If only I were Alice, Then All I would Have to do Would Be to Eat a Tiny Cake

I have a pattern to my day. It consists of watching things that don't matter, and not doing things that need to be done. I listen to music during the day and wonder why I never made anything so beautiful. I disappoint myself and let myself get wrapped up in all of that shame. I know that I am talented, but I won't let myself show this. It's a feeling of not deserving, I must have done something wrong not to be able to keep you, Frost. It's a need to hide, I don't want to spread my bad luck to others by letting them know me. It's the embarrassment when I take a chance and the response is limiting. I will show myself a new way. Some days I do, but I get shoved back. Tattle-tells always mortified me. I will never tell on myself.
I look into each corner of the room. I see spots of light and spots of dark. Like I stared at the sun. It is too much for me to take in. The power of one image has taken away all of the rest of my senses. I can't feel anything else, I only know you. What I have is not the same, and what I will have could never have been without you.
I stared at the sun too long as a child. I twisted up on a swing and looked up. I remember doing this. I wonder if anybody noticed as I was sidetracked. My White-Rabbit was the day. I followed it until I was lost.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.

Outside

Being in public is not something I should have done today. Every other person I saw today had a baby close to your age. I drove by women wearing slings with perfectly shaped tiny heads peeking out. Strollers rolled past as carefree as could be, and shopping carts holding precious cargo lingered a little too long, a little too near. I want to be these people but I do not want to see them, but I need to see them so that I have an idea of where we would be if you had stayed here. I look at the babies because I want to see what you would be doing now Frost. It's hard for me to pin-point your milestones. I have to look to others and guess at what new challenge you would be mastering right about now. When would you smile, when would you push yourself up, when would you sit? Never.
At the very beginning of my day today, right before waking, I was like these people. I dreamt that I was in the hospital and there was a beautiful baby with new eyes looking at me. There was a nurse I didn't recognize and she handed the child to me. I fed the baby my first milk and everything was good. I felt a great comfort. Then I woke, at that moment I still felt the comfort, I told your Daddy about it before I left to go out into the public. On the drive, I spent most of my time looking at the moon rather than the road, the comfort stayed with me. I arrived to my destination and began to busy myself with work. And then I felt the comfort leave me. It was a powerful rip, it tore away from me and sobs spilled out between the work and the memory of the recent dream. So soon the beautiy of it was replaced by a reality so harsh and unfair. All I wanted was in that dream and knowing it wasn't real took me down. This is why the public is hard for me. If I had stayed in bed I would have stayed with the comfort. With you.
I don't think that when people see me they know what's going on inside of me. Even when my eyes are dark and stained from tears, I don't think that people see the real struggle unless they too have been touched by the cold of death's hollow fingers. This empty hopelessness is what we are left with when our loved ones are taken. Oh, sweet baby I hope with all my heart that where you are what you are feeling is the complete opposite of this. I need you to be filled with a fullness so beautiful that it shines from your eyes and jumps from your voice. Today would have been a perfect day for holding you. Someday I want to do this forever.
My cry is changing, it's not the same as it was at first. It's becomeing more familiar, it has become a part of me.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.

We Could have Been in 1908

We went to your woods yesterday Frost. Hadley and I walked there together. I didn't cry this time, Hadley took away some of the saddness. She was amazed at the quiet in the woods and the beauty. She guaranteed me that there were fairies hiding from us and I told here that I thought you were there too. We took pictures of eachother and of the flora. Trees and vines, poison ivy and Solomon's Seal. Wolf spiders, snails and ants. Things scurried and we watched. We shared our afternoon with you and the Earth. It was good for us. It felt like we were living another life for a while, a life that could have been lived a hundred years ago. A life without distraction. Hadley called the creek a river, she is innocent. We searched for mushrooms but found none. What we did find was so much more. Broken branches spoke to me. I found out that broken things can still be pretty. I can still be pretty. I am going to explore this idea further. I am going to find broken things and prove that these can be beautiful. You were the most beautiful, and as broken as broken can be. I am going to embrace the things I cannot fix. And let these things fix me in turn.

Did you see your sister? Isn't she beautiful? She was singing her little made up songs in your woods. Just like I used to when I was a little girl. Her lyrics didn't make sense they just were. I think she must have been singing for you. She kept singing: "beautiful, beautiful, amazing...". Her voice can be quite lovely, it was more so in your woods.

Night, night Frost

Mama loves you.

