Entries 102
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Rage
I read a novel that was brash and honest and only now feel comfortable enough to say that what I’ve been feeling is rage. None of this is okay. I’m privileged, very privileged. We have our jobs, ...
Foreign thoughts
A bike ride through the empty Mall grounds, riding alongside my husband as my son dances on his handlebars to the eerie jangle of the lone ice cream truck. The next day the first - late, it seems...
Perhaps
His mom is manic. I wore a yellow dress on a group video call with his extended family. The weather was nice and I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to wear my dresses lately. She asked about it ...
Documented
I told David I think this is the most I’ve ever been afraid in my life. Not fear experienced in a passing moment, but in a sustained way. A tea shop we frequent burned down. Another small busines...
The last Friday night
I think a lot about that last Friday night dinner with friends. About how many lasts that night contained and how we had no clue that they would be lasts at all. There were, of course, the murmur...
My son has a face
Every Monday we bike to the grocery store and lock our bike to a rack nearby. I carry him in my arms on the way to the coffee shop and order a cappuccino at the takeout window. There’s always a b...
Not the duck pond
Today we walked to the duck pond but there were no ducks. The pond was half-drained, its pipes exposed, muck seeped and settled into the seating areas, inexplicably overrun with squirrels. Some s...
Rock Creek Park
Thursday was a government holiday so I had the day off work. It was a hard day. We had plans to bike on a new trail, but it ended up being way windier than the forecast had promised. I was frust...
Monday
You are curled up in my lap, and together we watch the sun rise and slowly overtake the glow of streetlights. The room is dark, the world is quiet, just you and me. Later I set you on the handleb...
Bread
Early this morning the two of us baked together. I wrapped him to my chest and prepared the dough, talking him through each step, letting him sift the flour and salt through his fingers. I showed...
what we lost
On Wednesday we went to another baby naming and basked in the joy of a tiny new soul and in the embrace of community. It was utterly lovely, one of my favorite traditions. And yet afterwards I fe...
Six months with H
How fast he is changing now. We kept finding him with one arm pulled up out of the swaddle, bent at the elbow with his hand on the back of his head, posing like a model. When we stopped swaddlin...
Seasons
Where I grew up there were no discernable seasons. Maybe that’s why all my thoughts of spring are so intrinsically tied to the big, grassy plaza off the bustling avenue that intersected my univer...
We are two of many
We have a children’s book for H that describes a day in the life of a child with our shared eye condition. I bought it with the hope that it would help him feel some agency over the somewhat unpl...
Min hametzar, redux
“Min hametzar karati Yah, anani vamerchav Yah.” “I cried out to G-d from a narrow place, and He answered me with expansiveness.” I sing these words on the final day of Passover and cry tears of t...
The power of time
A year ago today was the due date of my first pregnancy. Had I not miscarried, we would be celebrating a one year old’s birthday around now. I recall the date, but I don’t feel sadness about it a...
A is for anxiety
I keep having bouts of nausea. My first thought is always “Am I pregnant?” but I’m fairly confident that it’s anxiety. I’m having trouble moving on. I kept saying that I didn’t care how it happen...
It wasn't all bad
There were moments of joy, but they were sometimes difficult to discern or hold onto among all the fear. But now that we’re on the other side, I want to make sure that I remember. We were planni...
You are not alone
I watch them hold up my son from across the room, their shared smiles as they engage him with gentle movement and sound. Later I see the subtle crumple of her face during conversation, the loss o...
To enjoy him while I can
The thing I didn’t know how to say until today: We had two blissful weeks. Then blindness. Surgery. Endless eye drops. A whirlwind, emotional wreck of a trip to Dallas and LA. I just want to be ...
Like planning a wedding
Pregnancy announcements still get to me. Why? Because I’m jealous. I’m not even sure we would have done such a thing anyway; it’s more that I was never mentally even in a space where I would have...
Weighty
Perhaps I’m not being gentle enough with myself for all the other things that are weighing on me. We did all of this genetic testing, both before and during my pregnancy, and he ended up with som...
sad
I think often about my pregnancy, labor, and delivery. I feel … nostalgic? The thoughts are so frequent (almost obsessive?) that it’s been keeping me up at night. I’m more tired than I need to be...
peaceful piano
Toward the end of my pregnancy, I slept almost exclusively on the couch. Because every time I laid down in our bed, I was consumed by increasingly intense anxiety, mostly centered around the fear...
Shabbat rishon
He was born early on a Friday. That night we ordered grape juice and a dinner roll with my hospital meal to say kiddush and motzi over. Our voices faltered as we sang Shalom Aleichem, our son in ...
