quick takes friday: low blood sugar edition

(which is kindly hosted over here...)

--- 1) angry gardening -----

Earlier this week I planted strawberries in honor of Angel Mae. Angel Mae likes strawberries and she wants me to plant some. (More on how I know that another time.) My sister mail ordered us some happy-year-round berry plants and they finally arrived and it was time to plant. I put them in a terracotta strawberry pot, helpfully described on gardening websites as "urn shaped."

I'd been looking forward to putting the berries in and I suppose it I thought it would be a sad and tender experience, getting my hands in the dirt, thinking about my little girl, honoring her request. Instead it was awful. A very angry gardening experience, with winds and threatening rain to suit my mood.

Because this is how a good handful of us out there take care of our children. We plant strawberries and water trees and light candles and sit for tattoos and take a feather duster to a small urn. These are our acts of parenthood - dark shadows of the real thing. For more about crappy gardening experiences and parenting spirit babies, see here.

--- 2) the high cost of grief -----

There are some things I would like to do to take care of myself and honor my baby, especially as her due date approaches. I'd like a tattoo, a healing session with a local shaman, some therapy, some body work, a good postpartum haircut, plantable seed angels to send to everyone I know, helpful herbs for my reproductive system, memorial jewelry.... But I'm out of work and this stuff is freaking expensive. I don't want to set financial limits on my healing. But here we are, in a recession. How do you make a budget for grief work?

---3) counting up, counting down -----

Angel Mae was born and died at exactly 20 weeks. Halfway. Until a few days ago I had been counting the weeks since she had died. But we just hit another halfway point and suddenly my counting has flipped itself around. We are counting down the days and weeks until her due date in July.

Suddenly I feel like things are getting harder, like my mid-spring reprieve is over. The shock is over (oh, miraculous cushion of shock!) and my hormone levels are normalizing (oh hurrah for being able to occasionally blame the hormones!). It's just me and my brain and the awful fact of not being pregnant with her anymore. And the big dark scary due date is just looming there.

We are making some plans. We will probably head for the mountains. I will get that tattoo. But right now I'm really beyond feeling that any real healing is possible for me until after July 19.

---4) grief toxicity -----

Don't let anyone tell you grief is all in your head. It isn't. It's in your body. Most days I feel like there is a vice grip around each of my cells and I don't know how to get it to let go. On the worst days my cells feel like they want to throw up. Is that super weird? It's as if each cell in my body is holding some particular pain or sadness, and they just need to spit it out in some huge wave of grief and awfulness, and then be washed with love, and polished to a shine and returned to whatever they usually do for my body.

I think I'm going to call this grief toxicity. All that toxic backup - I think it's from a lack of crying. I've more or less stopped crying. Not good. If I start again, there will be a flood, and possibly some throwing up, and some more days of not getting out of bed. It is very hard to let myself go there.

I've been trying the gym for physical release. It is moderately helpful, for some things. But I just ran three miles on the treadmill and came home and stuck a spoon in the jar of nutella. Hm.

--- 5) yes, but-----

... not everything sucks. My sister and her family are coming up for beaching and hiking and barbecueing on Sunday. And otherwise I have a relatively unplanned weekend alone with my man. And Dice-K is back pitching for the Red Sox tonight. So that's something.