I Need a Book on Feng Shui

It was four months today, four months since the earth became flat again, and I fell from its edge. I spent much of the day sleeping. I slept like I did when I was first pregnant with you. The flat-out sleep that you cannot resist, the sleep that bounces you out of your ordeals. I surrendered to it. I wanted to stay in it longer than I did. I didn't wake refreshed as one might think would happen. I got up and wandered around the house looking at things. I get mad at things. Things that are always in their place. I want to move these things so that the rooms look different. I want to change the view from what it was when you died four months ago. I want to move the mirrors and rearrange chairs and carpets. I did this the week before you died to get ready for you. Tomorrow is Monday. I used to spend Mondays with you in my belly, it was the only day of the week I had to myself with you. We cleaned and made the things in their spaces look nice. We were arranging the nest I was to bring you into. I would look around and try to decide where your favorite place to be would be. I tried to pick out the calmest places, the places that would help me sooth your cries. I will go to those places now, they do not sooth my cries. Only you can do that Frost. And you don't do this where I pictured you doing it. You spring a calmness on me sometimes when I'm not expecting it, in places I didn't know were perfect.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.

The Ramp

I have something that is unusually difficult to do. I do it three times a week. I did it before you died and after. It was not hard before, but now it breaks me. I deliver food to the hospital on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. I go through the back, up a long ramp. It is the same hospital where I delivered you. I hated going there after, but I also used it to think about you. I know that you were there. I walked you down the long stark hallway in my belly. I hummed to you and listened for the echo. After, one day I had to deliver the baby cakes that they give to the new parents getting ready to take home new babies, living babies. I did not receive such a cake. I hate taking them there. It's a constant reminder. After, one day as I arrived I watched a somber pick-up being made. The morticians had come, they were returning to the herse with a body covered in blue sheets. The body was on a gurney, the body belonged to an adult. Thank God. I watched as they used the same ramp I had walked up and down with you as you grew. And then I realized that someone else had walked you down that ramp and put you into a car, Frost. I don't know if that stranger carried you or rolled you out. You were only four and a half pounds so I must assume that they carried you out. I hope that the stranger, who had the privilege of holding you, was gentle with your little body. Your Mother and Father never got to carry you outside into the face of nature, that stranger had our moment with you and probably didn't even realize it. We dreamed of it, it was his job. I walked up the ramp today wondering if the people I encountered knew how extremely shattered I was becoming inside, holding in tears and pretending that walking that path was the easiest thing. I have to walk the path of your only walk outside everyday. Should I embrace this, or be crushed by it? Somedays I hum as though you are there with me again, other times I sob as though this was the place where you were torn away from me forever. It is a very hard place to be, I think that there must be many, many spirits along that path. I am living. I walk upon cement that has felt the wheels of death. I feel its finality and frailty. In most of the places I spend my time, people have not died. In this place that I go three times a week, the number of lives vanished is overwhelming. It's a very different place to be. I will try to hum there more often.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.

Kites and Keys and Baby's Sneeze

A couple of nights before the ultrasound technician said "I'm so sorry" some strange things happened. Lights flickered around the house at weird times for no reason. The pictures I took of our deformed Christmas tree were blurred and grainy eventhough I sat completely still as I clicked the camera. My cell phone went dead all of the sudden and never came back up. These things were just irritating at the time. After you died and questions of every sort started to enter my head, I began to consider these happenings as something more. I wondered to myself why I could not tell when your little soul left my body? Why couldn't I feel my most important connection be broken? Why did the loss of something so powerful not register in my mind as it happened? Why didn't I see the clues that could have guided me to saving you? I felt guilt over all of these things and played the days over and over in my mind, hurting more and more each time. Why didn't I know? Then my mind started thinking about the things that had happened. They were all different things that had to do with energy, electricity. I thought then that maybe the energy it took to fly you from my body had caused these kind of strange malfunctions around our house. Was it your soul moving through these things that had caused them to short out? You breaking away from me seems similar to the spliting of an atom, it is so un-natural. It should never have happened. Our history changed the day you left. I see electricity in a new way now. I see it as being made up of souls searching out their new homes. A very precious resource indeed. These are the kinds of changes that have come to the way my thoughts work since we lost you Frost. The world isn't what I thought it was. Maybe you just zoomed past me as I typed the keys F R O S T.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.

