, "Mom, I need you. Now."
  
• Lugging Riley around on my hip as I prepared a dose of morphine for John.
  
• In his last few days of life, John's obsession with taking a shower.
  
• Arguing with my in-laws, and, ultimately sending them home so that John and I could have a few last days together.
  
• The day before he died, wanting John to die because I didn't think either of us could take one more day of him "living" the way he was.
  
• John's confusion, empty look, and inability to keep his eyes open.
  
• Anger that my husband was dying.
• Resentment that my husband couldn't help me more.
• Shame that I was angry and resentful and that I didn't feel particularly warm or loving towards anyone.

No one tells you that as a caretaker, you'll experience all kinds of emotions that will make you utterly ashamed. I was so often angry with John, angry that he was leaving me and the kids, angry that he couldn't help me more, angry that I had to take care of our kids and him. HE WAS DYING, and yet I managed to direct my bitterness about the situation towards him. No one tells you that along with the sadness of grief comes a loathsome sense of relief that the hypervigilence of being responsible for someone with a terminal illness is gone. When John died, cancer suddenly vanished from my life. As sad as I was to see John die, I was in equal measure relieved that no one living under our roof was being eaten away from the inside, dying far too early, suffering far too much.

Relief. It's embarrassing to admit that part of me felt flooded with relief the night John died. In part, I was relieved for him. John was so tired of being sick. But I was also relieved for me. I was so sick of dealing with sickness, of scheduling our lives around cancer. The oppressive weight a terminal illness brings into a home is something I cannot adequately describe, and something I do not miss.

I miss John, of course, but I don't miss the John of the last four months of his life. I miss the man I married, and the core of him was slowly sucked away during his illness, leaving a shell that, in personality, was almost not recognizable to me by the end. John pulled away from me at the end, and pulled away even more from Maddie and Riley. He almost couldn't stand to be around them because he couldn't bear to see what he was leaving. And yet. And yet! The night before he died, he got out of bed and, with the help of me and my father-in-law, shakily made his way to the living room where he held a bottle for Madeleine and snuggled her while I read some bedtime stories. I have pictures of that night; those are the last pictures of John alive, holding his daughter, sitting in our glider, Riley and me next to him. The next day, John was dead.

I still, every day, feel two conflicting emotions in equal measure. I feel profound sadness that John is not here to experience our life, and I feel profound relief that his suffering came to an end. One of the many things that makes grief so unbearably hard is that it stirs up emotions that you don't expect, emotions that you never thought could be experienced simultaneously, emotions that no one wants to talk about, emotions that are uncomfortable to feel.

No calls from daycare today. Hopefully the nosebleeds are over. I think I've had all the nosebleeds I can take.

We have a winner! Plus: sale extended!

With the help of the Integer Generator at random.org, I have picked a winner in the Barefoot Books giveaway. And the winner is . . . (drumroll, please):

Ellen!

She chose The Barefoot Book of Faeries. Congratulations to Ellen. UPDATE: Ellen changed her choice to Emily's Tiger.

FYI, Tammy has generously extended the 10% sale through midnight on Friday, February 6. So go do some more shopping to console yourself if you weren't the winner.

Free Book Reminder! and as a Bonus: Musings on Religion

Interested in winning a free book from the awesome Barefoot Books? Check out this post to get the details. All you have to do is leave a comment and you could win . . . Seriously, check it out.

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Maddie, Riley, and I had a great weekend. Mostly we just laid low, which was nice. Some friends came to us, we shopped for groceries, we jumped up and down on an extra crib mattress, we watched some Dora, we colored. You know, weekend stuff. 

We also went to church.

I've written here before about wanting to explore church options. I did not regularly attend church when I was growing up, and my feelings about religion are rather . . . unformed. But I would like some kind of community beyond our little threesome to help Maddie and Riley find the directions on their moral compasses. I don't want anything dogmatic or pushy, though. I want food for thought, gentle guidance, and tolerance for a wide range of beliefs. No guilt. No punishment. No judgment. Lots of room for questions. The Unitarian Universalists fit this list of requirements pretty well. As it would happen, it was "bring a friend to church" day on Sunday, so we met friends of ours there to check things out. 

Maddie and Riley are still too young for any formal Religious Education offerings at the church, but they are not too young to hang out in the well-equipped and lovingly staffed pre-K room. They had a blast playing and having snack (at least that's what they reported ex post facto) while I attended the service with my friends. 

I was surprised by how moved I was by the experience. I spent a lot of time crying. The music was beautiful, the readings were thought-provoking, and the few minutes spent in silent meditation were incredibly intense. My friend and I talked afterwards about how easy it is to avoid spending quiet times with one's own thoughts. It's much easier—and safer—to pick up a book, turn on the TV, or call a friend. To just sit and be with my thoughts was difficult, a little painful, and remarkably cathartic. There's a reason I don't spend that kind of time when I get minutes to myself after the kids go to bed: it's hard work. I know it's worthwhile, but it's not easy. My first thought when the quiet bell rang signaling the start of a few minutes of meditation was, "My husband is dead, and I'm really sad about that." It seems so self-evident, but to just sit and feel that was something I had not done in a long, long time.

We all went out for coffee and snacks after the service. Even though it was well into Maddie and Riley's naptime, they held up like troopers and we all seemed refreshed by our experience. I was not only refreshed, but utterly exhausted and oddly ravenous. That hour in the sanctuary was the most emotionally exhausting hour I've spent in recent months. Once the kids were down for their nap, I ate an enormous lunch and collapsed into a heap on my couch. I'd had plans to undertake all manner of projects during naptime, but I was totally incapable of doing anything but sitting. (OK, I did read as I felt like I'd spent enough time with my thoughts for the day.)

I anticipate that we'll be going back, and we may try other congregations to find a good fit. It's a bit like shopping around for the right Al-Anon meeting, I guess. I'm just glad I finally made the time to go. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while, but then when Sundays roll around, we end up with other plans or I'm too lazy or . . . I'm glad it came together this week.