Full of Life

I mentioned in my Valentine's Day post how the love has returned to my cooking, but really it has returned to my life in very undramatic but amazing way.  As my youngest would say, it "sneaked on me".  I remember last winter.  It was long, so long, so white, so very cold.   The day I gave birth to Eli, in March, it blizzarded.  This year we have had no blizzards, not a one.  Not only no blizzards, almost no snow.  So it looks like spring, it feels like spring and I feel like spring.

I am full of life and it is just waiting to burst out of me at any moment, or perhaps in eight weeks or less as far as the little life that grows within is concerned.  In the meantime I am baking up love left and right and it is a true joy to eat at our house again.  I find myself excited about holidays and birthdays and that is even with Eli's birthday just three or so weeks away.  Last year I was heavily pregnant as we celebrated my husband and 2nd daughter's birthdays just a week apart and the latter less than a week before Eli's birth.  The cakes were baked with love but did not taste like love, there was just too much sadness folded inside.  Eli was originally due at the very end of March so he would have been born weeks after my daughter's birthday but due to the Potter's Syndrome and my history of c-sections he was delivered just before 37 weeks and just 5 days after our middle daughter's birthday.  It was not an ideal situation last year and oddly enough is similar to Wyatt's birthday which is just 4 days before our oldest daughter's.  So we've lost two sons yet their birthdays are both within a week of one of our daughters.  It is a bittersweet combination.  On one hand I have the sad anticipation and realization that I have passed another year without my little boy and all the contemplation about who and what he would be that goes along with that, and on the other hand that sadness is almost tempered by the close birthday celebration of that little boy's living sister and how much we have watched her change and grow within the year.

If someone had told me how different I would feel on this day in 2012 compared to this day in 2011 I wouldn't and couldn't have believed them.  I am not looking for spring to save me this year.  I don't need it to bring me back to life.

I'm Falling with Fall

Fall has always been my favorite season. I live in a region where it is winter or winter-like for a majority of the year. Spring has always renewed my spirit after many long months of short, dark, colorless days. Especially this year. Eli died before the earth came back to life and when it did so a little bit of me came back to life. Fall, I'm afraid, is almost having the opposite effect. Each day shrinks in light and warmth. The earth is slowly beginning a slumber which will last for many long months. Color is leaving our world and so far there is little autumn splendor to ease the transition. With each chilly breeze it seems that a chill of sadness creeps into my bones. Some days I am so cold I can barely get warm and yet it is still only September and we are even experiencing above average temps for the season. I am glad that Eli was born on the cusp of spring so that each year when I celebrate his birthday I can await the awakening of nature and watch the earth come alive just in time for Wyatt's birthday which is appropriately just on the cusp of summer. Spring has always represented hope and rebirth and I often find it ripe with little miracles of nature. Fall is threatening to take my hope and allow its speedy friend Winter to hold it ransom.

Change

Outside my window, just as within my own heart, things are changing. Every day our ground becomes less white and more brown. There are even tiny sprouts of green here and there. It's April, it's time. However, for me it feels too soon. It feels too soon to change. I'm not ready.

I am healing. My body has all but erased any trace of Eli's presence. My outer scar from the c-section is now just a thin jagged line. The milk has dried up. Even my headaches, which had become a daily occurrence I contribute to grieving, have lessened. My heart, just four weeks ago shattered, seems to be gluing itself together. Tears fall fewer and farther between. I hear the sound of laughter, my laughter. I left the house by myself this week, twice.

Just as the ground outside, unable to escape the sun's warm rays, cannot hold onto its cool white blanket, I cannot stay wrapped in my own blanket of grief. Change is inevitable. The only constant in life is change and I am now caught within its tides.