An Old Friend

There's a place that I find every year. I've found it every year since I was a child. I first remember finding it in my Grandma's strawberry patch. And then on her mossy brick patio. I found it jars of lightening bugs stacked full of grass and pierced through and through with "breathe-holes". The side walk on the west of my Grandma's house hid my place well. Among snails and mashed leaves I explored. When I find my place I turn tiny. Although I become a giant next to the millipedes and baby wolf spiders, when I look in on their world I feel like I shrink into it, and become a citizen. When I find my place and go there, I am surrounded by the memories I keep there. I think the same thoughts I did when I was 6. They come back to me when I find my place. I add new thoughts and wonder about what my 6 year old thoughts mean to me now. I found my place for the first time this year yesterday. I was digging in the garden, planting peas and plucking violet blossoms for jelly. I crumbled clods of dirt between my fingers and watched for the earthworms to struggle for their freedom. I never want to hurt the earthworms, I watch for them when I dig and try not to cut them. They are nurturers and the earth belongs to them first. I found my place in the dirt. I felt the smell of my place and I knew that my memories would come to the surface soon. When I have these memories in my place I never cry, this is because I know that I am safe in my place. If I think about these things somewhere else tears will be sure to find me. I dig and think, dig and wonder. What did I know the first time I wondered about that? Frost, I can't remember thinking about you or your sister before you were here. But I do remember thinking about a great happiness that would come to me someday. A warm feeling, a deserving feeling, a true feeling, a wholeness. I think now that that must have been the two of you. I feel that when I am in the garden, working the earth, that has been worked before and will be worked after us. I am doing something that countless others have. I am a part of this world despite not knowing most of the others that cut the groove out before me. From my place I watch stillness turn into wind, the breath that blows the dust somewhere leaving a space for me to add another memory. This year I added my thoughts of you.
The apple blossoms are perfect this year.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.

Unwrapping Gifts

Today at 1:11 in 1975, I was born. I wonder then if you were in the plan set out for me. I wonder if you were there Frost, I wonder if you were not supposed to leave so early. Was I meant to have such pain in me, was this suffering part of the deal made at my birth? Why did I get to continue on with a life, when you did not? Who picks and chooses who lives and who doesn't? How is this determined? I could drown in all of the questions that pound through me each day. You are still a gift to me and you will be everyday, not just on my birthday. Every wish on every candle on every cake for the rest of my birthdays will be for you. For your happiness wherever you are. For the chance to see you again. For the ability to give you to the world through words. For being able to recognize the love I have for you in everything I see, and to share that love with those who need it.
There is a little boy in our life that is needing some of your extra love right now. It is your big cousin Ebben. His life isn't turning out as we had hoped at the moment. I have been watching him and caring for him. We will get him back to good. I've been sharing some of your love with him, and he has been giving back. He is playing and laughing, he has a beautiful big laugh. I imagine him teaching you things and playing with you. He is very smart and he is helping me. Hadley plays with him the way I know she would have played with you. I watch them together and I know that you are there. Your sister made me a birthday card today. She drew a picture of you and herself. You had wings and were in the clouds, she was on green grass. In the picture you were both smiling out at me. She signed your name; Love, Frost.
My life is lucky and unlucky at the same time. I always used to say my Dad was the luckiest unlucky person in the world. I wonder sometimes if this is a trait passed down through our entire family. The males especially seem to have a tragic twist thrown in. You don't feel this pain where you are, do you Frost? That was my wish today when I blew out the candles. My wish was for a sign that you are happy and good. I am still waiting. Or maybe you let me know through a little boy's beautiful big laugh. A laugh big enough for two boys. Or maybe through the smiling eyes of a drawing on a card made by a sister who is missing her Angel brother very much. I think it was in both. I saw you in the children today. Thank you for visiting me.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.

Easter and the Honeysuckle

Eggs were hidden. So were you. Tears swelled. Sobs and pleadings were thrown at the sky. I begged for a rebirth, a vision above my head. I saw nothing there, so I looked into the tangled garden. Green was sprouting over the dwindling stems of last year. I found the old vines to be disturbing. I took the honeysuckle plant from our old house. The house we lived in when our bad luck started. The house we lived in when the tree fell on your Grandpa, Frost. I didn't have the honeysuckle with us when Hadley was born. I went back and took it in between my babies. I wish I hadn't taken it now, it feels like I've taken ahold of the kind of bad luck that accompanies a piece of petrified wood when taken from the Petrified Forest. The honeysuckle plant is growing strong. I looked at it and remembered that at the old house we had buried our cat, Pippin underneath it's soil. She was my first pet, I loved her. I took the plant as a way of bringing her spirit back to us. She was beautiful and I won't believe that she would let bad things happen. The vines twisted all around the trellis. I saw coils and braids and strength where the stems bonded together. I saw an umbilical cord. I saw what it could do. I saw the buds of leaves popping out along the nodes of growth. I saw the green, I saw life. And I saw the dryness of death in the old wood. I felt its heart stop, it stayed right where it died and let everything else grow over it. It became a support for the life that was to come. It allowed nature to fashion something beautiful over its memory.
I wonder everyday if you were reborn somewhere else, I wonder if I will meet you someday?
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.